Tag: Russia
The road to Damascus still runs through Moscow
Michelle Dunne and Dimitri Simes got it wrong in yesterday’s discussion on the PBS Newshour of Russia’s role in Syria. They failed to understand the main reason the Obama Administration hesitates to buck Moscow and offered a precedent–the 1999 Kosovo intervention–that can’t be mechanically applied in today’s conditions.
If only Syria were at stake and the Russians were tacitly on board, it would be foolish, as Simes suggested, for the Americans to hesitate to act without UN Security Council (UNSC) approval. They acted without approval in Kosovo without any serious backlash from Russia, which in 1999 was in no position to offer much resistance.
But that is not the current situation. Iran is also on the chess board. If the United States attacks Syria without Moscow’s concurrence, it will lose Russian participation in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran. Your top national security priority for the moment is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but you would put that goal at risk for the sake of Syria? Whether you believe stopping Iran can be done by diplomatic means or you think that military action will be required, you want to keep your powder dry and the Russians on side as much as possible.
Russia to boot is not the basket case it was in 1999, when it winked and nodded at NATO’s attack on Serbia, which after several months ended Belgrade’s repression and the expulsion of the Albanians from Kosovo. Simes conveniently forgot that Kosovo briefly threatened real problems between the United States and Russia, when Moscow seized the Pristina airport before NATO forces arrived there. But Russia was too weak and too broke to do anything more than putter around the runways. Moscow today is far better equipped with armed forces, hard cash and diplomatic support to respond than it was in 1999.
The key to solving the Syria problem is convincing Moscow that it risks losing everything when the Assad regime comes down. Diplomatic persuasion, not military action, is what is needed. At some point, Russia will realize that protecting its port access in the Mediterranean and its arms sales to Syria requires support to the successor regime. If Moscow fails to jump ship in time, the Russians will go down with it.
Moscow sounded a bit desperate yesterday underlining that its arms sales to Bashar al Assad violate no UN resolution or international law. True enough. What they violate is common sense and human decency. No one should be surprised that this is difficult for Vladimir Putin to understand. He is after all having his own problems with demonstrators. But even he by now understands that helicopter gunships are not the right way to deal with dissent.
When President Obama sees President Putin at the G-20 meeting in Mexico next week, Syria should be high on the agenda. The road to Damascus still runs through Moscow.
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The Syrian people still hold the key to Syria
Randa Slim writes:
During the recent discussions in Baghdad between the global powers and Iran, the United States rejected an Iranian proposal to add Syria and Bahrain to the discussion agenda. It might be worth pursuing this proposal at the next round of talks in Moscow. Time and again, Iranian senior officials have stressed the need for a political resolution to the Syrian crisis. They have been reaching out to different groups in the Syrian opposition. As the Western community keeps searching for a political solution in Syria, Iran might have some ideas about how to bring it about.
Iran will no doubt have ideas about Syria, but they won’t be ideas that Bashar al Assad’s opposition (or I) will like. The Iranians will want to get in Syria compensation for whatever they give the P5+1 (that’s the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) on nuclear issues.
Bahrain is a red herring. The Iranians don’t really expect the Americans to yield anything there, because it hosts the American Fifth Fleet. But the refusal of the Americans to yield to the Shia majority in Bahrain is a good analogy from Iran’s perspective to Tehran’s refusal to yield to the Sunni majority in Syria. Tehran will want to know: if majority rule is good for Syria, why isn’t it good for Bahrain?
From the perspective of Americans sympathetic with the rebellion, it would be best to keep the Syria issue separate.
If the impending American election is what restrains President Obama from taking action more vigorous action on Syria, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney loosened the constraint a bit last weekend by criticizing the President for not doing enough and calling for arming the opposition. The trouble with that proposition is that it is already happening and won’t likely alter the balance much. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are providing arms to what the Americans think are reliable recipients. It is unrealistic to expect that the violent side of the Syrian uprising will win the day, but it can likely sustain an insurgency indefinitely.
The more important constraint on President Obama is the need to keep the Russians on board for the p5+1 nuclear talks with Iran. Any overt American military move would likely cause Moscow to scuttle those talks and leave the Americans with the unhappy choice of military action or nothing in dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. Stopping Iran short of a nuclear weapon is one of America’s top foreign policy and national security priorities. It is unrealistic to expect the president to put it at risk with a military strike on Syria.
