Tag: United Nations
Damsel in distress
France has answered a call from Bamako to stop an Islamist insurgent move southward. Their quick march towards the capital of Mali against an army led by American-trained officers has
left observers struggling to distinguish between fact, spin, and falsehood.
I won’t be surprised if we discover that the story is more complicated than the narrative so far, which is more or less “damsel in distress” and runs along these lines: Northern Mali is already in the hands of Sunni extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda and responsible for destroying Sufi shrines and documents. They were intending to move south to take over the capital, which appealed to France for help. The Brits and Americans are said to be in supporting military roles.
Just who made the appeal, and who is really in power in Bamako, is not clear to me, and no one seems to be asking. Instead they are rushing to do something. The UN Security Council will reportedly meet today. It had already in December approved an ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) military mission of doubtful capabilities to retake the north, but assembling that and deploying it was going to take months. ECOWAS is said to be accelerating its effort.
These military moves may be absolutely necessary. Damsels do sometimes have to be rescued, even if they are not without blemish in precipitating their distress. Mali’s military has played a dubious role in bringing on this crisis. Still, stopping an extremist takeover of Mali sounds like a pretty good idea to me. It is certainly preferable to fighting entrenched extremists for years, as in Yemen.
But I have no confidence that the north can be retaken by purely military means or that Bamako can be held without dealing with whatever brought on this crisis. Mali has had a pretty good reputation for sustaining democratic processes, but clearly something went awry. A few French bombs are not going to set things straight, even if they do discourage the Islamists from moving south.
For those interested in the deeper issues, this event at USIP in December is a good place to start. Those who imagine that civilian instruments of foreign policy can be jettisoned with the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, or that military means alone will solve the challenges we face, had better think again. These damsels will keep turning up where we least expect to find them. We don’t need to rescue them for their sake. What difference does it make if Malians elect their leaders or not?
We rescue governments, democratic or not, for our own sakes: fragile or collapsed states in the hands of extremists have a way of generating explosive packages on international flights, capturing tourists for ransom and investing heavily in the drug trade and human trafficking. These evils in Mali are far more likely to affect Europe in the near term than the United States, so it is a good thing that Europeans are taking the lead. But if they lead only with military means and ignore civilian requirements, whatever they do won’t last long or work well.
PS: @joshuafoust points out that @tweetsintheME (Andrew Lebovich) has elucidated at least some of the ethnic, religious and other background to the conflict. For some of the musical context, click here.
PPS: Jennifer Welsh reviews the legal basis for the French military intervention.
PPPS: The counter-narrative of enemy-producing Western intervention hasn’t taken long to emerge.
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Hagel needs Hegel
I don’t often write about Israel/Palestine issues. There are many other well-informed and intelligent people devoting their professional lives to what is euphemistically known as the Middle East “peace process.” It hasn’t gone anywhere for years, and expert opinion generally suggests it is not going anywhere anytime soon.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting developments. Neither facts nor opinion stand still just because negotiations are going no place. There is a growing inclination among right-wing Jews (Israelis and Americans) to think that they can annex the West Bank without incurring the risk that Arabs will outnumber Jews in this Greater Israel. Either the Arabs will be governed separately and won’t have political rights within Israel, or the Israelis will pay them to leave and go to Jordan, where the Hashemite monarchy is looking shaky anyway.
Let me be clear: either of these solutions is a heinous proposition, the first for an apartheid regime and the second for ethnic cleansing, even if accomplished by financial incentives rather than force. But there are apparently substantial numbers of Israeli Jews (nowhere near a majority yet) willing to consider these propositions rather than the now more commonly accepted two-state solution, which would maintain the Jewish majority in Israel by allowing a Palestinian state to govern the West Bank and (in the traditional proposition) also Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu is arguably among those who appear to find a one-state proposition attractive.
A Palestinian Linked-in colleague asked these questions the other day:
1- if Israel have Any intention of an honest and fruitful dialogue to negotiate for a two state solution, why are they still granting new permissions to build hundreds of illegal units in the illegal settlements built on Palestine occupied land?
