Tag: Tunisia
Revolutions require follow through
Michelle Kelemen had a good piece on NPR this morning focused in part on what shifts in U.S. assistance are required as autocrats fall in the Middle East.
This is a subject close to my heart, as I watched in Serbia when we abandoned Serbian civil society organizations as soon as Milosevic fell. Even worse, we cut off Otpor, the student movement that sparked the popular protests, because it put up billboards saying “we are watching you.” This ambiguous phrase, accompanied by a picture of a bulldozer, was meant to convey that the protesters would continue to monitor the new authorities, as well as the remnants of the old regime, to make sure that the transition was completed. The right thing to do, but too much for U.S. Embassy Belgrade.
Net result: reform in the Serbian security services never was completed. Serbia is still struggling with the consequences, which include a political spectrum unable to escape the unfortunate dictates of the ethnic nationalism that kept Milosevic in power.
I fear something like this may also happen in the Middle East, where the Obama Administration is already ambivalent about how much change it really wants. The remaining autocrats are no doubt pressing for less rather than more, and some think their influence is behind the President’s hesitation to take more decisive action in Libya. Would anyone watching recent events in Egypt be surprised if the security services managed to come out of this without thorough vetting and reform?
To Hillary Clinton’s great credit, she is quoted in the NPR piece as saying,
When I spoke with the Egyptian officials just over the last couple of weeks they kept mentioning central and eastern Europe. They kept saying that’s how we want to turn out. We don’t want to get this derailed. We want to make this work. So we want to help them make it work.
In Central and Eastern Europe there was a strong magnetic pole in Brussels that ensured the new governments would point in the right direction. That is not the case in the Middle East, where the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies as well as the Syrian and Yemeni secular autocrats (not to mention the Iranian theocrats) will weigh in heavily against fully democratic revolutions. Indigenous democrats are going to have to keep the needle pointed in the right direction.
The Secretary of State and her Egyptian interlocutors have the right approach, one that will require continuing support not only to the new post-autocratic governments but also to the civil society organizations, including some of the Islamic ones, that mobilized and steered the protests. I would shift substantial resources to them–and to support for the upcoming referenda and elections–quickly and decisively. Revolutions require follow through.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
What will Friday prayers bring?
Tomorrow is Friday again, and across the “greater” Middle East there will be prayers and restlessness. The big questions:
- Saudi Arabia: intellectuals have been signing petitions in favor of constitutional monarchy, but the experts are still betting that people will not go the street–it is illegal to demonstrate, and socially disapproved. We’ll see.
- Libya: most of the country is liberated already, but will crowds risk turning out in Tripoli?
- Egypt: Mubarak’s buddy prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, has stepped down. El Baradei at least is calling this a turning point. Will it open the way for real regime change that the military has been resisting?
- Tunisia: Ben Ali’s buddy prime minister has already stepped down, opening the way for real change, but the country is burdened with refugees from Libya. The Brits are at least trying to relieve that burden.
- Yemen: President Saleh has said he’ll step down in 2013. The political party opposition, buoyed by tribal support, is proposing he do it by the end of this year. Will that be enough to split his opponents and save his tuchas?
- Bahrain: formal opposition parties have presented reform demands in an opening bid for negotiations with the monarchy. Will that split them from the demonstrators?
- Iraq: The violent crackdown last weekend amplified what otherwise might have been relatively quiet demonstrations against corruption and for better services. Has the government learned its lesson?
- Jordan and Syria: little noise, as their king who allows demonstrations and president who doesn’t try to feed a reform half loaf to relatively weak oppositions. Will they succeed?
- Iran: crackdown in full swing with the arrest of Green Movement stars Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and their wives. Ahmedinejad is increasingly dominant and effective against both clerical and lay opponents, inside and outside the regime. Can he keep it up?
I can’t remember a time I looked forward so much to Friday, with anticipation but also with trepidation. The world could be looking very different by Sunday.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
So much to keep track of!
So I thought a quick update on the revolutions of 2011 might be in order:
- Libya: Gaddafi holding on in Tripoli, where his forces indulge in random killings, but most of the rest of the country seems to be in rebel hands. Tribes and a hodge-podge of local authorities seem to be the mainstay of law and order, insofar as it exists. The army is split. Lots of high level defections. The Americans have finally imposed unilateral sanctions freezing assets and banning travel. The UN Security Council is still debating its draft, which may have to lose the referral to the International Criminal Court in order to get past India, China and Russia (none are states parties to the ICC).
- Yemen: Protests have grown dramatically with adherence by some important tribes, President Saleh took the Gaddafi vow to fight to the last drop of blood, and the opposition seems intent on continuing despite Saleh’s vows to leave office in 2013 and not install his son.
