'In Syria We Have Been Scared All Our Lives. Now At Least We Have Hope, Too'

Syria is cracking down on activists such as Lina Mansour, but they will not be deterred from pursuing a better future 

By Dwight Holly 
This commentary was published in The Guardian on 12/05/2011

In this citizen journalism image, Syrian anti-government protesters gather in the coastal town of Banias, Syria, 6 May 2011. Photograph: AP  

 

We are sitting and smoking while the afternoon sun filters through the closed windows of a flat in the outskirts of Damascus. Not her flat, but a friend's place, as she is in hiding.

Lina Mansour is a young lawyer in her 20s. She works for a human rights organisation and, like many doing this job in Syria, she is using another identity to talk to the media. Since last week, Syrian authorities have stepped up their campaign of arrests, trying to crack down on activists that are communicating with the world outside and those who are joining the protests inside the country.

Many, like the 28-year-old cyber activist Rami Nakhle, have already left and are working from neighbouring Lebanon. Others – among them human rights lawyer Razan Zaytoun and dissident Haitham al Maleh – are still active inside the country, often spending no more than two or three nights in one flat before moving to the next.

Lina has experienced this a couple of times, while her father, an old and well-known activist, has been regularly spending nights out of his house. But if you ask her if she is scared, she smiles and says: "We have been scared all our lives. Now at least we have hope, too." Hope that the regime will change, even if "it might take years".

She looks very confident despite the gloomy updates she is getting from all over Syria from people who continuously ring her second phone, which is registered under a fake ID.

Lina has just been meeting a friend who managed to return from Deraa, the city that has been occupied by the Syrian army for more than 10 days in order to "find and punish terrorist groups", as the official media describe the military operation.

She conveys pictures of a human tragedy taking shape: people being randomly killed, others being arrested and threatened to be shot in the head by snipers if they demonstrate. She describes a mass graveyard, corpses being thrown there without names and identity. A city with no food, no medicines, no connections with the outside world.

A few days ago a group of TV actors and directors signed a petition known as the "milk manifesto". They called for immediate humanitarian aid for the people of Deraa, and particularly for children who need milk and medicines. The official reaction has been almost unanimous condemnation.

Dunya TV, the Syrian satellite channel owned by a consortium of powerful businessmen led by Mohamed Hamsho (a close friend of the president's brother, Maher) has been hosting incendiary talk shows where the brightest stars of Syrian TV drama have joined forces against the milk manifesto and its signatories.

With the help of other activists in the country, Lina is trying to collect money to help civilians in Deraa. So far, some humanitarian convoys have been rejected and sent back to Damascus. The UN inspectors have been trying hard to send a delegation to verify the humanitarian situation although, so far, they haven't been successful.

But apparently people are not giving up on their will to help, even on individual basis. "Lots of help is coming from Jordan, which has got a very strong link and affiliation to Deraa, being [part of] the Houran region between the two countries." But also people from Saudi Arabia and many of the rich oil countries are joining these efforts, adds Tony, a journalist friend of Lina who is helping her to compile a list of the people that have been killed so far.

"It is very important for us that humanitarian help comes from families and ordinary people, not from governments," Lina says. "We don't want any official intervention here, not even if it comes from an Arab country." Lina has attended different meetings where this was the most debated topic.

"There is not such a thing as one view or a common opinion about how the west or other Arab countries should help Syria," she says, while describing heated debates between different groups that could fall under the generic definition of "Syrian opposition" despite not being organised as such.

"My father and I completely disagree and have heated arguments about what the west should do with 'the Syrian file'," she points out. Here there is a generational clash: her father's opposition to western intervention – even a humanitarian one – is probably nurtured by an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist discourse that was a common mark of international leftist movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Lina is not only less ideological, but also more pragmatic.

"I think the west can help us at a humanitarian level and at a diplomatic one. We are not going to ask for milk and medicines but, if they can manage to send, we'll be silently grateful," she adds, putting an emphasis on the word silently, as if to excuse herself for not being able to openly manifest satisfaction for any kind of foreign intervention "at least for now".

