Tag: United Nations
Glass empty
Yesterday’s Middle East Institute discussion of Hamas’s shifting political calculations, moderated by Phil Wilcox of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, was one of the more depressing events I’ve attended lately. And I attend a lot of them.
Bottom line: the shifts, though potentially real, will make no difference to the peace process with Israel. Or even to reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.
Rob Malley of the International Crisis Group suggested the Arab awakening has certainly sharpened questions for Hamas about its relationship with Syria and Iran and about whether it should moderate its views, as other Muslim Brotherhood organizations have done. Hamas refused to support Bashar al Assad, but somehow that is now a byegone. Iran has renewed its financing, though at what level is unclear.
Gaith al Omari of the American Task Force on Palestine said Hamas needs Iranian financing less than in the past because it has Gaza’s revenue, which makes the Gaza leadership more independent. There is really no progress on reconciliation with Fatah, which would require more than naming a new unity government. It would require agreement on holding elections and unifying the security forces. So far, all we’ve seen is reconciliation theater, nothing more.
Mark Perry of the Jersalem Media and Communications Center anticipates generational change will be important inside Hamas. The outside (of Gaza) leadership may be ready for acceptance of the 1967 borders for a Palestinian state and for reconciliation, but the inside Gaza leadership is not. The division is not really ideological, Malley said, but based on where you happen to sit. There is a real debate happening, but the outcome is unclear.
The U.S. is a problem. The “quartet” (U.S., EU, UN and Russia) conditions (recognition of Israel’s right to exist, renunciation of violence and acceptance of past agreements) are unconditional. But Hamas sees no likelihood that Washington can really bring Israel to the negotiating table with anything interesting to offer on settlements, Jerusalem or other important issues. Hamas’ great fear is that it will get trapped like Fatah, having compromised without getting anything substantial in return. They want to know if they accept the conditions what would happen next. The U.S. has no serious response.
There is nevertheless no alternative to a U.S.-led mediation process. The Europeans and the UN have nothing substantial to offer.
This left me wondering whether George W. Bush was right when he shunned the Middle East peace process. The prospects for anything interesting happening sounded minimal to me. Then again, when the experts all agree the glass is empty, that’s when something interesting happens.
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Justice delayed
The conviction of former Liberian president Charles Taylor more than a decade after the war crimes he aided and abetted during the period 1996-2002 answers one important question about his role in the war in Sierra Leone: did he bear some responsibility for rebel atrocities, even if he did not command them directly or conspire to produce them? The court said yes, though an alternate judge held a dissenting view.
Judging from Helene Cooper’s graphic piece in the New York Times about her own family’s experiences, the conviction also provides an important occasion for victims. Even more than ten years after the fact, even though the indictment covered only crimes in Sierra Leone and not in Liberia, they take some satisfaction from knowing that justice has not been denied but only delayed.
But what does it do, and not do, to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity in the future? When Charles Taylor was indicted, it was widely believed that the court action would disrupt the then ongoing process of beginning the reconstruction of Liberia. Helene Cooper notes that he was tried for crimes in Sierra Leone rather than Liberia to avoid political problems that might have arisen in the country of which he was once president. So far as I can tell, these fears have proven unfounded. Charles Taylor is not today an important political factor in a Liberia that has made substantial progress in becoming a normal, functioning country, even if a frighteningly poor one.
Many diplomats bemoan the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of President Omar al Bashir of Sudan, because they say it makes him hold on to power more tightly and interferes with diplomatic efforts to resolve the various conflicts embroiling his country. That view readily prevails in Syria, where President Bashar al Assad’s obvious responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot lead to an ICC indictment because Russia will prevent the necessary referral from passing in the UN Security Council. Ugandan religious leader Joseph Kony, an ICC indictee, is still at large, despite a U.S.-aided manhunt. ICC indictment of Muammar Qaddafi, his son Saif and their security chief in Libya does not appear to have had much impact on their behavior.
So what good is an indictment that won’t produce justice for decades? It is unlikely that the indictees themselves will moderate their behavior in response to an indictment. Their discount rate is high and the results too uncertain and too far in the future to make them behave. But there are other possible benefits. First, an indictment may give pause to some of those below the top leadership, who will want to avoid also being held responsible. Second, an indictment is a concrete expression of international community will to remove a leader from power. It may not help in cutting deals, but it makes the bottom line remarkably clear.
