Tag: Syria
Syria isn’t going away
I couldn’t agree more with Fred Hof’s bottom line in his and Alex Simon’s paper prepared for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sectarian Violence in Syria’s Civil War: Causes, Consequences, and Recommendations for Mitigation:
Left on its current trajectory, Syria is on the path to state failure and sustained sectarian violence, featuring mass atrocities and cleansing that could amount to genocide in some areas.
That is a clear and compelling alarm, one the Holocaust Museum is uniquely qualified to sound.
As Fred and Alex painstakingly elaborate, all of the likely scenarios, including an opposition victory, will produce serious risks. This is due in no small measure to the history and context of the Syrian war. Syrian society is riddled with cleavages: sectarian, ethnic, regional, urban/rural and ideological. The Asad regime papered over them a thin veneer of secularism but quickly ripped that off when the Sunni majority rebelled. The regime has intentionally sectarianized the war, ensuring itself Alawite and other minority support by making the fight an existential one. As Hof and Simon put it:
Thus, while preaching and promoting secularism, Assad built a system implicitly featuring the sectarian poison pill: any attempt by non-Alawites to bring down the regime would run the risk of taking the country down with it via a bitter sectarian struggle.
- regime victory
- managed transition
- rebel victory
- stalemate, descent into further sectarian violence, possible state failure
They quite rightly conclude that each is worse than the last when it comes to the risks of mass atrocity and even genocide in some areas.
Check: possible future developments foreseen. Check: alarm bell rung. What is to be done?
That’s where the Holocaust Museum paper is less satisfying, but not for lack of good policy proposals. Hof and Simon want an inclusive, tolerant opposition government committed to rule of law on Syrian territory. They want a negotiated settlement that creates a transition regime. They want trust funds to back the transition. They want supply of training and weapons to good guys, while funding to bad guys is blocked. They want a UN-authorized, NATO-led stabilization force, to accompany unarmed observers. They want US support for a democratically oriented, non-sectarian outcome.
I can’t quarrel with wanting these things. But it is not at all clear how to get to them, or even how some of them would help to prevent mass atrocity. In my view, what is needed is a less global set of options targeted on the specific issue of protecting civilians. More than 70,000 Syrians are now dead due to a war that started only a bit more than two years ago. This is a colossal failure of the responsibility to protect, which lies first and foremost with the Syrian government. The options may be quite different in each scenario, but the moral imperative is the same: something needs to be done to save lives.
It is looking very much as if the fourth scenario is the most likely one (stalemate, descent into further sectarian violence, possible state failure). Preventing that or mitigating its consequences is going to require more international political will than has been forthcoming so far. Even if there is an opposition victory, the transition will be a long and painful one. With the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has dismantled much of its civilian capacity to handle cases of state failure. We need to be thinking about how to fill the gap, either with our own personnel and resources or other peoples’. UN? Arab League? Turkey? One way or another, Syria is going to be with us for a long time. It isn’t going away just because Washington ignores it.
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Hobson’s nuclear choices
No one seems overwrought that the latest nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (that’s US, UK, France, Russia, China + Germany) ended inconclusively yesterday in Almaty, Kazakhstan. An agreement on the eve of Iran’s presidential election campaign (voting is scheduled for June 14) was not likely. Iran is looking for acknowledgement of its “right” to enrich uranium, even if it limits the extent of enrichment and the amount of enriched material. The P5+1, led by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, are looking for strict limits on enrichment (to 5% or below, with most more highly enriched materials shipped out of the country) and tight international inspections without acknowledging Iran’s right to enrich. They are also looking for suspension of enrichment at Iran’s underground facility at Fordo and a strict accounting for past activities, which appear to have included some nuclear weapons development.
There are related non-nuclear issues on which the gaps may be greater. Iran wants sanctions relief up front as well as cooperation on Syria and Bahrain. The Western members of the P5+1 want to maintain sanctions until they have satisfactory commitments and implementation that prevent Iran from ever having a nuclear weapons program. They are not willing to soften their support for the revolution in Syria against Iran’s ally Bashar al Asad or for the Sunni minority monarchy in Bahrain, which faces a Shia protest movement that Iran supports.
The Israelis are the only ones who seem seriously perturbed:
“This failure was predictable,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, said in a statement. “Israel has already warned that the Iranians are exploiting the talks in order to play for time while making additional progress in enriching uranium for an atomic bomb.” He added, “The time has come for the world to take a more assertive stand and make it unequivocally clear to the Iranians that the negotiations games have run their course.”