Before even being able to ask her what she means by "western help at a diplomatic level", we both look at the TV screen, where al-Jazeera's anchor is reading a list of Syrian figures who will be prevented from travelling to the EU and whose assets there will be frozen. Top of the list is Maher al-Assad, the president's brother and commander-in-chief of the fourth armoured division, who is said to be responsible for the Deraa massacre and the violent repression of protesters in Syria.

Lina drinks her last sip of green tea and smiles. Her eyes have the look that you can find only in those who are young and have the courage to see a different future for their country

Rule Of Law Or Law Of The Jungle?

Patrick Seale writes: Bin Laden's killing could spark a chain of violence unless Obama uses new-found political clout to effect real change  
This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 13/05/2011 

The killing of Osama bin Laden on 1 May by a team of US Navy Seals sends a brutal message to the world that the execution of America’s enemies takes precedence over any consideration of morality or international law. For daring to attack the United States — an act of lèse majesté, the medieval crime of violating majesty — AlQaida’s founder had to be hunted down and exterminated, however long it took and at whatever the cost. Might is right.

Other governments will note the example set by America—an example that might also be copied by non-state actors, and even by aggrieved citizens. After all, Americans are not alone in having national interests, legitimate grievances and enemies they wish to bury. Others, too, can claim the right of self-defence, overriding legal or ethical constraints.

Israel has been doing so for decades. As a matter of deliberate policy, it has carried out numerous extra-judicial killings of its political enemies, and appears to have no qualms about violating the sovereignty of other countries. In a recent blog, the American lawyer John Whitbeck reports that General Shaul Mofaz, a former Israeli chief of staff known for his tough tactics, has claimed the credit for inspiring America’s assassination strategy. Mofaz is now chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs committee.

If states can resort to terrorism with impunity in order to kill their enemies, political leaders must be prepared to face the same rough ‘justice’ at the hands of the followers, friends or relatives of their victims. What if a hit team of Iraqi Bathists, for example, seeking to avenge the wanton destruction of their party, their army and their country, were to track down and kill George W. Bush, Tony Blair and, more particularly, the neo-con ‘architect’ of the Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz? Would that be terrorism or justice? What if a Pashtun tribal leader were to decide that the director of the CIA should pay with his life for the drone attacks that have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians in the tribal areas of Pakistan? Would that be terrorism or justice?

Would America not have been better served had it upheld the rule of law in Abbottabad rather than resorting to the law of the jungle?

Terrible and tragic as was the fate of the 3,000 victims of 9/11, they are not the only ones to be mourned. In seeking to punish Bin Laden’s AlQaida for its attack on America’s heartland, the United States waged wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan—wars which are thought to have caused about a million deaths, not to mention the wounded and the displaced, and all those whose lives have been shattered by the massive disturbance and material destruction of these conflicts. The dead from these misguided wars cry out for vengeance from the grave. Whether they are Iraqis, Afghans or Pakistanis, they, too, are mourned.

Just as America’s outrageous torture of ‘unlawful combatants’ in Iraq and elsewhere gave a blank cheque to Arab tyrants and others to torture their own citizens, so the assassination of America’s number one enemy will encourage others to resort to the same lawless methods.

He appears to have been gunned down in front of his family. His 12-year-old daughter witnessed the scene. His wife was shot in the leg and another woman was killed. Bin Laden did not hide behind them or use them as human shields. He was unarmed. Bin Laden may have been loathed and feared as a terrorist, but many will see the way he was shot as a ‘hit’—an assassination pure and simple.

What if American Special Forces have surrounded his house, once they had discovered where he was hiding, and asked the Pakistani authorities to arrest him and hand him over for trial? That would have had the great advantage of not violating Pakistani sovereignty and of not causing grave offenceto the Pakistani army and intelligence services, as well as to public opinion in that country. Pakistani officials have described the American raid as “unauthorised and unilateral,” while the army has warned that any repeat of such an operation would affect relations with the United States. It is likely that Pakistan will now reduce its anti-terrorist cooperation with the US and seek instead to strengthen its ties with China. It will certainly continue to befriend Afghan jihadist groups so as to have allies there to defend its cause against India, once US forces withdraw.

