Month: June 2011

Marvel the Syrians!

From Hama, yesterday:

You’ve got to admire the fortitude and organizational capability of the Syrians.  Josh Landis has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of both the “Friday of the Children of Freedom” and the opposition conclave Wednesday and Thursday in Antalya, Turkey.

The demonstrators inside Syria managed to turn out in good numbers to protest the torture and murder by security forces of a 13-year-old boy as well as other atrocities against children, despite shut-down of a large part of the internet and cell phone systems.  Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two biggest cities, are still not turning out big numbers, but yesterday’s demonstrations were widespread and energetic according to the reports that have leaked out.  Several dozen people appear to have been killed.

The opposition meeting in Antalya that ended Thursday not only reached agreement on a statement (not yet available in its entirety) but also elected an executive board.  So far as I can tell, the program focuses on getting rid of Bashar al Assad in favor of his vice president and holding free and fair elections within a year.  There is talk as well of maintaining separation of state and religion as well as Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity (Kurdish representation in Antalya was strong, so this is significant).  The Washington Post reported:

The statement also called for the creation of a democratic, secular Syrian state, in which freedom of worship would be guaranteed, but religion would play no role, and the rights of the country’s minorities would be respected.

All of this is fine, but of course the big problem is the regime’s determination to hold on to power. My understanding is that the protesters are not promising amnesty to Bashar al Assad, who therefore has a choice of using maximum repression to stay in power or expatriating himself to some safe haven. All indicators are that he is determined to hold on.

The protesters now have the challenge of maintaining nonviolent discipline and unity while under enormous pressure from the security forces. They also need eventually to spread their mass mobilization efforts into the centers of Damascus and Aleppo. Only when some of the security forces begin to hesitate–when they refuse to fire on protesters or even join them–will the revolution in Syria begin to see the fruits of its labors. Connecting with the army, some units of which are believed to be less committed to Bashar al Assad than others, needs to be a priority objective. This is likely to happen earlier in the provinces than in the major cities, where Assad will station the most loyal troops.

The international community is still proving ineffective on Syria. No UN Security Council resolution has emerged, despite expectations earlier in the week. Washington is sounding a bit more stentorian, but nevertheless holding on to the slim hope that Assad will institute reforms. The Wall Street Journal had a good article Friday detailing Obama Administration efforts to win Assad over to a settlement with Israel and a break with Hizbollah, Hamas and Iran.  The odds of that now seem vanishingly small, but I suppose someone in the White House (and in Senator Kerry’s office) may still harbor hopes.

The die is cast.  Either Assad will succeed, as his father did, in repressing the protests with state violence or he will have to yield to what is beginning to look like a more or less united, determined and focused  revolution.

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Preparing for the Balkans

I confess I haven’t done a lot to prepare for my next two weeks in the Balkans, apart from one or two subjects I need to be up to date on, but maybe my fans there will find it interesting to know what I’ll be reading to get ready. I’ll also be delighted if they would make some suggestions.

I was inspired to this blogpost by reading Ted Galen Carpenter’s piece in The National Interest.  Ted does not quite merit the “Srebrenica denier” category, because he doesn’t really deny it–he just doesn’t mention it, preferring instead to refer to Ratko Mladic as “repulsive” and responsible for “repulsive” acts.

Instead he attacks inflated figures for overall civilian deaths in the Bosnian war and claims the Muslim/Croat fighting has been ignored.  The civilian casualty figures were corrected many years ago, but that correction really has no bearing on the issue Ted raises of whether genocide was committed, which depends more on intent than numbers.  I don’t use the G-word myself except for Srbrenica, where the Hague Tribunal has made the determination.  I hardly need mention that the United States paid a good deal of attention to the Croat/Muslim fighting and was instrumental in bringing it to an end–I was the special envoy responsible for maintaining that peace from October 1994 to June 1996.

That short, disappointing piece was just an accidental read, but it reminded me of how polarized opinion on the Balkans can be.  No one ever wants to let anything rest, even the Americans.

