Tag: United States
Whose side are we on?
While Admiral Mullen has been raising questions about whose side Pakistan is on in the Afghanistan war, it is fair to ask whose side we are on in Yemen and Bahrain. Are we pressing for serious political change in these two very different but profoundly autocratic societies? Or are we willing to back President Saleh because he helps us against Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa because Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet and helps us in other ways to counter Iran?
I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question. The jury is still out. The killing in Yemen today of Anwar al Awlaki, an American-born terrorism suspect, provides us with an opportunity to choose. While there are surely other targets in Yemen, whack-a-mole is not a winning strategy over the long term. We need to consider seriously whether our national security interests are better served by continuing our heavy emphasis on the drone war there, which requires that we help Saleh stay in power and tolerate a consequently chaotic Yemen, or by trying to push Yemen towards political change, with the hope that will eventually bring stability and stronger governance.
In Bahrain, the Administration has chosen to proceed with a substantial arms sale, which certainly implies trust and support for the king. But it does not preclude a renewed effort in favor of political reform. The Sunni monarchy has chosen to pursue a very tough line against its mostly Shia reform movement. Yesterday its courts condemned doctors who had treated protesters to long prison sentences. Will we use the leverage provided by the arms sale to get the King to move in the direction of political reform, or will we subordinate our interest in supporting reform to what Arabs like to call “the security file”?
These are the tough questions that should be on the minds of our diplomats today in Sanaa and Manama. I suspect the sheer bureaucratic weight of the Pentagon will tip their judgment in favor of the more immediate security interests. So I’ll push in the other direction: with Awlaki gone, shouldn’t we take the opportunity to reassess and rebalance our approach, get Saleh to step down and start a serious process of political change? Shouldn’t we make it clear that our ability to continue arms sales to Bahrain depends on the government there being perceived as legitimate by Shia as well as Sunni?
Getting the balance right with people who help us with security but mistreat their own populations is difficult. But the lesson of the Arab spring is that tilting too far towards accepting autocracy, as we did for decades in the Middle East, does not ensure long-term stability. Tilting the other way will not be easy or risk free, but it might well be more effective and less burdensome in the long term.
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Is the U.S. still enabling dictators?
Several of the Arab protest movements look set to fail: Bahrain’s already has, Yemen’s is engulfed in civil war and Syria’s faces long odds. To what degree is the U.S. enabling outcomes that leave dictators in place?
The most problematic case is Yemen. There the U.S. has armed and trained military forces that President Saleh and his son have used both against unarmed protesters and tribal rivals. It is hard to believe that the U.S. could not do more to restrain the army, but Washington’s interest in continuing the effort against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has limited the constraints it is willing to impose on Saleh and son. We keep mouthing off about the Gulf Cooperation Council plan for Saleh to pass power to his vice president, in preparation for elections. That clearly is not going to happen. Gregory Johnsen proposes a radical reset to prioritize getting rid of Saleh and reaching a political settlement. It is hard to picture the intelligence community and the Pentagon concurring, unless they’ve learned a lesson or two from Pakistan’s relationship with the Haqqani network. They should be worrying about whether we end up with Yemen looking much like Somalia or Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan: a free fire zone for our drones with an increasingly radicalized population and little prospect of stability.
In Bahrain, the U.S. has essentially stood down from its early support of political reform and dialogue proposed by the Crown Prince. We are now getting ready to sell arms to a monarchy that has dissed its Shia population, which it refuses to recognize as a majority (and won’t bother counting either). The only remaining hope is the international commission of inquiry led by Cherif Bassiouni, which is supposed to report soon. Some will object that the King is not really a dictator, and that both the economy and speech are relatively free in Bahrain. I’d suggest talking with some of the protesters about that. The issues in Bahrain have more to do with concentration and abuse of power, discrimination and prejudice than legal restrictions. We should be continuing to press the monarchy for serious reform.
It would be unfair to accuse the U.S. of enabling Bashar al Assad, who is not a favorite in Washington, and President Obama has now said all the right things. But well-informed commentators think we still haven’t done all we could to organize a concerted multilateral effort against him. My own proposition is for diplomatic observers. If Bashar doesn’t accept them, he embarrasses himself. If he does, they are likely to embarrass him. Meanwhile, the protesters seem increasingly to be taking up arms, a move likely to fail and also ignite sectarian and ethnic violence. That’s a worst case outcome from the American perspective.
So whether by commission or omission, Washington is still not doing all it could to make things come out right. I’m not one who denounces the Administration for leading from behind–the White House is correct to expect Yemenis, Bahrainis and Syrians to take point. But especially in Yemen and Syria, where demonstrations continue daily despite ferocious repression, we should do more to lend a hand to those who have the courage to continue to protest nonviolently.
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They lead, we support
The European Union Institute for Strategic Studies asked “what’s next and whose job is it?” for transformations in the Arab world. Here is how I replied:
It is not for Europeans and Americans to lead. It is the citizens whose rights have been abridged who have to in the first instance lay claim to better.
