Why Obama Failed In The Middle East

From the Arab Spring, to Syria, to Iran, to the peace process, President Barack Obama's actions have yet to live up to his high-flying rhetoric.

BY AARON DAVID MILLER

It is the cruelest of ironies that President Barack Obama's legacy in the Middle East -- a signature issue for many U.S. presidents -- now lies in the hands of two of his most intractable adversaries: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It also probably doesn't make him sleep any easier that the third major player is a man with whom he has a famously dysfunctional relationship: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu.

It's cruel because saving Syria, resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, and achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace seem well beyond the president's capacity -- even if he boasted the support of willing and trusting partners. And it's ironic because Obama set out not to preside over catastrophes in the Middle East but to transform the region for the better. He now risks being the president on whose watch it all became so much worse.

Is this unhappy tale primarily Obama's fault? No. But on the four key issues that will likely define the president's legacy in this region, his critics have already reached a very different conclusion -- and history may too.

A regional order transformed

It was both Obama's luck and misfortune to have been president during a historic, once-in-a-century transformation of the Middle East. You don't get to be a doer of great deeds unless you're confronted with great events and are then able to help shape them (see: Lincoln, FDR).

Obama was lucky enough to have the first, but he couldn't -- his critics allege -- produce the second. Unlike the period from 1986 to 1992, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were perceived as proactive players in shaping events after the crumbling of the Soviet Union, Obama may be seen as more the bystander.

The comparisons to the end of the Cold War are perhaps a bit unfair. The president was indeed on the right side of history in the early acts of the Arab Spring: He recognized the inevitability of the end of America's authoritarian friends in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen -- and to his credit, he was proactive in helping get rid of Libyan autocrat Muammar al-Qaddafi.

But subsequent inattention in Libya and the Benghazi debacle, Obama's vacillation about how to deal with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood, a hesitancy to speak out more forcefully against the Brothers' exclusivist and arbitrary policies in Egypt, and acquiescence to Saudi-backed repression in Bahrain raised doubts about whether he had indeed moved to the right side of history.

Yet the "who lost the Middle East?" debate is really a silly one -- the region was never Obama's to lose. America cannot dictate the course of events there, even if it wanted to. It was, after all, Arabs' ownership of their own politics that gave the Arab Spring its authenticity and legitimacy.

But the strange marriage of neocons and liberal interventionists has hammered home the theme that the president has lacked vision, leadership, and strength in responding to these historic transformations. Where was the appointment of the "super envoy" to oversee America's strategy toward the Arab Spring, the task forces to monitor regional developments around the clock, and the strategic use of incentives and disincentives to reinforce positive change and lay down markers in the face of negative behavior? Or was it all just too much -- too fast and furious to keep track of?

Had the Arab Spring moved in the right direction, Obama would have been hailed as a strategic genius for his smart, low-cost management from the sidelines. Sadly, it has moved the other way -- toward instability, violence, and dashed hopes. As a result, what people saw -- certainly those in the Middle East, where it's easy to blame somebody else for your troubles -- is a president who became strangely disconnected and who at best just seemed to have other things to do. At worst, he seemed to have simply stopped caring.

Syria: Exhibits A to Z

Nowhere is the charge of passivity and abandonment more likely to stick than in Syria.

I've supported the president's risk-averse approach on Syria, largely because the endgame the United States wants -- a liberal, secular, pro-Western Syria -- is beyond America's capacity to achieve from the outside and not worth the risk of a more muscular intervention that would require the United States to be on the inside. Splitting the difference by thinking America can get what it wants by arming this or that rebel group in a sea of competing rebel groups and external actors for which Syria is truly vital is, well, laughable.

History may prove much less sympathetic, however. Syria's isn't Obama's Rwanda. But the killing -- and the passive reaction of the entire international community -- will raise inevitable questions about what more could have been done.

It won't help the president's case that key members of his national security team recommended doing more and he overruled them. It may not be remembered that "more" would barely have altered the military arc of the conflict.

It's lonely at the top. And the president will be criticized on moral, humanitarian, and strategic grounds for not doing more. Plenty of circumstances could still bring America into Syria, particularly the use of chemical weapons on a large scale. But barring some heroic, improbable intervention that brings down the Assads and stabilizes the country, it's hard to see how Obama could create a counternarrative to the judgment history is likely to bestow on him.

Iran

Obama stands to be the U.S. president who either allows Iran to get a nuclear weapon, is the first to bomb the country, or becomes the guy who cuts an interim deal that keeps the mullahs a few years away from nuclear nirvana. That last scenario, by the way, comes with ready-made tensions with Netanyahu, with whom Obama just mended fences. The Israeli prime minister will wonder how a limited tactical deal on enrichment fixes Israel's strategic problem with prospective Iranian nukes. It also offers no real guarantees that the Israelis -- unhappy with a diplomatic outcome -- don't at some point resort to military action on their own. If he's really lucky, he gets out of town before Iran gets the bomb, and then it's the next president's headache.

Not a terribly appetizing menu for the legacy buffet. A military strike could make Obama look strong, but there are those pesky, unpredictable repercussions, including plunging financial markets, skyrocketing oil prices, and escalating regional tensions. A grand bargain in which the mullahs gave up their nuclear weapons ambitions and began to work with the West toward a more stable Middle East would make the president look like a genius. But it's an outcome he's unlikely to see.

The reality is that Iran -- followed by North Korea -- is probably the most difficult puzzle in the international system today. There are no happy endings or comprehensive solutions. And for this president, who has publicly vowed not to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, the ironies abound. Think about this: His predecessor went to war against Iraq, a war Obama strongly opposed, because of imaginary weapons of mass destruction, only to strengthen and embolden an Iran that could cross some significant nuclear threshold on Obama's watch.

