Tag: United Nations
Fin de regime
My guess is that we are finally in the waning days of the Asad regime in Syria. UN envoy Brahimi was in Damascus yesterday and will talk with the Russians this weekend. His is sounding like a last ditch effort. Moscow has made it clear that it will no longer prop up Asad. Now they have to be convinced to give him a shove in the right direction. It shouldn’t be all that hard. Bashar’s military police chief has famously absconded, joining his foreign ministry spokesperson. The regime is cracking, though not yet crumbling.
This is a delicate moment in which a great deal is at stake. The devil is in the details. Brahimi is still pressing for a solution that jibes with last June’s Geneva agreement, which Moscow and Washington both endorsed, on formation of a fully empowered government with Bashar still in place. I doubt the revolutionaries will accept it. They want him out before agreeing to a ceasefire. Provided that condition is met, a negotiated transition of power to some sort of “unity” government (which means it would include a “remnant” of the Asad regime) with a guarantee of a future transition could be a good thing, provided it genuinely puts Syria on a democratic path and extracts it from the violence now on going. But it could also sell the Syrian revolution short by putting a new autocrat in place and creating conditions for renewed violence.
There will be precious little real international support for a true transition to democracy. The Saudis and Qataris, who have provided the bulk of the arms and money to the revolutionaries, are not much interested in anything beyond getting Asad out and installing a Sunni (preferably Islamist) regime, democratic or not. The Russians, Iranians and Iraqis will fear that outcome and want to preserve a secular regime, whether democratic or not. The Americans and Turks will want a secular democracy, but they are not in a position to insist on it. The Americans have been reluctant to get too involved. Only if Turkey decides to put its boots on the ground inside Syria will it have the kind of clout required. Even then, it may fail to get what it wants.
The Syrians hold the key to the outcome. But of course they point in many different directions. There are lots of Syrians who would prefer a secular democracy, but they are stronger among the nonviolent protesters than among the revolutionary military forces deciding the outcome. The Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, now recognized internationally as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, is trying to project a unified and moderate image. But the results so far are rudimentary: a few press statements, not always on the most pressing issues. There is still no transition government.
Jabhat al Nusra, a leading Islamist group among the fighters, is producing more substantial results. Rejecting the Coalition, it is anti-Western, Islamist, socially conservative and hard-fighting. The United States has designated it a foreign terrorist organization. Washington’s primary concern is its links to al Qaeda in Iraq, which Jabhat al Nusra denies. But I’ve also heard that the designation was done in part to please the Russians, who are genuinely (and justifiably) concerned with Syria becoming a source of Islamist extremism that could infect parts of Russia. Baghdad is also worried about a Sunni extremist regime in Syria that would try to counter Prime Minister Maliki’s increasingly Shia (and autocratic) drift in Iraq.
Few in Syria want the state to collapse or divide territorially. The revolution has not been fought on ethnic or sectarian grounds, even if it has exposed ethnic and sectarian divisions. Only Syria’s Kurds lean in the direction of federalism, inspired and supported by their confrères in Iraq. But I see no real plan on the horizon to prevent revenge killing, despite the very real likelihood it will happen. If there is extreme violence against the Alawites or other minorities thought to have supported the regime, collapse and division become more likely.
All decisions that depend on the will of a single individual, as Bashar’s to step aside does, are inherently unpredictable. There is of course the possibility he will refuse and hang on for a while, even defying the Russians to do so. A Google search for “fin de regime” turns up a lot of hits concerning Syria, in 2011. The longer this goes on, the worse it will be in the end.
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What can go wrong?
I am a great fan of Fred Hof’s Seven Key Points on Syria elaborated yesterday at the Atlantic Council. While I might quarrel on particular points, he lays out clearly what he thinks has to be done to make Syria come out reasonably well from the American perspective. What he recommends would also be good for the vast majority of Syrians.
But of course that means he also implies the inverse, all the things that can go wrong. They are at least as many as his seven points:
- The end of the Asad regime could still take a long time. This would mean not only more death and destruction, but also more polarization and radicalization. The Syrian state might well fail if this goes on for weeks, never mind months, more.
- Since there is no silver bullet, we are going to have to do a lot of things at the same time to hasten the regime’s end. Sanctions tend to erode with time. Even if they are maintained, the regime will learn how to evade and exploit them. Washington has to try to get the Russians on board, even as we work with Friends of Syria to do things that will offend Moscow. The Americans also have to manage Iran–stopping its nuclear program is arguably more important to Washington than winning the day in Syria.
- The new Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces will need to get an alternative government up and running quickly. It is hard to picture much more difficult conditions in which to do this. The opposition is still politically fractious, large parts of it are lacking in funds, communications are difficult and it will need to incorporate many new faces as the regime starts to crumble.
