Tag: Yemen
This week’s “peace picks”
Fewer this week than last. I’m trying to be more selective, and maybe there is less out there. Remember some of these may require registration and/or early arrival. Writeups for publication on www.peacefare.net are welcome:
1. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels Of Our Nature, Politics and Prose, October 11, 7 pm
In his new book, the cognitive scientist, author of How the Mind Works, and professor of psychology at Harvard, uses his broad expertise—plus some history and sociology—to examine the human propensity for violence. While we’ve always been a violent species, Pinker finds that we have been growing less so in recent decades.
2. Yemen After the Arab Spring: From Revolution to Disintegration? Root Conference Room, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 13, 2011 9 am-3:45 pm,
Lots of interesting people appearing during the day at this Jamestown Foundation event.
3. Voices from the Front Lines: Update on the Syrian Opposition, United States Institute of Peace, October 13, 10 am-12 noon
Since March, Syrians have taken to the streets calling for an end to the regime of Bashar al-Assad and a transition to democracy. The Syrian government has responded with massive force, killing some 3,000 Syrians and arresting tens of thousands more. Despite government repression, the Syrian uprising has given rise to an active and increasingly capable opposition movement, both inside Syria and among Syrians living abroad.
However, the Syrian opposition has struggled to establish a unified leadership. Now, following an intensive process of negotiations among diverse opposition groups, a Syrian National Council (SNC) has been established to represent the Syrian opposition. The formation of the SNC is an important and positive step in the opposition’s development. Yet significant challenges still must still be overcome for the SNC to secure international recognition, broaden its support within Syria, and acquire the legitimacy it will need to establish itself as a viable alternative to the Assad regime.
4. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Pivotal 2011 National Elections, Brookings, October 14, 10 am-12 noon
Much is at stake as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) prepares for a pivotal round of national elections on November 28. While violence and security issues have marred the country’s recent history, multi-party elections in 2006 produced democratic gains and this round of elections may push the DRC even closer to becoming a vibrant democracy. However, questions remain as to how the elections will affect the country’s major challenges, including a rapidly growing population, low job growth, and the lingering threat of authoritarianism.
Panelists:
Mvemba P. Dizolele
Duignan Distinguished Visiting Fellow
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution
Anthony W. Gambino
Independent Consultant and Former USAID
Mission Director to the DRC
John Mukum Mbaku
Nonresident Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution
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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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Diplomatic observers for Syria
I’d like to revive an idea that I put forward more than a month ago: diplomatic observers for Syria.
I think we are in for the long haul in Syria. Bashar al Assad shows no signs of giving up. The international sanctions will pinch with time, but Iran is doing its best to counter them. While Bashar’s support has frayed in Damascus and Aleppo, that is only around the edges. The protesters are under a lot of pressure and have been unable to do what the Libyans did so successfully: put together a proto-government that could project a constitutional framework and roadmap to elections.
Military intervention is simply not in the cards. The Arab League isn’t asking for it. Russia has so far blocked all serious propositions in the UN Security Council. Moscow’s naval base at Latakia guarantees this will continue. I imagine Putin admires Bashar’s spunk and isn’t going to worry about what is done to the demonstrators. Turkey may stiffen its position a bit, but Ankara hasn’t yet done anything that really pinches hard.
If the protest movement in Syria is going to survive, it needs some help. We’ve been through this before. In some of the darkest days of the Kosovar rebellion against Serbia in 1998, the international community provided a Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission that reported on who was doing what to whom. It was too little too late and did not avoid war, but it was that mission that confirmed mass atrocities and helped to rouse the international community to its military intervention.
I don’t expect in Syria that there will be a military intervention, even if an observer mission were to confirm mass atrocities. The Russians won’t sign on to it, and I doubt the Americans and Europeans have the stomach to do it without Security Council authorization, which is what they eventually did in Kosovo.
But an international observer mission would likely reduce the ferocity of Bashar’s assault on Syria’s citizens and give us a far better window on what is happening than we have at present. Ambassador Ford’s visits to the protesters have clearly been a boost. Multiply that 1000 times in quantity (hard to match Ford in quality) and you’ve got something that might make a difference.
Would Bashar agree to it? At some point, he is going to be feeling the international pressure enough to make concessions. It is unlikely he will make any serious political reforms, since those would put his hold on power at risk. If he thinks that agreeing to international observers might eventually help him to relieve international pressures, he might do it.
