Tag: Morocco
George W. Bush’s playbook
I can do no better in summing up Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech today than he does himself in the penultimate sentence:
The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity.
Here’s the problem: the terror, war and economic calamity Romney refers to occurred not on Barack Obama’s watch, but on George W. Bush’s. And Governor Romney’s foreign policy prescriptions, like many of his domestic policy prescriptions, are drawn from George W. Bush’s playbook.
The few innovations in Romney’s speech at Virginia Military Institute today are hardly worth mentioning. He wants to see the Syrian revolutionaries get more arms, in particular anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, but he fails to say how he will prevent these from being used against us, except to say that those who receive them will have to share our values. That should fix everything in the arms bazaars of the Middle East.
He says he will support a two-state solution for peace between Palestine and Israel. Nice to see him return to the mainstream from the extremist wings of Israeli and American politics, which is where he was during the “47%” fund-raising dinner in Florida when he suggested we would kick the can down the road and maybe skip the two-state solution altogether. Trouble is, the people he pitched that line to are supporting his campaign with fat checks. He says there will be no daylight between America and Israel, which is code for saying that the Jewish settlements will continue to expand, since that is what Netanyahu’s Israel wants. I fail to understand an American presidential candidate who outsources U.S. policy on the Palestinians to Israel.
In Libya he’ll track down the killers of our personnel, which is exactly what Obama promises to do. I’d just be curious how those 15 Navy ships he plans to build each year will help in the effort.
He pledges to condition aid to Egypt but makes the conditions both vague and easy to meet: build democratic institutions and maintain the peace treaty with Israel. There are lots of problems with President Morsy’s Egypt, but you won’t be able to hang him for either of those offenses, yet.
In Afghanistan, he calls the withdrawal the president has pledged a retreat but makes it clear he is not proposing anything very different.
Then there is this on foreign assistance:
I will make further reforms to our foreign assistance to create incentives for good governance, free enterprise, and greater trade, in the Middle East and beyond. I will organize all assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with responsibility and accountability to prioritize efforts and produce results. I will rally our friends and allies to match our generosity with theirs.
The trouble here is that the Ryan budget guts the foreign affairs budget, including foreign assistance. There won’t be any American generosity to be matched with theirs if Romney is elected. This is where Romney departs definitively from Obama and shows his reliance on George W.’s playbook.
I hasten to add that I’d be all for organizing our assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official. That would be a good idea.
One last issue: with all this overload of American values as the basis for our foreign policy, I’m curious what Romney plans to do about Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco and other less than fully democratic friends in the region? They get no mention in this speech, but of course they really can’t be mentioned in a speech that gives unequivocal backing to both our friends and our values. What would Romney do when there is a choice between the two? Keep silent would be a good guess.
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Eid mubarak!
Today and tomorrow mark the end of the month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day. Tonight and tomorrow night they feast.
It has been a truly terrible Ramadan in Syria, where Kofi Annan’s peace plan has died (along with thousands of additional Syrians) and the Asad regime has intensified military action, especially in Aleppo. Prospects are not good: Asad refuses to step aside and the opposition refuses to negotiate with him. We are not yet at Bill Zartman’s “mutually hurting stalemate,” when both sides see no gain in continuing to fight and decide instead to talk.
Egypt has taken another unexpected turn, with elected President Morsy taking over by decree the executive and legislative powers that the military had previously reserved for itself. He did it with savoir faire: previous military leaders were retired with medals and new ones chosen from just below them. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsy hails, and the military have reached a mutual accommodation, leaving Egypt’s secular revolutionaries out in the cold, which isn’t very refreshing in Egypt at this time of year.
In Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, the revolutions are looking a lot better. Libya‘s General National Congress, elected July 7, convened on schedule and chose as President Magarief, who promises to be a unifying figure. Tunisia is struggling to produce a constitution, with final approval delayed at least to April 2013 rather than October 2012. Yemen has made a start with military reform and is now embarking on preparations for its national dialogue, to be held in November and followed by constitution-writing.
Elsewhere counter-revolution is winning. Bahrain has sentenced human rights activist Nabeel Rajab to three years in prison. I wonder if he would have attracted more attention if his name were Pussy Riot. Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia have stifled any serious reform moves. In Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki has weathered political challenges and continues to accumulate power even as frictions between Baghdad and Kurdistan grow.
