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Egypt is important, but Libya and Yemen are urgent

While I sympathize with Robert Kagan and Michele Dunne on the importance of Egypt to the Arab world, Cairo is proceeding healthily if not rapidly in the right direction.  Libya and Yemen are more urgent problems for U.S. policy makers.

A week ago, the question of whether to intervene in Libya was already urgent.  Nothing that has happened since has made it less so.  Gaddafi has managed not only to hold Tripoli but to demonstrate that he can punch into the western oil town of Zawiya at will while hassling the rebellion in the east from the air.  It is only a matter of time before his superior fire power, more consolidated position and inclination to attack civilian populations causes a major disaster. If you are interested, Jeffrey White provides the best analysis of the military situation I have seen.

I understand of course that diplomacy is slow and more art than science.  But I also understand that leadership is critical to getting diplomatic ducks in a row.  While clear enough about wanting Gaddafi out, and correct to want to consult rather than impose, the time has come for some American decisions.  theatlantic.com will publish in the next hours my list of options to be considered.  Here I would like to focus on the importance of two other things:  getting Gaddafi out of there and maintaining a unified alternative to him.

Gaddafi has spent the last couple of days dangling the possibility of negotiations.  He knows this will divide his opponents, some of whom will be ready to talk.  But talk will inevitably lead to Gaddafi remaining in Libya, something that really won’t work.  The regime is so closely tied to his family that for any serious change to take place he has to be out of there, with his offspring.  He long ago gave up any claim he might have had to a peaceful retirement in a desert tent.  The best he can hope for now is Zimbabwe or Venezuela, something that should be negotiated not with the rebels but with Harare or Caracas.

The rebels are showing signs of trying to get organized, as well as indications that they are finding it difficult to remain united.  They need to remember what Ben Franklin said just before signing the Declaration of Independence:  “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”  American diplomacy should by now be in touch with the Interim Transitional National Council.  (I’ve included the website link, even though the precise relationship between the website and the council is not entirely clear to all observers, because it contains interesting documents.)  It is exceedingly important that the international community start channeling information and assistance through an institution that can claim legitimacy with most of the rebellion.  That will help consolidate unity.

Yemen, a frontline state in the fight with Al Qaeda, is becoming almost as urgent as Libya.  President Saleh is losing his grip.  Yesterday he used lethal force against student demonstrators, and he has lost the loyalty of important tribes.  Yemen has not plunged as precipitously into civil war as Libya, but the potential is certainly there, as separatists both in the north and the south may see an opportunity to achieve their goals in a country where declining oil production, water shortages and qat addiction have already weakened the state dramatically.

The Americans should  be aiming for a negotiated solution in Yemen, closer to the outcome in Egypt than in Libya.  Sanaa has a reasonably moderate opposition, one highly compromised by association with the regime but now standing up a bit more courageously to demand that Salih leave this year rather than stay on to the end of his term in 2013, as he has proposed.  In Yemen, too, some sort of unified opposition/protester institution is needed to speak with one voice and carry forward a delicate political maneuver to remove the president by the end of this year, using the meantime to develop and implement an alternative that can begin the difficult process of reconstructing a state that is very close to collapse.