Tag: United Nations
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A Kosovar friend sent me this triumphalist claim of Serbian victory in the recent agreement between Belgrade and Pristina on how Kosovo will be identified at meetings in which Serbia also participates:
Serbia’s success in putting an asterisk connoting the numbers “1244” in front of future Kosovar delegations to European meetings means the terms under which Kosova* participates in “Europe” explicitly recognizes the language in a resolution that preserves a measure of Serbian sovereignty over its former province. This advertisement of such sovereignty – dormant as it may be – marks tacit American acceptance of the defeat of its diplomacy of the past six years. The asterisk means America has relegated its client in Kosova* to something like the status currently enjoyed by Taiwan.
The author is my respected colleague of many years, David Kanin, who happens now also to teach at Johns Hopkins/SAIS, as I do.
But David is dead wrong. He is trying to make more of an asterisk than the little fellow ever imagined he might be. And more than he is. The only thing the asterisk guarantees is the undying hostility of most of Kosovo’s population, which will no doubt begin to add one to Serbia*.
David’s claims are wrong in many ways.
Serbs and their supporters have been telling themselves since 1999 that that 1244 preserves “a measure of Serbian sovereignty over its former province.” This is wrong, which is immediately apparent from their use of the appellation “its former province.” Even they recognize that something irreversible has happened to Kosovo. The reference to Yugoslav (now Serbian) sovereignty is in the preamble of 1244 and has no legally binding status. It simply reaffirms a commitment made at the time of the resolution:
Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Circumstances change. The United States and many other countries have decided that commitment no longer holds. You may not agree with that change of heart, but nothing in 1244 prevents it.
Far more important is that 1244 clearly refers in its operative paragraphs to a political process for deciding Kosovo’s future status. Among other mentions, there is this one that refers to the responsibilities of the “international civilian presence”:
Facilitating a political process designed to determine Kosovo’s future status, taking into account the Rambouillet accords (S/1999/648);
In a final stage, overseeing the transfer of authority from Kosovo’s provisional institutions to institutions established under a political settlement;
That process, conducted under the aegis of Marti Ahtisaari, was completed years ago, with full participation (but not final approval) of Russia and Serbia. What the asterisk signifies to anyone who reads past the preamble (which has no legal standing) to the operative paragraphs of the resolution is that Kosovo has completed the process foreseen there with a clear and now widely but not universally accepted result.
Russia and Serbia are of course perfectly entitled not to recognize that result, but so are others entitled to recognize the new state. The notion that Kosovo, now recognized by 88 other sovereign states, has no more status than Taiwan is risible, though I hasten to add that I will be happy for the day it has Taiwan’s economy and even governance. The International Court of Justice has advised that its declaration of independence was not in violation of 1244, a claim that Serbia made loudly and repeatedly. To pretend that preambular language with no legal significance outweighs not only the operative paragraphs but also an ICJ advisory opinion is to live in fantasyland.
What the agreement does for Kosovo is to get it a contractual relationship with the EU, including a “feasibility study” for a Stabilization and Association Agreement, thus neutralizing the heretofore effective veto of the five non-recognizing EU member states. While they can continue to not recognize Kosovo, they are now part of an organization that is treating it as a sovereign and independent state capable of undertaking obligations that only such states can undertake. This is no small matter, not outweighed somehow by an asterisk.
Is 1244 still in force? Yes, since it hasn’t been altered or withdrawn. But like many Security Council resolutions most of its terms have been fulfilled and it will fade into irrelevance. The only benefit to Serbia of the asterisk I see is that it will make it harder to forget 1244, which unfortunately for Belgrade provides the legal basis for answering the otherwise difficult question, why is Kosovo entitled to independence and not other provinces? The answer is 1244 and the political process for determining final status foreseen there.
I’ve challenged David to a duel. He has accepted. We won’t do it at dawn. But I hope we’ll meet soon in public at SAIS to cross swords and maybe provide some enlightenment to both sides of this issue.
In case anyone wonders: my title is intended to convey the vast over-valuation of the asterisk in David’s piece.
