Tag: Syria
Syria is getting serious
The protests and violent crackdown in Dara’a, in the southwest corner of Syria near the Jordanian border, appear to have left dozens dead. This is not remarkable in Al-Assad family history. The President’s father, Hafez al Assad, killed tens of thousands in Hama in February 1982 to quell an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
But the current president, Bashar al Assad, claims to be made of more modern stuff. He told the Wall Street Journal in January,
Internally, it is about the administration and the people’s feeling and dignity, about the people participating in the decisions of their country. It is about another important issue. I am not talking here on behalf of the Tunisians or the Egyptians. I am talking on behalf of the Syrians. It is something we always adopt. We have more difficult circumstances than most of the Arab countries but in spite of that Syria is stable. Why? Because you have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue. When there is divergence between your policy and the people’s beliefs and interests, you will have this vacuum that creates disturbance.
Bashar has hit the nail on the head, and it looks as if there might be a gap opening between policy and the people’s beliefs and interests.
How pervasive is this gap? In my month studying Arabic at the University of Damascus a couple of years ago, I found it widespread. Syrians focus their hostility not so much on Bashar himself as on the regime, which they recognize as one in which friends and family get rich while the rest of the country remains poor. They want what Bashar says they should have (also in his Wall Street Journal interview):
Actually, societies during the last three decades, especially since the eighties have become more closed due to an increase in close-mindedness that led to extremism. This current will lead to repercussions of less creativity, less development, and less openness. You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind. So the core issue is how to open the mind, the whole society, and this means everybody in society including everyone. I am not talking about the state or average or common people. I am talking about everybody; because when you close your mind as an official you cannot upgrade and vice versa.
Bashar al Assad has talked the talk, but he has not walked the walk. Dara’a is the testing ground, and he is failing the test. Will it spread? Only events can tell, but I won’t be surprised if it does.
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Implosions, more and less advanced
While the rest of the world catches up with the question of “how does Libya end,” which I dealt with yesterday, let’s take a look ahead. Today’s big news was not the explosions in Libya, but rather the implosion in Yemen, where President Saleh is now facing an opposition strengthened by defections from his army, government, parliament and diplomatic corps. He is appealing for “mediation” by the Saudis, which is being interpreted in some circles as a plea for Saudi guarantees if he agrees to step down in six months. He had already agreed to step down at the end of his present term in 2013.
It very much looks as if Washington may lose its spear carrier in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is a problem, since no one–including Saleh–seems to think AQAP is a serious threat to Yemen, which it uses as haven and launching pad. No one in his right mind would want to try to govern it.
Washington will have to convince whoever takes over–the betting seems to be on General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, but these things are inherently uncertain–that AQAP merits his attention. This will be difficult: Yemen is a place with a lot of problems. Water and oil are running out, there are more or less perennial rebellions both north and south, the population is high half the day on qat, and the authority of the government barely extends to the outskirts of Sanaa, the capital.
In Syria, the process of popular protest is far less advanced, but firing on demonstrators by the security forces has reaped an increase in demonstrations in the south. No telling whether the Syrians have the stomach to go all the way to revolution, and Bashar al Assad is a clever autocrat. But he too is lacking resources and tied to Iran in ways that make it difficult for him to do what most Syrians want: an opening to the West and foreign investment, which necessarily entails reducing ties to Iran and Hizbollah and settling up somehow with Israel. Syria also has ethnic and sectarian issues: Kurdish citizens treated as second class and a Sunni majority governed by an Alawhite (more or less Shia) but secular majority.
Bahrain, now under Gulf Cooperation Council protection, seems to be doing its best to turn its rebellion into sectarian strife, which is not how it began. It is hard to believe that is in the interests of the (Sunni) Khalifa monarchy, which governs a less than prosperous Shia majority. But when Saudi Arabia decides to embrace you, I guess you have to hug back.
It has already been an extraordinary few weeks in North Africa. While the monarchies in Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia seem to be learning how to keep the lid on, the pot is boiling over in Yemen and may still do so in Syria and Bahrain. It would be nice if the heat rose under the Iranian pot, but that does not appear to be happening, no matter how often the Secretary of State and the President wish it so.
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Cheerier news
Here is video of a demonstration today in Damascus. It cheered me up a bit:
I spent August 2008 in Damascus studying Arabic at the university. No political activity back then, but the discontent of the general population was easy to find. You just needed to talk to someone. They were not prepared to express unhappiness with the President but enjoyed telling even a foreigner how much they disliked the people around him. They also wanted peace with Israel, better relations with the U.S. and a lot of foreign investment, all of which they viewed as part of a necessary, maybe regrettable, package.
And here is French philosopher Henri Bernard Levy with a strikingly graphic metaphor for the relationship between European governments and dictators in the Middle East. Best not to play this one while the boss is around:
It is going to be hard to beat that for political comment of the day.
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What will Friday prayers bring?
Tomorrow is Friday again, and across the “greater” Middle East there will be prayers and restlessness. The big questions:
- Saudi Arabia: intellectuals have been signing petitions in favor of constitutional monarchy, but the experts are still betting that people will not go the street–it is illegal to demonstrate, and socially disapproved. We’ll see.
- Libya: most of the country is liberated already, but will crowds risk turning out in Tripoli?
- Egypt: Mubarak’s buddy prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, has stepped down. El Baradei at least is calling this a turning point. Will it open the way for real regime change that the military has been resisting?
- Tunisia: Ben Ali’s buddy prime minister has already stepped down, opening the way for real change, but the country is burdened with refugees from Libya. The Brits are at least trying to relieve that burden.