But there is precious little they can do about the situation. An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will do relatively little damage but will end the prospect of a negotiated solution and make Tehran redouble its efforts to get nuclear weapons. President Obama is in no hurry to do the more thorough job the Americans are capable of. He seems satisfied that there is still time. The Iranians have in fact been slowing their accumulation of 20% enriched uranium by converting some of it to fuel plates for their isotope production reactor, which makes the material difficult to enrich further. The Israelis may not like it, but it looks as if everyone will hold their breath until after the Iranian election, when the question of further meetings and a possible agreement will arise again.
In the meanwhile, the Iranians will be watching North Korea closely. It has tested several nuclear weapons and presumably made more. Pyongyang is sounding committed not just to keeping them but to acquiring the missile capability to deliver them. While the press makes a great deal of Kim Jong-un’s threats against the United States, he represents a much more immediate threat to South Korea and Japan. If he manages to hold on to his nuclear weapons and thereby stabilizes his totalitarian regime, the Iranian theocrats will read it as encouragement to continue their own nuclear quest.
With the “sequester” budget cuts forcing retrenchment on many fronts, Washington is trying for negotiated solutions and hesitating to enforce its will that neither Iran nor North Korea acquire serious nuclear capabilities. It is hoping the Chinese will help with Pyongyang, which nevertheless seems increasingly committed to maintaining and expanding its nuclear capabilities. Tehran has slowed its accumulation of nuclear material but is expanding its technological capability to move rapidly if a decision is made to move ahead. President Obama could soon face a Hobson’s choice in both cases: either act militarily, despite the costs and consequences, or accept two new nuclear powers, despite the costs and consequences.
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The UN’s challenges
I’ve been in New York since Thursday, unable to tweet or blog due to inexplicable wireless router problems at the home of friends, where we were staying. My focus was naturally on the UN, where the renovation of the Secretariat building is said to be nearing completion but you wouldn’t know it from the way it looks. I hope the people who move back in are feeling more renovated than the facility.
Here’s a quick list of things I’ve learned:
- Lots of angst at the UN about its expanding role in peace enforcement operations. In Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali, UN forces are being asked to go beyond impartiality to combat bad guys, some of whom may not be a lot worse than the folks the UN is helping. Life is complicated.
- The war in Syria is presenting enormous difficulties to the UN observers in Golan, where the UN staff is subject to threats, intimidation, kidnapping and murder. Troop contributing countries are withdrawing their soldiers, the rebels are using the neutral zone to mount operations and the Syrian army is lobbying artillery shells that occasionally land in Israel.
- Some countries are nevertheless pledging troops conditionally for post-war Syria. Lakhtar Brahimi will stay on as a personal representative of the Secretary General to help prepare contingency plans while possibly resigning his more formal mandates from the Security Council and the Arab League, which has seated the Syrian opposition coalition in Damascus’ place.
- Some folks think it would be a good idea to keep the UN out of stabilization operations altogether: it lacks understanding of local situations, imposes insensitive, standardized approaches, is opaque and unaccountable and leaves behind pathologies like prostitution and trafficking, not to mention the warlords it helps install in power and teaches the finer arts of corruption by shortcircuiting proper procurement procedures in the name of urgency.
- In any event, everyone is expecting financial stringency as a result of the American sequester. I expect the Americans, if they can overcome their ideological distaste for the UN, to load it up with more tasks, not fewer, as they do triage and and toss the lower priorities in the UN’s direction whenever the Security Council permits. It was pretty clearly a mistake not to have a beefier UN mission in Libya, for example, to help with demobilization and retintegration of the militias that are wrecking havoc with the transition, aided by a disappointing performance from the parliament elected last summer.
The UN reminds me of the High Line, New York’s elevated freight railroad spur now converted to an elongated park (where I spent an hour this morning, see the photos below). Created under different conditions for different purposes, the High Line has been repurposed and is now playing a starring role as a people magnet, attracting tourists and New Yorkers alike.
The UN was created in San Francisco to ensure post-World War II peace and security and to that end:
- to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
- To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
- To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
- To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
The circumstances were very different in 1945, but these purposes remain valid, far more so than during the Cold War. What the UN needs more than repurposing is reform to ensure that it has the knowledge, talents and resources to meet its high purposes in a 21st century environment.
