Month: October 2012
The slough of despond
Amar Causevic, a Bosnian citizen getting his master’s degree at SAIS, writes of Sunday’s municipal elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina (results are not yet in from Srebrenica, which may require a more in-depth look in the near future):
The campaign is over. No more posters on waste containers and schools, political gatherings under tents filled with turbo-folk music or poisonous ethnic rhetoric in the local media. Bosnia has ended one more post-war municipal electoral cycle. What were the results? How did the electorate of this war-torn, economically stagnant and politically gridlocked Western Balkan state assign its votes? Can we expect anything to change?
Bosniak voters decided to embrace once again the nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) and punish the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SDP). Among Serbs, the nationalist Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) made a skyrocketing comeback at the expense of the dominant Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). For Croats, by contrast, it was business as usual. The nationalist Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZ) retained its supremacy. The weaker Croat and Bosniak parties (the Croatian Democratic Union 1990 and Fahrudin Radoncic’s Union for a Better Future of Bosnia-Herzegovina) failed to fulfill pre-election expectations.
In short, avowed ethnic nationalists defeated avowed social democrats, as they have often in post-war Bosnia. The three winning parties in 2012 also won the first post-communist election in 1990. That political cocktail led within two years to war.
The nationalists—SDA, SDS and HDZ—have held power most of the time since the war ended in late 1995. Their inefficient rule, interrupted only briefly by stagnant and uninspiring periods under social democrats, has produced a country that enters more serious socio-economic decay every year. The citizens betray the “mentality of the subordinated” and continue to choose the same leadership.
There were other options. They could have voted for the smaller parties that have never had a chance to hold power. This would at least have opened the door to fresher, if not better, politicians.
There is no room for progress and change in Bosnia. Its politics resist the notion of the ancient Greek philosopher Simplicius of Cilicia that “everything flows” (panta rhei). The country is stuck in its own slough of despond, as John Bunyan describes it:
This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.
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Getting it out of the ground is the easy part
Paul Collier brought his big news to SAIS Friday: Africa will find lots more resources in the next decade. The question is whether it can take good advantage of them to transform the continent and its non-resource economy, which is already doing pretty well.
OECD countries have discovered about five times more than Africa in natural resources beneath every square kilometer. But there is no reason to believe resources are so unevenly distributed. So Africa has a lot more to find and exploit.
But in order to do so it needs to master a difficult chain of economic decisions:
- Discovery: to avoid hesitancy about private investment that then turns into “gold rushes” when discoveries are made governments will have to collect and publish relevant geological information to reduce the uncertainty and encourage private companies to explore.
- Taxes: these are especially important in poor countries because the companies and high tech workers are so often foreigners. Society will not gain much unless taxes are collected. But poor countries need to focus on taxing things that can be observed and observing things that can be taxed, which is not their natural inclination.
- Division of revenue with local communities: Local communities should be compensated for environmental and other damage and get a fair share of the revenue, but they should not capture all of it. This requires credible legal mechanisms as well as willingness of the national authorities to resist local capture of the rents (as in the Niger Delta).
- Savings at the national level: Poor countries should be saving at least 30% of the revenue and progressively more as the resource is depleted, thus ensuring a balance between present and future requirements.
- Spending at the national level: That still leaves 2/3 of the revenue for expenditures. When it comes to spending the two-thirds of the revenue that is not saved, health and education are good candidates, as they have very low productivity in Africa.
The Norwegian model, which many hold up as ideal, is a sovereign wealth fund invested entirely outside Norway and only the returns on investment spent. This would not be appropriate for a poor country that lacks adequate capital. African countries should first of all invest in building the capacity to invest well, then invest in increasing the capacity to produce outside the natural resource economy, since it is by definition in long-term decline.
Turning to the politics of natural resources, Collier sees two problems: the coordination of decisions across many governmental units (Ministry of Mines, Finance, Environment, parliament, local governments, courts, etc.) and the need for many decisions over decades when most of these governmental units have short time frames.