2- The withholding of the Palestinian Tax funds by the Israeli government which is leaving over 116 thousand Palestinian employees without salaries
Is that a collective punishment? How long Israel think that the Palestinian will remain cross handed ?
These are perfectly good questions, but I fear the answer is all too obvious: the Israelis building in the settlements and withholding tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority are not interested in the two-state solution. They are pursuing their BATNA: best alternative to a negotiated solution, which is one state without Palestinian votes (or possibly without Palestinians).
The question is how Americans and Palestinians should react to this situation.
As for the Americans, President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense seems to me a correct response, though it is presumably being done for many other reasons as well. Hagel is a determined two-stater. I hope this will be backed up by a substantial portion of the American Jewish community, most of which understands perfectly well that holding on to the West Bank would some day end Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. The big problem in the United States is not the Jews, who voted overwhelmingly for President Obama, but rather evangelical Christians, who appear to have convinced a lot of Republican members of Congress that Hagel ‘s two-state approach betrays inadequate support for Israel.
I cannot speak for Palestinians, but their choices are clear: a re-opened negotiation, a new intifada or a non-violent uprising of a sort that has not been seen so far. A re-opened negotiation is unlikely, since Palestinian President Abbas has, understandably but unfruitfully, insisted on an end to settlement activity as a pre-condition.
It is hard for me to imagine in the wake of the violence that has prevailed recently in the Arab spring that the next rebellion in the Palestinian territories will be nonviolent, much as I believe that would be more effective. It is far more likely that Israel’s growing interest in holding on to the West Bank will generate another violent uprising. But that won’t help the Palestinians to make the case that their state already exists, as they and the UN General Assembly would like to claim. Nor will it convince the Israelis to go back to the bargaining table.
Is there an alternative? Avner Cohen proposes an unlikely one: Asma Aghbarieh-Zahalka, the Arab leader of a non-sectarian, non-ethnic Jewish and Arab political party. Would that life were like that. The sad fact is that Israeli politics will be driven for the foreseeable future by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his increasingly nationalist allies.
I’m afraid the bottom line is that things aren’t likely to go anywhere anytime soon, but Hagel will have a rough time in his confirmation hearing on Israel/Palestine issue. He is going to need some of Hegel’s ability to reconcile the irreconcilable.
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War with Iran in 2013?
Reuters published this piece today, under what I regard as the misleading title “Will this be the year that Israel goes to war with Iran?”
Israel did not bomb Iran last year. Why should it happen this year?
Because it did not happen last year. The Iranians are proceeding apace with their nuclear program. The Americans are determined to stop them. Sanctions are biting, but the diplomatic process produced nothing visible in 2012. Knowledgeable observers believe there is no “zone of possible agreement.” Both the United States and Iran may believe that they have viable alternatives to a negotiated agreement.
While Israel has signaled that its “red line” (no nuclear weapons capability) won’t be reached before mid-2013, it seems likely it will be reached before the end of the year. President Barack Obama has refused to specify his red line, but he has made it amply clear that he prefers intensified sanctions and eventual military action to a nuclear Iran that needs to be contained and provides incentives for other countries to go nuclear. If and when he takes the decision for war, there is little doubt about a bipartisan majority in Congress supporting the effort.
Still, attitudes on the subject have shifted in the past year. Some have concluded that the consequences of war with Iran are so bad and uncertain that every attempt should be made to avoid it. Most have also concluded that Israel could do relatively little damage to the Iranian nuclear program. It might even be counter-productive, as the Iranians would redouble their efforts. The military responsibility lies with President Obama.
There has been a recent flurry of hope that the Iranians are preparing to come clean on their past nuclear weapons activities, which could be a prelude to progress on the diplomatic track. The issue is allegedly one of timing and sequencing: the Iranians want sanctions relief up front. The Americans want to see enrichment to 20 percent stopped and the enriched material shipped out of the country, as well as a full accounting for past activities, before considering any but minor sanctions relief. Some would also like to see dismantling of the hardened enrichment plant at Fordow.
