Tag: Saudi Arabia
Good show, now what?
While my twitterfeed remains skeptical that the U.S. has any leverage to get Bashar al Assad to step aside, I think the Administration put on a pretty good diplomatic show in the last day or two, with more to come. In addition to the US moves, the UN published a fact-finding report that Colum Lynch appropriately describes as “scathing.” The Europeans and Turkey seem to be lining up to say the right things.
More important is what Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Europeans do now. The Administration is hinting that the Europeans will block their own Syrian oil imports. This they can do because it is not much oil, but it accounts for more than a quarter of Syria’s revenue. Turkey’s National Security Council today called for democratic change in Syria, but that likely won’t have much impact as the Foreign Minister has already issued several final warnings to Bashar al Assad. What is needed is some action from Turkey in blocking trade or investment, which would signal clearly to Syrian businesspeople that the end is near. The Saudis can make life hard for Bashar in many ways, not least just by indicating that it supports the protesters, as the King did late last week.
New York will be the center of the international action the next few days. The Americans are pushing a Security Council resolution. The Human Rights Council is to meet Monday to discuss the fact-finding report. That should provide an occasion for lambasting the Syrian regime. Legitimacy counts, even for autocracies. When the UN is taking you to task for murdering your own citizens with their hands tied behind their backs, legitimacy comes into question.
Today in Syria is also key. Already this week there have been demonstrations in Aleppo, Syria’s largest and most important commercial city. A big turnout there and in Damascus would confirm that the judgment that it is time for Bashar to step aside. How widespread the demonstrations are will also count. The international moves may elicit a big response among the Syrians.
What we can’t really know is how all this will affect the small circle around Bashar al Assad. It would take only a few of them to abandon his cause for Syria to turn quickly in a new direction.
The problem is what to do with Bashar. Pressure is building for the Security Council to refer him to the International Criminal Court. I am not as opposed to an indictment as many diplomats, who believe it would only strengthen his resolve to hold on to power. That it may do, but it may also make those who work for him begin to wonder whether carrying out his orders to kill civilians is a smart thing to do.
I have my doubts though that evidence can be gathered in a time frame that would make an indictment meaningful. More likely, a referral would be followed by a long delay, which would make matters worse rather than better (remember the Hariri case, and the case against President Bashir of Sudan?).
So what happens next? Bashar al Assad won’t step aside until his security forces crack more dramatically than they have so far. I don’t know anyone who can even pretend to know when that will happen, but the American/Turkish/Saudi/European/UN pressure being brought to bear this week is pushing things in the right direction.
Paul Pillar, in a piece published yesterday by The National Interest focused on Gary Locke, the new American ambassador to Beijing, notes:
The incidental influence that the United States exerts simply through people around the world observing its behavior is consistently underestimated, just as the influence the United States can exert intentionally by exercising its economic, military, or other instruments of hard power tends to be overestimated.
My twitterfeed is underestimating America’s “incidental influence” on events in Syria. I don’t know whether it will be enough, but it will make Bashar al Assad very uncomfortable for the next few days, at the very least.
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The buck still stops with the Syrians
It has taken longer than Syria-watchers predicted, but President Obama today finally called on Bashar al Assad to “step aside” in Syria. This is an interesting formulation that implies he could remain nominally president but allow reforms to move forward. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon seems to have also taken that line yesterday with Bashar in a phone call.
Let’s look at the options from Bashar’s perspective. Egyptian President Mubarak stepped down and now finds himself on trial. Libyan non-president Qaddafi refused to step down and now is fighting a war he is likely to lose. Yemen’s President Saleh is recovering from wounds his opponents inflicted in retaliation for his military attacks on them, but he has managed to continue to dominate Sanaa from Saudi Arabia, using his son and other loyalists as proxies. Only former Tunisian President Ben Ali is managing an untroubled, but powerless, retirement somewhere in Saudi Arabia. None of those options looks as good as “step aside,” though I have my doubts the protesters would accept Bashar remaining even nominally in power for more than a brief transition period.
President Obama also signed an executive order that
- blocks the property of the Syrian government,
- bans U.S. persons from new investments in or exporting services to Syria, and
- bans U.S. imports of, and other transactions or dealings in, Syrian-origin petroleum or petroleum products.
The trouble of course is that there is little Syrian government property in the U.S., few new investments or service exports to Syria and almost no U.S. import of Syrian oil or oil products.
