The Status Of “Friday"

By Jameel Theyabi

This commentary was published in al-Hayat on 14/03/2011

The social networking websites are carrying sarcastic comments and jokes accompanying the popular revolutions in each Arab country. For example, after Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Jeddah and Hosni Mubarak stepped down – before the beginning of the Libyan youth revolution against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi – it was said that Gaddafi was thinking about annulling “Friday” from the week, as a preemptive step to prevent the transfer of the revolution to Libya. He also considered asking the Arab League to hold an urgent meeting, and look into the ways to deal with “Friday” which had started to pose a threat to the Arab rulers. However, the Libyan youth anticipated Gaddafi’s intentions, rebelled against him and toppled all the “hallucinating” concepts featured in the Green Book.

After Tunisia, and Egypt, the revolution moved to Libya, where some of the cities and streets are witnessing fierce battles between Gaddafi’s forces and the revolutionaries. Dozens of lives are thus being claimed every day, in light of the slowness affecting the issuance of the international resolution and the discrepancies affecting the positions of the states, even the Arab ones. Still, despite the delay of the Arab League’s decision to call on the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone over Libya – a decision which will go down in the League’s history – this is the first time that the League stands alongside an Arab people against the ruling regime. This may be due to the fact that the politicians were influenced by the tensions on the Arab street, the fall of the rulers, and the popular revolutions witnessed in the region and moving from one Arab capital to the other since the beginning of the year.

Friday has become a glorious and immortal day in the history of modern Arab revolutions. It has started to enjoy a status in the people’s spirits, as well as in the hearts of the Muslims.

It thus went from being a vacation day to pray and rest from the hardships of the week, to a day of gathering, action and the unification of the goals and demands, where all the voices are crying out the same slogan: “The people want to change the regime.”

Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled on a Friday night and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted against the backdrop of the Friday of “salvation” which followed the Friday of “rage.” As for the Yemeni president, he is suffering from these Fridays on a weekly basis, as the Yemeni cities have already witnessed the Friday of “launching” and the Friday of “no return.” Moreover, the Bahraini government is suffering from the Friday of “change” and Algerian President Bouteflika is scared from the surprises on the street each and every Friday. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is stressing the Iraqis’ right to express their opinions freely, provided that they do not demonstrate on Friday so that that the situation is not exploited by the infiltrators, while Jordan is fearful about the slogans and the marches of the protesters that are increasing weekly. The Sultanate of Oman for its part did not elude the popular Friday of Rage, and witnessed turmoil in some areas.

In the meantime, additional Arab capitals are starting to see the emergence of calls for protests on Friday, as Kuwait witnessed demonstrations that were staged by the Bidouns but were quickly settled, while Saudi Arabia prepared - last Friday - for what was dubbed the “Revolution of Longing” but was thwarted by the people who refused to take to the streets and announced their insistence on upholding the command, their unity, security and stability.

Friday has now become known as the “day of rage” and is bearing witness to the fall, collapse and hallucination of Arab rulers under the fist of the people, which prompted others to offer concessions they would have otherwise found difficult to make, but also to listen to the pleas of the demonstrators and tend to the youth and their national demands.

In the past decades, the people feared the power of the ruler and the supremacy of the military. Today however, the rulers are the ones fearing the voice of the people and their insistence on their demands as they are assisted by the new media outlets. At this point I would like to recall an Iraqi joke told about Saddam Hussein who governed Iraq with gunpowder, chains and steel. One day, Saddam gathered his ministers and told them: I have uncovered a plot led by one of the persons present to stage a coup against me. His name starts with the letter “T.” Among those present were Tarek Aziz, Taha Yassin Ramadan and Taha Muhyi. But the three men remained silent and impassible. However, a man whose name does not start with “T” began shuddering. So Saddam asked him: Why are you trembling, even though your name does not start with a “T”? The man responded: Why would I not be scared sir, since you usually call me “Toad”?

The revolutions of the Arab youth are distant from the foreign conspiracies which some are accusing them of implementing. For their part, the governments should permanently and not temporarily respond to the demands and listen to the voice of the people. They must continue presenting positive and serious initiatives that would contribute to the instatement of political reforms, in order to enhance the principles of social justice and human rights and protect the citizens’ dignity, freedom, security and interests before the narrow governmental interests.

Will Gaddafi Reverse The Tide Of The Arab Spring?

