Why Arab Kings May Outlast The Dictators

By Michael Meyer
This commentary was publiished in The Daily Star on 28/02/2011 

As far-fetched as it may have seemed a few weeks ago, the possibility of Arab autocracies falling like dominoes is now real. Tunisia’s revolution could have been dismissed as an aberration, but President Hosni Mubarak’s fall in Egypt is shaking the Middle East and Moammar Gadhafi’s turn may be next. Yet not all regimes are beyond repair. Some may be able to weather the current storm through reform.

Surprising as the idea may seem, it is some of the region’s monarchies that have created a more liberal environment for their citizens, and which, therefore, stand a better chance of avoiding full-fledged revolution. King Abdullah II of Jordan and King Mohammed VI of Morocco enjoy a degree of traditional or religious legitimacy that the republican autocrats of Egypt and Tunisia never have. As a result, it seems the monarchs have felt less need to repress political pluralism.

A king can also stand above the political fray, at least in theory. He is not aligned to specific political parties or ideologies, and if trouble looms he can blame and dismiss the government. Along with the emir of Kuwait, the Moroccan and Jordanian kings rule over countries more liberal than the republics, making them more adaptable to democratic pressures.

So far Morocco has been relatively calm. A rarity in the region, its last elections were credible overall. The kingdom’s problem is that interest and participation in the electoral process is low, reflecting the fact that Parliament is weak and King Mohammed calls the shots. As a result, Moroccans believe their vote will make little difference. However, the political system is not beyond reform. Under duress, the king could re-negotiate the Constitution to modify his role and that of Parliament in order to achieve a more democratic balance between the two.

As well as holding credible elections, Kuwait has by far the most powerful Parliament in a Gulf region replete with rubber-stamp legislatures. Parliament not only interrogates the government, but even on occasion passes legislation against the emir’s express wishes. Nevertheless, Kuwait is really only a half-democracy as the emir can still appoint the government without the need for parliamentary consent. Yet if pressure were to rise the country could undergo democratic changes that would leave it resembling a constitutional monarchy.

Jordanians enjoy more political liberties than their neighbors, but their say in politics is also limited. The Parliament is toothless and elections are skewed in favor of the rural electorate, King Abdullah’s backbone of support. Genuine reforms are needed that would lead to credible elections for a much-strengthened Parliament. The king is under pressure now, but if he can cast himself as the motor of reform while accepting a lesser role for himself, the monarchy could survive.

With less to show in terms of democratization, the other monarchies in the Gulf will find adaption more difficult. Saudi Arabia is the least democratic, not even having an elected Parliament. On the other hand Gulf monarchs enjoy some traditional legitimacy. They also have huge oil incomes to distribute and may therefore avoid the combustible mix of economic grievances and political frustration that fueled the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt. Bahrain is something of an exception in this regard. A Sunni king rules over a 70 percent Shiite majority, so that the question of political participation coincides with sectarian divisions, making it a more divisive environment and prone to conflict.

Reform looks like much less of an option for Arab republics led by long-standing leaders who have heavily restricted, or abolished, democratic freedoms. Libya’s Gadhafi seized power in 1969; Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has held power since 1978; Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir has been around since 1989; Abdul Aziz Bouteflika has led Algeria since 1999; and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad inherited power from his father in 2000. None of them is likely to survive politically in the event of a serious revolt.

While kings do not pretend to have electoral legitimacy, autocratic presidents humiliate their people with elections that are manipulated to create a fiction of overwhelming popularity. As heads of ruling parties, they cannot stand above the political fray and shirk responsibility for their countries’ political or economic crises. Mubarak fired his Cabinet, yet this did not placate demonstrators as the president was at the center of the system, not above it. Protesters in the Arab republics are unlikely to settle for anything less than new leaders, as well as a complete overhaul of their political systems.

Being more liberal has not spared governments from protests. The more open Arab countries have also seen unrest. In Jordan, protests have taken place almost daily, while Syria is eerily calm. Yet Jordanians are not angrier than Syrians, who live in a dictatorship bearing all the hallmarks of the regional malaise and ranking lower than most other Arab states with respect to a number of socio-economic indicators. Jordanians simply have fewer reasons to be afraid of taking to the streets, while Syrians face arrest and torture if they do so. A country like Jordan may absorb the pressures through adjustment, but a system as rigid and closed as Syria either survives or collapses in a cataclysm.

This truth is now being played out tragically in Libya, with a regime so repressive and brutal that there is little choice left to the protesters: either they must overthrow Gadhafi or die.

It seems impossible that the democratic genie in the Middle East can be put back in the bottle, which the Tunisians opened and Egyptians all but shattered. The era of long-lasting Arab presidents is drawing to a close. The dominoes have started falling and many other are swaying. Only the more liberal regimes, most of which happen to be monarchies, stand a chance of survival through reform.

Michael Meyer-Resende is the executive director of Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based non-governmental organization that promotes democratic reforms in the Middle East and North Africa. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

The Middle East Awakening

By Joschka Fischer

This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 28/02/2011

 

When the democratic revolt in Tunisia successfully ousted the old regime, the world reacted with amazement. Democracy from below in the Arab world?