For President Obama’s new rhetorical line to be effective, other countries–especially Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Europeans–will need to play hard ball with the Syrian regime. Both the Turks and Saudis have sounded recently as if they are willing to do that, and the Europeans in their own complicated way seem to be moving in the same direction.
Diplomacy is getting other people to do what you want them to do. As many in the blogosphere are noting, Washington’s direct influence on events in Syria is small. President Obama himself said:
The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.
So that’s where the buck stops: with the Syrian people, who have shown remarkable courage and determination so far. Here they are in Aleppo yesterday:
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Making Bashar al Assad history
As Marc Lynch points out in a tweet this morning, the region is belatedly beginning to react to regime violence against protesters in Syria. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have denounced it and have withdrawn their ambassadors, along with Qatar and Kuwait. Turkey is sending its foreign minister to Damascus tomorrow with a “final warning.” The Arab League has expressed “growing concern.”
Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy is predicting the downfall not only of Bashar al Assad but of the whole regime:
The whole Baathist system has to come down, and it probably will. The only questions now are how long it will take, and how much more innocent blood will be shed in the process.
I hope he is correct, but it won’t happen unless the pressure builds.
Let’s leave aside the remarkable hypocrisy of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia denouncing violence against demonstrators. They are more than welcome to join the international chorus against it in Syria, even if they jointly repressed the demonstrations this spring in Bahrain. The denunciations already make some difference, as they are necessarily the first step on the road to more vigorous action. What more can Syria’s neighbors do that will make a difference?
Andrew Tabler and David Schenker discussed the options early in July. Those that have not been tried yet include depriving Bashar al Assad of revenue by blocking oil exports, expanding sanctions on his businessman cronies, referring him to the International Criminal Court, and encouraging Syrian army defections. Most of the rest of what they recommend has already been tried, including denunciation by UN human rights experts, enhanced relations with the opposition and more vocal alignment with the Syrian people.
The brutal fact is that whether Bashar al Assad falls, and how long it takes, depends more on the wisdom and fortitude of the Syrians than on anything else. So far, they have been remarkable. A journalist who has been there and talked with the protesters recently has assured me that they look even better up close.
The two key “pillars of the regime” remain the army and the business communities in Aleppo and Damascus. If one or both of these crumbles, Bashar al Assad is history.
PS: The LA Times put up this video, allegedly recorded in Idlib yesterday:
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Three blind mice
I first used this title 15 years ago in a piece for the Secretary of State’s Morning Summary about Presidents Tudjman, Milosevic and Izetbegovic. It drew a personal word of interest and praise from President Clinton. That doesn’t happen often, so a lowly office director tends to remember when it does. And maybe resurrect the charmed title at an appropriate moment.
Today’s three blind mice are chiefs of state Bashar al Assad, Muammar Gaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Syria, Libya and Yemen, respectively. While it is easy now to imagine that things will get worse in these three countries before they get better, it is clear enough that they would be better now if their chiefs had stepped aside long ago to allow orderly transitions. Sunday the Syrian armed forces made a clear summer day in Hama sound like this:
Bashar al Assad therefore rates a word of particular opprobrium: he and his brother Maher are showing themselves heirs to the blood-shedding tradition of their father Hafez. This should not surprise, but people have come to think Bashar is somehow better than the rest of his homicidal family. It just isn’t so.
Things are arguably worse in Libya and Yemen. A kind of multi-faceted tribal, regional and sectarian chaos reigns in the latter, on top of a popular protest movement that remains vigorous and terrorist bands who harbor in the hinterlands. In Libya, the killing by we know not whom of General Abdel Fatah Younes, a rebel military leader who came over from the Gaddafi regime, has raised lots of questions about the Transitional National Council (TNC) that leads the rebellion, which apparently had to fight off Gaddafi forces inside Benghazi over the weekend.
These three Middle Eastern potentates are blind not just to the interests of their countries but also to their own. A few months ago it would have been possible to arrange a decent exit for these embattled chiefs of state. Now the International Criminal Court has indicted Gaddafi, Saleh is nursing wounds in Saudi Arabia and Bashar al Assad cannot hope to escape responsibility for several thousand deaths of peaceful demonstrators. Only Saleh can hope to live out a peaceful old age, and only if he gives up on his ambition to return to Yemen.
