Tag: Syria
Where are the patriots?
If nothing else, these weeks of protest and repression are demonstrating how tenaciously autocrats cling to power. This is not surprising, since for the three currently in question–Gaddafi, Assad and Saleh–there really is no role for them if they leave power. Worse, they fear for their livelihoods, their families and their lives.
This occurs to me as I am in Ljubljana (Slovenia) for meetings, one of which will be with a former president. As is all too apparent in the U.S., former presidents play useful roles in democratic societies, whether in talking with the North Koreans (or me), raising support for earthquake-ravaged Haiti, or just as living examples of the possibility of losing power without losing your life. The U.S. even pays and protects them well, as I imagine Slovenia does too.
The problem with our Middle Eastern chiefs of state is of course that they did things during their time in power that might merit justice once they are out of it and available to the courts. Saleh was offered immunity but refused to sign the agreement that would have provided it. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor has already asked for an arrest warrant for Gaddafi. It is hard to see how Assad is less criminal, though he may have succeeded in preventing much hard evidence getting into the hands of the ICC.
So what we’ve got is four–I’d like to throw in ICC indictee President Bashir of Sudan as well–blatantly criminal chiefs of state (or the equivalent, since Gaddafi claims not to have any official position in what he terms the “republic of the masses”). Military force isn’t yet working against Gaddafi, sanctions aren’t working against Bashir, and protests aren’t working against Assad. Only Saleh seems out of the picture, and that because of an artillery strike that was luckier than the many missiles thrown at Gaddafi.
We shouldn’t expect much better from these four. What I’m waiting for is someone in their respective entourages to take up the cudgels (admittedly something like that has happened in Yemen). All four seem determined not only to stay in power but to take their countries down with them. That’s what should embolden some of their followers: loyalty to their own country and people. Is that too much to ask?
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Marvel the Syrians!
From Hama, yesterday:
You’ve got to admire the fortitude and organizational capability of the Syrians. Josh Landis has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of both the “Friday of the Children of Freedom” and the opposition conclave Wednesday and Thursday in Antalya, Turkey.
The demonstrators inside Syria managed to turn out in good numbers to protest the torture and murder by security forces of a 13-year-old boy as well as other atrocities against children, despite shut-down of a large part of the internet and cell phone systems. Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two biggest cities, are still not turning out big numbers, but yesterday’s demonstrations were widespread and energetic according to the reports that have leaked out. Several dozen people appear to have been killed.
The opposition meeting in Antalya that ended Thursday not only reached agreement on a statement (not yet available in its entirety) but also elected an executive board. So far as I can tell, the program focuses on getting rid of Bashar al Assad in favor of his vice president and holding free and fair elections within a year. There is talk as well of maintaining separation of state and religion as well as Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity (Kurdish representation in Antalya was strong, so this is significant). The Washington Post reported:
The statement also called for the creation of a democratic, secular Syrian state, in which freedom of worship would be guaranteed, but religion would play no role, and the rights of the country’s minorities would be respected.
All of this is fine, but of course the big problem is the regime’s determination to hold on to power. My understanding is that the protesters are not promising amnesty to Bashar al Assad, who therefore has a choice of using maximum repression to stay in power or expatriating himself to some safe haven. All indicators are that he is determined to hold on.
The protesters now have the challenge of maintaining nonviolent discipline and unity while under enormous pressure from the security forces. They also need eventually to spread their mass mobilization efforts into the centers of Damascus and Aleppo. Only when some of the security forces begin to hesitate–when they refuse to fire on protesters or even join them–will the revolution in Syria begin to see the fruits of its labors. Connecting with the army, some units of which are believed to be less committed to Bashar al Assad than others, needs to be a priority objective. This is likely to happen earlier in the provinces than in the major cities, where Assad will station the most loyal troops.
The international community is still proving ineffective on Syria. No UN Security Council resolution has emerged, despite expectations earlier in the week. Washington is sounding a bit more stentorian, but nevertheless holding on to the slim hope that Assad will institute reforms. The Wall Street Journal had a good article Friday detailing Obama Administration efforts to win Assad over to a settlement with Israel and a break with Hizbollah, Hamas and Iran. The odds of that now seem vanishingly small, but I suppose someone in the White House (and in Senator Kerry’s office) may still harbor hopes.
The die is cast. Either Assad will succeed, as his father did, in repressing the protests with state violence or he will have to yield to what is beginning to look like a more or less united, determined and focused revolution.
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A brighter view of the Arab spring
I wrote yesterday about the pessimistic views of the Arab spring prevalent among experts at a Harvard/Carnegie Endowment event. They know a whole lot more about the Middle East than I do–that’s why I go to their events and write them up. But I think they are overly pessimistic. Why?
