Tag: European Union
Crouching tiger, hidden dragon
Now that the UN Security Council has at least condemned the regime violence in Syria, everybody is looking for President Obama to amp up calls for Bashar al Assad to step aside. The Administration, I am assured, knows perfectly well that an orderly transition to a less autocratic regime in Damascus would be a big improvement from the U.S. perspective.
But what if the President says Bashar has to go, and then he doesn’t? The U.S. hasn’t got lots of leverage, as it did over an Egyptian army that was heavily dependent on U.S. money, training and equipment. The most vulnerable sector in Syria is energy, where European rather than American companies are the critical players. Posing the President as a crouching tiger is better than exposing him as a paper tiger, especially after the week he has just gotten himself through.
And what if the transition is not orderly, but breaks down into sectarian and ethnic violence, with the risk of overflow into Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey? That could be a big mess, one we would regret for many years into the future.
The problem with this argument is that it suggests a quicker transition would be far better for the U.S. than one that drags on . Those who know Syria well are saying Aleppo and Damascus will turn against Bashar sooner rather than later. Sami Moubayed says unemployment, lack of moderate community leaders willing to calm the situation, and the influx of people from all over Syria into the two largest Syrian cities will ensure that the revolution eventually spreads there. In the meanwhile, the demonstrators are straining the security forces and beginning to bend them at the edges.
While Juan Cole is correctly disappointed in the wording and lack of teeth in the UN Security Council statement, I’m more philosophical about it. I see it as a necessary step along the way to ratcheting up pressure on Bashar. Its significance is that it happened at all, not the specific wording.
I wish we could wave a magic wand and make the Syrian army turn into pussycats, but we can’t. Only the demonstrators can make that trick work, by maintaining their nonviolent discipline and convincing some of the soldiers and police that their interests will be better served if they embrace the revolution rather than fight it.
While not often mentioned, it is important to keep an eye on the Chinese, who could either save the Syrian regime with cash for oil contracts or sink it by permitting more action in the Security Council and lining up with the Americans and Europeans. Syria doesn’t have enough oil to be of great interest to the Chinese, and a lot more of it is likely to flow once Bashar is gone. The hidden dragon may well be the deciding factor against the regime.
Meanwhile, the Syrian army has punched into the center of Hama, killing a few dozen more of its own citizens and making an orderly transition less likely. Bashar seems to have decided that he prefers to resist the inevitable, like Gaddafi in Libya and Saleh in Yemen, than give in like Mubarak in Egypt or Ben Ali in Tunisia. Yesterday’s scenes of Mubarak caged in a Cairo courtroom will not have encouraged him to rethink.
PS: AJ English continues to do a good job, with a lot of help from courageous friends at Shaam:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Change course, overhaul Dayton, fix Bosnia
Bruce Hitchner of Tufts and the Dayton Peace Accords Project writes:
If there is one lesson that ethnic nationalists on all sides in Bosnia learned from the 1992-5 conflict it is that their goals could not be achieved by war. They learned this lesson when the United States, finally accepting that one of its vital national interests—peace in Europe—was at stake, intervened to stop the war.
But the ethnic nationalists also absorbed another lesson, some to their relief, others to their dismay: that a Bosnia not at war did not have any special claim on the vital national interests of the United States. The Dayton Agreement, brokered by the United States, was first and foremost a peace treaty, and by any measure Washington has stood by its responsibility to enforce the peace.
The annexes are another story; they laid out the mechanisms and procedures for rebuilding Bosnia, but rather than root out firmly and finally the institutions and structures that had caused the war, the annexes glossed over many of them. And while there were many technical and legal solutions to political, constitutional, and economic problems articulated in the Annexes, supported by an international mission, the OHR, created to help implement them, their fulfillment ultimately depended on many of the same people and structures that had instigated the war.
All of this was not lost on the ethnic nationalists. They determined, each in their own way, that their respective goals could be achieved by exploiting the legal ambiguities and often complex institutional mechanisms embedded in the Annexes. It might take longer, but what could not be achieved by war, they determined, could be attained by peaceful political attrition.