First and foremost the next step is the job of the Arabs: the Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans in the first wave, the Yemenis and Syrians in what I hope will be a second wave. They know what they want better than we do, and judging in particular from the Tunisians and Libyans they are quite capable of setting the direction. The situation in Egypt is much less clear, as the protesters settled for a military takeover and are now having second thoughts, even as others try to pull Egypt in a nationalist direction that most of the revolutionaries would not want to pursue.
That said, they are going to need help. It seems to me that interests dictate that Europe take the lead on Libya and Tunisia while the Americans play a stronger role in Yemen and Egypt. The odd one out is Syria; sustaining the protest effort there for long enough to bring about real change will require commitment from both the Americans and the Europeans. In all these cases, Western influence will have to contend with Arab efforts that may sometimes pull in opposite directions.
Nor should the West forget the need for reform elsewhere: Bahrain of course, but also Saudi Arabia. The ageing Saudi monarchy (not just the ageing king) and the ferocious crackdown in Bahrain pose real questions about longer-term stability. The Americans stand on the front line with both of these questions, as they also do with Iran. There is no reason why the spring should only be Arab.
Barack Obama, like his predecessor, has made it clear that “all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights” does not stop at the water’s edge. It is written in our political DNA and we carry it abroad, like it or not. But the imperative does not stop at the ideal. If we care about the long-term security of our energy supplies, we’ll have to be ready to support those who cry out for their rights and avoid being caught on the wrong side of history.
But it is not for Europeans and Americans to lead. It is the citizens whose rights have been abridged who have to in the first instance lay claim to better. We can only support their efforts. And we’ll have our hands full doing even that much.
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All roads lead to Islamabad
The commentariat is rarely as unanimous as it has been on the assassination of Barhanuddin Rabbani: Dexter Filkins, Marvin Weinbaum, Anand Gopal, Alissa Rubin and others (including Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network) all agree that it will set back hopes for a negotiated agreement with the Taliban.
This despite the fact that the Taliban have not rushed to take credit for the assassination. Jihad Watch terms them “oddly quiet.” While no one seems to know why, the guessing focuses on differences of opinion within the Taliban, some of whom may want to pursue negotiations.
That suggests to me that the gloom about negotiations may be overdone. In a study published before the assassination, James Shinn and James Dobbins come an interesting conclusion in their primer on Afghan Peace Talks:
Close examination reveals that the priorities of all the potential parties to an Afghan peace process overlap to a considerable degree. For instance, each desires a withdrawal of Western armed forces—a situation especially desired by the publics in all of the Western countries. All Afghans want foreigners to stop interfering in their affairs. All foreign governments want assurances that Afghan territory will not be used to their disadvantage, whether by third parties or the Afghans themselves, and thus want to ensure that terrorists hostile to their countries cannot use Afghanistan as a sanctuary.
The problem of course is that it is not clear what the Taliban are prepared to do about terrorists, with whom at least some of them are allied. The killing of Rabbani is likely to come from sectors of the Taliban most tightly linked to international terrorists, who will want to do everything they can to prevent a negotiated settlement.
I would certainly expect a moment of hesitation in pursuing peace talks. Who is going to be brave enough to replace Rabbani, or meet the next time with a delegation that supposedly comes from the Taliban? Who among the Taliban would want to take the risk? Violence of this sort has consequences.
But they need not be permanent. The Americans clearly need a negotiated settlement as they begin to head for the exits. President Karzai wants one too, especially after the spectacular attacks on his allies and half brother in recent weeks. The remnants of Al Qaeda will want to continue fighting, as will some of the Taliban. But the prospects of civil war, so obvious to the American commentators, should be obvious to the Taliban too. Are they willing to test their mettle again in a war with the Tajiks, Uzbeks and others who once constituted the Northern Alliance, this time heavily armed and supported from the air by the Americans?
Taliban decisions on this question will depend heavily on whether they can continue to rely on their Pakistan safe haven. As Admiral Mullen at long last made clear in testimony yesterday, Islamabad is very much part of the problem. We are clearly going to have to figure out how to diminish Pakistani support for Haqqani network operations inside Afghanistan if a negotiation with the Taliban is going to succeed.
PS: For a well-informed view of splits in the Taliban, see Michael Semple’s piece on the Haqqanis in Foreign Affairs.
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Rashomon beyond borders
I finished jury duty yesterday, acquitting a guy who was observed by an undercover policeman conducting a drug transaction. The twelve jurors reached agreement in less than an hour.
I went home the night before convinced after hearing the prosecution’s case that we would convict the guy. The policeman said he had seen the accused transfer $25 worth of cocaine and PCP to another person in broad daylight on a Washington, DC street corner.
Yesterday, the defense put the accused on the stand, where he said he was an addict trying to buy, not sell, when he realized the transaction was being observed. He therefore aborted the transaction, asked for and received his money back without receiving the drugs, which were found in a search of the other guy.
