Tag: Iran

Middle East and Europe: impact and prospects

I had the privilege this morning of speaking today by Skype to the Ambassadors’ Council convened at the Macedonian Foreign Ministry in Skopje. These are the notes I used:

  1. First let me thank the organizers, in particular Ambassador Abdulkadar Memedi and Edvard Mitevski, for this opportunity. It is rare indeed that I get to talk about my two favorite parts of the world: Europe and the Middle East.
  1. My focus today will be on the latter, as I am confident that Europeans—a category that in my way of thinking includes all the citizens of Macedonia—know more than I do about the impact of the refugee crisis on your part of the world.
  1. But big as it looms for you, the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from the Greater Middle East is a fraction of a much larger problem.
  1. There are 4.8 million refugees from Syria in neighboring countries, the largest number in Turkey but millions also in Lebanon and Jordan. Upwards of 8.7 million will be displaced within Syrian by the end of the year. 13.5 million are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.
  1. The number of refugees leaving Syria has leveled off, but asylum applications in Europe are well above 1 million and still rising, albeit at a declining rate.
  1. The U.S. is committed to taking only 10,000 Syrians. I don’t anticipate that our politics will allow a lot more anytime soon, though eventually we will have many more arrive through family reunification and other modalities.
  1. The 1.5 million people you saw flow through Macedonia over the past year or so were the relatively fortunate Syrians, not the most unfortunate. Moreover, most who have arrived in Europe are male. If their asylum applications are successful, that will lead to large numbers of family members eventually joining them.
  1. The vital question for me is this: what are the prospects for ending the wars that are tearing Syria to shreds? And what are the prospects for other potential sources of migrants and refugees from Iraq, from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya?
  1. More than five years after Bashar al Assad’s attempted violent repression of the nonviolent demonstrations in his country, prospects for peace still look dim.
  1. The Russians and Iranians, whose support to Assad has been vital to his survival, show no signs of letting up and have in fact doubled down on their bad bet.
  1. The Iranians have committed Lebanese Hizbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and their own Revolutionary Guard to the fight, not to mention Afghan and other Shia fighters.
  1. The Russians have not only redoubled their air attacks but also added flights from Iran, now suspended, as well as cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea. Moscow has now killed more civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, than the Islamic State.
  1. The Americans continue to refuse to fight Assad, Iran, or Russia. President Obama lacks both legal authorization and popular support to attack them. Americans want him to focus exclusively on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, which is what he is doing, apart from assistance to some Syrian opposition forces willing to join in the fight against extremists.
  1. Donald Trump would certainly follow the same policy, perhaps redoubling efforts against the Islamic State and looking for opportunities for cooperation with Russia. Hillary Clinton has pledged to look at other options like protected areas or no-fly zones, but it is not clear that she will pursue them.
  1. The space for moderates in Syria is shrinking. Violence always polarizes, as you know only too well. In addition, the Americans are restraining the forces that they have equipped and trained from attacking the Syrian army. They want moderates focused exclusively on fighting the Islamic State.
  1. This morning, Turkish forces entered Syria at Jarablus on the Euphrates, in support of Arab and Turkman forces aiming to deprive the Islamic State of its last border point and block the expansion of Kurdish forces from taking the last stretch of the Turkish/Syrian border they don’t control.
  1. When will it all end? I don’t know, but I think it likely to end at best not in a clear victory of one side or another but rather in a fragmented and semi-stable division of areas of control.
  1. The Syrian government will control most of what Assad refers to as “useful Syria”: the western coast and the central axis from Damascus through Homs and Hama, with Idlib and Aleppo still in doubt.
  1. The opposition will likely control part of the south along the Jordanian border as well as a wedge of the north, including a piece of the border with Turkey stretching from Azaz to Jarablus.
  1. The Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey. Raqqa and Deir Azzour are still up for grabs, with the likely outcome opposition in the former and government in the latter.
  1. That is the likely best. Will that end the refugee problem?
  1. I think not. Nothing about this fragmented outcome is likely to make it attractive for Syrians to return home. Security will remain a serious problem and little funding will be available for reconstruction. Syria will remain unstable for years to come.
  1. What about other parts of the Greater Middle East?

Read more

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Shifting currents in Syria

As UN envoy Stefano de Mistura tries to reconvene Syria peace talks next week, there are important developments that could impact his prospects.