The much-too-promised land

Obama's hopes for burnishing his legacy don't improve when it comes to Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Will he become the president on whose watch the two-state solution finally expires?

Here, perhaps, there's more time, leeway, and even some hope to improve the odds of leaving a meaningful legacy behind. Sure, the possibility of a big, conflict-ending accord seems pretty remote, but in between doing nothing and the full monty, there's much to be tried. And Secretary of State John Kerry -- the new, very smart and savvy Energizer Bunny of U.S. diplomacy -- is well suited to the task, if the president gives him the latitude.

Kerry has a lot of options as he attempts to kick-start the peace process. He can try to first define the borders of a provisional Palestinian state. He might try to focus on terms of reference to guide a negotiation. He could even sprinkle in some resonant confidence-builders for both sides and a kind of code of conduct during a negotiating period. And if he's really ambitious, he can see where the gaps are on all the issues, including Jerusalem and refugees, and try for a framework agreement that would garner support in the Arab world by tying it to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

Given the uncertainties in the region and the gaps between the new Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, I think Obama has no illusions about Israeli-Palestinian peace. That's why he has a Plan B in mind: the legacy initiative. And that's the Obama parameters -- laying out U.S. views on the big issues to define the negotiations. It's not a perfect approach: Kerry, I'm told, wants an actual agreement. If all else fails, however, you can lay out these parameters, and who knows -- with enough effort, maybe you can get one side to embrace them and then try to leverage the other.

But even if you can't, Obama can use them to demonstrate his commitment to the desirability and importance of a two-state solution. This kind of exercise is vintage Obama -- rhetorical, above the details, plenty of thematic altitude with no need for real follow-up. It's not great for U.S. credibility if there are no takers and the Obama initiative is left hanging, but it beats the alternative: a big, fat goose egg from a president who initially set the bar so high.

Might Obama's zero for three-and-a-half legacy be averted? Can't the next several years offer up a different and happier set of endings? Isn't it still possible for Obama to be the president he wanted to be: the transformer, the peacemaker, the visionary leader?

It's hard to see how. The issues in this region are so complex, the mistrust between the parties so deep, the number of moving pieces so many, that it's tough to imagine grand bargains and transformative change brokered by a risk-averse president.

The pull of doing great things that initially inspired Obama will continue to tug. At least when it comes to the Middle East, the president should do everything he can to mightily resist it. Big transformations require that the locals -- in this case, the Iranians, Israelis, and Palestinians -- share real urgency and ownership. Only then can a willful and skillful president exploit that urgency and ownership and turn crisis into opportunity.

Right now, the first isn't evident and the second is a still a thought experiment. Obama ought to think transactions, not transformations: Try a serious effort to broker a deal with the mullahs before going to war, and do the same with Israelis and Palestinians to preserve the possibility of peace. Such interim accords aren't sexy or the stuff of which legacies are made. They won't get Obama into the presidential hall of fame. But they are both desirable and possible.

And if Obama is really lucky, he just might be able to do something that seems pretty consequential right now: leaving this broken, angry, and dysfunctional region a little better than he found it.

-This article was published in Foreign Policy on 03/04/2013-Aaron David Miller is vice president for new initiatives and a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His forthcoming book is titled Can America Have Another Great President?. 

A New Phase In The Struggle For Syria

Extremism among rebels, a fractious opposition and Israel’s machinations threaten to worsen the crisis

By Patrick Seale



While blood-letting in Syria continues on a grand scale, the situation in and around the country is far from static. Three major developments are worth noting, as they are changing the nature of the struggle.

First, the US and its western allies are becoming increasingly alarmed at the rise to prominence in Syria of extremist Al Qaida-backed rebel groups, such as the Nusra Front (Jabhat Al Nusra), which has eclipsed all its rivals in fighting prowess in the field. Washington has put it on a list of foreign terrorist groups.

Indeed, many are beginning to ask what is the point of the US and its allies waging war against Al Qaida across the world — in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and, most recently, in Mali — while giving free rein to it in Syria, thereby no doubt guaranteeing it a major role in any post-Al Assad government.

The spectre of a Taliban-type regime on the doorstep of Europe is causing real concern and explains the increasing reluctance of western countries to arm the rebels.

The current European Union embargo on arms deliveries to Syria is due to expire on March 1. Will it be renewed or will weapons be allowed to flow in? The British and French foreign ministers, William Hague and Laurent Fabius, have been very much in favour of arming the rebels, but they are likely to meet stiff resistance at the next council meeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels on February 18.

The western mood is now far more cautious in dealing with the Syrian crisis.

A second major development is a growing split in the civilian ranks of the Syrian opposition, a fractious body at the best of times. The Turkey-based Syrian National Council (SNC), dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, has always rejected any negotiation with the Syria regime so long as President Bashar Al Assad remains in power.

Its prime objective is to topple him, but the SNC has proved to be an ineffective body of squabbling exiles, exercising little control over the fighters in the field.

To remedy the situation, Qatar and the US sponsored the creation last November of a new opposition body — the Syrian National Coalition — headed by an apparently moderate Islamist, Muath Al Khatib, who had been the Imam of the Great Ummayid Mosque in Damascus. The old SNC was incorporated in the new coalition as a sort of junior partner.

Al Khatib’s new coalition, however, has not done much better than its predecessor. Its constituent factions have failed to show enough cohesion to allow it to form a credible opposition ‘government’ — and thereby win real financial and political backing from the West, not to speak of weapons.

Such is the background to the political bombshells recently dropped by two opposition figures. Haitham Al Manna, a veteran Paris-based Syrian civil rights activist, has from the start of the uprising in 2011 firmly opposed the rebels’ resort to arms.

When the world’s attention was focused on the fighting, he was ignored. But the military stalemate has contributed to a change of mood, which has allowed Al Manna to re-emerge into public view.

