Brookings: Topics - Syria

Syria's Unchecked Humanitarian Crisis

Elizabeth Ferris — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:34:00 -0400

As the civil war in Syria continues to escalate, refugees are fleeing the country, in record numbers, seeking safety from the deadly violence and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian conditions. More than 1.6 million Syrians have flooded nearby countries overwhelming relief organizations and local governments and even more are displaced within the country. This situation is desperate and the growing humanitarian crisis nearing a breaking point. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees senior advisor Jana Mason, U.S. Commission on Internal Religious Freedom senior policy analyst, Tiffany Lynch and I participated in a fact-finding trip to the region in early June. They join me to discuss the alarming situation and growing needs of Syrian refugees.

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Syria's Unchecked Humanitarian Crisis

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Syria's Unchecked Humanitarian Crisis

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Elizabeth Ferris

Why the Current Syria Policy Doesn't Make Sense

Shadi Hamid — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama's decision to arm Syrian rebels -- after resisting such a course for nearly two years -- has come under some withering criticism. Marc Lynch, who has long opposed military intervention in Syria, calls it "probably his worst foreign policy decision since taking office," while Daniel Larison casts it as "certainly one of the two or three worst [decisions]." Despite being on the opposite side of the debate -- I began writing in favor of military intervention nearly a year and a half ago -- it is hard to disagree with their assessment that providing "small arms" to the rebels is unlikely to make much difference.

What makes Obama's decision so unsatisfying -- and even infuriating -- to both sides is that even he seems to acknowledge this. As the New York Times reports, "Mr. Obama expressed no confidence it would change the outcome, but privately expressed hope it might buy time to bring about a negotiated settlement."

To some extent like the 2010 Afghanistan "surge," this is a tactical move that seems almost entirely detached from any clear, long-term strategy. A source of constant and sometimes Kafkaesque debate among interpreters of Obama's Syria policy is figuring out what exactly the policy is in the first place. Secretary of State John Kerry has been promoting the Geneva II peace conference, but his explanations of U.S. goals have tended to confuse. For example, there is this: "The goal of Geneva II is to implement Geneva I." But no one is quite sure what the goals of Geneva I were, except perhaps to "lay the groundwork" for Geneva II.

If the goal is to help rebels regain the military advantage and, second, to diminish the regime's ability to kill, then the proposed means fall well short (for a detailed discussion of why small arms are likely to be ineffective, see C.J. Chivers' explanation here). The fact that nearly everyone seems to agree on the ineffectiveness of such a course -- including even Obama himself -- suggests the president did this because he needed to "do something." It was, after all, getting embarrassing, with open mockery of Obama's fecklessness, in general, and a rather squiggly "red line" that insisted on shifting in odd directions, in particular. But that Obama has done something he clearly didn't want to do for precisely the wrong reasons does not inspire confidence. Rarely has a major policy change been announced so circumspectly with so little conviction.

The fact of the matter, and one the administration seems intent on eliding, is that the only way to help the rebels regain the advantage and force the Assad regime to make real concessions is with a credible threat of military intervention through airstrikes against regime assets and the establishment of no-fly and no-drive zones. This will mean taking additional steps and slowly deepening our involvement, a result which some now fear is inevitable. Of course, the other argument -- eloquently advanced by Larison over the past year -- is that no vital interests are at stake and that the United States would be better staying out altogether. This latter argument, despite defining U.S. "interests" in extremely narrow terms, at least has the virtue of some internal consistency.

For those who supported the NATO operation in Libya -- perhaps the epitome of a non-interests-based intervention -- and past interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, the continued reluctance to entertain direct military action is more difficult to explain, although it no doubt has to do with the legacy of Iraq. Iraq is often mentioned by the administration as offering lessons for the present, although why Syria should be so analogous to Iraq, rather than say Libya or Bosnia, is rarely specified in any detail (Syria shares some of Iraq's sectarian features, but, to my knowledge, this was not the reason that so many felt the war was illegal, unnecessary, and based on false pretenses). Misplaced support for the Iraq war has led to an overcorrection in the opposite direction.

"To my mind," Andrew Sullivan writes for instance, "the key components of a successful Obama presidency -- an actual change we can believe in -- is the ability to resist war in Syria or with Iran under almost any circumstance." Why intervene again in a messy, uncertain region when previous interventions have turned out so bad? Sullivan's position has little to do with understanding Syria and how the situation on the ground has changed, but is based, rather, on an ideological aversion to intervention under, as he puts it, "almost any circumstance." The problem with the Iraq war wasn't that it was an intervention, but that it was a bad intervention. It was the result of conscious policy decisions -- guided by a neo-conservative worldview - just as non-intervention in Syria has been a very conscious and deliberate choice on the part of an Obama administration guided by a philosophical and even ideological aversion to intervention or even pro-active involvement in the Middle East.

The question for Syria anti-interventionists builds on Sullivan's perhaps inadvertent admission: under what circumstances, if any, do they believe military intervention would be warranted, a question which has broad relevance for the future of the "Responsibility to Protect"? In Syria, at least 93,000 have been killed, one of the highest totals of any recent world conflict. Beyond unspeakable mass slaughter, rape, and torture, two other key conditions have been met. First, there have been consistent requests from the Syrian political and military opposition, as well as the broader protest movement, for foreign direct intervention, particularly the imposition of a no-fly zone. Second, there is broad regional and international legitimacy, with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and France backing various degrees of military action.

In an ideal world, these considerations would have been enough to intervene long ago -- the point of the Responsibility to Protect, after all, is to intervene on behalf of the living, rather than the dead -- but that is not the world we live in. I have always hesitated to emphasize the strategic rationale for military action, due to my concern that what should be about protecting the Syrian people and supporting their struggle against a brutal regime becomes much more a matter of setting scores with Iran, Hezbollah, or other unsavory actors. That caveat aside, the strategic arguments are compelling in a way they never were in Libya (or for that matter Kosovo). Unlike most Arab autocratic regimes, Syria has long been an enemy of the United States. The Syrian regime is such a vital lifeline and point of entry for Iran and Hezbollah that both parties are doing everything in their power to keep Assad in power. And so on. It is difficult to think of a comparable case where the moral and strategic rationales for military intervention were this strong.

If, despite all of these reasons, liberal internationalists are still loathe to consider intervention, then this calls into question the broader applicability and relevance of the very concept of "humanitarian intervention" and the Responsibility to Protect. If the exceptionally dire circumstances of Syria -- of mass slaughter and the resulting destabilization of an entire region (including Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq) -- are not enough to trigger intervention, then what would?

Authors

Shadi Hamid

Publication: The Atlantic

Image Source: © Stringer . / Reuters

Will Arming Syrian Rebels Lead to Disaster?

Bruce Riedel — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The United States is about to start arming and training the Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. If done well, this move can end a bloody civil war. If done poorly, it could lead to disaster. Will Obama and his team do the right thing?

It turns out Afghanistan of the 1980s is a terrific test case for how to handle the Syrian rebels. The Afghan mujahedin then and the Syrian rebels now both seem incapable of forming a broad national consensus or an effective united political and military organization. Both have a significant component of hard-core Islamist extremists in their midst who are fundamentally opposed to American interests. But both also have a legitimate cause that deserves our support. The issue is how to help wisely.

The CIA’s support of the Afghans ended in brilliant success and the downfall of the Soviet Union, but it succeeded only because it was fought with a clear mission, strong allies and broad bipartisan support. Even then, it also had serious unintended consequences that haunt us to this day.

A key lesson of Afghanistan is to be very clear from the beginning about your objective and mission. In the 1980s the goal was to defeat the Soviets by creating a quagmire for the Red Army like Vietnam was for America. The key planners behind the CIA operation to support the mujahedin, especially CIA Director Bill Casey, wanted to turn Afghanistan into Moscow’s Vietnam. They did.

Then Washington let mission creep develop. The Reagan and Bush administrations were unsure of what they wanted to do next. Some in Washington wanted to overthrow the communist government in Kabul that survived after the Russian withdrawal. Others wanted to support a political process to build a broad-based national unity government. And others wanted to forget Afghanistan and concentrate on forging a new world order with the post-communist leadership in Moscow. The American national-security bureaucracy became almost dysfunctional. In the end chaos ensued in Afghanistan.

What mission does arming the rebels in Syria support? It must be more than stopping Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Is it regime change or bolstering a political process in Geneva? Is it a means to unite the opposition and purge it of the al Nusra front, al Qaeda’s arm in Syria? Is it to defeat Iran and Hezbollah and bring regime change beyond Syria? We have yet to hear the answers to these questions.

Then there’s the matter of allies. The American support for the Afghan resistance was built around strong support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Only some 50 or so CIA officers were ever engaged at one time in helping the mujahedin. Their job was to buy arms for the rebels and ship them to Karachi. After they arrived in that port the war was fought by the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), which did all the training of the insurgents. ISI officers crossed the border into Afghanistan and even Soviet Central Asia to provide critical “boots on the ground” expertise and leadership when needed. The Pakistanis took all the risks of Soviet blowback at home as the KGB used terror operations inside Pakistan to try to shake Islamabad’s resolve. The Saudis helped pay for the operation with both government and private funds.

Of course, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had different interests in Afghanistan than America. Our interests only overlapped for a time. Saudi Arabia wanted to establish an Islamic state in Afghanistan and repress Shia (it wants the same in Syria today). And Pakistan was determined to install a puppet government in Afghanistan once the Russians left. That remains the ISI’s goal today, which is why we are now fighting a proxy war with Pakistan in Afghanistan.

In Syria, we will need the same sort of help. We can’t arm the rebels without a base next door. We should work with Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar as well as the U.K. and France. But we should have no illusions that we all share the same end game. Our arms could end up in al Qaeda’s hands not just in Syria but in Iraq, Jordan, and elsewhere. They could be used to kill Americans.

