Month: October 2012
Levant maelstrom
“Truce” – A caricture by world-renowned Syrian cartoonest Ali Farzat who once had his fingers crushed by Syrian security forces
The Eid al Adha truce broke down yesterday afternoon in Syria, with activists reporting 292 breaches by regime forces, who allegedly killed 116 people. Anti-regime demonstrations numbered 332. Damascus saw one big blast and many clashes. This strikes me as a particularly comprehensive list of reasons why the ceasefire could not last, with obvious bias towards the rebellion. Who wouldn’t be biased in that direction after 19 months of watching the regime kill its own people?
What now?
First there is the blame game. Regime and rebels will seek to pin the quick breakdown of the ceasefire on the other side. Neither will want its backers to react by cutting off arms, money and other support. The regime has little to worry about. The Russians and Iranians seem to be firm in supporting Bashar al Assad. The insurgents have more reason to be concerned. Turkey is getting wobbly. Washington is preoccupied until November 7 (and maybe for a few months after, if Romney wins). Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supplying ample arms and money but not seeing clear results. Extreme Islamists are increasingly prominent in the armed rebellion.
Brahimi will try hard to reinstate the ceasefire, arguing that each side should show restraint and police its own forces. This will work only if the rebels and the regime figure there is not much to be gained by continuing to fight. Even if they decide they have reached the “mutually hurting stalemate” that provides an opportunity for a ceasefire, it is difficult to see how it can work without third-party monitoring. Given the fate of the Arab League and UN observers earlier in the year, who would want to field another monitoring group?
I fear we are headed further into the abyss. With Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey increasingly at risk from spillover, the Levant may be condemned to a maelstrom of conflict whose eventual consequences could include assassinations, collapsed states, sectarian and ethnic war, economic implosion and safe haven for terrorists. Spread of the violence to the Gulf could make things worse. This cannot be ruled out. Even if Iran does not encourage it, Shia sentiment in Iraq, Bahrain and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia could significantly increase sectarian tensions.
The longer this goes on, the worse it is likely to get. Whoever wins the American presidency on November 6 needs to be thinking quickly about how to restore a modicum of order in the Levant. There are many options, none of them obvious winners:
1. Heavy arms for the (relative) good guys
2. No-fly zone (all of Syria or part)
3. Safe area inside Syria along the Turkish border
4. Political, economic and military support to liberated “ink spots” within Syria
5. Indictment of Bashar al Assad
6. Regime decapitation
7. Diplomatic push on the opposition to go to negotiations with the regime
These could also be mixed and matched. I’m sure there are other ideas out there as well, but this will do for a start. The important thing is block the descent into a regional maelstrom that will last for years and cause untold damage.
PS: The Red Cross on the humanitarian situation:
PS, October 29: Did I get Brahimi right?
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Peace requires sacrifice
Eid al Adha, the feast that commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Ishmael (and Ishmael’s acceptance) in the Koranic version of the story, is starting relatively quietly in Syria. The ceasefire that both the Syrian government and some of the revolutionaries had agreed with UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and the UN Security Council endorsed, has reportedly held in much of the country for the first few hours after Friday morning prayers today. Demonstrators are taking the opportunity to go to the street.
I have my doubts that the situation is “ripe.” The conflict is far from over. Both sides are hurting, but there is no “mutually hurting stalemate.” The rebellion has been gaining ground in Aleppo in recent days. Some of the rebels feel they have something to gain from continuing to fight. The Syrian army statement accepting the ceasefire was equivocal. It reserved the right to respond to the following:
First, the continuation of the armed terrorist groups’ gunfire against civilians and government forces and attacking public and private properties, in addition to using booby-trapped cars and explosive devices.
Second, attempts of the armed terrorist groups to reinforce their positions as of the beginning of this announcement or getting munitions or members.
Third, the facilitation of neighboring countries to let terrorists pass across the borders to Syria.
On the rebel side, the Free Syria Army accepted the ceasefire, but the radical Al-Nusra Front,which the Institute for the Study of War describes as a homegrown Salafi-jihadist group, did not, thus guaranteeing that the three conditions would not be met. It is hard to imagine a ceasefire holding for long under these circumstances.
That however doesn’t mean Brahimi was wrong to try. He should keep on trying. The ceasefire will give relative moderates both within the regime and among the opposition an opportunity to reassert themselves. He needs to give these people opportunities to express their opposition to continued fighting, reaching beyond the more belligerent components of both sides to find a constituency that will support a political process.
There will be many ceasefire “violations,” and the likelihood of a return to fighting is still high. The ceasefire has no monitoring mechanism. After a few days (or even a few hours) of rest, fighters on both sides may feel like going at it again. The regime is not going to want peaceful demonstrations showing the strength of the rebellion or rearming of the Free Syrian Army. The armed rebels are not going to want the regime to use the ceasefire to regain its balance and reset its strategy, which has accomplished little beyond destruction so far.
Brahimi and his team will need enormous patience and commitment. I wish them well. They will need the kind of faith Abraham and his son demonstrated. Peace requires sacrifice.
