Tag: Egypt
Rebuilding Libya: the first few steps
Theatlantic.com published my piece this morning:
Aug 22 2011, 6:39 AM ET
The most immediate challenges facing post-Qaddafi Libya
Reuters
Muammar Qaddafi’s finale in Libya is coming faster than even the rebels likely anticipated. They are reported to have arrested Saif al Islam, his favored son. If they take Qaddafi alive, the rebel leadership body Transitional National Council (TNC), or its successor organization, will presumably transfer him and his son to The Hague, for trial at the International Criminal Court. This would be a remarkable end to a 42-year reign as Libya’s chief governing authority and a first opportunity for the court to try a chief of state, even if he did not claim that title.
Some may prefer to try him in Tripoli, but it is going to be years before the Libyan courts are able to meet the necessary international standards. A show trial will not help Libya in its understandable passion to lay the foundations for a freer society.
Qaddafi’s continued resistance risks making the situation inside Libya far more chaotic than it need be. Some of his loyalists may go underground as people harmed by the regime seek revenge, rivalries among rebel groups may emerge, looting and rioting could break out, and criminal gangs are sure to try to take advantage of any disorder. Restoring public order will be job one, with restoring electricity, food, and water close behind. Oil installations will need to be protected, weapons depots guarded, and secret police files preserved. It is certainly a good sign that the rebels are reported to have thrown up a protective cordon around the National Museum.
The rebels say they believe everything will go smoothly, and they appear to have trained some police to protect sensitive infrastructure and maintain law and order. But hope is not a plan. They need to get things under control as quickly as possible, appealing for foreign help if need be.
European governments could step up to this challenge, since they are tied to Libya via gas pipelines that float beneath the surface of the Mediterranean. If Libya succumbs to chaos, it will be to Europe that refugees will flow, and mostly European investments in Libya that will be lost. Unfortunately, Washington seems to have allowed Europe to remain distracted with its own financial problems. There does not appear to be any serious plan for dealing with chaos in Libya, which could quickly turn into a humanitarian disaster. American boots definitely do not belong on the shores of Tripoli, but it has happened before and may happen again.
The TNC will have to be particularly alert to risks of revenge killings against Qaddafi loyalists, and of score-settling among rebels. They have already lost one of their military commanders, apparently to rebel-affiliated attackers who resented his role in Qaddafi’s army. In immediate post-war situations, the urge to exact quick justice is enormous. But allowing vigilantes to even the score will only lead to a spiral of violence that is hard to stop and inimical to democratic evolution.
Virtually overnight, the rebel leadership will need to shift its focus from fighting Qaddafi’s forces to protecting them. In the past few months, the local councils that have emerged in liberated areas have not generally allowed violence against regime supporters. But that is partly because many of Qaddafi’s loyalists have fled from newly liberated towns to Tripoli. Their concentration there and in his hometown of Sirte is going to make the challenge of transition much greater there than anyplace else in Libya.
It is critical that regime loyalists and rebels alike do not grab and “privatize” state assets, as often happens in chaotic moments and takes years to reverse. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, the government has been trying for years to recover valuable mines from those who took possession of them during the civil war. The liberty Libyans have fought for will require massive rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure and economy, which is in miserable condition. Early efforts to ensure transparency and accountability could help Libya avoid the kind of corruption that has plagued Afghanistan and Iraq.
Only the most selfish and egotistical leader would fail to make arrangements to transfer power and try to avoid bloodshed. Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine ben Ali fled, but left the country with a constitutional succession that is enabling a relatively smooth transition. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak tried to leave power in the hands of his vice president, a move negated only when the army stepped in. Yemen’s President Saleh has so far refused to allow a constitutional succession, leaving his country seized with violence.
Qaddafi is still calling on his supporters to fight and vowing to restore his own version of law and order in Tripoli. This is Qaddafi’s last misdeed. There is no constitution in Libya, so no clear constitutional succession. The revolutionaries have wisely written their own constitutional charter, but the real challenge will not be on paper. It will be in the avenues and alleys of Tripoli.
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The buck still stops with the Syrians
It has taken longer than Syria-watchers predicted, but President Obama today finally called on Bashar al Assad to “step aside” in Syria. This is an interesting formulation that implies he could remain nominally president but allow reforms to move forward. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon seems to have also taken that line yesterday with Bashar in a phone call.
Let’s look at the options from Bashar’s perspective. Egyptian President Mubarak stepped down and now finds himself on trial. Libyan non-president Qaddafi refused to step down and now is fighting a war he is likely to lose. Yemen’s President Saleh is recovering from wounds his opponents inflicted in retaliation for his military attacks on them, but he has managed to continue to dominate Sanaa from Saudi Arabia, using his son and other loyalists as proxies. Only former Tunisian President Ben Ali is managing an untroubled, but powerless, retirement somewhere in Saudi Arabia. None of those options looks as good as “step aside,” though I have my doubts the protesters would accept Bashar remaining even nominally in power for more than a brief transition period.