There are three answers:
1. Rules to provide guidance for natural resources;
2. Institutions to make the decisions;
3. Citizens who understand the issues and support the rules and the institutions.
The key to citizen understanding is a narrative of stewardship. It is important that natural resource discoveries not be seen as riches to be exploited but rather as opportunities that need stewardship. This is the difference between Nigeria’s “we’re rich!” narrative and Botswana’s “we’re poor and need to save” narrative. The latter is far more likely to produce wise decisions over long periods.
Exploitation of natural resources should build the non-resource economy over a 25-year time horizon. Governments don’t think inter-generationally, but citizens do, as they plan for their children’s future. With the right narrative, they will control the government’s worst impulses through rules and institutions.
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George W. Bush’s playbook
I can do no better in summing up Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech today than he does himself in the penultimate sentence:
The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity.
Here’s the problem: the terror, war and economic calamity Romney refers to occurred not on Barack Obama’s watch, but on George W. Bush’s. And Governor Romney’s foreign policy prescriptions, like many of his domestic policy prescriptions, are drawn from George W. Bush’s playbook.
The few innovations in Romney’s speech at Virginia Military Institute today are hardly worth mentioning. He wants to see the Syrian revolutionaries get more arms, in particular anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, but he fails to say how he will prevent these from being used against us, except to say that those who receive them will have to share our values. That should fix everything in the arms bazaars of the Middle East.
He says he will support a two-state solution for peace between Palestine and Israel. Nice to see him return to the mainstream from the extremist wings of Israeli and American politics, which is where he was during the “47%” fund-raising dinner in Florida when he suggested we would kick the can down the road and maybe skip the two-state solution altogether. Trouble is, the people he pitched that line to are supporting his campaign with fat checks. He says there will be no daylight between America and Israel, which is code for saying that the Jewish settlements will continue to expand, since that is what Netanyahu’s Israel wants. I fail to understand an American presidential candidate who outsources U.S. policy on the Palestinians to Israel.
In Libya he’ll track down the killers of our personnel, which is exactly what Obama promises to do. I’d just be curious how those 15 Navy ships he plans to build each year will help in the effort.
He pledges to condition aid to Egypt but makes the conditions both vague and easy to meet: build democratic institutions and maintain the peace treaty with Israel. There are lots of problems with President Morsy’s Egypt, but you won’t be able to hang him for either of those offenses, yet.
In Afghanistan, he calls the withdrawal the president has pledged a retreat but makes it clear he is not proposing anything very different.
Then there is this on foreign assistance:
I will make further reforms to our foreign assistance to create incentives for good governance, free enterprise, and greater trade, in the Middle East and beyond. I will organize all assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with responsibility and accountability to prioritize efforts and produce results. I will rally our friends and allies to match our generosity with theirs.
The trouble here is that the Ryan budget guts the foreign affairs budget, including foreign assistance. There won’t be any American generosity to be matched with theirs if Romney is elected. This is where Romney departs definitively from Obama and shows his reliance on George W.’s playbook.
I hasten to add that I’d be all for organizing our assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official. That would be a good idea.
One last issue: with all this overload of American values as the basis for our foreign policy, I’m curious what Romney plans to do about Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco and other less than fully democratic friends in the region? They get no mention in this speech, but of course they really can’t be mentioned in a speech that gives unequivocal backing to both our friends and our values. What would Romney do when there is a choice between the two? Keep silent would be a good guess.
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Facilitating dialogue in conflict zones
I’ve got a book out co-edited with David Smock on Facilitating Dialogue: USIP’s Work in Conflict Zones. For an easy intro, you can try my recent appearance on Voice of America.
This is no coffee-table crusher but rather a slim 170-page compilation of case studies from the last 13 years or so. It includes two chapters on dialogues in Iraq (Mahmoudiya and Diyala) and one each on Kosovo, inter- and intra-faith dialogue in the Middle East and Colombia, civil society dialogues in Colombia, Nigeria (Niger Delta in particular) and justice and security in Nepal. David wrote the introduction and we collaborated on the conclusion. The book grew out of a series of internal meetings at USIP that I convened starting in 2009, if I remember correctly, to compare notes on our various dialogue efforts.