And there is going to need to be bipartisan support in the Congress for a major covert operation arming a rebellion. Reagan and Casey had that in the 1980s. It was famously Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson’s war as much as it was Reagan’s war (at least in Hollywood). Some of the enthusiasm included a great deal of naiveté about our allies, especially the ISI, and a lot of romanticism about the mujahedin, but it also provided a solid base of support.

If America’s Syria mission lacks that, it will be constantly second-guessed. If the administration wants to arm the rebels, then it needs to make the case clearly and strongly. The president will need to take ownership. Hesitancy and uncertainty are a recipe for disaster.

Of course, there are many differences between Afghanistan in the 1980s and Syria today. Assad is not Brezhnev, and frankly, the stakes are not nearly as great. But no matter what, there will be unintended consequences. Arming the mujahedin was the right policy in the 1980s; Casey and Reagan never dreamed that Afghanistan would become a base for jihadists who would attack America. But it also had unintended and dangerous fallout. Clear thinking about goal, avoiding mission creep, frank talk with allies, and building bipartisan support can help bring the right outcome. Arming the rebels in Syria may be the right move today, but it could also be the start to a process that ends in another deeply unpopular, expensive, and counterproductive American war in the Islamic world.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Muzaffar Salman / Reuters

Obama, Putin to Talk Syria at G-8

Fiona Hill — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:36:00 -0400

Russian president Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama will meet privately on the sidelines of the 2013 G-8 Summit in Northern Ireland. It will be the first time these leaders have met since they were both returned to office. While they have many critical issues to discuss, the troubling events in Syria will likely top the list. Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the U.S. and Europe, previews the meetings, saying there’s little hope that these talks can persuade Russia to change its stance on Syria. She also expects President Putin to participate in the meetings under his "statist persona," a facet of the Russian president that she describes in her book, with Clifford Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Brookings, 2012).

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G-8 Not a Good Setting for Obama-Putin Sidebar

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Putin and Obama Have a Difficult Relationship

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Fiona Hill

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Source: U.S. Couldn't Nail Down Chemical Weapons Chain of Custody

Noah Shachtman and John Hudson — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

When the White House first publicly announced in late April its belief that the Assad regime in Syria had used chemical weapons on its own people, it stressed that this was only a strong suspicion -- not a certainty. Yes, they had blood samples that indicated exposure to deadly sarin gas. But they couldn't say for sure who handled those samples in the two weeks it took to get the blood into Western hands. "The physiological examples are compelling but without being able to determine the chain of custody, that's the key to confirming the use," one unnamed U.S. official told the New York Times earlier this week.

That chain of custody still hasn't been nailed down, an American intelligence source tells The Cable. But U.S. spy agencies nonetheless now feel confident that chemical weapons were used in Syria. And that, in turn, prompted the White House to make its more sure-footed announcement Thursday that Assad had, conclusively, gassed his opponents in Syria's civil war.

After an alleged chemical attack on the city of Aleppo in March, the U.S. and United States came into possession of at least three physiological samples that tested positive for indicators of sarin gas. Now, Western intelligence services have at least twice that number of blood, urine, and hair samples coming from a variety of battle zones around the country.

"The big thing that changed is an increase in the number of incidents," the source says. "It's impossible that the opposition is faking the stuff in so many instances in so many locations."

When the samples were combined with information from signals intercepts, overhead surveillance, and human tipsters, the intelligence community felt it had a powerful case. And once the intelligence community made its conclusion, the White House was, in a way, compelled to act.

It wasn't just that President Obama had declared the use of chemical weapons to be a "red line" (although, of course, that was vitally important for all sorts of geopolitical and strategic reasons). An obscure 1991 law, 22 USC 5604, states that the president shall notify Congress within 60 days if the executive branch determines that a foreign government "has used lethal chemical or biological weapons against its own nationals."

Yet the White House's decision to announce the chemical weapons findings -- and the decision to provide "direct military support" to the rebels -- came rather quickly. "We had less than a week to prepare," the source says. "Nothing indicated a decision before this week."

And that quick move to announce may partially explain why the Obama administration's proclamation was so oddly short on specifics. There was that declaration of direct military support. But what shape that support would take, the administration wouldn't say, at least not on the record.

"Can't you even say small arms, RPGs, heavier weapons?" a reporter asked Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes, during Friday's press briefing.

He answered: "We're just not going to be able to get into that level of detail about the type of assistance that we provide publicly here."

A State Department briefing with spokeswoman Jen Psaki added little clarity.

"So the United States has agreed to increase its support and aid to Syria, including direct military assistance," said a reporter. "Are you able to help us in any way explain exactly what is meant by that?"

"I cannot," Psaki said.

The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Pentagon directed all questions to the White House. ("Please feel free to report the CIA declined comment," one spokesman emailed.) The White House, in turn, refused to verify any order for small arms, ammunition, or any other kind of military support for the Syrian opposition.

One reason for the secrecy could be that the shipment of arms to rebels would fall under the CIA's classified purview. (Providing arms to rebel groups within another nation's sovereign borders presents legal issues in the absence of a United Nations Security Council resolution.) But another reason for the veiled statements and the lack of interagency coordination could be that the rollout of the chemical weapons announcement was done in haste.

Regardless, the U.S game plan in Syria has yet to be explained in full by U.S. officials on record. That reveals a conundrum of American security policy in 2013. Our wars are technically fought in secret. Yet they're announced to the world.

Editor's note: This piece was originally published by Foreign Policy magazine.

Authors

Noah Shachtman
John Hudson

Publication: Foreign Policy

Image Source: © Yuri Gripas / Reuters

Syria, the U.S., and Arming the Rebels: Assad’s Use of Chemical Weapons and Obama’s Red Line

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:30:00 -0400

Following confirmation that the Assad regime used chemical weapons in Syria, the Obama administration may send small arms, ammunition and potentially anti-tank weapons to the Syrian rebels. As the United States weighs its options, Foreign Policy at Brookings experts assess the situation in Syria and the Obama administration’s options going forward.

Tamara Wittes
Senior Fellow and Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

“Having apparently made the decision to provide lethal support to the Syrian opposition, the Obama administration must still make clear its ultimate interests and objectives. If the goal is limited to addressing the military imbalance to make way for a negotiated settlement, I fear they may be disappointed. For Assad, this is an existential struggle and the fighting will likely intensify. In addition, the more the sectarian aspect of the conflict deepens, the more existential the fight will be for Syrians on all sides of the conflict. The likely and unintended result? Making a negotiated peace very hard to achieve and creating a situation where the post-conflict phase will demand an intensive international presence.”

Michael Doran
Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

“President Obama has been extremely reluctant to get involved in Syria. But the combination of chemical weapons, pressure from allies, including the British and French, and the recent victories on the battlefield by Hezbollah have forced the president’s hand. In addition, there was a growing awareness in Washington that the Geneva II conference, the flagship of America’s Syria policy, would never take place without a greater commitment by the United States to strengthening the rebels.

“It remains to be seen, however, exactly what the United States has in mind when it says it will increase “the scope and scale” of aid. Leaks to the media suggest that this aid includes weapons, but as of yet we have no clear idea of exactly what the president has in mind. The provision of weapons alone is unlikely to drastically change the balance of power on the ground. What is needed, at a bare minimum, is a robust program of training and equipping the opposition, coupled with significant support in the areas of strategic planning, intelligence, and logistics. It is doubtful if at this stage the administration is considering such a broad package.”

Daniel Byman
Senior Fellow and Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

“Regime change is the only way to end this conflict. And to go further, the United States wants this regime to fall. By comparison, regime change in Egypt was the right thing to support diplomatically and in terms of U.S. values, even though we were betraying an ally nonetheless. It was also a big strategic risk, but an important one to take. In the case of Syria, however, the U.S. would be undermining an enemy. The Obama administration has been slow to recognize that difference and has shown a preference for pursuing stability instead of making a full commitment to regime change.

“In addition, I increasingly worry that the opposition will turn on itself, should it ever start to truly triumph. Its inability to unify after over two years is staggering. At the height of the Libyan revolution, many in the U.S. administration complained about how poorly united the Libyan opposition was. Now Obama officials are saying, ‘if only the Syrians could be like the Libyans,’ reflecting how low the expectations have become for the opposition forces. If nothings else at this point, the U.S. needs to arm and train the Syrian rebels in order to create a stable post-Assad Syria. After Assad falls, there may be a fight among the opposition forces, and I would think the Obama administration would want someone who is not Jabhat al-Nusra to take power.

“It may be too little, too late in terms of really affecting the military balance or, for that matter, scoring points with the Syrian people who will wonder why it took 90,000 dead for the United States to become more involved in the conflict. And as in Libya, the administration seemed to have waited until the forces it is backing are losing before becoming directly involved. But only by becoming involved can the U.S. help manage spillover of the conflict in the wider region and enable the U.S. to deal with a post-Assad Syria.”

Shadi Hamid
Fellow and Director of Research, Brookings Doha Center

“By itself, arming the Syrian rebels is unlikely to tip the balance in their favor. It might have made a difference a year ago, but, today, the Assad regime - particularly after re-taking Qusayr - has the advantage. With that, it is no surprise that Assad seems as confident as ever and, put another way, that the rebels are losing. At this point, a much more concerted effort is required for the Syrian rebels to regain momentum. That effort likely now would have to include the use of surgical airstrikes and the establishment of no-fly and no-drive zones.

“It is worth putting the Obama administration's decision into perspective. The U.S. will provide small arms and ammunition but not the more advanced weaponry that the rebels have been practically begging for. So not only is this a half-measure, it's a particularly weak half-measure. I worry that the Obama administration is doing this largely because of domestic and international pressure, and not because there's any real strategic vision or a re-think of what its wants to accomplish in Syria.”

