Tag: Syria
Disturbing, not disappointing
That’s the best that can be said about President Bashar al Assad’s speech today, in which he blamed the demonstrations in Syria on foreign conspiracies, accused his opponents of having an Israeli agenda, and promised, once again, still unspecified reforms. No lifting of the emergency laws, no opening of the political space to parties other than his Ba’ath, no moves against corruption. Emphasis on stability and the economy, not on opening the political system.
Now it is up to the Syrians to respond. Their first real opportunity will be Friday, when it is hard for the regime to prevent people from gathering for prayers. But one lady already took her shot:
I wonder what happened to her thereafter.
Can anyone still be disappointed? The guy is absolutely consistent in avoiding serious reform. It’s not disappointing, it’s disturbing. The people it should disturb most are John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, who have been at pains to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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Bashar’s challenge
Before I could get this piece up, Bashar had spoken. He flunked the test. Syria is in play. Will its youth stand up to be counted?
The Syrian cabinet has resigned and President Bashar al Assad is scheduled to speak to the nation today. But he was supposed to do it yesterday too, so who knows?
I assume he isn’t fooled by all those pro-government “demonstrators” in the streets yesterday. He has a tall order to fill: convincing his people that this time he is serious about reform. He may never have merited their confidence, but there is something in the Syrians that holds on to the hope that he’ll prove the modernizer he claims to be. If he disappoints once again, it won’t be long before he follows Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi into a battle with his own people that he can only lose. The first skirmishes have already been fought.
For some reason that is difficult to fathom, Washington has also grown attached to the notion that Bashar may be more part of the solution than part of the problem. John Kerry was quite explicit about this last week at the Carnegie Endowment, and Hillary Clinton has been not far behind. Some even seem to view him as an asset in the effort to make peace with Israel, a hope he (following in his father’s footsteps) has repeatedly dashed.
Perhaps the only thing that could make me think twice about this is an Elliot Abrams op/ed denouncing Bashar in such stentorian terms that you’ve got to wonder whether you’ve joined the wrong team. The specific measures Abrams proposes amount to denouncing Syria in every available forum and trying to hold Damascus accountable for its crimes.
I can certainly support that, but withdrawing the U.S. Ambassador would be silly. It accomplished nothing when the Bush Administration did it and would accomplish nothing now, except to deprive the protesters of an important point of reference, one that can help to ensure the regime feels the scrutiny of the international community for its offenses against them.
Helena Cobban suggests a middle ground. Hoping to avoid Iraq-like chaos in Syria, she hopes the Turks will be persuasive with Bashar and convince him to accommodate legitimate demands of the protesters. Clear commitments and careful monitoring she thinks could steer a Syria still led by Bashar in the right direction.
I have my doubts, but we’ll find out soon enough. If Bashar is as bad as Abrams says, he will fall short in his speech by failing to lift the emergency and other laws that support his repressive state, by refusing to open up the political system to competition, and by trying to maintain the monopoly his family and cronies have on corruption. Syria’s youth will then have its opportunity. Let’s hope they are as ready for it as the Tunisians and the Egyptians. And let’s hope they keep it non-violent, because one Libya is already too many for most Americans.
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Endgames: local legitimacy is key
It is easy to get caught up in the drama and thrill of events as people throughout the Middle East lay claim to inalienable rights, but we shouldn’t forget that revolutions don’t often end well. What can and should we be doing to try to ensure that the hopes and aspirations of so many don’t end up serving the interests of a few? And what vital U.S. interests need attention?
Libya. Hillary Clinton will be attending a meeting Monday in London to talk about the future of Libya, which is a particularly difficult case because the country largely lacks a state. What it has though is a strong tradition of local councils, most evident in Benghazi but also apparent in other places that have been liberated. If these local councils can gain a degree of legitimacy by being inclusive, they could become the foundation for a decentralized post-Gaddafi regime. My guess is that this would be far better than building the new Libya from Tripoli outwards, which won’t be possible in any event until Gaddafi departs.
As for U.S. influence, the most obvious way to guarantee it is to provide arms to the rebels, as Blake Hounshell suggests. There are many downsides, not the least of which is eventual misuse of the weapons to commit atrocities. Revenge killings are more than likely in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s fall, which is one of the reasons he and his minions hold on so tenaciously. That said, I would opt at least for the rocket-propelled grenades the rebels need to defend themselves against Gaddafi’s armor. The bigger question is whether supplying them is done
- without changing the existing UN Security Council resolution (1973) on grounds that they are part of the “all necessary means” required to protect civilians (either overtly or clandestinely), or
- by adopting a new UNSC resolution that recognizes Gaddafi’s failure to comply with 1973 and adopts additional measures required to unseat him.
If arms supplies are to get there in a timely way, the former is obviously preferable to the latter. But the latter is far better from the perspective of maintaining legitimacy of coalition operations against Gaddafi.
Yemen. President Saleh’s days are numbered, but he is insisting on an orderly transition of power. That is not a bad idea. It would certainly be preferable to the kind of mess we are seeing in Libya, and it really does not matter much whether it occurs this month or next.
To whom should Saleh hand over? The parliament is little more than a rubber stamp, some of the army leaders who have gone over to the protesters are arguably worse than Saleh when it comes to cozying up to terrorists, the political opposition is undistinguished and the protesters are still an amorphous mass. Here is both challenge and opportunity for the Americans, in whose interest it is to guarantee an orderly transition to someone who will be at least as good as Saleh in pursuing Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is not saying much. Here, too, they might look to grassroots tribal, religious, political, civil society and other leaders outside Sanaa for at least a validation of legitimacy. Part of the Yemen problem is that the current regime really has little or no support beyond the capital. Building a new regime that has serious representation from both north and south would be preferable to just finding another headman like Saleh.
Syria. It has indeed gotten serious, as I’ve already suggested, with widespread demonstrations yesterday met with regime live fire, killing how many dozens no one knows:
This time it will be hard for President Bashar al Assad’s spokesperson to claim that he ordered no firing on demonstrators, though that won’t stop them from trying, but the protests have so far stopped short of asking for his ouster. Bashar is still regarded by many Syrians as above the wrongdoing they associate with the regime, though it is hard to believe that his personal immunity will last much longer.
Bashar has been no friend to the Americans, even if Senator John Kerry thinks we owe him rather than the other way around (at least that is what he said in an appearance at Carnegie Endowment last week). But again orderliness is next to godliness, now that we’ve got the U.S. military preoccupied with two and a half wars. Bashar can still survive, but he needs to get serious about the reforms he promised this week, and stop the live fire on demonstrators. I can’t for the life of me think what it is about the events of the last couple of months that would convince an autocrat that firing on protesters would help him survive. It seems to me the evidence is all on the other side of the proposition: let them demonstrate and adopt reforms to meet their legitimate demands, then you might survive.
The others. The Moroccans seem to have understood that proposition, and until yesterday the Jordanians as well. The Bahrainis, with Saudi support, seem ready still to test the effectiveness of regime violence and in the process turn popular protests into sectarian strife between a Shia majority population and a Sunni regime. Their success is unlikely to be long lasting. It is hard to think of anything worse for Saudi Arabia than linking its fate to the survival of the Al Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain, but that appears to be what the Saudis are determined to do.
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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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