Tag: Bahrain
Slippery slope, moral hazard and tall order
The big questions for me in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death are how it will affect America’s relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as the Arab Spring. I leave it to others to consider the impact on Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the terrorist enterprise in general, but I have to assume that the already weakened enterprise will suffer some further fragmentation and demoralization, even as it tries (and occasionally succeeds) to exact revenge.
Pakistan has got some explaining to do. It seems likely someone in the Pakistani government knew that Osama bin Laden was hiding out in a garrison town not far from Islamabad. There is no sign they tipped off the Americans, their putative allies. How come? How many other Al Qaeda principles harbored in Pakistan? And if no one in the Pakistani government knew that OBL was there, that would suggest true incompetence, no? So too would failure of the Pakistani government to intervene to block the American operation, if the Americans are telling the truth about not having informed the Pakistanis.
My best guess is that some Pakistanis (army? intelligence service?) knew where bin Laden was hiding. They likely also knew about the American operation, or at least knew something was “going down.” So they both hid him and allowed him to be captured. That sounds like the kind of duplicity we’ve witnessed for years, practiced to our detriment. Glad it was at someone else’s expense this time. The unexcited and even congratulatory reaction of official Pakistan to the news suggests this was the case.
So what do we do now? Is it business as usual with the Pakistanis? Or is it time for a shift toward a more demanding stance? Should we make military assistance conditional on greater cooperation? Surely someone in the Congress will push that idea. The problem is we would then have to be prepared carry out the threat, which would surely reduce military and intelligence cooperation further. That’s a slippery slope. Are we really reduced, as Madeleine Albright suggested on the PBS Newshour this evening, to “working with” the Pakistanis?
Maybe. With OBL out of the way, Al Qaeda is a lot less interesting to the Pakistanis, whose purposes inside Afghanistan might just as well be served by the Taliban without all the international complications OBL necessarily engendered. Besides, they’ve now got lots of homegrown jihadis to throw against India when the need arises. OBL wasn’t so good in that direction anyway.
What about Afghanistan? President Karzai, in his usual uncharitable mood, took the occasion of OBL’s death to suggest that the Americans and their allies have been wasting a lot of time and Afghan lives looking for him inside Afghanistan. Meanwhile, American senators were suggesting that OBL’s death might make it possible to draw down American troops in Afghanistan faster than currently contemplated, leaving Karzai to his fate. Of course the two ideas are compatible: Karzai would like less U.S. military effort, and so would the Americans.
This “beggar thy ally” approach on both sides does not bode well for continuing anything like the current level of effort in Afghanistan, where the Taliban are proving resilient and resurgent. I confess to temptation: maybe we should try withdrawing faster than had been anticipated, making it clear to Karzai that we are in part responding to his pressure. He pushes us out because he has been pretty sure we wouldn’t take him up on it. If he thought we might, he would be getting his act together faster.
This is what is called “moral hazard.” Leon Panetta, about to become Defense Secretary, was big on the idea of giving the Iraqis a quick time line for U.S. withdrawal when he served on the Iraq Study Group (I’m not breaking confidence–he said so publicly on many occasions). I wonder if he might adopt the same posture on Afghanistan. Of course David Petraeus, whether in his current job or his future one, is likely to be on the other side of that argument.
As for the Arab Spring, it seems to me that OBL’s death should reduce the fear some have of Al Qaeda exploitation of the demonstrations and weaken the argument that we need autocrats to repress international terrorists. Those arguments have not gained much traction with me these past few months, but I hope those who believe them will reexamine the situation and come to the obvious conclusion: the faster we can help get something like democratic regimes up and running in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria the better off we will be. I wish I could say the same about Bahrain, but it seems to have fallen hostage to the regional sectarian standoff. We’ve already got what most would consider a tall order.
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Syrians need even more courage
AJ English is doing what it can to cover events in Syria from nonprofessional footage, as journalists have been kept out:
Brian Whitaker, whose al-bab.com is one of the best blogs covering the Arab world, is being widely cited today for saying about Syria:
For the regime, the only tool left now is repression, and in the long run that will seal its fate. The question is how long.
Of course in the long run we are all dead, but I wish I shared his confidence that repression will not succeed. One need only recall popular rebellions that did not succeed in Burma, Thailand, Belarus, Venezuela and elsewhere to be reminded that autocratic regimes sometimes do manage to repress their opponents. The outcome in Syria is not yet obvious to me, much as I might wish Whitaker correct.