In any event, I don’t see a downside to proposing it. The protesters have been literally crying for international protection. Civilian observers are not what they have in mind–some of them would like military intervention. But if the Arab League were to press the case and recruit the observers, the time may come when Bashar will yield to the proposition. If he doesn’t, all the worse for him: it suggests he has a great deal to hide.
I fear that if we fail to get something like this in place, the Syrian protest movement may fail, as the Iranian one did. That would be a big defeat for democratic forces in the Middle East, which are having a hard time elsewhere even if Libya and Tunisia seem to be proceeding more or less in the right direction.
In Yemen, the return of President Saleh to Sanaa has upped the ante and increased the violence. In Egypt, it is no longer clear–if ever it was–that the country will end up with a significantly more democratic system than the one Hosni Mubarak reigned over for decades. A Bashar victory in Syria would encourage reactionary forces elsewhere and help Iran to survive the Arab spring with its main client state still firmly attached. We haven’t got a lot of cards left to play on Syria: proposing international observers is a half measure that might be worth a try.
PS, October 26: The Syrian National Council is now calling for international monitors.
PPS, Octoer 28: Human Rights Watch likes the idea too.
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What was it like 48 years ago?
Credit for this post, if credit is due, goes to Zaheer Ali, a New York City historian who asked in response to a tweet saying that I was at the March on Washington if I had ever written anything about it. No, I haven’t, until just now, when I should be working on a book proposal.
I remember as much about the circumstances as I do about the event. My aunt tried to convince my mother she shouldn’t let me go. I was 18, age of the immortals. Just graduated from high school, working in a factory for the summer before starting at Haverford. I was determined to march despite rumors of violence. I certainly did not want to take advice from my rascist aunt, who went livid. Fortunately a more liberal uncle weighed in on my side. Defiance proved unnecessary–my mother was a liberal and thought it natural that I wanted to go.
It’s all about witness, wanting to testify to your beliefs by moving your body to the right place at the right time. I’d been to Washington before, as a child and tourist. It was still a segregated city then, though as best I understand it more by tradition than by law. My parents would only eat in chain restaurants that had integrated. Returning by bus that August day of 1963 was a right of passage for me: a first opportunity to witness on my own.
What has become known as Martin Luther King’s greatest moment I thought of at the time as Bayard Rustin’s. No, I did not know he was gay, or even what gay was, but I knew he was the great organizer. He proved it that day, assembling an enormous mass of people, whites as well as people who then mostly still called themselves Negro. There was a long list of speakers. Martin Luther King was the climax, but I can assure you that many of the others stirred the crowd as well. I particularly remember being moved by A. Philip Randolph, but don’t ask me any longer what he said. And the music! Dylan, Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary: mostly white, but “radical” as it was known then.
I had to leave New Rochelle, where my family lived, early in the morning, around 4 am. I grabbed the brown bag from the fridge with what I thought was my lunch in it, only to discover as we arrived in DC that the smell of raw fish was coming from my brown bag in the overhead rack. I had to borrow a couple of dollars from a cousin to get a hot dog or two for lunch.
We marched from somewhere not too far–maybe Thomas Circle. Memory confuses this occasion with the several later occasions I joined antiwar marches in DC. The spirit was good, really good. Everyone singing, chatting, laughing. I don’t remember a moment of tension all day. I guess the segregationists decided the crowd was too big and stayed home. Certainly it was nothing like the venomous atmosphere I endured two years later demonstrating in Cambridge, Maryland, where the national guard fixed bayonets and gas masks to confront us in the main street.
The message of the day was integration. Those who cite MLK’s “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers” have got it right. It is hard to appreciate today how much imagination was needed then to picture integration of blacks and whites in the United States. None of us were sure though at the time that MLK had quite risen to the occasion. Was his speech really eloquent enough? Did it rise to the occasion? Would anything make a real difference in a country that seemed hopelessly attached to segregation and racism?
We all think we know the answers to those question now, but at the time nothing was clear, except the day and the overwhelming power of that crowd of witnesses. These were people who really could sing “we shall overcome.” And they were determined to do it, though they had no idea how long it would take.