Bruce Riedel
Senior Fellow and Director, Brookings Intelligence Project
Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence

“The United States is about to start arming and training the Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. If done well, this move can end a bloody civil war. If done poorly, it could lead to disaster. Will Obama and his team do the right thing?”

“It turns out Afghanistan of the 1980s is a terrific test case for how to handle the Syrian rebels. The Afghan mujahedin then and the Syrian rebels now both seem incapable of forming a broad national consensus or an effective united political and military organization. Both have a significant component of hard-core Islamist extremists in their midst who are fundamentally opposed to American interests. But both also have a legitimate cause that deserves our support. The issue is how to help wisely.”

Read Bruce Riedel's full op-ed on The Daily Beast website »

Authors

Image Source: © Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

For Regional Stability, Help Syria's Internally Displaced

Megan Bradley — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: The full text of the below article on aiding Syria's internally displaced is available online from the Christian Science Monitor.

More than a quarter of Syria’s population – 5.75 million people – have been displaced in the country’s two-year civil war. Media coverage, UN debates, and diplomatic interventions have focused largely on the implications of the refugee crisis for the stability of neighboring countries – particularly Jordan and Lebanon, which are now each sheltering approximately 475,000 Syrians. Less attention has been paid to what the UN General Assembly recently called the “very dire situation” of the more than 4.25 million Syrians uprooted within their own country.

They are Syria’s internally displaced – forced from their homes, living within a war-torn country, with no place to go, often struggling to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, and medical care. This crisis demands increased attention.

A recent humanitarian assessment of the ravaged governorates of northern Syria concluded that the internally displaced consistently rank as the population group most at risk of abuse and deprivation. Increased protection and assistance for the internally displaced is also essential to managing the refugee crisis, and maintaining regional stability.

Before they fled to neighboring states, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees were first displaced within their own country.

Before they fled to neighboring states, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees were first displaced within their own country. Many internally displaced Syrians fled their country and became refugees due to violence and fear of attacks. Others who might have chosen to remain in Syria were forced to seek shelter abroad because of inadequate access to food, medical care, water, sanitation, and schools within their own country.

Why would anyone remain in a country where children are starving to death, and bread lines are bombed? Some Syrians have little choice, as they lack a safe escape route, or the resources to flee abroad.

Others, particularly those who have found shelter in relatively stable areas, may remain to care for family members unable to travel far, to continue working, or to watch over assets such as livestock or businesses. While humanitarian action cannot halt the bloodshed in Syria, increased assistance could make the option of staying in Syria more plausible for those who wish – or have – to do so.

Authors

Megan Bradley

Publication: The Christian Science Monitor

Image Source: © Muzaffar Salman / Reuters

The Price of America Not Leading in Addressing the Conflict in Syria

Michael Doran — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:00:00 -0400

This story has generated a buzz here at Doha, Qatar, where I've been attending the Brookings Institution's U.S.-Islamic World Forum. A number of well-informed people believe that President Obama is indeed inclined to begin arming the Syrian opposition.

Let's hope so. The hour is getting late. Last Wednesday, Hezbollah conquered the Syrian town of Qusayr. The week before, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, appeared on television and vowed to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The timing of the speech made it clear that taking Qusayr was crucial to that goal. The town sits on the most important route between the Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon and the Assad-controlled parts of Syria. In rebel hands it was a wedge driving the two apart.

Nasrallah’s speech thus betrayed a key vulnerability – and not just of Hezbollah and Assad. The Islamic Republic of Iran also sees the territorial separation of its two proxies as a grave threat. Therefore, all those who oppose Iran’s intervention in Syria should fix their sites on Qusayr. They should begin now to lay plans to retake the town or, at the very least, to make Hezbollah pay many times over for the right to occupy it.

President Obama would be wise to lead this planning effort. After all, every American ally in the Middle East – be it Israel or Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Qatar – is steadfastly opposed to the role that Iran is playing in Syria. But until now Obama’s key decisions on Syria have reflected nothing if not a firm commitment to remain aloof. Not only has he nixed all previous proposals for direct American actions, such as imposing a no-fly zone, but he has also objected to the indirect approach of arming the opposition, lest American weapons find their way into the hands of al Qaeda.

What's different now? Last year when Obama considered arming the rebels, it looked as if Assad might fall of his own weight. Now there is a clear recognition that he can hang on to power. Unlike the Americans, Iran and Hezbollah have no qualms about intervening on the ground. With their direct aid, Assad is carving out a rump Syrian state. Ethnic cleansing, aided by chemical weapons, is a primary tool for the job. Jordan is now awash in refugees, and the ongoing Syrian conflict threatens to destabilize the country. The conflict in Syria is also spilling over into Lebanon and Iraq, where sectarian tensions are at an all-time high since 2006. In the parts of Syria that are lost to Assad, an al Qaeda safe haven is rising up, smack in the middle of the Arab heartland. American inaction has thus enabled a simultaneous revitalization of Iran and al-Qaeda.

Until now Washington’s answer to this disaster has been to issue pious calls for a negotiated settlement between the opposition and the regime. But this idea is utterly fanciful, and the Obama administration is growing increasingly aware of the unreality of its policy. Assad will never negotiate himself out of a job. Even if he was inclined to do so – and he is not – a deal is a practical impossibility, due to the fractiousness of the opposition. Rebel leaders speak only for their own groups. An agreement by one leader would never be binding on the others. The war will go on no matter what.

Toppling Assad, therefore, is a necessary condition for peace. Unfortunately, the term “regime change,” has become nearly synonymous with direct American intervention on a massive scale. It need not be. As Senator John McCain explained in an important speech at Brookings on June 6, President Obama has options of a limited nature that would expose Americans to minimal risks. The president must simply explain to the American people and its allies that, while he is steadfast in his dedication to seeing the Syrian rebels dismantle the Assad regime, he also has no intention of taking responsibility for governing the entire country. Instead, he intends to offer the rebels assistance that is limited in scope yet highly effective.

Call it the pressure points strategy. According to this concept, the United States, together with its key allies, would seek to overcome the fragmentation of the rebels by building up a force of carefully vetted units. In effect, the United States would create the Free Syrian Army’s Special Forces. It would also function as their strategic brain, providing them with intelligence and logistical support – but all from outside of Syria and in concert with key local allies. These elite units would carry out assignments chosen to deliver maximum pain to the Assad regime at minimum cost.

Assad has numerous vulnerabilities that such a force could exploit. He is, for instance, desperate to ensure that the Alawite-dominated areas of the northwest Syria remain connected to Damascus. Fear of losing this connection was precisely why Hezbollah made an all-out effort to clear Qusayr, which guards the primary route between the two regions. The Assad regime is a wasp, and Qusayr is its tiny waist. A pressure point strategy would dedicate itself to hammering away at this point, cutting the wasp in half while also separating it from Hezbollah.

Qusayr is hardly the only point where the regime is vulnerable. Half of Aleppo and the entire countryside around it – reaching all the way to the Turkish border – are already in the hands of the rebels. Strong and effective external support, therefore, is all that is needed to remove Syria’s largest city from Assad’s grip.

A pressure points strategy will not strengthen al Qaeda. On the contrary, by building up only vetted units, arms will remain in the right hands. Moreover, the creation of an elite force, backed by the prestige of the United States – would strengthen the non-al-Qaeda rebels, who are desperately in need of rallying point.

Of course, the United States should form a supporting coalition to help implement a more aggressive strategy. France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Turkey are the obvious candidates for such a group. In one way or another, all of them have displayed clear dissatisfaction with the current American policy. The mere creation of such a coalition would therefore hearten both the Syrian opposition and the other regional allies of America. And it would probably also help to defray costs. Who knows? The Gulf Arabs might even foot the entire bill for a more aggressive American policy, just as they did in 1991, after the liberation of Kuwait. That war beat back a tyrant, and it cost the American taxpayer nothing – nothing, that is, but the price of leadership.

But if President Obama is briefed on something resembling the pressure points strategy, he will undoubtedly ask whether it puts the United States on a slippery slope to direct intervention. After all, the strategy does not outline a guaranteed route to victory. The only answer that his aides can give him is this: "Sir, this is not a recipe for winning; it's a recipe for not losing. Under the circumstances, it's the best we can do." Will that be enough to convince him? We'll soon find out.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article appeared in the Weekly Standard under the title "The Price of Not Leading".

Authors

Michael Doran

Image Source: © Mohamed Azakir / Reuters

2013 U.S.-Islamic World Forum

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Event Information

June 9-11, 2013

Doha, Qatar

Watch archived videos from the forum »

Join the conversation on Twitter using #USIslam13

Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, in partnership with the State of Qatar, convened its annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum from June 9-11, 2013 in Doha, Qatar. The Forum was entitled “A Decade of Dialogue,” heralding the ten-year anniversary of the Forum. The Forum has become the premier platform for engagement by American leaders from government, business, and civil society with their counterparts from Muslim-majority countries around the world.

This year's sessions highlighted the changing landscape in Pakistan and Afghanistan and its effect on internal and regional security. The event featured discussions on the challenges of democracy and development that have loomed in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The Forum also featured a discussion on the conflict in Syria, noting the spiraling effects of the conflict on the Middle East region and the roles played by the United States and other outside actors.

As in previous years, the Forum convened working groups focused on specific thematic issues. The 2013 working groups focus on advancing women’s political participation within an Islamic framework, supporting economic assistance and recovery in Egypt and Tunisia; examining the role of faith based leaders in mediating conflict and fostering diplomacy; and defining and understanding freedom of speech among global Muslim communities.