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The fireman of last resort
It is striking that the first comments on Fred Hof’s Washington Post piece today advocating U.S. support for a “nonsectarian,” opposition government in Syria are negative. The pendulum has swung hard against intervention, humanitarian or not. Americans are not interested in getting involved. They fear getting in deeper than they like and causing problems rather than solving them.
This is not surprising after a more than a decade of fruitless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the more recent intervention in Libya. I would argue that Libya was a relatively successful intervention despite the murder of our ambassador and his colleagues in Benghazi by a relatively small group of extremists. I would also argue that Iraq, while unquestionably not a just or justifiable war given the lack of nuclear weapons (or even a serious nuclear weapons program), is better off without Saddam Hussein. The war in Afghanistan was justified, but botched and now unlikely to have a good outcome. But I am not confident I can convince even my wife, who rolls her eyes knowingly whenever I say these things. Americans are in no mood to try again in Syria to create a relative democracy where a sectarian autocracy has ruled for decades.
The values argument is clear
But the national mood should not be the only factor in determining whether we intervene in Syria. National interests and values should also weigh in the balance. So far as values are concerned, Fred is right: we should be doing what we can to help the Syrian opposition to end a brutal and illegitimate dictatorship. There really is no serious argument here, though of course Fred’s critics are correct to suggest that a democratic outcome is far from guaranteed. Extreme Islamists are playing a strong role in the Syrian revolution and are likely to remain a strong political force once it is over, no matter what we do.
National interests are less clear
Some national interests also weigh in favor of intervention. The fall of Bashar al Asad would certainly be a blow to his sponsors in Iran and his partners in Hizbollah. If our failure to intervene means the war lasts longer, the conflict will become more sectarian and put at risk state structures throughout the Levant. Apart from Syria itself, the spillover could threaten Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, all of which are receiving large numbers of refugees and sending back into Syria fighters of various sectarian and ethnic groups. The Americans worry a lot about Al Qaeda, whose purpose is to recreate an Islamic caliphate. Continued fighting in and around Syria could make something like the caliphate re-emerge, with cataclysmic consequences.
Other national interests weigh against. Our parlous economic and budgetary situation hardly argues for intervention in yet another conflict. President Obama is concerned with keeping the Russians “on side” in support for the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital to American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. He also wants to maintain a credible threat of force against Iran’s nuclear program, which would be difficult to do if the US gets enmired in the Syrian war.
Everything costs
War is not cheap. It generally runs $1 billion and up. By some reckonings, we spent more than a trillion in Iraq, but that was a really expensive eight-year enterprise with lots of military and civilian boots on the ground. No one advocates putting American troops on the ground in Syria.
Humanitarian relief and other aid is not free either, though it costs a lot less than war. We are in the vicinity of $400 million already in Syria and the bills are compounding. I won’t be surprised if the US chips in more than $1 billion by the end of this year. The bill could go considerably higher.
What are we buying? Necessities: food, water, sanitation, shelter, including blankets, cooking stoves and other standard humanitarian relief supplies. But they are going largely to government-controlled communities. While USAID claims it is reaching all vulnerable populations, reports are multiplying of areas outside government control that are getting little or nothing. It is just very difficult to get supplies to all those who need them.
Military options
Is there an alternative? We are already providing intelligence to the opposition, according to the American press. At this point, the main additional options are military. You can call it a no-fly zone if you prefer, but as Jim Dobbins has said we can either give the Syrians the arms they need to take down Bashar al Asad’s aircraft or we can nail them ourselves. The former is war by proxy. The latter is war tout court.
A billion or two in arms or air operations would not be trivial, though I’d be surprised if we got off quite that cheap. In addition, the arms could end up in the wrong hands, which will likely happen no matter who supplies them. No country wants to be the supplier of the shoulder-fired missile that brings down a commercial aircraft. Nor do I think the folks receiving weapons are likely to show much gratitude, though supplying them to relative moderates could conceivably strengthen them in the post-war transition.
I’d be more interested in the “nail the aircraft” option, especially if it included the Scud missiles Bashar has been raining on population centers. Something like this is going to be necessay if the liberated areas are ever to be safe from long-range attack. The sooner it happens, the more likely it is the liberated areas can begin governing themselves, and receiving humanitarian assistance.
We’ve got a mess on our hands in Syria. Allowing it to continue will make things worse. Intervening could also make things worse, but it is likely to accelerate the denouement and tilt the outcome against Bashar. Syria is a house on fire. We can’t be the world’s policeman, but we do need to act as its fireman of last resort.