If what I suggest here is true, the answer to the problems of Bosnia does not lie in further measures to enforce the peace treaty per se or in the re-empowerment of international authority to enforce the annexes, but in the recognition that securing the peace and creating a stable democratic society in Bosnia cannot be achieved under the existing Dayton post-war settlement. It is time, I suggest, that the United States, as well as the European Union, acknowledge that the Dayton Annexes have failed to achieve their ultimate purpose; and that the only acceptable way forward is a complete overhaul of the country’s constitutional, political, and electoral order.
This may appear a radical and not especially welcome proposal, but after 16 years of falling short of fully implementing the annexes and other necessary reforms, and no prospect of a change in this pattern driven by this generation of politicians, a fundamental policy shift of this magnitude is perhaps the only way out of an increasingly stalemated political environment in Bosnia. Otherwise, the very thing that the Dayton peace treaty clearly established–peace–will be at risk.
This does not mean calling for a Dayton II or yet another international conference. What is required instead is the will and imagination to put forward a new vision of post-Dayton Bosnia that is matched by renewed international efforts at building fundamental trust and reconciliation. While there may always be a segment of the population of Bosnia who will desire separation over national unity, there are many among even among the ethnic nationalists who know implicitly that there are solutions to protecting group rights and interests in a unified, democratic, and functional Bosnia that hold far more hope for their future than a fateful and quixotic attempt at extreme autonomy or independence.
Indeed, there are many, I suspect, who will welcome it even among those who are thought to be against such things, but only so long as it is backed by a genuine commitment to building trust, confidence and political security across ethnic lines, and thereby ending the incentives to zero-sum politics that Dayton inherently encourages and sustains.
In the end, it comes down to facing up to a failure, and changing course. I think the United States and European Union have the capacity to do that in the case of Bosnia. More importantly, I believe the majority of Bosnians across the spectrum would welcome it. The question is whether Washington and Brussels are prepared to change course before things get worse, rather than when events compel them to do so.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Where am I?
That’s what a loyal reader asks: she wants me to comment on recent events in Northern Kosovo, where the Pristina government seized a border post in northern Kosovo Monday evening that was then attacked and burned, allegedly by Serbs. One Kosovo policeman was killed. NATO forces have now taken possession of the border post, resisted by Serbs.
Read all about it at Outside the Walls, but ignore the nonsense about NATO starting a war and acting illegally. UN Security Council resolution 1244 never gave local hooligans (or Belgrade) the right to control the Kosovo side of the boundary or border, which is properly secured by NATO if the Kosovo Police Service and Customs are unable to do it.
None of this is surprising. It was only a matter of time before Pristina/Belgrade differences over the status of northern Kosovo led to violence, as they have in the past, and it could get worse. I know of no two countries on earth where borders are not agreed and demarcated that don’t have big problems, often violent ones.
The odd thing in this case is that Belgrade and Kosovo agree where the line limiting Kosovo territory is, but they disagree on whether it is just an administrative boundary within Serbia or a border between two sovereign states. Belgrade claims all of Kosovo as sovereign territory but only exercises sovereign control in the northern 11% north of the Ibar River. Pristina claims independence, now recognized by 77 countries, but it is unable to gain entry into the United Nations or enforce its laws–including customs–in the north.
If the burning of a border post is the worst that comes out of this, we’ll be lucky. The issue here is the fundamental one in the Balkans: why should I live as a minority in your country when you can live as a minority in mine? Both Serbs and Albanians are saying no, they don’t want to live as a minority in a state dominated by the others. Albanians say no because of their actual experience living in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Serbia. Serbs are saying no because they fear being treated by the Albanians the way they treated the Albanians.