But the fundamental issue is whether Iran is prepared to give up its nuclear weapon ambitions, or whether it is determined to forge ahead. Iranian behavior in the last year suggests no let-up in the country’s regional (and wider) pretensions. It has supported Bashar al-Assad to the hilt in Syria, armed Hamas for its confrontation with Israel, continued to support Hezbollah in Lebanon, assisted North Korea’s ballistic missile satellite launch and made trouble in Iraq. Why would it not also seek nuclear weapons, which would make it immune (or so many in the Iranian regime seem to think) from American regime change efforts?
There are not a lot of good answers to that question, except this: a reasonable man in Tehran might well conclude that Iranian national security is better served by stopping the nuclear program before it actually produces weapons. Once Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the United States will target it. Israel will launch on warning. This hair trigger situation will be more perilous than the nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, when each side assumed the rationality of the other and communications between them were good. Neither Iran nor Israel assumes the other will behave rationally, making deterrence unreliable, and communications between the two governments are virtually non-existent. The distance between Tehran and Jerusalem makes quick decisions necessary.
Two big political uncertainties loom over the nuclear issue next year: Iran is scheduled to hold presidential elections in June and the Supreme Leader is thought to be ill. The identity of neither Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s successor as president nor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s as Supreme Leader is clear. While it may be too much to hope that the successors will be any better than the incumbents, any transition introduces diplomatic delays and uncertainties, even though the nuclear program should be expected to proceed. But will the transitions be orderly, or will the Greens who roiled Iran’s political sphere last time around revive? Iran’s regime has deep roots in revolutionary fervor, which has made it more resilient than Egypt’s. But that does not mean it will last forever.
There is still a slim hope for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. The prospects are not good, but the consequences of failure are dreadful. The Obama Administration has managed to avoid overt commentary on Iran in the last couple of months. Candidate Romney was cautious during the campaign. The door is clearly open to the Iranians, if they want to come in from the cold of sanctions and isolation. If they fail to do so, and continue to buck the international community, war in 2013 is likely. Not because it is a good solution, but because President Obama might regard it as the only solution, albeit a temporary and highly uncertain one.
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What is to be done
Hashem Alshamy, a Syrian reader, criticized peacefare.net today:
Sincerely, I have been disappointed with your overtly focus on “post-conflict” suggestions, solutions and suggestions, while taking the events of the past 22 months for granted. It seems that the crimes committed by the regime, military and militia should be taken as fait accompli, while the world should be watching out until the hotheads take over and start their witch hunt against regime henchmen and the minorities who supported them.
He goes on to suggest:
I still appreciate your interest in following up the Syrian “conflict” and writing about it, but my suggestion is to read more about its history and its composition to provide pragmatic solutions to your followers, including me.
Thank you, Hashem, you are precisely correct. I should be thinking more about what the regime is doing and how to prevent it from generating a negative reaction that will haunt the transition period.
I’ve already pointed in one direction: a UN or Arab League peacekeeping force that would seek to establish a safe and secure environment in which the new authorities can begin to establish the justice mechanisms required to assign accountability for past crimes.
But I’ve also pointed out that it will be difficult to find and deploy an international force of the size and capability required. So what else can be done?
The Day After report prepared by Syrian opposition representatives recommends beginning the transitional justice efforts before the fall of the regime:
- establishing a Preparatory Committee to begin to map a strategy of transitional justice;
- preparing to safeguard records and documentation;
- beginning public messaging and outreach to avoid revenge attacks and raise awareness of transitional justice mechanisms;
- anticipating international interest;considering appropriate frameworks to coordinate and integrate the variety of transitional justice mechanisms; and
- preparing personnel who will be engaged in transitional justice institutions.
I see some sign of effort to document abuses and to safeguard records. I imagine there has been some public messaging against revenge attacks, but I’ll be glad if others would enlighten me further on that. To my knowledge, little else of this has happened so far, but I would be happy for an update.
