Michael Young's columns

On Syria, John Kerry is left out on a limb

2013-06-09T10:54:00.001+03:00

The effectiveness of the Obama administration’s strategy in Syria is dependent on there being a good relationship between President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. While nothing suggests there are problems on that front, Obama has limited interest in the matter that preoccupies the secretary most today: Syria.

Earlier this week, after meeting with Poland’s foreign minister, Kerry commented on efforts to hold an international conference on Syria in Geneva: “This is a very difficult process, which we come to late.” To many this was implicit criticism of the administration’s repeated efforts to avoid engaging with the Syrian crisis. Kerry added, “We are trying to prevent the sectarian violence from dragging Syria down into a complete and total implosion where it has broken up into enclaves, and the institutions of the state have been destroyed, with God knows how many additional refugees and how many innocent people killed.”

This breakdown has been going on for over two years, and has been characterized by all the alarming elements Kerry described. For him to suddenly outline the dangers seemed more a subtle criticism of how the Syrian situation was allowed to reach such a stage than acknowledgement of a fundamentally new approach in Washington.

The question is whether Kerry has much latitude to push the United States in directions that Obama hesitates to allow. The Obama White House has tightly controlled the foreign policy agenda in recent years. Hillary Clinton was influential enough to have her way on certain issues, but one thing she frequently had trouble doing was enrolling the president in efforts to advance her recommended policies.

Kerry may be less effective. He was not Obama’s first choice as secretary of state, and the president has been largely silent on Kerry’s efforts to organize the Geneva II conference. That’s ironic, because Kerry agreed to it with the Russians partly in order to lessen the pressure on the president to intervene in Syria, after Bashar Assad’s forces allegedly used chemical weapons against the rebels.

The president has also said nothing about Kerry’s attempt to resume negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. It is understandable that Obama does not want to put his name to politically risky courses of action that might fail; but without more presidential commitment, the momentum that Kerry requires to get both projects rolling will not be forthcoming, thwarting the secretary’s political aims.

For instance, there were reports Tuesday that France and the United Nations had concluded that the Syrian regime used limited quantities of chemical weapons in fighting near Aleppo some months ago. The White House once again stuck its head in the sand. The spokesman, Jay Carney, said, “[w]e need more information” that allows the administration to “establish a body of information that can be presented and reviewed, and upon which policy decisions can be made.” There was a man throwing out chaff to buy Obama room to maneuver. Indeed the administration has yet to gather such a body of information, and has set no deadline for doing so.

In that context you have to wonder what leverage Kerry really has. The Obama administration, probably with Kerry’s approval, has withheld $63 million slated for the Syrian opposition, angry with its refusal to attend the Geneva conference while Hezbollah continues to fight on Syrian territory. The opposition decision was unwise, since it embarrassed Washington and by way of contrast made the Assad regime, which has agreed to attend the conference, look flexible.

However, publicly undermining the opposition is not the way to go. It strengthens a regime that has long fought America in the Middle East, and it weakens America’s diplomatic hand, when the objective should be to reinforce the opposition and impose unity in its ranks. But that requires effort and initiative, which have been absent from the administration’s approach to Syria. In contrast, the Russians saw how poorly Bashar Assad managed the Syrian uprising, but they never undercut the Syrian leader, and now he is stronger thanks to their military assistance and blocking tactics at the United Nations.

With friends like the Obama administration, who needs enemies? But Kerry is lucid about Syria’s importance, whereas the White House seems not to be. All those who have argued that the United States has no strategic interest in Syria have drunk from Obama’s Kool-Aid. For starters, Iran and Hezbollah have reached the contrary conclusion, and have acted accordingly, which imposes a second look at that foolish proposition. It is surely in the interest of the U.S. to push Iran out of Syria, and to make it difficult for Hezbollah to rearm in any new Middle Eastern conflict. A contained Hezbollah is one that will be more careful about embarking on new wars, which could stabilize Lebanon.

And since Iran is the main rival of the United States in the region, and since its nuclear program happens to be a major concern of the Obama administration, weakening Tehran’s footprint in the Levant could facilitate negotiations to help resolve the nuclear standoff.