The approach in the book is practical. We were not trying to theorize, as others have, but to demonstrate in practice why dialogue is important, what it involves, the many factors that determine success and failure, and best practices that can increase the odds for success.
All but one of the dialogues described were conducted as United States Institute of Peace projects, with vital contributions by contractors, some of whom had been trained by USIP. The exception was a USIP grant-supported project in the Niger Delta conducted by Acadmic Associates PeaceWorks. All were efforts that were at the heart of USIP’s push to go abroad to demonstrate in practice what we thought we had learned in the previous decade or so of peace research, in which the Institute had played a seminal role, mainly through its publications.
When I arrived at USIP in 1998 it was a think tank with training and grant programs. When I left in 2010 it was also a “do” tank, with a much-expanded training program and grants more focused on peace-building in conflict zones. This transformation depended on the ingenuity, courage and commitment of the people who contributed to the projects described in Facilitating Dialogue. These were not efforts for the squeamish, the faint of heart or those who don’t want to risk program failure.
We’ll be launching this book at USIP 10:30-noon on October 17 with a few presentations of the cases (I’ll do Kosovo, Rusty Barber Iraq, Colette Rausch Nepal) and some more general remarks by David Smock. This will be my first presentation at USIP since I left almost two years ago. Please join us for the occasion, which I expect will be a stimulating one.
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This week’s peace picks
Though Americans are focused on domestic politics, there are interesting events this week dealing with a variety of national and international issues.
1. U.S. Public Opinion Toward Arabs and Islam: How “The Video Incident” May Affect U.S.-Muslim Relations, Monday October 8, 10:30 PM – 12:00 PM, Brookings Institution
Venue: Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036, Falk Auditorium
Speakers: Tamara Cofman Wittes, William A. Galston, Hisham Melhem, Shibley Telhami
A provocatively offensive film and violent demonstrations protesting it have once again roiled the relationships between Americans, Arabs and Muslims. In both the United States and the volatile transition states of North Africa, popular reactions have been swift, severe and complicated by domestic politics. But beyond the partisan scorekeeping and the loudly raised voices, how have these recent events changed the way the American public views Arab and Muslim communities? Within the emerging democratic Arab states, how has the furor over the video altered the public debate regarding freedom of speech, civil liberties and other constitutional rights? Finally, how are these issues examined within the context of religious expression, pluralism and tolerance—values that are central to American identity?
On October 8, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at Brookings will host a discussion on these questions and unveil a new University of Maryland public opinion poll examining attitudes just days after violence erupted in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East. The poll, conducted by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami, gauges American public attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims and toward U.S. foreign policy in the region. Panelists include Brookings Senior Fellow William A. Galston, the Ezra K. Zilkha chair in Governance Studies; Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief of Al Arabiya News; and Telhami, principal investigator of the poll and the Anwar Sadat chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland. Senior Fellow Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, will moderate the discussion.
Participants can follow the conversation on Twitter using hashtag #USArabViews. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.
Register for this event here.
2. Is There a Political Solution to the Afghan Conflict?, Tuesday October 9, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM, SEIU Building
Venue: SEIU Building, 1800 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036
Speaker: Omar Samad, Shamila Chaudhary, Arif Rafiq, Marvin Weinbaum
With the military involvement of the U.S. and its NATO allies winding down in Afghanistan, there have been stepped up efforts to explore the possibility of reaching reconciliation with the insurgency. Some officials and independent observers have cited positive signs of interest on the part of the Taliban in a power-sharing arrangement. Others have questioned the Taliban leadership’s interest in pursuing a settlement or if the objective conditions exist for concluding an agreement. At stake is whether Afghanistan will be faced after 2014 with continued fighting that tests the mettle of its security forces in what could become a brutal civil war, or can be stabilized with a political solution that is inclusive and satisfies the country’s various ideological and ethnic groups.
Register for this event here.
3. Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Tuesday October 9, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, American Security Project
Venue: American Security Project, 1100 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005, Suite 710W
Speakers: Matt Freear, Nick Lockwood, David H. Young, Joshua Foust
Join us for a fact-based discussion with leading experts on counterinsurgency. As the war in Afghanistan comes to a close, the US strategy is focusing on the transition to Afghan security responsibility. We will discuss how the transition is proceeding, how counterinsurgency has evolved and what to expect from the local Afghan security forces.
RSVP for this event to events@americansecurityproject.org.
4. America’s Other Army: The U.S. Foreign Service and 21st Century Diplomacy, Tuesday October 9, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM, CSIS
Venue: CSIS, 1800 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20006, B1 Conference Room
Speakers: Nicholas Kralev
Kralev has been given unprecedented access to the inner sanctum of American diplomacy in Washington and around the world. Also the author of Decoding Air Travel: A Guide to Saving on Airfaire and Flying in Luxury, Kralev will be speaking on his latest work- America’s Other Army. He will share behind-the-scenes insights on how the work of American diplomats affects the daily lives of millions of people around the world, and examine whether the Foreign Service is equipped to address the challenges of the 21st century.
Register for this event here.
5. Youth Bulge, Public Policy, and Prospects for Peace in Pakistan, Wednesday October 10, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, USIP
Venue: USIP, 2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Speaker: Abiodun Williams, Moeed Yusuf, Edward Rhodes, Mehtab S. Karim, Nasim Zehra, Saleem Ranjha, Eric Manes, Mohsin Khan, Philip Auerswald, Ammar Anees Malik, Asad Majid Khan, Andrew Wilder, Ifran Malik, Kalsoom Lakhani, Shamila Chaudhary, Peter Stearns, M Nizamuddin, Jack Goldstone
Pakistan has been in the limelight since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While there has been plenty of it, the debate and policy analyses on the country have focused on the immediate concerns linked to extremism and terrorism. Yet, questions about the long term economic, political, and social health remain just as critical and will ultimately determine whether Pakistan stabilizes as a medium sized, stable, and moderate country or presents itself as a ticking time bomb that is a constant source of worry for the world. No other agent of change will be more relevant in this regard that the country’s bloated youth cohort.
It is surprising that for all the talk about Pakistan’s importance, very little is said or written about its upcoming generation. This is despite the fact that over 110 million of the 180-odd million Pakistanis today are under the age of 29 of whom over 50 million are classified as youth between ages 15-29. Their political preferences, their role in national development, and the avenues for Pakistan to accrue the demographic dividend are hardly understood. Given that this segment of Pakistani society will ultimately determine the country’s destiny, with its attendant impact on internal and regional peace and security, this is an obvious void that needs to be filled.
The School of Public Policy at George Mason University (GMU) and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) are jointly organizing a one-day conference focusing on the Pakistani youth, public policy options, and the prospects for peace in the long run. The conference will feature a group of leading experts, including young Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans who will discuss the role of Pakistani youth in national development, the role of education in youth development, outlook of young Pakistani Americans towards Pakistan, and how all of these factors can contribute to peace.
6. Arab Transitions to What?, Wednesday October 10, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Elliott School of International Affairs
Venue: Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20052, Lindner Family Commons
Speakers: Eva Bellin, Tamara Wittes, Daniel Brumberg, Marc Lynch
Three leading political scientists will discuss the political transitions in the Arab World since the region’s uprisings. A light lunch will be served.
Register for this event here.
7. Countering Radical Narratives through Cooperation with Pakistani Civil Society, Wednesday October 10, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM, Heritage Foundation
Venue: Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002, Lehrman Auditorium
Speakers: Hedieh Mirahmadi, Mehreen Farooq, Knox Thames, Lisa Curtis
Rising extremism in Pakistan has drawn attention to the need for engagement with moderate Muslim networks and civil society organizations that can effectively counter radical narratives and decrease the pool of recruits for militant organizations. In Pakistan’s Civil Society: Alternative Channels to Countering Violent Extremism, the World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE) argues that over the last decade, U.S. policymakers have focused most of their attention on engaging with government, military, and intelligence establishments, to the exclusion of civil society actors.