The Day After report also recommended immediate measures for the security sector:
- building trust between the political leadership of opposition groups and the Free Syrian Army;
- initiating efforts to improve command and control among armed opposition groups, ensure their compliance with human rights standards, and secure their acceptance of civilian authority;
- creating an oversight committee to manage the process of SSR in the transitional period;
- preparing for the establishment of a transitional security force based on the Syrian National Police and other resources, including by providing the police with appropriate training; and
- conducting a preliminary vetting of retired and active high-ranking officers in the army and police to identify trustworthy individuals who might take leadership roles in security sector reform.
I see some effort to build trust and coordinate between the political leadership (the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces) and the Free Syrian Army, which itself is more unified than in the past. But I don’t see a lot of the rest of this happening. Again, I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
What is missing from the Day After report is something I would consider vital: efforts at the local level to establish a safe and secure environment and begin to deliver services to all citizens. I am hoping that organizations like the Civil Administration Councils will make this effort. Syrians are naturally more concerned with their current circumstances than with some abstract future enterprise that the internationals call “transitional justice.” Yes, preparation now for the post-war period can help, as the Day After suggests, but so too can cooperation now to meet immediate human needs in areas that have already been liberated. There is a lot of evidence that cooperation on providing services and enabling economic activity helps to prevent sectarian and ethnic violence when the usual forces of law and order break down.
This is the opposite of the answer Lenin gave to the question “What Is To Be Done?” What Syria needs urgently is not central direction by Lenin’s revolutionary vanguard. The Ba’ath party has arguably provided that to no good effect for many years. Syria needs grassroots efforts by its citizens to establish locally the kind of inclusivity and participation that will prevent future bloodletting.
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War’s end can be deadly too
My Twitterfeed this morning is full of references to a video of Syria’s thugs finishing off rebels with knives and concrete blocks. Fortunately for you, the video did not work for me, so I am not even tempted to post it.
The behavior is, however, worth noting, as it is precisely what makes revenge killing highly likely. How would you feel if one of Asad’s thugs bludgeoned to death your brother, uncle, cousin? Of course you might not know precisely who did it, but you might suspect, or you might know someone working for the Shabiha whom you suspect of doing such things, or you might just feel someone needs to be taught a lesson. If a law and order vacuum follows the fall of Asad, it will be tempting to teach these people a lesson, prevent them from disappearing into the woodwork, or just satisfy the thirst for justice. Once it starts, tit for tat violence is difficult to stop. Police are no longer on the streets, courts have ceased to function as judges flee, prosecutors are seek refuge from infuriated relatives of people they sent to prison.
Most of the Syrian opposition will say it does not seek revenge. They will proclaim loudly that anyone who does not have Syrian blood on their hands can remain in their jobs and continue to provide public services. We have nothing against the Syrian state, they will say, only against those individuals who abused power and mistreated its citizens.
But who does not have Syrian blood on their hands? How do they prove it? It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative, and very hard to respond to accusations outside the neutral space of a serious justice system. It will take years to determine who was responsible for the killing of 45,000 or so opposition victims. Why should perpetrators be allowed to get away with their crimes in the meanwhile?
These are some of the issues that lead me to conclude that Syria is going to need an international peacekeeping force to prevent the worst from happening after the fall of the Asad regime. Such a force cannot bring justice or prevent all abuses, but it can–properly mandated, resourced and led–create what the military refers to as a “safe and secure environment,” provided the warring parties reach at least a temporary political accommodation against further bloodshed. There will still be incidents and reprisals, but if they can be kept below the level of mass atrocity it will give Syria a much better chance to move in a more democratic direction.
A commenter on a previous post suggested Indonesia and Malaysia might be able to contribute several thousand troops. That’s a start, though it seems likely Syria will require tens of thousands. The UN and Arab League–the two most likely leaders of such a peacekeeping force–should be developing the plans, not only for the peacekeeping forces but also for meeting other urgent requirements: humanitarian relief (food, water, shelter and sanitation), macroeconomic stabilization to prevent the currency from collapsing altogether, and support to whatever political process the Syrians can agree on.