On January 28, he chaired what seems to have been a highly successful meeting of like-minded opposition figures in Geneva. Two days later, on January 30, Al Khatib — perhaps not wishing to be upstaged by Al Manna — dropped his own bombshell by announcing (on his Facebook page) his willingness “to take part in direct talks with representatives of the Syrian regime …”

This dramatic statement was seen as a positive response to Al Assad’s call on January 6 for a major conference of national reconciliation tasked with drawing up a charter outlining how Syria was to be governed in future, the terms of which would then be put to a referendum, followed by elections, the formation of a new government and a general amnesty.

Al Khatib was immediately denounced by opposition hardliners, notably by the Muslim Brothers. He was forced to explain that he had spoken in a purely personal capacity, but it was widely suspected that he was reflecting a growing trend in the opposition which, despairing at the horrendous human and material cost of the conflict, is perhaps almost ready to give dialogue a chance. No doubt, Al Khatib has also grasped that, as there is little hope of western military and financial aid on the massive scale required, it might be time to explore the possibility of a negotiated settlement with the regime.

Needless to say, Israel is watching these developments with very great attention. Indeed, a third major recent development was Israel’s air strike on the night of January 29-30 on Syria’s prime military research establishment, the Scientific Studies Research Centre (SSRC), located at Jamaya, north-west of Damascus. Israel’s alleged motive was to prevent the transfer sophisticated Russian weapons such as advanced radars and anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah since this might restrict Israel’s freedom to strike Lebanon at will.

In fact, in mounting this latest attack, Israel’s motives were probably more ambitious. As is well known, it is anxious to bring down the whole so-called ‘resistance axis’ of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, which in recent years has managed to develop a certain deterrent capability vis-à-vis Israeli power. Israel’s bombardment of Syria’s research establishment was very probably intended to provoke the ‘resistance axis’ into responding with an attack on an Israeli target, which would then have provided Israel with the pretext for an all-out assault.

Israel has a score to settle with Hezbollah, which fought it to a draw when Israel last invaded Lebanon in 2006. Israel is also worried that the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (the so-called P5+1) might make progress at their next meeting with Iran, which is due to take place in Kazakhstan on February 25. It is particularly concerned at reports that the US and Iran might engage in a bilateral dialogue, as US vice-president Joe Biden has recently hinted.

None of this is to Israel’s taste. It has for years been urging the US to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities — and bring down the Islamist regime — in much the same way that pro-Israeli neo-cons, using fraudulent intelligence, pushed the US into invading and destroying Iraq in 2003. Equally, Israel does not want the Syrian opposition to engage in dialogue with the regime and arrive at a peaceful settlement. It wants Syria to be further enfeebled and dismembered, much as Iraq was a decade ago, and from which it has far from recovered.

Much will depend in the coming weeks on the wisdom of US President Barack Obama’s new team and, in particular, on the new secretary of state John Kerry. Will he encourage negotiations to resolve the Syrian crisis peacefully so as to stem the destruction of the country and its people, as well as preventing the further destabilisation of Turkey and Lebanon, or will he play Israel’s traditional game of subverting the region so as to reign supreme?

-This commentary was published in Gulf News on 07/02/2013
-Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs
 

The Egyptian Revolution Through Mubarak's Eyes

Insider accounts are shedding new light on the 18 days that brought down a pharaoh.

BY DAVID KENNER



It was Jan. 19, 2011, and Hosni Mubarak's regime was strong and confident. The Egyptian president was playing host to an array of Arab presidents at his beachside resort in Sharm el-Sheikh. Hundreds of construction workers had been evacuated from the area, lest they mar the spectacle.

But those listening carefully could make out the first rumblings of discontent. The Tunisian foreign minister had to scramble back to Tunis hours before the summit's opening, as his country dealt with the fallout of a revolution that had already toppled its long-serving dictator. And Egyptian Facebook pages were spreading news of demonstrations on Jan. 25, which would seek to replicate the drama of the Tunisian revolution on the streets of Cairo.

As the summit drew to a close, Mubarak headed to the airport to see the foreign dignitaries off. Trailing closely behind him were Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's feared domestic enforcer. Aboul Gheit asked Suleiman if he had raised the potential protests with the president; the intelligence chief replied that he had left Mubarak alone during the summit, but that it was high time to discuss the issue.

When the last dignitary had left, Suleiman approached the president and told him that he had a very important topic to discuss. It was then that Mubarak learned of the uprising that would sweep him from power in a few short weeks.

At the time, however, Mubarak was nonplussed. "The president didn't show much interest," Aboul Gheit wrote in his recently published memoir, My Testimony. When Suleiman suggested a meeting with top officials to coordinate responses to potential protests, Mubarak "didn't respond, and didn't react in a way that we understood as suggesting he was worried."

Two years after the Jan. 25 protests, the small clique of officials around Mubarak is finally starting to go public about the debates within the Egyptian government as the revolution unfolded around them. In addition to Aboul Gheit's account, top Egyptian officials gave their account of the unrest in journalist Bradley Hope's Last Day of the Pharaoh. Both tales provide a glimpse into the tensions at the very top of the Mubarak regime and the reason it failed to crush the protest movement.

Mubarak, in all these former officials' stories, is portrayed as a largely passive figure -- a leader who was at the mercy of the last person to offer his advice. "The president is very old, and consequently he is dependent on the vision of Gamal Mubarak," Aboul Gheit wrote, referring to Mubarak's younger son, who had been conspicuously active in the presidential palace since the beginning of the uprising. Gamal, he added, "stays with [the president] all the time in the palace or in the house."

Such explanations could be an effort by high-ranking officials to deflect blame away from the Egyptian state and on to their bureaucratic rivals. But the accounts are remarkably consistent: Hossam Badrawi, then the top official of the ruling political party, told Hope he had convinced Mubarak to relinquish power on Feb. 9 -- but the president then reversed his decision after being confronted by Gamal and other members of his inner circle. He would relent two days later.

