Tag: Morocco
A year on in North Africa
I enjoyed a fine event yesterday at an undisclosed location discussing north Africa from the Mediterranean littoral to northern Nigeria. Arab Spring was the overall theme, but with very explicit recognition that it has manifested itself differently in different national contexts. The event was not for attribution, so I can’t offer you the names of the distinguished folks involved, but here is a quick summary:
Tunisia: Still looking like the best of the lot, with a glass half full and continuing to fill. The mostly conscript army refused to fire on civilians, the old order has been willing to yield its positions and there have been Islamist moderates (Ennahda) on the rebel side. There could still be splits that would endanger moderation and the elections may not be held before October 23, as planned. Big issues include whether to have a presidential or a parliamentary constitutional system and whether Islamists will insist on implementing legislation for sharia. This was a political rather a social revolution, but so far a successful one. The U.S. should encourage trade and investment with Tunisia and leave ownership of the revolution with the Tunisians.
Libya: The National Transitional Council has had the advantages of uniting the opposition under reasonably good leadership and with decent planning, but it now faces serious challenges from people who are feeling excluded:
- Youth, who are particularly resentful of demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) plans on which they were not consulted;
- Tribes: some of them resent the failure to investigate the assassination of General Younis;
- Women: they get only lip service;
- Those seeking redress for mistreatment by revolutionary forces, especially the population of Tuarga, a town whose population the Misratans have vengefully displaced.
Power post-war is increasingly coming to depend on weapons, capture of high-value regime personalities, and a claimed role in the fighting, rather than on programmatic proposals for the future. Islam could become a source of division in Libya, but so far there is little debate because most Libyans agree it has a central role in their society. Still, there is a risk that Salafist elements, who have attacked Sufi shrines, may ignite tribal and sectarian tensions.
The NTC has been in a hurry, more concerned with speed than the quality of the transition process. The U.S. should focus not on the constitutional framework per se but on broad principles: participation of women, protection of minorities, and a broadly representative system of governance.
Egypt: Islamists of one sort or another have captured about 75% of the parliament. In Egyptian eyes, they stand for rule of law, an end to corruption, cultural authenticity and an end to foreign interference. For virtually all Egyptians, sharia simply means justice.
The economy is in free fall, with tourism hit hard, currency reserves plummeting, government bonds selling only at high interest rates and credit to business drying up.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) wants immunity from prosecution and continued control over large portions of the economy. It is cracking down hard on protests.
So far as U.S. interests are concerned, the picture is mixed. Egypt does not appear to be breeding violent extremists. Anti-Americanism is more overt, but military to military cooperation is so far not much affected. Egypt will not support U.S. military action as readily as it did at times in the past, but a U.S. aid cutoff seems unlikely.
On Israel, Egyptians are concerned with the below market sale of their natural gas but they are unlikely to support abrogation of the Camp David peace. They will be more vocal and critical of U.S. support for Israeli settlements, attacks on Gaza and a possible attack on Iran.
The U.S. will do well to accept the election results, not ask the Egyptians to like Israelis, and practice strategic patience. The responsibilities of power will moderate Islamist forces in Egypt and restore balance to its relationship with Israel.
Morocco: The King has successfully taken the initiative and coopted the push for a constitutional monarchy, preserving his absolute powers behind the smokescreen of the new constitution he proposed. Social protests are continuing, but there is no serious political challenge to the monarchy. The legislature is weak. Security is a problem, one the relatively weak state may not be able to manage effectively. An uprising is not impossible but unlikely due the regime’s skillful maneuvers and the lack of an effective political opposition.
Algeria: There are lots of reasons why there should be a revolution: mass discontent, especially among the young and more educated, deep and wide corruption, lack of transparency and the state’s contempt for its citizens, widespread disillusion with the political system, social inequities, dependence on oil and gas, the demonstration effect of other north African rebellions, wide availability of social media.
But it isn’t happening. Algeria in many respects already has a democratic political culture, with frequent strikes and relative media freedom. It has used its oil and gas revenue effectively to appease the population, which disdains the state but shows little sign of despising the political leadership, in particular President Bouteflika. The military coup and civil war of the early 1990s have left many Algerians unwilling to risk a challenge to the established order.
Still, something might happen. A presidential succession looms, as do legislative elections (May 10). The political leadership is aging and it is not clear who will inherit.