My more intentional reads are these:

  • B92 (English service), which I use regularly to stay up to date with regional events–my hat is off to Veran Matic and his team for their decades of hard work;
  • Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, which is a bit less every day events and more broader issues and commentary–a tip of the hat to them as well;
  • Foreign Policy Initiative papers, especially their recent piece on the “myth” of closure of the Office of the High Representative;
  • Matthew Parrish’s latest tirade against what the “international community” has done in Kosovo and Bosnia, published in  the Journal of Eurasian Law;
  • Anything interesting I find on the website of the Kosovar Stability Initiative;
  • The Coordinator’s Office for Strategy Regarding the North of Kosovo, “Report on Parallel Institutions:   Belgrade – with a foot on the north and an open hand in Brussels”;
  • My own “Albanians in the Balkans” published more than 10 years ago (!);
  • Ditto Bosnia’s Next Five Years: Dayton and Beyond;
  • As an antidote, whatever strikes my fantasy on the TransConflict website;
  • Everything Tim Judah has published lately;
  • Anything friends–some unnameable, so I won’t name any–in the Balkans send me.

ICG’s stuff is the obvious omission, but unless they put out something new before I get to the region, I think I’ve read it all.

Some people will see obvious bias in my reading material.  I like to think that I am reading broadly and gathering diverse perspectives.  And I’ll welcome more if you send me links or attachments!  Best to do that to daniel@serwer.org, since daniel@peacefare.net does not see to be working perfectly these days. With appreciation for those who respond,

 

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A brighter view of the Arab spring

I wrote yesterday about the pessimistic views of the Arab spring prevalent among experts at a Harvard/Carnegie Endowment event.  They know a whole lot more about the Middle East than I do–that’s why I go to their events and write them up.  But I think they are overly pessimistic.  Why?

First, because I’ve seen things come out all right.  I am not just talking South Africa, where admittedly Nelson Mandela’s leadership and stature counted for a lot, as did F.W. de Klerk’s.  I am not seeing any Mandelas or de Klerks in the Middle East.  Nor do there seem to be any Vaclav Havels or Lech Walesas.  But in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia protest leaderships that were notably lacking in vision and stature had at least temporary success and left their countries better off than they would otherwise have been.

Second, because it seems to me the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen have shown a combination of nonviolent restraint and persistence that is laudable, and likely to lead in good directions.  I am less convinced of the wisdom of the demonstrators in Libya and Bahrain, where it seems to me they fell victim to the temptations of violence and recalcitrance, respectively.  But the Libyan Transitional Council shows at least some signs of promise.  We’ll see if the Bahrainis can do better in the next “dialogue” phase.

Third, because I have more confidence in a bottom-up process than a top-down one.  Here I disagree with Marwan Muasher, who explicitly prefers to see top-down reform.  I don’t really know any place where that has worked terribly well in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, though obviously there are leaders like Gorbachev (or de Klerk for that matter) who made the process easier than it might otherwise have been. But people have to want democracy and freedom–it really can’t be given to them.

Nor do I think the consequences of the Arab spring will be quite as negative for U.S. interests as many of the experts say.  Middle Eastern leaders who have to be more responsive to public opinion may be more supportive of the Palestinians, but they would be foolish to take their countries to war when the people they lead are looking for prosperity.  So, okay, we’ll get Egypt opening the border with Gaza, but closing it was an approach that wasn’t worth a damn anyway.  Hamas is likely to need to cut its margins on smuggled goods when they can enter more freely. Maybe an open border will serve American purposes better than the closed one.

I admit that it is hard to see how Yemen comes out of this anything but a basket case, which is where it was headed under Saleh anyway.  Certainly it will be a while before any future government in Sanaa gets a grip on the provinces.  Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula may have a field day in the meanwhile, but they don’t appear so far to have been particularly effective at exploiting the chaos.

That said, the Arab spring is not about American interests, which will have to take a back seat for a while throughout the Middle East.  It is however about American values.  We should  be happy to see them spreading among young Arabs willing to demand their rights.  Let’s see where things go before we get too pessimistic.

 

 

 

 

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Anyone want to write this up?

If you are interested in writing this event up for www.peacefare.net, please contact me at daniel@serwer.org

The Johns Hopkins SAIS Center on Politics & Foreign Relations (CPFR)

The Johns Hopkins SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR)

University of California Washington Center

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governmental Studies

Financial Times

Invite you to a discussion on

“A Conservative Constitutional Foreign Policy”

Featuring

Senator Rand Paul

(Republican-Kentucky)

With

Robert J. Guttman, CPFR Director

Richard McGregor, Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief

Wednesday, June 8

8:30-9:30 a.m.

