Tag: Tunisia
Washington Journal today
I did C Span’s Washington Journal this morning. They don’t seem to allow embedding, so you’ll have to go to their website to watch. We dealt with Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Also Condi Rice. Don’t miss it!
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Next week’s “peace picks”
Good stuff, especially early in the week. Heavy on Johns Hopkins events, but what do you expect?
1. Strengthening the Armenianj-Azerbaijani Track II Dialogue, Carnegie Endowment, October 17, 10-11:45 am
With Philip Gamaghelyan, Tabib Huseynov, and Thomas de Waal
With the main diplomatic track negotiating the conflict over Nagorny Karabakh apparently deadlocked, more attention is being focused on how tension can be reduced and bridges built through Track II initiatives and dialogue between ordinary Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
Mohamed Salah Tekaya, Tunisian ambassador to the United States; Tamara Wittes, deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs and deputy special coordinator for Middle East Transitions at the U.S. Department of State; Mohamed Ali Malouche, president of the Tunisian American Young Professionals; and Kurt Volker (moderator), managing director of CTR, will discuss this topic. For more information and to RSVP, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2279443878/mcivte
4. Mexico and the War on Drugs: Time to Legalize, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, held at Mount Vernon Place, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, Cato Institute, to be held at the Undercroft Auditorium, 900 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. October 18, noon
Mexico is paying a high price for fighting a war on drugs that are consumed in the United States. More than 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence since the end of 2006 when Mexico began an aggressive campaign against narco-trafficking. The drug war has led to a rise in corruption and gruesome criminality that is weakening democratic institutions, the press, law enforcement, and other elements of a free society. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox will explain that prohibition is not working and that the legalization of the sale, use, and production of drugs in Mexico and beyond offers a superior way of dealing with the problem of drug abuse.
To register for this event, email events@cato.org, fax (202) 371-0841, or call (202) 789-5229 by noon, Monday, October 17, 2011.
Monday, October 17, 2011
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
1957 E Street, NW
5. Revolutionary vs. Reformist Islam: The Iran-Turkey Rivalry in the Middle East, Lindner Family Commons, room 602, 1957 E St NW, October 18, 7:30-9 pm
Ömer Tapinar, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Hadi Semati, Iranian Political Scientist
Mohammad Tabaar, Adjunct Lecturer, GW
The Arab Spring has brought Iran and Turkey into a regional rivalry to sell their different brands of Islam. While Tehran is hoping to inspire an “Islamic awakening”, Ankara is calling for a “secular state that respects all religions.” The panelists will discuss this trend and its influences on domestic politics in Iran and Turkey.
The Middle East Policy Forum is presented with the generous support of ExxonMobil.
This program will be off the record out of respect for its presenters.
RSVP at: http://tinyurl.com/3ntfx9o
Sponsored by the Institute for Middle Eastern Stuides
PS: I really should not have missed this Middle East Institute event:
Troubled Triangle: The US, Turkey, and Israel in the New Middle East, Stimson Center, 1111 19th St NW, 11th floor, October 18, 4:30-6 pm
The trilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States has deteriorated in recent years as Israel’s and Turkey’s foreign policy goals in the Middle East continue to diverge. Despite repeated attempts, the United States has failed to reconcile these two important regional allies since the divisive Mavi Marmara incident in May 2010. Please join us for a discussion of this critical yet troubled trilateral relationship in a time of unprecedented change in the Middle East. The discussion will feature Prof. William B. Quandt, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Professor of Politics at University of Virginia, Lara Friedman, Director of Policy and Government Relations and Gönül Tol, Executive Director of MEI Center for Turkish Studies, and will be held on October 18 at the Henry L. Stimson Center.
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They lead, we support
The European Union Institute for Strategic Studies asked “what’s next and whose job is it?” for transformations in the Arab world. Here is how I replied:
It is not for Europeans and Americans to lead. It is the citizens whose rights have been abridged who have to in the first instance lay claim to better.