By Jackson Diehl
This commentary was published in The Washington Post on 13/03/2011

Ever since Tunisian fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi set himself ablaze 86 days ago, the Arab uprising has been a mutating virus. That is why Moammar Gaddafi — who has set Libya ablaze — has become so important.

By now it’s almost hard to remember, but Bouazizi at first inspired not popular protests but copycat self-immolations in Algeria and Egypt. Then the contagion altered: A mass secular movement emerged in Tunisia under the banner of liberal democracy, and Egypt’s young middle class took up the same cause. U.S.-allied armies in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain decided one after the other that they would not gun down their own people to preserve the autocratic status quo — and each decision strengthened the principle of nonviolence being pushed by the United States and other outside powers.

Now Gaddafi has altered the virus’s nature once again. Thanks to his “Green Book” madness, Libya stood for decades at the margins of Arab politics. But Gaddafi’s scorched-earth campaign to save himself has not only stopped and partially reversed the advance of rebel forces on Tripoli during the past two weeks; it has done the same to the broader push for Arab democracy. If he survives, the virus of repressive bloodshed and unyielding autocracy could flow back through the region.

Maybe it already has. Egypt has seen dangerous outbursts of violence the past couple of weeks, including sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians. Security forces in Yemen have attacked crowds in the capital, Sanaa, with live ammunition twice in the past week, and violent clashes have resumed between security forces and protesters in Bahrain.

Pro-democracy forces outside of Egypt and Tunisia have stalled. Algeria and Morocco have gone quiet. In Saudi Arabia on Friday, a “day of anger” advertised for weeks on Facebook failed to produce a significant turnout. And there has been no sign of rebellion in the Arab country whose dictatorship rivals Gaddafi’s for ruthlessness: Syria.

In Egypt, to be sure, liberal forces remain strong. Though still relatively disorganized, the youth-led movement immortalized in Tahrir Square pushed out the prime minister and cabinet left behind by Hosni Mubarak and ransacked the headquarters of his once-feared secret police. Two credible candidates for president, former Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa and former U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei, have stepped forward, offering the prospect of genuine democratic competition and an outcome that Egypt’s neighbors and allies can live with.

But some Egyptians think the country is dangerously close to unraveling. “We may never get to the presidential election,” said one well-informed source I spoke to. The economy, he said, remains stopped; the government may soon run out of cash to pay salaries. Authority of all kinds is crumbling: Factory managers and union leaders are being challenged by their rank and file, and police have largely disappeared from the streets.

This Egyptian had a troubling thought: “What if Libya had happened first?” he wondered. “What would have happened then in Egypt?” The obvious follow-up question: In a Middle East where one dictator is slaughtering his way to at least temporary safety, what might the remains of Egypt’s autocracy be tempted to do if the country’s disorder grows? The country’s new reformist prime minister, Essam Sharaf, clearly has been thinking about this: Last week he warned that an “organized, methodical counter-revolution” was already underway.

What if Gaddafi were defeated and deposed? Naturally, this would not solve Egypt’s problems or cause the Assad dictatorship in Damascus to crumble. It would, however, cause the Arab virus to mutate again. It would give new strength to the idea that the Arab dictators can no longer save themselves through bloodshed. It would probably encourage more pro-democracy uprisings.

And what if Gaddafi’s downfall is brought about, in part, through military assistance from France, the United States or other Western powers — arms deliveries or a no-fly zone? Some seem to think this would weaken the Arab revolutionaries, by introducing a foreign element. More likely it would do the opposite. Just ask a leading opponent of intervention, Post columnist George F. Will.

“The Egyptian crowds watched and learned from the Tunisian crowds,” Will observed last week. “But the Libyan government watched and learned from the fate of the Tunisian and Egyptian governments. It has decided to fight. Would not U.S. intervention in Libya encourage other restive peoples to expect U.S. military assistance?”

The answer is: Perhaps it would. And: If a powerful opposition movement appeared in Syria, and asked the West for weapons or air support to finish off the Assad regime, would that be a disaster?

How To Prevent Pakistani Anarchy

By M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus on 14/03/2011

The eruption of democratic defiance among Arabs has discredited neoconservatives and al-Qaeda alike, shattering their shared assumption that Muslims need violent prodding to reclaim their dignity. In 10 weeks of protests, Tunisians and Egyptians achieved for themselves what 10 years of bloodshed could not purchase for Pax Americana or its archenemy in Iraq or Afghanistan: a spirit of solidarity among millions—secularists, mainstream Islamists, young men, old women—eager to rebuild their countries.