- Yemen: President Saleh has said he’ll step down in 2013. The political party opposition, buoyed by tribal support, is proposing he do it by the end of this year. Will that be enough to split his opponents and save his tuchas?
- Bahrain: formal opposition parties have presented reform demands in an opening bid for negotiations with the monarchy. Will that split them from the demonstrators?
- Iraq: The violent crackdown last weekend amplified what otherwise might have been relatively quiet demonstrations against corruption and for better services. Has the government learned its lesson?
- Jordan and Syria: little noise, as their king who allows demonstrations and president who doesn’t try to feed a reform half loaf to relatively weak oppositions. Will they succeed?
- Iran: crackdown in full swing with the arrest of Green Movement stars Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and their wives. Ahmedinejad is increasingly dominant and effective against both clerical and lay opponents, inside and outside the regime. Can he keep it up?
I can’t remember a time I looked forward so much to Friday, with anticipation but also with trepidation. The world could be looking very different by Sunday.
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The world beyond Egypt
I’ve been so caught up in Egypt for 10 days, and Tunisia before that, I’m feeling the need for one of those quickie updates, so here goes (even if there is relatively little progress to report):
- Iran: P5+1 Ankara meeting at the end of January went badly, some say because Ahmedinejad did not take advantage of what the Americans were offering. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it.
- Pakistan: Messy (that’s what I call it when a President has to call for a roundtable conference), but no big crisis.
- North Korea: Quiescent for the moment, but mil/mil talks have stalled.
- Afghanistan: Lots of reports of military progress from David Petraeus, and some sign that the Taliban may be looking for negotiations, or at least that is how I interpret their putting out the word that they might break with Al Qaeda.
- Iraq: some Arab/Kurdish progress that will allow oil to flow north. My friend Reidar Visser doesn’t think that’s good, but I do.
- Israel/Palestine: Biggest news has been the Palestine papers, widely interpreted to suggest Palestinian weakness, ineptitude or both. I think they show the Israelis overplaying their hand to no good purpose.
- Egypt: Trouble. This is what I said at the end of the year: “succession plans founder as the legitimacy of the parliament is challenged in the streets and courts. Mubarak hangs on, but the uncertainties grow.” Did I get it right? All but that part about the courts anyway.
- Haiti: Presidential runoff postponed to March 20. President Preval’s favorite will not be on the ballot; former first lady Mirlande Manigat will face singer Michel Martelly.
- Al Qaeda: No news is good news.
- Yemen/Somalia: Yemen’s President Saleh has so far proved immune to Egyptian flu, but itmay not last forever. Parliament in Somalia has extended its own mandate for three more years, dismaying the paymasters in Washington and other capitals. Nice democracy lesson.
- Sudan: The independence referendum passed, as predicted (no genius in that). Lots of outstanding issues under negotiation. President Bashir is behaving himself, some say because of the carrots Washington has offered. In my experience indictment has that effect on most people.
- Lebanon: Indictments delivered, not published, yet.
- Syria: President Bashar al Assad is doing even better than Bashir of Yemen. No demonstrations materialized at all.
- Ivory Coast: Gbagbo and his entourage are still waiting for their first-class plane tickets. African Union is factfinding, in preparation for mediation. Could this be any slower?
- Zimbabwe: Mugabe continues to defy, sponsors riot in Harare. No real progress on implementation of powersharing agreement with the opposition.
- Balkans: Bosnia stuck on constitutional reform, Kosovo/Serbia dialogue blocked by government formation in Pristina, Macedonia still hung up on the “name” issue. See a pattern here? Some people just recycle their old problems.
- Tunisia: At last some place where there is progress: the former ruling party has been shuttered. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen in Egypt!
PS: on Algeria, see this interesting piece.
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Simmer until ready
While it is hard to take eyes off Egypt, the rest of the Arab world is simmering. We should make sure nothing boils over while we aren’t watching:
- Syria: “days of rage” demonstrations called for Friday and Saturday. One wag has proposed calling them “days of mild frustration” and President Bashar al Asad has claimed he is in favor of “opening.” My month studying Arabic in Damascus two years ago suggested to me that the population, while more than mildly frustrated, lacks the stomach for anything like what is going on in Cairo. Bashar knows that. Feb 5 update: the days of rage failed.
- Jordan: Ditto Amman, where weekly protests haven’t grown very large and the government is busy increasing food and fuel subsidies and civil service salaries, despite budget problems. The King sacked the Prime Minister this week, but that won’t change much.
- Algeria: President Bouteflika has promised to lift the state of emergency “soon.” Next, planned and banned rally scheduled for February 12, focused on economic and social issues, not politics. Anyway that’s a political year away at this point.
- Libya: Quiet. Qadhafi looked frightened when Tunisia happened, but I guess oil income that makes GDP well over $12,300 per capita provides a lot of simmering time.
- Sudan: scattered, small protests, but the big news in Khartoum is the loss of the relatively Western-oriented, sometimes English-speaking and Christian South. That will shift the center of gravity in Khartoum sharply in the Islamist direction.
- Yemen: demonstrations and a president who promises not to run again in 2013, but this is at least the third time Saleh has made that promise. Revolution is tough to organize when a good part of the population chews qat, but keep an eye on the southern rebellion (the northern one has gone quiescent).
So to my eye nothing else seems ready to boil over yet, but the outcome in Cairo could well heat things up, especially in Syria. Bashar al Assad gives a great interview to the Wall Street Journal, but I doubt he is quite as in tune with his people as he claims.
PS: I really should not have skipped Saudi Arabia, which was treated in a fine NPR piece by Michelle Norris yesterday. No demos, but a lot of people watching and wondering, sometimes out loud.
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