 US President Barack Obama has made a meal out of this shabby episode, milking it for all it is worth. He has claimed the credit for personally ordering the CIA to find Bin Laden. We were told that he then took the ‘gutsy’ decision to attack the compound where he was living. The President followed the assassination in real time and enjoyed wild applause when it proved successful. He visited Ground Zero, paid tribute to the fire-fighters, and decorated the Navy Seals. His popularity has soared and his chances of re-election have been greatly enhanced.

In my (no doubt minority) view, Obama must now redeem himself for the killing by putting his heightened prestige to good effect. He should announce an early withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, call a halt to drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen; invite China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran to form an Afghan contact group to sponsor urgent and intensive negotiations between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the Taliban, with a view to the formation of a national unity government. It would also be greatly to America’s advantage—both politically and financially—to reduce its military presence in the Arab world. Its many bases in the Gulf, in particular, serve little purpose. They merely exacerbate local tensions, especially those between the Arabs and Iran.

Above all, if the United States is to regain some goodwill in the Arab and Muslim world, Obama must have the courage to stand up to Israel’s right-wing government and its many American friends and lobbyists. Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu is due in Washington later this month. He has been invited to address a joint session of Congress. This should be Obama’s opportunity to upstage him with a clear statement that America will use all its influence and all its power to bring to birth a viable and independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in occupied East Jerusalem, living at peace and security side-by-side with Israel.

The American President knows very well what needs to be done. He must be ready to use his new-found political capital to draw the poison from a conflict that has claimed countless victims and plagued the world for more than six decades. It is America’s failure to do so that has helped create the Bin Laden’s of this world.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East.

Yemen On The Edge

By Stephen Zunes 
This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus on 13/05/2011 

Since Obama came to office in January 2009, U.S. security assistance to the Yemeni regime has gone up 20-fold. Despite such large-scale unconditional support, however, the 32-year reign of autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh may finally be coming to an end. Yet the Obama administration has been ambivalent in its support for a democratic transition in this impoverished but strategically important country.

Saleh’s behavior has gotten increasingly bizarre. He has begun claiming that an unlikely coalition of Israel and Qatar has incited and financed the pro-democracy struggle, and that women in leadership positions in the pro-democracy struggle and even men and women protesting in the streets together is somehow “un-Islamic.”

Efforts by Saudi Arabia and other regional monarchies to negotiate Saleh’s resignation, despite showing some initial promise, have failed both as a result of the dictator’s obstinacy and the protesters’ demands for a genuine democratic transition. Saleh continues to lose support despite his corrupt system of patronage. This policy of “bribe a tribe” appears to be failing as tribal leaders, top military officers, and other formal allies have joined the protesters in demanding that the increasingly repressive and eccentric U.S.-backed dictator to step down.

Rising Protests

Yemen is a desperately poor country, with high unemployment, and a long history of division and instability. Sheila Carapico, a professor at the University of Richmond, has described

the grotesque enrichment of regime cronies at the expense of the many; deteriorating standards of living; obscenely bad schools, hospitals and roads; the skyrocketing price of meat, staples and even clean water; the lack of jobs for college and high-school graduates. … Grandiose pageants of presidential power, half-truths in the official media, indignities at military checkpoints, arbitrary arrests and imprisonments -- these and other daily insults feed popular alienation, despair and frustration, most notably among the youth. While a privileged few cool off in swimming pools in their luxury compounds, the water table has fallen, decimating the farm economy that remains the livelihood of the rural majority. Farmers and ranchers facing starvation have flocked to the cities where water supplies and social services are swamped. Misery has become the new normal; millions barely survive on the equivalent of a dollar or two per day.