- If guns decide the outcome, extremists are likely to come out on top. They will not only have earned in combat the admiration of parts of the population. They will also be in a position to distribute resources and intimidate opposition.
- The Americans are late supplying arms. Even if they move expeditiously now, they are behind the curve. And Washington will want to provide arms only to those who offer guarantees in return that they will not be used against the civilian population or transferred to extremists. Conditions, however justified, will slow the process and make it far less efficient than Saudi and Qatari distribution of hard cash.
- The messiness of the post-Asad period will make it hard to understand what is going on and also hard to mobilize resources. Parts of the state–the secret services in particular–are likely to collapse, sectarian sentiment will run high, revenge killings will happen, the international community will be slow out of the gate and the political horizon will be cloudy. It is difficult to picture where the troops for an international stabilization force would come from. Hof’s suggestion that Turkish forces protect the Alawites may be unwelcome both in Istanbul and Latakia.
- Resources are not likely to arrive quickly. They rarely do, and Syria is a poor country (more like Egypt than like Libya in terms of natural resources). The standards for accountability and transparency that the international community levies will not be easy to meet.
This is not a pretty picture. A collapsed state with extremists on top, sectarian warfare in many places and inadquate resources from the international community could make Syria look something like Iraq in 2006.
I am an enthusiast for the Syrian opposition, which has been through difficult trials and always bounces back fighting. They are going to succeed in toppling Bashar al Asad. But success in bringing down Asad quickly and the subsequent transition will require a much more concerted effort than we have seen thus far by the Syrians, and by the international community.
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Who’s afraid of North Korea?
The North Korean launch of a satellite has spooked the experts. Many thought the rocket wasn’t ready or anticipated its failure. Things seem to have gone quickly and smoothly, a stark contrast to previous attempts.
Lots of countries can launch satellites. All the other current nuclear weapons states can do it. Why so much concern about North Korea? There are two reasons:
- North Korea is North Korea;
- the UN Security Council has prohibited Pyongyang from testing long-range missiles.
Pyongyang has repeatedly shown itself ready and willing to use force, mainly against South Korea, which is pretty much the only enemy it can reach with its current arsenal. Preoccupied with its own survival, the regime is bellicose and provocative towards not only the South but also towards Japan and the United States.
Even paranoids have enemies. Tokyo and Washington are no friends of Pyongyang and would be delighted to see the regime there tumble. Short of that, they would like to see it constrained. They have been successful twice in convincing the Security Council to levy tough requirements on North Korea.
The military threat to the United States from North Korea is not the principal problem. Even with this successful missile launch, it will be decades before Pyongyang is capable of seriously threatening any of its neighbors other than Seoul. The United States is safe from North Korean nuclear weapons for a good while into the future.
But North Korea’s belligerence is destabilizing regionally. Between North Korean belligerence and Chinese nationalism, Tokyo is not wrong to think about how it needs to beef up its defense capabilities. Even the Chinese have objected to the satellite launch, which most experts believe is a thinly veiled missile test.
Also important is the weight and prestige of the UN Security Council. There are many countries that do not stick to the letter of what the UNSC decides. But the (Chapter VII) resolutions on North Korea are unusually explicit and forceful on the ballistic missile issue:
- 1718 (2006) “Demands that the DPRK not conduct any further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile”;
- 1874 (2009) “Demands that the DPRK not conduct any further nuclear test or any launch using ballistic missile technology.”
Note that slight shift in language, obviously intended to include something like a satellite launch, which uses ballistic missile technology even if some might say a launch vehicle is not a “missile.” North Korean defiance, which extends also to many other aspects of these two resolutions, risks convincing others that the UNSC is a paper tiger.
So now it is up to the Security Council to respond. I imagine it will find a way to tighten sanctions or other measures against Pyongyang, an approach that has not worked overly well in the past but still checks the “we did something” box. It is in fact hard to think of anything else to do. No one should today be afraid of North Korea except South and North Koreans, who suffer mightily under the Kim regime. They may have to suffer more now that the regime boasts longer-range missiles with which to frighten its neighbors.
PS: For the Korean speakers among you (translations welcome), here is the official announcement (via @shanghaiist):
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Justice still doesn’t always mean convictions
The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) acquittal today of Ramush Haradinaj and Idriz Balaj has elicited the expected reactions in Serbia and Kosovo. The Kosovars are celebrating while the Serbs denounce the ruling.
My own reaction, at least until I have a chance to read the decision, is the same as the one I had a couple of weeks ago, when an ICTY appeals panel found two Croatian generals not guilty: justice does not always mean convictions. All neutral observers I know think the prosecutor in Haradinaj/Balaj case simply failed to meet the burden of proof. Why that was the case is not so clear, but it left the court with little choice. “Not guilty” does not exonerate. It only finds that adequate evidence was not presented to prove the case.