U.S. policymakers should learn from these events that the Muslim impulse for modernity and freedom is hindered, not helped, by Western military intervention. And they should learn soon. The U.S. “Af-Pak” war is accelerating the self-destruction of the world’s second largest, and only nuclear, Muslim country.

Murder and Blasphemy

Pakistan’s lurch toward the abyss is exemplified by the recent murders of two politicians: Salman Taseer, a secularist killed in January, and Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian killed in early March. Opposition to the ruling party’s proposed changes of the blasphemy law underlay the attacks. The law, created in the 1980s by Pakistan’s military dictator Zia-ul-Haq and later criticized by the United States, was aimed at fostering Wahhabism amid the U.S.-backed “jihad” in Afghanistan.

Consistent with Wahhabi dogma, the blasphemy law reflects the opposite of what the Prophet Muhammad preached. Whereas Muhammad spared the lives of people who tried to poison, starve, and even kill him, the blasphemy law prescribes death for anyone who makes “derogatory” remarks about the Prophet. And whereas the Qur’an explicitly acknowledges the validity of other faiths and decrees that acceptance of Islam is a choice, Pakistan’s extremists target Muslim “heretics” and non-Muslims for destruction.

More troubling than the murders is the soft support for--if not outright approval of--the law among the Pakistani public. Lawyers, once hailed by Western media as heroes of Pakistani liberalism, raucously supported the alleged murderer of Taseer. The killer had been inspired by one of the many religious leaders who had railed against changes to the law in protests that drew tens of thousands.

Amid the backlash, Pakistan’s fragile prime minister abandoned the proposed amendments. That did not appease extremists, who then killed Bhatti, the only Christian cabinet member, also for opposing the blasphemy law.

Fearing Psychosis or the Taliban

Following that attack, a columnist in Pakistan's largest English daily opined that extremists had little to fear: “Because who are they afraid of? Not the state, not the government, not the law. All three have simply capitulated in front of the psychosis that is ever so often being presented to us through TV talk shows, mosques and cyber space as the ‘true faith.’”

But why has this “psychosis” taken root in a country home to Sufism, Islam’s mystical branch? Pro-Taliban political parties fared poorly in 2008 national and provincial elections. Even in the tribal north, they received little support. And in a late 2009 poll, national support for the Taliban registered at a dismal four percent after the group launched attacks against civilians.

The answer lies not in any one feature of Pakistani society, but rather in frustration with a war that has stretched the weak strands of that society to a breaking point.

One of those strands is the Pakistani military’s support for the Taliban. Its justification—creating “strategic depth” against India—seems absurd, as it is the radicals who have achieved strategic depth inside Pakistan. But this policy, crafted by Zia’s military regime, went unchallenged because of another national weakness: Pakistan’s democracy.

Benazir Bhutto, the former two-term prime minister killed by extremists in 2008, confided to writer Tariq Ali during her first term in 1988 that she was “powerless” against the military. Her own father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hung by Zia in 1979.

Driving a Humvee Through Pakistan’s Heart

Instead of working around these vulnerabilities, however, U.S. commanders drove a Humvee through them.

Desperate to salvage the war after the distraction of Iraq, the United States intensified its attacks, to which the Taliban responded by seizing swaths of land in Pakistan. The United States then ordered Pakistan to respond swiftly. The Pakistan Army’s harried campaign caused massive civilian displacement and complicated its “strategic depth” fantasies. In retaliation for U.S. and Pakistani pressure, local Taliban began launching suicide attacks, which are now a regular feature of Pakistani life. At the same time, U.S. drone strikes increased inside Pakistan as the civilian government lamely protested.

Taken together, these actions turned the militants’ ire on the country and cratered the government’s credibility.

Demoralized by the impotence of their institutions in the face of foreign power, Pakistanis prefer victimhood to a vigorous response. The war has made it easy to deflect attention and outsource blame.

Media outlets vie with one another to see who can finger the most foreign intelligence agencies for attacks that bear the Taliban’s imprimatur. That U.S. intelligence and mercenaries indeed operate on Pakistani soil--a fact U.S. media deliberately concealed in the Raymond Davis case-- drives the fury and paranoia that has peaked with the CIA agent’s capture.

