Tag: Syria
Has the time come for Syria?
It is hard to do better the day before a showdown in Syria than spending an hour with Joshua Landis and Ammar Abdulhamid of the Tharwa Foundation:
Landis has not been thinking the regime would crumble now. But these things are difficult to predict. Ammar is right that nonviolence is the way to go.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Lessons from Serbia applied in Middle East and North Africa
The press has caught on to some of the connections between Serbia’s Otpor legacy and popular rebellions in the Middle East and North Africa. Srdja Popovic is one of the links. Here is his presentation at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on April 1, 2011. A powerpoint is no substitute for Srdja, but I can’t figure out (yet) how to upload him to a blog post!
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
If only we had 10 plagues to send
It’s the second night of Passover and Bashar al Assad is still not letting his people go. The notion that he can get away with abolishing the emergency law from the books but continuing to shoot demonstrators illustrates how thoroughly imbued with authoritarianism this supposed paragon of reform really is. As I said yesterday, Syrians can accept it or they can press on for something better.
What they should not do is look to the international community for much help. There is no military option in Syria. The Americans have supposedly been providing assistance to an anti-regime broadcaster operating from London, and in due course it will no doubt come out that someone or other (most likely American or Serbian, maybe Tunisian or Egyptian) has provided training to the protesters in what is properly termed these days “nonviolent conflict.” I have no doubt my own image, which appears repeatedly in the film Bringing Down A Dictator (about the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia) is familiar to both the Syrian police and demonstrators. But none of the above amounts to any substantial assistance.
The Iranians are accusing the Saudis and Jordanians of pumping up the demonstrations. That seems unlikely, to say the least. Amman has its own problems. Riyadh’s preference for stability seems to extend to Bashar al Assad, despite the Saudi rivalry with Damascus for influence in Lebanon and Syria’s alignment with Tehran. The Syrian protesters are mainly on their own, as much as the Tunisians and maybe more than the Egyptians before them.
The lack of substantial foreign support should not discourage. The protesters are better off being genuinely and profoundly Syrian. What they lack is mass, which comes from inside the country. It is mass that protects the protesters and strains the regime. If the demonstrations are going to succeed, the protesters are going to have to convince many more Syrians to join them in the streets and to stay there for an extended period. This will require extraordinary nonviolent discipline, organizational acumen, and good humor.
Unfortunately, there is no modern equivalent of the ten Biblical plagues. I would gladly call them down on Bashar, whose cynical reform/violence trick should not succeed on the merits. But life isn’t fair, and Syrians will have to make their own good fortune.
Second Seder tonight, and you can be sure I’ll be putting in a good word for them.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
The Passover of Arab liberation
Tonight is the beginning of Passover, the holiday celebrating the founding narrative of the Jewish people, which is also regarded by many non-Jews as the archetypal liberation story.
This Passover is the first in my lifetime that we can truly cast Egypt in the liberation story not only as the oppressor but also as the people liberating themselves. I’ve watched and commented enthusiastically for months now on the events unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East. For those of us privileged to live in a relatively free and prosperous country, the courage and conviction of those demonstrating nonviolently for freedom in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria is thrilling. Unlike the ancient Jews, they are not trying to leave the countries that have kept them captive but instead are trying to revolutionize them, creating political systems that will allow far wider margins of freedom to speak, associate and choose their rulers than existed anywhere in the Arab world until now.
Jews of course worry about what the Arab revolutions of 2011 mean for world politics in general and Israel in particular. But my sense of the relatively liberal and secularized community in which I live and pray is that the revolutions have the benefit of doubt. Lots of us anticipate that a liberated Egypt will give greater support to the Palestinian cause, but we may also think that is a necessary ingredient in completing the Middle East peace process. As the Palestinian papers all too clearly reveal, Israel has been less than forthcoming and more than recalcitrant, passing up decent offers from the Palestinian Authority that might have opened the door to resolution.
Americans of all religions also worry about the implications of the revolutions for their interests in political stability, countering violent extremism and reliability of oil supplies. Most it seems to me have gradually tilted towards support for the demonstrators, as has the Obama Administration, even in Yemen. This is made relatively easy by the fact that the revolutions have not yet touched directly on U.S. oil interests: none of the countries so far involved is a major supplier. Where U.S. interests and values have been most at odds–in Bahrain because of the 5th Fleet presence and Saudi Arabia because of oil–the tilt has been in favor of interests. Washington has essentially supported the Saudi and Bahraini monarchies in their efforts to buy off and repress dissent, even if those same monarchies are angry at Washington for promoting revolution elsewhere.