Nothing is clear-cut in the Middle East, but the potential gains from an Iranian defeat in Syria should nevertheless have been obvious from the very beginning to Obama’s foreign policy sages. The White House claims to adhere to political realism, but other than displaying hard-nosed indifference to the fate of the Syrian population, the administration has failed to apply realist principles in defense of American national interests to the events in Syria.

Kerry’s admission that the U.S. came late to Syria will not endear him to Obama’s current advisers at the White House. The secretary of state could find himself without political allies at a time when he needs them the most to implement a coherent Syria policy. But the arrival of Susan Rice as the new national security advisor to replace Tom Donilon and the appointment of Samantha Power as UNambassador, both of whom have taken a touger line on Syria than other officials, could play in Kerry’s favor. Perhaps the secretary won’t be as lonely as he might have been.

Hezbollah’s Vietnam?

2013-06-07T10:27:00.000+03:00

The only thing odd about Hezbollah’s intervention in the Syrian conflict is that it took over two years for the party and its backers in Tehran to make the decision. That’s because whatever one thinks of Hezbollah, the triumph of Syria’s rebels always posed an existential threat to the party and its agenda.

The victory in Qusayr was undeniably an important one for Hezbollah and the Syrian regime, knocking the rebels out of a swath of strategic territory in the province of Homs, linking Damascus to the coast. It now allows the Assad regime to turn its attentions to other areas from where the regime was forced to withdraw.

Attention is now focused on Aleppo, where Hezbollah combatants have been amassing recently. However, we can’t forget that the rebels have already been pushed out of neighborhoods around Damascus. And the recent deployment of Patriot missiles and F-16 aircrafts to Jordan suggests there are expectations of a regime offensive in the southern province of Deraa, considered the most likely location from where rebels could mount an attack against the Syrian capital.

Hezbollah’s deepening involvement in the Syrian war is a high-risk venture. Many see this as a mistake by the party, and it may well be. Qusayr will be small change compared to Aleppo, where the rebels are well entrenched and benefit from supply lines leading to Turkey. In the larger regional rivalry between Iran and Turkey, the Turkish army and intelligence services have an interest in helping make things very difficult for Hezbollah and the Syrian army in northern Syria, particularly after the car-bomb attack in Reyhanli in May.

Many will be watching closely to see how the current crisis in Turkey affects Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ability to react to the Syrian situation, particularly if the epicenter of the fighting shifts to Aleppo. Erdogan has faced the displeasure among many in Turkey’s southern border areas with their government’s policy in Syria. At the same time, a defeat of the Syrian rebels in and around Aleppo is not something that Turkey can easily swallow so near to its borders, particularly if Hezbollah is instrumental in the fighting.

Hezbollah is willing to take heavy casualties in Syria, if this allows it to rescue the Assad regime. The real question is what time frame we are talking about, and how this affects the party’s vital interests elsewhere. For now, Hezbollah has entered Syria with no exit strategy. The way in which Hassan Nasrallah framed the intervention indicates that it is open-ended. This will prompt other parties to take actions and decisions they might otherwise have avoided for as long as the Syrian conflict was primarily one between Syrians.

Hezbollah is already a magnet for individuals and groups in Syria keen to take the air out of the region’s leading Shiite political-military organization - or simply to protect their towns and villages. As Qusayr showed, the presence of Hezbollah only induces its enemies to fight twice as hard against the party. As a proxy of Iran, Hezbollah will prompt governments to do the same, and they will see an opportunity to wear down the party and trap it in a grinding, no-win situation.

Playing in the favor of Hezbollah’s enemies is that the party has little latitude to alter its strategy in Syria. It must go all the way, predisposing it to sink ever-deeper into the Syrian quagmire, or until the point where the Syrian regime and pro-regime militias can capture and control territory on their own. That is not easy in a guerrilla war in which rebels have often out-matched the army.

Hezbollah, by contrast, benefits from coordination between the Syrian regime and Russia and Iran. Hezbollah’s entry into the conflict in Syria was, clearly, one facet of a broad counter-attack agreed by the Russians and Iranians, who have slowly but effectively reinforced and reorganized Syria’s army and intelligence services in the past two years. Their behavior has been disgraceful and pitiless, but from the start their objective was clear – to save Assad rule – while the Obama administration offered no strategy at all, and compensated for its incompetence in addressing the Syrian crisis with empty rhetoric.

