Tag: Turkey
The Kurds’ new clout
Last month, the Middle East Institute’s (MEI) Turkish Studies program hosted a panel entitled “The Kurds’ New Clout in U.S. Ties with Turkey and Iraq” which focused on the challenges and opportunities in U.S. relations with Turkey and Iraq in light of the growing regional influence of the Kurds. This growing influence, with the Kurds emerging as a key player in the fight against the Islamic State, has put US relations with the governments in Baghdad and Ankara to the test.
How will US collaboration with Iraqi Kurdistan affect US-Turkish and US-Iraqi relations? What will the implications be for the future of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)?
Panelists included Mohammad Shareef, founding member of the London Kurdish Institute, Denise Natali, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, and Gönül Tol, founding director of MEI’s Center for Turkish Studies, with Daniel Serwer moderated.
Shareef outlined the regional, economic, and political factors that define Iraqi Kurdistan as an emerging regional power. The logical conclusion was apparent: sooner or later Kurdistan would achieve independence, as a natural consequence of its growing strength and importance.
Denise Natali believes, however, that Kurdistan’s success needs to be viewed in the context of the region’s increasingly complex and unstable environment, as well as America’s other relations in the region. There is no ‘clear cut’ US Kurdish policy, as Washington views Turkey’s Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) as a terrorist group, while the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces are fighting alongside the US in Iraq.
Notwithstanding that cooperation, the White House remains committed to the territorial integrity of Iraq. This became a point of contention during President Barzani’s recent visit to Washington, when it was made clear that US military support would have to pass through Baghdad.
Gönül Tol outlined Turkey’s changing relationship with the United States on issues such as ISIS, economic cooperation, and rapprochement with Turkey’s Kurds. Turkish fear that the US wants to break up Turkey was allayed with the 2008 Turkey-US security agreement. Ankara’s relationship with the KRG mirrors this progression. Turkey opened a consulate in Erbil and has expanded bilateral trade centered on the natural gas and oil.
Natali believes that the Kurds might have overstepped in their territorial acquisition in Iraq—will they be able to pay for the lands and administer effective control over these areas? Considering the KRG is 17 billion dollars in debt, this remains to be seen. Mohamad Shareef believes that the KRG can be economically viable. A highlight is the 2006 Liberal Investment Law, which has offered vast benefits for foreign investors.
Serwer agreed that perhaps the Kurds have taken on more land than they can realistically control, but this could result in a ‘land for peace’ exchange. Kurdish independence has been postponed due to ISIS, but this issue is sure to resurface in the next 2-3 years, as the Iraqi Kurdish people overwhelmingly support independence. But in the absence of agreement on the borders of Kurdistan, independence could lead to more war, not less.
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A grand bargain, with the Gulf not Iran
Expectations for next week’s Wednesday/Thursday summit at the White House and Camp David with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) heads of state (or their proxies) vary greatly. Simon Henderson, who follows the Gulf from the Washington Institute, says
the definition of success for this summit will more likely be a limited agreement than an historic pact.
Joyce Karam suggests something more substantial: the summit may allow a bargain in which the Gulf states drop their opposition to a nuclear deal with Iran in exchange for the US allowing the Gulf a freer hand in countering Iranian surrogates in Syria and possibly Yemen.
The Americans have not seemed inclined in this more grandiose direction. They remain worried about who might take over in Syria should Asad fall. They have also leaned in favor of a ceasefire or humanitarian pause in Yemen, where the Saudi-led intervention has not done much to roll back the Iranian-supported Houthis while rousing nationalist sentiment among Yemeni civilians, who are suffering mightily because of the fighting.
Those concerns are serious ones, but events on the ground in Syria may not permit the Americans to remain aloof much longer. Rebel forces there have gained ground both in the north, near Idlib, and in the south, between Damascus and the Jordanian border. Regime forces seem unable to respond effectively, though Lebanese Hizbollah and Iranian fighters continue to prevent outright disaster for Asad. The divisions among Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (the three main financiers of the Syrian revolution) that in the past have hampered rebel effectiveness are diminishing. The Americans might prefer to await training of their vetted rebels to bring down Asad, but he is unlikely to last the years it will take to put a significant number of them back on the battlefield.
In Yemen, the Gulf protagonists have less reason for optimism. Intervention there against the Houthis has not done more than slow their advance south. In the meanwhile, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is gaining ground. The Houthis don’t like Al Qaeda any better than the Saudis do, but it is hard to picture a political solution at this point that allows them to combine to fight their common enemy. They are inclined to forget Ben Franklin’s admonition: either we all hang together, or we all hang separately.