First and foremost the next step is the job of the Arabs: the Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans in the first wave, the Yemenis and Syrians in what I hope will be a second wave. They know what they want better than we do, and judging in particular from the Tunisians and Libyans they are quite capable of setting the direction. The situation in Egypt is much less clear, as the protesters settled for a military takeover and are now having second thoughts, even as others try to pull Egypt in a nationalist direction that most of the revolutionaries would not want to pursue.
That said, they are going to need help. It seems to me that interests dictate that Europe take the lead on Libya and Tunisia while the Americans play a stronger role in Yemen and Egypt. The odd one out is Syria; sustaining the protest effort there for long enough to bring about real change will require commitment from both the Americans and the Europeans. In all these cases, Western influence will have to contend with Arab efforts that may sometimes pull in opposite directions.
Nor should the West forget the need for reform elsewhere: Bahrain of course, but also Saudi Arabia. The ageing Saudi monarchy (not just the ageing king) and the ferocious crackdown in Bahrain pose real questions about longer-term stability. The Americans stand on the front line with both of these questions, as they also do with Iran. There is no reason why the spring should only be Arab.
Barack Obama, like his predecessor, has made it clear that “all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights” does not stop at the water’s edge. It is written in our political DNA and we carry it abroad, like it or not. But the imperative does not stop at the ideal. If we care about the long-term security of our energy supplies, we’ll have to be ready to support those who cry out for their rights and avoid being caught on the wrong side of history.
But it is not for Europeans and Americans to lead. It is the citizens whose rights have been abridged who have to in the first instance lay claim to better. We can only support their efforts. And we’ll have our hands full doing even that much.
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Diplomatic observers for Syria
I’d like to revive an idea that I put forward more than a month ago: diplomatic observers for Syria.
I think we are in for the long haul in Syria. Bashar al Assad shows no signs of giving up. The international sanctions will pinch with time, but Iran is doing its best to counter them. While Bashar’s support has frayed in Damascus and Aleppo, that is only around the edges. The protesters are under a lot of pressure and have been unable to do what the Libyans did so successfully: put together a proto-government that could project a constitutional framework and roadmap to elections.
Military intervention is simply not in the cards. The Arab League isn’t asking for it. Russia has so far blocked all serious propositions in the UN Security Council. Moscow’s naval base at Latakia guarantees this will continue. I imagine Putin admires Bashar’s spunk and isn’t going to worry about what is done to the demonstrators. Turkey may stiffen its position a bit, but Ankara hasn’t yet done anything that really pinches hard.
If the protest movement in Syria is going to survive, it needs some help. We’ve been through this before. In some of the darkest days of the Kosovar rebellion against Serbia in 1998, the international community provided a Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission that reported on who was doing what to whom. It was too little too late and did not avoid war, but it was that mission that confirmed mass atrocities and helped to rouse the international community to its military intervention.
I don’t expect in Syria that there will be a military intervention, even if an observer mission were to confirm mass atrocities. The Russians won’t sign on to it, and I doubt the Americans and Europeans have the stomach to do it without Security Council authorization, which is what they eventually did in Kosovo.
But an international observer mission would likely reduce the ferocity of Bashar’s assault on Syria’s citizens and give us a far better window on what is happening than we have at present. Ambassador Ford’s visits to the protesters have clearly been a boost. Multiply that 1000 times in quantity (hard to match Ford in quality) and you’ve got something that might make a difference.
Would Bashar agree to it? At some point, he is going to be feeling the international pressure enough to make concessions. It is unlikely he will make any serious political reforms, since those would put his hold on power at risk. If he thinks that agreeing to international observers might eventually help him to relieve international pressures, he might do it.
In any event, I don’t see a downside to proposing it. The protesters have been literally crying for international protection. Civilian observers are not what they have in mind–some of them would like military intervention. But if the Arab League were to press the case and recruit the observers, the time may come when Bashar will yield to the proposition. If he doesn’t, all the worse for him: it suggests he has a great deal to hide.
I fear that if we fail to get something like this in place, the Syrian protest movement may fail, as the Iranian one did. That would be a big defeat for democratic forces in the Middle East, which are having a hard time elsewhere even if Libya and Tunisia seem to be proceeding more or less in the right direction.