Libya is a special case. There some of the demonstrators chose to respond to violence with violence. The international community has backed them against the Gaddafi regime, but so far at least the results are less than satisfactory. It can be very difficult to dislodge an autocrat with violence, as that is their preferred method. They can and do escalate. The Gaddafi regime will not win in Libya, but it has already created a mess that will be difficult to repair. While Tunisia and now Egypt seem headed down paths that will lead to more open and democratic societies, Libya will need a lot more help to find its way after its devastating experience under Gaddafi and the war that will end his rule.
The outcome in Syria is also in doubt. As I noted yesterday, Syrians need to decide what they really want: the promise of responsiveness from a still autocratic regime, or real choices about how they are governed. Liberation will not be easy, as Bashar al Assad is brutal, determined and marginally more “enlightened” than some of the other autocrats in the Middle East. The benign despotism he is offering may well attract some Syrians, especially those who thrive under the current regime.
My message for Bashar and for all the other leaders on this Passover of the Arab rebellions, is simple: let your people go!
Here they are, in Homs, Syria, today:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
What do Syrians want?
While the Arabist is certainly correct in noting the banality of President Bashar al Assad’s speech to his new council of ministers yesterday, I confess I read the whole thing on al-bab.com
What he presents is basically his reform program, which is offered in a more or less explicit trade for an end to the demonstrations. The major features of the reform program are these: citizenship for Syrian Kurds, lifting the state of emergency, a law regulating demonstrations (one that he anticipates will eliminate the need for organizing demonstrations!), possibly a law permitting political parties, a law on local administration and another on media, plus of course all the implementation required.
Like most political speeches, this one is most notable for what it omits: no freedom of speech or association, no free and fair elections, little consideration of corruption (none at the higher levels, but mention of bribes at the lower levels), and nothing to speak of on rule of law or an independent judiciary.
In fact, the concept of the state that Bashar puts forward would be inconsistent with these ingredients. He says at the opening:
What’s important at this stage is for us to reach a state of unity, unity between the government, state institutions and the people. We are supposed to be moving in parallel when we move in the same direction. In this case we maximize the outcome and the achievement. The more we distance ourselves from the Syrian population, the weaker our strength and the less our achievement.
And this appears towards the end:
What’s important is that we and the population are one party, not two parties. The citizen is our compass, and we get along with our citizens in the direction they identify. We are here to serve our citizens; and without this service there is no justification for the existence of any one of us. What is important is for the citizen to feel his or her citizenship in every sense of the word.
But clearly your citizenship does not allow for expressing your opinions freely, or having your disputes settled fairly by independent judges observing the rule of law, or voting freely. Rather your citizenship consists in state officials detecting your needs and responding to them.
This is an authoritarian concept of the state, perhaps even a totalitarian one. The question for Syrians is whether this is what they are demonstrating for, or whether they want a government that they choose freely rather than one provided by an allegedly benevolent Bashar. We’ll see in coming days whether the bargain Bashar offers–a state that is not created by its citizens but is purportedly responsive to them, in exchange for quiescence–is what Syrians want.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
How long can this go on?
Big demos today Yemen and Syria. President Saleh has so far played rope-a-dope, pretending to negotiate but in fact ducking whenever the GCC or Saudis get close to a serious demand that he step down. The demonstrations in Syria are still focused mainly on regime abuses, especially the emergency law, rather than an end to the regime. No one seems fooled by the changes President Bashar has made in the cabinet, but somehow he manages to curry favor with both Syrians and the internationals.
In Libya, the military situation seems stalemated in a dynamic kind of way, but the Big 3 (US, France and UK) are making it clear that Gaddafi has to go. I trust this means they are working hard on it in clandestine ways. They are also admitting, as peacefare.net began suggesting in some depth on March 28, that a post-war reconstruction effort is necessary.
In Bahrain, the protesters’ cause seems lost for now. The Sunni monarchy there managed to reframe the whole affair as a sectarian conflict, which in a bizarre sort of logic justified the Saudi/UAE intervention and the crackdown on supposedly Iranian-inspired Shia. No doubt the protests will be back at some point, and likely with a far sharper sectarian edge. Torture and kill people for being Shia and they will no doubt seek recompense on that basis.
The main question now in Yemen and Syria is whether the demonstrators can maintain their momentum and continue to press for what they want. They are doing fairly well so far, but it is not easy to get people out every Friday, especially when there is serious risk involved. What happened in Libya should be ample warning that taking up arms is no quick or easy solution. Massive nonviolent protest is the way to go, and it won’t be easy to sustain.
RSS - Posts