A Gulf/American pact in favor of more concerted efforts to counter Iran’s regional trouble-making could be helpful to the Obama Administration at home, where it faces continued bipartisan opposition to the nuclear deal. Yesterday’s 98-1 Senate approval of legislation giving the Congress a 30-day opportunity to debate and vote on the nuclear deal sets up an important debate for early August, provided the nuclear deal is reached by the end of June. The strongest argument against the nuclear deal is likely to be the prospect of an emboldened Iran free of sanctions using its considerable wealth to subvert the Arab states of the Gulf and Levant. Freeing the Gulf to counter Iranian efforts in Syria and Yemen would be one way of responding to the Administration’s critics at home.
The problem is that it may not work. The Gulf states, which have armed themselves far beyond the Iranians’ wildest dreams, continue to bumble when it comes to military action and diplomatic weight. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has succeeded in building up effective surrogates in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. In Yemen and Bahrain, the Iranians have taken advantage of local grievances to make a lot of trouble. The Gulf states fear the lifting of sanctions for good reasons. Even under sanctions, Iran has done well diplomatically and militarily. What might Tehran be able to do once sanctions are lifted and hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenue return to its coffers?
The summit next week is an unusual one. Whether your expectations are great or not so great, there are real issues to discuss between Washington and its Gulf interlocutors. An agreement that combines a nuclear deal with more effective action to stem Iranian regional trouble-making would be a serious outcome. Rather than the grand bargain with Iran the Republicans and Israelis fear, we may be seeing the emergence of a grand bargain with the Gulf.
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Peace picks April 20 – 24
- Politics of a Nuclear Deal: Former U.S. & Iranian Officials Debate | Monday April 20 | 9:30 – 11:00 | USIP | REGISTER TO ATTEND | This event is the fourth in the Iran Forum series hosted by a coalition of eight think tanks, including USIP, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, RAND, the Arms Control Association, the Center for a New American Security, the Stimson Center, Partnership for a Secure America, and the Ploughshares Fund. Speakers include Ali-Akbar Mousavi, Former member of Iran’s parliament and Visiting Fellow at Virginia Tech, Jim Slattery, Former Congressman (D-KS), Howard Berman, Former Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (D-CA) and Michael Singh, Former Senior Director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council and Senior Fellow, The Washington Institute. The discussion will be moderated by Stephen J. Hadley, Chairman of the Board, USIP, Chair, RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy Advisory Board and Former National Security Advisor.
- Turkey’s Role in a Turbulent Middle East | Monday April 20 | 2:30 – 3:30 | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will address the country’s evolving policy toward the Middle East, including its role in the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. He will also discuss Turkey’s relationship with the West and its responsibilities in NATO. George Perkovich, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will moderate.
- The Syrian Humanitarian Crisis: What Is to Be Done? | Tuesday April 21 | 9:30 – 12:00 | Middle East Policy Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Middle East Policy Council invites to the 80th Capitol Hill Conference. Live streaming of this event will begin at approximately 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 21st and conclude at noon. A questions and answers session will be held at the end of the proceedings. Refreshments will be served. The speakers include Karen AbuZayd, Former UN Under Secretary-General and Former Commissioner-General, UNRWA, Denis J. Sullivan, Director, Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies, Co-Director, Middle East Center, Northeastern University, Susan M. Akram, Clinical Professor, Boston University School of Law, and Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University. The conference will be moderated by Thomas R. Mattair, Executive Director, Middle East Policy Council.
- Current State of Syrian Refugees in Turkey | Tuesday April 21 | 10:00 – 12:00 | The SETA Foundation |REGISTER TO ATTEND | The civil war has driven 6.5 million Syrians from their country; nearly 2 million now reside in Turkey. While Turkish refugee camps have garnered much attention due to their quality, the majority of Syrian refugees reside outside the camps. In urban areas, the government, aid agencies and NGOs struggle to meet the needs of an-ever growing number of refugees. Please join us for a panel discussion on the refugee crisis in Turkey and its impact on social, political and economic dynamics in the country. Speakers include Fuat Oktay, President, Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, AFAD, Kemal Kirisci, TÜSİAD Senior Fellow and Director of Turkey Project, The Brookings Institution, Kilic B. Kanat, Research Director, SETA DC and Daryl Grisgraber, Senior Advocate, Refugees International. The discussion will be moderated by Kadir Ustun, Executive Director, SETA DC.