The Syrian government has continued to block aid to opposition-controlled areas, causing Stefano to abruptly curtail humanitarian task force deliberations last week. Moscow last week flew bombers from Iran, an innovation now reportedly suspended. The Russians also launched cruise missiles allegedly targeted against Jabhat al Nusra (which is generally embedded with more moderate insurgents) from the Black Sea. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Russia has now killed more civilians in Syria than ISIS, though it started years earlier. Moscow has shown no visible inclination to limit Syrian government strikes on civilian areas, which it targets on a daily basis.

At the same time, the situation in northern Syria has evolved in a direction favorable to the US. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are mostly Kurdish fighters, have retaken Manbij from the Islamic State and are heading for Jarablus on the border where the Euphrates crosses from Turkey into Syria. Arab SDF forces are said to be preparing the assault from inside Turkey, which wants to block the Kurds from taking over the entire northern border of Syria. At the same time, farther east in Hasakeh, US-supported Kurdish forces are fighting with the Syrian army, with which they cooperated in taking the town a year ago and had maintained a truce since. The Syrian air force last week came close to clashing with US aircraft sent to protect the Kurds, who are reportedly trying to oust President Assad’s forces entirely from their northeastern “canton.”

If successful, these operations in northern Syria will cut off the Islamic State from its supply lines in Turkey and possibly end the ambiguous relationship of the Kurdish PYD forces with the Syrian government, though the Syrian opposition is unlikely to accept the PYD into its fold, not least because of Turkey’s opposition. The possibility of an attack on the Islamic State capital at Raqqa is starting to loom on the horizon, perhaps even before an effort to liberate Mosul in Iraq.

Still John Kerry is saddled as the Obama Administration draws to a close with the unenviable task of conducting Middle East diplomacy without any serious threat of coercion. The President, supported by most Americans, simply doesn’t want to use American force against anything but the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. This means not targeting the Syrian government  and Hizbollah forces, even when they attack civilians. The Iranians and Russians in Syria are following his lead in a way: they are using force on the issues they care about and ignoring diplomacy. No matter what they say about not being wedded to Assad, the Russians and Iranians are mostly fighting the Syrian opposition in an effort to prevent regime change, with few relatively few attacks on on the Islamic State.

This free for all isn’t likely to work well for John Kerry in his efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Syria. The proposition he has been flogging is this: US cooperation with Russia in targeting the Islamic State and Al Qaeda (presumably including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the allegedly unaffiliated successor to Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra) provided Russia ends attacks on the non-extremist Syrian opposition and convinces President Assad to ground his air force. The relative success of US-allied forces in northern Syria may strengthen Kerry’s hand, but there is no sign yet of any willingness on Russia’s part to meet its side of the bargain.

 

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Fighting to win

No, this won’t be about the American elections. It’s about Syria.

The Russians and the Iranians are doubling down in Aleppo, where the insurgent part of town is virtually surrounded, civilians are under daily bombardment, and too brief humanitarian pauses are routinely flaunted. The breach opposition forces have made in the siege is mostly unusable, as it is constantly under fire. The Russians are now flying their bombers from Iranian territory, in order to shorten the transit time and increase the ops  tempo.

Why would they do this?

They have good reasons. If they ever did, Tehran and Moscow no longer have any hope that a successor regime in Syria would treat their interests respectfully. So many Syrians have now suffered from their intervention that they can count only on autocracy, of Assad or someone like him. They may not share Assad’s objective of retaking control of every inch of Syria, but they want him to win in Aleppo because they think that will ensure his survival in power.

Assad understands this and will drag his allies as deep into the hole he has dug for himself as possible. Yesterday and today he attacked Kurdish forces in northern Syria, if not for the first time still for the first time in a long time. There had been a de facto truce between the regime and the Kurds, who have gotten some support from the Russians (as well as the Americans). It looks as if Assad has decided to put the Russians on the spot, knowing that they don’t dare abandon him for the sake of the Kurds.

Assad is even looking strong enough for the Chinese to pitch some military assistance in his direction. They don’t really have a dog in this fight, but they presumably want to come out on the winning side. If that is an autocracy, all the better.

Meanwhile, the Americans are sticking to their game plan, which requires them to focus exclusively on defeating the Islamic State (ISIS): the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have taken the strategically important northern town of Manbij from ISIS and are heading towards Jarablus, on the border where the Euphrates crosses from Turkey into Syria. Washington has supposedly promised that the Kurds will withdraw from the Manbij “pocket” once the fighting is over, leaving Arabs in charge to prevent the Kurds from controlling the entire northern border of Syria and thus to please the Turks. We’ll see if that intention holds.