The fact is that no one has come up with anything demonstrably better than pursuing the Annan plan for Syria, though Andrew Tabler’s suggestion of an arms quarantine against the regime certainly merits consideration as a supplement. The key to making the Annan plan work is moving Bashar al Assad out of power so that work can begin on a political process. The Iranians and Russians will do this once they see him teetering on the brink. He is not far from that point. I still think the best way to put him there is through nonviolent means, like the general strikes that have recently plagued Damascus and other cities. It is very hard to crack down on large numbers of merchants for not opening their shops in the souk.
The Syrian people still hold the key to Syria.
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Annan needs to keep at it
With the toll from Friday’s attack on the Syrian village of Houla mounting well over 100 (including dozens of children), it is tempting to denounce the UN’s Annan peace plan as a dead letter. The European edition of the Wall Street Journal this morning headlines, “Syria Massacre Upends Fragile Hopes for Peace.” Others are even more explicit that Annan has failed, and have been saying so for months.
That is a mistake. The UN observers Annan directs did their job at Houla, verifying the incident and assigning blame to the regime. That is precisely what they are there to do. Unarmed, they have no capacity to intervene with force. The Security Council yesterday issued a statement, approved by Russia and China, condemning the Syrian government for the massacre. Minimal as it is, that counts as progress on the diplomatic front. Weaning the Russians from their client, Syrian President Bashar al Assad, is an important diplomatic objective.
The clarity of the UN observers may push the diplomacy further in the right direction. Moscow and Washington are apparently discussing a plan similar to the Yemen transition process, which involved a resignation of the president and a transition guided by the vice president. I have my doubts this particular scheme is viable in Syria, but there may be variants worth discussing that would provide reassurance to the Alawites while initiating a political process that will move the country definitively past the Assad regime.
That is the essential point. It is hard to picture the violence ending and politics beginning without dealing somehow with Alawite fears that they will end up massacred if Bashar al Assad leaves power. That would be a tragedy not only for the Alawites but for the Middle East in general. Let there be no doubt: past experience suggests that those who indulge in abusive violence often become the victims of it when their antagonists get up off the ropes and gain the upper hand.
It would be far better for most Alawites, the relatively small religious sect whose adherents are mainstays of the Assad regime, if a peaceful bridge can be built to post-Assad Syria. They will not of course trust those who have been mistreated not to mistreat them in turn. This is where the diplomats earn their stripes: coming up with a scheme that protects Alawites as a group from instant retaliation while preserving the option of eventually holding individuals judicially accountable for the Assad regime abuses. It is hard to picture a case more difficult than Syria, where the regime has managed to keep most Alawites loyal and used some of them as paramilitary murderers.
There really is no Plan B. The Americans cannot act unilaterally on Syria without losing Russian support in dealing with Iran on its nuclear program. President Obama’s top priority is stopping that program from advancing further toward nuclear weapons. While some think the American elections are a factor restraining the president on Syria, I don’t think he is likely to change his mind even if he wins. Only if he decides that the effort to stop a nuclear Iran has failed will he be tempted to cut the chord with the Russians and lead a military response to Bashar al Assad’s homicidal behavior, thus ending Syria’s alignment with a potentially nuclear Iran and shoring up the Sunni Arab counterweight. But he would only do that in the narrow window before Tehran acquires nuclear weapons, not afterwards.
The observers are supposed to be laying the groundwork for a political solution. Their mandate expires in July. That is the next big decision point. Annan needs to keep at it for now, hoping that the Russians and Americans come to terms and open a window for a political solution that ends the Assad regime.
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Revolution, conspiracy or civil war? Yes
After a spectacular clear morning walking in the older parts of Istanbul and a visit to the Grand Bazaar, I took in a discussion of Syria this afternoon at Bahçeşehir University moderated with distinction by Samir Aita of le Monde Diplomatique, who noted the key role of the youth movement in Syria, whose cohort faces a disastrous job market with no more than one in five finding even inadequate employment. Control of the Syria by a small, rich rent-seeking elite is no longer acceptable to the younger generation.
