Tag: Saudi Arabia
The gulf with the Gulf
Yesterday was Gulf day. I spent part of the morning reading Christopher Davidson, who thinks the Gulf monarchies are headed for collapse due to internal challenges, their need for Western support, Iran’s growing power and their own disunity. Then I turned to Greg Gause, who attributes their resilience to the oil-greased coalitions and external networks they have created to support their rule. He predicts their survival.
At lunch I ambled across the way to CSIS’s new mansion to hear Abdullah al Shayji, chair of political science at Kuwait University and unofficial Gulf spokeperson, who was much exorcised over America’s response to Iran’s “charm offensive,” which he said could not have come at a worse time. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was already at odds with the US. The Gulf was not warned or consulted about the phone call between Iranian President Rouhani and President Obama. Saudi Arabia’s refusal to occupy the UN Security Council seat it fought hard to get was a signal of displeasure. The divergences between the GCC and the US range across the Middle East: Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq and Palestine, in addition to Iran.
On top of this, US oil and gas production is increasing. China is now a bigger oil importer than the US and gets a lot more of its supplies from the Gulf. Washington is increasingly seen as dysfunctional because of its partisan bickering. Its budget problems seem insoluble. American credibility is declining. The Gulf views the US as unreliable. Read more
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Peace picks, October 21-25
With a sense of normalcy returned to the city after the reopening of the government, some timely events coming up this week:
1. Will India’s Economics be a Victim of its Politics?
Monday, October 21 | 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW
The Indian economy has entered a difficult period over the past eighteen months with the rate of GDP growth having halved, inflation still stubbornly high, and deficits remaining substantial. Economists are asking whether India’s rapid growth of the last decade was more a credit-fueled aberration than a result of structural reforms. To complicate matters, economic concerns are increasingly secondary to political debate as India prepares for critical state elections this winter and parliamentary elections in spring 2014.
Jahangir Aziz and Ila Patnaik will assess the state of India’s economy in the context of India’s growing election fervor. Edward Luce will moderate.
JAHANGIR AZIZ
Jahangir Aziz is senior Asia economist and India chief economist at JP Morgan. He was previously principal economic adviser to the Indian Ministry of Finance and head of the China Division at the International Monetary Fund.
ILA PATNAIK
Ila Patnaik is a nonresident senior associate in Carnegie’s South Asia Program and a professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi. She writes regular columns in the Indian Express and the Financial Express and recently co-led the research team for India’s Ministry of Finance Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission.
EDWARD LUCE
Edward Luce is the Washington columnist and former Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times. Earlier he was their South Asia bureau chief based in New Delhi. He is the author of In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2006) and Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline (2012).
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The Syrian Coalition speaks
University of Arkansas Professor Najib Ghadbian, the Syrian Opposition Coalition representative to the United States, stopped by SAIS today for an all too rare public presentation, followed by Q and A. I moderated, though I confess both speaker and audience distinguished themselves in moderation. Revolutionaries should always be so reasonable. The event should be up on C-Span soon.
Najib outlined the main problems the Coalition faces in its effort to create an inclusive, secular and free democracy:
- The humanitarian catastrophe: 2.5 million Syrians are refugees, 5 million are internally displaced. Opposition funding has gone predominantly to meet their needs. Access is a major issue, as liberated areas are under frequent attack. But the Coalition’s Assistance Coordination Unit is now functioning well after some initial difficulties.
- Radicalization: Regime killing and weak support from outside Syria for moderates has strengthened extremists, who have proven effective on the battlefield. Jabhat al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the former more Syrian and the latter more closely affiliated with Al Qaeda, are big and growing problems. ISIS in particular is responsible for mass atrocities attributed to the opposition.
- Governance: In liberated areas, local revolutionary councils are trying to fill the vacuum left by withdrawal of state institutions, some more successfully than others. The Coalition is expected to form and approve an interim government at its next meeting in Istanbul in early November. This will be a technocratic stopgap until the transitional government called for in the June 2012 Geneva communique is formed.
- Ending the conflict: The Coalition favors a political end to the conflict, but it must be one that leads to a democratic outcome. This is not possible with Bashar al Asad still in the presidency. The idea of his conducting elections next year is completely unacceptable. In order to go to a Geneva 2 conference next month or whenever it is scheduled, the Coalition will need the support not only of the US but also Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Coalition will also want to see the withdrawal of Hizbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, both of which are fighting inside Syria.
The Coalition needs to meet these challenges by providing humanitarian assistance, isolating and countering extremists, delivering government services and uniting to negotiate an end to the conflict. It is unlikely any negotiation can be successful unless there is a change in the military situation on the ground. The Coalition-linked Supreme Military Council needs increased resources, training and professionalization. Funding to extremists should be blocked. The Coalition will not try to expand in their direction.