After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old regime in Egypt, the heartland of the Middle East, amazement has turned into certainty. The Middle East has awakened and begun to enter the globalised world of the 21stcentury. Up to now, the region (excluding Israel and Turkey) had more or less missed out on the epochal process of worldwide modernisation.

Whether the Arab and wider Islamic world’s democratic awakening will actually prevail or produce only change at the top of authoritarian regimes, whether it will lead to a stable order or sustained chaos and radicalisation, still remains unclear. One thing, however, is already clear: the era when this vast region slept while others modernised has ended.

The grassroots revolt will, of course, continue. Virtually no country in the region will escape it, though when and where the next eruption will occur remains uncertain. Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia are all candidates, with the latter probably posing the most difficulties.

Israel, too, would be well-advised to prepare for epochal change in the region and try to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians and Syria as quickly as possible.

There is, however, little indication that Israel’s government has the vision required for such an undertaking.

The problems are the same almost everywhere (with the exception of Israel and Turkey): political suppression, economic underdevelopment and grinding poverty (except in the smaller oil states), a lack of education, high unemployment, and huge demographic pressures, owing to a very young and rapidly growing population.

These problems have been cited, year after year, in the United Nations Development Programme’s reports.

Moreover, the situation was exacerbated by the incompetence of the region’s authoritarian regimes, which have been unable to provide their young people with any prospects beyond repression. So it was only a matter of time until this powder keg was ignited.

The fuses were the new information technologies of the Internet and satellite television, such as Al Jazeera.

Indeed, one historical irony is that it wasn’t American hard power - as applied, for example, in the Iraq war - that furthered this democratic revolution, but rather its soft power - Twitter and Facebook - which was much maligned under George W. Bush and his neocon advisers. Silicon Valley, it seems, has more potency than the Pentagon.

These digital tools from the United States became the instruments for a trans-Arabian/Iranian youth revolt for freedom and democracy. And, although many things in the Middle East are in short supply, there is no dearth of hopeless young people, whose numbers will continue to grow in the coming years.

Indeed, whatever resemblance events on Cairo’s Tahrir Square bear to May 1968 in Paris and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, it would be premature to proclaim that freedom has prevailed.

Whether it does will depend to a large degree on how the West responds now, because what is at stake is not just the ousting of tyrants, but also the profound transformation and modernisation of entire societies and economies. It is a staggering task.

Moreover, compared to eastern Europe in 1989, the Middle East in 2011 lacks any stabilising external structures, such as NATO and the European Union, that could influence domestic reforms by holding out the prospect of membership.

The efforts involved in this great transformation must come from within these societies, and this in all likelihood is asking too much.

Eastern Europe’s transformation after 1989 took a lot longer and was much more costly than originally envisaged.

There were many people who lost out during this transformation, and the democratic revolution’s organisers were not necessarily those who could push through the democratic and economic development. And there is the experience of Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” in 2004, which failed a few years later due to the estrangement, incompetence and corruption of its leaders.

Taken together, these constraints and analogies suggest that the West, particularly Europe, should focus on long-term assistance for the democratic and economic development of the Middle East’s reborn countries, and also on partnerships with all forces that support their countries’ democratisation and modernisation.

The West can no longer continue with Realpolitik as usual.

These tasks call for largesse, both financial and otherwise (opportunities to travel, for example, were of vital importance in locking in the democratic aspirations of east Europeans after 1989), and they require decades, not years, of persistence. In other words, success will be expensive - very expensive - which will be anything but popular in the current economic downturn. But a democracy that does not translate into regular dinners is a democracy that is bound to fail.

Economic aid, the opening of the EU and US markets, strategic energy projects, legal and constitutional advice, and cooperation between universities are among the resources that the West must supply if it wants to contribute to the success of the Middle East’s democratic awakening.

Should this awakening fail, the result will be a radicalisation throughout the region. There can be no return to the status quo ante. The genie is out of the bottle.

The writer, Germany’s foreign minister and vice-chancellor from 1998 to 2005, was a leader in the German Green Party for almost 20 years. ©Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences, 2011. www.project-syndicate.org

Time To Wipe The Slate Clean

Mohamed Al Baradei writes: consider the steps that lie ahead, and think, with renewed determination: we have sowed the seeds for a new Egypt, but it is not enough; we must nurture and grow the plant.

This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 28/02/2011

Every morning for the past week, I have awoken with the same thought: I have witnessed a miracle; we have toppled a dictator. Then I consider the steps that lie ahead, and think, with renewed determination: we have sowed the seeds for a new Egypt, but it is not enough; we must nurture and grow the plant.

Egypt's awakening has spread hope across the Arab world. The courage shown by the Libyan people risking everything for their freedom is only the latest incredible example. But to realise this vision of Egypt's "Second Republic" — a democracy rooted in social justice, equal opportunity, respect for human rights and other universal values — is an enormous, complex undertaking. Egypt, under Hosni Mubarak, had deteriorated to the status of a failed state. We must wipe the slate clean and start again.