President Barack Obama's administration reached out to Aboul Gheit on several occasions to express its views on how the Mubarak regime should handle the crisis. The Egyptian foreign minister believed the U.S. government was attempting a good cop-bad cop approach: "The White House appears very strict against the government, while [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton and the State Department show some flexibility," he told Suleiman.

The intelligence chief replied, "It is the traditional distribution of roles."

As the revolution gained momentum, Aboul Gheit describes a regime paralyzed by infighting. On Jan. 31, he attended the swearing-in of the new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, a career military man brought in to restore order. Mubarak, he says, was bored and quiet: "He pretended to be very busy reading some papers."

Other players, however, were already maneuvering to protect their interests. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, then defense minister and the future head of the military junta that would replace Mubarak, informed Aboul Gheit at the ceremony that the military would not sacrifice its reputation to preserve Mubarak's rule. "Some told me that people are talking about using the army to control the situation by force," Tantawi said sternly, according to Aboul Gheit. "And I said from my side the army doesn't strike people at all, or else it will lose its legitimacy."

Gamal, meanwhile, was intent on protecting Mubarak's hold on power, whatever the cost. Gamal was widely believed to have designs on the presidency himself -- though the aging dictator denied that he would orchestrate Gamal's inheritance of power. "Do you think I'm crazy?" Aboul Gheit wrote that Mubarak told him. "To put my son ... my son ... in this jail? Impossible."

While Gamal indisputably played a powerful behind-the-scenes role, Mubarak resisted efforts to place him in the public eye. Aboul Gheit wrote that he suggested to the president in 2010 that Gamal run for a seat in parliament. At the time, the opposition Muslim Brotherhood held nearly 20 percent of parliament, though their presence would be decimated in the 2010 election, which was widely viewed as rigged.

"This is nonsense," Mubarak responded sharply. "They will cut him into pieces. Don't you know what is happening in parliament?"

On Feb. 1, with the police forces helpless to control the swelling protests, Mubarak delivered a late-night speech announcing that he would not run for another term in office. "[The speech] was late ... it was late ... and then I fell asleep," Aboul Gheit writes, mirroring the frustrations of many protesters. The foreign minister was awakened afterwards by a phone call from Gamal, who said that the speech had sparked a "new spirit" and popular sympathy for Mubarak.

Gamal, however, had overestimated the sea change. On Feb. 2, Aboul Gheit was ensconced in his office in the Foreign Ministry when he looked out the window to see a crowd, interspersed with horses and camels, moving toward Tahrir Square. His phone rang: "They are going to burn the country." shouted a relative. "The unity of Egypt will be gone!"

It was the beginning of the Battle of the Camel - a failed attempt by regime loyalists to clear the square by any means necessary. The cavalry charge with horses and camels, as well as attacks with stones and Molotov cocktails, left 11 Egyptians dead and more than 600 injured.

But the attack also marked the beginning of the end for the Mubarak regime. Aboul Gheit frantically called Suleiman to discuss the bloodshed in Tahrir: The two officials agreed that the president now had no choice but to step down. Suleiman, however, said that he could not say this publicly -- he would be accused of forcing Mubarak out in order to ascend to the presidency himself.

From this point, the fractures within Egyptian regime widened quickly. Aboul Gheit recounted a conversation with Suleiman, in which the intelligence chief said "there was a real plan" to make Gamal as president, but that "the national security apparatus will not agree on this" and that he would not work for Gamal. "They want to get rid of me, and they exerted a lot of effort in this respect," Suleiman added. Aboul Gheit added that he believed Suleiman was referring to Mubarak's wife, Suzanne.

This conversation may also contain a hint for understanding why Suleiman was shunted aside by the military establishment after Mubarak's fall. The intelligence chief suggested that there was a disagreement between him and Tantawi over Gamal, saying that in the event Mubarak's son became president, "it is only Tantawi who will work with him." In any event, Suleiman's bombastic statements blaming foreigners for the uprising and claiming that Egypt was not ready for democracy had made him extremely unpopular among the protesters - and a liability to any transitional government.

By Feb. 9, Mubarak's position was clearly untenable. At this point, Badrawi -- after receiving Suleiman's blessing -- was granted a one-on-one meeting with Mubarak. "Mr. President, I see in front of me an image of [Nicolae] Ceaucescu," Badrawi said, referring to the Romanian dictator, a former friend of Mubarak's, who had been executed by firing squad during the country's anti-Communist revolution.

"You mean they are going to kill me?" Mubarak asked.

"Probably, yes." Badrawi responded.

"I am ready to die for my country," the president said.
According to Badrawi, Mubarak soon opted for a better course: He agreed to delegate power to Suleiman and pave the way for early presidential elections. This path out of the crisis, however, was quickly undermined by Gamal and other loyalists in the president's inner circle.

Even as the regime crumbled, Gamal embarked on a last-ditch attempt to preserve his father's rule. On Feb. 10, Mubarak announced that he would give another speech, in which he was widely expected to announce his resignation.

"It was late ... it was late," Aboul Gheit wrote. "And then the statement came, but it did not have anything good in it. And I understood then that the son of the president was trying to shape the statement so that it pleased everyone."

Egyptian protesters, shocked that Mubarak was attempting to cling to power, took to the streets in huge numbers on Feb. 11, dubbed the "Friday of Departure." Aboul Gheit said that he spent the morning working the phones between Suleiman and Shafiq, trying to negotiate Mubarak's exit. Suleiman told him that the president would retreat to his home at Sharm el-Sheikh -- where he had first learned of the protest movement -- that day, before noon prayers.

