Tag: Libya
Riyadh and Washington try to get it together
With King Abdullah back in the saddle throne since late February, after months abroad for medical treatment, it seems to me that Saudi diplomacy has gone into relative overdrive. Their biggest move was troops into Bahrain, to free up the Bahraini security forces to beat up demonstrators, but now they appear to be taking an active role in arranging for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh from his post, if not from the country. I imagine they’ve decided now he is more liability than asset, something most Yemenis seem to have concluded weeks ago.
The Americans are also in overdrive, with Defense Secretary Gates and National Security Adviser Donilon wearing out the flying carpet to Riyadh. This is likely in part damage limitation–the Saudis aren’t happy to see the Americans plumping for transition in the democratic direction in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. It must be difficult to convince them that somehow we’ll manage to stop the process before it gets to the Kingdom, which has largely pacified its own population and cracks down hard when soft power fails to do the job.
But it looks as if there may be more on the agenda: the Iranian challenge looms large for both Washington and Riyadh, and both have taken to implying that the Iranians are up to no good in Bahrain, though there is little evidence that the protests were fueled by Tehran. This I suppose is where the Saudis would like the Americans to draw the line: democracy is good, but not if it threatens to bring a Shia majority into power (as it did of course in Iraq, and the Saudis were not pleased).
This leaves Libya and Syria. I see no real unhappiness coming from the Saudis about what is going on in Libya, and it is difficult to imagine that the United Arab Emirates would lend its air force to the cause if the Saudis were not prepared to go along. Gaddafi is not a Saudi kind of guy, and of course there is no Shia threat there. Syria is harder to read: are the Saudis backing Bashar al Assad, who runs an Alawi (sort of Shia) regime, or not? Riyadh and Damascus have in the past competed with him for influence in Lebanon. Would the Saudis prefer a Sunni regime in Damascus? Or does the preference for stability prevail? So far, the latter.
Saudi influence is likely one of the reasons the Americans haven’t been as welcoming of the protesters in Syria as might have been expected. Both Washington and Riyadh are worried about chaos in Syria, and how that might affect Iraq and Jordan. This is odd, of course, since Damascus is allied with Tehran and Bashar al Assad has not hesitated to make trouble for the Americans in both Iraq and Lebanon. I wonder if things started really coming apart in Damascus whether the Saudis would reconsider.
Now if you’ve got a headache from all this diplomatic mumbo jumbo, I’m not surprised. But the world really is complicated, the Middle East more than most other regions. And if something happens in Saudi Arabia to disrupt its giant oil production and exports, that $4 gasoline is going to start looking cheap.
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Counterrevolution, again
With the U.S. Government immobilized by its own self-generated problems–a kind of self-licking ice cream cone phenomenon–dictators are resurgent in the Middle East again. They are doing what they know to do best: killing their own citizens, hoping that will make the popular protests against their interminable rule go away.
In Syria, the demonstrations were once again widespread yesterday, if not gigantic. The killing seems to have focused on the southern town of Deraa, where Bashar al Assad seems to be wanting to demonstrate how really dangerous it is to protest persistently. In Yemen, yesterday’s killing focused on Taiz, a southern town that President Ali Saleh sees as the leading edge of separatism. In Egypt, Tahrir square was cleared in the early morning hours by an army riot. In Libya, Gaddafi continues to make mincemeat of rebel forces, which have also been bombed unintentionally by NATO. Negotiations with the Gaddafi family are ongoing, but Washington seems to be holding a hard line on getting them all out of Libya. In Bahrain, the monarchy continues with a hard line on the demonstrations, which it increasingly paints with a sectarian brush.
It is surprising to me that the dictators think this will work, but they know their own people better than I do. Alistair Crooke published yesterday on foreignpolicy.com a piece on “Syrian exceptionalism” that essentially says Bashar knows best and will win his bet. There will surely be people in the U.S. administration who are also hoping now to stem the tide and save a few really important autocratic regimes (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia foremost) for future use, while arranging soft landings for others (Yemen in particular). Secretary of Defense Gates has been running up his frequent flyer miles with visits to key stalwarts and Gulf states worried about the situation.
That said, President Obama has issued strong statements on Syria and Yemen in recent days. He seems much more inclined to emphasize the legitimate aspirations of the people than to help preserve Bashar and Bashir.
It is nowhere written that counterrevolution will fail, and in fact it has often succeeded. Regime principals and their oligarchs are clever about using their remaining power and money to divide the opposition, crack down on the weaker but more militant portion, and preserve at least some vestige of their own privilege and control. We should expect no less from them.
Those who want to complete their revolutions and emerge as free societies with more or less representative governments will somehow need to keep the pressure on. But they will also have to stay united, and plan carefully for where and when to confront their respective regimes nonviolently. The consequences of violent rebellion should by now be obvious to everyone who follows events in Libya–it isn’t pretty, and it may not end well.
PS: Just to complete the picture, in Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo’s forces are reportedly today attacking the hotel where Alassane is headquartered, as well as the French Embassy. You have to wonder when Paris will see fit to take decisive action.