- Building Peace in Libya: A Conversation with Wafa Bugaighis | Tuesday April 21 | 3:00 – 4:00 | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | As the conflict between Libya’s political factions drags on, its humanitarian and economic crisis deepens. Meanwhile, the Islamic State is exploiting the vacuum wrought by the fighting and the absence of coherent, capable institutions. What are the prospects for a ceasefire and the formation of an inclusive, sustainable government? Wafa Bugaighis, the charge d’affaires and highest-ranking diplomat at the Libyan Embassy in Washington, will offer her vision for ending the war and discuss how the international community can help rebuild Libya. Carnegie’s Frederic Wehrey will moderate.
- Is Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback? | Tuesday April 21 | 5:00 – 7:00 | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The past few years have marked the beginning of a tumultuous period for global governance. Across the world, we have seen threats to international order and a disruption of longstanding political norms and values as authoritarians get smarter and persist undeterred. With authoritarianism on the rise in many of the world’s most strategically important regions, new questions emerge regarding the diffusion of power, the rise of sometimes violent nonstate actors, and the future role of the nation-state. Developing an appropriate strategy for the advancement of human rights and the support of nonviolent civil resistance movements is thus proving to be one of the most challenging policy dilemmas for the United States and other democracies.On April 21, the Atlantic Council will be hosting a public discussion of these challenges in recognition of the release of its forthcoming publication, Is Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback? This discussion will feature multiple leading experts on nonviolent civil resistance and authoritarian states, and will explore the range of issues and case-studies examined within this book of essays. Atlantic Council CEO and President Mr. Frederick Kempe will begin by moderating a discussion on countering authoritarianism between Dr. Peter Ackerman, Dr. Paula Dobriansky, and Mr. Damon Wilson. This will be followed by a discussion of the issues raised in the book itself, featuring Adm. Dennis Blair (USN, Ret.), Dr. George A. Lopez, and Dr. Regine Spector, moderated by Dr. Mathew Burrows and Dr. Maria J. Stephan.
- Escaping the Cycle of Stagnation in the Middle East | Wednesday April 22 | 10:00 – 5:00 | SAIS | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Global Security & Conflict Management Club and MENA Club of Johns Hopkins’ SAIS invite to a conference on the social, political and economic challenges facing the current Middle East. The conference will be opened with a keynote address by Paul Salem, Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute. Following the address, the conference will proceed with three panels. The first panel will discuss civil society in Syria. Speakers include Mohammad Ghanem, Director of Government Relations, Syrian American CounciI, Ibrahim Al-Assil, President, Syrian Non Violence Movemement, Mohammad Al Abdallah, Executive Director, Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre, Nidal Bitari, Palestinian Refugee Writer and Hind Kabawat, Lawyer and Syrian Activist. The second panel will discuss migration, displacement, and patterns of protracted crises in the Middle East, featuring Mona Yacoubian, Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Middle East, Rochelle Davis, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Matthew Reynolds. Director, UNRWA Representative Office, Washington, DC. The panel will be moderated by Elizabeth Ferris, Co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. The third panel will focus on economic reform and development in the MENA region. Panelists include Lili Mottaghi, Economist in the Chief Economist Office for the Middle East and North Africa Region, The World Bank, Dr. Diane Singerman, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs, American University, and Co-Director, TADAMUN: The Cairo Urban Solidarity Initiative and Amy Ekdawi, Middle East & North Africa Program Director, The Bank Information Center. Lunch will be served.
- Examining U.S.-Israel Relations at a Time of Change in the Middle East | Wednesday April 22 | 10:30 – 1:00 | Center for a New American Security | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The U.S.-Israel relationship has been a centerpiece of U.S. Middle East strategy and a main pillar of Israel’s national security strategy for decades. But political relations between the two countries during the past six years have seen some turbulence, even as security cooperation deepens and they continue to share common interests and values at a time of change and uncertainty in the Middle East. On April 22, please join the Center for American Progress, the Center for a New American Security, and the Israel Institute to take stock of where we are at this crucial stage in U.S.-Israel relations, featuring two expert panels. The first panel will discuss the management of U.S.-Israel relations, and the second will focus on the main issues under discussion between the two states. Speakers include Rudy deLeon, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Mel Levine (D-CA), Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Middle East Policy, The Brookings Institution, Michael J. Koplow, Program Director, Israel Institute, Dan Arbell, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, The Brookings Institution and Scholar in Residence, Department of History, College of Arts & Sciences, American University, Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, Director of Arab-Israeli Programs, U.S. Institute of Peace, Michael Singh, Lane-Swig, Senior Fellow and Managing Director, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, Visiting Fellow, Center for American Progress. Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress and Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Security Program, Center for a New American Security will moderate the first and second panels respectively.