He wanted to know whether Syria is experiencing a revolution, a conspiracy or a civil war? Will there be a military or a negotiated solution? If the latter, who should negotiate, how will they attain a modicum of unity and what roles should international powers play, in particular Qatar, Russia and Turkey?
I am not going to identify the respondents by name, even though this was a more or less public event. I don’t want my reports in someone’s file.
A young Syrian activist confirmed it was a revolution but suggested that the civil (nonviolent) revolt needs to split from the military (violent) rebellion, because a democratic outcome requires the former and not the latter (which will lead to civil war). Military intervention will not bring what the Syrian opposition wants. Success in Syria means a democracy established without international intervention.
Confusion reigns in Syria. The Syrian National Council (SNC) has been fragmented among ethnic/sectarian communities in a way that does not reflect Syrian reality. The regime has built a strategy quickly that divides the opposition and drives it in a violent direction. The opposition will be willing to negotiate with secondary members of the regime as well as with Russia and Iran, who are mainstays of the regime, but not with Bashar al Assad.
A Lebanese political scientist living in Paris suggested the Syrian revolution is undergoing three simultaneous processes: militarization of the rebellion because of regime violence (which will create big demobilization challenges in the post-Assad period), territorialization (which will create big governance issues after Assad) and regionalization, with spillover and external interference that makes the conflict increasingly a proxy war among foreign powers (which may ignite a regional conflagration). For the Iranians, the conflict in Syria is now an existential one and they will continue to support Bashar al Assad, but only up to a point, when they feel they have to abandon him to limit their losses. Israel would have preferred that Bashar stay in power, but they have now concluded that the best solution is to replace him with a strong military regime, to block jihadists from taking over.
Negotiation will eventually be necessary, but only on the conditions of the regime’s surrender, in particular amnesty, and an exit for Iran and Russia from their support to Bashar al Assad. There is also a need for negotiation within the revolution on a minimal united front: the role of Islam in the future of Syria, the position of minorities, and international guarantees and assistance.
For the moment, the Annan plan is the only political game in town. To succeed it needs some sticks for use against the regime and as many as 3000 monitors (there are currently fewer than 300) as well as a clear commitment to transition away from Bashar al Assad. If the Annan plan fails, there will be civil war.
A Syrian Kurd underlined that the Kurds have suffered 60 years of oppression in Syria and want to see a real revolution. But the regime is trying to make the rebellion into a sectarian and ethnic conflict. The Kurds fear their efforts will be viewed as separatism. There really is a conspiracy, by the regime, to make the revolution into a civil war. That is increasingly successful, with the conflict framed as Islamists against the Alawites. There will be no military solution without a political one. The Kurds are willing to participate in a unified opposition, but they want to hear an answer to the plan that they have already put forward. They want to see a tolerant society emerge from this revolution.
Another young Syrian activist underlined that the student movement has been in existence since 2001, when Bashar al Assad came to power. The goals have always been freedom, dignity and citizenship. The demonstrators often chant “We are all Kurds, we are all Arabs, we are all Syrians.” The Free Syria Army cannot win a war with the regime. The international powers all have their own agendas, the U.S. with Russia and China and Qatar wanting to export gas to Europe via Syria.
Little did I expect at the end of the presentations to find the session hijacked by hostile remarks from Turks in the audience on the Kurdish question. I should have known. The questioners had heard little about Syria, only about how the Kurds would get what they wanted from the Syrian revolution. The news was not welcome. One of the Syrian Arabs was unequivocal in reply: the Kurds will decide their own destiny.
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Ramifications of an Iran nuclear deal
Optimism is breaking out in some circles for tomorrow’s nuclear talks in Baghdad with Iran. Tehran Bureau hopes for a win/win. Stimson projects possible success.
This hopefulness is based on the emerging sense that a quid pro quo is feasible. While the details people imagine vary, in general terms the deal would involve Iran revealing the full extent of its nuclear efforts and limiting enrichment to what the amount and extent it really needs under tight international supervision. The international community would ease off on sanctions.
