Tag: Libya
Syria: is there hope?
Salon.com asked me to review recent events in Syria and their significance. They published it today under the heading “Has the Syria threat cooled?”:
Watching Syria is like looking through a kaleidoscope. The picture seems to change dramatically in response to the slightest jolt, but the components remain the same. The past week has seen lots of jolts, but no real change in the elements that make up the sad picture.
Inside Syria, the regime’s forces have started an ethnic cleansing campaign in the west intended to clear Sunnis from areas its Alawite supporters want to secure for themselves. The regime has also successfully pushed south toward the Jordanian border. In much of the rest of the country, there is lots of fighting but only marginal changes in the confrontation lines, which run through many urban areas, or between the urban centers and the countryside. Almost 7 million Syrians are now thought to need humanitarian assistance. The number could rise dramatically during the rest of the year.
Secretary Kerry’s visit to Moscow this week revived, once again, hopes for a negotiated settlement. He and the Russians agreed to try to convene a conference, even before the end of the month, that would include both the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime. The prospect of this conference will relieve President Obama of any need for a quick decision on unilateral action in Syria, since it would hardly be appropriate to preempt the conference. That is likely what both the Russians and the Americans wanted: more time.
Pressure had been building for action, including possible direct American shipment of arms to the opposition, safe areas for displaced people, a no-fly zone, or an attack on Syria’s air force and missiles, which are being used against civilians. Evidence that the regime has used chemical weapons put President Obama on the spot, as he has several times said that crossing this red line would change his calculus. American credibility, some thought, was at stake.
The ink was barely dry on the allegation of chemical weapons use when Carla Del Ponte, a Swiss member of a U.N. human rights inquiry for Libya, suggested that she knew of evidence that chemical weapons were used by the opposition rather than the regime. This allegation has little credibility, not only because of the technical difficulties involved but also because Del Ponte has a record of sensational allegations that are difficult to prove (or disprove).
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Covering CIA’s rear
Yesterday’s hearing on the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans last September 11/12 failed to live up to hyped expectations. Republicans are trying to demonstrate higher-level culpability for not foreseeing the attack, for its consequences, and for Susan Rice’s television appearances claiming it grew out of a demonstration and was not necessarily a terrorist attack.
Let me make clear from the start: as soon as I heard Ambassador Rice’s account, I knew it was wrong. So did the President, as he demonstrated in the third debate with Mitt Romney. He had already referred to it several days before Ambassador Rice’s appearances as a terrorist attack. And I disagree with Hillary Clinton, who asked “what difference does it make?” when testifying in Congress. Of course it makes a difference whether the attack was a demonstration that went bad or a concerted terrorist act.
The higher-level culpability for the inadequate physical security at the Benghazi facility has already been established in the report of the Accountability and Review Board. Diplomatic Security, the responsible part of the State Department, has moved several people as a result. That may not be sufficient, but it is hard to imagine that culpability for the height of the perimeter wall or the strength of the exterior gate extends to the Secretary of State. There are few American diplomatic facilities anywhere in the world that could withstand an attack like the one that occurred in Benghazi. But in most other places we can rely on the host government security forces to respond.
If you want to hold someone responsible for not foreseeing the attack, best to focus on the Ambassador himself. He met with a Libyan political science professor that morning who had given me a few months before a thorough account of the radical groups in the Cyrenaica region (in which Benghazi is the principal metropolis). I have no doubt the professor would have been at least as forthcoming with Chris Stevens, who will have spoken to him in Arabic, than he was to me in English. But knowing that there are extremists in the region and anticipating an attack on a particular day are of course two different things.
The understandably emotional testimony of the deputy chief of mission (DCM) revealed little. Yes, he had asked for military support, but it was not available in a time frame that would have been meaningful. I dread to think what would have happened had the four special forces people available arrived from Tripoli in time to confront the dozens of attackers in Benghazi. The death toll might have been higher. But there was no way to get them there in time. The DCM may have assumed it was a terrorist attack, but he knew little about it and only found out the Ambassador was dead when the Libyan prime minister told him so. The embassy had thought him alive in a hospital.
The Republicans’ best shot at higher level responsibility arises from Susan Rice’s press appearances. She used cleared talking points. Why would she be given talking points that denied terrorist involvement, or at least offered a different explanation?
I don’t of course know. But the Weekly Standard has published what I take to be an accurate account, with various drafts of the talking points. In this, it is clear that CIA made the changes, the Weekly Standard would have you believe in response to State Department pressure. But that is an interpretation. It would be unusual. If State wants changes, it usually suggests them itself.