As President Obama has suggested, Bashar al Assad is being egged on and assisted by Tehran, which will regard the Syrian repression as a quid pro quo for Saudi intervention in Bahrain. This is cynical and ugly, but sometimes cynical and ugly succeeds. As Babak Rahimi says in a piece for the Jamestown Foundation yesterday:
If successful in its reaction to the events in Syria, Tehran will be able to reinforce its national interests and expand its reach in the region. If Syria is unsuccessful in subduing its revolt and goes the route of Egypt, then Iran will lose a major strategic ally and access to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which could have a major impact on Iran’s position in the Middle East.
If Babak is correct, and I think he is, it is puzzling that the Americans have waited so long to express their displeasure with the repression in Syria.
Of course it may well be that the demonstrators are better off without overt American assistance, which the regime would no doubt use to tar them as foreign stooges. But that label for the moment seems more appropriate for Bashar al Assad, who is clearly getting Iranian encouragement and support.
The Syrian demonstrations yesterday were widespread, but not overwhelming in numbers, and the regime showed little hesitation in mowing down its opponents, killing upwards of 75. That however is a smallish number in the history of repression in Syria. Bashar is trying desperately to prevent Damascus from erupting. It is not pre-ordained that he will fail–a lot of people in Damascus owe their jobs to the regime, which has husbanded the spoils less greedily than Gaddafi in Libya.
Syrians still need to decide how much they want change, and how much change they want. No one should presume to tell its citizens that they have to risk their lives. That is for them to decide, I hope in numbers so large that the outcome Whitaker predicts will come sooner rather than later.
PS: Courage does not appear to be lacking. This crowd chanting “the people want to topple the regime” is in Zabadani, near the Lebanese border, tonight:
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Lessons from Serbia applied in Middle East and North Africa
The press has caught on to some of the connections between Serbia’s Otpor legacy and popular rebellions in the Middle East and North Africa. Srdja Popovic is one of the links. Here is his presentation at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on April 1, 2011. A powerpoint is no substitute for Srdja, but I can’t figure out (yet) how to upload him to a blog post!
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The Passover of Arab liberation
Tonight is the beginning of Passover, the holiday celebrating the founding narrative of the Jewish people, which is also regarded by many non-Jews as the archetypal liberation story.
This Passover is the first in my lifetime that we can truly cast Egypt in the liberation story not only as the oppressor but also as the people liberating themselves. I’ve watched and commented enthusiastically for months now on the events unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East. For those of us privileged to live in a relatively free and prosperous country, the courage and conviction of those demonstrating nonviolently for freedom in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria is thrilling. Unlike the ancient Jews, they are not trying to leave the countries that have kept them captive but instead are trying to revolutionize them, creating political systems that will allow far wider margins of freedom to speak, associate and choose their rulers than existed anywhere in the Arab world until now.
Jews of course worry about what the Arab revolutions of 2011 mean for world politics in general and Israel in particular. But my sense of the relatively liberal and secularized community in which I live and pray is that the revolutions have the benefit of doubt. Lots of us anticipate that a liberated Egypt will give greater support to the Palestinian cause, but we may also think that is a necessary ingredient in completing the Middle East peace process. As the Palestinian papers all too clearly reveal, Israel has been less than forthcoming and more than recalcitrant, passing up decent offers from the Palestinian Authority that might have opened the door to resolution.
Americans of all religions also worry about the implications of the revolutions for their interests in political stability, countering violent extremism and reliability of oil supplies. Most it seems to me have gradually tilted towards support for the demonstrators, as has the Obama Administration, even in Yemen. This is made relatively easy by the fact that the revolutions have not yet touched directly on U.S. oil interests: none of the countries so far involved is a major supplier. Where U.S. interests and values have been most at odds–in Bahrain because of the 5th Fleet presence and Saudi Arabia because of oil–the tilt has been in favor of interests. Washington has essentially supported the Saudi and Bahraini monarchies in their efforts to buy off and repress dissent, even if those same monarchies are angry at Washington for promoting revolution elsewhere.
Libya is a special case. There some of the demonstrators chose to respond to violence with violence. The international community has backed them against the Gaddafi regime, but so far at least the results are less than satisfactory. It can be very difficult to dislodge an autocrat with violence, as that is their preferred method. They can and do escalate. The Gaddafi regime will not win in Libya, but it has already created a mess that will be difficult to repair. While Tunisia and now Egypt seem headed down paths that will lead to more open and democratic societies, Libya will need a lot more help to find its way after its devastating experience under Gaddafi and the war that will end his rule.