Economic reality is far from encouraging for western countries that have few options in reacting to what is an increasingly fluid situation. They are essentially bystanders to developments in countries where protests are in their early phases, writes Mohammad Al Erian.

The transition before us is critical. Democracy is more than a ballot box. As much as Egyptians treasure their military, acting alone it cannot provide the legitimacy to lay the foundations for democracy.

So far the army has been leading the "transition" in an opaque and exclusive manner. It has not courted any faction of Egyptian society, other than to meet selectively with a few young people whose names have gained notice. It has not outlined a plan or timeline for how the transition will lead to a democratic state.

This has me — like many of my young colleagues — worried. Shaking hands with a couple of young men and billing the result as a youth revolution is far from sufficient. The path to democracy must be inclusive, with its goal being the full transformation of Egypt. To progress constructively from Days of Rage to Days of Rebuilding, we urgently need four building blocks to be set in place:

First, there should be a provisional constitution guaranteeing equal rights and basic freedoms and outlining the purposes and limited authorities of the transitional government. This should be designed explicitly to carry the country past a defined set of milestones. The existing constitution entrenched the old regime, with imperial powers for the president, a non-representative parliament and a quasi-independent judiciary. At the very least, the effort to patch up the old constitution must make it clear this is a temporary move until a new democratic constitution is drafted and adopted through a constitutional assembly.

Second, a three-person presidential council should be formed to lead the transition. Two of its members should be civilians, neither of whom should have ties to the old regime. The third should be from the military. This council will be the first step towards inspiring collective trust that Egypt is moving in the right direction. The army should be the guarantor of security during this transition. But it should not be in the driver's seat; for effective governance, it needs the partnership of civilian leaders to ensure the aspirations of the people are fairly represented and upheld.

Third, there should be a caretaker government of highly qualified people of unquestionable integrity, to provide the continuation of basic services, replacing elements of the old regime that have lost credibility. This government should nurture the formation of strong institutions that make up the backbone of civil society. Most importantly, it should put in place the structures to pave the way for free and fair elections.

This transitional body should be for at least a year — not six months as currently proposed. We must give new political parties time to organise themselves and engage with society. A rushed transition will only benefit existing parties and groups, leaving the silent majority still absent from the political scene, and leading to non-representative, skewed elections.

Fourth, all residual instruments of the outgoing dictatorship should be abolished. The emergency law, which suffocated the country for 30 years, should be repealed immediately — as should edicts restricting the formation of political parties, forbidding the right to assembly, or constraining the freedom of the press. Political detainees should be released from prison.

Gaining credibility

Some have voiced concern about the role the Muslim Brotherhood would play. This misconception should be set straight. The Brotherhood in Egypt is a religiously conservative, but non-violent group. It has gained credibility for providing social services where the Mubarak government failed. It has also committed publicly to participating in a civil — not a religious — state and to the principles of equal rights irrespective of religion. While I do not share the Brotherhood's religious views, I foresee it being part of a democratic political process. It is supported by a sizeable minority and should be represented, with other groups — socialists, liberals, etc — under a constitution that establishes the civil nature of the state and guarantees the right to representative government.

What I have outlined is not my vision, per se; it is a vision shared by a robust majority of Egyptians, including the many youth groups with whom I have been working closely for more than a year. Our vision of a "Second Republic" is of a modern, moderate Egypt. Its democratic institutions must be equipped with the structures and leadership that will enable us to catch up with the rest of the world in science and technology, to provide opportunities for the 40 per cent of our citizens who live in poverty and to educate the 30 per cent who are illiterate. This will take time but we must get it right.

The dream of democracy has long been enshrined in the hearts of the Egyptian people. It only needed awakening. Our young people created the spark and all of Egypt has embraced their leadership to build a beacon, spreading hope throughout the Arab world, most recently in Libya.

This is only the beginning.

- Mohamed Al Baradei,  Former International Atomic Energy Agency chief

Why A King's Ransom Is Not Enough For Saudi Arabia's Protesters

King Abdullah's offer of bribes to his country's alienated youth is no substitute for genuine reform

By Mai Yamani
This commentary was published in The Guardian on 27/27/2011

watching the assault on Libya's strong man Muammar Gaddafi with his monarchy's usual complacency, thinks he can buy off protests with the promise of gifts.

Of course, the scale of the bribes the king offered last week to his country's alienated young generation – £22bn – is something only an oil-rich monarch could deliver. The Saudi king speaks as a father to the youthful population – after all, this is the only royal family to give its name to its people – and he expects them to obey the name al-Saud as they would their own father.

But the king has compromised his authority by combining it with the role of "sugar daddy". Nowhere else are subjects promised such largesse to not rock the boat.

Throughout the Arab awakening that began in Tunisia, the 86-year-old monarch and several of his elderly royal brothers have watched the turmoil across the Arab world convinced that the traditional pillars of their political control would see them through: oil revenues, US protection and custodianship of the holy places.

