Tag: United States
More Free Syria
My publication Thursday of a post marginally favoring creation of clearly defined liberated and protected areas inside Syria (“Free Syria”) has elicited, in addition to many laurels I would like to become accustomed to, some critical comments and misunderstandings. I thought I might respond and clarify.
First a clarification: I in no way think the UN is doing anything wrong by pursuing “freezes” in Syria. It is doing what it should be doing, given its institutional role and mission: taking advantage of any opportunity whatsoever to improve the lot of Syrian civilians by embarrassing the warring parties into treating them better. It cannot advocate protected areas that infringe on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a member state. It needs to respect Damascus’ authority, while trying to get it to demonstrate some restraint.
But from an American perspective, the freezes are not promising. Experience in the Balkans and elsewhere suggests security for those willing to cease their fire (or freeze the disposition of their forces) is vital to success. Nor are freezes likely to serve Washington’s first priority: weakening, containing and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS). The US should do nothing to detract from the UN effort, but it should also be thinking about its own options.
One highly experienced and knowledgeable diplomat commented to me that protected areas along the Turkish border would arouse strong opposition from the Gulf, whose monarchies don’t want to see Turkish influence expanded in an important Arab country.
I’m sure he is correct that the Arab Gulf will react that way, but I am not so sure they are right to do so.
What harm to Arab Gulf interests has greatly increased Turkish influence in Iraqi Kurdistan done? If Gulf countries are concerned, they should balance any Turkish inroads by supporting the protected areas themselves, with money, arms and if need be ground troops to back up the Free Syrian Army. The Turks would presumably be providing cover only from the air, along with the Americans. Saudi King Salman is showing, friends tell me, less hostility towards the Muslim Brotherhood than his predecessor. A modus vivendi with the Brotherhood-led Turks that helps at least some Syrians may not be beyond reach.
The Turks are irrelevant to a protected area near the Jordanian border, where it would presumably get air cover from the Jordanians and the Americans. That is where the US-trained Free Syrian Army troops are being re-inserted. President Obama would be foolish to risk their rout, which would go down in the annals of American failures with the Bay of Pigs. He will have to provide air cover, or convince the Jordanians to provide it. Israel is already providing humanitarian and likely other assistance across its border with Syria, but expanding that to overt military aid seems to me a bridge too far, at least for now.
Iran will have to have a role in any solution in Syria. How would it react to protected areas? The demands of Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and the nuclear talks have already stretched Tehran’s military, financial and diplomatic capacities. Why wouldn’t the Iranians be relieved to see at least a portion of the Syrian opposition walled off in protected areas, which would necessarily be mostly Sunni and Kurdish? That could enable a focus on the fight against ISIS, in parallel with the US-trained Syrian forces, with reduced short-term risks to the Asad regime (though admittedly I wouldn’t have supported the idea if it didn’t increase the longer-term risks to Bashar).
Russia is the big problem. It will see in the proposal for protected areas the kind of slippery slope that allowed a NATO-led military coalition to take down Muammar Qaddafi. But Moscow is tired and broke. It prioritizes Ukraine. Moscow isn’t likely to allow a UN Security Council resolution to create protected areas until it sees a clear US commitment to do it, resolution or not. But it might then figure better to go along, in order to get a resolution that more strictly limits US and allied military action than was the case in Libya.
So yes, there are serious barriers to “Free Syria.” But they are surmountable, with serious US diplomatic and military commitment. That’s what has been lacking.
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Free Syria: better than local ceasefires
SAIS hosted at noon a launch event for the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) report on “Examining Syrian Perspectives on Local Ceasefires and Reconciliation.” Ellen Laipson (Stimson) moderated with Mohammed al Abdallah (SJAC), Craig Charney (Charney Research), Joseph Bahout (Carnegie Endowment) and me as panelists. These are my speaking notes for the event:
1. First let me join Ellen in lauding SJAC and Craig for their truly heroic and fascinating report. People in conflict zones have surprising perspectives. It is important they be heard.