CIA had its own reasons to reduce the references to extremists in the talking points. The Benghazi facility was mainly a CIA station, not a consulate. The State Department presence there was mid-level and minimal. Fig leaf is the phrase that comes to mind. The former prime minister of Libya (the same one who called the ambassador’s deputy that night) told me a couple of months ago that the Libyans had no idea how many people were at the facility, which was known to the Libyan government but undeclared. They were astonished to discover that it was dozens.
CIA would not want it known publicly that terrorists had without warning attacked a place that housed dozens of its personnel. What are they supposed to be doing if not detecting such efforts? CIA stations are nominally secret. No one would want to acknowledge this one (and to my knowledge no one explicitly has).
So what we’ve got here may include still unproven high-level distortion of the facts, but it likely also includes bureaucratic tail-covering. I’ll know Congress is conducting serious oversight when it calls responsible CIA officials who made the changes and cleared Susan Rice’s talking points to testify. Chairman Issa has said there is more to come. Let it be that.
One more thing: The DCM thinks he was punished with a desk officer job. Considering the current over-staffing of state, someone coming home “off cycle,” as he did, is lucky to do that well. I have no doubt the powers that be snubbed him–that’s what happens at State to people who aren’t regarded as being with the program. He was not, and he is entitled not to be. But an off-cycle desk officer job hardly constitutes serious retaliation.
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Peace Picks April 9th- April 12th
1. Lessons Learned from Iraq and How They Apply to North Africa
Date and Time: April 9, 10:00-11:30 am
Location: US Institute of Peace
2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.
Speakers: Amb. William B. Taylor, Jr., John Nagl, Manal Omar
Description: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) Stuart Bowen on March 6 released SIGIR’s final report for Congress, ‘Learning From Iraq,’ which details the accomplishments of the U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The report provides an ‘instructive picture of what was the largest stabilization and reconstruction operation ever undertaken by the United States (until recently overtaken by Afghanistan).’ Additionally, the report outlines seven lessons that the U.S. should implement to improve its approach to future stabilization and reconstruction operations. The event will highlight SIGIR’s experience in Iraq and examine the major problems it discovered, such as America’s ‘ad hoc’ approach, the effectiveness of oversight, funding challenges, and the larger issue of nation-building. Experts will explore how lessons learned from Iraq can be applied to other American-led efforts, such as those associated with emerging democracies. Please join us on April 9, 2013 from 10:00am to 11:30M for what promises to be a relevant and timely discussion.
Register for this event here: http://www.usip.org/events/lessons-learned-iraq-and-how-they-apply-north-africa
2. How the United States and Europe Can Cooperate in the Middle East
Date and Time: April 9, 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: Johns Hopkins SAIS – Rome Building
1619 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.
806
Speakers: Charles Ries
Description: Charles Ries, vice president, international and senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and a SAIS graduate, will discuss this topic.Note: A reception will immediately follow the event in Room 812, Rome Building.
Register for this event here: http://sais-jhu.edu/events/2013-04-09-180000-2013-04-09-193000/how-united-states-and-europe-can-cooperate-middle-east
3. Energy Developments in the Persian Gulf
Date and Time: April 10, 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: Lindner Family Commons, Room 602 1957 E Street, NW
Speakers: Bijan Khajehpour, Siamak Namazi, and Ambassador Edward Skip Gnehm (as Moderator).
Description: As Iraq reemerges as a major oil producer after years of domestic turmoil, Iran continues to develop its petroleum sector despite economic sanctions. Focusing on energy sectors in Iran and Iraq, the panelists will discuss the influence of energy developments on regional relations. They will also highlight important trends in regional oil production and consumption. Dr. Bijan Khajehpour is a managing and founding partner of Atieh International, a Vienna-based management consulting firm, and holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the International School of Management in Paris. Siamak Namazi is the general manager of Access Consulting Group, a Dubai-based private regional consultancy, and holds a MBA from the London Business School and a MS in Urban and Regional Planning from Rutgers University.
Register for this event here: https://docs.google.com/a/aucegypt.edu/forms/d/1rE8VLjnFI8ksIKmRARxmVyQYf_D2eQXXqjwI1f7HU5o/viewform
4. Iraq: Policy and National Security Challenges for the Future
Date and Time: April 11, 6:30-8:00 pm
Location: Mortara Center for International Affairs
Speakers: James F. Jeffrey, Kenneth Pollack, David Pollock, Mr. Ahmed Ali
Description: Ten years after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq remains a geopolitically vital state in the midst of questionable challenges of political, security, and natural resource instability. Join top Iraqi experts Dr. Kenneth Pollack, Dr. David Pollock, and Mr. Ahmed Ali and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, James F. Jeffery, in assessing the challenges to Iraq’s future development, the challenges and opportunities Iraq continues to pose for US regional and national security interests, and exploring how Iraq fits into a broader regional picture with numerous other security challenges, from Iran to Syria.