But Abdullah's kingdom is surrounded by waves of revolutionary rage lapping at the fortress: Yemen in the south, Bahrain in the east, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya in the west. Even the usually docile kingdom of Jordan is racked by the spectre of change. Saudi Arabia's royals have no doubt been shaken to their core by these disturbances and feel threatened by the successive, swift revolutions that have put paid to their cronies in Cairo and Tunis. How is it possible, they ask, for a few hundred shahids [martyrs], in just two to three weeks, to bring down their fellow autocrats so quickly?

The Saudi royals want to both resist and buy off these demands for political change. But the problem is that they do not grasp what their people are demanding. The internet, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are all strangers to men raised in an age when the telephone was a novelty. That some 70% of the kingdom's population is under 30 compounds the problem.

So it is no surprise that they mistake public demands for dignity and a genuine voice in government for petulant cries to be silenced with bribes and bread and circuses.

The king and his brothers have not considered making any serious political concession, as many hope they might: the creation of a constitutional monarchy, parliamentary elections, releasing up to 8,000 political prisoners being held without trial or representation, ending royal corruption, reform of the judiciary and cutting the privileges afforded all 22,000 members of the house of Saud, and curtailing the influence of the religious establishment.

Instead, they offer bribery to appease the restless and troublesome: a 15% pay raise for public employees, aid for students and the unemployed, and sports clubs. Let them kick footballs seems to be the royal's motto!

But financial handouts are no substitute for genuine reform.

The demands now being made by the country's youth are of an entirely different type. What Saudi youth are boldly expressing on their websites and on Facebook is the quest for real citizenship rights, and to be treated by their government with dignity. Many have announced 11 March as the day for "revolution". Should such public protests take place, they will constitute a sign of ultimate defiance, because all political demonstrations are illegal in Saudi Arabia, punishable by lashing and imprisonment.

In 1979, indeed, the kingdom's ground and air forces shot at protesting Shia in the eastern province, killing dozens and wounding hundreds.

Denial remains the dominant state of mind of the Saudi rulers. The royals believe that they have a special status in the Arab world and that no revolution can touch them. And if one tries, they will follow the words of Prince Naif: "what we took by the sword we will hold by the sword."

In Saudi Arabia, the technologies of globalization have been deeply felt. When people are awakened in this way, the view that economic development would automatically produce political stability has been shown as a lie by the events in Tunis and Cairo, Bahrain and especially Libya. There is no automatic stabilizing factor in either economic or the social bribery that King Abdullah is now engaged in.

To preserve their throne, the Saudi royals must embark on a political evolution commensurate with the country's accidental economic modernisation. Today's inchoate unrest can still evolve in the direction of a constitutional monarchy. Now is the time for King Abdullah to act and not to bribe.

Mai Yamani is the author of Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia

The Vacuum After Qaddafi

By Neil MacFarouhar from Cairo
This news analysis was published in The New York Times on 27/02/2011

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi sounded a resonant warning, exhorting his dwindling supporters toward civil war.

“At the appropriate time, we will open the arms depots so all Libyans and tribes will be armed,” he shouted into a handheld microphone at dusk Friday, “so that Libya turns red with fire!”

That is indeed the fear of those watching the carnage in Libya, not least because Colonel Qaddafi spent the last 40 years hollowing out every single institution that might challenge his authority. Unlike neighboring Egypt and Tunisia, Libya lacks the steadying hand of a military to buttress a collapsing government. It has no Parliament, no trade unions, no political parties, no civil society, no nongovernmental agencies. Its only strong ministry is the state oil company. The fact that some experts think the next government might be built atop the oil ministry underscores the paucity of options.

The worst-case scenario should the rebellion topple him, and one that concerns American counterterrorism officials, is that of Afghanistan or Somalia — a failed state where Al Qaeda or other radical groups could exploit the chaos and operate with impunity.

But there are others who could step into any vacuum, including Libya’s powerful tribes or a pluralist coalition of opposition forces that have secured the east of the country and are tightening their vise near the capital.

Optimists hope that the opposition’s resolve persists; pessimists worry that unity will last only until Colonel Qaddafi is gone, and that a bloody witch hunt will ensue afterward.

“It is going to be a political vacuum,” said Lisa Anderson, the president of the American University in Cairo and a Libya expert, suggesting that chances are high for a violent period of score-settling. “I don’t think it is likely that people will want to put down their weapons and go back to being bureaucrats.”

There is a short list of Libyan institutions, but each has limits. None of the tribes enjoy national reach, and Colonel Qaddafi deliberately set one against the other, dredging up century-old rivalries even in his latest speeches.

There are a few respected but elderly members of the original 12-member Revolutionary Command Council who joined Colonel Qaddafi in unseating the king in 1969. Some domestic and exiled intellectuals hope that Libya can resurrect the pluralistic society envisioned by the 1951 Constitution, though without a monarch.

And there is the wild card, such as Colonel Qaddafi’s feat at age 27 as a junior officer when he engineered a bloodless coup against a feeble monarchy.

The greatest fear — and one on which experts differ — is that Al Qaeda or Libya’s own Islamist groups, which withstood fierce repression and may have the best organizational skills among the opposition, could gain power.

“We’ve been concerned from the start of the unrest that A.Q. and its affiliates will look for opportunities to exploit any disarray,” said a United States counterterrorism official, referring to Al Qaeda.