Event Materials

Sectarianism and the Politics of the New Middle East

F. Gregory Gause, III — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 10:43:00 -0400

With fighting raging in Syria, spill-over effects becoming more apparent in Lebanon, violence increasing in Iraq, tensions simmering in Bahrain and clerical politicians like Hassan Nasrallah and Yusif al-Qaradawi launching calls for war, it is no surprise that sectarianism is the lens through which most outsiders are viewing events in the Middle East. Even the New York Times thinks so, so it must be true.

There is no denying that sectarianism is a real factor in the politics of all these places, and more places, in the region. But it is important to recognize the political context in which sectarianism becomes prominent in a country’s politics and to realize that neither sectarian conflict nor sectarian political alliances are immutable. While religious identities are extremely important and powerful elements of how people define themselves politically, they are neither always dominant nor do they always mean the same thing. The contemporary political context is more important for understanding how sectarianism plays into modern conflicts than is the history of the first Islamic century.

In the experience of the contemporary Arab world, the salience of sectarianism (and other sub-national identities, like tribalism and regionalism) rises as the power of the state declines. When the state is unable to provide basic security and services for its citizens, they have to look to those communities that will protect them and in which they feel safe. Thus, in Arab states like Lebanon and Yemen, where the state has always been weak, sectarian and tribal identities have played an outsized role in politics.

Syria and Iraq are a different kind of case. In each, the Ba’th Party established a dictatorial regime in the 1960’s that set about building a strong, overweening state. The core of the governing elite in each country was overwhelmingly from a sectarian minority – Sunnis in Iraq and Alawis in Syria. Over time, that core elite came to be identified more and more with a particular family from that sectarian minority. But the state did not govern as a sectarian state at the outset in either. Arab nationalism was the official ideology of the state, the focus of the state educational system and the approved discourse of the state media.

However, as the rulers’ control came to be challenged, they relied more and more on fellow sectarians for support, and their opposition came to be identified more and more by its own sectarian (and ethnic, in Kurdish areas) characteristics. By the time that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, sectarian and ethnic identities dominated Iraqi politics as the power of Saddam Hussein’s brutal state contracted under the pressures of economic sanctions and political pressures. The American destruction of what was left of the Iraqi state apparatus exacerbated this trend. Likewise in Syria, what began as a popular, national protest against the Assad dictatorship devolved into a sectarian fight as the reach of the Syrian state contracted. The regime quickly identified its fight for survival as a sectarian struggle, and the opposition reacted in kind.

Even though Lebanon, Syria and Iraq started in different places, they have ended up as a crescent of state weakness in the Arab East, where sub-national sectarian and ethnic identities now dominate politics and drive conflict. But this was not an inevitable path. Had Saddam Hussein not entered into two disastrous wars in 1980 and 1990, perhaps Iraqi state-building, even with him at the helm, might have developed in a more salutary and less sectarian way. Had Bashar al-Assad actually followed through with his early promises of political reform, Syria might have avoided the protests of 2011 and the collapse of state authority it is now experiencing. The severe sectarianization of their politics was not the only result that could have occurred.

Nor is the sectarian line-up of political conflict in these countries necessarily going to dominate their politics in the future. Lebanon is an instructive comparison here. The weakness of the Lebanese state, a characteristic of the elite bargain that created the Lebanese political system decades ago, became even more pronounced with the civil war of the 1970’s and 1980’s. So it is not surprising that sectarianism remains the driver of its politics. But the axes of conflict and alliance have changed over time. At the height of the civil war, it was a Christian v. Muslim dynamic. Now, Sunnis and Shia square off, with Christians divided between support for the March 14 and March 8 coalitions. It is still sectarian politics, but the scorecard is very different. This is a useful reminder that politics and political choices are not completed controlled by a logic of sectarianism.

Syria, Iraq and even Lebanon are not condemned in the long term to the deep sectarian conflicts that now drive their politics. But to escape the destructive path they are all on, their political elites are going to have to find a way to agree on a way to reconstruct their states on a basis of inclusive citizenship rather than sub-national sectarian and ethnic identities. That is a hard, but not an impossible, task and one that I look forward to being addressed at the forthcoming U.S. Islamic World Forum in Doha this weekend.

Authors

F. Gregory Gause, III

Image Source: Â© Osman Orsal / Reuters

Iran In Syria: Let Your Enemy Make A Mistake

Jeremy Shapiro — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:23:00 -0400

The Syrian civil war, all acknowledge, is a humanitarian tragedy and a threat to regional stability. For many, however, it is also a proxy battle in a larger struggle between Iran and the United States. Worse, many say that the U.S. is losing that battle or as Vali Nasr, who is a Brookings non-resident senior fellow and dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, puts it in a recent op-ed, “Iran is beating the U.S. in Syria.” In an echo of the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, the U.S.-Iran rivalry will now play out in shadow wars and guerilla struggles across the Middle East. As we often heard during the Cold War, the United States must fight its enemy everywhere, lest it lose credibility—in Nasr’s words “the aura of power”—in the larger struggle.

This is the logic that brought us the Vietnam War and innumerable ugly and unnecessary struggles in Central America and Africa during the latter stages of the Cold War. It was dangerously wrong then and it is similarly wrong now.

The U.S. and Iran are clearly locked in competition, but to see Syria as a prize in that competition is to misunderstand the dynamics of the Syrian war. Neither the United States nor Iran has any hope of effectively controlling Syria. Syria, like Iraq, will remain both too unstable and too nationalistic for that level of control for many years to come.

We have too often assumed that tactical victories by either side foreshadow total victory. The current conventional wisdom holds that the Assad regime’s victory in Qusayr portends an unstoppable momentum; just as opposition advances a few months ago spelled doom for the regime. In fact, neither side has the capacity to achieve a decisive victory anytime soon. Assad has the allies and the firepower necessary to sustain himself in Damascus and other cities, but he lacks the manpower and the mobility to take to the fight to the insurgents throughout the country. Similarly, the opposition has the numbers in the population and sufficient access to external support to maintain an insurgency and to control rural areas effectively forever, but they cannot stand up against the superior firepower of massed regime security forces.

In these circumstances, external support is rarely decisive, as long as both sides have such support. As is so often the case, weapons and fighters from outside simply reinforce the dynamics of the civil war, bringing it to new levels of violence but not to any sort of decision. Iran and Hizbollah on the one side and the Turks and Gulf Arabs on the other are playing this game, but far from acquiring an “aura of power,” they are simply wasting themselves in the process.

For Iran and Hizbollah, in particular, the Syrian war offers few upsides. To try to save an allied regime, they have alienated publics throughout the Middle East, including in Lebanon and Palestine, and exposed themselves as more interested in Iranian or Shi’a power than in popular sovereignty. They have wasted precious Hizballah cadres and weapons that they might have preferred to put to better use elsewhere, while Iran, already short of foreign reserves and allies, is forced to throw money and political capital down the Syrian pit. And the war simply continues on.

As Napoleon supposedly counseled, “when your enemy is in the process of making mistake, do not interrupt him.” The Soviets did not interrupt the U.S. in Vietnam with direct intervention. The United States paid them the same geopolitical courtesy in Afghanistan. In each case, the appearance of masterly inactivity did far more for credibility and the aura of power than getting bogged down in an unwinnable war. In this vein, the only thing that can redeem Iran's disastrous commitment to the Syrian civil war is for the United States to muddy the waters with Western intervention and to become similarly bogged down. Then at least, Syria would offer Iran the opportunity to pose once against as the regional defender against Western imperialism and to attack its enemy directly on the favorable terrain of a Middle Eastern civil war.

So by all means, let us try to deal with the humanitarian tragedy of Syria and try to find a settlement that might preserve regional stability. But a Syria in the process of implosion is no prize and if the Iranians want to make the mistake of seeing it as one, the United States should let them.

Authors

Jeremy Shapiro

The Challenge of Syrian Unity: Reassuring Local Communities and Framing National Consensus

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

With Syria on a course of violent fragmentation, the toppling of Bashar al-Assad will not – on its own – ensure a peaceful resolution of the conflict. In order to hasten the erosion of regime support and establish conditions for a stable transition, there is an urgent need to reassure large swathes of the Syrian population about the shape of a future Syria.

A new paper published by the Brookings Doha Center, The Challenge of Syrian Unity: Reassuring Local Communities and Framing National Consensus, explores the interests and concerns of key Syrian constituencies as they struggle to devise a formula for maintaining Syrian unity as part of a political solution to the crisis.

The paper draws on a closed-door workshop held by the Brookings Doha Center in Paris that brought together prominent members of the Alawi, Christian and Druze communities, Kurdish and tribal leaders, as well as members of the Syrian National Coalition and high-level representatives from key Western states. It finds that – alongside an intensified military effort backed by the international community – a political solution to the conflict lies in the development of a unifying national compact, built on a process of power-sharing and broad consensus.

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Publication: Brookings Doha Center

Image Source: © Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Looking Beyond Islamism and Islamists

Khaled Elgindy — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:30:00 -0400

Much has changed in the decade since the first U.S.-Islamic World Forum was convened in Doha in 2004, not long after the devastating 9/11 attacks in the United States. Since then, wars were waged in two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, by one U.S. president and ended by another—the effects of which are still with us today. Moreover, the extraordinary transformations and upheavals that have raged across the Middle East and North Africa since late 2010 have both deepened America’s engagement with Muslim-majority societies and raised new challenges.

One important outcome of the still-unfolding Arab uprisings has been to challenge long-held assumptions about the Middle East, Arabs, and Islam—from outmoded notions of “stability” to the redefining of terms like “moderate” and “extremist.” In particular, the unspoken boycott of “political Islam” by U.S. officials and most of the Washington policy establishment is now a thing of the past. Leaders and movements once shunned by the United States now receive glowing receptions in Washington, and private audiences with the Secretary of State and even the President.