All of that is quite comprehensible. What is less clear is why anyone should expect people in Washington to worry about a minor disturbance in a faraway place, when it faces a lot bigger issues. The answer to that question unfortunately is that this incident–or some sequel–could unravel 15 years of relative progress in the Balkans. Pandora’s box can be opened in many places, but northern Kosovo is definitely one of them. Over at the Foreign Service Institute, they have for years used a crisis management simulation for training senior officers that starts with rioting in Mitrovica and ends in partition of Bosnia. Partition of Macedonia and Serbia (both Presevo and parts of Sandjak are majority minority) are also real possibilities.
Even a wide-open Pandora’s box might not attract much of Washington’s attention these days, obsessed as we are with our own budget problems and more or less three wars in places more important to us than the Balkans. It’s good that NATO has now intervened, a move that will presumably stop the violence. And it is good that the Security Council has refused to allow a public discussion that Serbia sought as a stage for its Foreign Minister to continue to provoke as much trouble as possible. But don’t expect the American cavalry to come galloping to the rescue.
The only thing that will nail Pandora’s box closed is an agreement between Pristina and Belgrade on status: first status of northern Kosovo, then status of Kosovo as a whole. The EU has the lead on Belgrade/Pristina talks, which should discuss northern Kosovo as soon as possible. Even if five EU members haven’t recognized Kosovo, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t recognize that opening Pandora’s box is a really bad idea. It is truly bizarre that Belgrade, which claims all of Kosovo as its own, is now trying to divide it.
I can’t imagine why Belgrade would put its hopes for EU candidacy at risk for 11% of Kosovo. Nor do I see why it is supporting hoodlums in northern Kosovo, even if some of those hoodlums are more than likely on Serbia’s secret service payroll. If Serbia were serious about its EU candidacy, it would arrest whoever killed the Kosovo policeman and turn the murderer over to the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo.
Kosovo has less to lose, hence Pristina’s ill-conceived and ill-executed seizure of the border post, but if it wants sympathy in Washington and Brussels for its efforts to establish sovereignty over all of Kosovo it will need to avoid provocations. Neither Europeans nor Americans will be happy to see NATO troops tied down on the line between Kosovo and Serbia.
The issue that precipitated this mess, believe it or not, is whether Serbia will accept “Republic” of Kosovo on Pristina’s customs stamps and documents. I gather Pristina intended its seizure of the border posts to allow it to block imports from Serbia into Kosovo so long as Serbia continues to refuse imports from Kosovo with the dreaded “Republic” word inscribed. Does the EU really want to begin negotiating membership with a country that can’t settle a dispute of this import with its neighbor, and aligns itself with hooligans? Does Kosovo really want to blot its copybook with the EU over the R-word?
So where am I? Right here in DC, hoping that Belgrade and Pristina will come to their senses and sort out what is, after all, a relatively small problem in the current world order.
PS: A birdie tells me I was wrong about the R-word. It has not appeared on Kosovo customs stamps since 2008, and Pristina might have dropped it from the customs documents. Belgrade still wasn’t prepared to agree.
PPS: For an update on the situation, see Jeff Jorve’s “Breaking with Customs” at The American Interest. He has at least two great virtues: he has been in Mitrovica this week and he was an excellent student in my post-war reconstruction class last semester. First class piece that calls for Pristina to start proving to the Serbs in the north that it is willing to take their concerns into account and help them in a difficult situation.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Off the deep end
So much is being written so quickly about a Norwegian whose name I don’t care to remember it is very difficult to keep up. But if you have time for only one piece, for the moment I’d recommend Spencer Ackerman’s. I don’t like the title, so I won’t repeat it, but it does a good job of showing the parallels between extremist thoughts on both sides of the Western/Muslim divide. And the accompanying video expounding the Norwegian’s appeal for a new crusade against multiculturalism and Islam is worth browsing. Also worth a mention, Blake Hounshell’s quick account of what the Norwegian killer was trying to accomplish. And if you are a glutton for punishment, try Reidar Visser, who has the virtue of commenting also on the Norwegian political context.