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

The Johns Hopkins University

Rome Building Auditorium

1619 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

 

Space is limited. Please RSVP using the following link:

http://bit.ly/senrandpaulsais

 

Media should respond to Felisa Neuringer Klubes, SAIS communications director, at fklubes@jhu.edu or 202.663.5626.

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A soggy version of the Arab spring

Big Carnegie Endowment/Harvard discussion of Arab Spring yesterday.  Outcome:  pretty gloomy.  But these are experts, who admittedly failed to see the budding of the Arab Spring and are unlikely to be able to predict its course either.  They all acknowledged the many unknowns and the difficulties of prediction.

Marwan Muasher, who prefers reform from above, thinks doing nothing in response to the protests is no longer an option but also noted there is more “empire strikes back” (Libya, Yemen, Syria) and “buying time with money” (the Gulf) than “promises of reform” (thin in Jordan, a bit more serious in Morocco).  And his criteria for successful reform from above were exacting:  it has to be holistic and inclusive, power has to be shared seriously, it should be gradual and measurable.  Nothing makes the cut yet.

No optimism from Marina Ottaway either.  She noted that even in Tunisia and Egypt there are problems of political will to complete the reform process, that some of the politicians formerly associated with the ruling parties will be able to recycle themselves, that secular parties are weak and fragmented, that Islamists may be a bit stronger but also fragmented, with Salafi influence rising.  It is not clear yet what the protesters will be able or willing to do politically, and it is too early to count the military out.

Tarek Masoud did not like what he sees in Egypt.  He noted the intense conflict among political forces and between political forces and the military, with the military wary of democracy.  They don’t want democratic oversight, fear the demand for justice and don’t want to break with past policy on Israel and the U.S.  The military would like to reign without ruling, keeping out of the public eye and avoiding responsibility for governing.  They have already made mistakes by scheduling the constitutional referendum, then having to fix the amended constitution with their own constitutional declaration.  Early elections will favor Islamists, and opening the constitution to a constituent assembly will open the question of the relationship between state and religion, which is not a good idea.  The future holds more discord.

So spring wasn’t so cheery.  How about the U.S. policy response?

Nick Burns praised President Obama’s relatively rapid and thoroughly nuanced response in a difficult international situation.  He was not too late to support the Tahrir protesters, correctly hesitated about Libya but signed on in response to the Arab League appeal in light of Gaddafi’s threat to Benghazi, and gave the Gulfies more slack because there was no rebellion to sign on to in Saudi Arabia, Oman or Qatar.  Only under questioning did Nick state baldly that he could not understand why we hadn’t zapped Bashar al Assad earlier and admit that in Bahrain Washington had chosen interests over values.  Nick urged that we focus on Egypt, decrease out focus on governments  and security, increase our focus on development and outreach to people, move on Israel/Palestine and shift to a containment policy on Iran.

Agreeing that the case-by-case contextual approach was the right one, Steve Walt concluded that we would soon face Arab governments more sensitive to public opinion, that there would be no easy fixes for the problems of over-centralization and corruption in the Arab countries, Western governments are not flush and would find it hard to ante up, Israel’s position would be weakened as Egypt and Jordan became less compliant to U.S. wishes and that U.S. strategy in the region is obsolete even if its interests are the same as always:  unhindered flow of oil and gas, nuclear nonproliferation, countering terrorism and protecting Israel.  A more effective policy would pay more attention to Arab public opinion, embrace reform, sustain multipolarity in the region, get U.S. troops out (to an offshore balancing role, naturally, that would still prevent others from exerting control), internationalize the Israel/Palestine peace process (including encouragement of European support for the Palestine resolution at the GA and a possible settlement imposed by the Security Council).  Most importantly:  we need to stop threatening Iran, which gives Tehran incentives to build nuclear weapons and attempt more creative (unspecified) diplomacy. In response to a question, Walt said he also thought we need a residual force in Iraq to counter Iran.

Chris Boucek, focused mainly on Yemen, warned of economic meltdown, suggested we manage the Saudis better and noted that the youthful protesters are espousing our ideals.

There was a good deal more, but this gives you the flavor:  the U.S. focus on stability, peace and democracy has failed:  no stability, little prospect for peace and not much for democracy either.  Burns and Walt, each in his own way, thought the U.S. could still play an important role, but no one was sanguine about the prospects for the Arab spring or U.S. interests in its aftermath.

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