2. I am a vigorous supporter of the Syrian opposition, but it should give us pause that regime-controlled areas report relatively good conditions and services while rebel areas are struggling to survive. Bashar al Assad is not entirely wrong when he claims to be providing a measure of security and government services, especially in Damascus and along the Mediterranean coast.
3. While conditions vary, there is an area of consensus: Syrians, who (importantly) continue to identify as such, support the idea of local ceasefires. But the reasons differ. Pro-regime people think local ceasefires will strengthen the regime’s grip and expel foreigners. Anti-regime people want relief.
4. Both want freedom of movement and the universal desire of people in conflict: normal lives.
5. The devil is in the details. I know something of local ceasefires, having worked on the Bosnian Federation—where the ceasefire between Croat and Muslim forces largely held—while the Federation was fighting the Bosnian Serb Army in 1994-95.
6. But I also can’t forget Srebrenica, where UN forces stood by while Serbs massacred thousands of Muslim men and boys. Local ceasefires that amount to surrender could look more like Srebrenica than any of us would like.
7. The key to local ceasefires is security for both sides. In the Bosnian Federation, the often criticized UN peacekeepers provided that security by manning checkpoints set up between the Muslim and Croat forces. At Srebrenica, the Dutch UN forces failed to do so.
8. The problem is that there are no peacekeepers, UN or otherwise, in Syria and little prospect for deploying them. I don’t know any serious country that would consider putting its troops into the current fluid and perilous situation, even if a local ceasefire can be negotiated.
9. Nor, judging from the Charney interviews, are Syrians prepared to see coordination between the opposing forces, which of course is vital even if peacekeepers were available. But let’s suppose FSA and regime forces were willing to coordinate. Spoilers from Jabhat al Nusra or the Islamic State would likely intervene in ways that would make it impossible to continue.
10. So the usual techniques for achieving and sustaining local ceasefires are not available in Syria.
What do we do?
11. Faute de mieux, I am thrown back on a Turkish idea: protected areas that opposition Syrian opposition would govern and non-extremist Syrian forces would guard on the ground while the US-led coalition ensures protection from air and artillery bombardment.
12. I hesitate to call these “safe areas,” as they would not be safe. They would be target-rich environments that the regime would attack unless prevented from doing so.
13. Nascent areas of this sort already exist, both along the Turkish border in the north and on the Jordanian border in the south. What needs to be done is to declare them, draw clear lines around them, protect them, and begin to weave them together into a Free Syria.
14. This idea is different from local ceasefires and reconciliation across the divide between opposition and regime. I just don’t think there is much basis, even in this fairly optimistic report, for believing there is sufficient trust to achieve much in that direction, even at the local level.
15. Sulha and musalaha, the traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, require—as does reconciliation in the West—acknowledgement of harm and willingness to compensate.
16. Anyone who can see in Assad’s recent interviews willingness to acknowledge and compensate for harm is reading more between the lines than I am able to do. Nor would the Syrian government have anything like the resources required to compensate for the harm it has done.
17. Of course protected areas have their downsides. They could lay the basis for ethnic or sectarian partition. They could lead to abandonment of less protected areas, increasing displacement. They could open the door to pushing refugees back into Syria. They would require serious, coordinated efforts at protection, both on the ground and in the air.
18. But protected areas might also give refuge from violence to hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people. If established along borders in the north and south they would enable humanitarian relief to be far more effective and prevent it from being exploited by the regime, as is common today. They would provide opportunities for the relatively moderate opposition to demonstrate that it can govern and counter extremists effectively.
19. Opposition success would also remove an important reservation in the international community, which wants to know “what comes next.” This is important for the US, which has prioritized the fight against the Islamic State. It will only support efforts that have potential to aid that fight.
