Tag: Libya
Counterrevolution, again
With the U.S. Government immobilized by its own self-generated problems–a kind of self-licking ice cream cone phenomenon–dictators are resurgent in the Middle East again. They are doing what they know to do best: killing their own citizens, hoping that will make the popular protests against their interminable rule go away.
In Syria, the demonstrations were once again widespread yesterday, if not gigantic. The killing seems to have focused on the southern town of Deraa, where Bashar al Assad seems to be wanting to demonstrate how really dangerous it is to protest persistently. In Yemen, yesterday’s killing focused on Taiz, a southern town that President Ali Saleh sees as the leading edge of separatism. In Egypt, Tahrir square was cleared in the early morning hours by an army riot. In Libya, Gaddafi continues to make mincemeat of rebel forces, which have also been bombed unintentionally by NATO. Negotiations with the Gaddafi family are ongoing, but Washington seems to be holding a hard line on getting them all out of Libya. In Bahrain, the monarchy continues with a hard line on the demonstrations, which it increasingly paints with a sectarian brush.
It is surprising to me that the dictators think this will work, but they know their own people better than I do. Alistair Crooke published yesterday on foreignpolicy.com a piece on “Syrian exceptionalism” that essentially says Bashar knows best and will win his bet. There will surely be people in the U.S. administration who are also hoping now to stem the tide and save a few really important autocratic regimes (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia foremost) for future use, while arranging soft landings for others (Yemen in particular). Secretary of Defense Gates has been running up his frequent flyer miles with visits to key stalwarts and Gulf states worried about the situation.
That said, President Obama has issued strong statements on Syria and Yemen in recent days. He seems much more inclined to emphasize the legitimate aspirations of the people than to help preserve Bashar and Bashir.
It is nowhere written that counterrevolution will fail, and in fact it has often succeeded. Regime principals and their oligarchs are clever about using their remaining power and money to divide the opposition, crack down on the weaker but more militant portion, and preserve at least some vestige of their own privilege and control. We should expect no less from them.
Those who want to complete their revolutions and emerge as free societies with more or less representative governments will somehow need to keep the pressure on. But they will also have to stay united, and plan carefully for where and when to confront their respective regimes nonviolently. The consequences of violent rebellion should by now be obvious to everyone who follows events in Libya–it isn’t pretty, and it may not end well.
PS: Just to complete the picture, in Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo’s forces are reportedly today attacking the hotel where Alassane is headquartered, as well as the French Embassy. You have to wonder when Paris will see fit to take decisive action.
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The devil in the details is named Saif
Former Republican Congressman Curt Weldon says in the New York Times this morning that he is in Libya to get Muammar Gaddafi to step aside. He also argues that the United States should have developed a much deeper relationship with the Libyan people and civil society since the Colonel gave up his nuclear ambitions in 2004, a perspective I can certainly share.
Reading more carefully, it appears that “step aside” does not mean “leave Libya,” and Weldon also says
Colonel Qaddafi’s son Saif, a powerful businessman and politician, could play a constructive role as a member of the committee to devise a new government structure or Constitution. The younger Mr. Qaddafi, who has made belligerent comments about the rebels, has his detractors. But he also pushed his government to accept responsibility for the bombings of a Pan Am flight over Scotland and a disco in Germany, and to provide compensation for victims’ families. He also led the effort to free a group of Bulgarian nurses in Libya who had twice been sentenced to death.
Here is where I part company with Mr. Weldon. I don’t think we owe Saif anything for his past efforts, all of which were amply rewarded at the time. Keeping him–or any other member of the Gaddafi family–in the process now will only complicate the post-war arrangements and make it difficult to satisfy the 98 per cent of the Libyan population that has not benefited from the last 42 years of the Colonel’s idiosyncratic and impovershing rule.
Weldon will be serving a useful purpose on his visit to Tripoli if he convinces the Gaddafis that they all need to depart, post haste. Anything less than that will prolong Libya’s pain, and U.S. involvement.
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Blogging(egg)heads
Tune in to Rutgers University Professor Eric Davis and me, chatting on Friday about events in the Arab world:
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No joke
The day is done in the Middle East, with no definitive results:
- protests were widespread in Syria, with at least a dozen demonstrators killed
- duelling demonstrations in Yemen came off, I gather peacefully
- Libyan rebels remain on the defensive
Even in Ivory Coast expectations of a definitive end to Gbagbo have not been fulfilled, as fierce fighting is said to continue in Abijian. Ah well, it is April Fools’ Day, and maybe I’m the fool for having hoped for better outcomes.
Srdja Popovic, the Serb Otpor (Resistance) leader who now participates in a network of people training others for “nonviolent conflict” was here at SAIS today. His messages as always to those who seek to overthrow dictators and embark on a path to democracy: unity, planning, nonviolent discipline.
The Syrians are handicapped: they haven’t had time for serious planning, but so far they’ve been pretty good at maintaining nonviolent discipline and unity. If Bashar keeps on giving them the gift of failing to offer serious reform, they may be able to catch up with their planning homework, but maintaining momentum won’t be easy.