Calling for renewed engagement between the United States and Pakistan’s vibrant civil society, the report offers a comprehensive study based on in-depth fieldwork in 35 cities and villages across Pakistan and interviews with over 100 civil society activists, former militants, jirga members, and religious scholars. The report concludes that traditional Muslim networks buffer the rise of extremist activity and offers suggestions how U.S. policymakers and the Pakistani American community can help rebuild U.S.-Pakistan relations by actively supporting these networks.
Join us for a launch of this groundbreaking report by two of the report’s authors as well as commentary by a leading expert on religious freedom issues in Pakistan.
Register for this event here.
8. Democratic Crisis in Sri Lanka: The Threat to Rule of Law in South Asia’s Oldest Democracy, Wednesday October 10, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM, East-West Center
Venue: East-West Center in Washington, 1819 L Street NW, Washington, DC, Sixth Floor Conference Room
Speakers: Saliya Pieris
The defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by the Sri Lankan government, ending thirty years of war, has resulted in relative peace after decades of terrorism, violence, and destruction. However Sri Lanka’s years of civil war, coupled with systematic attacks on its democratic institutions by successive governments, has placed what was once one of Asia’s model democracies at risk; jeopardizing the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of its people. These developments have not gone unnoticed. In March 2012 the United States successfully introduced a resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council expressing its concerns about the situation—a move which was strongly criticized within Sri Lanka.
In this seminar, Saliya Pieris will seek to explain how developments in Sri Lanka, beginning with the executive Presidential Constitution in 1978 and tracing through the war with Tamil militant groups and its after-effects, have contributed toward the serious rule of law challenges faced by the country today. Among these challenges are the issues of enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, suppression of the opposition, and the breakdown of national institutions such as the legislature, the judiciary and the free media. Mr. Pieris will discuss the role that can be played by the government and the people of Sri Lanka, and the international community, including the United States and India, to reverse this threat and establish strong rule of law in Sri Lanka.
Register for this event here.
9. Model, Resource or Outlier? Does it Matter? – What Effect Has the U.S. Constitution Had on the Recently-Adopted Constitutions of Other Nations?, Thursday October 11, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM, Heritage Foundation
Venue: Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002, Lehrman Auditorium
Speakers: Istvan Stumpf, Jeremy Rabkin, Ron Rotunda, Emilia Versteeg, Edwin Meese III
The United States Constitution, the world’s oldest written design of government, was a novel political development in the 18th Century. No nation previously had adopted a written instrument to create and limit its national government. But it has been more than 200 years since our Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) came into being. Numerous other nations have adopted their own written organic political instruments since then. Have those nations looked to the U.S. Constitution as a model or a resource for their own constitutions, or has the U.S. Constitution become an outlier in the world? If the latter, what does that say about the structure and substance of our Constitution and how it is considered in the international community?
Register for this event here.
10. The Politics of Identity in Tajikistan, Thursday October 11, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM, Rethink Institute
Venue: Rethink Institute, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002, Suite 1125
Speaker: Nuriddin T. Shamsov, Marlene Laruelle, Vladimir Fedorenko, Bayram Balci
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan faced enormous challenges while trying to forge a new Tajik identity. It inherited dysfunctional and obsolete political and economic institutions that were not suited to deal with new challenges of a multiethnic society, religious extremism, and civil disorder. Tajikistan’s current identity issues and social cleavages are the very products of this difficult transformational era. So, what does it mean to a be a Tajik national nowadays? This panel aims to address this question and shed light into identity-building process in Tajikistan.
Register for this event here.
11. Arab Youth: A Look at the Future, Thursday October 11, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Venue: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036
Speaker: Dalia Mogahed, Marina Ottaway, Rami Khouri, Vivian Lopez
Young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four represent nearly one-fifth of the population of the Middle East and North Africa. This group has played a central role in shaking up the old order, and while so far they have not been able to shape the policies of the new regimes, it remains key to the outcome of transitions in the region. A Generation on the Move, a study cosponsored by The Issam Fares institute at the American University in Beirut and UNICEF, offers important insights on the aspirations and problems of Arab youth. The study includes polling data that reveals further information about this demographic.