Register for this event here: http://dc.linktank.com/event/iraq_policy_and_national_security_challenges_for_the_future#.UWLyRGBU05w
5. The Turkish American Alliance: Opportunities and Challenges
Date and Time: April 12, 9:30-11:00 am
Location: Foundation for Defense of Democracies
1726 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036
Suite 700
Speakers: Soner Cagaptay, Douglas J. Feith, Jonathan Schanzer, Gonul Tol
Description: How does Turkey’s Syria policy help the United States? How do Turkey’s financial ties to Iran and Hamas complicate the Turkish-American relationship? How seriously does Turkey take its counter-terror finance responsibilities? What does the recent rapprochement between Ankara and Jerusalem mean for future ties between these two US allies?
Please join FDD for a conversation with Soner Cagaptay of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Douglas Feith former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under the Bush Administration, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies.
Register for this event here: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/events/
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The fireman of last resort
It is striking that the first comments on Fred Hof’s Washington Post piece today advocating U.S. support for a “nonsectarian,” opposition government in Syria are negative. The pendulum has swung hard against intervention, humanitarian or not. Americans are not interested in getting involved. They fear getting in deeper than they like and causing problems rather than solving them.
This is not surprising after a more than a decade of fruitless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the more recent intervention in Libya. I would argue that Libya was a relatively successful intervention despite the murder of our ambassador and his colleagues in Benghazi by a relatively small group of extremists. I would also argue that Iraq, while unquestionably not a just or justifiable war given the lack of nuclear weapons (or even a serious nuclear weapons program), is better off without Saddam Hussein. The war in Afghanistan was justified, but botched and now unlikely to have a good outcome. But I am not confident I can convince even my wife, who rolls her eyes knowingly whenever I say these things. Americans are in no mood to try again in Syria to create a relative democracy where a sectarian autocracy has ruled for decades.
The values argument is clear
But the national mood should not be the only factor in determining whether we intervene in Syria. National interests and values should also weigh in the balance. So far as values are concerned, Fred is right: we should be doing what we can to help the Syrian opposition to end a brutal and illegitimate dictatorship. There really is no serious argument here, though of course Fred’s critics are correct to suggest that a democratic outcome is far from guaranteed. Extreme Islamists are playing a strong role in the Syrian revolution and are likely to remain a strong political force once it is over, no matter what we do.
National interests are less clear
Some national interests also weigh in favor of intervention. The fall of Bashar al Asad would certainly be a blow to his sponsors in Iran and his partners in Hizbollah. If our failure to intervene means the war lasts longer, the conflict will become more sectarian and put at risk state structures throughout the Levant. Apart from Syria itself, the spillover could threaten Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, all of which are receiving large numbers of refugees and sending back into Syria fighters of various sectarian and ethnic groups. The Americans worry a lot about Al Qaeda, whose purpose is to recreate an Islamic caliphate. Continued fighting in and around Syria could make something like the caliphate re-emerge, with cataclysmic consequences.
Other national interests weigh against. Our parlous economic and budgetary situation hardly argues for intervention in yet another conflict. President Obama is concerned with keeping the Russians “on side” in support for the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital to American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. He also wants to maintain a credible threat of force against Iran’s nuclear program, which would be difficult to do if the US gets enmired in the Syrian war.
Everything costs
War is not cheap. It generally runs $1 billion and up. By some reckonings, we spent more than a trillion in Iraq, but that was a really expensive eight-year enterprise with lots of military and civilian boots on the ground. No one advocates putting American troops on the ground in Syria.
Humanitarian relief and other aid is not free either, though it costs a lot less than war. We are in the vicinity of $400 million already in Syria and the bills are compounding. I won’t be surprised if the US chips in more than $1 billion by the end of this year. The bill could go considerably higher.
What are we buying? Necessities: food, water, sanitation, shelter, including blankets, cooking stoves and other standard humanitarian relief supplies. But they are going largely to government-controlled communities. While USAID claims it is reaching all vulnerable populations, reports are multiplying of areas outside government control that are getting little or nothing. It is just very difficult to get supplies to all those who need them.