The Sahel: The presentations focused on particular issues. First was Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, the Algerian terrorist group that has been largely defeated inside Algeria and has now turned to crime: smuggling, human trafficking, drug trade, kidnapping. It is making lots of money. The second was northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram is tying down the Nigerian security forces. That, the situation in the Delta and contestation between Christians and Muslims in central Nigeria are making it difficult for the Nigerians to play a major role in meeting the Sahelian challenge.
I focused on possible approaches to security in the Sahel, based on experience elsewhere. My personal conclusion is that the Sahel today does not today present a serious security challenge to the United States, but some preventive effort there–especially regional cooperation on community-level development, tracking terrorist financing and border controls–would be appropriate.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Arab world: positive balance, still teetering
I need a scorecard to keep track of political change in the Arab world, so here it is:
- Egypt: New Egyptian parliament led by Muslim Brotherhood met for the first time yesterday. It needs to choose a commission to write the new constitution and call elections for president in June. Other powers are uncertain. Supreme Council of the Armed Forces still running things and holding on to perks and power.
- Yemen: President Saleh has left for the U.S. for medical treatment. I still find it incredible he would come here given the risks of a court deciding to hold him accountable for crimes for which he has immunity in Yemen. A single-candidate “election” February 22 is scheduled to elevate his vice president to the presidency. It is unclear to me what good this will do. Protests continue, his relatives cling to power and dissident parts of the armed forces control parts of the capital.
- Libya: Demonstrators in Benghazi Sunday attacked National Transitional Council offices in a protest over lack of transparency in deciding the electoral law to be used in May elections and in disbursing money. That’s the good news. Occasional strife among the armed militias is the bad news.
- Syria: The Arab League, much criticized because its human rights observers have failed to stop the violence, proposed a serious transition plan, which the Syrian National Council accepted and the Assad regime rejected. The Russians are saying that their patience has run out. A strong UN Security Council resolution would be a fine way to show that they mean what they say.
- Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom is cracking down hard on demonstrations in the majority Shia, oil-producing east.
- Bahrain: Despite the Bassiouni report‘s frankness about human rights abuses during last year’s repression of protests, the monarchy shows no sign of letting up and the Americans, anxious to keep the Fifth Fleet there, aren’t complaining too loudly.
- Morocco, Algeria, Jordan: All attempting various degrees of reform to forestall revolution. Largely succeeding so far. In forestalling that is. Reforms are modest.
So what once looked like a wave of Arab spring protest has now broken into rivulets moving in many different directions as they hit harder and softer obstacles. A few regimes are gone, but most are still holding on, in some cases just barely. Tunisia is the great success story, so far.
There are quite a few shoes that haven’t dropped yet, but likely will: Egypt’s economy is devastated, shoulder launched antiaircraft missiles are circulating in and beyond Libya, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula may well expand further in Yemen, sectarian war threatens in Syria. The new regimes, especially in Egypt, look likely to be tougher-minded towards Israel, even if domestic issues predominate in the short term. 2012 is likely to be even more challenging than 2011.
Still: the overall direction is clear enough. There will likely be more freedom of speech and expression in much of the Arab world once this tide goes out. There will also be more Islamists in power and fewer supposedly secular and pro-Western autocrats. There will likely be more political competition, though how long it will be permitted to last is uncertain. It is also unclear how much governance will improve, in particular whether accountability and transparency will triumph over cronyism and corruption, and whether human rights–especially minority rights–will be respected. The balance for the year is positive, but there are still a lot of things to sort out.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Responding to the Islamist wave
Islamists have now won pluralities in recent Tunisia, Morocco and the first round of the Egyptian elections. There is every reason to believe they will continue to do well in Egypt and in Libya. How should the U.S. and Europe respond?
Calmly. It is not surprising that relatively well-organized Islamists, who for decades led often underground opposition to nominally secularist and nationalist autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (and to the monarchy in Morocco), are doing well in the first sort-of free and fair elections. Yes, relatively secularist youth led the protests earlier this year, but they are not reaping the electoral fruits. There has not been nearly enough time for them to organize, and in Egypt they have been more inclined to protest in Tahrir than to get out to the hustings. Secularism, stained by autocrats and often viewed as synonymous with atheism (not only in Muslim countries), faces a long uphill struggle. Separation of mosque and state is not even on the horizon.
In Tunisia and Morocco, the parties winning pluralities seem determined to avoid the worst excesses of Islamism, but there are going to be constant tussles over veiling, alcohol, status of women and other religious/social issues. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has also been toeing a relatively moderate line, but the far less moderate and Salafist Nour party is also doing well. In all three countries, at least some of the Islamists would like to imitate the success of the ruling Turkish Islamists, who have managed to gain a clear majority by moderating their once more militant views.