But as change and upheaval continue to transform the Arab Middle East, there is a real risk that old dogmas will merely be replaced by new ones. For much of the U.S. policy establishment, the broad spectrum of sociopolitical movements associated with political Islam – from nonviolent movements like the Muslim Brotherhood to the death-cults of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates – seem to be the only Muslims that matter. In this, the worldview of many western observers of the Muslim world is eerily similar to that of Islamists themselves – one in which Islam is seen as both all-encompassing and inherently political.

While it is true that Islam remains a powerful force in the spiritual, social, legal, and political life of Muslim majority countries, its myriad expressions are not limited to those of self-proclaimed Islamists. And while Islamist groups are often the most organized and motivated forces on the political scene, they are frequently also the most polarizing and destabilizing—as events in Egypt, Tunisia, and most recently, Turkey, clearly demonstrate.

That large swaths, perhaps even a majority, of Muslims are not ideological or even politicized in their understanding or practice of Islam, including many pious individuals and those whose social and political activism is derived from their Islamic faith, is often overlooked. As is the fact that many non-religious and even non-Islamic voices are part and parcel of the “Muslim world.” Genuine engagement between the United States and the Muslim world must be more than just a conversation about, with, or among Islamists. This year’s participants at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha will no doubt have an opportunity to do just that.

See a preview of this year's forum here:

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Preview of the 2013 U.S.-Islamic World Forum

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Preview of the 2013 U.S.-Islamic World Forum

Authors

Khaled Elgindy

Image Source: © Asmaa Waguih / Reuters

U.S. Strategy in the Middle East: An Address by Senator John McCain

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:15:00 -0400

Event Information

June 6, 2013
2:15 PM - 3:15 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Webcast Archive:

Renewing American leadership in the Middle East should be a Republican goal. It should be a Democratic goal. And if the President makes it his goal, he will have my full support. – Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Robert Kagan and Senator John McCain during the question and answer session following
McCain's speech at the Brookings Institution, June 6, 2013 - Photo by Paul Morigi

On June 6, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered his first public remarks on his recent trip to Syria, the ongoing civil war there, and U.S. policy toward the wider Middle East. McCain detailed how he thinks the United States should approach the Syria conflict and secure its interests in the volatile Middle East region.

Last month, McCain became the highest-ranking U.S. official to enter Syria since the bloody civil war began there more than two years ago. Spillover from the conflict increasingly threatens to destabilize Syria’s neighbors. Hezbollah fighters are now battling alongside troops loyal to the Assad regime, fighting has spread into Lebanon, and orthodox Sunni clerics have escalated the sectarian tensions into calls for a new jihad. Many question whether the United States should lead the international community in a determined effort to ensure Bashar al-Assad’s ouster as soon as possible—but the question remains: what might Syria and the region look like after multinational intervention? What might intervention mean for the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear weapons, and for efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict?

The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted Senator McCain on the heels of his trip to the region (which included stops in Jordan, Turkey and Yemen). Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Kagan moderated the discussion and Vice President Martin Indyk, director of Foreign Policy, provided introductory remarks.

Follow the conversation on Twitter at #SenMcCain.

I am now more concerned than at any time since the darkest days of the war in Iraq that the Middle East is descending into sectarian conflict. – Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)

If the Middle East descends into extremism, and war, and despair, no one should think America would be able to pivot away from those threats. Our national security interests will suffer. – Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)

An alternative strategy must begin with a credible Syria policy. I want a negotiated end to this conflict. But anyone who thinks that Assad and his allies will ever make peace when they are winning on the battlefield is delusional. – Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Our foreign aid budget is shrinking while the demands on it are growing. As a result, Egypt must show that it is a good investment of our scarce resources – that the return on this investment will be a freer, more democratic, more tolerant Egypt. If not, Congress will spend this money elsewhere. That is just a fact. – Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)

I love Turkey. But I think Mr. Erdoğan, in the view of many Turks, is acting more like a dictator than a president. – Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)

I would encourage a national dialogue on the Middle East. It’s important, and it’s not too late. – Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)

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Excluding Iran From Syria Talks Will Backfire

Jeremy Shapiro — Tue, 28 May 2013 09:43:00 -0400

Diplomatic wisdom holds that you make peace with your enemies, not your friends. This mantra has been intoned by such diverse figures as Moshe Dayan, Desmond Tutu, and James Baker. When they said it, it seemed almost self-evident, even trite. But it is nonetheless often repudiated in U.S. domestic debates, where a willingness to negotiate is seen as a sign of weakness or an inappropriate reward for bad behavior.

Negotiating with the United States is not a reward. Anyone who has ever spent long hours shut in a windowless conference room with Secretary of State John Kerry understands this basic truth at the core of his being.

The question of whether to seek Iran’s involvement in the proposed Geneva talks on Syria illustrates how this concept of reward can lead us astray. The reason to involve Iran is not because Iran is a constructive actor on Syria. According to a recent report by The New York Times, Iran has been a key supporter of the Assad regime’s violent oppression and is a party to the conflict. It is not because U.S. officials believe that agreement with Iran on Syria could herald the dawn of a new era of U.S.-Iranian friendship. After more than ten years of dealing with the Iranian regime on the nuclear file, there are few illusions and even less trust left in the U.S. government when it comes to the Iran. The regime in Iran is, quite simply, our enemy.

The reason to involve the Iranians is because talking to that enemy is the only conceivable route to achieving a political settlement in Syria. We know (or should know) from long, hard experience that civil wars like the one in Syria don’t end as long as powerful external supporters oppose a settlement. Iran has the capacity to spoil any deal reached at Geneva. This brutal fact leads to the simple conclusion that we need to reach agreement with Iran if we want a political solution in Syria.

Of course, many people in the United States don’t believe that a political settlement in Syria is possible. They may be right. History tells us that externally-brokered negotiations rarely succeed in ending civil wars, particularly ones as brutal as that in Syria. But, even in that case, it matters why the negotiations fail. The U.S. strategy at Geneva must be to ensure that any failure of the negotiations demonstrates to the world, and particularly to the other UN Security Council members, that the Assad regime and its supporters are the obstacles to peace and the threat to regional stability so that the international community can bring maximum pressure to bear on Assad after the talks fail. If the U.S. excludes Iran from the negotiations, this will provide a ready and arguably even valid excuse for blaming the United States for the failure of the talks.

There are others on the American political spectrum— probably fewer— who don’t see a political solution in Syria as desirable. They would prefer to enhance U.S. credibility with our Arab “friends” through an all-out push for military victory over the Assad regime, in many cases specifically because they see the Syrian conflict as part of the larger struggle between the U.S. and Iran. In this zero-sum logic, the fall of the Assad regime is a loss for Iran and thus a win for U.S. interests, regardless of any collateral damage done to the Syrian people or to regional stability. In that case, there is precious little reason to have Iran at the Geneva talks, or even to hold the Geneva talks at all.

But let us be clear about what these people are advocating. They are seeking to wage a proxy war in Syria against Iran and Hizballah. That war will take years to wage. It will involve the destruction of the Syrian state and the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands more Syrians, millions more Syrian refugees, and a very real threat of even more destabilizing spillover into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Israel. To win that war will probably require direct U.S. intervention of one sort or another and even then success is not guaranteed. The Obama administration has decided that deep involvement in another Middle Eastern war of this sort will harm U.S. interests and erode U.S. power and that it would be better for all involved to reach a political settlement in Syria as soon as possible. It is that view that has led the administration to favor a political solution and promote the Geneva talks. But I must concede that if you disagree with the administration and see such a war as desirable, it makes little sense to try to work with Iran to make peace in Syria.

Authors

Jeremy Shapiro

Finishing the Job: Security Sector Reform After the Arab Spring

Omar Ashour — Tue, 28 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The Arab Uprisings were principally sparked by the brutality of the security sector in almost every single country where they occurred. In Tunisia, Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation following an insult by the police in December 2010 triggered the revolution. In Egypt, the June 2010 murder by two policemen of Internet activist Khaled Said, followed by the brutality of police during the fraudulent parliamentary elections of November-December 2010, set the revolution’s context. In Libya, the arrest in February 2011 of Fathy Terbil—a human rights lawyer who had represented the families of the victims of the June 1996 Abu Selim Prison massacre, in which more than 1,236 political prisoners were gunned down by Moammar Gadhafi’s security forces—sparked that country’s revolution. In Syria, abuses committed in March 2011 by Assad’s security forces, which included the pulling out of the fingernails of children and teenagers in Deraa, triggered the protests that ignited that country’s ongoing civil war. In many ways, the Arab Spring was a region-wide reaction against violations by the security services.

Throughout the decades prior to the 2011 revolutions, Arab security establishments behaved more like organized crime syndicates than professional security services. Concepts such as human rights, human security, democratic control, civilian oversight and accountability were absent from the lexicons of Arab interior and defense ministries, and any attempts to introduce them were met with brutal repression—as, for example, during the January 1992 coup against Algeria’s reformist President Chadli Bendjedid and the June 1989 coup against Sudan’s democratically elected Prime Minister Sadeq al-Mahdi. Indeed, Egyptian opposition activists unsurprisingly chose to stage the massive protests that began Egypt’s revolution on Jan. 25—Egypt’s “Police Day,” intended to “honor” the security services. “[We] wanted to ruin their party like they ruined our lives,” a young Egyptian revolutionary told me. “We had to break them . . . I wish there was another way but there wasn’t.”

Now, those security services must be fixed. Following the removal of dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, security sector reform (SSR) became an immediate objective of both revolutionary and reformist forces, regardless of ideological or political affiliation. The same will apply to Syria once the Assad regime is toppled, as it will to any other potential post-despotic transition in the Arab world. How this reform process plays out will be decisive in determining the future of Arab democracy.