Military options
Is there an alternative? We are already providing intelligence to the opposition, according to the American press. At this point, the main additional options are military. You can call it a no-fly zone if you prefer, but as Jim Dobbins has said we can either give the Syrians the arms they need to take down Bashar al Asad’s aircraft or we can nail them ourselves. The former is war by proxy. The latter is war tout court.
A billion or two in arms or air operations would not be trivial, though I’d be surprised if we got off quite that cheap. In addition, the arms could end up in the wrong hands, which will likely happen no matter who supplies them. No country wants to be the supplier of the shoulder-fired missile that brings down a commercial aircraft. Nor do I think the folks receiving weapons are likely to show much gratitude, though supplying them to relative moderates could conceivably strengthen them in the post-war transition.
I’d be more interested in the “nail the aircraft” option, especially if it included the Scud missiles Bashar has been raining on population centers. Something like this is going to be necessay if the liberated areas are ever to be safe from long-range attack. The sooner it happens, the more likely it is the liberated areas can begin governing themselves, and receiving humanitarian assistance.
We’ve got a mess on our hands in Syria. Allowing it to continue will make things worse. Intervening could also make things worse, but it is likely to accelerate the denouement and tilt the outcome against Bashar. Syria is a house on fire. We can’t be the world’s policeman, but we do need to act as its fireman of last resort.
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Can Syria be saved?
I spoke yesterday on “Can Syria Be Saved” at the Italian Institute of International Affairs (IAI). I was honored at the last minute by Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Staffan de Mistura, who joined the event and provided some comments. Here are the notes I used, amplified with Stefano’s comments and a bit of the Q and A:
1. The situation inside Syria
Military: The regime can clear, but less and less; the revolution can clear more and more. Neither can hold securely or build without the other being able to strike. This is the significance of air power and Scuds, which prevent consolidation of rebel control.
Civilian: The government is doing all right in areas that are loyal, but not gaining and under severe economic pressure. The revolution is unable to supply many areas outside government control and therefore unable to consolidate control and support.
2. Who is doing what outside Syria
There is no sign of the Russians or Iranians abandoning Assad, despite some change in Russian rhetoric. Russian arms supplies continue. Iranian forces are active within Syria, as is Hizbollah. Arms are flowing to the opposition, but unevenly and not always what they need.
The June 2012 Geneva communique, which provides for a fully empowered transition government approved by both the regime and the opposition, is still the only agreed diplomatic route. Brahimi is quiet, which is the best way to be until he has something definite. The Americans are exasperated but unwilling as yet to send arms. The naming of a prime minister this week should bring more civilian assistance, which is already topping $400 million from the US.
3. Why Obama hesitates to intervene more decisively, why Putin backs Assad
President Obama’s hesitation has little to do with Syria. He recognizes full well that a successful revolution there will be a blow to Iran and Hizbollah, but even an unsuccessful one is bleeding them profusely. The main issues for Obama are the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital for American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran. He does not want to risk alienating the Russians on either front.
For the Russians, the main issues are no longer the port and arms sales, if ever they were. Now the question is one of prestige and power. Putin is defining his Russia in explicitly anti-Western terms, all the more so since what he portrays as Western trickery during the Libya intervention.
For Iran, the issue is an existential one. Loss of Syria would disable the connection to Hizbollah and isolate Iran from the Arab world, with the important exception of Iraq. This would be a big loss to a country that thinks of itself increasingly as a regional hegemon. The Islamic Republic would regard the loss of Syria as a big blow.
4. Options for the US and Europe
Britain and France are considering supplying weapons. That is unlikely to buy much allegiance. The best that can be hoped for is to strengthen relatively secularist and pro-Western forces, but that is going to be diffficult given the good military and relief performance of the Islamists, including those the US regards as extremist and even linked to Al Qaeda.
The US hesitates about arms transfers because of “fast and furious,” a US government scheme to track weapons transferred to the Mexican cartels. One of the weapons was used to kill an American border patrol agent. If an American-supplied shoulder-fired missile were to bring down a commercial aircraft, the incident would have major domestic political repurcussions.
Washington is instead focusing on enabling the civilian side, in particularly the newly named Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto and whatever interim government he cobbles together. This should certainly include ample humanitarian assistance and operating expenses.
It might also include military intervention, since the Hitto government won’t be safe inside Syria if Assad continues to use his air force and Scuds. The idea gaining ground outside the US administration is to destroy as much of that capability as possible while it sits on the ground. No one in Washington wants a no-fly zone that requires daily patroling. This is also a possible response to chemical weapons, whose possible use was mentioned during the IAI event but the facts were still very unclear (as they still are today so far as I can tell).