Many have commented on the fact that Hezbollah’s reputation is in tatters. The so-called champion of the deprived is now at the vanguard of Bashar al-Assad’s repression of his own people; the embodiment of resistance has shifted forces away from the border with Israel to help in crushing an uprising against a brutal dictator.

That’s perhaps true, but Hezbollah is not particularly concerned with its reputation, except when it affects its political power. The party’s behavior is shaped by stark power calculations, and it has often read this into political situations with some accuracy. Hezbollah feels that, ultimately, if Assad stays in office and the uprising against him is overwhelmed, this will impose a new reality that will allow the party to resist all counter-reactions. In the end, Hezbollah knows, power tends to define reputation in the Middle East much more than allegiance to what is regarded as the morally acceptable position.

But that interpretation will apply only if Hezbollah avoids being drawn into a long and debilitating campaign in Syria. The party’s tolerance threshold is high, as is its ability to maintain Lebanese Shiite loyalty. But in Syria, as in Lebanon previously, the outsider is at a disadvantage. Hezbollah should learn the lessons from its own experience. The party cannot allow Syria to become its Vietnam.

Why America's liberal hawks lost their voice over Syria

2013-06-06T10:49:00.000+03:00

Last Sunday, US Senator John McCain offered a bleak assessment of the situation in Syria. He observed that the president, Bashar Al Assad, "now has the upper hand and it's tragic while we sit by and watch". Mr McCain's sense of outrage is shared by very few others in the United States, as those willing to advocate American intervention in Syria on moral grounds have been largely silent.

Things were different when President George W Bush prepared to invade Iraq. He had the support of a group of moral interventionists who endorsed the removal of Saddam Hussein, as they had earlier backed American involvement in the Bosnia war. Most of these individuals were public intellectuals, writers and academics who had little ideological affinity with the Bush administration. Many came from a left-wing background, earning them the label liberal hawks.

Yet the silence of most of these individuals on Syria has been so noticeable that the Washington Post's Jason Horowitz wrote about the topic last week. He speculated that the liberal hawks had been spooked "by the traumatic experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and the clear reluctance of a Democratic president to get mired in the Middle East. Call them Syria's mourning doves".

Certainly, American fatigue after a decade of conflict in the broader Middle East is a major factor in shaping responses to Syria. However, moral interventionists generally base their actions on principle, and principles aren't supposed to change depending on political context. That is why there appears to be a more profound reason for the silence of the interventionists, and it probably has something to do with culture, even if few of them might readily admit to this.

Justification for American interference in Syria must be based on a narrative that appeals to the American public and politicians. The narrative in Bosnia stressed how Washington had to assist a freedom-loving people repressed by brutal Serbian forces, who had abused the human rights of defenceless Bosnian Muslims.

After the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995, President Bill Clinton escalated America's military role in the Balkans, allowing it, ultimately, to sponsor the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian conflict. This diplomatic success through armed force validated the attitudes of the moral interventionists.

Iraq was less convincing. The outcome of the war seemed too messy to fit into the neat narrative that the liberal hawks had defined before the war. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a leader of unspeakable viciousness, ruling over a long-suffering population. But what emerged from the American invasion was less a people welcoming their new-found freedom than a society falling back on the primary identities of sect or tribe as Iraq descended into chaos.

For the liberal hawks, there was little liberalism around which to rally. Armed Islamist organisations gained the upper hand. Al Qaeda found a new impetus. Iran benefited the most from the changed situation. And for a long time political violence and factionalism were the order of the day, so that many interventionists wondered whether they had not made matters worse by pushing for action in Iraq.

Given the memory of the September 11, 2001, attacks, this had a freezing effect on American moral interventionists. After all, liberty and democracy were regarded by them as necessary antidotes to the religious extremism that had led to that day. Instead, what materialised in Iraq, and is now materialising in Syria, was an Islamist upsurge accompanied by heightened sectarianism, precisely the opposite of what the interventionists had sought.

There is something else. As the one-time interventionists watch events in Syria, what they can see is that the uprising has tended to be led by a rural population, while Syria's more polished and cosmopolitan urban population has tended to be ambiguous. Indeed, the Assad regime has played on this urban-rural dichotomy to divide Syrians. Many in the secular west find it difficult to identify with rebels who shout "God is great" at every turn, and who come across as unsophisticated and frequently uncontrollable.