SSR can be described as the transformation of a country’s security apparatus—including the roles, responsibilities and actions of all the actors involved—so that it is managed and operated in a manner consistent with democratic norms and sound principles of good governance, and thus contributes to a well-functioning security framework. Ideally, the reform process should embrace all branches of the security sector, from the armed forces to the customs authorities. The focus here will be on post-Arab Spring security bureaucracies affiliated with interior ministries, as opposed to those affiliated with defense ministries or under the direct command of the top executive—the president in Egypt and the prime ministers in Tunisia and Libya. In Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, security bureaucracies under the interior ministries include the police; paramilitary forces, such as the Central Security Forces in Egypt and the Intervention Forces in Tunisia; domestic intelligence services, such as the National Security Apparatus in Egypt; and temporary irregulars, such as the Supreme Security Committee in Libya.

Two core objectives of SSR are critical in the case of Arab states in general and Arab Spring countries witnessing post-despotic transitions in particular. These are, first, the establishment of effective governance, oversight and accountability in the security system; and second, the improvement of the delivery of security and justice services. The challenges of SSR are numerous, however, beginning with the technical, organizational and administrative dimensions of the process. In addition, SSR is a highly political process involving powerful anti-reform factions within the relevant bureaucracies. Indeed, this political dimension can dictate the direction and success of the entire project.

Attempted Reforms

Following each successful revolution of the Arab Spring, various SSR initiatives were put forward by governmental and nongovernmental institutions as well as by independent experts. In Tunisia, SSR efforts started as early as June 2011, a few months after President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled. In November 2011, the Ministry of Interior laid out a roadmap for reforming Tunisia’s security sector in a white paper, which discussed transforming the security sector from a police order to a police service that could respond urgently to the new challenges of crime. Tunisia’s current leaders, however, view this white paper as the product of former regime elements within the Ministry of Interior who are not necessarily pro-reform. “There are some good elements [of the white paper]. But it offers no comprehensive reform,” Amer Larayedh—head of the Political Bureau of the Ennahda party, the lead party in Tunisia’s ruling coalition—told me in May 2012. Meanwhile, in December 2011, Ali Larayedh, a civilian who was himself a torture victim during the 16 years he was jailed by the Ben Ali regime, became the interior minister; he became prime minister this March.

In Egypt, more than 10 SSR initiatives have been proposed since March 2011. The proposals, which vary significantly in terms of quality and comprehensiveness, have been put forward by a range of stakeholders including independent experts, civil society groups, disenchanted police officers, the Ministry of the Interior and parliament. Civil society organizations have offered various initiatives focused on legal reform, oversight and civilianization of the security sector. Disenchanted police officers were able to form several independent organizations, such as the General Coalition for Police Officers (GCPO), which lobbied for official recognition as a police union with an elected leadership. The initiatives proposed by GCPO and others were focused on cleansing the police force of corrupt generals; improving work conditions, training, media relations and public relations; and increasing salaries and pensions. Several independent SSR experts were consulted by both the presidency and the parliament regarding implementation of the various proposals.

But perhaps the boldest step toward civilian control over the security sector was taken by the Egyptian presidency. In August 2012, a massacre of Egyptian soldiers in Sinai by an armed group led to the culling of the top brass of Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), including its head, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, and his deputy, Gen. Sami Anan. The Sinai incident also sparked a process of removing some of the most powerful generals across the security sector. These included the head of the General Intelligence Directorate, Murad Muwafi; the head of the Presidential Guard, Nagib Mohammed Abd al-Salam; the head of the Military Police, Hamdy Badin; the head of the Cairo Security Directorate, Mohsen Murad; and the head of the Central Security Forces, Emad al-Wakil. These generals all shared an anti-reform stance, defiance of elected civilian rule and a desire to maintain as many Mubarak-era policies and practices as possible. Two of them, Badin and Murad, were specifically accused by several revolutionary and reformist groups, including the GCPO, of organizing a campaign of repression against activists.

In Libya, security sector reform began with the appointment of Salem al-Hasi as the head of the Libyan intelligence agency, the Foreign Security Apparatus (FSA). Al-Hasi, who was a member of the armed wing of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) and spent more than two decades in exile in the United States, thus became the first civilian opposition figure to lead an Arab intelligence service. “All of the Arab intelligence services were there to protect the regime and oppress citizens. I will change that," al-Hasi said upon taking his post. “The Libyan intelligence will be under the control of the elected executive and the direct oversight of the legislative assembly.”

Whether he will succeed or not is another matter. Accusations have been leveled against al-Hasi and his agents for allegedly tapping phones and electronically monitoring Gadhafi loyalists, using the interception equipment they inherited from his regime. Libya’s General National Congress (GNC) and future parliaments will need to craft laws for oversight and control of the security and intelligence apparatuses, as well as a clear mechanism for enforcing that control. Such steps will require the help of the U.N. Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) as well as independent experts. At the same time, Libya also critically needs a thorough process of demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR), and several steps have already been taken to that end.

Critical Challenges

To achieve the core SSR objectives of effective security sector governance and improved security and justice services delivery, a few critical hurdles need to be overcome. Six major ones can be identified in the Arab Spring countries, where revolutions were successful in overthrowing despots—Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. They also apply elsewhere in the Arab world. The first is extreme political polarization, which can lead to the politicization of the SSR process as well as political violence. The second is internal resistance and spoiler tactics by anti-reform factions within the security sector. The third is the limited capacity and resources of the newly elected governments. The fourth is weak democratic institutions. The fifth is limited knowledge and experience of SSR requirements among stakeholders. The sixth, which mainly applies to Libya and Yemen, is incomplete demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) of former anti-regime fighters.

Political polarization per se should not be a hurdle to SSR. Diversity in the political spectrum, heated debates, intense arguments and general differences of opinion should be celebrated as gains of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Indeed, this freedom of opinion and expression should be aimed for in other Arab countries.

However, some of the ramifications of such polarization have negatively affected SSR processes. In all of the aforementioned transitioning countries, political and criminal violence is cheap and effective, and the risks of using violence are low. “I got 186 dead officers and more than 800 injured so far, petty-officers blocking security chiefs from entering their offices, a presidential palace getting torched on weekly basis by a hundred kids or so,” said the new Egyptian interior minister, Gen. Mohammed Ibrahim, at a press conference in February. “Egypt’s largest government complex was blocked for four days; when will I have time to reform? . . . When these political polemics end.” This was one of the rare times an incumbent minister had spoken out publicly about the limitations of the security forces and the reform process. And, more worryingly, he was not lying about the facts or the numbers.

In that sense, the Egyptian and other post-Arab Spring interior ministries face a dilemma. On the one hand, they are responsible for defending state institutions, which are constantly under attack by violent groups from various backgrounds. On the other hand, if any members of these groups should be killed or injured, the interior ministry will be accused of brutality. On top of that, all these ministries have limited experience in non-lethal tactics of riot control.

A major in the Egyptian Central Security Forces who witnessed the attacks on the presidential palace last January summarized the problem: “The pattern we have here is that the officer gets attacked with shotguns and Molotov cocktails. If he flees, he gets accused of negligence, and then he gets tried. If he fights back, he gets accused of brutality, and then he gets tried as well. What exactly is he supposed to do?”

The other consequence of extreme political polarization is the politicization of the SSR process by rival politicians. On talk shows, political figures call for SSR to be implemented and for police brutality to end. At the same time, the very same political figures praise generals known for their support of brutal tactics. Some politicians even call on them to intervene in the political process by cracking down on their political rivals. As comparison with other cases makes clear, the unity of political forces regarding the very particular demands of depoliticizing the security sector and imposing civilian control over the armed forces is key for the success of both security sector reform and democratization.

A second challenge is the strong resistance within the ranks of security sectors in post-Arab Spring countries to several critical elements of the reform process. Many of the leaders of Arab interior ministries understand the reform process to mean increasing the material capabilities and budgets of their respective institutions. Whereas this is a part of the SSR process insofar as it aims to enhance the performance of these security institutions, Arab interior ministries do not usually welcome other elements of SSR. These elements include effective civilian oversight, procedures ensuring transparency, the introduction of merit- as opposed to seniority-based promotion criteria, and even revisions of the police academies’ curricula—though there is lesser resistance to this last element compared to others.

Accountability in particular faces strong resistance. One example from Tunisia is the case of Col. Moncef al-Ajimi, the former director of the Tunisian Intervention Forces. Al-Ajimi was officially accused of firing on peaceful protestors in the towns of Thala and Qasarin during the Tunisian revolution. During al-Ajimi’s trial, then-Interior Minister Larayedh attempted to remove him from his position. In reaction, hundreds of policemen from the Bouchoucha barracks physically blocked access to al-Ajimi and then organized a strike to protest his attempted dismissal. Thousands of Intervention Forces members withdrew from key locations in several Tunisian cities and returned to their barracks. “We will not be a scapegoat for the families of the martyrs,” said one of the protesting policemen. As a result, Larayedh had to keep al-Ajimi in the ministry. In June, a military court found al-Ajimi not guilty. Though the military prosecutor appealed the verdict, the incident reflects the level of resistance to the process of accountability faced by newly elected, post-revolution governments.

A third challenge is limited capacity and resources. The post-revolution, democratically elected governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia inherited serious economic challenges. Egypt’s public debt is $188 billion, or 85 percent of its GDP. Though public debt is lower in Tunisia (15.8 percent of GDP) and Libya (4.2 percent of GDP), these countries’ governments also still suffer from limited resources available for a thorough SSR process. The economic crisis in Egypt, however, did not prevent SCAF from increasing the bonuses of policemen by 300 percent in the 2012 budget to “enhance security performance.” Tunisia spends 9.5 percent of the state’s budget on its Interior Ministry for the same reason. However, there is limited public information about how such resources are spent and what the outcomes of such spending are, undermining both transparency and accountability.