Charles Taylor is the first head of state to be convicted since the Nuremberg trials. He is likely not the last. International justice is agonizingly slow, frustratingly incomplete, and potentially damaging to prospects for negotiated settlements. But even justice delayed can shed light on past events, moderate behavior and provide satisfaction to victims.
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Remembrance without resolve
How much time is required to decide if the UN observers in Syria are failing? If you are the New York Times, two weekend days after authorization by the UN Security Council will do. You wouldn’t want to wait until a significant number of them have actually deployed. Even today, only eleven are active. And you would cite Syrian army attacks occurring while they are not present as evidence of their ineffectiveness, whereas the opposite would seem more likely the case: reduced attacks while the observers are present suggest they are having an impact.
The observers admittedly have a thankless task. There is as yet no peace to keep in Syria, where the regime continues to attack its opponents, refuses to withdraw the military from population centers or to allow peaceful demonstrations, blocks journalistic and humanitarian access and is not prepared to discuss a transition away from the Assad regime. The opposition also occasionally resorts to violence against the security forces. If they are going to have an impact, the observers will need to acquire it after full deployment over a period of weeks, working diligently with both protesters and the regime to ensure disengagement and to gain respect for Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan.
This they can do, but only by being forthright in their assessments of what is going on, determined in their efforts to go where they want when they want and honest in communicating their observations to both the Syrian and the international press.
The regime will do everything it can to intimidate the observers and shield their eyes from the worst of what is going on. It will retaliate against protesters who communicate with the observers. And it will play “cat and mouse,” encouraging the observers to go where nothing is happening and discouraging them from going where something interesting might be observed.
Kofi Annan will not be easily fooled. His long experience with UN peacekeeping and with the Security Council will ensure that Bashar al Assad faces a savvy and determined international civil servant, provided Washington continues to back the UN effort.
The initial deployment is for 90 days. It should have been shorter, so that the Security Council would be forced to review and decide whether to renew the mission earlier than July. Still, reports every 15 days to the Council will keep the issue on its agenda. The number of observers is limited to 300, still too few to monitor a country the size and population of Syria. At the very best, they will be able to make a difference in a relatively few communities, unless their numbers are much increased.
Some of the observers are likely to resign in frustration, as some of the Arab League observers did over the past winter. Others will take the regime’s side, criticizing the protesters for violence against the security forces. There will be confusion, even consternation, as they try to get a grip on a very slippery situation, one that threatens every day to descend into sectarian bloodletting of the worst sort.
Ultimately, Kofi Annan will need to decide whether the observers are serving a useful purpose. The history of such missions suggests that they are greeted initially with a surge of violence, which subsides if the observers gain respect as truly neutral. The difficulty is that “neutrality” is in the eye of the beholder. One of the beholders in Syria, Bashar al Assad, has labelled all the demonstrators terrorists and will try to settle for nothing less from the UN.
As chance would have it, President Obama on Monday announced the creation of an Atrocities Prevention Board, saying
…remembrance without resolve is a hollow gesture.
The first test of those words will be in Syria, Bahrain and the border between what is now Sudan and South Sudan. In all three places, there is a need to stiffen international community and in particular U.S. resolve to prevent atrocities, protect civilians and make oppressors accountable. This does not necessarily mean the military action others are calling for. In fact, none of these situations lends itself to military means. But the full political, diplomatic and economic weight of the United States should be brought to bear. The President needs make sure his words and gestures are not hollow as he weighs U.S. options in these on-going conflicts.
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The 90 day ultimatum
United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice used today’s passage of UNSC Security Council resolution 2043 authorizing deployment of 300 UN observers to Syria to issue an ultimatum: the Syrian government needs to fully comply with the six-point Annan plan or else.
Or else what? The explicit threat was not to renew the observer mission. But Rice was trying to imply more than that:
…let there be no doubt: we, our allies and others in this body are planning and preparing for those actions that will be required of us all, if the Asad regime persists in the slaughter of the Syrian people.