- Turkey: Still a U.S. Ally? | Thursday April 23 | Bipartisan Policy Center | 3:00 – 4:30 | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Foreign policy divergences and increasingly worrying developments in Turkey’s domestic policy are raising questions about the strength of the U.S.-Turkish partnership. Turkey and the United States remain divided on their approach to Syria, the ISIS threat, and turmoil in the region more broadly. Meanwhile, crackdowns on media and the passage of draconian new security legislation are jeopardizing fundamental freedoms in Turkey as the country heads for parliamentary elections this summer. Should the United States continue to look to Turkey as a strategic partner in this environment? Join the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) for the release of a new paper on the state of the U.S.-Turkish alliance and a discussion of Turkey’s domestic political struggles, foreign policy and implications for its relationship with the United States. The discussion features Amb. Eric Edelman, Co-chair, BPC’s Turkey Initiative and former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Dr. Svante Cornell, Member, BPC’s Turkey Initiative and Director, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, and Amb. James Holmes, Former President, American-Turkish Council. Blaise Misztal, Director, BPC’s National Security Program, will moderate.
- An overlooked crisis: Humanitarian consequences of the conflict in Libya | Friday April 24 | 10:00 – 11:30 | Brookings Institution | REGISTER TO ATTEND | With international attention focused on the humanitarian emergencies in Syria and Iraq, the escalating crisis in Libya has gone overlooked. With the vast majority of international actors having pulled out of Libya in the summer of 2014, humanitarian assistance for needy populations is in short supply, and solutions to the crisis seem far from sight. On April 24, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement will convene a discussion on the humanitarian consequences of the violence in Libya, focusing on the implications for those in Libya and for the country’s neighbors. Brookings Nonresident Fellow Megan Bradley will draw on recent research on Libya’s displacement crisis. Speakers will also include Kais Darragi of the Embassy of the Republic of Tunisia and Shelly Pitterman of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Elizabeth Ferris, senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement will moderate the event and offer opening remarks.
- What’s Wrong with the Proposed Nuclear Deal with Iran? | Friday April 24 | 12:00 – 1:30 | Hudson Institute | REGISTER TO ATTEND | This month, the White House announced the framework for a nuclear agreement with Iran, with details to be finalized by the end of June. For all of the technical details that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is intended to establish, the foundational political agreements—the reason for the meetings at Lausanne—seem unclear. What can American policymakers expect next? Will the White House continue to make concessions as it has since the November 2013 interim agreement when it acknowledged Iran’s right to enrich uranium? Or is there a way to ensure the administration gets a better deal than the framework unveiled earlier this month? What are the implications of the deal for U.S. national security, as well as our interests and allies in the Middle East? On April 24th, Hudson Institute will host a lunchtime panel of experts to discuss where the administration’s Iran policy will go from here. The panel will include Michael Doran, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Matthew Kroenig, Associate Professor, Georgetown University and Senior Fellow, The Atlantic Council, David Samuels, Contributor, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. Lee Smith, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, will moderate.
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The Islamic Republic and the Kingdom
This morning’s news confirms that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has jinned up a Sunni alliance (including Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan as well as several other countries) to battle the (sort of Shia) Houthi rebellion in Yemen, which the Shia-majority Islamic Republic of Iran backs. No one likes to label wars sectarian, but avoiding it doesn’t make them less so.
Sectarian wars are identity conflicts, which makes them particularly difficult to resolve. No one likes to compromise their identity. During conflict, the multiple (and sometimes common) identities we all sport in more normal times are often shorn in favor of a single one. Middle East experts will all tell you that seeing what is going on exclusively through a sectarian lense is a mistake. But it is a mistake that in a first approximation comes all too close to reality during conflict.
It is increasingly clear that it won’t be possible to manage the conflicts in the Middle East country by country, which is the way diplomacy normally works. War does not. Syria and Iraq are one theater of operations for the Islamic State and for the Iranian-backed militias fighting it. Lebanon could be engulfed soon. Iran supports the Houthi rebellion in Yemen in part because of the Sunni rebellion in Syria.