Syria's rebels often appear too different from Americans, unlike the Europeanised Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars, to invoke much sympathy in the United States. Their fight seems so plainly not to be America's fight that moral interventionists have little room to make a case on their behalf, especially in a country that has turned in upon itself and embraces the Obama administration's minimalism abroad.

That is not to say that there are no supporters of American intervention in Syria, or those who don't recognise the serious political implications of President Barack Obama's refusal to do much there. Vali Nasr, a former Obama administration official and the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, has been critical of the president's performance in Syria, publishing his thoughts in an excellent book, The Dispensable Nation. So too has another former Obama administration official, Anne-Marie Slaughter, who teaches at Princeton University.

Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, has been equally disparaging of Mr Obama's indifference towards the loss of life in Syria. "The moral dimension must be restored to our deliberations, the moral sting, or else Obama, for all his talk about conscience, will have presided over a terrible mutilation of American discourse: the severance of conscience from action," Mr Wieseltier wrote.

Yet individuals such as these are exceptions. Their willingness to challenge the trend of apathy in the United States is laudable, as is their worry that America will pay a price, both strategic and moral, for avoiding Syria. They also realise that an America that abandons Syria cannot be true to the values it purports to represent.

Hizbollah's foreign loyalties push Lebanon to the brink

2013-05-30T14:50:00.000+03:00

The rocket attack against a predominantly Shia district in Beirut on Sunday remains a question mark. No one has claimed responsibility - even as many interpretations have been advanced to explain what happened. The attack heightened worries that Hizbollah's participation in the Syrian conflict will destabilise Lebanon.

The most conventional explanation for the attack on Shiyah was that it was retaliation by Syrian rebels, or their allies, for Hizbollah's role in helping the regime of Bashar Al Assad to recapture the strategic area of Qusayr, just across the Lebanese border. However, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) denied it was behind the attack.

Anti-regime groups that are not affiliated with the FSA, such as Jabhat Al Nusra, have said nothing, though such an operation is one they would have probably claimed as their own. Some speculated that a small group in Lebanon, perhaps even a Palestinian group with access to the Grad rockets that were fired, may have done this. Others offered conspiracy theories, including that Hizbollah had organised the attack to rally Shia support and discredit the rebels. All agreed the main victim was civil peace in Lebanon.

Adding to the confusion was that a rocket was fired at Israel on Sunday evening. Little goes on in southern Lebanon without Hizbollah knowing about it, which is why so many saw the incident as the party's way of reaffirming, despite Qusayr, that the main enemy remained Israel. It underlined - as did Hizbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah in a speech on Saturday - that Hizbollah's engagement in Syria sought to prevent Israel and the United States from exploiting the potential downfall of the Assad regime.

Was there a link between the morning attack in Shiyah and the evening attack in Israel? It's difficult to say. But Hizbollah's agenda and foreign loyalties are pushing Lebanon to the brink, with many worrying that violence in Syria may spread to Lebanon.

Indeed, fighting in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli between Sunni and Alawite neighbourhoods has gone on for over a week, and appears to be linked to the offensive in Qusayr. The skirmishing could have been provoked in an attempt to distract Lebanese Islamist groups from reinforcing the FSA fighters in Qusayr.

Mr Nasrallah's speech heightened tension in Lebanon as he linked what was happening in Syria to Hizbollah's well-being and survival. He also laid the groundwork for the party's continued involvement in Syria. "If Syria falls into the hands of the Takfiris and the United States, the resistance will be under siege and Israel will enter Lebanon. If Syria falls, the Palestinian cause will be lost," he said.

Many Lebanese politicians, including Hizbollah allies, are unhappy with the party's escalation in Syria. It has undermined the so-called Baabda Declaration between Lebanese parties to stay out of the war in Syria. Even Russia, which has sided with Mr Al Assad, is uneasy with Hizbollah's move, as it realises the implications for Lebanon.

Hizbollah feels that it can contain the consequences, and in this it may be right. The Sunni mainstream is not preparing for war. The danger comes from smaller, more radical groups, but even these need financing, and for now the likely financiers in the Gulf do not appear to want a sectarian conflict in Lebanon. Moreover, the Lebanese army has been able to control such groups, even if one can never be too reassured.