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Annan Anon
Today’s news from Syria is bad, really bad for those of us who hope to see a more open and democratic regime there. The usual sources in Baba Amr, the Homs neighborhood that Bashar al Assad has been shelling for a month, have gone silent, apparently because elite Syrian army units are closing in from all sides. Electricity has been cut off. Violent resistance there will be, but sporadic and largely ineffectual. Expect widespread mistreatment of the civilian population, where the regime is trying to re-install the wall of fear that kept people in line for decades.
In the meanwhile, Kofi Annan, the newly appointed joint envoy of the UN and the Arab League, met in New York with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, in the aftermath of still another UN Security Council meeting that failed to reach agreement on his mandate. Annan was modest in his goals:
It is a very difficult assignment. It is a tough challenge and the first thing we need to do as the secretary general has said is to do everything we can stop the violence and the killing to facilit[tate] humanitarian access and to ensure the needy are looked after and work with the Syrians in coming up with a peaceful solution which respects their aspirations and eventually stablizes the country.
My Twitterfeed is disappointed in his failure to mention transition (away from the Assad regime), but Annan is doing what a good diplomat should: lowering expectations and trying to ensure himself at least a first meeting with Bashar. He needs to keep his public remarks in line with the minimalist goals that Russia and China support. UN envoys don’t last long if one of the Perm 5 members of the UNSC object to what they are saying and doing, or a key interlocutor refuses to meet with them.
Kofi Annan knows as well as any of us that stabilization of Syria is not going to be possible with Bashar al Assad still in power. He betrays it with that adverb: “eventually.” Getting Bashar to step aside from power will not be easy. It will require convincing him that he is safer out of power than in it. Several Arab presidents have already chosen that route (Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh). Muammar Qaddafi preferred to fight, with well-known consequences. But Bashar will not like any of those precedents: exile in Saudi Arabia, a trial in his home country, exile in Ethiopia and murder victim are not attractive propositions. Maybe Tehran will be?
He will try to sell himself to Annan as a reformer: like the Bahraini and Moroccan monarchies or Algeria’s President Bouteflika, all of whom are engaged in modest reforms intended to co-opt protesters and maintain their regimes intact. Bashar will attribute his obvious excess use of force to the need to fight terrorism, a favorite excuse for violating human rights in this country as well as in Syria. There is just enough evidence of Al Qaeda in Iraq involvement in a few of the bombings in Syria to put some wind in that sail.
We should not expect Annan to get past Bashar’s defenses easily or quickly. As fallacious as the claims may be, he will have to listen and appear to appreciate them. Then, he needs to try to internationalize the situation as much as possible, by getting Arab League and UN monitors back into Syria to prevent renewed violence once a ceasefire is in place. He also needs to maintain his credibility with the Russians, so that he can talk with them about how their interests in port access and arms sales might be better served by a future, democratically-validated regime than by a declining Assad.
Annan will also need to reach out to the protesters in Syria and assure them that their pleas are heard and that their interests will be best served by returning to nonviolence, with international monitors in place to offer what protection they can, which is admittedly not much. In the meanwhile, the Free Syria Army and other militia groups will be arming, but hopefully not fighting. If the protesters resort to violence, Annan’s position will quickly become untenable as the regime returns to the battlefield.
Why is this not more like the situation in Libya or Kosovo, where the rebellions armed themselves and fought the regime tooth and nail? The answer is that the Syrians can be close to certain that no air force is coming to their rescue. The Americans and Europeans are showing no appetite for it. The Turks and Arabs seem almost as reluctant. If any of them were to change their minds and decide to throw their military weight behind the protesters, the situation would be different. But that is unlikely to happen.
Annan’s chances of success are low. But we should wish him the best in his efforts, which should begin as soon as possible. Delay or failure would mean continuation of a war the regime is bound to win.
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A serious military option
Chalk up one more for arming Syria’s rebels and creating safe corridors. To his credit, Roger Cohen also cites the counter-argument:
I hear the outcry already: Arming Assad’s opponents will only exacerbate the fears of Syria’s minorities and unite them, ensure greater bloodshed, and undermine diplomatic efforts now being led by Kofi Annan, a gifted and astute peacemaker. It risks turning a proxy war into a proxy conflagration.