There are not a lot of good options out there. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday revealed few. Tightening sanctions is one, but the Russians resisted including that in the resolution. Maybe they will be willing to do it if Damascus continues to defy the Security Council for another 90 days. An arms embargo is another. But arms embargoes are normally enforced against a country, not only a government. The Russians are unlikely to allow one to pass that applies to Damascus but not the Free Syria Army. While I am not in favor of a violent uprising, it would be profoundly unjust to deny Syrians the means to defend themselves.
Then there is the option Rice was presumably trying to imply: military action, by NATO and/or a coalition of the willing. I still see little prospect of this happening, though three more months of Syrian government defiance could change the picture.
Unfortunately what the 90-day ultimatum does in the meanwhile is to give Bashar al Assad a three-month hunting license. It is now in his interest to get the observers in as quickly as possible, since no military action can be taken while they are deployed in Syria. He’ll try to use the 90 days to bag as many protesters as possible. It would have been far better to deploy them with no fixed time limit, or with a shorter one requiring re-authorization by the Security Council. The reports the Secretary General is required to make every 15 days are a useful mechanism to keep international attention focused on implementation of the Annan plan, but they don’t provide the same leverage that a shorter authorization would have done.
That said, the key is to get the Syrian army out of artillery range of population centers. Randa Slim wisely reminds us that local leaders in Syria have the capacity to put hundreds of thousands–maybe millions–into the streets if peace protests are permitted, as required by the Annan plan. This she suggests would be a game changer.
I agree. Syria needs no more than a couple of days of relative peace for the people to show unequivocally and peacefully their preference for Bashar al Assad’s departure. If the observers can help to give them those days, their deployment will be worthwhile. If not, withdrawal in 90 days will be the right move. But then it will be incumbent on the Obama Administration to have a plan for what comes next.
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Syria can get worse
NATO preparations for military intervention in Syria are again in the news. The Obama Administration is looking for Plan B. Even my former colleagues at US Institute of Peace are calling for suppression of Syrian air defenses. That’s spelled W-A-R.
I am feeling the need to repeat what I’ve said before: half measures won’t work and could make things worse. If removal of Bashar al Assad from power is your objective, and you propose to achieve it by military means, don’t trick yourself into thinking it will necessarily be easy or quick. Certainly a humanitarian corridor is not an obvious or direct means of getting rid of Bashar. It is a target-rich environment that is only safe if military force makes it so.
It would be folly for NATO to waste its resources on such a half-baked non-solution. That is certainly one of the lessons of the Libya experience, when a humanitarian intervention had to refocus on Qaddafi in order to bring about the desired, but not stated, result.
If you want Bashar al Assad out, the thing to do is take him out. A massive attack on Syria’s command and control facilities would force him underground–as a lesser effort eventually did to Qaddafi–and all but guarantee that the regime changes, though in which direction is unpredictable. To control that, you’ve got to put boots on the ground. But you will also need to write off any prospect of Russian or Chinese support for action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are certainly a greater threat to U.S. national security than Bashar al Assad.
Arming the opposition is another option. There is lots of mumbling from Senators McCain and Lieberman about how the Free Syria Army (FSA) hasn’t gotten any help from anyone and are running out of ammo. The French call that de la blague. The Turkish and Iraqi borders have seen lots of arms flowing. Others want to manage the process despite the chaotic conditions. The FSA is not a threat to the Syrian regime in the short-term. It is an insurgency that will be difficult to defeat entirely but offers little immediate prospect of displacing Bashar al Assad, whose army is stronger than the Libyan one and notably more loyal.
A long, violent, drawn-out and increasingly sectarian conflict in Syria is not a good outcome for the United States. I am second to none in wishing Bashar al Assad gone from a country in which I studied Arabic and enjoyed remarkable hospitality from people who have suffered a half century of privation, economic and political. Yes, we should certainly support the on-the-ground opposition and do everything possible to protect their right to protest and determine their own political future.
But the best bet for now is to play out Annan plan and the UN observer scenario for what it is worth: either it will lead to a serious reduction in violence, and I hope a corresponding increase in peaceful protest, or the observers will give up like the Arab League observers before them and abandon the field. If the former, we’ll all be able to celebrate, as nonviolent protest will provide by far the best foundation for a successful transition to something like democracy. If the latter, we should not be surprised to find that things get worse, much worse, as they did after the Arab League observers withdrew.