In the longer term, Hizbollah believes Mr Al Assad will prevail. The international community has been unable to dislodge him, and the Obama administration in particular has shown that its priority is to avoid being drawn into the Syrian conflict. When pressure built to reverse this stance after the Syrian regime apparently used chemical weapons, US president Barack Obama sent his secretary of state, John Kerry, to Moscow to find a way out.

Mr Kerry and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, agreed to hold the so-called Geneva II conference on Syria, fulfilling a long-standing Russian demand for the opposition to negotiate with Mr Al Assad. This allowed Mr Obama to avoid American intervention to uphold his "red lines" against chemical weapons use, and it gave him an excuse to delay arming Syria's rebels, which some in Washington have urged.

Mr Al Assad's regime and Hizbollah read American indecisiveness as an opportunity to attack in the area of Qusayr and in the suburbs of Damascus, regaining lost territory. In that way they gained leverage and favourably prepared the context for potential negotiations with the opposition. They also sensed that if the opposition refused to go to Geneva, this would alienate the western countries.

Nor have Syrian opposition groups convinced anybody of their effectiveness. They remain divided and their stance toward Geneva has yet to be announced. If they manage the conference and its outcomes poorly, this could cost them western backing, at a time when Washington worries far more about Al Qaeda filling the Syrian vacuum than about Mr Al Assad's staying in office.

If he can gain control over Qusayr, and eventually southern Syria, Mr Al Assad would hold land from Damascus to the coast and southward towards the border with Jordan. For Hizbollah, this would push the front line further away from Lebanon, possibly calming the mood in the country and allowing the party to secure its back at home.

The real dangers to Lebanon notwithstanding, Hizbollah is as clear about the risks in its actions as anybody else is. The party does not want a Sunni-Shia war in Lebanon as this could decisively weaken it. But Mr Al Assad is a red line for Iran and Hizbollah (along with Russia), and unlike the red line of Mr Obama, it is one they mean to impose.

Aoun's highway of broken dreams

2013-05-30T14:42:00.000+03:00

So parliamentary elections will be postponed, allowing us to enjoy a further year and a half of Lebanon’s legislative confederacy of dunces. But what has provoked interest in the halls of parliament in recent days is Michel Aoun’s displeasure with extending parliament’s mandate, and how this might affect his relations with Hezbollah.

Most of the large parliamentary blocs have accepted an extension for different reasons. Hezbollah, the strongest proponent of an election delay, sees no reason for a decisive election before the situation in Syria becomes clearer. Saad Hariri, too, prefers to postpone elections, because under the several probable laws that would govern the electoral process today, he and March 14 would not win a majority. For Walid Jumblatt, any of the laws most likely to be on the table, such as a hybrid law, would undermine his lock on the Chouf and Aley. Better to wait until the broader political context changes. Meanwhile, Jumblatt still holds the balance of power in parliament.

The Lebanese Forces, after the fiasco over the Orthodox proposal, also prefer to hold off on elections in order to rebuild their relationship with Hariri and the Future Movement. Samir Geagea helped torpedo the 1960 law, which is what he sought, and knows no consensus will emerge over a new law anytime soon. Plus, postponement could thwart the aims of Geagea’s main Christian rival, Michel Aoun.

That’s why Aoun is the odd man out. After spending weeks pretending that he wanted the Orthodox proposal and opposed the 1960 law, Aoun must now pay the consequences. The reality is that he always favored the 1960 law, which allows him to benefit from friendly Shiite electorates in Jbeil, Baabda, and Jezzine. But Aoun needed to show he was sensitive to Christian displeasure with the 1960 law, and so he played the game of endorsing the now-dead Orthodox project.

Aoun finds himself in a bind. An extension means that there will be no elections, which would likely have won him a new Christian majority under the 1960 law. This would have put him in a stronger position to take over from President Michel Suleiman next year, when Suleiman’s mandate is scheduled to end. But Aoun now has to worry that an extension of parliament’s term will mean an extension of Suleiman’s term, denying Aoun the opportunity to become president.