America’s luminaries are still focused on a no-fly zone and arms for the rebels. We are past the point where either makes much sense. The rebels have obtained sufficient arms to contest the Syrian security forces throughout most of the country, and they are quickly downing most of the Syrian air force. The death toll is way up–around 400 per day recently–as Asad unleashes what little he has left that he hasn’t already used. I’ve got to hope that UN Envoy Brahimi is successful in getting the Russians to pressure Asad to step aside. Nothing short of that will open the door to a negotiated outcome, which is far more likely to reduce the death toll than continuation of the fighting.
War is deadly, but post-war can be deadly too. It is time to be thinking about how to end this war and begin the peace in an orderly way.
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It is not too early
UN special envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said Friday in Moscow of the Russian Foreign Minister:
I think Sergey Lavrov is absolutely right that the conflict is not only more and more militarized, it is more and more sectarian…And if we are not careful and if the Syrians are not careful, it will be a mainly sectarian conflict.
The day was a particularly bloody one: more than 200 people are said to have been killed in Homs.
The fear of sectarian conflict is well-founded. No matter how many times Syrians tell me that their revolution is not sectarian and aims at a civil state and open, democratic society in which all citizens are equal, the normal mechanisms of violent conflict lend themselves to increasing polarization along sectarian lines. I am afraid, so I seek safety where I can find it, which for Alawites and some other minorities is with the government while Sunnis seek protection from the Free Syrian Army.
Of course there are Sunnis who fight for the Syrian government and minorities who fight for the rebels, but there will be fewer and fewer as time passes. Then when Assad goes, individuals will try to recover property and seek revenge for the harm done to themselves and their families, even if the more organized and disciplined military units on both sides remain disciplined. Revenge killing spirals quickly, polarizing people further and driving them into the arms of their family, tribe, sect or ethnicity. Building a state on the ruins of a fragmented society is far more difficult than anyone imagines in advance.
That’s why I also welcome something else Brahimi said:
Perhaps a peacekeeping force may be acceptable. But it must be part of a complete package that begins with peacekeeping and ends with an election.
This is the first I’ve seen the obvious mentioned at his level: peacekeeping forces are going to be needed in Syria. They will be needed not only to protect minorities but also to support the post-war state-building effort. We’ve seen in Libya what happens when the new state does not have a monopoly on the means of violence. Extremists of all sorts, including Al Qaeda franchisees, set up shop. State-building without a monopoly on the means of violence becomes a dicey proposition. There will be more than two armed forces in Syria at the end of the civil war: Syrian army, local militias, regime Shabiha, Free Syria Army, Jabhat al Nusra and other jihadi extremists.
The issue in Syria is where peacekeeping troops can be found. Even if they are needed, that does not mean they will be available. The obvious troop contributors have all been protagonists in the proxy war of the past two years: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The Turks and Russians may be willing, but won’t trust each other. The Americans will not want to put troops into Syria. Nor will the Europeans. China now has experience in 20 UN peacekeeping operations and might like to extend its reach into the Middle East, if the Americans and Russians will allow it. Iran is out of the question, though it will likely stir up trouble using some of the regime militia forces left over. There are lots of other possibilities, but few I can think of that meet the full panoply of desirable criteria: impartial, Arabic-speaking, experienced and self-sufficient in peacekeeping operations, available for deployment abroad. Algeria and Morocco?
A related question is who would authorize and supervise a peacekeeping operation. The UN is one possibility, but the divisions in the Security Council over the past two years hardly suggest it could act decisively. The Arab League is another. Still another is an invitation from a new Syrian government, which would have the advantage of picking which countries to invite and directing where they deploy. But that could defeat the whole purpose of inviting in a more impartial force.
If–against the odds–an international peacekeeping force is somehow put together and somehow properly authorized for Syria, it is important to remember Brahimi’s caution, written before he took up his present position:
Even if such peacekeepers are well-armed and well-trained, however, they will be no match for much larger and well organized forces intent on destroying the
peace or committing mass atrocities. It has to be said upfront that the military forces, civilian police, human rights experts and international aid workers will not provide security, protection, justice, social services and jobs for all of the millions or tens of millions of inhabitants of the country.
A solid political solution is a prerequisite to a peacekeeping deployment.
Syria is going to be a very difficult post-war operation. It is not too early to be thinking about who will conduct it and under what mandate.
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