What is far less clear than the shape of a deal is whether politics in either Tehran or Washington will allow it to happen, as Zack Beauchamp speculated on Twitter last week. Europe, which leads the p5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany) talks with Tehran is useful to the process but will go along with whatever the Americans and Iranians decide.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been a major stumbling block in the past. He scuppered a deal a few years ago that would have supplied Iran with the enriched uranium it needs for a research reactor in exchange for shipping its own stockpile of 20% enriched uranium out of the country. Unquestionably more in charge than in the past, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards who support him need hostility with the West to maintain their increasingly militarized regime. A resolution–even a partial one–of the nuclear standoff may not be in their interest.
It might not please hawks in the U.S. Congress either. They want a complete halt to enrichment in Iran and don’t want to rely on international inspections that might be suspended or otherwise blocked. Improvement in relations with Iran would hinder their hopes for regime change there. It would also make it difficult to criticize Barack Obama in the runup to the election for his diplomatic outreach to Iran, which failed initially but with the backing of draconian international sanctions seems now to be succeeding.
The smart money is betting that both Tehran and Washington will want to string out the negotiating process past the U.S. election in November. This would be a shame if a deal really is possible before then. The world economy would look a lot brighter if oil prices, pumped up since winter by Iranian threats to close the strait of Hormuz, sank well below $100 per barrel. Improved relations with Iran could also have positive knock-on effects in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iran (which neighbors both countries) has sought to make things hard for the Americans.
A nuclear deal could also free the American hand a bit in Syria, where Washington has been reluctant to act decisively because it needs Russia and China on board for the P5+1 effort. Of course it might also work in the other direction: Washington could decide to give a bit in Syria in order to get a nuclear deal with Iran. That would not be our finest moment.
PS: Julian Borger is, as usual, worth reading, in particular on how low the bar has been set for the Baghdad talks.
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Justice delayed
The conviction of former Liberian president Charles Taylor more than a decade after the war crimes he aided and abetted during the period 1996-2002 answers one important question about his role in the war in Sierra Leone: did he bear some responsibility for rebel atrocities, even if he did not command them directly or conspire to produce them? The court said yes, though an alternate judge held a dissenting view.
Judging from Helene Cooper’s graphic piece in the New York Times about her own family’s experiences, the conviction also provides an important occasion for victims. Even more than ten years after the fact, even though the indictment covered only crimes in Sierra Leone and not in Liberia, they take some satisfaction from knowing that justice has not been denied but only delayed.
But what does it do, and not do, to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity in the future? When Charles Taylor was indicted, it was widely believed that the court action would disrupt the then ongoing process of beginning the reconstruction of Liberia. Helene Cooper notes that he was tried for crimes in Sierra Leone rather than Liberia to avoid political problems that might have arisen in the country of which he was once president. So far as I can tell, these fears have proven unfounded. Charles Taylor is not today an important political factor in a Liberia that has made substantial progress in becoming a normal, functioning country, even if a frighteningly poor one.
Many diplomats bemoan the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of President Omar al Bashir of Sudan, because they say it makes him hold on to power more tightly and interferes with diplomatic efforts to resolve the various conflicts embroiling his country. That view readily prevails in Syria, where President Bashar al Assad’s obvious responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot lead to an ICC indictment because Russia will prevent the necessary referral from passing in the UN Security Council. Ugandan religious leader Joseph Kony, an ICC indictee, is still at large, despite a U.S.-aided manhunt. ICC indictment of Muammar Qaddafi, his son Saif and their security chief in Libya does not appear to have had much impact on their behavior.
So what good is an indictment that won’t produce justice for decades? It is unlikely that the indictees themselves will moderate their behavior in response to an indictment. Their discount rate is high and the results too uncertain and too far in the future to make them behave. But there are other possible benefits. First, an indictment may give pause to some of those below the top leadership, who will want to avoid also being held responsible. Second, an indictment is a concrete expression of international community will to remove a leader from power. It may not help in cutting deals, but it makes the bottom line remarkably clear.
Charles Taylor is the first head of state to be convicted since the Nuremberg trials. He is likely not the last. International justice is agonizingly slow, frustratingly incomplete, and potentially damaging to prospects for negotiated settlements. But even justice delayed can shed light on past events, moderate behavior and provide satisfaction to victims.
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