Of these affiliates, he mentioned the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, formed by the veterans who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the network’s North African affiliate, which hastened to endorse the Libyan uprising last week.

Those groups “could be more successful” in Libya than militants have been so far in Egypt, the counterterrorism official said. “Our counterterrorism experts are watching for any signs that these groups might gain a new foothold there.”

Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation who just returned from a three-week trip to Libya, said Al Qaeda might try to exploit tribal unrest and seize footholds in the vast ungoverned spaces of southwestern Libya, near the Algerian border. But he added that Sufi Islam, a mystical form of the religion popular among Libyans, has been resistant to the most extreme forms of Salafism favored by Al Qaeda.

“Al Qaeda is very skillful at exploiting tribal grievances, so that’s a concern in the south,” Mr. Wehrey said. “But in terms of whether Libyans are primed for Al Qaeda’s narrative, I don’t think that’s as ominous as some might suspect.”

Colonel Qaddafi long saw Al Qaeda as a grave threat to his rule, and was the first to request an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden through Interpol, said Bruce Hoffman, director of the center for peace and security studies at Georgetown University. But the reality is more nuanced.

To answer the threats that after the Qaddafis comes either an Islamic or tribal deluge, Mustafa Mohamed Abud al-Jeleil, the justice minister who defected to the east, held a forum this week in the eastern city of Baida. It brought together tribal leaders, former military commanders and others who pledged future cooperation.

“We want one country — there is no Islamic emirate or Al Qaeda anywhere,” Mr. Abud al-Jeleil told Al Jazeera. “Our only goal is to liberate Libya from this regime and to allow the people to choose the government that they want.”

It was right around Baida, a city northeast of Benghazi, however, that the Islamic insurgency reached its zenith in the 1990s. Colonel Qaddafi heavily bombed the city of Darnah, also in the northeast, in the 1990s to eliminate the insurgency, and jailed those members who were not killed. His son and heir apparent Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi led a well-publicized campaign to wean them from violence while they were in jail, but there is no assurance that the teachings will stick once they are freed. Among these groups is a Libyan Muslim Brotherhood with ties to similar organizations in Egypt and Algeria, which is mainly moderate with a few radical splinters.

Nonetheless, there are real doubts about how much appeal radical Islam holds among Libyans. In Benghazi, in the courthouse that serves as the nerve center for the opposition, Essam Gheriani, a psychologist turned merchant, said that because most Libyans are Sunni Muslims from the same sect, Islam in Libya would remain moderate. “The extremism we saw is the result of oppression,” said Mr. Gheriani, a graduate of Michigan State University who is married to a lawyer who helped organize the first protests. “As you move from that period the extremism will decline with democracy. It won’t have a chance.”

Experts also believe Colonel Qaddafi used the threat of a Muslim takeover the way many Arab leaders did — exaggerating the menace to win sympathy from a United States prone to seeing Islamic revolutions under every Koran.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, who has participated in several White House meetings on the crisis, said Libya’s tribal nature and absence of civil society were worrisome. But he said the experience of eastern Libya, where ad-hoc committees have taken control of local affairs, is a strikingly positive sign.

“People seem to be adopting a new identity based on their common experience of standing up to a dictator,” Mr. Malinowski said. “That doesn’t mean peace and love and brotherhood forever. But it’s a reason to hope that our worst fears about a post-Qaddafi Libya may not be realized.”

For the most part, though, few experts believe that any group can dominate.

“The current opposition movement in Libya is diverse and includes secular, nationalists, monarchists and Islamist elements,” said Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. “I don’t think that any movement is in the position, in terms of resources and ideological power, to monopolize the political process.”

But he said that some hybrid of Islamism and nationalism was likely to emerge. In Libya, the strong nationalism that has run through all the recent uprisings is more likely to take on a religious tinge, experts believe, because it is a conservative society whose royal family once drew its authority in part from its spiritual role.

Probably the greatest insurance that Libya will not descend into Somalia-like chaos is its oil. The oil — once production fully resumes — can buy social content during a rocky transition period and offers insurance that Western powers cannot afford to sit by and watch such an important oil exporter disintegrate. Last year Italy, Germany and France together bought a substantial proportion of Libya’s 1.55 million barrels of petroleum pumped daily, about 2 percent of world production.

Some experts wonder if Libya might become the first experiment in the use of the “responsibility to protect” — the idea that a United Nations force would be deployed to prevent civilian deaths in the event of widespread violence. Russian or Chinese opposition to intervening in domestic affairs might be overcome if enough Libyans accepted the idea, which is possible because the United Nations helped oversee the birth of their modern nation.

With the country now split badly between east and west, an outside protection force would lend time for Tripoli to reassert itself as the capital and establish control.

“Nobody has an interest in permanent anarchy,” said Ms. Anderson of American University in Cairo. “You have to have some kind of mechanism to ensure that people turn in their weapons,” she said. “I don’t see there is any group within the political constellation that could do it.”

Eric Schmitt and Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya.

Le Scandal

The Arab world's revolutions have exposed the moral bankruptcy of France's foreign policy.