That is not how Serbs and Albanians view court verdicts. Serbs see this and the previous acquittal as demonstrating ICTY bias against Serbs. Albanians view the verdict as validation of the war conducted by the Kosovo Liberation Army against Belgrade’s security forces. Both are wrong. The court did not consider the general question of justification for the armed uprising in the late 1990s. It considered the specific allegations against two specific people, both of whom unquestionably committed acts of armed rebellion that violated Yugoslav law of the time.
I have a little personal experience with Ramush, who came to see me without publicity repeatedly after the war, when he had already laid down his arms and was beginning his political career. He pursued that with vigor until he was indicted the first time in 2005, when he resigned from the prime ministry and went to The Hague. I also visited him in2001 in Gllogjane/Glodane, the village where his family reigns supreme. He took me to the graves of his two brothers killed in the war and described to me in some detail the fighting he was involved in against Yugoslav security forces. He did not–but who would?–admit to any violence against Serb civilians. He also denied that his family was involved in any way in the fighting in 2001 in Macedonia. That, I believe, was untrue.
Ramush will now return to Kosovo, where it is widely expected that Prime Minister Thaci will try to restore his uncertain majority in Parliament by bringing Ramush’s party into the government. Ramush may extract a substantial price for his support. This could complicate the ongoing political-level talks between Pristina and Belgrade, which have seen a couple of business-like, but as yet unproductive, meetings. Unafraid of being criticized for being soft on Serbs, Ramush is likely to take a pragmatic approach to relations with Belgrade. But Belgrade’s politicians will find it harder to meet with him than with Thaci, whose war-time role was primarily political rather than military.
Proving things in court more than ten years after the fact is not easy. I don’t know if Ramush committed the acts he was accused of or not. If someone in Belgrade has stronger evidence than the prosecutor presented, they should have made it available. I do know that an orderly and deliberative court using modern methods and procedures has found him not guilty. You may not like the outcome, but little purpose is served by denouncing the court. Justice still doesn’t always mean convictions.
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Justice does not always mean convictions
The acquittal at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) last week of two Croatian generals responsible for Operation Storm in 1995 has occasioned a lot of annoyance among Serbs. Belgrade has downgraded cooperation with the Tribunal. I got some pretty ugly tweets, because somehow I am responsible for what ICTY decides. Anti-Semitic tirades accused me of being a Nazi.
So I decided to read the judgement, which I imagine few of my expletive-wielding antagonists had done. I am not a lawyer, but the appeals panel that made the split decision to reverse a lower chamber’s conviction did not, in my layman’s view, exonerate the generals. What it did was to find the trial chamber’s decisions faulty and indict the prosecution’s case as weak and ill-founded. This distinction is important. Courts do not exonerate. They find guilty, or not guilty. Not guilty does not mean innocent. It means everything from innocent to insufficient evidence to poorly argued to logically inconsistent to incorrectly processed. This gives the accused the benefit of doubt, which some of them are able to exploit to get off the hook (in this case only after Gotovina had spent seven years in prison). That is inherent in a modern court system, which seeks to avoid false convictions.
The main rational objection to the Tribunal in Serbia is that it is biased against Serbs. I find this assertion hard to credit. Certainly ICTY has indicted more Serbs (94 of 161) than Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians, who were the main ethnic groups involved in the Balkans wars of the 1990s. There are many possible reasons for that: Serbs were certainly involved in more wars (they fought against each of the other three ethnic groups), they may have engaged in more criminal activities, and even if they did not there may be more evidence available against them, including more witnesses willing to testify. Belgrade did not help by refusing to cooperate with ICTY for years. The number of indictments and convictions is not a reliable indicator of bias.
It is really very difficult, given the varied make-up of the Tribunal’s judges and staff, to imagine how any systematic bias could be at work. And this particular decision was a close call: 3 to 2. It is far more likely that the Tribunal’s critics simply don’t accept that certain acts are criminal according to the laws of war. Whenever someone objects to a conviction on grounds that the acts involved were provoked by another ethnic group, or were not as bad as what another ethnic group did, the critic simply does not understand what application of law to war means. The Tribunal judges individuals (and their joint action), not ethnic groups.
Personally, I don’t have much doubt that the way in which the generals conducted their offensive against Serb-held areas in Croatia was indiscriminate, inconsistent with their obligation to protect civilians and unlawful. My opinion is that they intended to displace the civilian population by force. I’d have preferred that they be held criminally responsible for it.