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Who will have more influence abroad?
I don’t think I need to comment on this:
The Pakistan exception is not an anomaly, as most Pakistanis consider the U.S. an enemy. Drone strikes, the raid on Osama bin Laden and support for Afghanistan have their costs.
President Obama is not as popular abroad as once he was, but ratings of the U.S. are generally up in Europe (except Germany) and Japan since the Bush administration, but not in the Middle East:
Of course if you believe American influence results primarily from military power, none of this matters. But where is the evidence of that? Certainly not in Pakistan.
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Diaspora communities invest
Diaspora communities are important: they are significant political lobbies, essential support networks, and a critical source of aid to their home countries through remittances. Diaspora communities can make important contributions to development and peacebuilding. Understanding the pivotal role of diaspora communities is the easy part. What’s difficult is finding members of diaspora communities, connecting them and effectively harnessing their motivations to help their home countries.
It is this difficulty that inspired Molly Mattessich of Africa Rural Connect and Homestring’s Eric-Vincent Guichard, the presenters at Tuesday’s event hosted by Microlinks about “Connecting to Diaspora Communities Through Web Portals.”
Africa Rural Connect was developed by the National Peace Corps Association in 2009 to address major rural agricultural challenges in Africa with the help of rural African farmers, especially women. The site functions as a meeting place for members of the African Diaspora, people in Africa, and people connected to the Peace Corps. On the site, people can “offer,” “remix,” and “endorse” ideas in addition to “pledging” money or time to events they like the most, though no financial transactions take place on the site. Through periodic competitions, the most popular ideas win cash prizes. Measuring the impact of the ideas generated on the site is hard because Africa Rural Connect does not follow their progress. It can report that there have been over 20,000 profiles created from 130 countries. About a third are members of the African Diaspora, another third live in Africa, and a final third are academics, people in the development field and entrepreneurs.
Homestrings uses a different approach based on the desire of members of the African Diaspora to invest in their homelands. Roughly $450 billion in remittances is sent from the West to emerging markets each year. Of that, Homestrings figures ten billion dollars per year comes from members of the African Diaspora looking to invest in Africa. Homestrings overcomes barriers diaspora communities face in investing at home by providing a credible, transparent, professional, and customer-oriented investment platform. A study prepared by George Washington University in collaboration with USAID and Western Union concluded that contrary to popular opinion, diaspora communities want to invest in their home countries not just for emotional or political reasons, but because they hope to get a return on their investment. The most often reported way diaspora communities connect with their homeland is through the internet. Homestrings offers a web-based investment platform where potential investors can find projects, endorse or invest in projects they like and manage their investments. Since February of 2012, Homestrings users have invested over $25 million. Homestrings plans to expand to Asia and Latin America.
Peacebuilding is expanding. Research, like the report considered in this post, indicates that intelligent development efforts are often necessary components of work to make and maintain peace. Using the internet to help diaspora communities invest shows promise.
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More than fiscal crisis in Palestine
Despite all of the media attention Israel and Palestine usually receive, no one is talking about Palestine’s fiscal crisis. Kate Seelye of the Middle East Institute (MEI) opened a panel hosted by MEI and Johns Hopkins SAIS on “The Political and Economic Implications of the Palestinian Authority’s Fiscal Crisis” by noting the presidential debates made it clear this issue will only receive less attention in the future, regardless of who is elected. The panelists explained that the world cannot afford to put this issue aside. Unless progress is made a two-state solution may become impossible.
Hussein Ibish, senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and the event’s moderator, summarized the fiscal crisis: the failed Palestinian UN bid in September of 2011 caused a crisis in the donor community, which provides one billion dollars to the Palestinian Authority per year. The Palestinian Authority has been unable to pay state employees on time. Oussama Kanaan of the International Monetary Fund pointed to a confusing aspect of this problem: the amount of money that the Palestinian Authority needs to pay all of its employees is relatively small, so why has no donor come forward? There is a $400 million deficit, assuming the United States pays the $200 million it pledged (which is not certain given Palestine’s announcement that it will petition in November to become a nonmember observer). At a recent donor meeting in New York, France came forward, but only with $10 million.
When the risks are so high, why is there resistance to action? Kanaan hypothesized that donors are unwilling to commit until the peace process has been revitalized. This was true during the Palestinian fiscal crisis of 2007 so the donor community, Israel, and Palestine met in December of 2007 in Paris to lay out a transition plan. Israel committed to gradually relax restrictions on the movement of goods and people and Palestine promised to strengthen its institutions. The World Bank and the IMF measured progress based on benchmarks over the period between 2008 and 2010. The results exceeded expectations, but in 2012 after Palestine’s failed UN bid and the expiration of the three year plan, the international community finds itself without a strategy. The advances made between 2008 and 2010 are unraveling.
Kanaan offers two possible solutions: convene another meeting like the Paris one in December 2007 or quit struggling for a transition solution and start work on a permanent plan for peace and stability.