What he does not do is consider a serious military option: decapitating the Syrian regime with a forceful strike against its command and control.
This mystifies me. Safe areas, enclaves, humanitarian corridors–whatever you call them–have consistently and repeatedly failed. They create target-rich environments, which in this case means the Syrian armed forces will attack them vigorously. Nor is arming the Free Syria Army likely to produce a balance of forces, as Cohen suggests. Just ask the Libyans: they’ll tell you they would have lost to Muammar Qaddafi had NATO not intervened from the air.
There is another option: once you’ve taken down the air defenses, a necessary first step no matter what, you can proceed to take down the command, control and communications of the regime. This was what changed the tide of war in Bosnia in the summer of 1995. Specifically, it was when NATO hit the communications nodes of the Bosnian Serb Army that it became incapable of defending the long confrontation line with the Bosnian Army. Something similar happened in the NATO/Yugoslavia war: hitting various security force headquarters in Belgrade and dual-use infrastructure signaled the kind of seriousness that convinced Slobodan Milosevic his regime was in peril. He yielded in Kosovo.
The problem is that you don’t know what will come next. Milosevic survived for more than another year, though he then fell to his own miscalculation in calling elections. There is no guarantee that you’ll get Bashar al Assad in a military attack, and even less certainty about what will happen if you do. He might well survive and would be unlikely to allow any serious electoral competition thereafter. These guys do learn from each other.
So here’s a thought: combine the threat of such a direct attack on the regime with Kofi Annan’s diplomatic efforts, offering Bashar a choice between a punishing attack on his security forces’ command, control and communications and a ceasefire with free access to all areas in Syria for humanitarian relief and international journalists. If he fails to deliver, you’ve still got the trump card in your pocket.
Of course if he calls your bluff, you’ll have to go ahead with the military attack, even without a UN Security Council resolution. A bit of diplomacy might at least generate an Arab League request, but it is hard to picture the Russians coming on board. If they do, well and good–I doubt Bashar survives even 48 hours once Moscow abandons him. If they don’t, you’ve still got to go ahead.
If you are not willing to do that, you are thrown back, as I am, to diplomatic means, wisely discussed this morning by David Ignatius in the Washington Post. Let’s not waste analytical talent and high-priced real estate in America’s leading newspapers on half-hearted military propositions that just won’t work. If you want war, go to war, not to humanitarian corridors.
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Kofi time
Huffington Post has just published my latest on Syria:
With Kofi Annan chosen to be the joint UN/Arab League Special Envoy and today’s Friends of Syria meeting in Tunis, the stage is set for a more serious diplomatic effort to bring the Syrian crisis to a close. Kofi’s marching orders include:
The Special Envoy will provide good offices aimed at bringing an end to all violence and human rights violations, and promoting a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis.The Special Envoy will be guided in this endeavor by the provisions of the General Assembly resolution A/RES/66/253 and the relevant resolutions of the League of Arab States. He will consult broadly and engage with all relevant interlocutors within and outside Syria in order to end the violence and the humanitarian crisis, and facilitate a peaceful Syrian-led and inclusive political solution that meets the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people through a comprehensive political dialogue between the Syrian government and the whole spectrum of the Syrian opposition.
This broad mandate, which the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have approved, implicitly points in the direction of the Arab League plan that Russia and China previously vetoed, even if it does not explicitly mention the need for Bashar al-Assad to step aside. The ambiguity is intended to hide the differences of view on the UNSC, but clearly no political solution can meet the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people with Bashar still in office.
Kofi will surely meet with Bashar al-Assad. The question is whether he will be able to tell him that the P5 want him out. Colum Lynch notes that in his last trouble-shooting effort Kofi arranged for power-sharing in Kenya. Bashar has spilled far too much blood in Syria for the opposition to accept sharing power with him. The Russians should by now be wondering whether their best bet for holding on to port access and arms sales in Syria is Bashar. Once they decide differently, Kofi will have the support he needs for defenestration.