It looks as if the Arab awakening will continue mainly in North Africa, where it began in early 2011. While Libya has ample oil and gas resources, none of the other countries in which revolutions have come to fruition does. Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen all have serious economic challenges ahead. Syria will be an economic basket case the day after Asad is gone. If we want anything like democracy to prevail in these places, there is going to be a substantial bill to pay.
Marc Lynch has called this a cruel summer. It has certainly been that and worse in Syria. But those of us who have experience with transitions, especially in post-conflict environments, set the bar low. There has been progress elsewhere, even if halting and slower than hoped.
The big open questions are these: is Egypt getting back on track, or are we seeing a new, Islamist autocracy in the making? Can Saudi Arabia manage the succession to next-generation leadership without upheaval? Can the regional war that has begun in Syria be ended before it engulfs several other countries? Can Iran‘s nuclear ambitions be ended at the negotiating table, or will Israel or the United States attack?
No answers are needed today. It suffices to salute those who observe Ramadan with “Eid mubarak!”
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Is Libya really headed for democracy?
Al-Monitor yesterday published this piece, which they titled “Libya Hurtles Toward Democracy.” That’s not quite my message, but have a read for yourself:
Returning from observing the July 7 Libyan elections last week, it was hard for me to believe that Libya — a pariah state for most of my adult life — might be on the path to democracy. Why, I wondered, did the elections go so well? Why were the results so “good” from a US as well as Libyan perspective? What are the implications of the results for the US and the region?
Based on my experience in Benghazi, the answers so far are encouraging, although significant challenges remain.
The elections went well because that is what the Libyans wanted. Without exception, the politicians I spoke with rejected last-minute appeals to vote for Islamists, as well as even more extreme Islamist and “Federalist” views opposed to voting at all. At least some of the Federalists, who want a commitment to a Libya formed from its three historic regions, have acknowledged defeat and proclaimed that the Libyan people have spoken in an election that drew 62% participation. Most Libyans wanted to vote and felt invested in the electoral process, which was organized and paid for by the Libyans themselves.
The assistance the Libyans got from the United Nations and US-backed organizations such as the National Democratic Institute and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems was wide-ranging, but did not deprive Libyans of ownership. Relatively quick sanctions relief ensured that the National Transitional Council’s coffers were full. When I asked the manager of the tallying center in Tripoli how he managed to get the ballots and tally sheets to the capital so fast from far-away Tobruk, near the border with Egypt, he responded, “I sent the plane.” Elections conducted in many municipalities during the spring were in some ways a practice run and whetted the electoral appetite.
Libyans won’t be happy to hear me say it, but I suspect that there were elements of Muammar Gadhafi’s legacy involved in the success of the elections. Hatred for Gadhafi gave Libyans a stronger sense of collective identity than many experts had anticipated. One Libyan election observer, asked at the end of her 12-hour vigil at the polling place whether she had ever imagined a free election in Libya, said, with vehemence, “never!” Her determination was a reaction to decades of oppression.
The Gadhafi regime also gave Libyans a lot of discipline. Entrusted with setting up the polling places, the nation’s school teachers posted instructions on classroom walls and arranged furniture and cardboard voting booths as shown in the posters provided by the Libyan High National Election Commission.
Last but not least, the Gadhafi regime had always promised Libyans self-government even if they were never allowed to exercise that right. No one in Libya has anything good to say about the Green Book or the Jamahiriya (Gadhafi’s “republic of the masses”), but Libyans have a clearer concept of self-governance than many people I know who have also lived under autocracy for decades.
As an election observer, my role was to watch and report. Mostly I found myself checking the “yes” boxes: the polling centers were accessible and free from adverse influence; the polling center staff was present; polling procedures were implemented correctly; voting was secret and free of apparent fraud or disruption. More often than not, Libyan observers were also present at the polling stations I visited. They also thought the process was conducted properly. There were separate polling stations for men and women, with relatively few women observing in the male polling stations. The polling stations in a camp for displaced people and in a disability center were set up and operating in the same way.