The United States has sent plenty of money, but it's almost all been military assistance. The small amounts of economic aid have mostly gone through corrupt government channels.

Until the pro-democracy struggle emerged as a major nationwide challenge to the regime, the attention of the U.S. media and the Obama administration had almost exclusively been on al-Qaeda cells operating in the country and Shiite Houthi tribesmen fighting in a remote northern region. There was a sense that the people of Yemen were too poor or too tribal or too “backward” to engage in a nonviolent civil insurrection against their dictator. However, as other unarmed pro-democracy uprisings in the region have demonstrated, the desire of human freedom and the willingness face down the tanks, machine guns, tear gas, and truncheons to defend basic rights is indeed universal.

As with Tunisia and Egypt, young people make up the majority of the protesters, though people of all ages have taken to the streets in more than a dozen cities across the country. As with similar pro-democracy protests, there has been a strong cultural dimension, including street theater, music, dancing, and other performance art. Protesters have used tactics that illustrate the unity of the movement, such as 50,000 hands being clasped above the crowd.

Yemen is the most heavily armed countries in the world in terms of individual gun ownership, with some estimates as high as three weapons per person. The fact that the millions of Yemenis who have taken to the streets have consciously left them at home and largely maintained a strict nonviolent discipline is nothing short of remarkable. At a recent demonstration in the tribal al-Bayda region, men brought guns only to throw them down on the ground shouting “silmiyya!” (“peacefully!”), a common chant of the protests. Indeed, the extent of the pro-democracy struggle and its commitment to nonviolence is comparable to the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and earlier unarmed insurrections in Serbia, Czechoslovakia, the Philippines, Chile, and elsewhere.

Washington Flat-Footed

Despite diplomatic cables going back as far as 2005 indicating that Saleh could potentially face a popular pro-democracy uprising, the Obama administration appears to have been caught completely off-guard. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged that Washington had not planned for an era without Saleh. As one former ambassador to Yemen put it in back in March, “For right now, he’s our guy.”

Since then, the Obama administration has belatedly joined its European allies in encouraging Saleh to step aside. At the same time, the United States has not been very supportive of the pro-democracy protests either. For example, following government attacks on peaceful pro-democracy protesters two weeks ago, which killed a dozen protesters and injured hundreds of others, the U.S. embassy called on the Yemenis to cooperate with the rather dubious Saudi-led negotiations for a transition by “avoiding all provocative demonstrations, marches and speeches in the coming days.”

Recently released Wikileaks cables have also demonstrated that U.S. military assistance increased despite evidence that Saleh was using U.S.-supplied weapons not against al-Qaeda as promised but against domestic opposition to his increasingly repressive rule. As a result of the popular protests, Washington has frozen the more than $1 billion in military aid currently in the pipeline. But Washington has acted more out of concern over Saleh's successor than genuine outrage at the dramatically increased repression.

It’s time for the United States to recognize that the future of the Middle East is not in the hands of aging autocrats like Saleh or even traditional elite oppositionists, but in civil society. Ultimately power comes not from well-armed people at the top but from the consent of the people.

Stephen Zunes, a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist, is a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is the author, along with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press, 2010).

Egypt: Sectarian Tensions And Authoritarian Temptations

By Steven Cook

This commentary was published on CFR Blog on 13/05/2011

Egyptian Muslims look towards army soldiers trying to break up clashes between Christians and Muslims in downtown Cairo (Amr Dalsh/Courtesy Reuters)