- Egypt: Big demonstration yesterday to keep pressure on the military, force out the prime minister, who is Mubarak’s buddy, and end the state of emergency, which the military has promised to do once order is restored.
- Bahrain: Another big demo, but the monarchy clearly committed for the moment to avoiding violence. An important Bahraini Shiite leader returned to the country from exile and was allowed to speak.
- Tunisia: Protesters Friday pressed for faster change. Pro-Ben Ali youth rioted Saturday. Violence in both instances. The good guys should really wear white hats and maintain non-violent discipline, as that will help to distinguish them from the bad guys.
- Iraq: At least eight killed around the country in the first big demonstrations, mainly by undisciplined security forces. The Speaker of Parliament says he supports the demonstrators’ right to protest, Prime Minister Maliki tried to fend off both protests and criticism, and Ayatollah Sistani weighed in on the side of the improved public services and an end to corruption. Sistani is the one really worth listening to, but he hasn’t got a lot of influence in Kurdistan, where violent demonstrations continue.
- Jordan: A big, peaceful demonstration Friday, but big is much smaller (4000) than in other places. The call is still far more for reform than for regime change.
- Iran: The regime still has things “under control,” mistreating its own people even as it praises the rebellions in Arab countries. The video at that link, by the way, demonstrates a lack of discipline on both sides of the confrontation, but the text is useful for understanding why demonstrations in Iran have been less than fully successful.
Overall: lots of ups and downs this week, but it is clear that few real dictators will survive much longer. The question of what will replace them is still an open one, but it is looking more and more as if re-imposing autocracies will be nigh on impossible. The people simply won’t stand for it. More power to them!
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
The world beyond Egypt
I’ve been so caught up in Egypt for 10 days, and Tunisia before that, I’m feeling the need for one of those quickie updates, so here goes (even if there is relatively little progress to report):
- Iran: P5+1 Ankara meeting at the end of January went badly, some say because Ahmedinejad did not take advantage of what the Americans were offering. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it.
- Pakistan: Messy (that’s what I call it when a President has to call for a roundtable conference), but no big crisis.
- North Korea: Quiescent for the moment, but mil/mil talks have stalled.
- Afghanistan: Lots of reports of military progress from David Petraeus, and some sign that the Taliban may be looking for negotiations, or at least that is how I interpret their putting out the word that they might break with Al Qaeda.
- Iraq: some Arab/Kurdish progress that will allow oil to flow north. My friend Reidar Visser doesn’t think that’s good, but I do.
- Israel/Palestine: Biggest news has been the Palestine papers, widely interpreted to suggest Palestinian weakness, ineptitude or both. I think they show the Israelis overplaying their hand to no good purpose.
- Egypt: Trouble. This is what I said at the end of the year: “succession plans founder as the legitimacy of the parliament is challenged in the streets and courts. Mubarak hangs on, but the uncertainties grow.” Did I get it right? All but that part about the courts anyway.
- Haiti: Presidential runoff postponed to March 20. President Preval’s favorite will not be on the ballot; former first lady Mirlande Manigat will face singer Michel Martelly.
- Al Qaeda: No news is good news.
- Yemen/Somalia: Yemen’s President Saleh has so far proved immune to Egyptian flu, but itmay not last forever. Parliament in Somalia has extended its own mandate for three more years, dismaying the paymasters in Washington and other capitals. Nice democracy lesson.
- Sudan: The independence referendum passed, as predicted (no genius in that). Lots of outstanding issues under negotiation. President Bashir is behaving himself, some say because of the carrots Washington has offered. In my experience indictment has that effect on most people.
- Lebanon: Indictments delivered, not published, yet.
- Syria: President Bashar al Assad is doing even better than Bashir of Yemen. No demonstrations materialized at all.
- Ivory Coast: Gbagbo and his entourage are still waiting for their first-class plane tickets. African Union is factfinding, in preparation for mediation. Could this be any slower?
- Zimbabwe: Mugabe continues to defy, sponsors riot in Harare. No real progress on implementation of powersharing agreement with the opposition.
- Balkans: Bosnia stuck on constitutional reform, Kosovo/Serbia dialogue blocked by government formation in Pristina, Macedonia still hung up on the “name” issue. See a pattern here? Some people just recycle their old problems.
- Tunisia: At last some place where there is progress: the former ruling party has been shuttered. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen in Egypt!
PS: on Algeria, see this interesting piece.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
A charm of powerful trouble
That’s Shakespeare’s description of the witches’ brew in Macbeth, but it seems apt for what may be brewing in parts of the Arab world these days. Today’s big demonstrations in Egypt aiming to spook President Mubarak and derail his effort to give the presidency to his son follow closely on yesterday’s naming of a Lebanese prime minister (albeit a wealthy, Sunni one) by Hizbollah. We need hardly mention the uprising in Tunisia, whose outcome is still in doubt despite (or maybe because of) the vows of the army chief to defend the popular will. And the pot may still boil over in Algeria or Libya.