20. Gradually expanded, Free Syria areas could present Assad with a serious rival, creating the necessary precondition for a national ceasefire, peace settlement and political transition.
21. For me, those advantages outweigh the disadvantages, though I admit it is a close call.
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Bosnia’s muj
I did this interview yesterday for Amil Ducic of the Sarajevo daily Avaz:
1. What is your perception on the indictment of six Bosnians who have been charged with providing money and equipment to foreign fighters joining al Qaeda, Nusra Front and Islamic State in Syria and Iraq? Two persons were even accused of conspiring to kill and maim persons in a foreign country.
A: Innocent until proven guilty is my first reaction. But if proven it should not be such a big surprise. There are a lot of Bosnians in the U.S. Why would we think none of them would be sympathetic with the Islamic State? There are also non-Muslim Americans who support ISIS. Ours is a big country with many different strands of political thought.
2. Reading the indictment, it’s obvious that the charges are serious. Problem for BiH is that the money is transferred in our country to stimulate the foreign fighters. Your comment?
A: I expect BiH will cooperate as much as it can in trying to block financial transfers to support foreign fighters. That’s something on which all the political leaderships can agree.
3. Again, one of the charged persons Ramiz Hodžić is identified as a person who was radicalized in Bosnia during the war. He was member of the unit “El-Mudjahid”. Do you think this an issue which has to be solved in Bosnia. Radicalization of the Bosnian Army during 1992-1995 is, regarding some opinions, the root of problems…. What is your opinion.
A: I don’t think this is a gigantic problem. At Dayton, a Croat asked that we get rid of the foreign mujahedeen in Bosnia. I asked how many there were. He replied 700, which I took to be a maximum given the source of the information.
At least half of those were forced out after the war, in part due to American pressure. Many of the remainder are living peacefully with their Bosnian families. It is twenty years since the war ended. Some will be well above fighting age (and condition) now.
So yes, Bosnia should do what it can to block them from helping or volunteering for the Islamic State. But let’s not exaggerate the scale of the problem.
4. What about the Bosnian community in USA. Is there is a danger of being labeled?
A: What I’ve seen of the Bosnian community reaction in the US is universal condemnation of any support to the Islamic State or other extremists. There will no doubt be bigots who “label” all Muslims as terrorists. But most Americans know and appreciate that Muslims in the U.S. overwhelmingly oppose extremism.
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The courteous banality of evil
I won’t have much time to write today, due to meetings and my class this evening. But here for your edification is the full BBC interview with Bashar al Asad:
Listen and weep. Note not only the content, but the reasonable and courteous tone combined with incredible lies. The courteous banality of evil.
PS: The Syrian government is proud of this interview and published the text. I assume it is an accurate rendition, but I have checked.
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Corruption continues to erupt
Twenty years have passed since Moses Naim coined the phrase, “the corruption eruption.” As Sarah Chayes outlined this week in a talk at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, there is no sign of the eruption ending anytime soon. Promoting her book Thieves of State, Sarah outlined the push and pull factors driving corruption’s omnipotence in conflict environments. Systemic corruption is not merely the byproduct of war, but often an accelerant of conflict.
She opened the discussion with two common misperceptions of corruption:
1. Corruption is not merely “chump-change” siphoning off small amounts of money. It has real economic significance and implications for the social wellbeing of society. In Afghanistan for example, corruption amounts to a daily attack on people’s dignity. It creates an atmosphere of hopelessness and despondency that often leads to rage and violence.
2. There is a tendency to think of corruption as a sort of corrosion eating away at government. She turns this theory on it’s head: corruption is in fact a system created by the government. The levers of state power are put into the service of vertically integrated kleptocratic networks. It is not merely that state weakness can give space for corruption to seep in. Corrupt networks purposefully weaken institutions that will not work with them.
The policy community in Washington needs to wake up and realize that pervasive corruption has real and dangerous security implications. By enabling corruption, as the US has done in Afghanistan, it is only making the security problem more severe.