President Obama also signed an executive order that
- blocks the property of the Syrian government,
- bans U.S. persons from new investments in or exporting services to Syria, and
- bans U.S. imports of, and other transactions or dealings in, Syrian-origin petroleum or petroleum products.
The trouble of course is that there is little Syrian government property in the U.S., few new investments or service exports to Syria and almost no U.S. import of Syrian oil or oil products.
For President Obama’s new rhetorical line to be effective, other countries–especially Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Europeans–will need to play hard ball with the Syrian regime. Both the Turks and Saudis have sounded recently as if they are willing to do that, and the Europeans in their own complicated way seem to be moving in the same direction.
Diplomacy is getting other people to do what you want them to do. As many in the blogosphere are noting, Washington’s direct influence on events in Syria is small. President Obama himself said:
The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.
So that’s where the buck stops: with the Syrian people, who have shown remarkable courage and determination so far. Here they are in Aleppo yesterday:
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Anyone still think it was the downgrade?
Yesterday’s sharp bump upwards on the stock market following the Fed’s announcement that it would keep interest rates low for two years demonstrates all too clearly that the sharp falls the previous two days were not reactions to the S&P downgrade of U.S. government debt. I shouldn’t say it, but I will: I told you so.
The press this morning attributes the Fed action to concern about growth, which is surely in part true. But it also reflects concern about banks and the financial system, which are always close to the Fed’s heart. Low interest rates have helped to save the banks for several years now–their profits are soaring–and will continue to help in the future, as a result of the Fed’s commitment.
Does this change the picture for foreign policy? Is the Federal budget under any less pressure? The short answer is “no.” If Congress sticks with the debt deal, it still has to cut expenditures sharply starting in fiscal year 2013. All the Fed has done is to make monetary policy carry the burden of adjustment until then.
The longer answer is a bit more nuanced. Certainly U.S. government borrowing costs for the next two years will continue to be unusually low, unless the markets really do lose confidence in the dollar or inflation rears its you know what. Low interest rates will ease the government’s fiscal situation. I confess to relief about this, but it does not reduce the need for triage on foreign policy.
Nina Hachigian, who was overly optimistic about the American role in the world a few years ago, is overly pessimistic now. America is no less indispensable today that it was last week, but it is likely to be less available in the future. People who have grown to rely on the United States to help them out of the deep holes they dig for themselves–from the Balkans to Israel/Palestine to Iraq and Afghanistan–are going to find us preoccupied elsewhere, with our own top national security risks.
This is not a bad thing–most of them will discover their own capacities to manage are greater than they had imagined. And it is high time some of America’s burdens shifted to Europe and the Arab League, even if the former has financial problems of its own and the latter lots of money but little experience. Far more often than in the past, the message from America will be handle it on your own, or figure out a cheap way to get it done.
What we need to be careful about is cheap shortcuts that end up of creating expensive longterm problems. In the Balkans, that expensive delusion comes from those who advocate rearranging borders to accommodate ethnic differences, a sure formula for instability if not war. In the Middle East, it comes from those who resist defining clearly the borders of the Palestinian state or want to turn a blind eye to the Arab spring, ignoring Egypt and Tunisia because the revolutions there have been “successful.” Backing a revolution doesn’t necessarily mean paying for it or bombing a regime into submission, as Robert Ford (our man in Damascus) has demonstrated with his deft visits to protesters in Hama.
Diplomacy is not inherently expensive. Military action is. In tight financial times, we’ll do better with a foreign policy that relies less on deployed forces and more on alert diplomats.
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The rich get richer
Yesterday’s conference on investment prospects in the wake of the Arab Spring over at the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) was a lively couple of hours–these economic types are briefer and more to the point than their political counterparts–but the bottom line was gloomy: the GCC states and Iraq are likely to attract the lion’s share of investment while Egypt and Tunisia (Syria, Yemen and Libya weren’t even mentioned) go begging in the short term. There was disagreement on longer-term prospects, with Ian Bremmer registering a strong minority view that the geopolitics are unfavorable, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict.
An upbeat and indefatigible Afshin Molavi started off underlining that we live in a world of surprisingly interconnected risk, that there is a lot of diversity in what we should not really label “Arab Spring,” and that the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has a young population, many unable to get married because of the lack of jobs and looking for “dignity.” Growth has now slowed, hurting their prospects.