In an attempt to salvage the situation, Suleiman summoned Aboul Gheit to a meeting at Cairo's Ittahadeya Palace at 1 pm. The palace, however, was besieged by protesters -- the army warned that it could be stormed at any moment, and the officials had to relocate to a nearby military base. "And finally I came to the logical conclusion: The world has changed," wrote Aboul Gheit.

A three-way conversation between Mubarak, Suleiman, and Tantawi laid bare the disagreements between the formerly tightly knit officials at the top of the Egyptian government. Suleiman first received a call from Mubarak, who had by then relocated to Sharm el-Sheikh, in which the president ordered him to tell Tantawi that he had been granted the power to oversee the administration of the country. When informed of the order, however, the defense minister balked: "I understood from the phone call that Tantawi doesn't want to put the army in office," Aboul Gheit wrote.

Suleiman then told Mubarak that he needed to appeal directly to Tantawi. In the end, he and Shafiq headed in person to the Defense Ministry to inform the military chief of his new role. His job done, Suleiman delivered the announcement that charted the first, tentative steps of Egypt's post-Mubarak future.

"In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, citizens, during these very difficult circumstances Egypt is going through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down," the once all-powerful intelligence chief declared. "May God help everybody."

-This article was published first in Foreign Policy on 24?01/2013
-David Kenner is an associate editor at Foreign Policy

Responsibility To Object

It's time for the U.N. Security Council to do something about war crimes in Syria.

By David Kaye



In Syria, the new year begins without change. President Bashar al-Assad continues to attack Syrian citizens on a vast scale, targeting civilians and rebels indiscriminately, and making use of summary executions and torture. Meanwhile, anti-government factions commit human rights violations of their own, according to the United Nations and various human rights organizations. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights recently estimated the number of dead at more than 60,000; Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. and Arab League peace envoy, warns that the civil war could claim another 100,000 lives in 2013.

But if the situation in Syria looks increasingly grave, one thing could and should change. The U.N. Security Council -- so far unable to agree on measures to try to end the war -- should find a way to deter war crimes and crimes against humanity by all parties to the conflict. Its current silence encourages all Syrians, especially the perpetrators of such crimes, to believe that nobody will be held accountable for these abuses. The Security Council should therefore adopt a three-pronged strategy to insert some measure of accountability and restraint into the war, even while a political settlement remains out of reach.

First, the Security Council should impose financial, travel, and diplomatic sanctions on individuals on both sides of the conflict who commit serious violations of human rights or international humanitarian law. The Security Council has established sanctions committees in conflict zones like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan to restrain those responsible for the worst abuses. In Sudan, the so-called 1591 Sanctions Committee is authorized to make sanctions determinations on the basis of information from a range of sources, including a specialized panel of experts, governments, U.N. bodies, and non-governmental organizations. A similarly modeled Syria sanctions committee would also complement the U.N.'s independent commission of inquiry on Syria by providing a more individualized and granular response to the violence.

Second, the Security Council should refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) -- as it did Sudan in 2005 and Libya in 2011. An ICC referral has long seemed out of reach because of opposition from critical Security Council members, but that may be changing. Russian officials, for instance, increasingly see Assad as a butcher and understand the risks to the thousands of Russian nationals living in Syria. Moscow, itself not hostile to the court in principle, should see that an ICC referral could restrain the rebels as well as the government.

To facilitate success, the Security Council should take two steps it failed to do in previous cases. Because a Syria investigation would likely stretch ICC resources beyond capacity, the Security Council should take a leading role in helping fund a serious, sustained process. Likewise, the Security Council should promise up front that it will stand behind the results of the ICC investigation, obligating all governments to provide the court with the necessary logistical and political support. This should not involve a commitment to use military force to make arrests, but political and logistical support, as well as a sanctions process, would put a meaningful squeeze on those alleged responsible for the worst crimes.

Third, the Security Council should support a framework to encourage Syrians from all ethnic, national, and religious backgrounds to begin discussions about long-term justice and rule of law in the country. The ICC is a blunt and limited instrument, designed to hold senior political and military leaders accountable for their actions. But many thousands more have been and are involved in the violence; they too need to be reminded of their obligations of humane behavior in war.

A Syrian national effort, with U.N. support and encouragement, could begin to map out a plan for seeking justice in the long-term. Such an effort should include discussion of criminal process at local and national levels; truth and reconciliation programs; reparations for those thousands who lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods; and rebuilding of the institutions of law and governance. Many Syrian activists are already thinking ahead to the day when accountability is on the national agenda. They should be supported by the international community, though the process must ultimately be Syrian-led and inclusive of all sections of society.

None of these efforts is a substitute for real efforts to end the war. But they would amount to a powerful statement in favor of norms against war crimes and crimes against humanity -- warning both the regime and the opposition that they will be held accountable for their actions. Such measures would also offer a longer-term framework for restraining abuses in the future. If even at the margins, a strategy against the most serious crimes could temper abuses and possibly save lives. Failure to take action, moreover, undermines the international community's commitment to seeking justice for massive crimes and upholding the responsibility to protect.

There are some who will argue that introducing accountability weakens the prospects for a political settlement by forcing leaders to dig in their heels in commitment to violence. In some situations, the reality on the ground may indeed counsel against moves toward accountability at a given moment. But that moment has long passed in Syria, where the regime has abandoned even the pretense of restraint and elements of the armed opposition have already stumbled into the regime's sectarian trap.