In this poisoned atmosphere, many Pakistanis have adopted an us-against-them mentality. If the United States supports something--such as changes to the blasphemy law--then it must be a U.S. plot. Pakistanis who support such changes then must be agents of the CIA, who after all operate secretly across the country.

If not for the sprawling and blundering U.S. brand of war, might Pakistanis have revolted against their regime and its Taliban creation in a Tunisia-like moment? History brooks no “ifs.” But alongside the established cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab-led awakening suggests that foreign bullying impedes native progress. The movement has flourished where regimes were lavished with U.S. support (Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain) but flagged where regimes are lashed with U.S. threats (Syria, Iran). Pakistan is both lavished and lashed, which only heightens the hysteria.

The United States must abandon its schizophrenic approach to Pakistan. It should end violations of sovereignty and the flow of money to elites that turn sovereignty into satrapy. While the Obama administration may find it useful to spy and strike inside Pakistan to help the war, “winning” in Afghanistan is not worth losing Pakistan to resentment-fueled chaos.

America’s endless war is not the cause of Pakistan’s malaise. But it is preventing the emergence of a cure.

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, writes about Islam and America at his blog, Crossing the Crescent. He has been published in several outlets, including Altmuslim.com, Antiwar.com, Colorlines, and The Nation's website.

Memo to Madam Secretary: First, Do No Harm

Hillary Clinton's first visit to a changed Arab world is full of promise and peril.

By Aaron David Miller
This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 14/03/2011

The sudden onset of the Arab spring and winter has reminded us yet again that America doesn't run the world. And the country must be wary, in the elegant phrasing of the late Reinhold Niebuhr, of its own dreams of managing history.

Like the children's game Where's Waldo?, a coherent and effective American response to what's taking place these days in the Arab world seems hard to find in a sea of faces and events over which the United States has little control.

And no one knows this better than America's smart, superstar secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, whose Arab spring/winter tour begins Monday, March 14. Never has there been a less hospitable world and greater challenges for serious American diplomacy.

Despite her popularity and adept practice of public diplomacy, Clinton understands her own limitations and those of the United States. She knows she's between a White House and a military that owns all the consequential hot-button issues. Indeed, more than two years in, America's top diplomat -- one of Washington's ablest, smartest, and savviest players -- has yet to put her signature on a high-profile issue of peace or war likely to get her admitted into the secretary-of-state hall of fame.

And now this: a transformative, historic wave of political change sweeping the Arab world that on paper would seem to offer huge opportunities for bold American action, but in practice has left Barak Obama's administration more sidelined than central, playing whack-a-mole with ad hoc responses in a frantic effort just to keep up.

From Libya to Egypt, Washington has been forced to recognize -- and this is mostly for the good -- that change in Arab world isn't primarily an American story. And yet, America isn't a potted plant. It must work to find a role that tries to reconcile its interests and its values with policies that somehow just don't seem to fit anymore.

The secretary's trip is an important part of that effort. America needs to be seen as identifying itself with progressive, peaceful change, supporting those who demand it and to oppose those who practice violence and cruelty. But it's also Mission Humble.

The secretary's mission must be short on grandiose designs, unrealistic action plans, and hastily assembled tool kits, and long on listening and learning. No more Cairo speeches where the gap between rhetoric and action consumes American credibility. Instead, the secretary should hear what the Arabs have to say, assess what they need, and see what America can deliver. And she should ascribe to the diplomatic equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: Above all do no harm.

Because the United States is capable of doing plenty of damage. In Cairo, the secretary is likely to find Egyptians wary of official American instruction and guidance on matters of democracy and governance. And they should be. Americans like their democrats American style -- in line with their values and interests -- regardless of the outcome of elections. So they gravitate quite naturally and understandably toward establishment types and liberal reformers and away from the Islamists and other undesirables like Hamas and even the Muslim Brotherhood. It will be fascinating to see how Clinton will handle the questions in public forums (her strong suit) about engaging with the Brotherhood. Meeting with younger members of the organization as part of the Tahrir generation would send a powerful signal, but strong congressional views on this subject and her own indecision may produce a wait-and-see attitude.