Citibank’s Hamid Biglari said investors have adopted a wait and see attitude toward the more revolutionary part of the region and are shifting their attention towards the GCC and Iraq, whose prospects are good if Baghdad can get security under control. Multinationals are not pulling out. Egypt is a larger and better known market than Tunisia, which however is more homogeneous, more secular, more middle class and better educated. Tunisia is more likely to succeed economically, but Egypt is the bigger prize. The immediate concerns of investors are about legitimacy and whether the new governments will treat the old elite decently, but it will be a decade before “equilibrium” returns.
Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group admitted enthusiasm for the Arab Spring (“it feels good”) but noted that Ukraine and Georgia felt good at first too. Tunisia seems to be moving in the right direction, Egypt less so but will likely muddle through. Iraq is the most exciting investment opportunity in the region. U.S. influence is declining, and Saudi influence is increasing. Saudi policy objectives and conditionality will differ from those of the U.S. Overall though the immediate political risks have been overvalued. The problem is in the longer term, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict. Europe and the U.S. will increasingly be occupied with other problems.
Cairo-based Walid Bakr of Riyada Enterprise Development, Abraaj Capital, was more optimistic in the medium and long term. Egypt’s big market and tourist attractions are not going away. Half the population is under 24, well educated and internet savvy, with lots of entrepreneurial spirit. The revolution has unleashed strong feelings of national pride and dignity. Youth is the engine of growth and can contribute to the all-important creation of small and medium enterprises so vital to job creation and wealth distribution.
Dubai-based Yasar Jarrar of PwC Middle East underlined that we are still at the beginning of the changes in the Middle East, which suffered a long period of stagnation (not real stability). The GCC countries are moving well to kickstart job creation for youth, major infrastructure investments and dialogue between their governments and the citizens. But it is going to be a long spring in a region that really does matter. Philip Haddad of Mubadala Infrastructure Partners agreed that we need to take the long view, but in the meanwhile as much as $38 billion is being invested in infrastructure, which is not bad.
The Omani ambassador, Hunaina Sultan Ahmed al-Mughairy, led off with a very upbeat assessment of the Sultanate’s prospects. The message was “yes, we can” reform ourselves, if we put our minds to it. Jean Francois Seznec of Georgetown said he was very pessimistic about Bahrain, where the basic issue is governance. In recent weeks, only 5% of the hotel rooms in Bahrain have been occupied.
There was a good deal of agreement that the issue everywhere is at least in part governance. Citizens did not feel they were benefiting under the old regimes, because of a lack of accountability. Political and economic reform need to go together, but it is not clear that new parliamentary democracies will credit competence and choose economic reform, which is discredited because it is associated with the old regimes.
Wrapping up, Ravi Vish of MIGA confirmed the importance of governance, addressing social inequality and the income gap, and job creation, mainly through a stronger and more entrepreneurial private sector. He also reviewed MIGA’s portfolio of political insurance products, for which demand is naturally rising in the region.
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A brighter view of the Arab spring
I wrote yesterday about the pessimistic views of the Arab spring prevalent among experts at a Harvard/Carnegie Endowment event. They know a whole lot more about the Middle East than I do–that’s why I go to their events and write them up. But I think they are overly pessimistic. Why?
First, because I’ve seen things come out all right. I am not just talking South Africa, where admittedly Nelson Mandela’s leadership and stature counted for a lot, as did F.W. de Klerk’s. I am not seeing any Mandelas or de Klerks in the Middle East. Nor do there seem to be any Vaclav Havels or Lech Walesas. But in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia protest leaderships that were notably lacking in vision and stature had at least temporary success and left their countries better off than they would otherwise have been.
Second, because it seems to me the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen have shown a combination of nonviolent restraint and persistence that is laudable, and likely to lead in good directions. I am less convinced of the wisdom of the demonstrators in Libya and Bahrain, where it seems to me they fell victim to the temptations of violence and recalcitrance, respectively. But the Libyan Transitional Council shows at least some signs of promise. We’ll see if the Bahrainis can do better in the next “dialogue” phase.
Third, because I have more confidence in a bottom-up process than a top-down one. Here I disagree with Marwan Muasher, who explicitly prefers to see top-down reform. I don’t really know any place where that has worked terribly well in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, though obviously there are leaders like Gorbachev (or de Klerk for that matter) who made the process easier than it might otherwise have been. But people have to want democracy and freedom–it really can’t be given to them.
Nor do I think the consequences of the Arab spring will be quite as negative for U.S. interests as many of the experts say. Middle Eastern leaders who have to be more responsive to public opinion may be more supportive of the Palestinians, but they would be foolish to take their countries to war when the people they lead are looking for prosperity. So, okay, we’ll get Egypt opening the border with Gaza, but closing it was an approach that wasn’t worth a damn anyway. Hamas is likely to need to cut its margins on smuggled goods when they can enter more freely. Maybe an open border will serve American purposes better than the closed one.