The Sunni/Shia dimension of these conflicts puts the Americans in an awkward spot. They don’t want to take sides in sectarian war. Their major concerns are not sectarian but rather nuclear weapons, terrorism and oil. So they find themselves supporting Iranian militias in Iraq and as well as their (allegedly moderate) Sunni opponents in Syria and Yemen. The result is that Sunnis feel abandoned by their erstwhile ally even as Iranians accuse the Americans of originating Sunni sectarianism in the Middle East. We are in a lose-lose bind.
Getting out of it is going to require more skilled regional diplomacy than we have demonstrated so far. We need to be able to do two things at once:
- bring home a serious product from the nuclear talks with Iran early next week, and
- counter Iranian aggression and proxies in Yemen and Syria
If the nuclear talks fail, expect to see escalation on all sides: in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. But if the nuclear talks succeed, that will not mean peace in our time, as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will seek a free hand in pursuing its activities abroad to compensate for limits on the nuclear program. Only preparedness to counter the IRGC will convince it otherwise.
The Administration has wisely kept the nuclear talks focused mainly on the Iranian nuclear program. But the time is coming for a wider discussion with Iran of its interests in neighboring countries and the counter-productive way in which it is projecting power through Shia proxies. We’ll also need to be talking with America’s Sunni friends, especially Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, about the opening they provide to Iran by discriminatory and exclusionary treatment of Shia in their own populations.
A classic security dilemma has emerged between Sunni and Shia in many parts of the Middle East. What one group does to make itself more secure the other group sees as threatening. Escalation is the consequence, but that won’t work. Neither Sunni nor Shia will win this war. Eventually the Islamic Republic and the Kingdom will need to reach an accommodation. How many will die before they do?
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The SuShi proxy war is likely to continue
This morning’s news that Saudi Arabia is bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen confirms what you already knew: the Middle East is engulfed in a proxy war between Iran–which supports the Houthis in Yemen, Bashar al Asad in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq, and Lebanon’s Hizbollah–and Sunni states, including in the front lines the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as well as Saudi Arabia. Occasional Sunni-majority contributors include Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt. At the same time, Iran and its allies as well as Saudi Arabia and its allies are fighting against Sunni extremists associated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
No wonder it is hard to keep score. This game is played in many dimensions. In the Sunni/Shia dimension, the United States has no dog in the fight, to use Secretary of State Baker’s unforgettable phrase. Our focus is on the fight against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, wherever they rear their brutal methods, because we fear they will inevitably target the “far enemy” (us) in due course. You might think it would be possible for Iran and Saudi Arabia to cooperate in that dimension, but instead they compete. Neither wants a victory over extremism to be credited to the other or to allow the other (or its proxies) to inherit the territory extremists once controlled.
The Sunni/Shia dimension and the anti-extremist dimension are not really orthogonal. Victory in one will affect the outcome in the other. The protagonists know it, which is one reason they are engaging in both. Iran would gain a great deal in the fight against Sunni states if Shia-allied forces win in Iraq and Syria. Likewise, Saudi Arabia would gain a great deal in the fight against Iran if it is able to put a majority Sunni regime in place in Syria and chase the Islamic State from the Sunni provinces of Iraq.
Yemen is a bit of a side show to the main theater of operations in the Levant. But geography makes it important to Saudi Arabia, in whose back yard it lies. If the Iran-allied Houthis are able to take over there, the Kingdom will feel the loss. By the same token, the Kingdom wants to see Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula defeated. Ironically, the Houthis have been at least as willing to engage on that front as the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, but Riyadh won’t see that as a plus. It wants to defeat both the Houthis and Al Qaeda.
Washington is in a difficult spot. It doesn’t want to be a protagonist in the Sunni/Shia war, but is viewed as one with every move it makes. Yesterday’s American air attacks against the remaining Islamic State forces in Tikrit were apparently undertaken only when Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi agreed to limit the role of Shia militias in retaking the capital of Salahuddin province. David Petraeus and others are being quoted as claiming that Iran is a far greater threat to the US than the Islamic State.