First, because I’ve seen things come out all right. I am not just talking South Africa, where admittedly Nelson Mandela’s leadership and stature counted for a lot, as did F.W. de Klerk’s. I am not seeing any Mandelas or de Klerks in the Middle East. Nor do there seem to be any Vaclav Havels or Lech Walesas. But in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia protest leaderships that were notably lacking in vision and stature had at least temporary success and left their countries better off than they would otherwise have been.
Second, because it seems to me the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen have shown a combination of nonviolent restraint and persistence that is laudable, and likely to lead in good directions. I am less convinced of the wisdom of the demonstrators in Libya and Bahrain, where it seems to me they fell victim to the temptations of violence and recalcitrance, respectively. But the Libyan Transitional Council shows at least some signs of promise. We’ll see if the Bahrainis can do better in the next “dialogue” phase.
Third, because I have more confidence in a bottom-up process than a top-down one. Here I disagree with Marwan Muasher, who explicitly prefers to see top-down reform. I don’t really know any place where that has worked terribly well in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, though obviously there are leaders like Gorbachev (or de Klerk for that matter) who made the process easier than it might otherwise have been. But people have to want democracy and freedom–it really can’t be given to them.
Nor do I think the consequences of the Arab spring will be quite as negative for U.S. interests as many of the experts say. Middle Eastern leaders who have to be more responsive to public opinion may be more supportive of the Palestinians, but they would be foolish to take their countries to war when the people they lead are looking for prosperity. So, okay, we’ll get Egypt opening the border with Gaza, but closing it was an approach that wasn’t worth a damn anyway. Hamas is likely to need to cut its margins on smuggled goods when they can enter more freely. Maybe an open border will serve American purposes better than the closed one.
I admit that it is hard to see how Yemen comes out of this anything but a basket case, which is where it was headed under Saleh anyway. Certainly it will be a while before any future government in Sanaa gets a grip on the provinces. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula may have a field day in the meanwhile, but they don’t appear so far to have been particularly effective at exploiting the chaos.
That said, the Arab spring is not about American interests, which will have to take a back seat for a while throughout the Middle East. It is however about American values. We should be happy to see them spreading among young Arabs willing to demand their rights. Let’s see where things go before we get too pessimistic.
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A soggy version of the Arab spring
Big Carnegie Endowment/Harvard discussion of Arab Spring yesterday. Outcome: pretty gloomy. But these are experts, who admittedly failed to see the budding of the Arab Spring and are unlikely to be able to predict its course either. They all acknowledged the many unknowns and the difficulties of prediction.
Marwan Muasher, who prefers reform from above, thinks doing nothing in response to the protests is no longer an option but also noted there is more “empire strikes back” (Libya, Yemen, Syria) and “buying time with money” (the Gulf) than “promises of reform” (thin in Jordan, a bit more serious in Morocco). And his criteria for successful reform from above were exacting: it has to be holistic and inclusive, power has to be shared seriously, it should be gradual and measurable. Nothing makes the cut yet.
No optimism from Marina Ottaway either. She noted that even in Tunisia and Egypt there are problems of political will to complete the reform process, that some of the politicians formerly associated with the ruling parties will be able to recycle themselves, that secular parties are weak and fragmented, that Islamists may be a bit stronger but also fragmented, with Salafi influence rising. It is not clear yet what the protesters will be able or willing to do politically, and it is too early to count the military out.
Tarek Masoud did not like what he sees in Egypt. He noted the intense conflict among political forces and between political forces and the military, with the military wary of democracy. They don’t want democratic oversight, fear the demand for justice and don’t want to break with past policy on Israel and the U.S. The military would like to reign without ruling, keeping out of the public eye and avoiding responsibility for governing. They have already made mistakes by scheduling the constitutional referendum, then having to fix the amended constitution with their own constitutional declaration. Early elections will favor Islamists, and opening the constitution to a constituent assembly will open the question of the relationship between state and religion, which is not a good idea. The future holds more discord.
So spring wasn’t so cheery. How about the U.S. policy response?
Nick Burns praised President Obama’s relatively rapid and thoroughly nuanced response in a difficult international situation. He was not too late to support the Tahrir protesters, correctly hesitated about Libya but signed on in response to the Arab League appeal in light of Gaddafi’s threat to Benghazi, and gave the Gulfies more slack because there was no rebellion to sign on to in Saudi Arabia, Oman or Qatar. Only under questioning did Nick state baldly that he could not understand why we hadn’t zapped Bashar al Assad earlier and admit that in Bahrain Washington had chosen interests over values. Nick urged that we focus on Egypt, decrease out focus on governments and security, increase our focus on development and outreach to people, move on Israel/Palestine and shift to a containment policy on Iran.