The sectarian violence that flared in Cairo earlier this past week that killed 12 and injured 238 is an ominous sign that not all is well in the new Egypt. There are many—likely a majority—of Egyptians who want to live in peace with their neighbors of a different religion, but there are clearly some who are intent on sowing conflict between Muslims and Copts. Not only was the violence in Imbaba disturbing in its own right, it also suggests that state authority in the immediate post-January 25 period remains a serious problem. Egypt has experienced a spike in crime and street violence over the last few months, arms smuggling to Gaza has increased, and there is a pervasive sense of uncertainty throughout the country. Perhaps most worrying for those who want to live in a more democratic and open Egypt is the potential for those presently in a position of power, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or those who seek power—counterrevolutionary forces and salafists—to create a destabilized political environment in order to advance their interests. There is, of course, historical precedent for this. On March 20, 1954, at the culmination of the Free Officers’ efforts to consolidate their power, six bombs went off in Cairo—almost certainly the work of agents operating on behalf of Gamal Abdel Nasser and his associates—in order to stir up widespread fear of instability and violence. This paved the way for a harsh military crackdown that succeeded in finally breaking the back of opposition to the Officers. The rest is, as they say, history.

As I have said in previous posts, the past is an imprecise guide for the present, but there are influential groups in Egypt that would prefer it if the country did not realize the revolutionary objectives of Tahrir Square. Violence is surely one way to place these laudable goals in jeopardy.  It is not a particularly novel insight to suggest that if instability and threats to social cohesion persist, leaders will be tempted—with no doubt a measure of popular support—to find authoritarian solutions to the problems society confronts. As an aside, Mubarak actually took this dynamic a step further. Already in command of a well-developed authoritarian system, he and his internal security services manipulated sectarian tensions as a way of maintaining control over the population and justifying non-democratic politics.

The good news is that the government has acted swiftly in the aftermath of the last week’s violence. Prime Minister Essam Sharaf announced the promulgation of new laws protecting houses of worship and 23 salafists and 200 others were arrested on Thursday in connection with the attacks on Christians. Egyptians have also signaled that they are not going to countenance threats to social cohesion. Tens of thousands took to Tahrir Square again today in part to celebrate national unity (they were also there to express solidarity with the Palestinian people). Still, the attacks in Imbaba remain profoundly unsettling because they are precisely the kind of events that counterrevolutionary groups can exploit going forward.

In Libya, Time To Nourish Democracy’s Roots

By Fred Hiatt 
This commentary was published in The Washington Post on 13/05/2011 

Is the standoff in Libya a disguised blessing for Arab democracy? 

And if so, will the United States be nimble enough to take advantage?

There’s nothing blessed in the suffering of civilians forced to flee the fighting or subjected, in the besieged city of Misurata, to shelling by forces loyal to dictator Moammar Gaddafi. If Gaddafi isn’t forced from power soon, stalemate could evolve into disaster.

But during the past three months, with rebels controlling the east of the country while Gaddafi hangs on in Tripoli, Libyan democrats have had an opportunity their counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere lacked: to prepare to govern, free of influence from the old regime.

And the Libyans, to the surprise of some, have made the most of the chance, assembling a temporary management team that stands for everything Gaddafi’s dictatorship tried to stifle: democracy, the rule of law, a free press and independent civic society.

“Even the graffiti says, ‘We want a country of institutions,’ ” Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, recounted after visiting rebel-controlled Benghazi, where he says newspapers, volunteer groups and free political activity are flourishing. “And they don’t want a charismatic leader.”

If so, they seem to have found their man in Mahmoud Jibril, interim prime minister of the Transitional National Council.

Jibril is a soft-spoken businessman who did postgraduate work at the University of Pittsburgh and who comes across as almost excessively honest and reasonable.

His mouthful of a title is a deliberate signal that he and the council do not want to assert power; they are simply managing things, he says, until Libya is united again and all Libyans can vote for a democratic constitution, in a referendum supervised by the United Nations.

He is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t do more to help the rebels, but he explains with some understanding the legal basis for the slowness. He is guardedly optimistic about the prospects for democracy — “Maybe we have some shot,” he said during a visit to The Post on Wednesday — but understands why outsiders might be skeptical.

Egypt at least has a history of political parties and coffeehouse debate; Gaddafi’s totalitarian rule left little room for that. Yet, Jibril says, because there were no parties, the opposition has not become polarized.

“We have no organizational history — but we have a structure to be talking to the world,” he said. “So this is a case to be studied.”