I admit that it is hard to see how Yemen comes out of this anything but a basket case, which is where it was headed under Saleh anyway. Certainly it will be a while before any future government in Sanaa gets a grip on the provinces. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula may have a field day in the meanwhile, but they don’t appear so far to have been particularly effective at exploiting the chaos.
That said, the Arab spring is not about American interests, which will have to take a back seat for a while throughout the Middle East. It is however about American values. We should be happy to see them spreading among young Arabs willing to demand their rights. Let’s see where things go before we get too pessimistic.
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A soggy version of the Arab spring
Big Carnegie Endowment/Harvard discussion of Arab Spring yesterday. Outcome: pretty gloomy. But these are experts, who admittedly failed to see the budding of the Arab Spring and are unlikely to be able to predict its course either. They all acknowledged the many unknowns and the difficulties of prediction.
Marwan Muasher, who prefers reform from above, thinks doing nothing in response to the protests is no longer an option but also noted there is more “empire strikes back” (Libya, Yemen, Syria) and “buying time with money” (the Gulf) than “promises of reform” (thin in Jordan, a bit more serious in Morocco). And his criteria for successful reform from above were exacting: it has to be holistic and inclusive, power has to be shared seriously, it should be gradual and measurable. Nothing makes the cut yet.
No optimism from Marina Ottaway either. She noted that even in Tunisia and Egypt there are problems of political will to complete the reform process, that some of the politicians formerly associated with the ruling parties will be able to recycle themselves, that secular parties are weak and fragmented, that Islamists may be a bit stronger but also fragmented, with Salafi influence rising. It is not clear yet what the protesters will be able or willing to do politically, and it is too early to count the military out.
Tarek Masoud did not like what he sees in Egypt. He noted the intense conflict among political forces and between political forces and the military, with the military wary of democracy. They don’t want democratic oversight, fear the demand for justice and don’t want to break with past policy on Israel and the U.S. The military would like to reign without ruling, keeping out of the public eye and avoiding responsibility for governing. They have already made mistakes by scheduling the constitutional referendum, then having to fix the amended constitution with their own constitutional declaration. Early elections will favor Islamists, and opening the constitution to a constituent assembly will open the question of the relationship between state and religion, which is not a good idea. The future holds more discord.
So spring wasn’t so cheery. How about the U.S. policy response?
Nick Burns praised President Obama’s relatively rapid and thoroughly nuanced response in a difficult international situation. He was not too late to support the Tahrir protesters, correctly hesitated about Libya but signed on in response to the Arab League appeal in light of Gaddafi’s threat to Benghazi, and gave the Gulfies more slack because there was no rebellion to sign on to in Saudi Arabia, Oman or Qatar. Only under questioning did Nick state baldly that he could not understand why we hadn’t zapped Bashar al Assad earlier and admit that in Bahrain Washington had chosen interests over values. Nick urged that we focus on Egypt, decrease out focus on governments and security, increase our focus on development and outreach to people, move on Israel/Palestine and shift to a containment policy on Iran.
Agreeing that the case-by-case contextual approach was the right one, Steve Walt concluded that we would soon face Arab governments more sensitive to public opinion, that there would be no easy fixes for the problems of over-centralization and corruption in the Arab countries, Western governments are not flush and would find it hard to ante up, Israel’s position would be weakened as Egypt and Jordan became less compliant to U.S. wishes and that U.S. strategy in the region is obsolete even if its interests are the same as always: unhindered flow of oil and gas, nuclear nonproliferation, countering terrorism and protecting Israel. A more effective policy would pay more attention to Arab public opinion, embrace reform, sustain multipolarity in the region, get U.S. troops out (to an offshore balancing role, naturally, that would still prevent others from exerting control), internationalize the Israel/Palestine peace process (including encouragement of European support for the Palestine resolution at the GA and a possible settlement imposed by the Security Council). Most importantly: we need to stop threatening Iran, which gives Tehran incentives to build nuclear weapons and attempt more creative (unspecified) diplomacy. In response to a question, Walt said he also thought we need a residual force in Iraq to counter Iran.
Chris Boucek, focused mainly on Yemen, warned of economic meltdown, suggested we manage the Saudis better and noted that the youthful protesters are espousing our ideals.
There was a good deal more, but this gives you the flavor: the U.S. focus on stability, peace and democracy has failed: no stability, little prospect for peace and not much for democracy either. Burns and Walt, each in his own way, thought the U.S. could still play an important role, but no one was sanguine about the prospects for the Arab spring or U.S. interests in its aftermath.
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