The big losers in all this are non-extremist Syrians, particularly those who live in opposition-controlled areas. Their cause at this point seems lost, which I suppose is why the White House persists in its indifference. Only resounding defeat of ISIS will play well in the American election campaign. Obama is also fighting to win, but in a different war from the one Putin and Assad are pursuing.

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Nation-building isn’t a four letter word

Donald Trump yesterday followed in a long tradition of American presidential candidates and presidents who have forsworn nation-building.

George H. W. Bush said he was sending the marines to Somalia in 1992 to restore order and enable feeding the population. When Washington discovered that we couldn’t get out without leaving chaos behind, we turned the nation-building over to a UN mission (run by a US Navy Admiral) that failed. We are still fighting insurgent terrorists in Somalia.

Bill Clinton said in 1995 we would send US troops to a NATO mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina for only a year, to oversee implementation of only the military aspects of the Dayton peace agreements. He discovered the obstacles to peace implementation didn’t divide neatly into civilian and military components. US troops stayed for almost 10 years and some still remain. They likewise have stayed in Kosovo much longer than initially projected. In both Bosnia and Kosovo, their presence has had positive effects.

George W. Bush declared during the 2000 election campaign that US troops don’t do nation-building. But once he had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq he discovered that we couldn’t get the troops out without it. He then launched the two biggest and most expensive nation-building efforts since the Marshall Plan after World War II.

Barack Obama has been more disciplined than his predecessors: he pulled US troops out of Iraq almost completely (in accordance with an agreement and timetable negotiated and signed by his predecessor) and has tried to get them out of Afghanistan. The negative consequences of failure to build an inclusive state in Iraq, including Prime Minister Maliki’s turn to sectarianism and the rise of a Sunni insurgency, are documented in the Washington Post this morning. The consequences in Afghanistan are all too obvious: the Taliban are back in force and the Islamic State is trying to gain traction. Obama has said that one of his worst mistakes was failing to provide adequate assistance to Libya after the fall of Qaddafi.

When Trump yesterday declared an end to nation-building, he was repeating what his predecessors have said, and mostly regretted. The American people are reluctant to govern others, even if they are quick to tell others how to govern. Trump followed that tradition too, by announcing that he would somehow make sure that lesbians, gays, transgender and queer people are treated with respect abroad and honor killings stopped.

It is of course unfair to blame all the consequences of reluctance to do nation-building on American presidents.

First, because they are reflecting the real preferences of their constituents. Americans want their resources expended at home, not abroad. Many believe that 25% of the Federal budget is spent on foreign aid, even though the actual figure is less than 1%. If I thought one-quarter of my tax money was going overseas, I would want foreign aid cut too.

Second, because the task they are trying to avoid really is difficult and expensive. It is properly called state-building rather than nation-building, a term presidents prefer because it sounds pejorative. But what we needed in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya is a legitimate organization that could govern on a particular territory. The people on that territory might or might not constitute a “nation.”

Given what we know about terrorist groups and their affinity for weak or fragile states that cannot fully control their territory, state-building is not optional. Without it, post-war Syria or Yemen will, like post-war Iraq and Afghanistan, provide haven to people who wish harm not only to their own state but also to us.

That doesn’t mean the US has to be responsible for the state-building. You break it, you buy it is the prevailing rule. The Russians and Iranians in Syria along with the Saudis and other Gulf states in Yemen should be thinking about that as they bomb with abandon. The UN is already stuck with the job in Libya, where it appears to be making slow headway in gaining traction for a national unity government.

But what kind of state-building will Russia and Iran, or the Gulf states, do? Not the kind of state-building that even Donald Trump says he wants. What presidents call nation-building may not be what they want to do, but it is not a four letter word either. If you want to keep America safe, you are going to have to figure out how to get it done.

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Why get Hezbollah out of Syria

I’ve got a piece in the Washington Post this morning: The right target for the U.S. in Syria: Hezbollah. It starts like this:

The military situation in Syria has turned against the U.S.-supported opposition over the past year, due mainly to Russian intervention. Now, the failed coup in Turkey and subsequent crackdown there stand to reduce the capabilities of a key U.S. ally. Without some rebalancing now in favor of the opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the prospects for a satisfactory negotiated political transition are dim.