Jibril’s optimism has roots in something deeper than what has been accomplished during this interim period. He draws his hope from the difference he sees between his generation and the young people who have stirred revolution across the Arab world.

Jibril’s generation demonstrated against imperialism or for Arab unity or Palestinian statehood, he says, and it talked about “demands, needs, wants.”

The new generation, he says, “talks about democracy, talks about a dignified life.” And, he says, “These people have no fear whatsoever. They are completely the opposite of our generation, where fear is a central part of our cognitive system.”

Jibril is scheduled to see national security adviser Thomas Donilon on Friday, with a possible drop-by from Vice President Biden. His message, he says, will be simple: “We are really in desperate need of our money.” In providing a greater measure of recognition to the regime and granting access to Libya’s frozen assets, he said, the French, Italians, Qataris and others have been flexible.

“So far we did not meet the same luck with the U.S. government or the British,” he said.

That caution typifies the overall response of the Obama administration to the unfolding Arab Spring. It did not push Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak until the Egyptian people made clear that Mubarak was finished. It has offered only mild objections as Bahrain’s king has brutally stifled a peaceful movement for democracy. President Obama has yet to say a word (though the White House has issued statements) as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has slaughtered hundreds and rounded up thousands.

In Libya, Obama supported military action to protect civilians, but he limited the U.S. role; he called for Gaddafi’s departure but insisted that the military operation not be aimed at that result.

In each of these cases, the White House had its reasons; no one can doubt the complexity of the calculations. But there is risk in excessive caution, too: of being seen in the region as on the wrong side, and of missing opportunities to promote secular democracy where, just months ago, few dreamed it could flourish.

Now the administration is supporting legislation put forward by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to begin to release some assets to Jibril and his team, but Jibril fears it will be too little and — given the congressional process — too late.

Libya has only 6 million people, compared with Egypt’s 74 million and Syria’s 19 million. But a success in any Arab country will resonate among democrats throughout the region; so would a failure. The triumph of the values championed by Mahmoud Jibril would represent a big success.

Syria: Too Big To Fail?

Is Syria's repressive dictatorship really so crucial to Mideast peace and stability that we can't let it fail? The Obama administration still seems to think so.

By Aaron David Miller
This commentary was published in The Foreign Policy on 12/05/2011

 

If you're a bit confused about U.S. President Barack Obama's passivity in the face of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brutal repression of domestic opposition, don't be. Syria isn't Libya. The Assad regime is just too consequential to risk undermining. 

Although the fall of the House of Assad might actually benefit U.S. interests, the president isn't going to encourage it. For realists in the White House, Assad's demise carries more risks than opportunities.

Great powers behave inconsistently -- even hypocritically -- depending on their interests. That's not unusual; it's part of the job description. In fact, in responding to the forces of change and repression loosed throughout the Arab world, flexibility is more important than ideological rigidity.

The last thing America needs is a doctrine or ideological template to govern how it responds to fast-breaking changes in a dozen Arab countries, all of which are strikingly different in their respective circumstances.

That the administration's response often seemed like a giant game of whack-a-mole, with a new problem popping up daily, was inevitable. And so was the variety of U.S. responses. In Bahrain, where the United States had established the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, and in Yemen, where counterterrorism is king, interests trumped values. You didn't hear Obama make any "Qaddafi must go"-style speeches directed against Bahrain's ruling Khalifa family or Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The contradictions and anomalies of U.S. foreign policy have also been on stark display in the Obama administration's differing responses to Qaddafi's and Assad's repression of their own people.

Beating up Qaddafi proved doable and necessary to prevent what was viewed as potential atrocities by his forces in Benghazi. Libya had few significant air defense systems and no friends; it was relatively easy to construct a coalition of the (semi-)willing in the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League to oppose the man President Ronald Reagan once dubbed the "mad dog of the Middle East" -- a tin pot and often bizarre dictator who opposed reform and political change. If you wanted to construct a more vulnerable target in a laboratory, you couldn't have done much better.