Anne-Marie Slaughter today in the New York Times calls for “no-kill” zones established by the Free Syria Army (FSA) near Syria’s borders with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. This would require a major effort to arm the FSA and provide it with special forces advisors. The notion that this can be done “to protect all Syrians regardless of creed, ethnicity or political allegiance” without precipitating the chaotic ethnic and sectarian civil war that Anne-Marie herself recognizes as the worst outcome is unrealistic. And doing it without taking down Syria’s air defenses would condemn the effort to failure.
Only the U.S. can quickly and effectively destroy Syria’s Russian-supplied air defense and severely damage his artillery, which is bombarding his opponents. At yesterday’s Syria event at the Center for National Policy, colleagues evoked the image of President Clinton reacting to the shelling of Sarajevo, suggesting that President Obama might do likewise.
We too readily forget that Clinton waited three and half years — until Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole started taking him to task for not carrying out his campaign promise to bomb the Serbs — before initiating the military action that ended the war in Bosnia. I doubt even a Republican candidate bemoaning what is happening in Syria would get the White House to drop other priorities in favor of another Middle East war.
The Syrian opposition doesn’t have years, or even months. It needs protection quickly. The best bet is a vigorous diplomatic effort by Kofi Annan.
Today in Tunis the Friends of Syria called for a ceasefire, humanitarian relief to the cities under attack, deployment of UN peacekeepers and the beginning of a dialogue process aimed at a political settlement. They also named the Syrian National Council “a” legitimate representative of the Syrian people and promised further sanctions and diplomatic isolation of Damascus. They did not call for arming of the opposition, which has been left up to individual states. The Saudis made it clear they thought it a good idea (and they will presumably do it).
Few believe Bashar al-Assad will cave. I won’t be surprised if he eventually does, though I’m not prepared to predict when. His army and other security forces are exhausted and won’t want to enter the cities they have been shelling from afar. If Bashar can get the international community to accept responsibility for feeding the inhabitants and maybe even maintaining law and order, he may count himself lucky. His security forces could then lick their wounds and prepare to fight another day, while blaming the internationals for anything that goes wrong.
Syria is showing us the limits of military force. It is a blunt tool that in this instance is likely to bring about the civil war that we should most want to avoid. Diplomacy won’t be pretty. It will require negotiations with Bashar al-Assad and acceptance of compromises that are odious. But it is our best bet for the moment. Kofi time.
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More thunder, no lightning
The UN General Assembly today passed a resolution supporting the Arab League plan for Syria, which would have Bashar al Assad step aside from his presidency and turn over power to his vice president, who would form a broad coalition government and initiate a democratic transition. The vote was 137 to 12, which is pretty lopsided even in the UNGA, where lopsided votes are common.
The opponents were: Belarus, Bolivia, China, Cuba, DPRK, Ecuador, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe. This is a crew that needs a name: something like the antidemocrats, but snappier.
So what practical effect will this have? Hard to say, but the legal effect is nil. UNGA resolutions are like preseason football: the games may be well played and show off talent, but they have no direct impact on the standings. Only UN Security Council resolutions have legal effect.
But legal effect isn’t everything and doesn’t guarantee implementation either. The important thing is that the “international community” has made an appropriate noise in response to Bashar al Assad’s military assault on Syria’s citizens. This will weaken Bashar’s position both internationally and within Syria and give inspiration to his opponents, who will also bemoan international community ineffectiveness.
The real question is what should be done now. Some will want to resort to military intervention or arming the Syrian Free Army. This is a serious error in my book. The worst outcome for the U.S. is a prolonged civil war in Syria, which could have a destabilizing impact on Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and more widely. “Safe areas” and “humanitarian corridors” would, in the absence of Syrian government cooperation, require major military intervention.
As Mona Yacoubian, Randa Slim and Aram Nerguizian were at pains to make clear this morning at a Stimson/Middle East Institute Event, there are diplomatic and political courses of action that still need to be played out:
- The U.S. should lead on getting a “Friends of Syria” group up and running;
- The Arab League and Turkey should lead on pressing the Syrian opposition to unify;
- Sanctions implementation needs to be tightened, especially by the Arab League;
- The U.S. and Turkey need to court Russian support, on grounds that their interests require a good relationship with whatever comes after Bashar;
- The Syrian opposition has to work on peeling away Sunni and Christian merchant, as well as military, support for the regime.