To me, there is nothing surprising about people discovering the will to rebel and overthrow oppressive or unrepresentative political systems, however difficult to predict it may be.
What is interesting to watch is the differentiated reaction to events in the West. How is what’s happening in Lebanon less democratic than what’s happening in Tunisia? You’d think from Washington’s reaction that the devil himself had ceased power in Beirut, when all that has happened is naming of a government that can gain a majority in parliament. Hizbollah is not a legitimate democratic political party, since it runs its own army and terrorist cells as well as social services. But does anyone doubt it would be successful politically in Lebanon even without its military dimension?
Washington’s enthusiasm for popular revolt in Tunisia, which otherwise doesn’t count for much in the West, is palpable. We rarely send an Assistant Secretary of State off to ensure free and fair elections in the aftermath of a popular revolt. You’d think we hadn’t spent several decades helping former President Ben Ali avoid the popular will. But I guess there is little else you can do when your man has fled the country. I do hope however that we are keeping an eye on the army chief and trying to ensure that he protects, rather than expropriates, the popular will.
Egypt is a different case altogether. You can watch one tidbit that demonstrates considerable police discipline, and somewhat less than complete determination on the demonstrator side, here:
The blogotwittersphere may be enthusiastic, and critical of Al Jazeera for downplaying today’s events. But official Washington is not going to welcome in Egypt anything like what happened in Tunisia. I do hope however that President Obama will find the gumption to tell President Mubarak that the legitimacy of the succession depends in large part on how open and fair the process is. How it is handled will determine more than anything else whether the result is “Like a hell-broth boil and bubble,” or something more like a democratic opening in the Arab world.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Dominoes anyone?
The metaphorical game in international relations is often chess, or escalation, or maybe just the adjectival “great” game. But these days we seem to be playing that old standby, dominoes, more than anything else: will Iran getting nuclear weapons lead to others getting them? will Tunisia’s revolt spread? will North Korea’s erratic behavior precipitate in one way or another refugee flows into China that Beijing will want to prevent?
As Stephen Walt points out, revolutions don’t usually spread like wildfire. The demonstration effect of what happens in Tunisia may be strong, but it is uncertain what the outcome is and therefore what events there will “demonstrate.” I still wouldn’t call it a revolution, since the prior regime is very much in place, not only in the salubrious sense that the constitution is being implemented but in the less salubrious sense that the old guard remains in key offices. Only the President and his coterie are gone. Tunisia is looking for the moment more like a palace or military coup in response to popular uprising than like a real revolution. I can imagine that being imitated in more than one Arab country.
With respect to Iran and nuclear weapons, Johan Bergenas argues his case against the dominoes falling well, but unfortunately the argument against a nuclear Iran remains strong even without the worst case scenario, as he acknowledges. While diplomats, spooks and geeks (or maybe I should say spoogeeks?) in the U.S. and Israel are chuckling over Stuxnet’s damage to Iranian centrifuges, the problem remains as great as always. We just have more time to find, or not to find, a solution. I’m no fan of Hillary Mann and Flynt Leverett’s triumphalist version of today’s Iran, but I also don’t buy Tehran Bureau’s defeatist version. President Ahmedinejad still looks pretty strong, having managed his personnel challenges to the Supreme Leader as well as his economic reforms and their political impact better than many expected.
China’s willingness to save our bacon with North Korea is but one of the Washington myths that Mort Abramowitz pooh-poohs, suggesting that if we had a clearer and more consistent policy of our own we might be better off than relying on Beijing to do the right thing. In any event, the Chinese seem to be finding the discomfort that North Korea causes “not unwelcome,” as the diplomats say, and they fear more refugee flows arising from the regime change Washington might like than anything else.
So dominoes don’t look like such a good game, and in my experience they are not, being a Vietnam generation fogy. That said, I feel reasonably certain that our weak response to North Korea’s nuclear testing has in fact encouraged the Iranians to move ahead to acquiring whatever technology they think they need to become at least a virtual nuclear power. Did we ever deprive Brazil of its technology after it forswore nuclear weapons and signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco? Or South Africa?
That is the thing about dominoes. When they fall, the consequences are often irreversible, and the directions they fall in unpredictable. I hope that the outcome of last week’s events in Tunisia is not only democratic but relatively liberal and Western-oriented. Many of us–I include myself–will regret the cheering we did from the sidelines if Al Qaeda in the Maghreb finds haven in North Africa, where its recruiting efforts are already strong.
RSS - Posts