What we are lacking here is the farmer’s wife, who is supposed to cut off their tails with a carving knife. By this I mean some international party that can persuade chiefs of state who have lost the consent of the people they govern to step aside. In the midst of this Arab spring Ban Ki Moon was reelected as United Nations Secretary General, but he has not been empowered to negotiate what the international community clearly seeks: abdication of these chiefs of state. He has a clear mandate only with respect to Gaddafi, and that is for a ceasefire and withdrawal rather than abdication.
Several “mediators” have sought compromise solutions. The African Union and Turkey have tried with Libya, Turkey has tried with Syria, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia and its wealthy monarchy friends) has tried with Yemen. None of this has worked so far. What we are witnessing is a failure of diplomacy, which should make us think harder about how to strengthen international norms and institutions that can deliver results more effectively.
That is precisely what is not happening, though I happily credit U.S. ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford (who testifies this week in Congress) for his courageous display of support to the demonstrators. Instead, the U.S. Congress is considering budgets that would slice diplomacy to the bone and limit contributions to international organization. I can’t really say there are 535 blind mice, since some members of Congress understand better than I do what is needed. But the collective decision is likely to disarm the farmer’s wife, leaving her standing there without even a carving knife to discipline the unruly despots of the 21st century.
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Have we got the Arab Spring right?
The Middle East Institute, which kindly lists me among its “scholars,” asked me to address the question of whether President Obama has established the right policy in his May 19 speech in his May 19 speech for reform and democracy in the Middle East and whether implmentation is adequate. This MEI meeting was part of a broader effort to look at the implications of the Arab Spring. Here are the notes I used yesterday to respond, slightly embellished with hindsight (see especially note 19).
Reform and Democracy
Middle East Institute
July 29, 2011
1. President Obama was clear enough in May: he said, “it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.”
2. And he added: “our support must also extend to nations where transitions have yet to take place.”
3. Nor was there any doubt what “reform” means: “The United States supports a set of universal rights…[including] free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders.”
4. This he made clear is on top of our “core” interests in the region: “countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.”
5. So is the Administration living up to its own rhetoric? Is the policy framework right? Is the bureaucratic response adequate?
6. My view is that basically the policy framework is correct. As someone whose foreign service career was spent mainly in Europe, I in fact am a bit surprised that this was not the policy framework all along.
7. Values and interests have always been pursued in tandem in Europe, though not always without conflict and tradeoffs. I served 10 years in Italy, where we often compromised our values in favor of our interest in keeping the Communist Party out of power.
8. Of course there is more conflict between values and interests in the Middle East, especially when it comes to countries that have not yet seen much of the Arab Spring: the GCC countries in particular.
9. I see no sign that we’ve really adjusted our bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia or United Arab Emirates to this policy framework.
10. Nor do I see signs that Saudi Arabia has embraced reform: this week’s Economist reports on efforts there to restrict new media by “inciting divisions between citizens”, “damaging the country’s public affairs”, or insulting senior clerics. The Shura Council is considering a draft anti-terrorism law that would criminalize “endangering national unity” and “harming the interests of the state,” imposing harsh penalties. Our embassy won’t be encouraged to reform by the fact that this proposal originates with Prince Nayef; repression can’t be more of a problem for us than for the Saudis.
11. As for other countries, I would hesitate to make the judgment on my own.
12. In Tunisia, we seem to be doing the right things. But the Project on Middle East Democracy/Boell Foundation report suggests effectiveness is spotty in a lot of other places:
- Aid is restricted by US policy concerns (Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, fifth fleet in Bahrain)
- Host government concerns (Yemen, Egypt)
- US aid is a declining percentage of the whole (Egypt $17B from Gulf)
- Indifference (Morocco)
- Violence (Yemen and Libya)
- Excessive focus on government bodies and not enough on real democratic development
14. I think part of the problem is the bureaucratic structure, which is not only fragmented but also too much under State Department and chief of mission control.
15. If you are going to get serious about supporting reform, especially in coutries where interests militate in the other direction, you are going to have to break the strait jackets diplomats put on you. I am not a fan of interagency mechanisms when it comes to democracy support.
16. We are going to see a whole lot more support for reform the more independent the sources of funding are—ask anyone (except George, who was disappointed in the results) whether Soros was effective in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
17. I would rate NED and its family of organizations as a preferable conduit for democracy assistance (relative to State or USAID), at least until the revolution has actually occurred. And yes, Fulbrights should be regarded as part of our democracy and reform support efforts.