BY Eric Pape
This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 25/02/2011

The year in French foreign policy began rather well, with a feeling of a fresh start as the new minister of foreign affairs, Michèle Alliot-Marie, returned home rejuvenated from her Christmas holiday to provide renewed strength and focus at the Quai d'Orsay, the home of the ministry. As it turned out, neither her return, nor the vacation itself were such a great idea.

Two months into 2011, the transformation of North Africa has exposed a slew of moral failings in French policy in the Arab world, and it has raised a flurry of questions about Alliot-Marie's ethics, judgment, and veracity. Political observers and even government ministers are already debating who might take her place, perhaps in the coming days. The French diplomatic corps is increasingly turning on the president as his Middle East policy continues to disintegrate.

It all began in Tunisia, a former French protectorate. If any country should have seen the first North African people's revolution of the 21st century coming, it was France, Tunisia's largest commercial partner and main lender. More than 22,000 French citizens live in Tunisia, and approximately 600,000 Tunisians live in France. Former strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was such a reliable ally throughout his 23-year reign that it seemed almost natural when French President Nicolas Sarkozy chose to visit Tunisia on his first presidential trip outside the European Union.

Sarkozy, in a mea culpa of sorts, recently explained that France did not take "full measure of the hopelessness" of the Tunisian people because the two countries have been so intimate. "When you are so close, when the individual and collective destinies [of Tunisia and France] are so thoroughly intertwined," the French president told journalists at the Élysée presidential palace 10 days after Ben Ali and his family fled, "you can't always have the necessary perspective."

The president's rationale, though, feels a whole lot like damage control. For a country whose leaders often trumpet their commitment to universal human rights and social justice, the silence -- following the street protests in Tunisia on Dec. 17, spurred by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi -- spoke volumes. When Tunisian police initiated a series of violent crackdowns on protesters on Christmas Day, France didn't complain. Worse, Alliot-Marie was vacationing with her husband (who is also a government minister) and her parents in Tunisia. In fact, it was only after 23 people were killed that any prominent French government official commented. But rather than denouncing or even mildly chastising Ben Ali, Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand denied on French television on Jan. 9 that Tunisia was an "unequivocal dictatorship." The next day, a spokesman at the Quai d'Orsay finally spoke, responding to a request from a journalist, to say -- without putting any emphasis on responsibility -- that France "deplores the violence and calls for calm."

At least 35 people had been killed by Jan. 11, when Alliot-Marie shockingly offered to bolster Ben Ali's grip on power. She suggested to France's Parliament that the world-renowned "savoir-faire of our security forces" allows for the "solving of security problems of this sort." (She later clarified that she meant to help control protesters without killing them, but the distinction was lost to many people in France and Tunisia.)

An array of opposition politicians called for her resignation. "Here is a people who rises up after 23 years of dictatorship, the police fire into the [crowd], and the only thing that the [French] government says is: 'We are going to help you through police cooperation,'" said former prime minister and prominent Socialist Laurent Fabius on French radio. "It is one thing to have state-to-state relations. It is another to pat a dictator on the back."

It was only after Ben Ali fled into exile on Jan. 14 that French officials finally took the side of the Tunisian people. In Egypt, where relations were never as deep, France spoke cautiously of the potential terrorist threat, and it came around to supporting the Egyptian people before Hosni Mubarak gave up power. But in the case of Libya -- whose leader of 42 years, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, was warmly welcomed by Sarkozy for a pomp-filled, five-day visit to Paris in 2007 -- France stayed silent through six days of crackdowns during which an estimated 233 people were killed. Qaddafi's promise to fight to the "last drop of blood" seems to have played a role in driving France to turn against him. Perhaps to make up for its slow and morally questionable responses in all three countries, the French government has since announced a push for EU travel and economic sanctions on Libyan officials, and Paris agreed to an Egyptian request to freeze assets linked to the Mubarak family.

The late recognition of the history-changing tide was, perhaps, to be expected. After all, France's relations with its former colonies have long prioritized stability -- especially opening doors for French business and military contracts, while also protecting geopolitical interests. France's cynical actions in Africa in past decades, often via secret emissaries or old buddy networks, are so common that they have earned a special name: Françafrique. (While the term often refers to French conduct in its former colonies or in Francophone Africa, it ultimately expanded into other parts of the continent as well.) With its post-colonial connotations, Françafrique has long encompassed bribes, kickbacks, and other backroom deals by a cadre of well-connected French figures who engaged everywhere from Angola to the country formerly known as Zaire.

More recently, Sarkozy applied a sort of Françafrique-lite concept to Libya when he signed billions of dollars in industrial contracts with Qaddafi during the 2007 visit. As Libya's leader pitched his Bedouin tent in Paris, widespread complaints rang out that France -- along with Britain and especially Italy -- was doing business with a terrorist who regularly abused his own people.