Syria presents a profoundly different situation. U.S. policy has always been driven by the hope that the Assads would change and the fear of what might replace them if they fell. Three additional realities ensured a U.S. response quite different from the one for Libya.

First, Syria was hard. It's a country with a sophisticated air defense system, chemical and biological weapons, and a great many friends -- including Iran and Hezbollah, which are capable of striking back. Marshaling support at the United Nations, mobilizing NATO, and getting buy-in from the Arab League in the way that made the Libya intervention possible are not in the cards. Some of America's closest friends, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, are also not at all sure that Syria without Assad would be better than with him.

Second, for most U.S. presidents -- Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush being the exceptions -- Syria has served as a kind of unholy diplomatic grail. Since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, U.S. policymakers had viewed the Assads as pragmatists capable of facilitating or blocking U.S. policy in Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli peace process.

If only the Syrians could be brought around, presidents have believed for generations, life would be so much easier. The United States wasn't alone in this illusion -- the Israelis, Arabs, Europeans, and Russians felt the same way. Like the Wall Street banks, Syria was then, as it is now, judged as simply too big to fail. There was something perversely comforting about having the Assads around.

I had my own fair share of illusions during my government career, but the Assads were never one of them. I could never quite understand my colleagues' fascination with the brutal Syrian regime. To me, Bashar al-Assad was a brutal dictator who wanted to be the Frank Sinatra of the Middle East -- obsessed with doing things his own way to the point that he priced himself out of peace with Israel and a relationship with the United States. It's striking that every other Arab state, with the possible exception of Libya, managed to establish a close relationship with the United States. Not Assad.

Third, Obama's approach toward Syria has been managed by the realists. This stands in contrast with his Libya policy, where liberal interventionists in the administration and neocons outside clamored for action. This group of realists includes the president, who knows his options on Syria aren't great. He's being told that American leverage isn't great and that if he calls for Assad's head and the Syrian despot survives, he'll have lost access to a key player in the region.

And after all, what could he do that would deter a regime in a fight for its life? Pull U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford from Damascus? Impose a travel ban on Assad and his family? Press the Europeans to freeze Assad's money?

In a world of symbols, these steps may make an important point about American values. However, none of them will make a difference in how events play out in Syria.

Simply put, the Obama administration is worried about creating a worse situation if Assad falls. Take your pick of scary scenarios: civil war, a Sunni fundamentalist takeover, or a new base for al Qaeda.

Of course, there would also be an upside to Assad's demise. A brutal regime would have fallen; Iran would be denied an Arab patron and a critical window into Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli arena; Hamas would likely drift further into the orbit of Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and Hezbollah -- though hardly defanged in Lebanon -- would lose a critical patron. At this point, however, the administration clearly judges that the risks of U.S. action outweigh the potential benefits.

Bad options, bad outcomes. So, for now, we watch and wait to see where the arc on the Assads is headed -- north or south. But if the Assads do survive, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Washington at some point resumes a business-as-usual posture with the only surviving repressive Arab dictator that's too big to fail.

Aaron David Miller is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His book, Can America Have Another Great President?, will be published in 2012.

Syria Fortifies Obama In His indecision

By Michael Young  
This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 12/05/2011

The New York Times gave readers a double-whammy of Syrian statements on Tuesday. Its correspondent in Beirut, Anthony Shadid, landed interviews with presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban and with Rami Makhlouf, the powerful maternal cousin of President Bashar Assad, who represents the financial front of the regime. 

Shadid was allowed into Syria for only a few hours to conduct the interviews. You have to wonder whether this provoked much debate in the newspaper’s offices. The condition transformed the correspondent into a stenographer, and the New York Times into a platform, for the dual messages emanating from Damascus. This irked quite a few people. However, it’s also fair to say that Shadid has kept the Syria story on the front pages of his daily, at a moment when the attention in the United States has been drifting elsewhere.