In Yemen, the return of President Saleh to Sanaa has upped the ante and increased the violence. In Egypt, it is no longer clear–if ever it was–that the country will end up with a significantly more democratic system than the one Hosni Mubarak reigned over for decades. A Bashar victory in Syria would encourage reactionary forces elsewhere and help Iran to survive the Arab spring with its main client state still firmly attached. We haven’t got a lot of cards left to play on Syria: proposing international observers is a half measure that might be worth a try.
PS, October 26: The Syrian National Council is now calling for international monitors.
PPS, Octoer 28: Human Rights Watch likes the idea too.
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What was it like 48 years ago?
Credit for this post, if credit is due, goes to Zaheer Ali, a New York City historian who asked in response to a tweet saying that I was at the March on Washington if I had ever written anything about it. No, I haven’t, until just now, when I should be working on a book proposal.
I remember as much about the circumstances as I do about the event. My aunt tried to convince my mother she shouldn’t let me go. I was 18, age of the immortals. Just graduated from high school, working in a factory for the summer before starting at Haverford. I was determined to march despite rumors of violence. I certainly did not want to take advice from my rascist aunt, who went livid. Fortunately a more liberal uncle weighed in on my side. Defiance proved unnecessary–my mother was a liberal and thought it natural that I wanted to go.
It’s all about witness, wanting to testify to your beliefs by moving your body to the right place at the right time. I’d been to Washington before, as a child and tourist. It was still a segregated city then, though as best I understand it more by tradition than by law. My parents would only eat in chain restaurants that had integrated. Returning by bus that August day of 1963 was a right of passage for me: a first opportunity to witness on my own.
What has become known as Martin Luther King’s greatest moment I thought of at the time as Bayard Rustin’s. No, I did not know he was gay, or even what gay was, but I knew he was the great organizer. He proved it that day, assembling an enormous mass of people, whites as well as people who then mostly still called themselves Negro. There was a long list of speakers. Martin Luther King was the climax, but I can assure you that many of the others stirred the crowd as well. I particularly remember being moved by A. Philip Randolph, but don’t ask me any longer what he said. And the music! Dylan, Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary: mostly white, but “radical” as it was known then.
I had to leave New Rochelle, where my family lived, early in the morning, around 4 am. I grabbed the brown bag from the fridge with what I thought was my lunch in it, only to discover as we arrived in DC that the smell of raw fish was coming from my brown bag in the overhead rack. I had to borrow a couple of dollars from a cousin to get a hot dog or two for lunch.
We marched from somewhere not too far–maybe Thomas Circle. Memory confuses this occasion with the several later occasions I joined antiwar marches in DC. The spirit was good, really good. Everyone singing, chatting, laughing. I don’t remember a moment of tension all day. I guess the segregationists decided the crowd was too big and stayed home. Certainly it was nothing like the venomous atmosphere I endured two years later demonstrating in Cambridge, Maryland, where the national guard fixed bayonets and gas masks to confront us in the main street.
The message of the day was integration. Those who cite MLK’s “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers” have got it right. It is hard to appreciate today how much imagination was needed then to picture integration of blacks and whites in the United States. None of us were sure though at the time that MLK had quite risen to the occasion. Was his speech really eloquent enough? Did it rise to the occasion? Would anything make a real difference in a country that seemed hopelessly attached to segregation and racism?
We all think we know the answers to those question now, but at the time nothing was clear, except the day and the overwhelming power of that crowd of witnesses. These were people who really could sing “we shall overcome.” And they were determined to do it, though they had no idea how long it would take.
What does this have to do with peace and war? Everything: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria have all trod the path of nonviolent witness, some more successfully than others. Even Libya did it briefly. Hesitatingly, sometimes inadequately but increasingly the United States has come out on the right side, witnessing for the world to see that it supports human dignity. There really is no other choice. Bashar al Assad and King Khalifa of Bahrain should take notice. Washington may hesitate, it may equivocate, but it will not fail in the end to support the radical proposition that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.