In a dissenting internal memo last month, 51 State Department diplomats advocated attacks on Syrian government forces to end their aggression against the country’s civilian population, alter the military balance and bring about a negotiated political solution. President Obama has focused instead on fighting terrorism in Syria, but U.S. targets are limited to Sunni extremists such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliates.

There is also a Shiite terrorist organization in Syria: Lebanon-based Hezbollah. It should not be immune.

That’s all I can reproduce without getting into trouble with the guardians of intellectual property. Go to the link above for the rest.

I don’t advocate an ultimatum backed with the threat of force lightly. But I also don’t see how allowing the Syrian wars to continue can be justified. Doing nothing is also doing something. It has consequences.

The US proposal to cooperate with Russia in attacking Jabhat al Nusra as well as the Islamic State makes the Hizbollah question even more urgent. If implemented, the US/Russia agreement will further weaken the opposition to Bashar al Assad, which relies–like it or not–heavily on Jabhat al Nusra capabilities. While the Americans are proposing as part of the agreement that the Syrian air force be grounded, no restraint on its ground forces (or those of Hezbollah) is proposed. Nor would it be possible to enforce.

So Faysal Itani is correct when he suggests that implementation of the agreement will make things even worse for the Syrian opposition than they’ve been to date, which is pretty bad for the past year. Aleppo is under siege and will likely fall, sooner or later. Idlib is at risk. Barack Obama, who doesn’t think US national security interests are at risk in the fight against Assad, could leave office presiding over mass atrocities the US has pledged to prevent and further undermining prospects for the negotiated settlement the US says it wants.

I am however sympathetic to the Administration’s aversion to taking up the cudgels against Russia, Iran and even the Syrian regime, as it lacks Congressional authorization for that kind of state-on-state fight. But I doubt any Congressional authorization is needed for the fight against a non-state actor like Hezbollah that has killed many Americans. The existing Authorization to Use Military Force, passed to bless the war against Al Qaeda, has already been stretched to cover the Islamic State and Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra, both Sunni extremist organizations. Why won’t it stretch to cover Shia Hezbollah as well?

The main purpose of an ultimatum to Hezbollah would not be to widen the Syrian war. It would be intended to get Hezbollah to withdraw to Lebanon and end its participation in the Russian/Iranian coalition supporting Bashar al Assad, thereby encouraging him to get serious about the UN-sponsored peace talks. Washington would of course continue to have a problem with Hezbollah even in Lebanon, where for decades it has weakened the Lebanese state, distorted Lebanese politics and planned the murder of innocent civilians in half a dozen countries.

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Iraqi Kurdistan’s future

Some colleagues asked me to offer my view of the future of Iraqi Kurdistan. Here is what I told them:

  1. A Martian could be forgiven if he arrived today on earth and concluded that Iraqi Kurdistan will be independent by November.
  1. President Barzani has promised a referendum by then and even the Martians know that Iraqi Kurds would vote overwhelmingly for independence if given free choice and opportunity.
  1. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) case for independence is strong: Iraqi Kurds have been brutally treated by their own government, chased from their country and even attacked with chemical weapons; they have governed themselves sort of democratically for decades and treated minorities well by regional standards; they have fought the Islamic State courageously and welcomed people of all ethnicities displaced by the fighting.
  1. One of my pro-independence friends argues that Iraq is like former Yugoslavia: a failed state that has disappointed all its inhabitants and needs to dissolve into its constituent parts.
  1. Another friend asks why Washington would not welcome another stalwart and more or less democratic friend in the turbulent Middle East.
  1. So why do I think independence won’t happen?
  1. To make a long story short: the KRG lacks well-established borders, the means to defend itself, the needed internal political cohesion, the required economic resources, the good relations with its neighbors and the required support of the world’s great powers to become a sovereign state.
  1. Before explaining in depth, let me make an important distinction: political independence is something you declare. It is an expression of political will, sometimes unilateral.
  1. Sovereignty is something you acquire, largely through recognition by other states, which sometimes requires the defense or conquest of territory. The KRG already has a large measure of independence. What it lacks is sovereignty.
  1. President Barzani’s proposal is a classic process for achieving independence: a referendum followed by a unilateral declaration.
  1. It would do little or nothing to establish sovereignty.
  1. For that, the KRG would need to have in the first place well-established borders that none of its neighbors would contest.
  1. That is simply not the case. Baghdad has not and will not accept the KRG’s right to all the disputed territories the peshmerga seized in the confusion of 2014, when the Iraqi Army collapsed in Mosul and other parts of the north under Islamic State attack.
  1. The Iraqi Army today is in no condition to contest KRG control of Kirkuk, parts of Diyala and parts of Ninewa province, but Baghdad won’t accept the fait accompli either. A declaration of independence now would leave a giant unresolved border problem that sooner or later would likely be resolved by force.
  1. I don’t really see how the KRG will ever be able to defend itself from the rest of Iraq if Baghdad gets its act together, which to some degree it seems to be doing. In fact, there might be nothing so likely to unite Shia and Sunni Arabs in the rest of Iraq than a KRG declaration of independence.
  1. How does a KRG with a population of 5.2 million defend itself from an Arab Iraq of perhaps 28 million? Only by reaching an agreement that would likely involve the surrender or compromise of Kirkuk and other disputed territories.
  1. The KRG lacks the internal political cohesion for a deal of that sort and many other requirements of sovereignty and independence. Just last month a Sulamaniya delegation was in Baghdad forswearing any intentions to go for independence.
  1. The PUK and Gorran have no intention of letting President Barzani be the George Washington of the KRG, or even allow him an unconstitutional third term. He has locked the opposition Speaker out of parliament, which is unable to meet even to decide how the referendum will be organized.
  1. Kirkuk’s governor wants his province to become a region, separate at least initially from the KRG. Some in Sinjar are resisting incorporation into the KRG. One observer even sees signs of Balkanization of Kurdistan.
  1. Resources are also a problem. At oil prices of $100/barrel or above, KRG officials thought production of 500,000 bpd might enable them to replace all the money Baghdad was supposed to be sending. At $50/barrel, the production required is presumably close to 1 million bpd. Current exports are a bit more than 500,000 bpd.
  1. The KRG is an oil rentier state. Even with recent tax increases and reductions in subsidies, it has precious little revenue other than from oil.
  1. The consequences for the KRG economy are dramatic. Civil servants are going unpaid, the economy is in crisis and the enormous influx of people displaced by the Islamic State has increased the stress. The 1.4 million people on the government payroll, including those fighting the Islamic State, are being paid erratically.
  1. Kurdistan’s difficult neighborhood is an additional problem. All the KRG’s oil is exported to Turkey, which has greatly improved its relations with the Iraqi Kurds. But Ankara under current conditions is still unlikely in my opinion to welcome a KRG declaration of independence, for fear of incentivizing the Syrian Kurds or its own to head in the same direction.
  1. Iran is even harder over against KRG independence, for fear of what it would mean for its own province of Eastern Kurdistan, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is chasing Kurdish guerrillas and occasionally shelling across the border into the KRG.
  1. Syria no longer counts for much in regional politics, but KRG independence would not be a welcome move there either. The KRG could expect none of its neighbors to offer it diplomatic recognition and exchange of ambassadors.
  1. Most of the great powers will be even more resistant than the KRG’s immediate neighbors. The United States will fear that a referendum and independent Kurdistan would strengthen Russia’s case for the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as well as the annexation of Crimea and eventual annexation of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, not to mention Bosnia’s Republika Srpska.
  1. Europe, in particular Germany, is hard over against independence.
  1. China would agree: it wants no precedents that Tibet might want to follow. Russia might be more amenable, though Moscow would be wise to contemplate the issue, since an independent Kurdistan is likely to be strongly pro-Western (and its own constituent republics might be getting ideas).
  1. To summarize: if you can’t expect recognition by any of your neighbors or your best friends, if you don’t have the money to pay the bills, if your internal politics are divisive and you will not be able to defend the borders you claim, my best advice is don’t try it.
  1. The Kurds would be wise to wait for a more auspicious moment. It may well come, possibly within the next five years. They will know the time is right when they have Washington and Baghdad’s concurrence, recognition by Iran and Turkey, revenue to cover their expenses, a functioning parliament and a leader who attracts support from Sulamaniyah as well as Erbil. Stranger things have happened.

What, my colleagues asked, if the KRG went ahead despite the circumstances. What would happen?

I answered maybe nothing, since without recognition of sovereignty declarations of independence evaporate pretty quickly. Kosovo’s in 1991 didn’t work, nor did the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad declared in 1946, another colleague noted. But it is also possible a Kurdish declaration of independence would spark a wider war in the Middle East, involving Iran and Turkey even more directly than the current conflict. That would not be good news.

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