Justice may seem unattainable for now as Syria spirals further out of control. But Syrians and members of the international community can still point the way to another possible future -- one where those who commit terrible crimes cannot escape some measure of justice.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy on 10/01/2012
-David Kaye, a former State Department lawyer, is a professor of law at UC Irvine School of Law

As Bashar Assad Shows His Defiance, Syria Nears Its Existential Cliff

By Tony Karon


Syrians watch President Bashar Assad making a public address on the state-run Syrian TV on Jan. 6, 2013, in Damascus

If the geological metaphor fashionable in Washington these days can be applied in Damascus, then Syria is moving perilously closer toward an existential cliff. President Bashar Assad on Sunday delivered a dramatic aria of defiance from the stage of the Damascus Opera House, rallying his base for a fight to the finish against a 21-month-old rebellion he dismissed as an unholy alliance between the West and al-Qaeda. The hour-long speech offered little hope that Assad might be about to end the civil war that has killed upwards of 60,000 Syrians by heeding the rebels’ central demand: that he step down. Indeed, Assad rejected any negotiations with an opposition he branded “enemies of God and puppets of the West.” He would only negotiate, he vowed, “with the master, not the servants” — a signal, perhaps, that his real message was directed at Western and regional powers. Condensed to a tweet, such a message might read: “Aprés moi, le déluge. Accept my terms, or own the consequences of Syria’s breakup — which we all know you’re desperate to avoid.”

Assad did, of course, offer settlement terms, but those were not much different from his previous demands: rebels would cease attacks and outsider powers would stop backing them; state control over border crossings (many now in rebel hands) would be restored, and the regime would convene a “national dialogue conference” with those who reject violence in order to negotiate a new constitution and open the way for a political transition. Unsurprisingly, his terms were summarily rejected by opposition spokesmen who said the regime had offered no meaningful concessions. The U.S. State Department dismissed Assad’s proposals as “detached from reality” and as “yet another attempt to cling to power.” Until now, the opposition has insisted that negotiations are possible only when Assad agrees to go.

“That was not the speech of a man seeking a compromise,” says Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma. “That was the speech of a man who believes his side can win. He offered no ray of hope that a political solution might be possible but instead sought to rally the troops and remind the West of the stakes.” With neither the opposition nor Assad willing to talk to each other, mediation efforts by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, strongly backed by Russia, are going nowhere. “Assad’s speech also challenges the West to rethink its policy, because the war is nowhere near an end,” says Landis. “The rebels are not getting nearly the level of outside support they’d need to destroy the regime’s military. And Assad seems to be warning that Syria itself could be destroyed in the process of bringing down his regime.”

While there’s a common perception in Western capitals that the regime is on its last legs, there are plenty of signs on the ground that it remains very much intact — and very dangerous. Assad’s security forces have been forced to relinquish control of many rural areas and have even ceded the impoverished peripheries of a number of Syrian cities, but the regime has escalated its attacks on areas under rebel control in recent months, deliberately imposing a heavier toll in humanitarian suffering. And rebels in many areas appear desperately short of funds and military resources, despite promises of expanded support from outside powers.

Assad may have also been playing on the West’s ambivalence at the prospect of a rebel military victory by harping on the al-Qaeda theme. Washington last month designated Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-inspired militia at the forefront of rebel fighting forces, as an international terrorist organization — a move that drew howls of protest, even from the leadership of the U.S.-backed Syrian National Coalition.

Assad has survived, as the New York Times noted last Friday, because almost two years into the rebellion, “a critical bloc of Syrians remains on the fence,” skeptical of both the regime and of the rebels. Large numbers of Alawite and Christians who detest Assad and his regime remain unwilling to embrace what appears to many of them as a sectarian, Sunni Islamist rebellion. As Slobodan Milosevic had done in Yugoslavia, Assad has created a kill-or-be-killed mind-set among his core constituencies.

That’s not a reality easily altered by the best efforts of Western powers to foster reconciliation plans in distant capitals in the hope that these will convince most of the Alawite and Christian minorities — and even many urban, wealthier Sunnis — that they have nothing to fear from a rebel victory. Those closest to the action are often less convinced of the alternative represented by the armed rebels, even if they’re appalled by the regime’s brutality. Grotesque scenes of Alawite soldiers being tortured to death by rebel captors may not have gotten much international-media air play, but they’ve gone viral on YouTube among the communities that fear for their fate should Assad be toppled.

Fred C. Hof, who until last September was the U.S. State Department’s special adviser for the transition in Syria, wrote last week of the sectarian danger in Syria:

“Some regime opponents insist … that the opposition (armed and not) remains overwhelmingly committed to a Syria of citizenship, one permitting no civil distinction among Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Kurd, Ismaili, Turkman, Druze, and so forth.  One hopes they are accurate and truthful, and not merely trying to appeal to the sensibilities of Americans who perhaps do not understand how the world really works (at least in Syria). And yet how many members of Syrian minorities — fully one-third of the country’s population — accept these proffered reassurances? Probably no more than a handful do. And why should they? What would weigh heavier on the brain of a non-Sunni Arab (or a Sunni Arab committed to secular governance): the occasional word about the primacy of citizenship, or the televised chanting of hirsute warriors and the exaltation by [Jabhat al-Nusra] in reaction to the fully justified (if ill-timed) U.S. designation of the group as terrorist?

In sum, the Assad regime has hijacked the Alawite community and large components of other minorities, holding them hostage to the survival of rule by clan and clique … If in the end Syria is really akin to Lebanon in terms of the supremacy of sectarian identification, it is finished.”

That may be exactly why Assad has chosen to force what began as a peaceful protest movement for democracy onto the terrain of a sectarian civil war. This way, the stakes for millions of Syrians, and for regional stakeholders, are that much higher.

-This commentary was published in Time magazine on 06/01/2013

Death of the Two-State Paradigm?

By Lihi Ben Shitrit , Mahmoud Jaraba



Even though the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has experienced long periods of stalemate over the past 20 years, a majority of Palestinians and Israelis never ceased to support its final goals. They disagreed about the contours of negotiations, preconditions, and timing, but they consistently agreed about the most important things: the viability of a two-state solution and the acceptance of mutual recognition of each other's right to self-determination. Israeli and Palestinian opinion polls since the signing of the Oslo Agreement have shown this again and again. However, recent polls indicate that 2013 could be the year when this all changes.