Yemen has developed into a more unified movement and seems to be maintaining nonviolent discipline. President Saleh is slippery though and keeps on squirming out of deals that would lead to his stepping down. The demonstrators are going to have to keep it up for a while longer.
Libya and Ivory Coast are violent situations, not nonviolent ones. Each in its own way demonstrates why nonviolent discipline is so important.
Violence in Libya gave Gaddafi the advantage, as his forces are far better equipped and trained than the rebels. A stalemate for weeks while they equipped and trained would be ruinous for Libya and for the coalition supporting UN Security Council resolution 1973. It is important to get Gaddafi and his family out of the country as soon as possible.
In Ivory Coast, president-elect Ouattara showed enormous discipline in resisting a military solution. Now that he has embarked on one, he has the international community–even the African Union–on his side. He needs to keep the military action clean and avoid revenge killings, which would set his administration off on the wrong foot and deprive him of vital international support. He also needs to win quickly, before more innocent people are killed.
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Good behavior and laughter make better revolution
As incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo is being forced out of power by election winner Alassane Ouattara in the Ivory Coast, it is time to remind all concerned that proper behavior of security forces is required of good guys as well as bad guys. This is not only a matter of international humanitarian law but also of good policy. If you are claiming power in the name of democracy or freedom and intending to establish the rule of law, the last thing in the world you should want is for your security forces to begin behaving even remotely like the ones they have just defeated.
This will be important also in Libya, where revenge killings–in particular of Gaddafi “mercenaries” thought to be of non-Libyan origin–have already occurred. The International Criminal Court should not limit its investigation only to the Gaddafi loyalists but should also keep its eye on those generally called “the rebels,” even if actual prosecutions for war crimes may prove technically difficult because the rebel forces are not an organized armed force, or at least don’t appear to be yet.
I am hoping that this problem will not arise in Yemen or in Syria, where the protesters have tried hard to maintain nonviolent discipline. The prerequisite for doing so is to mass large numbers of people, something the regimes will try to prevent by instilling, or re-instilling, fear. It may seem odd, but the winners in nonviolent confrontations are often those who can laugh best at their opponent, a clear metric for the removal of fear.
I’d be the first to admit that Gbagbo and Gaddafi scare me, and it is hard to fault those on the spot who decided to take up arms rather than rely on laughter and massive nonviolent protests. But if they want the rest of the world to help them, they’ve got to keep it clean.
PS: Rival demonstrations in Sanaa today appear to have been relatively peaceful, so far. Saleh is clever, but will it buy him until the end of the year? Sporadic but persistent Twitter reports from Syria suggest the regime is using violence and the threat of violence to prevent demonstrations.
PPS: In Ivory Coast, the outcome is still not quite final, but Outtara is sounding the right notes:
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Another BIG Friday
The President of Syria has thumbed his nose at the protesters, suggesting that they are operating on an Israeli agenda. After much vacillating and many negotiations, the President of Yemen has called for his supporters to rally in Sanaa tomorrow, a day when the opposition is also planning another mass rally in the capital. Gaddafi’s favorite Foreign Minister has defected in London and other regime stalwarts are thought to be on their way, even as the rebels lose ground to his forces in eastern Libya and the CIA tries to train them into a more effective fighting force.
Tomorrow promises to be a big day. Will Syrians respond en masse to the President’s provocation? Will the opposition in Yemen push the vacillating president past the tipping point? Is the Gaddafi regime near collapse?
It would be easy to be cynical and suggest that the answer to these three questions is “no.” It is not likely to be “yes” to all three on the same day. I’m more inclined to hedge a bit.
Maybe the best bet is on clashes tomorrow in Sanaa. The more nonviolent they can keep it, the better the chance for the protesters to win a confrontation. Violence will evoke a violent response on the part of the security forces, and in a violent confrontation the protesters lose. President Saleh would appear to have more than nine lives. He definitely wins the survivor prize so far, but nine is a finite number and he is certainly close to it.
Syrians have long given Bashar al Assad the benefit of more doubt than can seriously be alleged to exist. They really haven’t even reached the point of asking for his departure. They stop short of that by asking for suspension of the emergency laws that prop up his regime. He has responded violently and likely will again tomorrow. Numbers of demonstrators, and non-violent discipline, will be vital to the outcome. Whatever residual support for him the Americans (and Israelis) harbor, on grounds that he provides stability, should by now have been dispelled: he is as bad as his father, and likely as violent too. His father killed 20,000 at Hama.
Libya is the great uncertainty. By all rights, Gaddafi should be gone already. But he holds on in Tripoli and has again fought back the rebel advance. The Americans are loudly debating whether to move ahead with arming the rebels, in accordance with a covert action “finding” that the President has already signed. I suppose they expect this noisy display to scare him. He is definitely frightened, but that makes him hold on tighter. There is no way he can stay on in Libya if he loses this fight, and he knows that sooner or later justice will find him if he leaves.
Maybe none of these issues will be decided tomorrow, but it would certainly be a fine trifecta if all three went down on April Fools’ Day.
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