Brookings Institution’s Khaled Elgindy supports the latter solution. “The peace process is dead,” he said. It is time to look for different strategies. The peace process failed because it was unbalanced, disjointed and detached from reality. The different application of the Quartet principles and the Road Map illustrates the imbalance. The former is applied as if it had the strength of a Security Council Resolution, but the UNSC-endorsed Road Map has been ignored and destroyed by Israel with Quartet support, he said.
The peace process was built on contradictions. The Palestinian Authority is a government without a state. It is treated as representing all of Palestine when there is a divide between the West Bank and Gaza. The peace process actually facilitated the occupation of Palestine and its dependence on foreign aid. It is impossible to have a healthy economy under occupation, especially when the state is not in control of 60% of its territory or the movement of people and goods. The failure of the peace process is intimately connected to the failure of legitimacy. Years of failed negotiations, the Palestinian Authority’s inability to represent all of Palestine, and the lack of Palestinian control of Gaza eroded the Palestinian Authority’s leadership.
The failures of the peace process and leadership pushed US/Palestinian relations into the “realm of infantilization,” said Elgindy. Elgindy quoted a State Department official in 2012 saying that what matters to the peace process is that the prime minister and the president remain in power. This remark is troubling at a time when the United States is supporting citizen-led movements to make governments more responsive to the people. Elgindy’s solution is that we let the peace process go and focus on doing no harm, building consensus, and ending the occupation.
Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations agreed with Elgindy and Kanaan on the problematic lack of a working peace process and Israel’s failure to relax restrictions enough. Danin emphasized that there is a lot happening on the ground, though the international political conversation doesn’t reflect this. Though the United States pulled back in 2011, other states have been working to keep a more serious crisis from developing. Usually political progress precedes changes on the ground, but the Palestinian Authority met the Paris benchmarks marking it a stable, functioning government but now has no political process to support it. Israel won’t make concessions without being asked. A Netanyahu aide told Danin that there was no incentive to help if Israel was not going to receive anything for its concessions. Danin argued that the solution is to take action before all faith in a two-state solution dies, but with a new conceptual approach where economics and politics are taken together.
Though Danin believes time might really be running out for a two-state solution, Elgindy argued that the peace process and a two-state solution are not the same. The death of one does not mean there is no hope for the other. Danin reported that in 2001 and 2002 during the intifada the international community thought the peace process was dead, but with effort it was revitalized. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad also said recently that he would accept a deal like the one offered by Prime Minister Olmert in 2008. This goes to show, Danin said, there is a difference in the Middle East between dead, really dead, and so dead there’s no hope. Hopefully the peace process is just “dead.”
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The guests who won’t come calling
Today is turning into a Balkans day. It must have been less than 5 minutes after I posted about the SecState visit to the Balkans with Lady Ashton that I got a note complaining that they weren’t going to Macedonia. I’d of course be perfectly happy if they did go to Macedonia, but I’m not sure the Macedonians would be delighted. When the EU and the U.S. come calling, they do it wanting results.
In Belgrade and Pristina, they will be looking for further progress on the bilateral dialogue, which already had a big moment last week with a meeting between the two prime ministers. A settlement of north Kosovo is presumably in the works, though I doubt it will be full-fledged by the end of the month. I don’t really know what they can hope for in Sarajevo. The political situation there is a shambles. They may be content to give a pep talk.
In Skopje, they would necessarily be looking for progress on the “name” issue, which means they would have to go to Greece as well. I can think of a lot of reasons why they might not want to do that. In addition, Washington and Brussels have come to believe that Macedonia’s Prime Minister Gruevski is a big part of the problem in the decades-long search for a name (other than Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM) that Greece will accept. He seems to think he is better off just leaving things as they are, since everyone except Greeks calls the country Macedonia (even Greek officials don’t object any more).
The big problem for Gruevski and Macedonia is that they have been blocked from entering NATO because of the “name” issue. This is unjust, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said clearly and unequivocally last December. But Athens has convinced Washington not to bulldoze it into accepting FYROM, despite the Interim Accord that obligates Greece to do so.
I imagine that if Gruevski rang up the State Department and told them he is willing to accept a “qualifier” (as in North Macedonia) that he might get a SecState and HiRep visit. He does not want to do that because Greece is insisting that any solution be used for all purposes, including every time the name of the country is mentioned in its constitution. I imagine that is at least as difficult for him to swallow as it would be for other prime ministers.
I am notoriously sympathetic with the Macedonians on this question: I think any country (and people) is entitled to call itself what it wants, as in Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Also “Americans,” which is a term some of my Latin American and Canadian friends think should be available to them as well as citizens of the United States. Fat chance they have of stopping us from using it as we like, or we them.
I don’t for a moment believe that Skopje has designs on Greek territory. Certainly its claims, if it had any, would be no better than those of Mexico on large parts of the United States, and the power relationship between the two countries is similar. Greece needs to get over its fear of Macedonia and unworthy defiance of the ICJ decision.
But none of that is likely to get Skopje a visit from Hillary Clinton and Lady Ashton.
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