On the economic side, the Egyptian ask will be clearer. As political space opens up, people are demanding more. Meeting their economic needs will be even more pressing, yet U.S. capacity remains limited. Clinton will have more luck in facilitating small-scale loans and launching an Operation Tin Cup from others than persuading Congress in the age of austerity to commit funds. This will be particularly tricky as the new Egypt, now inclusive of more diverse voices, expresses much more criticism of various American policies, including U.S. support for Israel. If you thought Congress was hard on Mubarak's Egypt, just wait.

Some have made the argument that if America really wanted to help rising democrats and check troublemaking radicals, it would play to its comparative advantage and tackle the Palestinian issue. It's the newest form of linkage: Don't mess around in the internal Arab house; deal with this troublesome issue and you will disempower extremists.

There may actually be some logic here, but there are also huge problems. The gaps on the core issues are large, the Palestinian and Israeli houses are divided, Arabs are preoccupied, and the odds against a breakthrough are long indeed. President Obama might still give it a try, though the last thing America needs is another false start, failure, or a speech on the issue that has no legs. Former Secretary of State George Shultz once said to me that when America has no policy or hope of one, the pressure grows to give a speech. Clinton should consider carefully the words of one of her most able predecessors.

The Libya or Arab winter portion of the secretary's travels also begs some cautionary notes. Obama has already boxed himself in by saying Muammar al-Qaddafi must go but without really having the will or means to force him out. Let's be clear: There's no way to get rid of him in a reasonable period of time without some kind of military action led by the United States.

Obama now seems to prefer a longer-term approach. And part of that strategy will be dealing with the Libyan opposition. If we end up with a Libya cut in half, with Qaddafi controlling Tripoli and parts of the east with the rebels in control of other parts of the country, then long-term sanctions, assistance to the opposition, an oil embargo, and even a no- fly-zone are possible. But there are many unknowns. Qaddafi could reimpose his control. Clinton, who plans to meet with Libyan opposition figures on her trip, knows not to raise expectations and hopes. One has to assume that other, more substantive contacts with the rebels are occurring clandestinely and that the United States has already started to assist with weapons and aid.

Some congressional critics think the Obama team is far too passive; others lament the passing of an era when America stood tall, had moral clarity, and acted instead of talked. That would be the George W. Bush administration.

Nobody is happy with the present state of affairs. The message America wants to send to dictators and democrats should ideally be clear, and with regard to Libya it isn't. Worse, finding a middle ground between doing too much and not enough to get rid of Qaddafi looks less like solid terrain and more like a slippery slope that could end with America in control of or at least responsible for yet another Arab/Muslim country.

To his credit, Obama has avoided the two greatest transgressions of a great power: omniscience and omnipotence, that America can know and do everything. That brought us Iraq at a frightful price.

Downsizing U.S. ambitions isn't pretty, but at a time of serious domestic economic dislocation and two ongoing wars, it's smart. And in the case of Libya, never a vital American interest, it's imperative. America is still the world's greatest power, but maybe a little smarter, having learned from the cautionary tales that history and its own current limitations provide.

The Arab Did It...What About The West

By Tariq Alhomayed
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 14/03/2011

The Arab foreign ministers have now taken another important and responsible decision regarding Libya. After suspending Libya's membership to the Arab League, the Arabs decided to call on the international Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities by immediately imposing a no-fly zone on Libyan military planes, and to establish a safe zone in areas that are facing bombardment, in order to protect the Libyan people from the regime.
 
This of course is an important and responsible resolution. It followed a similar move, which in turn paved the way for this decision, namely the call made by the Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] last week to the international community, to impose a no-fly zone over Libyan airspace. Therefore, today the ball is in the court of the international community, which must carry out its duty to protect the people of Libya from the tyranny that it is being subjected to at the hands of the regime.
 
The West and the US of course were hesitant about imposing a no-fly zone for several reasons; one of which was that there was no unified Arab position on the issue. Now the GCC, and the Arab League, have invalidated that excuse. The West has all the capacities and mechanisms to apply the no-fly zone, in order to save the Libyan people from the tyranny that is being perpetrated by Gaddafi. Perhaps some Western states, including the US, believe that the Gaddafi regime might win on the ground, and this is a natural conviction, because the regime is not hesitating to use all of its military power, let alone mercenaries. But if the Libyan regime does prevail by crushing its own people, how can there ever be cooperation with it? What about human rights? What about international laws and conventions?
 