The latest joint Israeli-Palestinian poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) from December 2012 shows that a majority among Israelis (65 percent) and Palestinians (62 percent) now believe the chances for a final agreement are low to non-existent. In Israel, unlike the 2009 election in which the center-left and the right blocs were approximately tied, the election planned for January 2013 is likely to generate an easy victory for the hawkish Netanyahu and Lieberman coalition. The two main players in this coalition -- the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu parties (which have merged into one list) -- are dominated by politicians who adamantly reject the two-state paradigm, some of whom even advocate for an Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

The same is happening among Palestinians. In 2006, 66 percent of Palestinians said they would support recognizing Israel as the national home of the Jewish people in the context of a peace agreement. However, the latest polls by the PCPSR show that support for mutual recognition has dropped to an unprecedented low of 40 percent. A majority of Palestinians (57 percent) now believe that a two-state solution is no longer viable. Moreover, if elections were held any time soon Hamas is expected to win and this time not because of its credentials as a democratic, non-corrupt social services provider. After winning in the 2006 Palestinian national election, Hamas had to undertake rhetorical and ideological summersaults in order to indicate some openness to a potential two-state accommodation. Hamas did not win because of its peace rejectionist stance, with polls showing that about 75 percent of Palestinians wanted Hamas to negotiate a peace deal with Israel. While this was the case in 2006, the years of Hamas rule in Gaza have changed its image. Over 60 percent of Palestinians perceive Hamas controlled institutions in Gaza as corrupt and 61 percent believe they cannot criticize Hamas without fear. This time a Hamas victory will not be for its ability to govern, but for its peace-rejectionist stance. After the Gaza war of November 2012, the majority of Palestinians prefer Hamas's political strategy (60 percent) over Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's and Fatah's (28 percent) to end the Israeli occupation, despite Abbas's success in upgrading the status of Palestine to a non-member state in the United Nations.

What does this mean for 2013? In Israel, Netanyahu's coalition will be stronger and more hawkish after the January election. It is unlikely that Netanyahu would want to or would be able to accept Abbas's condition for a return to negotiation -- the freezing of construction in the settlements. On the Palestinian side there is currently strong support for Fatah-Hamas reconciliation. If that happens, presidential and legislative elections will follow and Hamas is expected to win. In this case, the new governments in Israel and Palestine would have been elected with a mandate to continue to reject advancement toward a two-state resolution.

In the absence of Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, Palestinians will have two options. The first is mobilization for large peaceful demonstrations inspired by the Arab uprisings. Recent findings show a dramatic increase in support for participation in peaceful protests as compared to attitudes before the Arab spring. When Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were asked in September 2012 if they would participate in non-violent demonstrations blocking army and settler roads and protesting at checkpoints, 59 percent said they would. However, and here we come to the second option, after the recent war in Gaza (which 80 percent of Palestinians believe Hamas won) increasing numbers say that armed resistance is the most effective method to deal with Israel. The last poll from December shows that 41 percent of Palestinians think that a return to armed attacks against the Israeli Defense Forces and settlers in the West Bank is the best strategy for advancing Palestinian objectives (only 30 percent think negotiations is the way to go). The new official Facebook page for the third Palestinian intifada, launched on September 28, 2012, already has over half a million "likes." The language on the page advocates both non-violent and violent action and reflects popular attitudes among Palestinians.

It appears that the last long period of suspension in the peace process has managed to finally convince Israelis and Palestinians that the two-state solution is no longer viable. Eighty-one percent of Palestinians now believe that Israel's goal is to annex the Palestinian territories and 60 percent of Israelis believe that the Palestinian objective is to conquer the whole of Israel. In 2013, Hamas and the Israeli government will likely continue to work on further entrenching these perceptions. Perhaps the only hope that the old two-state vision has is that as much as they do not think a two-state solution is viable, most Israelis and Palestinians are deeply averse to the alternative one-state option.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 03/01/2013
-Lihi Ben Shitrit is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens. Mahmoud Jaraba is the author of "Hamas: Tentative March toward Peace" (Ramallah: Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 2010). He is a PhD candidate at the Departments of Political Science and the Middle Eastern Studies, the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

Flow Of Arms To Syria Through Iraq Persists, To U.S. Dismay

By MICHAEL R. GORDON, ERIC SCHMITT and TIM ARANGO from Washington


An Iranian cargo plane during an inspection at Baghdad’s airport in October. Iraq has been reluctant to do inspections.

The American effort to stem the flow of Iranian arms to Syria has faltered because of Iraq’s reluctance to inspect aircraft carrying the weapons through its airspace, American officials say.
The shipments have persisted at a critical time for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has come under increasing military pressure from rebel fighters. The air corridor over Iraq has emerged as a main supply route for weapons, including rockets, antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenade and mortars.

Iran has an enormous stake in Syria, which is its staunchest Arab ally and has also provided a channel for Iran’s support to the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah.

To the disappointment of the Obama administration, American efforts to persuade the Iraqis to randomly inspect the flights have been largely unsuccessful.

Adding to American concerns, Western intelligence officials say they are picking up new signs of activity at sites in Syria that are used to store chemical weapons. The officials are uncertain whether Syrian forces might be preparing to use the weapons in a last-ditch effort to save the government, or simply sending a warning to the West about the implications of providing more help to the Syrian rebels.

“It’s in some ways similar to what they’ve done before,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “But they’re doing some things that suggest they intend to use the weapons. It’s not just moving stuff around. These are different kind of activities.”

The official said, however, that the Syrians had not carried out the most blatant steps toward using the chemical weapons, such as preparing them to be fired by artillery batteries or loaded in bombs to be dropped from warplanes. 