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What good are UN observers?
That was my title for a piece The Guardian published this morning as UN observers in Syria must show courage in their actions and words:
By insisting on moving freely, and reporting what they see, the observers can deter violence and help to restore stability in Syria
As Kofi Annan rushes to deploy the first 30 UN observers to Syria, it is important to ask what good they might do. How can a few dozen unarmed soldiers monitor a ceasefire in a country of more than 22 million? Even at their anticipated full strength of 250, what can they really accomplish? Won’t government minders lead them around by the nose, showing them only what President Bashar al-Assad wants them to see? How can they possibly understand what is going on in a situation that is chaotic at best, homicidal at worst?
These doubts are well-founded, especially in today’s Syria. Observers are most useful where there is a peace to keep. If both sides in a conflict conclude that they cannot make further gains by fighting, then observers can increase mutual confidence in a ceasefire and reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings or miscommunications leading to violence.
Those conditions do not exist today in much of Syria, where the government is still purposefully attacking its own population. Violence has declined in some places, but fighting continues in others. The government has already made it clear it wants the observers to go where and when it is safe, as determined by Damascus. On Sunday, Assad’s spokeswoman said: “Syria cannot be responsible for the security of these observers unless it co-ordinates and participates in all steps on the ground.” This is as much threat as warning. The government security forces have always tried to focus on one major community at a time. Damascus will try to take the observers to those communities where relative peace prevails.
To be effective in this situation, the observers will need to take a proactive stance, reaching out to the Syrian opposition, insisting on going where they want when they want, and reporting amply on what they find. This takes courage. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is providing the top cover. “It is the Syrian government’s responsibility to guarantee freedom of access, freedom of movement within the country,” he said. The observers will need to focus their attention on the violence, report on its origins and course, and demand that it stop.
Liaison with the opposition, while desirable, is also problematic. Anyone the UN observers contact may be tracked and monitored by the Syrian security forces. Arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killings are common in Assad’s Syria. Some courageous individuals will speak up no matter what. Others, who are prepared to talk with the observers, will need to move quickly to protect themselves thereafter, changing residences, cell phones and even identities. This will make it difficult for the observers to maintain continuity.
Despite these very real problems, the presence and persistence of the observers can deter violence and encourage non-violent protest. The opposition will become less bold in provoking the security forces, fearing provocations will be visible internationally. Peaceful demonstrations, which are already common, will become larger and more frequent. The security forces will gradually realise that the observers cannot be intimidated and that they will return to check and re-check what is going on, reporting their findings in ways that will embarrass anyone who is continuing the violence. The commanders may begin to behave with less abandon.
The UN observers, in addition to doing whatever they can to report on violations of the Annan plan, need to keep in mind their own broader significance. They are the living symbols of international community engagement, the only token so far of the UN security council’s commitment to restoring peace and stability in Syria. They will need to try to maintain a good working relationship with the Syrian government, but they also have to insist on their own independence. This includes the freedom to meet with the Syrian and foreign media and report fully what they have found.
The ceasefire, already fraying, cannot, however, succeed for long on its own. The UN security council resolution requires humanitarian and media access as well as the start of a political dialogue. This is where Annan’s job gets really hard. Even though the security council was silent on the future of Assad, he has to be convinced to step aside, because there can be no serious transition if he remains in place. The ceasefire can only be a bridge to a broader political solution, not an end in itself.
If the observers come to the conclusion that current conditions do not permit them to do their work effectively, or if they determine that one side or the other is primarily responsible for the violence and mayhem, then they need to say so plainly. Failure is a possibility, but even failure can sometimes have a positive impact. The Arab League observers, whose mission failed during the winter, played a useful role despite their pro-Assad Sudanese leader. They talked with the opposition, their presence encouraged peaceful demonstrations, some reported accurately on what was going on, and others resigned in protest over the restrictions the Syrian government put on them. In the end, it was the withdrawal of the Arab League mission that escalated the Syrian situation to the UN and ultimately forced the security council to act.
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