What did Shaaban and Makhlouf say? The essence of Shaaban’s remarks was that the Syrian regime had gained the upper hand against the uprising. “I think now we’ve passed the most dangerous moment. I hope so, I think so,” she said. Shaaban repeated the government line that Syria faced an armed rebellion, and disclosed that she had been tasked with initiating a dialogue with dissidents. “We see [the Syrian events] as an opportunity to try to move forward on many levels, especially the political level,” she added.

Makhlouf’s comments sounded more ominous. “If there is no stability [in Syria], there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,” he warned. “No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.” He observed that the regime had opted to fight, insisting that all its members were united: “We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end.” He also issued a transparent threat: “They should know when we suffer, we will not suffer alone.”

Some have suggested that the two messages reveal a split in the Syrian regime. That’s not convincing. The messages were not that different, and to put Shaaban on the same level as Makhlouf is absurd. Shaaban is viewed as a spokesman for the president, but she plays no central role in the Assad-Makhlouf constellation. She doubtless needed a green light to go ahead with the interview, one that required some measure of approval by Makhlouf and Assad’s younger brother Maher, both of whom have taken an eradication approach to the protests. Makhlouf, in turn, needed no authorization whatsoever.

What Shaaban said was likely intended to be interpreted in the United States as a marginally soft statement by Bashar Assad. In contrast, Makhlouf offered the harsher alternative if the president’s approach was rejected by the international community. It was a classic good cop, bad cop routine, and those familiar with Syrian manners will be little surprised by the ploy. That’s why it seems far-fetched to assume that we are witnessing a fundamental rift in Syria’s ruling family.

The reason for this is that there is no serious alternative to what the Assads and the Makhloufs are doing today. They can either stand together behind repression, or fall apart. That’s hardly to justify the regime’s butchery of hundreds of unarmed civilians. Rather, it’s to affirm that the Syrian leadership is incapable of undertaking anything different. There simply is no reform option, and there never was. Genuine reform means dislodging the bricks holding up Assad-Makhlouf authority. Bashar Assad’s open-ended presidency, the crony capitalism practiced by his cousin and other members of Syria’s elite, the abuse practiced by the all-powerful security services, even Alawite predominance, would never survive a system shaped by free elections, the rule of law, and the existence of independent media.

The New York Times interviews were made possible by the deep uneasiness in the Obama administration with moves that might destabilize the Assad regime. The Syrians are good judges of their adversaries’ weaknesses, and what they see in Washington is a president who prefers the Assads to the possibility of chaos. They realize that the measures taken until now by the United States and Europe have been relatively gentle, therefore wholly ineffective. Add to that the U.N. Security Council’s recent failure to condemn Syria and official Arab support for Syrian stability, and you will grasp why the Assad regime saw an opening to reinforce American paralysis.

Nor can the Obama administration ignore that the Syrian leadership regards American dithering as a sign of implicit approval of its actions. Indeed, Shaaban described the recent statements of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Syria as “not too bad,” and the sanctions against Syria as manageable. That can only mean one thing: If Washington fails to clarify its views on the carnage in Syria through effective policies, the killing and the arrests there will continue, with the U.S. bearing partial responsibility. The White House’s uncertainty can be measured in human lives.

The Syrian protesters are right in not pursuing their salvation in Washington, let alone Brussels, Paris, or London. This is not an American administration overly outraged by the viciousness of dictatorships. Even in Egypt, Obama only turned against Hosni Mubarak when he was left with no other choice – although doing so against an old ally while sparing Assad suggests that Obama is like the coward who will yell at his wife to avoid a brawl with the neighbor.

What all this could also mean, however, is that the Syrian regime is wrong in pursuing its salvation in foreign capitals. Ultimately, Assad, his legitimacy in tatters, will have to win out against his own people. That will not be easy, not when the president has had to order the military occupation of several of his major cities. The regime’s behavior is a daily insult to Syrians, one they will not readily forget.

Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR and author of “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle” (Simon & Schuster), listed as one of the 10 notable books of 2010 by the Wall Street Journal