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The devil in the details is named Saif
Former Republican Congressman Curt Weldon says in the New York Times this morning that he is in Libya to get Muammar Gaddafi to step aside. He also argues that the United States should have developed a much deeper relationship with the Libyan people and civil society since the Colonel gave up his nuclear ambitions in 2004, a perspective I can certainly share.
Reading more carefully, it appears that “step aside” does not mean “leave Libya,” and Weldon also says
Colonel Qaddafi’s son Saif, a powerful businessman and politician, could play a constructive role as a member of the committee to devise a new government structure or Constitution. The younger Mr. Qaddafi, who has made belligerent comments about the rebels, has his detractors. But he also pushed his government to accept responsibility for the bombings of a Pan Am flight over Scotland and a disco in Germany, and to provide compensation for victims’ families. He also led the effort to free a group of Bulgarian nurses in Libya who had twice been sentenced to death.
Here is where I part company with Mr. Weldon. I don’t think we owe Saif anything for his past efforts, all of which were amply rewarded at the time. Keeping him–or any other member of the Gaddafi family–in the process now will only complicate the post-war arrangements and make it difficult to satisfy the 98 per cent of the Libyan population that has not benefited from the last 42 years of the Colonel’s idiosyncratic and impovershing rule.
Weldon will be serving a useful purpose on his visit to Tripoli if he convinces the Gaddafis that they all need to depart, post haste. Anything less than that will prolong Libya’s pain, and U.S. involvement.
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Blogging(egg)heads
Tune in to Rutgers University Professor Eric Davis and me, chatting on Friday about events in the Arab world:
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No joke
The day is done in the Middle East, with no definitive results:
- protests were widespread in Syria, with at least a dozen demonstrators killed
- duelling demonstrations in Yemen came off, I gather peacefully
- Libyan rebels remain on the defensive
Even in Ivory Coast expectations of a definitive end to Gbagbo have not been fulfilled, as fierce fighting is said to continue in Abijian. Ah well, it is April Fools’ Day, and maybe I’m the fool for having hoped for better outcomes.
Srdja Popovic, the Serb Otpor (Resistance) leader who now participates in a network of people training others for “nonviolent conflict” was here at SAIS today. His messages as always to those who seek to overthrow dictators and embark on a path to democracy: unity, planning, nonviolent discipline.
The Syrians are handicapped: they haven’t had time for serious planning, but so far they’ve been pretty good at maintaining nonviolent discipline and unity. If Bashar keeps on giving them the gift of failing to offer serious reform, they may be able to catch up with their planning homework, but maintaining momentum won’t be easy.
Yemen has developed into a more unified movement and seems to be maintaining nonviolent discipline. President Saleh is slippery though and keeps on squirming out of deals that would lead to his stepping down. The demonstrators are going to have to keep it up for a while longer.
Libya and Ivory Coast are violent situations, not nonviolent ones. Each in its own way demonstrates why nonviolent discipline is so important.
Violence in Libya gave Gaddafi the advantage, as his forces are far better equipped and trained than the rebels. A stalemate for weeks while they equipped and trained would be ruinous for Libya and for the coalition supporting UN Security Council resolution 1973. It is important to get Gaddafi and his family out of the country as soon as possible.
In Ivory Coast, president-elect Ouattara showed enormous discipline in resisting a military solution. Now that he has embarked on one, he has the international community–even the African Union–on his side. He needs to keep the military action clean and avoid revenge killings, which would set his administration off on the wrong foot and deprive him of vital international support. He also needs to win quickly, before more innocent people are killed.
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Good behavior and laughter make better revolution
As incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo is being forced out of power by election winner Alassane Ouattara in the Ivory Coast, it is time to remind all concerned that proper behavior of security forces is required of good guys as well as bad guys. This is not only a matter of international humanitarian law but also of good policy. If you are claiming power in the name of democracy or freedom and intending to establish the rule of law, the last thing in the world you should want is for your security forces to begin behaving even remotely like the ones they have just defeated.
This will be important also in Libya, where revenge killings–in particular of Gaddafi “mercenaries” thought to be of non-Libyan origin–have already occurred. The International Criminal Court should not limit its investigation only to the Gaddafi loyalists but should also keep its eye on those generally called “the rebels,” even if actual prosecutions for war crimes may prove technically difficult because the rebel forces are not an organized armed force, or at least don’t appear to be yet.
I am hoping that this problem will not arise in Yemen or in Syria, where the protesters have tried hard to maintain nonviolent discipline. The prerequisite for doing so is to mass large numbers of people, something the regimes will try to prevent by instilling, or re-instilling, fear. It may seem odd, but the winners in nonviolent confrontations are often those who can laugh best at their opponent, a clear metric for the removal of fear.
I’d be the first to admit that Gbagbo and Gaddafi scare me, and it is hard to fault those on the spot who decided to take up arms rather than rely on laughter and massive nonviolent protests. But if they want the rest of the world to help them, they’ve got to keep it clean.
PS: Rival demonstrations in Sanaa today appear to have been relatively peaceful, so far. Saleh is clever, but will it buy him until the end of the year? Sporadic but persistent Twitter reports from Syria suggest the regime is using violence and the threat of violence to prevent demonstrations.
PPS: In Ivory Coast, the outcome is still not quite final, but Outtara is sounding the right notes:
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