Register for this event here.
13. The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble: the Human Cost of Military Strikes against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities, Friday October 12, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM, Atlantic Council
Venue: Atlantic Council, 1101 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005, 11th Floor
Speakers: Khosrow B. Semnani, Barbara Slavin, Haleh Esfandiari
Khosrow Semnani will present the findings of his new report, “The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble,” which offers a detailed, scientific discussion of the human and environmental consequences of a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The report and the discussion will highlight a largely overlooked issue in the intensifying public debate in the United States over the wisdom of using military force to try to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Register for this event here.
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How do you say fast and furious in Arabic?
I’m surprised the American-imposed limits on arms transfers to the Syrian opposition from Qatar and Saudi Arabia are front page news today in the New York Times. It has been common knowledge for some time that the United States does not want shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons (man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS) transferred to Syrian rebels. Anti-tank weapons are likewise blocked.
I thought it obvious why. But apparently not, so let’s review the merits of the case. These weapons pose a serious threat to commercial aircraft and other civilian targets. Washington does not want to transfer weapons that fall into extremist hands and are then used against Americans. “Fast and furious” comes to mind–the scandal surrounding a transfer of guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to track them that ended in the murder of American border patrol agent. So, too, does the Washington-sponsored mujahideen effort against the Soviets in Afghanistan, which armed radical Islamist forces that are now fighting against the Americans.
Rumint has it that there are hundreds of thousands of MANPADs already in circulation. If so, it is hard to understand how none have made it into Syria. I am told that American ones come with a difficult-to-replace 90-day battery. If effective, that would make them relatively unattractive. I don’t know whether Russian, Chinese, Iranian, British and other systems have similar immobilizing measures. There have been a number of incidents in which MANPADS have been used against civilian aircraft: in Rhodesia, Georgia, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Iraq. Some attempts were successful, others not. It does not take a lot of imagination to picture why officials in Washington would worry about MANPADS getting into the wrong hands.
Anti-tank weapons come in a bewildering variety, wire-guided and not. Some seem to have made their way to Syria, where the rebels have often destroyed the regime’s tanks. I have a hard time understanding why Washington would worry much about the transfer of these weapons, especially if they are already in theater. It would of course be wiser to transfer them to more reliable people, but war doesn’t allow a lot of fine distinctions to be made.
A birdie tells me that the Syrian opposition is getting all the AK-47s and other “light” weapons it needs. It is not doing them a whole lot of good. The Syrian army is using artillery, tanks, snipers and the occasional aircraft to project force far beyond the range the rebels can target effectively when they shoot back.
The real question for Washington at this point is whether to allow the Syrian opposition to get MANPADS, which it would use to enforce a de facto no-fly zone over the areas that it controls. This could level the playing field and allow the opposition to hold on to liberated areas. I haven’t been enthusiastic about the arming of the opposition, not the least because it strengthens extreme Islamist and other anti-democratic forces that should not inherit Syria from the Asad regime. But with the civic opposition yesterday demonstrating in favor of arming Free Syrian Army, it is hard to oppose a shift in Washington’s stance that would allow MANPADS with appropriate self-limiting technology and anti-tank weapons to reach it.
U.S. government officials have been insisting that they draw the line at “lethal” assistance, presumably to bolster their so far unsuccessful efforts to turn the Russians and Chinese around on Syria and allow a UN Security Council resolution with teeth to pass. But with Iran, Hizbollah and the Russians pouring arms and men into Asad’s efforts to crush the rebellion and Syria repeatedly firing artillery into the territory of NATO-member Turkey, isn’t it time to consider leveling the playing field, as the diplomats say?
If that shift takes place, we have to recognize that there is a real possibility that the weapons will some day be used us. How do you say “fast and furious” in Arabic?
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