Likewise the nuclear negotiations are being seen through the lens of the Sunni/Shia conflict. An agreement that blocks Iran’s paths to nuclear weapons and provides at least a year’s warning of breakout has come to be viewed as strengthening rather than weakening the Islamic Republic. Sunni states apparently prefer military action against Iran’s nuclear program, which would guarantee that the Iranians do their damndest to get the bomb. But their goading of the US to war might be quickly forgotten in the devastating aftermath, as Iran would no doubt target its Gulf neighbors in any response.
This layered set of interrelated issues (Sunni/Shia, Islamic extremists, nuclear capabilities) is a good deal to complex for even very skilled diplomats to imagine easy solutions. The Obama Administration has essentially decided to prioritize two issue: blocking Iran from nuclear weapons and fighting Islamic extremists. We’ll know by Monday, the deadline for some sort of product from the nuclear talks, if the first issue is likely to be resolved. The second is likely to be with us much longer, if only because the Sunni/Shia conflict we don’t want to be involved in will keep feeding the extremists of both varieties with recruits.
The SuShi proxy war (between Sunni and Shia) is likely to continue.
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The road forward is civilian as well as military
I spoke this afternoon at on a “political analysts” panel at The Road Forward conference on planning the future of the Syrian American Community. Here are my speaking notes:
1. Let me start by saying the obvious. This comes from someone who would have preferred that you stick with nonviolent rebellion. But four years have passed and that is history.
2. Now you’ve got to do better on the military front. There is no substitute for that.
3. The regime’s relative success on the battlefield, with ample Iranian and Russian support, has made a political solution less feasible than in June 2012, when the Geneva communiqué was adopted.
4. If you want to get back to its provision for a transitional governing body with full executive powers, you are going to need somehow to threaten Bashar al Assad’s hold on power, making him feel that failure to agree puts him more at risk than agreeing. That is vital for a negotiated solution.
5. But it is only a necessary condition. It is not a sufficient one.
6. Today’s Syria is the scene of a devastating regional proxy war pitting Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran against each other, with the US and Russia only slightly more removed.
7. Syrians need to re-establish control over their own destiny.
8. The civilian dimension is as important as the military one.
9. One vital civilian dimension is diplomacy. The Syrian opposition did well at the Geneva 2 conference. But it failed to follow up on that triumph by uniting its factions.
10. That is still vital. Broad unity under a single umbrella would make the opposition a more serious negotiating partner not only for the regime but also for the Americans, Russians and Iranians.
11. A second important civilian dimension is governance. You cannot hope to be taken seriously unless you are serious about plans to govern effectively inside Syria. The “Back to Syria” idea was a good one, but it was never implemented.
12. It never even got out of the planning stage, so far as I know.
13. Even that would have an impact: a serious plan to govern protected areas in the north and south would give people sympathetic to your pleas for American help, like me, what they need to argue in your favor.
14. It is now ancient history, but in both Kosovo and Bosnia civilian governance during the wars weighted heavily with the international community. In Kosovo, the Albanians created institutions that provided health and education, in addition to a parliament and a presidency. In Bosnia, the collaboration of Croats and Muslims in the Bosnian Federation was vital to success at the Dayton peace talks.
15. The time is ripe in Syria. One way or another, Syrians trained in US-sponsored programs will begin to be inserted back into the country over the next year or so.
16. Failure to protect them from bombardment could lead to a Bay of Pigs fiasco.
17. No-fly zones, even with anti-aircraft weapons, are insufficient. The regime and extremists could well attack with artillery. What Syrians need are protected areas along the Turkish border and in the south, where American, opposition, Jordanian and Israeli interests converge.
18. These would not be “safe” areas. They would be target-rich environments in the view of both extremists and the regime.
19. On the ground, they will have to protect themselves. But air cover should come from Coalition countries, including Turkey and Jordan.
20. Military protection will not however make protected areas a success. Only if governance succeeds will they represent a serious step forward.
21. Success in governance will depend on planning and unity.
22. The national plans for The Day After and the Syrian Transition Roadmap have been overtaken by events. Nor is it sufficient for disparate administrative local councils to accomplish heroics here and there.
23. What you need is a plan for governance and enough performance to convince the powers that be that the opposition is a viable governing entity and a bulwark against extremism.
24. I have to admit that I voted twice for Barack Obama, who has made big mistakes in Syria. If you want him to correct those mistakes, you need to do better not only on the battlefield but also in diplomacy and governance.
25. This is a dark moment for the Syrian opposition, but also an opportunity: to write a serious plan for governing liberated areas of Syria.
26. I hope you’ll move in that direction. I pledge my personal support for such an effort.
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