Regarding the arms shipments, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton secured a commitment from Iraq’s foreign minister in September that Iraq would inspect flights from Iran to Syria. But the Iraqis have inspected only two, most recently on Oct. 27. No weapons were found, but one of the two planes that landed in Iraq for inspection was on its way back to Iran after delivering its cargo in Syria.

Adding to the United States’ frustrations, Iran appears to have been tipped off by Iraqi officials as to when inspections would be conducted, American officials say, citing classified reports by American intelligence analysts.

Iran’s continued efforts to aid the Syrian government were described in interviews with a dozen American administration, military and Congressional officials, most of whom requested anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

“The abuse of Iraqi airspace by Iran continues to be a concern,” an American official said. “We urge Iraq to be diligent and consistent in fulfilling its international obligations and commitments, either by continuing to require flights over Iraqi territory en route to Syria from Iran to land for inspection or by denying overflight requests for Iranian aircraft going to Syria.”

Iraqi officials insist that they oppose the ferrying of arms through Iraq’s airspace. They also cite claims by Iran that it is merely delivering humanitarian aid, and they call the American charges unfounded.

“We wouldn’t be able to convince them, even if we searched all the airplanes, because they have prejudged the situation,” Ali al-Musawi, the spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, said of the American concerns. “Our policy is that we will not allow the transfer of arms to Syria.”

Mr. Musawi acknowledged that one of the planes was not inspected until it was returning from Damascus, but said it was a simple error, not a deliberate effort to help the Iranians. “Mistakes sometimes occur,” he said.

But one former Iraqi official, who asked not to be identified because he feared retaliation by the Iraqi government, said that some officials in Baghdad had been doing the bare minimum to placate the United States and were in fact sympathetic to the Iranian efforts in Syria.
The Iranian flights present challenges for the Obama administration, which has been reluctant to provide arms to the Syrian rebels or to establish a no-fly zone over Syria for fear of becoming entangled in the conflict. They also illustrate the limits of the administration’s influence with the Maliki government and point to divergent foreign-policy calculations in Washington and in Baghdad.
While Iraq’s actions clearly benefit Iran, a Shiite country with close ties to many Iraqi officials, Mr. Maliki may have his own reasons to tolerate the flights.

Mr. Maliki, American officials say, is worried that if Mr. Assad falls from power it may embolden Sunni and Kurdish forces in the region, including in Iraq, which could present challenges to his Shiite-dominated government.

Iran’s support for Syria is vital to the Assad government, American officials said. In addition to flying arms and ammunition to Syria, Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force is sending trainers and advisers, sometimes disguised as religious pilgrims, tourists and businessmen, the officials say.

Iran’s flights of arms to Syria drew the concern of American officials soon after the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq last December. Iraq lacks an air force and is unable to enforce control of its own airspace, and Iran took advantage by ferrying arms to Syria.

Under American pressure, Iraqi officials persuaded the Iranians to hold off on the flights as Iraq prepared to host the Arab summit in Baghdad in March. Soon after the meeting, President Obama, in an April 3 call to Mr. Maliki, underscored that the flights should not continue.

But after a bombing in Damascus in July that killed ranking members of Mr. Assad’s government, the Iranian flights resumed. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised American concerns over the flights in an Aug. 17 phone call with Mr. Maliki. So did Denis McDonough, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, who met with Mr. Maliki in Baghdad in October.

When Mr. McDonough raised concerns over the inspection of the plane that was on its way back to Iran, Mr. Maliki responded that he was not aware that the inspection had been carried out that way, according to one account of the meeting by an American official. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined to comment.

There is evidence of collusion between Iranian and Iraqi officials on the inspections, according to American intelligence assessments. In one instance, according to an American intelligence report, Qassim Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, ordered that a flight to Syria carry only humanitarian goods. An Iraqi inspection occurred soon after, when the plane was asked to land in Iraq on Oct. 27.

Much of the American intelligence community’s concerns about possible collusion has focused on Hadi al-Amiri, Iraq’s minister of transportation, who is believed to be close to the Iranians and was among the Iraqi traveling party when Mr. Maliki visited Washington last year. Mr. Amiri said: “This is untrue. We are an independent country and our stance is clear. We will search whichever plane we want, whenever we want. We will not take orders.”

Nasir Bender, the head of civil aviation in Iraq, said there was no indication that Iraqi officials had tipped off the Iranians. “We have orders to search any plane that we feel is suspicious, but the ones we have searched were only carrying medical supplies and clothing,” he said, adding that the Iraqis had inspected only two Iranian flights because of the cost of fuel. “We can’t search every plane because there are so many heading to Syria,” he said. “It would be a big waste of money. Each plane we take down we must refill with fuel.”

In one instance in late October, however, an Iranian flight ignored an Iraqi request that it land, according to American intelligence assessments, presumably because the Iranians did not want its cargo to be inspected.

Iraq’s attitude toward the Iranian flights has drawn the concern of lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who has been mentioned as a possible secretary of state in Mr. Obama’s second term.

“If so many people have entreated the government to stop and that doesn’t seem to be having an impact,” Mr. Kerry said in September, “that sort of alarms me a little bit and seems to send a signal to me maybe we should make some of our assistance or some of our support contingent on some kind of appropriate response.”

The activity at the Syrian chemical weapons sites, described by American, European and Israeli officials, poses an additional challenge for the West. The senior American official confirmed on Saturday that in the past two or three days, United States and allied intelligence have detected that the Syrian military was carrying out some kind of activities with some of its chemical stockpiles.

Since the crisis began in Syria, the United States and its allies have stepped up electronic eavesdropping and other surveillance activities of the sites.

-This report was published in The New York Times on 02/12/2012
-Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Tim Arango from Baghdad. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.