Asked about protection for minorities, in particular Alawites, after Bashar al Asad is gone, Najib suggested that international peacekeepers or some form of elite units might be required. In any event, it is clear that the Asad regime is not protecting Alawites so much as it is putting them at risk. There are prominent Alawites within the opposition. Security sector reform, including consolidation of Syria’s 16 existing security agencies into a single internal and a single external service, will be a priority. The Day After report and ongoing project will be helpful, especially on security sector reform and rule of law.
Syria is not nearly as divided ethnically (or in sectarian terms) as Bosnia at the end of its war. Most Kurds are with the opposition. Administrative decentralization will be important in the post-Asad era, but federalization of the Iraqi variety is not in the cards because the Kurdish population is not as concentrated in one geographic area.
From the United States, the Coalition is looking for strong and more consistent support. While the Coalition supports US/Russia agreement, Washington made a mistake to embark on dismantling the regime’s chemical weapons capability without also doing something about Asad’s ferocious use of the Syrian air force against liberated areas. Conventional weapons have killed many more Syrians than chemical weapons. The military training being conducted in Jordan for the opposition should not be secret. It should be taken over by the Defense Department and enlarged to a much grander scale. US leadership and coordination is needed to ensure that the disparate supporters of the Coalition are all working in the same direction, as recommended in the recent International Crisis Group report.
I spent a summer in Damascus not too many years ago studying Arabic. The desire of ordinary Syrians, and even those close the regime, for freedom and democracy was palpable. The people I talked with would be pleased to hear what the Coalition representative had to say. But they would ask how much longer the killing will last.
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Tilting at pyramids
Those who follow Egypt these days are discombobulated. Its military-backed government is forging ahead to exclude the Muslim Brotherhood from existence, never mind political participation. It wants to make all Islamist parties illegal. The Brotherhood is uncompromising. Former revolutionaries are touting what looked like a coup as “popular impeachment.” Secular democrats who don’t buy that are under increasing pressure.
The frequent answer to these developments is to cut off American military aid, sending a signal to the Egyptian military that the US will not tolerate its excesses and to the broader Islamic world that Washington is not willing to sacrifice democracy on the alter of security. Many of my friends in Washington believe we should have done this long ago, though they fail to put forward a serious plan for what happens next.
The latest call for an aid cut-off is more nuanced, long-term and sophisticated. Shadi Hamid and Peter Mandaville recognize that unilateral US action in the absence of a broader political and diplomatic strategy will not work. They argue instead that the US should prioritize democracy rather than security: Read more
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Leverage without a fulcrum
The International Peace Institute published this piece today on its Global Observatory under the title “With Democracy, Security at Stake in Egypt, How Should the West Respond?”:
Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the confrontation in Egypt have so far failed. The refusal of coup leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, now the defense minister, to go along with diplomatic de-escalation, and the excessive force used by security agencies signal that they do not aim at repressing only the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian army is trying to frighten the general population and restore autocratic rule to an Egypt that has tasted freedom and expressed itself repeatedly at the ballot box since 2011.
The US and Europe want to get Egypt back on a more orderly democratic path. This entails restraining the Egyptian security forces, maintaining relative openness, and moving towards an inclusive polity with Islamist, and, if possible, Muslim Brotherhood, participation. It also means restoring a modicum of order and stability so that ordinary Egyptians can go about their business without fear of violence or intimidation.
The security forces are continuing their violent crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which is pledging to continue its protests against the July 3 military takeover. Some Islamists are resisting with arms. About 1,000 people have been killed. What can the United States and the international community do to mitigate the situation?
Analysis
The civilian government the Egyptian army installed after the coup has pledged an amended constitution by the end of the year, to be approved in a referendum and elections early next year. This is a fast timeline. What can the international community do to try to ensure it is met?
The United States has already postponed delivery of F16s to Egypt and canceled joint military exercises scheduled for the fall to protest General Sisi’s crackdown. Inevitably the question of America’s $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt will now arise in Washington. It would make sense to refocus the civilian assistance of about $250 million tightly on democratic objectives. Those most concerned with getting Egypt back on a democratic path are recommending suspension of the military portion ($1.2 billion).
This will be opposed by those more concerned with security issues, including maintenance of the peace treaty with Israel. A proposal in the US Senate to redirect all Egyptian aid to domestic American priorities was defeated last month by a wide margin (86-13), but that was before the worst of the crackdown. The margin would likely be much closer next month.