None of the jurors was sure this defense account of events was true, and for all I know it is a standard ploy to claim to have been buying when you are accused of “distribution,” which the judge explained requires transfer to another person (not necessarily for payment). But there was no compelling evidence the story was false. Had the policeman seen the tiny packets (“zips”) of drugs transferred? Not really, but he claimed that he saw the second man pick something unidentified out of the accused’s cupped hand.
So here you have two different versions of the same events, with the rules heavily weighted in favor of the defense: the government was obligated to prove the distribution of illegal drugs “beyond a reasonable doubt.” None of us on the jury thought that standard had been met.
It struck me as we proceeded through the careful choreography of a DC courtroom how really very difficult it is to administer justice this way. Jurors randomized, judge impeccable in explaining the law and protecting the integrity of the process but not commenting in any way on the truth or falsity of the allegation, machine to make consultations at the bench inaudible, jurors disciplined about not discussing the case outside the jury room, prosecutor and defense attorney clearly well-educated and experienced.
It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a privilege to have your crimes judged in this fashion, though the drug-addict accused is unlikely to have been grateful. His court-appointed attorney told me after the trial he did not think the guy would take advantage of the big break the jury had given him.
All this for a $25 offense? I still don’t know why the government bothered to prosecute this case, but I imagine they were convinced he was a much bigger fish than he appeared in court.
Which raises the much more important question of how and why Troy Davis was convicted in Georgia when there was no physical evidence and most of the witnesses changed their stories after the conviction, several claiming the police had pressured them to testify as they did. I can’t say Troy Davis was innocent, but was he guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”?
The world was watching the Troy Davis case. Were I still a U.S. diplomat, I would find it hard to explain the execution of someone about whom there was even a sliver of reasonable doubt. The issue for me is not so much the moral one, which should be more important to those who believe government is an inefficient and ineffective mechanism to do just about anything and therefore inherently untrustworthy. The issue for me is doing something irreversible (and, by the way, frighteningly expensive, as capital cases chew up a lot of resources) when there is no physical evidence. Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable.
The United States makes a lot of effort these days to promote “rule of law” abroad–it has been a major part of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ours is such an expensive and difficult system to administer that it gives me pause to ask poorer and less well educated countries to imitate it. But the execution of Troy Davis gives me even greater pause, even if both Iraq and Afghanistan are devotees of capital punishment. Can they really be expected to do any better than we do in eliminating the possibility of executing someone who is innocent? What is the example we are setting?
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The long and the short of it
As I prepare to head home to DC from Cairo today, my two weeks in Egypt and Libya seem enormously interesting and informative, even as they reconfirm how little can be understood from such short stays in complicated environments. What do we really see of another society without speaking its language and living at length in its midst?
I am close to finishing Alaa al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building. There is little in its penetrating accounts of abusive sexual relationships in Egypt that I would gather from staying at the Fairmont and running around Cairo to talk with various participants in its recent revolution, though I knew enough about harassment of women here to understand how fraught with sexual dysfunction the society is.
In Libya, the thing that struck me is how difficult it is to understand the role of religion. Pervasive, but not really political, at least not yet, Islam seems more a unifying factor (again, for the moment) than a divisive one, as it certainly is among some Egyptians. But that may be changing.
The east/west geographical divide in Libya appeared far less important to me (and to many journalists who have spent a lot of time in Libya) than some experts had predicted. At the same time, the demands of fighters from Misrata are roiling what had appeared to be relatively tranquil regional relationships. I understand they yesterday laid claim to the prime ministry in a reshuffled executive committee of the National Transitional Council, on grounds that they have fought more aggressively against Qaddafi’s forces, especially at Sirte, than anyone else. The Benghazis, who claim to have initiated the revolution, did not react well.
Egypt and Libya are certainly not the only countries with sexual dysfunction, regional differences and problems with the role of religion in public life. I didn’t live 10 years in Italy without hearing a great deal about all three. But even after 10 years I wasn’t sure that I understood things the way Italians understood them–in fact, I’m sure I didn’t. I was still an American with different cultural baggage and presumptions about gender, geography and religion.
Societies in the midst of revolution are particularly problematic. How much is changing and how much is staying the same? Most historians would hesitate to say until years later. Libya and Egypt have both decapitated their autocratic regimes, but they are still far from having established new ones.
For all the giddy enthusiasm of the revolutionary days and weeks, there is no guarantee that they will be democratic, or even much different from the old ones. Libyans often say they know what they don’t want, namely a leader who tells them what to think (and enforces the dictate with violence). But does that mean they won’t accept a softer autocracy? No one in Egypt seems sure any longer that the military will be prepared to leave power, even if the generals seem ready to set a date for the first round of elections on November 21.
Short visits may be unsatisfying and even misleading, but it doesn’t follow that longer visits will be much more enlightening. I wouldn’t want to wait until the history books are written to have a look for myself. The point I suppose is to take the opportunities we can to expose ourselves to other societies and learn whatever can be gathered in the time available, remembering always that there is a great deal more beneath the surface that we can’t possibly fathom.
I certainly don’t regret having passed up a summer holiday for this September interlude in two very exciting places!
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