Agreeing that the case-by-case contextual approach was the right one, Steve Walt concluded that we would soon face Arab governments more sensitive to public opinion, that there would be no easy fixes for the problems of over-centralization and corruption in the Arab countries, Western governments are not flush and would find it hard to ante up, Israel’s position would be weakened as Egypt and Jordan became less compliant to U.S. wishes and that U.S. strategy in the region is obsolete even if its interests are the same as always: unhindered flow of oil and gas, nuclear nonproliferation, countering terrorism and protecting Israel. A more effective policy would pay more attention to Arab public opinion, embrace reform, sustain multipolarity in the region, get U.S. troops out (to an offshore balancing role, naturally, that would still prevent others from exerting control), internationalize the Israel/Palestine peace process (including encouragement of European support for the Palestine resolution at the GA and a possible settlement imposed by the Security Council). Most importantly: we need to stop threatening Iran, which gives Tehran incentives to build nuclear weapons and attempt more creative (unspecified) diplomacy. In response to a question, Walt said he also thought we need a residual force in Iraq to counter Iran.
Chris Boucek, focused mainly on Yemen, warned of economic meltdown, suggested we manage the Saudis better and noted that the youthful protesters are espousing our ideals.
There was a good deal more, but this gives you the flavor: the U.S. focus on stability, peace and democracy has failed: no stability, little prospect for peace and not much for democracy either. Burns and Walt, each in his own way, thought the U.S. could still play an important role, but no one was sanguine about the prospects for the Arab spring or U.S. interests in its aftermath.
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Après eux?
President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and non-president of Libya Muammar Gaddafi will soon be gone. They have cracked their respective countries beyond repair. It looks unlikely that Bashar al Assad will last much longer in Syria. What can, or should, come next?
There is no reason why these revolutions should follow a common pattern, but it may be worthwhile to look at what is happening in Egypt to get an idea of the issues that will arise. The New York Times has made a brave effort in this week’s magazine to give us a well-rounded, if optimistic, snapshot. I was struck with this compelling observation:
The revolutions of 2011 were led by a generation that is tired of ideologies and that tends to see its own struggle in terms of more concrete personal rights and freedoms.
Many observers worry that the generals who now run Egypt may want to remain in power, or that the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood may dominate the post-revolution political space, or that economic distress will upend hopes for democracy. All these worries are real, but the Times found the generals interested in returning to barracks, the Muslim Brotherhood split and other Islamist groups less threatening than imagined. Economic problems may well endure and present the most serious threat to improvements in personal rights and freedoms.
Jane Novak, a keen observer of Yemen blogging at Armies of Liberation, proposes a locally-based approach to politics, social services and jobs once Saleh is gone. I don’t really know if her “Interim Transitional Mechanism” and its local “Community Centers” is realistic. Is it too schematic? Cartesian organization doesn’t strike me as a likely formula for success in Yemen. But she is on to something: the Saleh regime’s attempt to run Yemen from Sanaa has been notably unsuccessful, and the political “opposition” seems also to lack strong roots outside the capital. It might be a lot smarter post-revolution to try something more locally based, drawing on tribal loyalties. There is of course a risk that southerners will take advantage of the opportunity to secede, but Novak seems to feel this can be prevented, at least temporarily.
It is easy to imagine something similar in Libya, where the resistance to Muammar Gaddafi seems to have evolved largely along municipal and tribal lines, starting in Benghazi but certainly extending also to Misrata and other towns. The same is true on Gaddafi’s side of the ledger, where his tribal strength in Sirte helps to protect Tripoli from the insurgent forces. Building the new Libyan state from the grassroots up strikes me as preferable to replacement of Gaddafi with some internationally acclaimed worthy. Far better a decentralized approach that makes Tripoli listen to other population centers more than it has in the past. Libyans seem fully committed to national unity, despite the current civil war, and economic hardship could pass quickly if the oil revenue is used effectively. But of course that is a tall order.
In Syria, the risk of disintegration is serious. Some of its Kurds–treated as second class citizens in an Arab Republic–aspire to the kind of autonomy they see next door in Iraq. So too is the risk of a Sunni Islamist takeover that would breach one of the current regime’s only virtues: commitment to religious pluralism. Many Syrians will be looking to settle accounts with the Alawites who run the current regime, and they will not wait to be attacked before defending themselves (that in a sense is already what they are doing). Constitutional succession in Syria seems even more unlikely than in Egypt, which abandoned that route mid-stream. Economic problems are likely to be at least as challenging, as Syrian oil production is declining and the current regime’s repressive efforts are no doubt emptying the treasury (if it hadn’t already been emptied by the kleptocrats).
I don’t have a ready-made formula for Syria, Yemen or Libya except this: we need to listen to the locals, and follow their lead if we can figure out what it is. It is striking, as the Times observes, how the street protesters are committed to individual rights and freedoms. We should be finding and supporting that vein of gold in each of these societies. I remember all too well how we quickly abandoned the Otpor youth who led the revolt against Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, because we were more concerned to support the new government than to make sure it was true to democratic ideals. Above all, we should not make that mistake again.