There will be a temptation to treat the Norwegian incident as a one-off, pretty much the way we’ve treated Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City attack. Isn’t most terrorism today Islamic? The answer is no, as demonstrated in Islam 101’s now aging post from January 2010 on terrorism in the U.S. and Europe. In Europe, most terrorism is associated with separatists (Basque, Corsican and Irish principally). In the U.S., it appears Latino, leftist and Jewish terrorist incidents were more numerous than Islamic ones, at least until 2005.
Nevertheless, Jennifer Rubin–having already made the mistake of suggesting that Al Qaeda was responsible for the Norwegian events–acknowledges that mistake and goes on to compound it:
That the suspect here is a blond Norwegian does not support the proposition that we can rest easy with regard to the panoply of threats we face or that homeland security, intelligence and traditional military can be pruned back. To the contrary, the world remains very dangerous because very bad people will do horrendous things. There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West.
I can agree that “we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West,” but many of them come from nationalists, racists, and Islamophobes, something the American right is loath to acknowledge. It might cut altogether too close to the bone.
The happy fact is that a privileged elite is being dethroned from power in many countries by people who don’t think power, privilege or even citizenship should derive from the color of one’s skin, gender, sexuality, position on abortion rights or the vehemence of one’s devotion to Christianity. There are losers in that process of democratization. Some of them are going to go off the deep end. We need to be far more attentive to the violent risks they pose than we have been so far.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Can citizens bridge the divide?
Pew yesterday published the results of its survey of Western and Muslim attitudes towards each other, updating a 2006 survey. Andy Kohut presented the results at a Carnegie Endowment event yesterday, “A Great Divide? How Westerns and Muslims See Each Other.” I won’t try to summarize: best that you read it in Pew’s own words.
There were some striking findings. The percentages of Muslims believing that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks has gone down since 2006. Pew deadpans:
There is no Muslim public in which even 30% accept that Arabs conducted the attacks. Indeed, Muslims in Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey are less likely to accept this today than in 2006.
Another stunner:
Muslim publics have an aggrieved view of the West — they blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity. Across the Muslim publics surveyed, a median of 53% say U.S. and Western policies are one of the top two reasons why Muslim nations are not wealthier.
This despite very large quantities of aid given to some Muslim countries by the West, and an astounding amount of money sent to other Muslim countries in payment for oil.
On a more hopeful note:
…both Muslims and Westerners are concerned about Islamic extremism. More than two-thirds in Russia, Germany, Britain, the U.S. and France are worried about Islamic extremists in their country. Fully 77% of Israelis also hold this view.
But extremism is considered a threat in predominantly Muslim nations as well. More than seven-in-ten Palestinian and Lebanese Muslims are worried about Islamic extremists in their countries, as are most Muslims in Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey.
The Carnegie Endowment discussion yesterday had some high points too. Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council noted the similarity of what people want in Muslim countries and in the West (freedom and democracy, no violence) but underlined the U.S. neglect of education about the world beyond its borders, noting that less than half of 8th graders know that Islam originated in Saudi Arabia.
Shuja thought Muslims react more to U.S. policy than to Americans as a people (or the U.S. as a political system); they see the U.S. as backing autocratic rulers, fighting in Islamic countries and wanting to sustain its hegemony. Six out of ten Pakistanis want improved relations with the U.S., but few have any direct contact with Americans. What we should be trying to do is establishing more society-to-society, people-to-people relations, in particular with the middle class, but American visa policy does the opposite (and is opaque and demeaning to boot).
Samer Shehata of Georgetown University agreed, suggesting that U.S. policy has given Muslims little reason to change their views of the West in a positive direction since 2006, apart from the still incomplete withdrawal from Iraq. He also noted that there have been no serious protests against the NATO action in Libya, which is broadly supported in Muslim countries. Still, Muslim attitudes are heavily conditioned by the Palestine/Israel conflict, the presence of U.S. troops in Muslim countries, and U.S. support for Arab and other autocrats. Shehata also asked a lot of good questions about the assumptions and framing of the Pew survey.