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Rebuilding Libya: the first few steps
Theatlantic.com published my piece this morning:
Aug 22 2011, 6:39 AM ET
The most immediate challenges facing post-Qaddafi Libya
Reuters
Muammar Qaddafi’s finale in Libya is coming faster than even the rebels likely anticipated. They are reported to have arrested Saif al Islam, his favored son. If they take Qaddafi alive, the rebel leadership body Transitional National Council (TNC), or its successor organization, will presumably transfer him and his son to The Hague, for trial at the International Criminal Court. This would be a remarkable end to a 42-year reign as Libya’s chief governing authority and a first opportunity for the court to try a chief of state, even if he did not claim that title.
Some may prefer to try him in Tripoli, but it is going to be years before the Libyan courts are able to meet the necessary international standards. A show trial will not help Libya in its understandable passion to lay the foundations for a freer society.
Qaddafi’s continued resistance risks making the situation inside Libya far more chaotic than it need be. Some of his loyalists may go underground as people harmed by the regime seek revenge, rivalries among rebel groups may emerge, looting and rioting could break out, and criminal gangs are sure to try to take advantage of any disorder. Restoring public order will be job one, with restoring electricity, food, and water close behind. Oil installations will need to be protected, weapons depots guarded, and secret police files preserved. It is certainly a good sign that the rebels are reported to have thrown up a protective cordon around the National Museum.
The rebels say they believe everything will go smoothly, and they appear to have trained some police to protect sensitive infrastructure and maintain law and order. But hope is not a plan. They need to get things under control as quickly as possible, appealing for foreign help if need be.
European governments could step up to this challenge, since they are tied to Libya via gas pipelines that float beneath the surface of the Mediterranean. If Libya succumbs to chaos, it will be to Europe that refugees will flow, and mostly European investments in Libya that will be lost. Unfortunately, Washington seems to have allowed Europe to remain distracted with its own financial problems. There does not appear to be any serious plan for dealing with chaos in Libya, which could quickly turn into a humanitarian disaster. American boots definitely do not belong on the shores of Tripoli, but it has happened before and may happen again.
The TNC will have to be particularly alert to risks of revenge killings against Qaddafi loyalists, and of score-settling among rebels. They have already lost one of their military commanders, apparently to rebel-affiliated attackers who resented his role in Qaddafi’s army. In immediate post-war situations, the urge to exact quick justice is enormous. But allowing vigilantes to even the score will only lead to a spiral of violence that is hard to stop and inimical to democratic evolution.
Virtually overnight, the rebel leadership will need to shift its focus from fighting Qaddafi’s forces to protecting them. In the past few months, the local councils that have emerged in liberated areas have not generally allowed violence against regime supporters. But that is partly because many of Qaddafi’s loyalists have fled from newly liberated towns to Tripoli. Their concentration there and in his hometown of Sirte is going to make the challenge of transition much greater there than anyplace else in Libya.
It is critical that regime loyalists and rebels alike do not grab and “privatize” state assets, as often happens in chaotic moments and takes years to reverse. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, the government has been trying for years to recover valuable mines from those who took possession of them during the civil war. The liberty Libyans have fought for will require massive rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure and economy, which is in miserable condition. Early efforts to ensure transparency and accountability could help Libya avoid the kind of corruption that has plagued Afghanistan and Iraq.
Only the most selfish and egotistical leader would fail to make arrangements to transfer power and try to avoid bloodshed. Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine ben Ali fled, but left the country with a constitutional succession that is enabling a relatively smooth transition. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak tried to leave power in the hands of his vice president, a move negated only when the army stepped in. Yemen’s President Saleh has so far refused to allow a constitutional succession, leaving his country seized with violence.
Qaddafi is still calling on his supporters to fight and vowing to restore his own version of law and order in Tripoli. This is Qaddafi’s last misdeed. There is no constitution in Libya, so no clear constitutional succession. The revolutionaries have wisely written their own constitutional charter, but the real challenge will not be on paper. It will be in the avenues and alleys of Tripoli.
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