The outcome in Syria is also in doubt. As I noted yesterday, Syrians need to decide what they really want: the promise of responsiveness from a still autocratic regime, or real choices about how they are governed. Liberation will not be easy, as Bashar al Assad is brutal, determined and marginally more “enlightened” than some of the other autocrats in the Middle East. The benign despotism he is offering may well attract some Syrians, especially those who thrive under the current regime.
My message for Bashar and for all the other leaders on this Passover of the Arab rebellions, is simple: let your people go!
Here they are, in Homs, Syria, today:
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How long can this go on?
Big demos today Yemen and Syria. President Saleh has so far played rope-a-dope, pretending to negotiate but in fact ducking whenever the GCC or Saudis get close to a serious demand that he step down. The demonstrations in Syria are still focused mainly on regime abuses, especially the emergency law, rather than an end to the regime. No one seems fooled by the changes President Bashar has made in the cabinet, but somehow he manages to curry favor with both Syrians and the internationals.
In Libya, the military situation seems stalemated in a dynamic kind of way, but the Big 3 (US, France and UK) are making it clear that Gaddafi has to go. I trust this means they are working hard on it in clandestine ways. They are also admitting, as peacefare.net began suggesting in some depth on March 28, that a post-war reconstruction effort is necessary.
In Bahrain, the protesters’ cause seems lost for now. The Sunni monarchy there managed to reframe the whole affair as a sectarian conflict, which in a bizarre sort of logic justified the Saudi/UAE intervention and the crackdown on supposedly Iranian-inspired Shia. No doubt the protests will be back at some point, and likely with a far sharper sectarian edge. Torture and kill people for being Shia and they will no doubt seek recompense on that basis.
The main question now in Yemen and Syria is whether the demonstrators can maintain their momentum and continue to press for what they want. They are doing fairly well so far, but it is not easy to get people out every Friday, especially when there is serious risk involved. What happened in Libya should be ample warning that taking up arms is no quick or easy solution. Massive nonviolent protest is the way to go, and it won’t be easy to sustain.
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Riyadh and Washington try to get it together
With King Abdullah back in the saddle throne since late February, after months abroad for medical treatment, it seems to me that Saudi diplomacy has gone into relative overdrive. Their biggest move was troops into Bahrain, to free up the Bahraini security forces to beat up demonstrators, but now they appear to be taking an active role in arranging for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh from his post, if not from the country. I imagine they’ve decided now he is more liability than asset, something most Yemenis seem to have concluded weeks ago.
The Americans are also in overdrive, with Defense Secretary Gates and National Security Adviser Donilon wearing out the flying carpet to Riyadh. This is likely in part damage limitation–the Saudis aren’t happy to see the Americans plumping for transition in the democratic direction in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. It must be difficult to convince them that somehow we’ll manage to stop the process before it gets to the Kingdom, which has largely pacified its own population and cracks down hard when soft power fails to do the job.
But it looks as if there may be more on the agenda: the Iranian challenge looms large for both Washington and Riyadh, and both have taken to implying that the Iranians are up to no good in Bahrain, though there is little evidence that the protests were fueled by Tehran. This I suppose is where the Saudis would like the Americans to draw the line: democracy is good, but not if it threatens to bring a Shia majority into power (as it did of course in Iraq, and the Saudis were not pleased).
This leaves Libya and Syria. I see no real unhappiness coming from the Saudis about what is going on in Libya, and it is difficult to imagine that the United Arab Emirates would lend its air force to the cause if the Saudis were not prepared to go along. Gaddafi is not a Saudi kind of guy, and of course there is no Shia threat there. Syria is harder to read: are the Saudis backing Bashar al Assad, who runs an Alawi (sort of Shia) regime, or not? Riyadh and Damascus have in the past competed with him for influence in Lebanon. Would the Saudis prefer a Sunni regime in Damascus? Or does the preference for stability prevail? So far, the latter.
Saudi influence is likely one of the reasons the Americans haven’t been as welcoming of the protesters in Syria as might have been expected. Both Washington and Riyadh are worried about chaos in Syria, and how that might affect Iraq and Jordan. This is odd, of course, since Damascus is allied with Tehran and Bashar al Assad has not hesitated to make trouble for the Americans in both Iraq and Lebanon. I wonder if things started really coming apart in Damascus whether the Saudis would reconsider.
Now if you’ve got a headache from all this diplomatic mumbo jumbo, I’m not surprised. But the world really is complicated, the Middle East more than most other regions. And if something happens in Saudi Arabia to disrupt its giant oil production and exports, that $4 gasoline is going to start looking cheap.
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