But I don’t envy the judges who sit at ICTY on trials and appeals, or the prosecutors that try them. The facts of these cases are horrendous. The evidence is often less than fulsome. Procedures and standards (the main issue in this case) are not always as well-defined. There will never be justice for most of the victims, who are heard only faintly through the often muted voices of survivors. Bad guys certainly get off. But to my knowledge ICTY has a good record of avoiding false convictions. That is very much to its credit.
I understand Serbs are offended that the Croatian generals whom Belgrade holds responsible for ethnic cleansing got off. The unseemly celebrations in Zagreb irritated an old wound. But it would be unwise to promise that everyone who committed crimes would be convicted. Nor is it reasonable to expect that ICTY will go easy on Serbs to compensate for the Croatian acquittals. Justice is an individual, not an ethnic, issue.
If someone has evidence that ICTY is systematically biased against Serbs, I’ll be glad to have a look at it. If not, it is time to put the ethnic feelings to one side and accept the fact that some of those who committed heinous crimes will be convicted and others not. Justice does not always mean convictions.
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The Gaza war in regional context
While the news media is mainly focused on the exchanges of rocket and air attacks between Israel and Gaza, my guess is that the broader regional picture will be decisive in determining the course and outcome of this latest outbreak of war in the Middle East. Here is a rundown of that broader picture:
1. Egypt: Cairo is trying to broker a ceasefire, with rhetorical support from the Arab League, but the Egyptian Prime Minister’s visit to Gaza Friday made it clear that the Muslim Brotherhood-led government will be more sympathetic to Hamas than Hosni Mubarak. Still, Egypt is in a tight spot: continuation of the war will attract militants to Gaza and the Sinai as well as send an already weak Egyptian economy into a tailspin. While Hamas has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, a democratic regime in Egypt has to worry that Egypt’s citizens, sympathetic as they are to the plight of the Palestinians, will not want to sacrifice too much on their behalf. A ceasefire could restore Egypt’s role as a key regional player.
2. Syria: There has already been an exchange of artillery fire between the Syrian regime and Israel, something that hasn’t happened in a long time. Bashar al Asad may well look to military action on the Golan front in an effort to rally his remaining support and try to divert attention from his war against the Syrian revolution, now more than a year and a half old. The Syrian army won’t have a lot of spare capacity to challenge Israel, but it won’t want to be left out of the fight if the war continues.
3. Jordan: The protest movement against the rule of King Abdullah has intensified. The monarchy will not want to divert security forces to a fight against Israel, with which it maintains good if not warm relations. If the protests are successful, the king will be weakened further. A more constitutional monarchy might well be less friendly to Israel, but still unwilling to risk conflict.
4. Hizbollah: On the Lebanese front, Hizbollah is the main military force. It is already heavily engaged fighting against the revolution in Syria, but it could presumably make Israel’s situation more difficult by joining in the rocket barrage. Its record fighting Israeli ground forces is significantly better than Hamas’, so the Israelis would hesitate to engage on both fronts. But Hizbollah will be reluctant to aid Hamas, which has fallen out with the Syrian regime Hizbollah is supporting.
5. Gulf Cooperation Council: The Saudis and the other GCC states have not generally engaged directly against Israel, but the visit last week of the Emir of Qatar to Gaza (and his promise of financing) suggest that they may play a behind the scenes role bankrolling Hamas and others willing to challenge Israel. This could significantly attenuate the quiet but growing accommodation between Israel and the Sunni Arab world.
6. Turkey: Turkey and Israel seemed headed for rapprochement that would cure the 2010 rift over the Israeli attack on a Turkish aid flotilla headed for Gaza. This now seems much less likely. Turkey’s Islamist government will have to give at least verbal support to Hamas and hesitate to appear to paper over its differences with Tel Aviv.
7. Iran: Many of the larger rockets in Hamas’ arsenal come from Iran, which must be enjoying watching the Israelis engage in Gaza rather than carrying out the threat to destroy Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Iran will no doubt provide Hamas, Hizbollah and Syria as much assistance as it can spare in its sanctions-weakened state, hoping to keep the Israelis preoccupied.
8. The wider Arab world: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen and Sudan all have their own problems that preclude more than rhetorical engagement in the Palestinian cause. Marc Lynch notes that mobilization in the Arab world so far is limited but could well intensify. The Arab street, which presumably has a louder voice today than before the Arab awakening, is certainly sympathetic to the Palestinians. And it is far more likely to support Hamas’ more aggressive military approach to Israel than the Palestine Liberation Organization’s diplomatic push for membership for membership in the United Nations.
Bottom line: Egypt likely has the decisive role in determining whether this war remains, like the one in 2008/9, a bilateral affair or turns into a wider conflict with more permanent consequences. But Iran, Hizbollah, and Turkey are also important players. If Israeli ground action lines up all the regional forces in favor of Hamas, the unintended consequences could be dramatic.
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