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Nowruz/Passover/Easter: better than expected
I did not anticipate how well President Obama’s visit to Israel, Palestine and Jordan would go last week. I was not alone. In Washington, pre-roadtrip skepticism prevailed: differences over Iran and Palestine were anticipated to overshadow any cosmetic improvements in the President’s often tense personal relations with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
It may still turn out that way in the longer-term. Whatever new castles Obama built in the Mediterranean sand could be quickly swept away. But for those who think the US is decline and can no longer influence events in the Middle East, this trip should sow doubt. And for those who thought Mitt Romney would do better with the Israelis than Obama, this trip suggests the contrary.
The President went out of his way to establish his bona fides with Israelis: praising their democracy, admiring their courage, recalling their idealism, remembering their history, sharing their losses, ensuring their security. But he at the same time spoke bluntly of the need to make peace with the Palestinians, who will have enjoyed his performance less but still got a blunt and unambiguous defense of their right to a state of their own. The well-crafted statement brought the president ample applause also from Israelis. Presumably there were not a lot of West Bank settlers in the audience. It was a virtuouso performance.
So much for the flash. What about the substance? The big issues for the trip to the Middle East were three:
Iran: The President and Netanyahu sounded more united on preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. In fact, there are differences, with Israel concerned that the Americans will agree to allow Iran to hold on to a substantial quantity of 20% enriched uranium, which could be further enriched quickly with more advanced centrifuges that Iran is now installing. The Iranians are slowing their accumulation of enriched material while increasing their capacity to move quickly if they decide to develop nuclear weapons. Obama made it clear he would not stand in the way of Israel taking military action, but only the US can cause serious damage to the Iranian nuclear program. Netanyahu seems now to accept that the Americans will draw the redline, albeit closely consulting with the Israelis.
Syria: Secretary Kerry has been leaning forward on bringing an end to the civil war in Syria, but President Obama is still wanting it to be done without US military intervention or lethal supplies to the opposition. Israel is increasingly concerned about more advanced arms flowing to Hizbollah and about the buildup of more radical Sunni Islamists on its Golan Heights boundary with Syria. The apparent use during the week of chemical weapons–the regime says by the revolutionaries, the revolutionaries say by the regime–is a big problem for President Obama, who side-stepped the issue during his trip by saying he would await a determination on whether they were really used or not. Still, he said their use would be a game changer, whatever that may mean.
Palestine: The US and Israel need to keep the Palestinian Authority afloat, even as they discourage it from seeking further international recognition, taking Israeli officials to the International Criminal Court and reconciling with Hamas. This is a delicate dance, and Obama was less than clear on next steps. He is downplaying settlements per se and wants direct negotiations on borders, which of course would limit the extent of Israeli settlements.
Obama also has to be concerned about other issues:
Jordan: The big problem is the burgeoning flow of refugees from Syria, who are getting close to half a million. Amman just doesn’t have the capacity to welcome many more and needs help to manage the burden of those who have already arrived. The presidential visit will buck up King Abdullah, but the public relations effect is likely to be short-lived. He needs financial help (Obama pledged $200 million more for Syrian refugees in Jordan) and some good advice on carrying forward political reform. He is getting most of the former from the Saudis, who aren’t likely to give him much of the latter.
Egypt: The Israelis will have expressed concern about instability in Egypt, even though Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi has so far not undermined the peace treaty. The presence of Islamist extremists in Sinai appears still to be growing. The difficulties Egypt is having in establishing its new regime and maintaining legitimate governance throughout the country will be of concern to both Israel and the US.
Turkey: The big surprise of the President’s trip was his successful mediation of a Netanyahu apology for an attack on an aid flotilla to Gaza that killed nine Turks in 2010. This comes along with Turkish success in convincing imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan to agree to a ceasefire in the decades-long rebellion. Both moves will help to shore up Turkey in its continuing confrontation with Bashar al Asad and restore some confidence in an Ankara whose “zero problems with neighbors” policy had been in tatters.
I have my doubts Obama will succeed where other presidents have failed: on Palestine and Iran in particular. But he did well last week, and for that we should all be thankful. The Nowruz/Passover/Easter season is proving better than expected.
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Can Syria be saved?
I spoke yesterday on “Can Syria Be Saved” at the Italian Institute of International Affairs (IAI). I was honored at the last minute by Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Staffan de Mistura, who joined the event and provided some comments. Here are the notes I used, amplified with Stefano’s comments and a bit of the Q and A:
1. The situation inside Syria
Military: The regime can clear, but less and less; the revolution can clear more and more. Neither can hold securely or build without the other being able to strike. This is the significance of air power and Scuds, which prevent consolidation of rebel control.