5. Possible outcomes and their implications
The fall of Bashar will be a beginning, not an end. It is not clear that the state structure in this Levant will hold. Lebanon is clearly at risk. You’ve got Kurds in Syria and Iraq who want to unite, in addition to an ongoing if somewhat sporadic Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. You’ve got Sunnis in Iraq fighting in Syria who might eventually turn around and fight again in Iraq. You’ve got Alawites, Druze, Christians and others who will want to protect their own communities, isolated from others in enclaves.
Even if the state structure holds, there are big questions about the future direction of Syria. Will Islamists triumph? Of which variety? Will secularists do as badly in a post-war transition as they have in Egypt? The opposition in Syria agrees that the state should remain intact, but will it be able to under pressure from a “stay-behind” insurgency like the one that Saddam Hussein mounted in Iraq?
I also ran quickly through the options for post-war Syria that I’ve already published.
Staffan reacted underlining the importance of continuing to talk with the Russians, who are convinced that the intervention in Libya has opened the door to Al Qaeda extremism in Mali and Syria. He also underlined the importance of the opposition forming an inclusive and cohesive government that enunciates a clear plan for how to deal with the previous regime, including an exit for Bashar al Assad, and how to provide guarantees to the Alawites. He underlined that we should be putting together an international peacekeeping force now. We should not be tricked into international intervention by allegations of chemical weapons use.
I’ll stop my account there, as I’ve already gone on too long. It was a stimulating discussion. Many thanks to my hosts at IAI!
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Can we do better today than 10 years ago?
There will be a lot of discussion today of the Iraq war: why did we do it, who won, what is its longer term significance? Andrew Bacevich’s answer to the last two of these questions strikes me as correct: even if the “surge” saved the US from unambiguous defeat, the larger narrative is one in which the Muslim world determines its own fate.
Ironically, that is nominally what some of the advocates of the Iraq war say they had in mind in 2003. But of course they did not really mean it. If Iraq decides to break up, or even install a theocracy on part of its territory, the neocon advocates of the war won’t want to count that as self-determination. At the same time, they are not too exigent any more about democracy in Iraq. Many would count Maliki as good enough, despite his obvious shortcomings.
That’s because democracy had little to do with the matter. The only valid justification for going to war in 2003 had to do with nuclear weapons, not democracy or even 9/11. Condi Rice was correct that it was incumbent on the United States to prevent the smoking gun from being a mushroom cloud. But she and the entire Bush Administration, as well as most of the Democrats in Congress, were wrong to think that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program, much less a nuclear weapon.
Today, that error is being blamed on “intelligence.” But of course intelligence is always uncertain. We elect political leaders to exercise good judgment and make key political decisions, like going to war. That is where George W. Bush failed most dramatically. It was his decision, validated by a vote in Congress, to go to war in Iraq, collapse the regime and ultimately occupy the country because of his Administration’s inadequate plans for the post-war transition.
This is inexcusable. History will not treat George W. Bush, or the electorate that put him back into office in 2004, kindly. But just as important is this: we are pretty much as poorly prepared for a post-war transition of this sort today as we were in 2003. We demonstrated as much in Libya, where we failed to follow up the NATO military mission with one that enabled the Libyans to establish a safe and secure environment. Nor is there any sign that we would be capable of helping the Syrians transition their country to something like a democracy if Bashar al Assad abandoned the field tomorrow.
The Iraq tragedy was rooted in the failure of civilian assistance in the few weeks immediately following the taking of Baghdad. Thereafter, we spent a lot and did a lot of good things, but all to little avail because the insurgency had already begun and we were too far behind the curve to catch up. The situation in Syria after the fall of Bashar will be far more complicated. There will be many militias, both Islamist and non-Islamist, claiming victory. There will be a broken Syrian army, pro-regime militias and some elite forces prepared to continue the fight. There will be Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces and Assad’s Mukhabarat, some of which will likely constitute an underground resistance (as the Saddam Fedayeen did in Iraq).
If the worst is to be avoided in Syria, we are going to have to back the government named in the wee hours of this morning by the Syrian Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC) amply and wisely. At least the SOC grows out of an indigenous and popular rebellion (as did the rebellion against Qaddafi). We are also going to need to respect Syrian choices–which may include an important role for Jabhat al Nusra and other forces we regard as extremist, even as linked to Al Qaeda. The fall of Bashar will be only a beginning, like the falls of Saddam, Ben Ali, Qaddafi, Mubarak and Saleh. Muslim self-determination, as Bacevich calls it, is just starting.
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