Not only the process, but also the election results were good. The leader of the winning coalition is Mahmoud Jibril, whose doctoral thesis and portrayal in a Wikileaks cable, show him to be a certifiable wonk and technocrat. He also proved to be a good politician. Eschewing secularism, he managed to get dozens of smallish, liberal parties to unite, then campaigned vigorously all over Libya. His Islamist opposition was more divided and less rooted than Jibril’s coalition.
It would be unwise to suggest that the results necessarily have broad implications for Libya’s western neighbor Tunisia, where the transition is already going reasonably well, or Egypt, where the transition is confused and messy. Nor will Libya echo strongly in Yemen, already embarked on a Gulf Cooperation Council-designed transition, or in benighted Syria. But Syrians and Libya’s western Maghreb neighbors, Morocco and Algeria, would do well to study carefully the way Libya is managing its transition. If the pro-revolution Syrian National Council could muster even a fraction of the cohesion the Libyans have shown, there might be some hope for a peaceful transition once Syrian President Bashar al-Assad falls.
The age of Algeria’s leaders will compel some sort of transition there as well, likely beginning with presidential elections in 2014. If the Moroccan king wants to avoid cataclysm, his tentative steps in the direction of constitutional monarchy should be bolder than they have been so far.
Perhaps the most important lesson of Libya is that the polarization of Islamists and secularists can be avoided. When everyone is Islamic, it hardly matters who is an Islamist. Islam, like Christianity in most of the West, should be a religion, not a source of political division. Europe and America will find it far easier to improve relations with a moderate, Islamic Libya than a sharply divided Egypt.
Libya still runs serious risks. Everyone points towards the militias, which provided good security for the voting in many areas but also clashed in a few, disrupting the polls in Kufra and Ajdabiya (south of Benghazi). While still vital to security in some places, the militias gradually have to be reined in and absorbed into state security forces and civilian society. These young militants have enjoyed a heady time. It will not be easy for them to accept a less exciting life. There are also tribal conflicts, often over smuggling routes, that continue to threaten the transition, especially in the south. And there are regional tensions between east and west that will have to find solutions in the constitution to be written and approved in a referendum next year.
The biggest challenge will be handling oil and gas revenue. If that is not done equitably, accountably and transparently, all bets are off. Only two countries on earth with hydrocarbon-dominated economies have managed their wealth reasonably well: Norway and East Timor. If Libya becomes a third, it might really be on the path to democracy.
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Libyan bellwether
From Tripoli:
It is hard not to share Libyans’ affection for their revolution. They are thrilled with themselves. Qaddafi seemed forever, especially after the United States normalized relations with Libya in 2004. But somehow in a relatively few months last year they found the courage and the means to evict him from power and establish what they hope will be a free society and a democratic state.
The odds are long. Libya has no democratic tradition. Elections were not held at all during Qaddafi’s 42 years in power. The violence of the Libyan revolution, supported by NATO air power, has left thousands of armed youths and dozens of militias scattered throughout the country. This week a mob claiming to object to the geographic distribution of parliamentary seats attacked the elections commission office in Benghazi. Their looting of the computers and other equipment suggests other motives, as did the green shirts some of the youths wore (green was Qaddafi’s favored color). There are also threats of an election boycott in the south, where clashes have occurred recently. Disorder lurks not far below the apparently peaceful and relatively orderly surface.
It is not however hard to find a hopeful Libyan. Things were so bad under Qaddafi that improvement will not be difficult. Libyans believe themselves moderate people who will not reward the Muslim Brotherhood or the more radical Salifists the way Egypt did, a woman with hair covered by a hijab says to me. It has taken time for Libyans to begin to understand that the election on July 7 is important. Some thought they had fulfilled their civic obligation when they registered to vote. No one knows how many will turn out or how they will vote, but there is ample choice and a real possibility of new faces emerging.
Women in Libya will run both as individuals for 120 seats in the assembly as well as on party lists for the remaining 80. The party lists are required to alternate male and female names. An Italian businessman who has been coming to Libya for decades was surprised they were even being allowed to vote. There is palpable distrust in political parties, which have emerged only in the past year. Individual reputation and standing is expected to count for a lot.
I enjoyed dinner this evening with activists from Egypt and Morocco. The contrast with Libya could not be stronger. Egypt has elected a Muslim Brotherhood president who will now engage in a complicated tug of war with the country’s still powerful Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has dissolved the elected parliament. The Moroccan king has nominally begun a reform process with a new constitution and elections that returned an Islamist-led government, but things there remain as always: absolute monarchy rules.
