Tag: Syria
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:
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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.
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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.
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Why do they look for Bashar’s good side?
Shame on the International Crisis Group, which I generally admire, for Peter Harling’s “time is running out” nonsense published yesterday on foreignpolicy.com yesterday:
Time is running out as every new casualty makes the clock tick faster. To open the space required for a radical reform agenda to take hold, the regime’s top priority must be to ensure a period of relative calm. Prospects will look grim were the country to witness yet another bloody Friday.
How come time has not already run out? The country has seen at least two bloody Fridays already. The Syrian regime has spent the past couple of weeks beating and killing demonstrators.
Maybe Harling should re-read his own material. He wrote on March 30 about Bashar al Assad:
…his much-anticipated speech has failed to offer a credible alternative. There is now every likelihood that Syrians, their hopes dashed, will again take to the streets. The regime must pass this last test, which is to avoid more bloodshed. Repression could help it survive or it could be tantamount to suicide — but in either case, it would be an ignominious fate.
What is it about Bashar al Assad that makes Western commentators want to think the best of him? Why is it that after 12 days of failing a test Bashar is told he can still pass it? Hasn’t he made it clear enough that he is uninterested in any sort of reform that threatens his own hold on power, much less radical reform of any sort?
I’m puzzled by this need to imagine that somehow there is a positive side of the Syrian regime we just haven’t seen yet. Can there be any doubt that the regime will seek to stay in power, spending whatever resources it can assemble and sacrificing whatever ideology or political groups may stand in the way? Has there been the slightest sign of willingness to engage in genuine political reform?
The problem is not, as Harling supposes, lack of communication or interlocutors on either side. The problem is a regime that has shut the door on political competition, genuine economic reform and openness to much of the world. The solution lies with the Syrian people, who seem to me to be doing their best under difficult circumstances. I’d have expected more sympathy for their perspective from ICG. For a genuine cry for freedom, from Syrian writer and political activist Yassin al-Haj Saleh, see this from the New York Times. That is where ICG’s heart and head should be.
PS: Here is some of the latest on the Syrian crackdown. For more detail, see Syria Comment. Or try this, reporting that Syrian soldiers have been shot for refusing to fire on protesters. Imagine what we might find out if foreign journalists were allowed in!
PPS: Joshua Landis has published evidence that the allegation of Syrian soldiers having been shot for refusing to fire on protesters is untrue.
- Old City Damascus
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Riyadh and Washington try to get it together
With King Abdullah back in the saddle throne since late February, after months abroad for medical treatment, it seems to me that Saudi diplomacy has gone into relative overdrive. Their biggest move was troops into Bahrain, to free up the Bahraini security forces to beat up demonstrators, but now they appear to be taking an active role in arranging for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh from his post, if not from the country. I imagine they’ve decided now he is more liability than asset, something most Yemenis seem to have concluded weeks ago.
The Americans are also in overdrive, with Defense Secretary Gates and National Security Adviser Donilon wearing out the flying carpet to Riyadh. This is likely in part damage limitation–the Saudis aren’t happy to see the Americans plumping for transition in the democratic direction in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. It must be difficult to convince them that somehow we’ll manage to stop the process before it gets to the Kingdom, which has largely pacified its own population and cracks down hard when soft power fails to do the job.
But it looks as if there may be more on the agenda: the Iranian challenge looms large for both Washington and Riyadh, and both have taken to implying that the Iranians are up to no good in Bahrain, though there is little evidence that the protests were fueled by Tehran. This I suppose is where the Saudis would like the Americans to draw the line: democracy is good, but not if it threatens to bring a Shia majority into power (as it did of course in Iraq, and the Saudis were not pleased).
This leaves Libya and Syria. I see no real unhappiness coming from the Saudis about what is going on in Libya, and it is difficult to imagine that the United Arab Emirates would lend its air force to the cause if the Saudis were not prepared to go along. Gaddafi is not a Saudi kind of guy, and of course there is no Shia threat there. Syria is harder to read: are the Saudis backing Bashar al Assad, who runs an Alawi (sort of Shia) regime, or not? Riyadh and Damascus have in the past competed with him for influence in Lebanon. Would the Saudis prefer a Sunni regime in Damascus? Or does the preference for stability prevail? So far, the latter.
Saudi influence is likely one of the reasons the Americans haven’t been as welcoming of the protesters in Syria as might have been expected. Both Washington and Riyadh are worried about chaos in Syria, and how that might affect Iraq and Jordan. This is odd, of course, since Damascus is allied with Tehran and Bashar al Assad has not hesitated to make trouble for the Americans in both Iraq and Lebanon. I wonder if things started really coming apart in Damascus whether the Saudis would reconsider.
Now if you’ve got a headache from all this diplomatic mumbo jumbo, I’m not surprised. But the world really is complicated, the Middle East more than most other regions. And if something happens in Saudi Arabia to disrupt its giant oil production and exports, that $4 gasoline is going to start looking cheap.
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Counterrevolution, again
With the U.S. Government immobilized by its own self-generated problems–a kind of self-licking ice cream cone phenomenon–dictators are resurgent in the Middle East again. They are doing what they know to do best: killing their own citizens, hoping that will make the popular protests against their interminable rule go away.
In Syria, the demonstrations were once again widespread yesterday, if not gigantic. The killing seems to have focused on the southern town of Deraa, where Bashar al Assad seems to be wanting to demonstrate how really dangerous it is to protest persistently. In Yemen, yesterday’s killing focused on Taiz, a southern town that President Ali Saleh sees as the leading edge of separatism. In Egypt, Tahrir square was cleared in the early morning hours by an army riot. In Libya, Gaddafi continues to make mincemeat of rebel forces, which have also been bombed unintentionally by NATO. Negotiations with the Gaddafi family are ongoing, but Washington seems to be holding a hard line on getting them all out of Libya. In Bahrain, the monarchy continues with a hard line on the demonstrations, which it increasingly paints with a sectarian brush.
It is surprising to me that the dictators think this will work, but they know their own people better than I do. Alistair Crooke published yesterday on foreignpolicy.com a piece on “Syrian exceptionalism” that essentially says Bashar knows best and will win his bet. There will surely be people in the U.S. administration who are also hoping now to stem the tide and save a few really important autocratic regimes (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia foremost) for future use, while arranging soft landings for others (Yemen in particular). Secretary of Defense Gates has been running up his frequent flyer miles with visits to key stalwarts and Gulf states worried about the situation.
That said, President Obama has issued strong statements on Syria and Yemen in recent days. He seems much more inclined to emphasize the legitimate aspirations of the people than to help preserve Bashar and Bashir.
It is nowhere written that counterrevolution will fail, and in fact it has often succeeded. Regime principals and their oligarchs are clever about using their remaining power and money to divide the opposition, crack down on the weaker but more militant portion, and preserve at least some vestige of their own privilege and control. We should expect no less from them.
Those who want to complete their revolutions and emerge as free societies with more or less representative governments will somehow need to keep the pressure on. But they will also have to stay united, and plan carefully for where and when to confront their respective regimes nonviolently. The consequences of violent rebellion should by now be obvious to everyone who follows events in Libya–it isn’t pretty, and it may not end well.
PS: Just to complete the picture, in Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo’s forces are reportedly today attacking the hotel where Alassane is headquartered, as well as the French Embassy. You have to wonder when Paris will see fit to take decisive action.
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