The related fourth and fifth challenges to SSR in post-Arab Spring countries are weak democratic institutions, and limited knowledge and experience of SSR requirements among many of the stakeholders in the process. In Egypt, the lower house of the parliament, the People’s Assembly, which was elected following the revolution, was dissolved by the SCAF following a Constitutional Court verdict that deemed parts of the electoral law unconstitutional in June 2012. Before dissolution, the lower house had approved amendments to a law governing the organization of the police force. The new version of the law removed the president’s right to act as the head of the Supreme Council of the Police, and amended articles relating to salary controls and the status of certain ranks in the force.

Yet, some members of parliament and activists expressed frustration with the amendments. “There were more than 70 Egyptians killed in Port Said stadium . . . And all the revolutionary parliament does is try to amend a few articles on salaries and pensions,” said one MP. Clearly there is a big gap between the revolutionary demands of eradicating torture, ending impunity and increasing transparency on the one hand, and the limited knowledge of how to translate such demands into policies and procedures for SSR on the other. A general understanding of such limitations in Tunisia led the government and the Interior Ministry to collaborate with an international organization and several SSR experts to identify necessary reforms as early as July 2011.

A final challenge to SSR, which exists mainly in Libya and Yemen—and to a much lesser extent in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt—is DDR. The DDR process is key to the success of both the SSR and democratization processes in these countries. If it fails, or succeeds only partially, armed organizations will emerge as a challenge to democratically elected governments, as the case of Libya currently demonstrates despite the relative progress that has been made. In February 2012, the Libyan Ministry of Interior announced the appointment of 10,000 armed revolutionaries to its ranks, while the Ministry of Defense announced the reintegration of 5,000 others into army units. Back then, the numbers remained small compared to the estimated 125,000 citizens who were said to be armed following the revolution.

Moreover, collective reintegration of armed brigades has proved to be highly problematic, as it undermines the command-and-control structures within both the Ministries of Defense and Interior. “Reintegrated” personnel take orders from the immediate commander of their own brigade, not from the minister of defense or interior. The Kufra events of February-June 2012, in which two tribes clashed in the remote southeast of Libya, leaving more than 100 people dead, not only exposed the limited capacity of the army and security forces to contain intertribal violence, but also the weak command-and-control structure within the Ministry of Defense. Such weakness is sensed by other non-state armed formations, which refuse to disarm when the state cannot guarantee their safety due to limited capacity, among other factors. This ultimately undermines the DDR process altogether and further complicates the related processes of SSR and democratization. A very similar situation exists in Yemen, although there the forces of the old regime had not been as undermined as they were in Libya.

Conclusion

Although the repressive societal model known as the “mukhabarat state” was severely undermined by the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, many of its subcultures survived. To ensure that SSR progresses further, three recommendations are essential. They are related to the political, institutional and legal dimensions of the SSR process and can be summarized in a few words: political consensus on SSR, institutional oversight and new police laws.

The involvement of international democratic partners such as the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and other democracies in Arab SSR is useful for knowledge transfer—for example, oversight training for MPs, non-lethal riot control training for the police and assistance with depoliticizing security institutions—as well as for advanced equipment supply and training. However, direct Western support of SSR in the Arab world may be used by anti-reform generals, old regime remnants and even by some opposition groups to delegitimize SSR as a “foreign conspiracy” to weaken or infiltrate the security services.

In all cases, no democratic transition is complete without targeting abuse, eradicating torture and ending the impunity of the security services while imposing effective and meaningful elected-civilian control of both the armed forces and the security establishments. Those objectives were at the core of the Arab revolutions of 2010-2011. They have yet to be attained.

Authors

Omar Ashour

Publication: World Politics Review

The Folly of Waiting for a More Perfect Syrian Opposition

Shadi Hamid — Tue, 28 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Today, the debate over Syria focuses once again on the composition of the Syrian National Coalition. And while the United States, Europe, and Saudi Arabia push the opposition to expand its ranks to include more liberals, the Assad regime continues to make significant gains against rebel forces, who report a loss of morale and -- remarkably after two years of asking -- lack even the most basic equipment. "If we had more ammunition," says a rebel from Aleppo's Tawhid brigade, "we could take Aleppo in 20 days."

With military intervention effectively ruled out from the beginning, the United States has instead worked to build a more "unified" and "representative" political opposition, despite the fact that liberation movements, historically, are rarely unified or particularly representative. A more unified opposition would, of course, be better, but the persistent hopes for a more perfect opposition have become both a crutch and a distraction from what really matters -- fighting Assad's forces and shifting the military balance on the ground. Progress on the military front is a prerequisite for political progress, rather than the other way around.

From the beginning, there has been a seemingly obsessive concern with creating a more palatable and sufficiently "liberal" opposition. It may have made sense to try in the early months of the uprising, but much less so today, with the armed opposition inside Syria effectively dominated by Salafis and Islamists. A truly "representative" opposition coalition, in actuality, would require adding a significant number of Salafis (there is no Salafi bloc in the National Coalition), but, presumably, this is not the sort of representation that the United States, Britain, and France have in mind.

In the early months of the uprising, the international community worked to build up the Syrian National Council (SNC), after a number of false starts and dueling opposition conferences. Soon enough, the SNC came to be seen as a Muslim Brotherhood proxy and was deemed insufficiently representative of Syria's ethnic and religious diversity (not without reason), so efforts were made to piece together a broader coalition, culminating in the formation of the National Coalition. This new 60-person strong coalition, in which the SNC was allotted a third of the seats, also came to be seen as dominated by the Brotherhood (despite Brotherhood members only officially having six seats). To be sure, the group is able to extend its influence beyond its numbers through a network of allies, including former Brotherhood members from Ahmed Ramadan's National Action Group. It seems self-defeating, though, to fault the Brotherhood for being better organized and more effective than the rest of the notoriously fractious Syrian opposition.

In recent weeks, there was yet another effort to "broaden" the coalition to include 20 to 25 additional seats for a liberal bloc led by veteran secular opposition leader Michel Kilo. Western nations, along with Saudi Arabia, effectively tried to strong-arm the National Coalition into accepting Kilo and his allies. When it went to a vote, Coalition members approved only six new seats (according to coalition bylaws, adding new seats requires a 42-vote supermajority). The French were reportedly furious, saying "unless you expand you will get no support from any of us." Such a reaction, through unsurprising, was a bit odd. In any organization, it is standard practice for existing members to approve expansion of membership.

For their part, American officials - far from being the hapless observers that they are sometimes portrayed as - have put considerable energy, resources, and money into a quixotic attempt to mold the Syrian opposition. Would it be nice if more people like Kilo were in the opposition? Yes. But it's unclear how much of a difference this would make, considering that most fighters on the ground don't answer to or particularly care about the National Coalition, whose members are primarily based abroad.

Efforts to expand the Coalition come ahead of the "Geneva II" peace conference, touted by some as a final (or first) opportunity for a real political breakthrough. The idea, here, is that the opposition needs to get its act together so it can speak with one voice to the Russians and regime. There is the small matter that practically no one in the Coalition believes anything will come out of the talks. They are going largely for show, to placate an international community which they still hope will do more on their behalf, including providing advanced weaponry.

Most in the political opposition say they won't accept anything less than Assad's ouster, yet Russia appears to see Geneva as an opportunity not to negotiate in good faith but, rather, to rehabilitate Assad. Assad himself is as strong as ever, both on and off the battlefield. The head of German foreign intelligence believes the regime could retake the entire southern half of Syria by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the international community has increasingly bought into the regime narrative of a rebellion dominated by extremist elements (the distinction between Salafi and Salafi-Jihadist fighters is rarely made). Prominent American voices, including former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, have come awfully close to drawing moral equivalence between the rebels and the regime. It is an strange time to hope for a diplomatic "breakthrough," when the rebels are arguably at their weakest and the regime at its strongest.

From the beginning, there has been a fundamental problem of sequencing. The original sin of U.S. policy was taking military intervention off the table and focusing instead on a "political settlement," as if the two were mutually exclusive. Instead, intervention and diplomacy should have proceeded in parallel. It was only a credible threat of military action that would have brought the regime, or at least elements of it, to the negotiating table. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the Serbian government gave up its ethnic cleansing campaign and agreed to Western terms only after NATO military intervention, not before. In Libya, NATO intervention pushed a once confident regime to desperation, with Qaddafi envoys engaging in cease-fire talks and eagerly offering to negotiate with the rebels.

It is a testament to the faith that the Syrian opposition still place in the United States that they are even willing to go to Geneva. They, and we, have been through this before, the cycle of hope, followed by disappointment and even betrayal. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they still hope that American policy might change and adapt, after yet another round of diplomacy fails, as it almost certainly will.

Authors

Shadi Hamid

Publication: The Atlantic

Enlisting Iran On Syria Will Backfire

Michael Doran — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

“There are few nations in the world with which the United States has less reason to quarrel or more compatible interests than Iran.” So wrote Henry Kissinger in 2001. The sentence is more than just the assessment of one man. It expresses the deep longing of much of the American foreign policy establishment. For more than three decades the United States as been at odds with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Throughout the entire period, however, a dream of cooperation has captivated even the most hard-bitten American realists.

This dream beguiled Ronald Reagan. He sent his national security adviser, Robert C. Macfarlane, to Tehran, carrying a key-shaped cake, which was meant to symbolize the unlocking of doors between the two countries. The very same vision also convinced Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000 to express regret for American meddling in Iranian politics back in 1953, at the time of the Eisenhower administration. The mea culpa was meant to elicit a reciprocal gesture from Tehran, which never materialized.

As Secretary of State John Kerry labors to organize the Geneva conference on Syria, he will undoubtedly hear advice from those who are captivated by the dream. The Russians, for their part, have explicitly called for Iranian participation in the conference, now scheduled for the second week in June. The French, by contrast, have flatly opposed the idea. "We do not want Iran," a foreign ministry spokesman said in Paris with admirable clarity. Meanwhile, Kerry and the State Department have remained mum. We must hope that their silence does not imply any agreement with the Russians. Any effort to enlist the aid of Tehran – direct or indirect – would backfire.