Civilian: The government is doing all right in areas that are loyal, but not gaining and under severe economic pressure. The revolution is unable to supply many areas outside government control and therefore unable to consolidate control and support.
2. Who is doing what outside Syria
There is no sign of the Russians or Iranians abandoning Assad, despite some change in Russian rhetoric. Russian arms supplies continue. Iranian forces are active within Syria, as is Hizbollah. Arms are flowing to the opposition, but unevenly and not always what they need.
The June 2012 Geneva communique, which provides for a fully empowered transition government approved by both the regime and the opposition, is still the only agreed diplomatic route. Brahimi is quiet, which is the best way to be until he has something definite. The Americans are exasperated but unwilling as yet to send arms. The naming of a prime minister this week should bring more civilian assistance, which is already topping $400 million from the US.
3. Why Obama hesitates to intervene more decisively, why Putin backs Assad
President Obama’s hesitation has little to do with Syria. He recognizes full well that a successful revolution there will be a blow to Iran and Hizbollah, but even an unsuccessful one is bleeding them profusely. The main issues for Obama are the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital for American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran. He does not want to risk alienating the Russians on either front.
For the Russians, the main issues are no longer the port and arms sales, if ever they were. Now the question is one of prestige and power. Putin is defining his Russia in explicitly anti-Western terms, all the more so since what he portrays as Western trickery during the Libya intervention.
For Iran, the issue is an existential one. Loss of Syria would disable the connection to Hizbollah and isolate Iran from the Arab world, with the important exception of Iraq. This would be a big loss to a country that thinks of itself increasingly as a regional hegemon. The Islamic Republic would regard the loss of Syria as a big blow.
4. Options for the US and Europe
Britain and France are considering supplying weapons. That is unlikely to buy much allegiance. The best that can be hoped for is to strengthen relatively secularist and pro-Western forces, but that is going to be diffficult given the good military and relief performance of the Islamists, including those the US regards as extremist and even linked to Al Qaeda.
The US hesitates about arms transfers because of “fast and furious,” a US government scheme to track weapons transferred to the Mexican cartels. One of the weapons was used to kill an American border patrol agent. If an American-supplied shoulder-fired missile were to bring down a commercial aircraft, the incident would have major domestic political repurcussions.
Washington is instead focusing on enabling the civilian side, in particularly the newly named Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto and whatever interim government he cobbles together. This should certainly include ample humanitarian assistance and operating expenses.
It might also include military intervention, since the Hitto government won’t be safe inside Syria if Assad continues to use his air force and Scuds. The idea gaining ground outside the US administration is to destroy as much of that capability as possible while it sits on the ground. No one in Washington wants a no-fly zone that requires daily patroling. This is also a possible response to chemical weapons, whose possible use was mentioned during the IAI event but the facts were still very unclear (as they still are today so far as I can tell).
5. Possible outcomes and their implications
The fall of Bashar will be a beginning, not an end. It is not clear that the state structure in this Levant will hold. Lebanon is clearly at risk. You’ve got Kurds in Syria and Iraq who want to unite, in addition to an ongoing if somewhat sporadic Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. You’ve got Sunnis in Iraq fighting in Syria who might eventually turn around and fight again in Iraq. You’ve got Alawites, Druze, Christians and others who will want to protect their own communities, isolated from others in enclaves.
Even if the state structure holds, there are big questions about the future direction of Syria. Will Islamists triumph? Of which variety? Will secularists do as badly in a post-war transition as they have in Egypt? The opposition in Syria agrees that the state should remain intact, but will it be able to under pressure from a “stay-behind” insurgency like the one that Saddam Hussein mounted in Iraq?
I also ran quickly through the options for post-war Syria that I’ve already published.
Staffan reacted underlining the importance of continuing to talk with the Russians, who are convinced that the intervention in Libya has opened the door to Al Qaeda extremism in Mali and Syria. He also underlined the importance of the opposition forming an inclusive and cohesive government that enunciates a clear plan for how to deal with the previous regime, including an exit for Bashar al Assad, and how to provide guarantees to the Alawites. He underlined that we should be putting together an international peacekeeping force now. We should not be tricked into international intervention by allegations of chemical weapons use.
I’ll stop my account there, as I’ve already gone on too long. It was a stimulating discussion. Many thanks to my hosts at IAI!
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