Perhaps the most notable example of Sarkozy's complex and cozy relationship to Arab autocrats has been his high-profile project, the Union for the Mediterranean, which began (and seemed to end with) an extravagant gathering of leaders at Paris's Grand Palais in 2008. The 43-nation group -- including the 27 EU countries and 16 others on the Mediterranean -- was Sarkozy's effort to reinvigorate the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership on technical and political cooperation. Sarkozy ambitiously saw the union as both a bulwark against the spread of radical Islam and terrorism, and a means to alleviate poverty and immigration pressures from across the Mediterranean. One of its many problems, however, was that it relied on the support and involvement of prominent dictators who were entirely uninterested in reform. Sarkozy's co-president in this "union" was Mubarak. (The union canceled its meetings in 2009 and 2010.)

But Qaddafi was just one of an array of Arab dictators whom Sarkozy set about wooing soon after his election. In some cases, the new president acted as a sort of personal spokesman for such leaders.

Ben Ali held a dinner in Sarkozy's honor in Tunisia in 2008 at which the French president spoke of the growing "free space" that was part of a "shift toward democracy" in Tunisia.

A 2007 U.S. Embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and later published by Le Monde quoted France's ambassador to Tunis at the time, Serge Degallaix, as having said, "Tunisia is not a dictatorship," and paraphrased him as saying, "Its leaders genuinely listen to the country's people." The cable also cited Degallaix as telling his American counterpart that "major changes in French policy toward Tunisia" are "unlikely" under Sarkozy.

The next French ambassador, Pierre Ménat, was pulled from Tunis in January, soon after the fall of Ben Ali. (In France, some active and former diplomats assert that Ménat was made into a scapegoat for Sarkozy's close embrace of the Tunisian leader.) Although this might seem understandable, Sarkozy replaced him with a 41-year-old former advisor, Boris Boillon, who has often been referred to in the French media as a "Sarko boy" for his Sarkozy-like energy and way of talking. Within days of his arrival, Ambassador Boillon invited a number of Tunisian and French journalists to an introductory lunch and, in very undiplomatic fashion, grew aggressive with them, ultimately walking out. Video footage of the incident brought more than 500 Tunisian protesters to the gates of the French Embassy in Tunis to demand the withdrawal of the second French ambassador in two months. It didn't help that a photo of a nearly naked (and surprisingly muscular) Boillon from the French social networking site, "Copains d'avant" (Buddies from Before) surfaced in France, further painting Boillon as a dubious choice by Sarkozy.

As Sarkozy's foreign policy was crumbling this month, Alliot-Marie sought to regroup, announcing to foreign journalists in Paris on Feb. 9 that she wanted to create "honed diplomacy" in sync with the "needs of the contemporary world." But soon after Alliot-Marie had suggested helping Tunisian police in their crackdown on peaceful protesters and after it became clear that she had continued her vacation in Tunisia after the protests began, another damaging revelation emerged: She had accepted a pair of flights during that trip on the private aircraft of a wealthy Tunisian businessman, Aziz Miled, a partner of one of Ben Ali's notoriously corrupt in-laws. In one particularly clumsy response to that burgeoning controversy, Alliot-Marie insisted, "When I am on vacation, I am not a minister." Then her office acknowledged reports that the vacationing minister had in fact briefly spoken with Ben Ali by phone while in Tunisia, just days before he fled the country. (She has not revealed the substance of that chat.)

Amid growing calls for her firing, Alliot-Marie's immediate boss, Prime Minister François Fillon, pre-empted a news report and acknowledged on Feb. 8 that he spent his own Christmas vacation in Egypt, along with his family. Who footed the bill, which included an Egyptian government flight on a tourist excursion? The Mubarak regime. In response to such revelations, the prime minister cited similar trips to Egypt by Sarkozy himself, as well as the president's two predecessors.

On Feb. 10, Sarkozy offered a parsed response to the revelations about the inopportune travels of his top ministers, arguing that no French public funds were diverted and that the country's foreign policy was unaffected. "If I thought there had been a mistake, I would have taken action," the president said on French television. "Nonetheless the era has changed, and I understand that this can shock [people]. And so, this must change." (Members of his party promised new conflict-of-interest legislation for politicians soon.)

The revelations about Alliot-Marie, though, have continued. On Feb. 16, the minister acknowledged yet another damaging French media report noting that her parents -- who are both in their 90s -- bought a substantial stake of a real estate company from that same Tunisian businessman. Her parents signed the deal in Tunisia over Christmas, reportedly paying Miled around $440,000.

The initial revelations, however, didn't immediately seem to make Alliot-Marie toxic to her new counterparts. On Feb. 4, Tunisia's post-Ben Ali minister of foreign affairs, Ahmed Abderraouf Ounaies, made his first trip abroad to Paris, where he met with his French counterpart. For whatever reason, the 75-year-old diplomat seemed strangely drawn to Alliot-Marie, fawning over her in a surreal spectacle. "I am happy to speak next to Michèle Alliot-Marie," he said at a joint news conference. "It is, for me, an honor. It was perhaps a little dream that I had, and that the speeding up of history" -- i.e., the Tunisian revolution -- "permitted me to live.... I love listening to Michèle Alliot-Marie, in any circumstance and in any platform," he continued, complimenting her "breadth of vision" and adding, "I know that you are above all, a friend of Tunisia."