18. In the end, though, the most important instrument for influencing the course of events in some countries will not be our democratization support efforts, but the U.S. military, whose training and assistance were certainly influential in Egypt and could be in places like Bahrain and Iraq.
19. It goes without saying that we can only be effective if there is an indigenous movement for democracy and reform, one that has taken on the responsibility of defining for itself what those words mean. We should not be imposing systems that we invent, but helping others to discover what will suit their needs for accountability, transparency and inclusivity.
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The rich get richer
Yesterday’s conference on investment prospects in the wake of the Arab Spring over at the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) was a lively couple of hours–these economic types are briefer and more to the point than their political counterparts–but the bottom line was gloomy: the GCC states and Iraq are likely to attract the lion’s share of investment while Egypt and Tunisia (Syria, Yemen and Libya weren’t even mentioned) go begging in the short term. There was disagreement on longer-term prospects, with Ian Bremmer registering a strong minority view that the geopolitics are unfavorable, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict.
An upbeat and indefatigible Afshin Molavi started off underlining that we live in a world of surprisingly interconnected risk, that there is a lot of diversity in what we should not really label “Arab Spring,” and that the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has a young population, many unable to get married because of the lack of jobs and looking for “dignity.” Growth has now slowed, hurting their prospects.
Citibank’s Hamid Biglari said investors have adopted a wait and see attitude toward the more revolutionary part of the region and are shifting their attention towards the GCC and Iraq, whose prospects are good if Baghdad can get security under control. Multinationals are not pulling out. Egypt is a larger and better known market than Tunisia, which however is more homogeneous, more secular, more middle class and better educated. Tunisia is more likely to succeed economically, but Egypt is the bigger prize. The immediate concerns of investors are about legitimacy and whether the new governments will treat the old elite decently, but it will be a decade before “equilibrium” returns.
Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group admitted enthusiasm for the Arab Spring (“it feels good”) but noted that Ukraine and Georgia felt good at first too. Tunisia seems to be moving in the right direction, Egypt less so but will likely muddle through. Iraq is the most exciting investment opportunity in the region. U.S. influence is declining, and Saudi influence is increasing. Saudi policy objectives and conditionality will differ from those of the U.S. Overall though the immediate political risks have been overvalued. The problem is in the longer term, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict. Europe and the U.S. will increasingly be occupied with other problems.
Cairo-based Walid Bakr of Riyada Enterprise Development, Abraaj Capital, was more optimistic in the medium and long term. Egypt’s big market and tourist attractions are not going away. Half the population is under 24, well educated and internet savvy, with lots of entrepreneurial spirit. The revolution has unleashed strong feelings of national pride and dignity. Youth is the engine of growth and can contribute to the all-important creation of small and medium enterprises so vital to job creation and wealth distribution.
Dubai-based Yasar Jarrar of PwC Middle East underlined that we are still at the beginning of the changes in the Middle East, which suffered a long period of stagnation (not real stability). The GCC countries are moving well to kickstart job creation for youth, major infrastructure investments and dialogue between their governments and the citizens. But it is going to be a long spring in a region that really does matter. Philip Haddad of Mubadala Infrastructure Partners agreed that we need to take the long view, but in the meanwhile as much as $38 billion is being invested in infrastructure, which is not bad.
The Omani ambassador, Hunaina Sultan Ahmed al-Mughairy, led off with a very upbeat assessment of the Sultanate’s prospects. The message was “yes, we can” reform ourselves, if we put our minds to it. Jean Francois Seznec of Georgetown said he was very pessimistic about Bahrain, where the basic issue is governance. In recent weeks, only 5% of the hotel rooms in Bahrain have been occupied.
There was a good deal of agreement that the issue everywhere is at least in part governance. Citizens did not feel they were benefiting under the old regimes, because of a lack of accountability. Political and economic reform need to go together, but it is not clear that new parliamentary democracies will credit competence and choose economic reform, which is discredited because it is associated with the old regimes.
Wrapping up, Ravi Vish of MIGA confirmed the importance of governance, addressing social inequality and the income gap, and job creation, mainly through a stronger and more entrepreneurial private sector. He also reviewed MIGA’s portfolio of political insurance products, for which demand is naturally rising in the region.
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