Even if the US Congress or the Administration acts to suspend military aid to Egypt, the financial impact will not be immediate. This year’s tranche has already been transferred. It will be the better part of another year before money can be blocked. More weapons scheduled for delivery can be delayed, but American industry will spend the year lobbying hard against a funding cut-off, as much of the money is actually spent on US contractors who supply the Egyptian military with materiel and services.
Europe provides much more assistance to Egypt than the United States. Its 5 billion euro (more than $6 billion) mainly economic package is now under review. This was intended to support the transition to democracy, which is now in doubt. Europeans concerned with their own economic problems may well see suspension of aid to Egypt as an opportunity.
The international financial institutions are another important part of the picture. Egypt has been negotiating for many months a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The US and Europe can block or delay that loan.
But both Europe and the United States need to consider the broader international context in deciding what to do about bilateral and IMF assistance. They are not the only players on the world stage. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait have already pledged $12 billion, dwarfing both the American and European assistance packages. Russia will likely try to take advantage of any opening and provide military aid if the Americans suspend theirs.
Egypt clearly has alternatives to Western assistance, even if the Gulf states are notoriously slow and unreliable, and the Russians significantly less attractive to a military that has been getting advanced American weapons. If they want to see a democratic outcome in Egypt, the Americans and Europeans will need to convince the Gulf states—no paragons of democracy—to back the timeline for a return to democratic governance.
Widening the aperture farther, the Arab and Muslim worlds are watching what the international community does about Egypt. Will it insist on a return to a democratic path and an inclusive polity that allows Islamist participation on the timeline that Egypt itself has defined? Or will it settle for delay or a security solution that allows the army to remain the arbiter of Egypt’s fate? A lot depends on the skillful use of diplomatic and assistance leverage in a context where there are many players with diverse and even conflicting objectives.
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Syria has dropped off the screen
The White House justifications for backing out of a bilateral summit with President Putin lack one important one: Syria. The list is a long, citing (in addition to the asylum for Edward Snowden):
our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society.
Some might hope that this presages progress in convening the proposed Geneva 2 meeting on Syria, but there is no sign of that. The more than 100,000 people killed in Syria in the past 2.5 years, the 1.5-2 million who are refugees, the 4 million who are displaced inside Syria and the 7 million in humanitarian need have dropped off the radar of an administration that promised to anticipate and prevent mass atrocities.
A colleague deeply immersed in Syria asked the other day whether watching the Bosnian implosion was this bad. I answered that it was worse, because the crisis was on the front pages daily. And it went on for 3.5 years before President Clinton carried out the threat he had made during his first campaign for the presidency to bomb Serb forces. That is why it is not on the list of reasons for canceling the Obama/Putin meeting.
Why was it on the front pages every day? The proximate causes were two: the Bosnians had forceful and effective spokespeople, mainly their ambassador to the UN in New York and their wartime prime minister. Ambassador Mo Sacirbey was on CNN daily strumming the heartstrings of ordinary Americans. Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic would whip himself into a lather bemoaning the latest atrocity. Students organized against the war on college campuses, Congress held hearings, Foreign Service officers resigned and newspapers ran daily accounts of a war in which little of strategic significance was happening.
While Senator McCain and a few others have raised their voices about Syria, mobilization today against the atrocities in Syria extends little beyond the Syrian American community, which is doing its best to funnel in humanitarian assistance but has found no resonance in the broader US population. There is no recognizable and consistent Syrian voice speaking out daily on US television.
Part of the reason is political instability in the Syrian opposition, which has gone through three or four “presidents” in a couple of years, none of whom became a welcome figure in the American media. Divided international sponsorship–the Qataris backing the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis backing less Islamist forces–underlies this instability.
The Bosnians faced similar divisions among their international sponsors: their money and weapons came from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others. But the government in Sarajevo had from the first a stable leadership: the laconic Alija Izetbegovic was the more or less uncontested first among equals, accepted even by his rivals as the legitimate president of the beleaguered Bosnian state. There was stolid consistency at the top, which helped to paper over the differences among the international donors and reduce the perceived significance in Washington of the jihadi fighters who joined the Bosnian cause.
In Syria, the Saudis, perhaps emboldened by the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, are now trying to play a leadership role by offering to buy off the Russians. They have managed to install one of their favorites as president of the Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. What they have not managed to do is counter the growing significance of the extremist fighters, who have frightened Washington away from embracing the revolutionary cause.
The Syrians are not lacking in rhetorical power: sister and brother Rafif and Murhaf Jouejati here in DC do a great job trying to bring the latest atrocity to our attention. But they are doing it essentially as civil society activists rather than as official representatives of the Syrian opposition. And they are heard mostly in a narrow circle of Syria-watchers and expatriate Syrians, none of whom carry much weight in the broader American body politic. Syria really has dropped off Washington’s screen.
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