As Randa Slim noted, what helps the regime is fear of instability on the one hand and Islamism on the other. These fears would get worse with military intervention, not better. We need more thunder, no lightning.
PS: Somehow this “Dancing and chanting around an independence flag in Qudaysa, Damascus” tweeted by @LeShaque and retweeted by Robert Mackey grabs me this morning. It is a lot more expressive than the important, if dull, session of the UNGA yesterday and reminds us of what the resolution is really about:
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A rose is a rose
Gertrude Stein might just as well have said “Macedonia is Macedonia.” The trouble is, the Greeks don’t like to hear it.
This is one of the least interesting problems resulting from the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Its “Republic of Macedonia,” one of six republics that constituted Socialist Yugoslavia, became independent in 1991. But Greece, its neighbor to the south, objected to the use of “Macedonia,” claiming that appellation belongs exclusively to Greece and its use by the northern neighbor implied territorial claims to Greek territory. The newly independent country entered the United Nations as The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (last time I was there it was alphabetized under “T” on the voting board at the UN General Assembly).
Athens and Skopje signed an “interim accord” in 1995 supposedly regulating the issue, but Greece claims Macedonia (oops, The FYROM) has violated it while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided last December that Greece had definitely violated it by blocking The FYROM’s entry into NATO at the Bucharest Summit in 2008. There is an opportunity to correct this injustice at the NATO Summit in Chicago in May. Efforts to resolve the issue have been ongoing since the early 1990s in UN-sponsored talks, mediated since 1994 by New York lawyer Matt Nimetz.
Macedonia already has a pretty good deal on the name issue. Just about everyone calls the country by the name Skopje prefers, and many countries (including the U.S.) have formally recognized it as the “Republic of Macedonia.” Greece does not, but why should anyone care about that?
The unfortunate answer is that Athens can veto Skopje’s membership in NATO as well as any further progress towards membership in the EU. Macedonia is already a candidate for EU membership but hasn’t got a date for the start of negotiations, which is an important milestone that Athens is holding hostage.
NATO membership is also important to Macedonia, which counts itself as part of the West and has deployed troops to Afghanistan under NATO command. Alliance membership is a goal sought by both Albanians (who constitute about one-quarter of the population) and Macedonians. It also, by the way, should end any lingering Greek fears of irredentist claims to its territory by Skopje.
The problem for Macedonia is the veto, not the name. While there is virtue in continuing the effort to resolve the name issue, it might be wise for Skopje to stop pounding on Matt Nimetz’s door this spring for a solution to a problem Athens has but Skopje does not. Skopje needs to go directly to Athens and mount a serious effort to convince Greece to allow it into NATO under the interim accord as The FYROM. The ICJ decision requires nothing less.
A Macedonian joked with me recently that he would personally push a statue of Alexander the Great that has offended Greek sensibilities from Skopje to the Greek border if Athens would allow Macedonia into NATO in Chicago. I doubt Athens is interested in the statue, but the joke points in the right direction. Skopje needs to find out what Athens needs that Macedonia can provide. If the government won’t discuss the issue of NATO membership, then Macedonia should find thinktanks and academics in Greece who will.
At the same time Skopje should be working with the Macedonian and Albanian American communities to make sure that the mayor of Chicago, once right hand to President Obama, raises this issue with the White House. So far it is studiously avowing support for Skopje but doing nothing to pry open the NATO door. Vice President Biden, when he was a senator, opposed use of “Macedonia,” which is too bad since he holds the Balkans portfolio.
Greece is vulnerable at the moment because of its parlous financial situation, but no one in Brussels or Washington wants to kick Athens while it is down. Greek Americans are well-organized and an important voting constituency. Macedonia has a “stick” it can’t really use. It needs to find some other way to put the squeeze on, or “carrots” that are attractive enough in Athens to open the NATO door. Then they can go back to not resolving the name issue at the UN for another 15 years or so, by which time everyone will have forgotten why it once seemed important.
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