Tag: Syria
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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Syria: not now but not never
Describing the Syrian protests as less than widespread and deep-rooted, Joshua Landis, who knows more about Syria than 10 of me will ever know, nevertheless writes over at Syria Comment:
But in…four or five years, the next generation of Syrian youth will not remember the turmoil in either Lebanon or Iraq. Palestine will be a cause remembered only by grandfathers. Instead of defeat and hopelessness, invoked by Iraq and Palestine, young Arabs may well have the examples of Egypt and Tunisia. They may well be on the road to becoming the Arab World’s first democracies.
This begs the question of how long the Assad regime can last. Syria’s youth are no longer apathetic. They have tasted revolution and their own power. Many commentators have remarked on Bashar al-Assad’s stubbornness. He may be a “modernizer,” but not a “reformer,” is how Volker Pertes recently explained it. This is a polite way to say that he is not preparing the way for a handover of power from Alawites to Sunnis. Assad’s refusal to prepare the present regime for a soft landing spells bad news for Syria. The day that regime-change will come to Syria seems closer today than it did only a short time ago.
So not now, but not never. A lot depends on how effectively the protesters can unify across the country. Keeping it nonviolent, and funny, will help. Professor Landis might prefer a Bashar-engineered soft landing, but wouldn’t a serious transition like the one occurring in Tunisia be better?
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Blogging(egg)heads
Tune in to Rutgers University Professor Eric Davis and me, chatting on Friday about events in the Arab world:
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A still small voice
I’ve been wondering how Syrians are feeling about their regime and its disdain for the its citizens. Over at Diadochi they are expressing it clearly:
Yet nothing hurt like witnessing the parliament. Watching them one by one deliver their legendary praises like trained apes crushed our spirit. It made us realize, this is us, the ones stupid enough to stay loyal to a contract that has been desecrated time and time again. We realized the opinionated peaceful pro-reform youth are not the face of Syria, the face of Syria is an old demented suck-up who lavishes wondrous feats to a system that does nothing but slap him around, suffocate him, ridicule his stupid fantasies and stomp on his dignity. Suddenly we went down from the golden generation, to vermin.
Ever seen a whole nation assume fetal position? It’s quite a sight.
Even the most optimistic are broken. Some still say words of hope, but it’s not with the old spark you’d see in their eyes. It’s more of a desperate attempt to cling on to what has already been destroyed. Most of us, we’re grinding our teeth in a rage that can hardly be kept in. You see, even if they actually do the unlikely attempt of making all they pledged happen, it won’t matter. The contract is broken, our dignity has been stung bad, we feel detached from a system which very clearly doesn’t represent us to the slightest.
I don’t take this as a voice of despair. This is a still small voice getting ready to act. I wish it well in its efforts.
PS: On Bahrain,which has almost disappeared from the news since the Saudis intervened, see this.
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