The Islamists who do well this year will have an enormous challenge ahead of them, as economic conditions are going to be difficult. This may force some degree of moderation, or at least reduce the saliency of social/religious issues and give secularists some time to get their act together.
The key battleground in my view will be rule of law. Rule of law is where secular regimes in Muslim countries have most obviously failed. It is also the area where many Muslims regard Islamists as offering a credible alternative.
Islamists think Sharia should be the basis of law in Muslim countries, as in fact it nominally was even under supposedly secular autocrats. The question is one of degree and interpretation. If Europe and the United States want the 2011 Arab spring to result in democratic regimes that respect human rights and see eye to eye with the West, they are going to need to engage seriously on rule of law issues. This would mean helping the judiciaries of these countries to rid themselves of corruption and enabling them to establish the kind of independence from executive authority and moderate interpretations of Sharia that might lead to legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
Sincere secularists have advantages in this struggle for hearts and minds. The more than 50 per cent of the population that is female cannot expect equal rights under the more extreme interpretations of Sharia. It is hard to picture the substantial middle classes of Tunisia or Morocco accepting public stoning of adulterers. Egypt’s Christian minority will want a more moderate legal regime.
But to take advantage of these advantages, secularists and more moderate Islamists will need to regroup after these elections and get serious about protecting individual human rights and independence of the judiciary. Their friends in the West should provide support.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Context matters, and so does U.S. support
I gave a talk yesterday at West Virginia University’s Law School on U.S. policy towards democracy-seeking rebellions. The star attraction at the conference was Erica Chenoweth, co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Some of you will have seen my tweets summarizing her talk, which I won’t try to reproduce here. Suffice it to say that she provides hard statistical evidence that nonviolent civil resistance really does work, even against the most repressive regimes, and she gives a coherent rationale for why. She also notes that foreign monetary assistance does not appear to work well.
I was asked to address the U.S. policy response, in particular to the Arab Spring. Here are my speaking notes, which of course do not represent exactly what I said:
West Virginia University
November 10, 2011
1. While I am an admirer of Dr. Chenoweth’s quantitative methodology, I am going to rely today on the much less impressive techniques of the historian and diplomat: stories, I would call them, rather than “cases.”
2. Arab spring is far from over yet, but I’ll try to focus on the transition phase: that is, the phase after a regime falls and before a new one has yet emerged.
3. I am thoroughly convinced of the efficacy of what Dr. Chenoweth calls civic resistance in the earlier phase.
4. But things get much more complicated when that resistance has to turn into something more constructive.
5. There are three cases already in the transition phase, more or less: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Each is quite different.
6. In Tunisia, the autocrat left the scene quickly and the regime was pushed aside fairly easily. First elections have already been held and there is a clear roadmap ahead. A classic, fairly smooth case, with no sign of counter-revolution on the horizon. Good chance of consolidating a democratic regime.
7. In Egypt, the autocrat also left pretty quickly, but the regime was not pushed aside easily and the protesters called on the army to manage the transition. It is doing so, but in a way that consolidates its control over some aspects of governance (security, foreign policy) and a big piece of the economy. I’d say much less likelihood of success in the transition. Might be rather like Serbia, where a similar deal was made with the security forces and the transition has been slow and halting as a result.
8. In Libya, there was a violent revolution that has the advantage of having swept the old regime away completely, with foreign help. There has been good leadership, decent planning and ample resources. I give the Libyans a decent chance at success in consolidating a democracy, albeit less probability than Tunisia.
9. What of Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, all of which are still in progress?
10. Yemen has turned violent, even if the protesters themselves have stuck with nonviolence. The odds of successful transition to democracy seem to be small, because the opposition to Saleh most likely to take power is the violent one, which is no more inclined to democracy than he is.
11. Syria could be headed in the same direction, though there is still some hope of keeping it on a nonviolent course. That’s vital for success. Violence will lead to sectarian and ethnic breakdown (similar to Iraq) that will be difficult to overcome.
12. Bahrain is an odd case. The protesters have been nonviolent, but the crackdown was effective, unlike Syria and Yemen. A lot depends on the Bassiouni commission report: will it revive nonviolent resistance, or will the regime be able to keep the lid on?
13. What of the other monarchies: Morocco and Jordan? Saudi Arabia and Oman?
14. These four, each in its own way, is attempting to preempt resistance with reform, albeit minimal reform in the case of Riyadh. So far, they are largely succeeding.