Libya, a country many in the region view as backward, has a grand opportunity with the elections this week. If they go well, it will mark an important step forward in a democratic direction for the Arab awakening, which has lost a lot of its shine in recent months due to profound confusion in Egypt, extreme violence in Syria and a half-baked outcome in Yemen. If the elections in Libya go poorly, with violence or boycott undermining their legitimacy, it will be a giant step backwards. Libya is not the largest or most important country in the Arab world, but right now it is a bellwether that counts.
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Shifting sands
Uncertainty is breaking out all over the Greater Middle East.
With Crown Prince Nayef’s death in Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud will soon have to look past its octogenarian leadership to the next generation, with all the uncertainties that implies. Will the next generation be as attached to religious and social Wahhabi conservatism as the current one? Will it open an era of serious reform?
The suspension of the UN monitoring effort in Syria presages an increase in violent conflict with a highly uncertain outcome. Russia seems determined to keep Bashar al Assad in power, though its Foreign Minister denies it. Iran will certainly exert itself in that direction. I doubt the armed rebellion can beat the Syrian security forces any time soon, but we could see a lengthy insurgency fed by Saudi and Qatari arms shipments through Turkey.
The only real certainty in Egypt is that the military is trying to hold on to power. Whether it can and what the consequences will be is highly uncertain, as are the results of today’s presidential election. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has arrogated to itself legislative power, which means it now has to deal with Egypt’s economy and social problems along security and law and order. I don’t know any military establishments equal to that task, but the risk of new parliamentary elections may be greater than the SCAF wants to run. It could end up forced to rule Egypt, likely badly, for some time to come.
Iraq‘s Prime Minister Maliki has faced down a parliamentary rebellion but Al Qaeda has renewed its murderous attacks against the country’s Shia. If they succeed in reigniting Iraq’s sectarian warfare, the promise of a relatively democratic society that produces a lot of oil will evaporate, leaving a bitter residue.
Iran‘s Supreme Leader Khamenei has concentrated power as rarely before in the Islamic republic’s history, but American and Israeli threats of military attack against it nuclear program make prediction even a year out difficult.
After ten years of rule by Hamid Karzai, even Afghanistan faces the uncertainty of an election (to be held no one knows when in 2013 or 2014) in which he will not be running and an end to the NATO combat role shortly thereafter.
I needn’t mention next month’s elections in Libya or the aging leadership in Algeria, where military success in repressing Al Qaeda in the Maghreb seems to have pushed the militants into the Sahel, where they are destabilizing several other countries.
A region that enjoyed decades of stability–some would say stagnation, much of it autocratically imposed–now registers high volatility. Of course volatility can move in either direction: there are possible positive developments as well as negative ones. Tunisia has pushed the envelope in the positive direction. Yemen seems to be making progress against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and affiliates, though some think the government offensive and U.S. drone attacks are creating more extremists than they are killing. Morocco and Jordan have attempted some modest reforms that seem unlikely to suffice, but they may stave off open rebellion.
It is not easy to deal with uncertainty. Most experts would recommend triage and prioritization. Triage happens naturally. There are only a few Middle East problems that will make it to the President’s desk: Iran and Egypt most frequently, Afghanistan because of the American troops, and we can hope Syria when Obama meets with Putin this week at the G-20 in Moscow.
Prioritization of issues is harder. Even those who recommend it muddle exactly what they mean. Colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment recommend in a recent overview of the situation in the Middle East:
international actors should focus on a few, very specific issues for special emphasis, such as international human rights standards, the maintenance of existing treaty relationships, and the principle of peaceful settlement of international disputes.
But then they go on to recommend economic cooperation aimed at job creation, a non sequitur virtually guaranteed to disappoint expectations given limited U.S. resources and a track record of failure. Not to mention the difficulty of meeting human rights standards, since these require equal gender treatment not readily available in the workplace in many of the countries in question.
Shifting sands will make navigation in the Middle East difficult for a long time to come. I recommend to all my international affairs students that they learn Arabic, or another of the regional languages (Farsi most of all). Even if American oil production continues to reduce already low U.S. dependence on the Middle East, the global oil market and the extremist movements the region has spawned will ensure we remain engaged there for a long time to come, triage and prioritization notwithstanding.