Germany and France were quick to welcome the Arab League resolution, even though the Germans were asking: how can the Arab League call for a no-fly zone whilst rejecting foreign intervention? The answer is simple; the decision to impose a no-fly zone will come from the Security Council, and therefore it has international legitimacy, and is not an individual act by one state in particular. Consequently, there must be a unified European and American position, and the imposition of the no-fly zone must be carried out quickly through the Security Council. Of course, this will be a tough diplomatic battle, but the foundations are in place, and the justifications are genuine.
 
The priority now is to protect the Libyan people, and not to offer vague proposals, such as the Turkish initiative that was announced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on 'Al Arabiya' television channel. What is most important today is to protect the Libyan people. We must also realize that the Libyan regime has lost its legitimacy; therefore any initiative should not only be clear, but should also not aim to restore credibility to Gaddafi's regime.
 
What happened in Libya is of course different to what happened in Egypt or Tunisia, as the military institutions in those countries demonstrated a sense of responsibility. Perhaps what is happening today in Sanaa, or what is about to happen, is most similar to what is happening in Libya. There is now a genuine need for caution, so that Yemen is not dragged into a civil war. But what is urgently required today is that the Libyan people are given protection, as soon as possible.

The Right Intervention Mix For Libya

By Rami G. Khouri
This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 12/03/2011

The question of whether foreign powers should intervene in the fighting in Libya to prevent Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from attacking civilians has generated great debate around the world.

The matter is particularly complex because it includes humanitarian, legal, political and logistical military dimensions that need to be reconciled. It becomes doubly complicated when the question revolves around American intervention specifically, given the ugly history of unilateral militarism by the United States and its double standards in other cases of state brutality and civilian mass suffering around the Middle East.

Since the events in Rwanda, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the past two decades, the international “obligation to protect” civilians being wantonly killed, injured or ethnically cleansed is now widely accepted. But how and when to do so, and what triggers such intervention, remains widely disputed. The Libyan situation makes this an immediate and real issue once again.

My view is that international intervention is now appropriate in Libya, on the assumption that the majority of citizens have declared their desire to end the Gadhafi regime and re-establish a truly inclusive, representative and democratic system of governance. Yet such intervention – whether political, humanitarian or military – should only happen if it is based on three critical prerequisites: a credible call by the Libyan people for such assistance; Arab-Islamic-African support for such a move through the respective inter-state organizations grouping these countries; and the legitimacy derived from a United Nations Security Council resolution.

The first and last requirements are probably already available. However, securing Arab-Islamic-African agreement on foreign intervention might be difficult, given that governments define organizations like the Arab League, and they are probably loath to agree to such intervention because they might be the target of the same kind of action later on.

If collective Arab approval of foreign intervention is difficult to achieve through the Arab League, it is probably best to rely on state-by-state support for such a move rather than wait for a collective nod that may never come. The fine points of such a discussion can be debated for months, but Libyans are being killed on a daily basis and are suffering new atrocities at the hand of the Gadhafi regime. So a decision is needed quickly if the situation is to be tempered and the Libyan people’s wishes are to be reflected in a change of Libya’s governance system and its ruling elite.

Degrees of misconduct, human rights denials and outright savagery across the region require different kinds of responses. Libya today reminds us that these questions only arise in the heat of battle, when the urgency to intervene and protect civilians is most compelling.

 

In some Arab countries, governments and others who use force have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, or in some cases like Sudan, millions of their own citizens. In another regional case, Israel has savagely attacked Lebanese and Palestinian lands, killed thousands, imprisoned thousands more, colonized and ethnically cleansed Palestinian lands, and laid siege to Gaza to the point where children’s growth is stunted due to a lack of sufficient nutrition.

The difficult question arises then: Why should the world intervene in Libya if it does not intervene to stop the killing and suffering caused by the policies of governments, whether Arab and Israeli, in other parts of the Middle East? Why sanction Iran for concerns about hypothetical acts it might commit in the future on the nuclear front, when the same international community quietly acquiesces in mass human rights denials in many Arab countries?

My response is that Libyans fighting for their liberty need assistance, and if military intervention is difficult, then other forms of solidarity should be quickly considered: recognizing the opposition National Council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people; sending in large amounts of humanitarian and other aid; applying available international legal measures to pressure the Gadhafi regime; and sending military supplies if the National Council asks for them.