Sarah spent seven years living there. She helped Afghans rebuild homes and established a cooperative that aimed at encouraging Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits and herbs instead of opium poppies. It is through this work, and through her interactions with the American aid establishment, that she became aware of the extent to which corruption is destroying American efforts for peace in Afghanistan.
Anti-corruption assistance aimed at civil society can help build the expertise of local reformers who are challenging the government. But if the bulk of the US government interaction with a country reinforces corruption then these programs don’t stand a chance. Chayes believes that not enough emphasis is put on good-governance strategies, which are too often trumped by strategic considerations.
A survey conducted by the US military in Kabul asked captured Taliban prisoners why they joined the insurgency. The most common response was not anger at the US presence in their country, or a religious claim, but rather that the Afghan government was irreversibly corrupt. This sense of grievance and hopelessness has the power to fill ordinary citizens with feelings even worse than anger. They want revenge.
Intelligence collection and analysis should play a major role in fighting corruption, but that is not now the situation. She suggests subjecting intelligence agency payments to key members of corrupt governing networks to high level interagency debate, increasing the number of personnel assigned to study the structure, manning and other characteristics of corrupt governing networks (including corruption in annual assessments of security risks compiled by intelligence communities), and to design new collection requirements to fill knowledge gaps regarding corrupt networks, especially the ways in which Western governments and private-sector actors enable such systems.
The solutions are not simple or straightforward, but a better understanding of the nature of corruption and it’s implications for international security would contribute to improved policy and practice in government, civil society and business.
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End of status quo
Vetëvendosje Movement member of parliament Ilir Deda writes from Pristina:
Kosovo has entered a turbulent year. The winter started with the election of a new government composed of former rivals – the PDK of Hashim Thaçi and the LDK of Isa Mustafa. The Western Embassies were satisfied – the status quo seemed ensured. Three out of twenty-one cabinet posts were given to the Serbia-created, -funded and politically -controlled Serbian List, which emerged victorious among Kosovo Serb political parties.
The new American/German brokered government, whose sole purpose is to maintain the status quo, signaled the end of hope for Kosovo’s people, 70 percent of whom voted in the June 2014 elections against the PDK in government. On November 20, 2014 – a day after it was announced that PDK and LDK would govern together, buses of hopeless citizens began leaving Kosovo towards Hungary – through Serbia – and on towards Western Europe. As a direct consequence of the creation of the PDK-LDK government, over fifty-five thousand people have left Kosovo since the end of November.
Amid this despair, the leader of the Serbian List, Aleksandar Jablanovic, led a bus with Serb pilgrims who were trying to come to the western Kosovo town of Gjakova to celebrate Orthodox Christmas. Jablanovic was accompanied by Djokica Stanojevic, the former ethnic Serb mayor of Gjakova during Milosevic’s occupation of Kosovo, who was directly involved in crimes against Albanians in the city and the area.
Gjakova proper and the surrounding area was among the worst hit areas during the Kosovo war in 1998-99, where not only some of the strongest fighting took place, but also thousands of civilians were executed and massacred. Thousands more went missing, and still are unaccounted for. The leading association of missing persons, “The Call of Mothers,” organized a protest to block the visit of the Serb pilgrims. The bus was stoned. Jablanovic called the protesters “savages.”
While over the last 150 years he is not the only Serb politician who called Albanians savages, he is the first Kosovo Serb minister of the government of the Republic of Kosovo to do so. Several days later, Jablanovic questioned the well-documented record of war crimes committed by Serbia’s police and military forces, saying he “didn’t know” whether they had occurred.
A week later, Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, came to Kosovo for a “religious purpose” – to celebrate the Orthodox New Year. When asked whether Serbia would apologize for the state crimes in Kosovo, he added fuel to the fire by responding “everybody can dream.” To the protesting Albanians he said that next time he would bring “books to educate them on politeness.”