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Believe what they do
While Eric Trager over at the Washington Institute continues to warn that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood seeks a monopoly on power, Carnegie Endowment yesterday hosted Islamist politicians–including an Egyptian adherent of the Muslim Brotherhood–swearing fealty to pluralism. The day-long event–of which I attended only the first session on “Building New Regimes After the Uprising”–started off with Islamists from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan.
Tunisia
Sahbi Atig, a Tunisian National Constituent Assembly member representing Ennahda, said that Tunisians want is a “civil state” and protection of individual rights. The Tunisian revolution has been fortunate to have broken cleanly with the autocratic regime without much violence. The army stepped aside willingly and is now out of politics–soldiers cannot even vote. Tunisia has now conducted free and fair elections to a pluralist constituent assembly operating under a temporary constitution.
The constituent assembly seeks a broad consensus based on Islamic and Arab identity but also guaranteeing individual liberties through institutions like a constitutional court and independent electoral and media commissions. Women’s and minority rights will be respected. Sharia will be a basis for freedom and justice.
The current government is seized with economic issues: unemployment, foreign investment, the need for more development in the interior. Accountability and transitional justice will be important issues, but settled only by dialogue and consensus. Questioned about his 16 years in prison, Atig made it clear they had taught him to oppose torture and advocate for freedom.
Morocco
Mustafa Elkhalfi, now Minister of Communications, claimed that Morocco’s “third path” is working: meeting the demand for reform without instability. The King reacted promptly to the “February 20” movement, promising good governance, transparency, rule of law. There is now a new constitution, real elections have been held, there is an Islamist prime minister and a governing coalition that includes Amazighs (aka Berbers). The monarchy has provided unity, modern religious leadership, and preservation of pluralism. There is a dynamic and active civil society with more than 50,000 private organizations and a culture of integration that includes Amazighs as well as leftists, in addition to Islamists and other political forces.
There are four main challenges: implementation of the new constitution (especially its provisions for freedom press and expression, women’s equality and an independent judiciary); real decentralization of governance (including the Western Sahara); answers to economic and social challenges like poverty, electricity, health and education; and revived regional cooperation with Morocco’s neighbors.
Egypt
Abdul Maegoud Rageh Dardery of Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party (a Muslim Brotherhood outfit), suggested that Egypt had made mistakes in the past by either slavishly following European practices or trying to depart entirely from them. He would like to see Egypt respect its own traditions but learn from the Europeans.
Egyptians yearn to live free under the rule of law. They want a civil state with reference to Islamic principles (not rulings in the FJP view) as the main source of law. The new constitution will be written by committee chosen half from outside parliament, which includes 20 parties. The FJP refused to claim the chair of all the parliamentary committees, preferring to distribute responsibilities more widely. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is trying to hold on to its privileges but the FJP wants to avoid a military-industrial complex.
Dardery was at pains to underline that sharia simply means rule of law and jihad means exerting an effort. The FJP will take a pragmatic approach to alliances, making common cause with whoever supports its program.
Jordan
The tone got darker with Nabil Alkofahi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Jordan, which has undergone very limited reform. Elections in 2007 were fraudulent, he said, leading the Brotherhood to boycott them in 2010. The King is still stalling on reform, preferring to keep in place a constitution that gives him, his government and the military too much power. He uses the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the division between West Bankers and Jordanians, to distract attention and delay reform.
The King should be part of the solution, not part of the problem. The MB wants a constitutional, pluralist and civil state to conduct free and fair elections. There is no history of religious oppression in Jordan. But there is a need to eliminate military tribunals and the excessive role of the intelligence services. The MB itself is internally democratic, he claimed. Women participate.
Alkofahi was blunter than the others about Israel. While at pains to say that individual Jews and Christians should be treated correctly in Muslim countries, he underlined that Israel is occupying Palestine. Israel, he said, needs to end its aggression and respect Palestinian rights, including the right of return. But he promised a clear MB policy on the issues only when they gain power.
The bottom line: It was good to hear these rising political figures deal forthrightly with the issues Americans have on their minds, well-posed by Carnegie’s Marwan Muasher. But ultimately we’ll need to assess what they do, not just what they say. Trager’s warnings should not be ignored.
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