Kohut agreed that personal exposure makes a difference to attitudes, whereas there appears to be little correlation with age and education. American assistance after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake was positively received, but the effect was not dramatic. President Obama has disappointed Muslim expectations.
On 9/11, Shuja Nawaz said that in Pakistan most of the conspiracy theories originate on the crackpot fringe in the U.S., but no one counters them once they reach Pakistan, where they consequently gain greater currency.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
A Libya busman’s holiday
I’ve got a paper coming out on Libya over at the Council on Foreign Relations in the next couple of days, but I mosied over to the Carnegie Endowment this afternoon for a discussion on Libya’s post-Gaddafi transition featuring Esam Omiesh of the Libyan Emergency Task Force and Fadel Lamen of the American-Libyan Council, Carnegie’s Marina Ottaway in the chair.
Marina started off with a cautionary tone: the transition has to be fast enough to provide the country with some semblance of order and governance, but not so fast that legitimacy is brought into in doubt. The country was already devastated by the Gaddafi regime even before the fighting, which has now split it east and west. The security forces are also divided. Political agreements take time, elections are not urgent, but some sort of interim administration is necessary.
Esam outlined the process as currently foreseen by the Transitional National Council (TNC). The goal is a united, constitutionally based, democratic Libya. In the immediate future, the NTC hopes for a ceasefire and withdrawal of Gaddafi’s forces, creation of humanitarian “safe zones,” release of prisoners and removal from power of Gaddafi and his family.
The NTC thinks of itself as a temporary umbrella group, a hybrid executive and legislative body. It has already expanded from the original 31 members to 60 and will need to expand further as more areas are liberated. Tripoli will be a particular challenge. Tribal cleavages will not be an issue in Libya, as so many foreigners seem to think. Nor will ethnic differences emerge as important, as Berbers are thoroughly integrated and have been fighting with the rebels in the Nafusa moutains.
The NTC foresees a committee of 15 to write a new constitution within 45 days by a committee of 15, then approved in a referendum. Legislative elections would follow in 4 months, with presidential elections 2 months later. Fadel and Marina preferred a provisional constitution, subject to subsequent revision in an unspecified way. The new constitution, it has already been decided, would cite Islam as “a” (not “the”) source of law.
All this would be done in line with international mandates and seeking international support through a reconstruction conference. International nongovernmental organizations will be welcomed, provided they are well informed and seek the trust of the Libyans, and especially if they have Libyan American staff. The NTC may negotiate with Gaddafi, but it will not agree to allow him or any of his family to remain in power.
Fadel, noting that Libya under Gaddafi was a stateless state, or worse a stateless autocracy, surveyed the key players. The TNC, he said, is accepted as legitimate everywhere, as is its chair Judge Abdul Jalil. There is controversy about some of its other members, and it does not always make good decisions, but it has served well so far.
Local councils have grown up in liberated areas as well as in Gaddafi-held territory, including Tripoli (where there are thought to be four). They are the ones governing at the local level. The February 17 coalition of lawyers and judges is influential. A relatively moderate Muslim brotherhood seems to dominate the Islamists part of the political spectrum, at least for the moment. Technocrats from the Gaddafi regime, military officers, militia leaders, “syndicates” (regime-sponsored guilds of lawyers, doctors, etc.), secular democrats will all have roles to play.
An international honest broker will be needed, but not Qatar or the Arab League. The UN and EU will play important roles, but Fadel wants the U.S. not to lead only from behind. There will be a real need in order to ensure security for Muslim and Arab peacekeeping boots on the ground.
My comment: A lot of wishful thinking here, especially about the speed and ease of the transition. But what’s a revolution without a bit of idealism and hope? I’m not one to fault people for wanting a good outcome, moving quickly, and being inclusive.
The local councils are the real news here: few conflict societies generate bodies of this sort with palpable legitimacy. For some reason, Libya does. It will be difficult but important to preserve them from the depredations of the foreign invasion of embassies and NGOs, who will want to hire away everyone in sight who speaks English or has a decent education.
RSS - Posts