Violent sectarianism, Islamic extremism, and terrorism are stamped in the DNA of the Islamic Republic. It leads an anti-American coalition throughout the region. Its allies, Assad foremost among them, are the sworn enemies of the allies of the United States. Fruitful cooperation between Washington and Tehran is impossible.

More importantly, it is also harmful to American interests. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, entertains no reciprocal dream of friendship. He wisely recognizes that he is locked in a zero-sum game with the United States. He periodically responds to gestures of friendship from Washington, because he knows that sitting down with the Americans, if only to scorn them, is an effective asymmetric tactic. It allows him to affirm key planks of Iranian propaganda: that the United States is a country in decline, that it is searching for the exits in the Middle East, and that it has no choice but to cut a deal with Iran, the rising power. The Islamic Republic’s message to America’s Arab friends is crystal clear: “Obama is intent on courting us. He will sell you down the river just to get into our good graces.”

The Islamic Republic is the primary external enabler of Assad’s murderous policies. By seeking Tehran’s help, if only indirectly, at the Geneva conference, the United States would simply be embracing the role that Iranian propaganda has assigned it.

The Geneva conference itself is already being read in the Middle East as a sign of American backsliding. When Assad ignored explicit American red lines on chemical weapons, the Obama administration responded by calling on the Syrian opposition to sit down with his representatives. It reacted, that is, with what everyone in the Middle East sees as a gesture of renewed respect for a murderous regime.

Many in the Middle East see America’s erasing of its own red lines as part of a pattern of capitulation to Iran. Assad is Tehran’s best ally, so it is only natural that the Arab friends of the United States read American policies toward Syria against the background of the Iran problem. Over the last decade Tehran has repeatedly ignored explicit warnings regarding its nuclear program. But the West has greeted each transgression with a tacit acceptance of the fait accompli. No one today believes that the United States will actually deny Iran the complete nuclear fuel cycle. With or without Iranian participation, the Geneva conference already appears as yet another example of American retreat in the face of aggressive Iranian policies.

Authors

Michael Doran

Bosnia May Offer Road Map for Syria

Michael E. O'Hanlon and Edward P. Joseph — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The international community needs a better strategy for the intractable war in Syria. Washington and Moscow are jointly pushing for an international conference that would bring representatives of the Assad regime and the opposition to the table. The question is, if the sides show up — which is not clear at the moment — how likely is it that they will agree on a deal? And if they do agree on a deal, who will ensure that it doesn’t dissolve into more bloodletting? We believe that any deal is likely to require, among other things, international peacekeepers and that the world is going to have to start getting used to the idea.

There is no doubt that the U.S. has critical interests at stake in Syria. A key state in the heart of the Middle East is being devastated by a war that will soon have killed 100,000, already has forced more than 1 million into neighboring states, and that increasingly provides opportunities for Al Qaeda-linked groups to establish bases. The involvement of regional actors, the pressure on an already overstressed Iraq and the presence of highly lethal chemical weapons only underscore the risks. President Barack Obama, leading a war-weary nation, has been understandably reluctant to intervene militarily just to satisfy the urge to “do something.” But diplomacy alone may not be enough for a conflict that, increasingly threatens to engulf its neighbors. The Assad regime has been buoyed by recent gains, while the opposition appears more divided and ineffectual, except for radical elements whose prominence feeds the regime’s narrative that is defending Syria against “terrorists.”

We need an approach that increases military pressure on the brutal Assad regime so that it becomes obvious to all that President Bashar Assad cannot possibly hang on to power. At the same time, we need a concept for an eventual peace settlement that offers some hope to his fellow Alawites — and other allied minorities in Syria — since they will otherwise fear retribution at the hands of the opposition and therefore fight to the death. Assad must go, but the preponderance of Alawites need a vision for a way they can be safe and secure in a future Syria, if we wish to persuade them and their chief foreign supporter Russia to go along with our plan. We need bigger sticks and better carrots — without assuming a major role in the war, given what we have experienced in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.

And we have been here before. The conditions mentioned here are similar to what transpired in Bosnia two decades ago. The Bosnia recipe is, in fact, the best first approximation to what we should be trying to accomplish in Syria. After two years of war and hesitation, the United States, with allies, intensified its engagement, unifying and building up the flagging Bosniak and Croat forces. NATO conducted sustained airstrikes, and then diplomacy produced a peace accord that gave the Serbs territory while introducing outside peacekeepers to provide security. Alas, just as in Syria, roughly 100,000 died and many hundreds of thousands were displaced before this happened, but the Dayton accords ultimately ushered in a peace that has lasted to this day.

The parallels between Syria and Bosnia are instructive. As with President Barack Obama in regard to Syria at present, the Clinton administration keenly wanted to avoid getting involved in Bosnia. Fearing a quagmire, the administration was ambivalent about its own proposal to lift the arms embargo. In turn, the arms embargo froze an unfair advantage into place in Bosnia, as it has done in Syria. And just as in Syria, the administration’s initial focus was mainly on providing humanitarian aid along with limited training and support for covert material shipments for the weaker side (ironically, then facilitated through cooperation with Iran).

Gradually, as President Bill Clinton recognized the growing risks of protracted fighting, particularly its impact on NATO, U.S. policy changed. Washington worked to end the war between Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats and helped the two forge a military alliance that could take on the Bosnian Serb Army. U.S. and allied pressure on the United Nations finally gained NATO the authority to carry out sustained airstrikes. And, of course, Washington took the lead in diplomacy, bringing the parties to Dayton, Ohio, to end years of futile peace talks and hammer out the agreement that ended the war. That diplomatic triumph brought with it an obligation on the part of the United States to deploy ground troops to enforce the peace. American forces numbered 20,000 out of NATO’s initial force of somewhat more than 50,000, though the relative U.S. contribution declined over time (as did the overall size of the force, which has by now withdrawn from Bosnia).

Does the success of the Dayton Peace Agreement mean that a similar approach could work in Syria? No two situations are identical, but the experience in Bosnia is a reminder that tailored outside intervention — the kind that induces the parties not just to talk but to compromise — can end seemingly hopeless conflicts, saving thousands of lives in the process.

The parallels have their limits. With the risk of chemical weapons, possible implosion of allies like Jordan and explosions in Iraq, the United States has far greater interests in ending the conflict in Syria than it ever did in Bosnia. At the same time, the risks associated with intervention also are larger. The opposition in Syria is more fractious and difficult to control than the Bosnian and Croat armies, which closely heeded direction from Washington. Another major difference with Bosnia is the role of Russia, which is more wedded to the Assad regime than it was to Bosnia’s Serbs. American activism in Bosnia did not provoke Russian obstructionism, but the situation is tougher in Syria. The challenge for Washington is to find a way to change the military balance on the ground without alienating Moscow.

The first step must be to build the opposition’s military capabilities to change the dynamics on the ground, which have been tilting in the regime’s favor of late. It was intensive military training and political engagement by the United States and its allies that helped transform Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats from bitter enemies to effective Federation allies. It was the rapid advance of the Federation army — together with NATO air power — that brought humbled Serbs to bargain seriously at Dayton. Russia ultimately accepted the painful realities in Bosnia. Nor will it be blind to battlefield dynamics in Syria. If the Assad regime again begins to suffer severe setbacks, Moscow is more, rather than less likely to work with most of the rest of the world to produce a peace agreement. This is particularly the case if the setbacks come at the hands of a Free Syrian Army trained intensively by the United States and its partners, instead of jihadis allied with Al Qaeda.

While the United States has provided some military training, and U.S. diplomats have worked tirelessly with Syria’s fractious opposition, these efforts have not borne fruit. Achieving Bosnia-level success will take a far more concerted effort, at higher levels and with attention-getting military hardware and training for the Free Syrian Army. It is possible that, at some point, Arab League and NATO airstrikes may be needed as well, though it would be preferable not to begin with such an approach. When the tide turns on the ground, so will Moscow’s position on Syria, in all likelihood, increasing the chances for a settlement.

However, an eventual settlement in Syria won’t be as clear-cut as the Bosnian map agreed to at Dayton. Assad has given every indication that he intends to fight at all costs to keep Alawites in Damascus. Syria’s other central cities, though the sites of fierce fighting, still contain a range of sects and ethnicities. And it would be highly desirable that they stay that way if Syria is to remain a unified country.

In Bosnia, NATO’s mission was vastly simplified by the population separation that had taken place during the war. Despite the growing sectarian complexion to the conflict in Syria, and the enormous population displacement, cleansing of the ruling Alawite minority by the opposition has been remarkably infrequent. And rebel leadership has worked across confessional lines in a number of Syria’s towns to rebuild integrated communities. Still, there is no guarantee that this will last. As such, a peace deal will require international peacekeepers.

After the experience in Iraq and the fatigue from Afghanistan, no one seriously expects the United States to send the preponderance of any foreign troops to Syria to implement a peace agreement. But someone is going to have to do it, and America will have to play a leading role. Without U.S. participation on the ground, other nations, including our much-needed European allies, will not step up to help implement the agreement. Forces from Muslim countries would have to take the lead in patrolling the most sensitive and dangerous area, sparing the U.S. from exposure to the improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks that are part of the new Middle East landscape. Russia may wish for a role, too.

There is a long way to go before Bosnia can really be a model for Syria — and before we can get to a peace deal. But we need to start thinking in terms of an integrated, long-term approach that provides a realistic path to a peace settlement as well as an exit strategy. Protecting our interests in Syria will require more than diplomacy.

Authors

Michael E. O'Hanlon
Edward P. Joseph

Publication: POLITICO

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