Vucic was a minister in the Milosevic’s government in 1998 – 1999, which was responsible for ethnic cleansing, war crimes, execution of civilians, deportation of Albanians and destruction of public and private property in Kosovo. The apology cannot be a “dream” but a firm political position of the Kosovo government as a precondition for normalization of relations with Serbia.
The first two protests were held in Gjakova on January 10 and 17, gathering five and ten thousand protesters respectively, organized by “The Call of Mothers,” Vetëvendosje and few civil society organizations. The same demand was repeated the following week when thousands took to the streets in eight other Kosovo cities.
Amidst these protests, the government sponsored a law to nationalize Trepça – a mine rich in zinc, silver and lead, with deposits worth more than $14 billion – in an attempt to save it from liquidation. Serbia protested and held a joint meeting with the three Serbian List ministers of the Kosovo government. The Kosovo government backtracked on its initial a plan to nationalize Trepça because of Serbia’s opposition. The public was left aghast to see that 15 years after the war and removal of Serbia’s say in Kosovo’s domestic affairs, and almost seven years after the declaration of independence, Serbia still had a say in Kosovo’s affairs. This reversal of history is unacceptable to the people of Kosovo.
On January 23 “The Call of Mothers” and Vetëvendosje, supported by other opposition parties, civil society organizations, unions and independent public figures organized the largest protest held in Kosovo since 1999 in Prishtina, gathering over thirty thousand people. The government was issued a deadline – to dismiss Jablanovic and sponsor the law on nationalization of Trepça in two days, or the protest would continue. At the end of the protest, a small crowd of several dozen people threw rocks at the government building.
The government and its controlled media began the expected propaganda, accusing Vetëvendosje of being behind the violence. The international sponsors of the government followed the same line. Meanwhile, all the security institutions in Kosovo had credible information that Vetëvendosje was not behind the violence, but did not come forth publicly with this information. Instead, the government said that Jablanovic would not be dismissed.
January 27 saw twenty thousand people gathering in Prishtina. Since early morning the police, under orders from the government, showed hostility and brutality – it did not allow the organizers to set the stage in the center of the city, confiscated protest materials, and prevented citizens from other cities from joining the protest in Prishtina. The police started throwing tear gas at the crowd while the speeches of the opposition figures were ongoing. One hundred seventy people were injured, as the police used tear gas, water cannons, and UN-banned rubber bullets on the protesters, while the protesters threw rocks at the police. The clashes lasted over six hours. Almost two hundred protesters – mostly young – were arrested. Such police brutality has not been seen in Kosovo in the last fifteen years. Nor was such anger of young protesters, who blame the government for the lack of hope.
The government accused the opposition of wanting to “violently overthrow” the government. Prime Minister Mustafa went further – he accused the media of aiding the opposition in the “destabilization of the state,” because media were broadcasting live scenes and reporting from the protest. In the US, it is quite normal for CNN and other media to broadcast from such events. In Kosovo, the PDK-LDK government began using rhetoric similar to the worst totalitarian regimes.
On February 3, the prime minister informed the public that Jablanovic would not be part of the Government any more, while the opposition halted the protests to await the response of the government on Trepça. If the law on transforming Trepça into a public company is not proposed soon, the protests will continue.
The protests brought the return of hope among the citizens, who see that an arrogant government can be forced to be accountable to its people, and not only to Western Embassies. The protests were not against the Kosovo Serbs, as alleged continuously over the last month. The anger of Kosovo’s people 15 years after the war with the overall state of affairs – no economic development, high unemployment, high corruption, Serbia’s destabilizing role, and alarming poverty of half of the population – has reached extreme heights. There is no more space for unconvincing justifications of incompetent politicians. This is the beginning of the end of the fifteen years status quo in Kosovo. The majority of people who are determined to stay in Kosovo are resolute to see the state succeed. They are determined to have a dignified life in the Republic of Kosovo.
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