It is clear that the Gadhafi regime has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of its own people and most of the world, and therefore the world should act firmly both politically and with regard to humanitarian aid to help the National Council achieve a transition to a new governance system. Direct foreign military action is a much more complex issue because using military force against Libya is an act of war that plays havoc with existing international legal principles. It also fails to explain why we are seeking to use force in one country while ignoring others suffering the pain of equally distasteful government policies?

Under the current circumstances, the world should immediately act on the ground politically in a manner that emphatically supports the Libyan National Council, until critical international political legitimacy is in place to use military force if needed.

Building A Culture Of Tolerance In The Mideast

By David Ignatius

This commentary was published in The Washington Post on 13/03/2011

 

After weeks of exhilarating scenes from Tahrir Square, Egypt offered a reality check last week that shows how hard the transition to democracy will be in the Arab world: The essential ingredient will be a culture of tolerance - and a spirit of unity that overcomes political, religious and other differences. 

 

The ugly old politics of division surfaced in Egypt in three dramatic confrontations: Participants in a women's march reportedly were groped by male bystanders; Coptic Christians clashed with Muslims following the burning of a church, leaving 13 dead; and protesters ransacked the files of the hated security police, looking for dirt on the old regime and perhaps on their neighbors. 

 

What a democratic culture does is take these real and inescapable tensions and find a constructive outlet for them. The Arabic chant "Salmiya" - peaceful - was one of the unifying themes of Tahrir Square, and it's needed now just as much as it was in the campaign to topple Hosni Mubarak. The Tahrir movement was made up of disparate groups - socialists and capitalists, men and women, Muslims and Christians - but they found a common language. I hope they don't get amnesia. 

 

The danger is that the nascent democracy will turn into anarchic discord, followed by renewed repression - a process all too common in post-revolutionary history. The idealism of the French Revolution gave way to the bloodletting of the Committee of Public Safety, which in turn brought the crackdown known as Thermidor. The young democrats of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will avoid this tragic cycle only if they embrace tolerance. 

 

Let's take the example of the security institutions of a new Egypt. The police became the enemy for the Tahrir Square protesters, and there's still a lot of pent-up rage at Mubarak's repressive state. But Egyptians want law and order, too, and they will need a modern, efficient police force that doesn't harass or torture people. They will need an effective intelligence service, too, for that matter. 

 

How to help the Arabs build modern security services? After the fall of communism, the United States assisted the nations of Eastern Europe in establishing such organizations, with appropriate rules and oversight. America is not the right country to help reconstruct the new Egyptian security service (we were too involved in the evils of the old one), but how about a mission from Poland, or the Czech Republic, or other nations that created police and intelligence agencies on a democratic model? 

 

American history is about the gradual development of such a culture of tolerance, and it took us decades to get it right. We revere the Founding Fathers, but Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton spent the 1790s firing rhetorical spitballs at each other. Our young republic bounced between the anarchic protests of the Whiskey Rebellion and the police-state repression of the Alien and Sedition Acts. 

 

America was lucky to have a Bill of Rights amending its new Constitution, which guaranteed a base line of tolerance that would make democracy possible. I hope that Egyptians and their neighbors will think about their own versions of such a bill of rights, to guarantee freedom of religion, press and other human rights. 

 

And on the subject of press freedom, it is disheartening to see regimes such as Jordan, which claim to want reform, encourage the suspension of the weekly column in the Jordan Times by Randa Habib, the widely respected Amman bureau chief of Agence France-Presse. Bravo to the 200 brave Jordanian journalists who demonstrated last week for press freedom. If King Abdullah II wants to be seen as a genuine reformer, he needs to embrace this cause rather than fight it. 

 

As the Arab world struggles to create a democratic culture, I hope it will hear more from President Obama. He is a symbol of America's own progress toward that goal - and he's a man with standing to give some advice: an African American, the son of a Muslim father, a person whose demeanor and governing style convey the reticence and respect for others' views that make democracy work. 

 

Obama has been criticized for not being more interventionist in his response to the uprisings in Egypt and Libya. Mostly, I think that criticism is bunk; Obama has been right to keep this a narrative written by Arabs, without American meddling. But on the subject of creating new and tolerant democracies, Obama should find his voice. Isn't it time for a new Cairo speech that aligns America with this process of change?