What does this have to do with peace and war? Everything: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria have all trod the path of nonviolent witness, some more successfully than others. Even Libya did it briefly. Hesitatingly, sometimes inadequately but increasingly the United States has come out on the right side, witnessing for the world to see that it supports human dignity. There really is no other choice. Bashar al Assad and King Khalifa of Bahrain should take notice. Washington may hesitate, it may equivocate, but it will not fail in the end to support the radical proposition that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.
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Rebuilding Libya: the first few steps
Theatlantic.com published my piece this morning:
Aug 22 2011, 6:39 AM ET
The most immediate challenges facing post-Qaddafi Libya
Reuters
Muammar Qaddafi’s finale in Libya is coming faster than even the rebels likely anticipated. They are reported to have arrested Saif al Islam, his favored son. If they take Qaddafi alive, the rebel leadership body Transitional National Council (TNC), or its successor organization, will presumably transfer him and his son to The Hague, for trial at the International Criminal Court. This would be a remarkable end to a 42-year reign as Libya’s chief governing authority and a first opportunity for the court to try a chief of state, even if he did not claim that title.
Some may prefer to try him in Tripoli, but it is going to be years before the Libyan courts are able to meet the necessary international standards. A show trial will not help Libya in its understandable passion to lay the foundations for a freer society.
Qaddafi’s continued resistance risks making the situation inside Libya far more chaotic than it need be. Some of his loyalists may go underground as people harmed by the regime seek revenge, rivalries among rebel groups may emerge, looting and rioting could break out, and criminal gangs are sure to try to take advantage of any disorder. Restoring public order will be job one, with restoring electricity, food, and water close behind. Oil installations will need to be protected, weapons depots guarded, and secret police files preserved. It is certainly a good sign that the rebels are reported to have thrown up a protective cordon around the National Museum.
The rebels say they believe everything will go smoothly, and they appear to have trained some police to protect sensitive infrastructure and maintain law and order. But hope is not a plan. They need to get things under control as quickly as possible, appealing for foreign help if need be.
European governments could step up to this challenge, since they are tied to Libya via gas pipelines that float beneath the surface of the Mediterranean. If Libya succumbs to chaos, it will be to Europe that refugees will flow, and mostly European investments in Libya that will be lost. Unfortunately, Washington seems to have allowed Europe to remain distracted with its own financial problems. There does not appear to be any serious plan for dealing with chaos in Libya, which could quickly turn into a humanitarian disaster. American boots definitely do not belong on the shores of Tripoli, but it has happened before and may happen again.
The TNC will have to be particularly alert to risks of revenge killings against Qaddafi loyalists, and of score-settling among rebels. They have already lost one of their military commanders, apparently to rebel-affiliated attackers who resented his role in Qaddafi’s army. In immediate post-war situations, the urge to exact quick justice is enormous. But allowing vigilantes to even the score will only lead to a spiral of violence that is hard to stop and inimical to democratic evolution.
Virtually overnight, the rebel leadership will need to shift its focus from fighting Qaddafi’s forces to protecting them. In the past few months, the local councils that have emerged in liberated areas have not generally allowed violence against regime supporters. But that is partly because many of Qaddafi’s loyalists have fled from newly liberated towns to Tripoli. Their concentration there and in his hometown of Sirte is going to make the challenge of transition much greater there than anyplace else in Libya.
It is critical that regime loyalists and rebels alike do not grab and “privatize” state assets, as often happens in chaotic moments and takes years to reverse. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, the government has been trying for years to recover valuable mines from those who took possession of them during the civil war. The liberty Libyans have fought for will require massive rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure and economy, which is in miserable condition. Early efforts to ensure transparency and accountability could help Libya avoid the kind of corruption that has plagued Afghanistan and Iraq.
Only the most selfish and egotistical leader would fail to make arrangements to transfer power and try to avoid bloodshed. Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine ben Ali fled, but left the country with a constitutional succession that is enabling a relatively smooth transition. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak tried to leave power in the hands of his vice president, a move negated only when the army stepped in. Yemen’s President Saleh has so far refused to allow a constitutional succession, leaving his country seized with violence.
Qaddafi is still calling on his supporters to fight and vowing to restore his own version of law and order in Tripoli. This is Qaddafi’s last misdeed. There is no constitution in Libya, so no clear constitutional succession. The revolutionaries have wisely written their own constitutional charter, but the real challenge will not be on paper. It will be in the avenues and alleys of Tripoli.
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