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Not if but when
A May 25 first-rate panel on Syria at the Carnegie Endowment had a clear bottom line: Bashar al Assad might survive in power for a while, but not for long. I took this to mean a year, not more.
Ammar Abdulwahid led off noting that the protests in North Africa and the Middle East should not have been a surprise to anyone who read the Arab human development reports: demographic growth, the youth bulge, unemployment, governments incapable of reform and out-of-touch oppositions, combined with the recent availability of social media, made the protests inevitable. The results of the protests in Tunisia gave the Syrians confidence. At the same time, Bashar al Assad–having broken out of the international isolation he suffered after the Hariri assassination–disappointed Syrian expectations.
The result is a movement which is now “self-organizing” with a clear goal: Bashar out. The next step will be organization of a transitional council, like the one in Libya but necessarily outside Syria under current conditions. A upcoming conference in Turkey will move in the direction of forming such a council. There is no possibility of restoring the status quo ante. A new era has already begun. The protesters are reaching out to the West and the United States for support.
The shift in President Obama’s speech last week was welcome, even if it rhetorically retained the option of Bashar staying to lead reforms, something that will not happen. The President needs to go farther and ask that Bashar step down–only that will convince regime loyalists to turn against him.
Murhaf Jouejati agreed there is no going back. Bashar al Assad has lost his legitimacy and authority. What is needed now is a “pincer movement” of the domestic and international forces to squeeze him out. The regime is determined to survive, and it may do so, but not for long. The economy is a shambles, inflation is up, oil production is down and the government can’t afford to keep the promises it is making.
Itamar Rabinovich said Israel is ambivalent about Bashar al Assad, who is at war with Israel but has kept the peace. Israel destroyed a Syrian reactor being built secretly by the North Koreans in 2007, but Bashar never retaliated. Israelis want to know, “what is the alternative?” The Palestinian demonstrations at the fence on the Golan Heights were an attempt to demonstrate the credibility of Makhlouf’s threat of instability if Bashar falls. Syria has a large number of Scud missiles that would create real problems for Israel. For the moment, there is definitely no “Syria option” for the peace process.
The regime will not survive, but it is unclear what will come next. Certainly the fall of Bashar al Assad would weaken Iran’s position, and Israelis naturally like the idea of a more democratic Syria. But the road to democracy is bumpy and bad things can happen along the way. It is particularly important that the peace agreement with Egypt be maintained–if it is not, Israel will not trust any agreements in the future.
Tamara Wittes reiterated that Syria has changed irrevocably as a result of the mass murders and arrests. Contrary to its claims, the regime is not a source of stability but of instability. The U.S. is pushing Bashar al Assad every day to stop the violence, release the prisoners and accept human rights monitors. There is little possibility he will agree. The international community is preparing additional sanctions that will sharpen the choice. Change is coming; we need to focus on how it happens.
Paul Salem, while agree the issue is not if but when, raised the question of what will happen? A Syrian implosion would affect the whole region. There is a possibility the regime will hang on for a while, even that Bashar might move in the direction of reform. There is also the possibility of civil war, perhaps with a quick opposition victory. Or a prolonged period of Syrian weakness, as in the period 1945-58. In short, there is a baffling array of scenarios.
The neighbors are each looking out for their interests. Turkey is pressing Bashar for reforms, which it prefers to come from the top down. Not wanting democracy to spread, Saudi Arabia is supporting the regime, at least in part as a quid pro quo for Syrian support on Bahrain. Egypt has already welcomed Hamas back from Syria. Iran is worried that its position in the region could be seriously damaged. A Sunni takeover in Syria would cut Hizbollah off from Iran.
In response to questions, Ammar said the middle class is protesting in the Damascus suburbs, less so in Aleppo. He thought a clear statement that Bashar must leave office is required before the army will engage seriously against the regime. Murhaf underlined that the protestors need to alleviate the fears of minorities like the Alawis and the Christians, who otherwise will stick with the regime. Salem and Rabinovich agreed Hizbollah will not risk a war with Israel, but it may be tempted to provoke further border incidents.
The protesters still face an uphill battle, because the wall of fear is not completely broken. The older generation is still not taking to the streets, and the demonstrations–while widespread–are not massive. But something irreversible has happened–it remains to be seen whether the outcome can be kept on a path towards democracy.
I might say the same thing about Libya and Yemen, where autocrats are holding on well after their sell by dates. Success in ousting Muammar Gaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh would no doubt have an inspirational effect also on Syrians.
PS: Read also Andrew Tabler on the end of days for Bashar al Assad.
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