But when Ounaies returned to Tunis, his own ministry staff went on strike to protest his comments. By mid-February, he had handed in his resignation. Amid this combination of absurdity and tragedy, an array of current and former French diplomats penned an anonymous open letter that was published in Le Monde on Feb. 22. The letter took Sarkozy to task for blaming his professional diplomatic corps for his own failures, particularly in not forecasting the falls of Ben Ali and Mubarak. "The policies pursued on Tunisia and Egypt were defined by the president of the Republic without taking into account the analysis of our embassies," the diplomats wrote. They went on to suggest that a French WikiLeaks would be able to show the truth: that French embassies criticized the North African regimes as much as their U.S. counterparts did.

By mid-February, Alliot-Marie, who was one of the government's few truly popular ministers when she was appointed in August, faced polls showing that 54 percent of French people want her out. These sentiments highlight just how poor her judgment has been since arriving at the Quai d'Orsay -- and this despite a remarkable ministerial trajectory that had her overseeing all of France's power ministries (justice, interior, and defense). Barring a diplomatic miracle, Alliot-Marie's days appear to be numbered.

But ultimately France faces questions far greater than whether its minister of foreign affairs can still effectively do her job in a region that has long been among the most important for France. The country's leaders must ask themselves how they can overcome the moral bankruptcy laid bare by the tumult in the Arab world and how they might transform grandiose international rhetoric into a coherent and influential set of policies.

In their letter, the disgruntled diplomats suggested that Sarkozy's foreign policy has consisted of little more than domestic political pandering, backroom dealing, and a shortsighted money chase to benefit French industry, at great geopolitical cost.

The ultimate result, they write, is that, "Europe is impotent, Africa is falling through our hands, the Mediterranean pays us no attention, China has tamed us, and Washington ignores us!" And if it needed a final punch, the anonymous diplomats added: "The voice of France has disappeared from the world."

Sarkozy now needs to act fast if he wishes it to be heard again.

Eric Pape has written for Newsweek magazine out of Paris since 2003. He focuses on politics, culture, and entertainment for a wide array of publications. Follow him at twitter.com/ericpape.

Why Make Fun Of Gaddafi?

By Tariq Alhomayed
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 27/02/2011

There has been a barrage of derisive and humorous comments regarding Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's recent speeches. This follows on from the comic trend which was evident amongst the youth of Tahrir Square in Egypt. This light-hearted attitude continues to dominate people's minds, but it is remarkable that the mocking comments about Gaddafi's speeches have not only been found on the internet, but have even been used by some political commentators! What is the intention of this?
 
It is simple - there is an element of comedy, call it black comedy, in Gaddafi's speeches. However, some of his attitudes are not unique, but rather they can be seen in past and present examples in our Arab world! When Gaddafi says that the Libyans have a right to demonstrate peacefully, as long as the demonstrations are related to Gaza or Iraq, and not Libyan internal affairs, he is not the only one who does so. If we are talking about authoritarianism in the Middle East, then it is sufficient to look at 'democratic' Iraq, and how many citizens were killed last Friday because they came out to demonstrate! There is also Syria, which had allowed demonstrations sometimes against the Egyptians, and sometimes in support of them, and a few days ago permitted protests outside the Libyan embassy. However, Syria does not allow demonstrations to take place if they are for internal reasons. Either it should prevent demonstrations entirely, or not try and exploit them for its own purposes.
 
There are more examples than these, of course. Colonel Gaddafi didn't even blink when he said: "If the Libyan people do not love me, then I do not deserve to live. If the Arab people, the African people, and all people, do not love Muammar Gaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi does not deserve life for one day". He is convinced that his role is to protect the nation, and has forgotten that genuine power comes from the unity of the citizens behind him. Gaddafi is not the only one who thinks by this logic, we see Hassan Nasrallah every now and then speaking from somewhere in the suburbs of Beirut, delivering a speech to the nation. Sometimes he is inciting the Egyptian army [to rebel] against its government, other times he is addressing the Egyptians about their revolution, not to mention his speeches to the Tunisians. Why look further than this? Isn't Hassan Nasrallah the man who spoke in 2006, on Al-Jazeera, telling Arab rulers: "I am even certain that some sons, daughters, and wives of some Arab rulers are with us. But I tell the Arab rulers, I do not want your swords and I do not even want your hearts." What is the difference between Gaddafi and Hassan Nasrallah?
 
When Gaddafi says that he will ignite the whole of Libya, and turn it into smoldering embers, again this is nothing new. This is no different to some of what is happening around us. Gaddafi views Libya, as I said earlier, according to the perspective of "I am the state, and the state is I". This is exactly what Saddam Hussein did, ending up hiding in a hole, and leading Iraq towards unparalleled destruction.
 
Some of what Colonel Gaddafi comes out with may be funny, but we do not know whether to laugh or cry, and this merits lengthy contemplation. What Gaddafi says in his speeches is merely an attempt for survival, and others in the region are also guilty of this. However, they speak more calmly, repeating their rhetoric day and night, with intellectual language sometimes, and stimulating the Arab masses at other times.