15. I do think the monarchies have some advantage in this respect: not because they are somehow nicer, but because their legitimacy is understood not to derive from elections but rather from heredity.
16. It is much harder for a republic to claim that there is no need to change who is in power in order to reform the system.
17. But that does not mean the monarchies will succeed forever. The fact that all Saudi Arabia experts agree that it can’t happen there, that the succession is ensured, is a clear earlier indicator that it may well happen there.
18. If I were advising the Saudis and the other monarchies, I would suggest they get ahead of the curve and stay ahead, by taking truly meaningful steps to redistribute power and ensure that their security services are shifting from protecting the rulers to protecting the ruled.
19. If there is one mistake common to all the Arab Spring successes so far—and also to those places where rebellion is still in progress—it is the use of regime violence against the population.
20. These guys need to learn that legitimacy comes from the people, who will be much more inclined to confer it on those who protect them than on those who attack them.
21. We should also be thinking about how we can encourage security sector reform in advance of rebellion and revolution—it would be far cheaper and more effective than doing it after the fact.
22. America should certainly be supporting those who demonstrate nonviolently for their rights, but I confess to doubts that it should be done through embassies.
23. Robert Ford, our ambassador in Syria who has bravely gone to “observe” demonstrations, is the exception that proves the rule.
24. The rule is that embassies need to stay on good terms with the host government, even if it is an autocracy. They cannot be implicated in support to revolutionaries.
25. Assistance to democracy and human rights advocates should flow not through embassies but through nongovernmental organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute as well as non-American counterparts.
26. The more these can be made distinct from our official representation, the better.
27. America is condemned to spreading democracy. If you really believe that all people are created equal, you have no choice but to sympathize with those who claim their rights. But the specific modalities for when and how to do it depend a great deal on context.
PS: In answer to a question, I said yes it can happen in Iran, but American efforts to support it there are problematic because of our fraught relationship with Tehran, which includes both concern about nuclear weapons and attempts to foment ethnic strife inside Iran. In the end, I think Obama got the reaction to the Green Movement about right in the end: rhetorical support without repainting it red, white and blue.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Best freebie next week
Game Changer: Policy and Politics
For a New Middle East
The Grand Hyatt Hotel
1000 H Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
Thursday, November 17, 2011
8:45am-5:30pm
Conference Schedule
8:45am-9:00am – Opening remarks
Ambassador (ret.) Wendy Chamberlin, Middle East Institute President
9:00am-10:30am – After the Arab Spring: Assessing US Policy in the Middle East
Steve Clemons, New America Foundation, The Atlantic
Ambassador (ret.) Daniel Kurtzer, Princeton University
Ambassador (ret.) Ron Schlicher, Former US Department of State
Tamara Cofman Wittes, Deputy Assist. Secretary of State-NEA
10:45am-12:15pm – The Road Ahead for Emerging Arab Democracies
Esraa Abdel Fattah, Egyptian Democratic Academy
Michele Dunne, Atlantic Council
Larry Diamond, Stanford University
Radwan Masmoudi, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy
2:15pm-3:45 pm – Shifting Regional Power Dynamics in an Era of Change
Abdelkhaleq Abdalla, UAE University
Jamal Khashoggi, Al-Arab TV
Haim Malka, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Mohsen Milani, South Florida University
Paul Salem, Carnegie Middle East Center
4:00pm-5:30pm- Economic and Development Strategies for a Middle East in Transition
Adel Abdellatif, UN Development Programme
Odeh Aburdene, OAI Advisors
Iman Bibars, Ashoka/MENA
Ambassador William B. Taylor, US Department of State
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Game changer
Politics and Policy in the New Middle East: that’s what they are calling the Middle East Institute 2011 Annual Conference at the Grand Hyatt, 1000 H Street:
Wednesday, Nov. 16th
6:00pm: Kickoff Banquet: Keynote by Bill Burns, DepSecState; awardees Lakhdar Brahimi and Esraa Abdel Fattah
Thursday, Nov. 17th
Conference
8:45 – 9:00am: Opening Remarks: Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, President MEI
9:00-10:30am: After the Arab Spring: Assessing US Policy In the Middle East
10:45am-12:15pm: The Road Ahead for Emerging Arab Democracies
12:30-2:10pm: Keynote Luncheon: Samih al-Abed and Yossi Beilin
2:15-3:45pm: Shifting Regional Power Dynamics in an Era of Change
4:00-5:30pm: Economic and Development Strategies for a Middle East in Transition
RSS - Posts