Another question (if rather less grand) also preoccupies Aoun, namely who will succeed Jean Qahwaji as army commander. Aoun wants his son-in-law Shamel Roukoz to get the nod, and he opposes efforts by the parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, to extend Qahwaji’s term. Some have suggested that Hezbollah gave Aoun guarantees in this regard so as to secure his approval for extending parliament’s term.

But that will not make it any easier for Roukoz to be promoted. No one wants to hand Aoun such influence over the armed forces, and it is doubtful that Suleiman will welcome such an arrangement. Even Hezbollah, regardless of its alliance with Aoun, deep-down may prefer to bring in a commander of its own choosing rather than someone linked to a politician who, given his background, has the latitude to push the army in directions the party would prefer it not to go.

It is difficult to see what Aoun really gains from an extension of parliament’s mandate. The general is getting no younger and deferring electoral deadlines forces him to readjust his plans. Aoun has been a stalwart partner of Hezbollah for years, but other than help him gain large parliamentary blocs, the alliance has never permitted him to take advantage of such representation in order to fulfill his overarching ambition: becoming Lebanon’s president.

Aoun, no fool, knows this. Apparently his preferred way of dealing with his frustration is to impose himself as the Christian whom the political class cannot afford to circumvent. That is why the parliamentary elections were so important to him, and why their postponement is so damaging to his political fortunes.

Aoun has been uncomfortable with Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian conflict, though there are no signs that he will break with the party, despite suggestions to that effect from parliamentary sources cited by the Al-Hayat newspaper. What is interesting, however, is to see whether the general will seek to exploit growing Lebanese condemnation of Hezbollah’s actions in Syria to extract concessions from the party. And if so, what might these concessions be?

Ultimately, parliament’s extension saga may prove no more than another blip on Lebanon’s volatile political chart. But for Aoun it represents a fresh setback. Whenever he has felt the winds blowing his way, a political deal has intervened to foil his plans. In 2008 it was the Doha accord, which brought Suleiman to office instead of Aoun. Suleiman was set to go next year, giving Aoun a second chance, but now the political system has been frozen until 2015.

With a push from Hezbollah, Aoun may be compensated with a lucrative ministry for his son-in-law Gebran Bassil in a new government. But how pathetic that would be for a man who has long sought to become Lebanon’s head of state. Move aside as Aoun races ahead on the highway of broken dreams.

The slow suicide of Syria’s opposition

2013-05-30T14:13:00.000+03:00

We are near the stage where the Syrian opposition, thanks to an effective campaign by the Syrian regime and its allies, but also a pervasive lack of unity or direction, may lose much of the support it needs to defeat President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Nor has the opposition grasped the deepening anxiety in neighboring countries who fear being destabilized by the conflict in Syria. A car-bomb explosion in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli recently and the rocket attack against the Shiyah neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs have only reinforced this fear (even if no one has claimed responsibility for the suspicious Shiyah attack).

The killing of three Lebanese soldiers near Arsal Monday was no less worrisome. Whoever committed all these crimes must have known they would increase hostility to the cause of the Syrian rebels, whose determination to fight Assad until he leaves office guarantees tenser times ahead. If it was the Syrian opposition or its sympathizers, their reading of events was faulty; if it was the Syrian regime or its allies, then they cleverly manipulated rising popular misgivings.

Even the reaction of the Free Syrian Army to the Shiyah attack was a disaster. Initially, an FSA officer, Ammar al-Wawi, described the incident as a warning to Hezbollah. Soon thereafter, another FSA spokesman, Fahd al-Masri, rebuked Wawi and denied any FSA involvement. Wawi later changed his version, accusing Hezbollah of firing the rockets itself. And on Tuesday, the FSA threatened to retaliate against Hezbollah unless Lebanese President Michel Sleiman withdrew Hezbollah from Syria, as if Sleiman had any say in the matter.

The cacophony is even louder when it comes to preparing for the Geneva II conference on Syria scheduled for June. Last Thursday the opposition National Coalition began meetings in Istanbul to expand its membership and include Michel Kilo, a prominent opposition figure. Kilo proposed a list of 22 candidates, of whom only five were accepted. “The real, real, real problem is in the coalition,” a disgusted Kilo told the Al-Arabiya Arab satellite television station.

Meanwhile, the opposition has yet to decide whether it will be present in Geneva. A refusal to attend risks alienating the opposition’s supporters in the West. If it accepts, Geneva could prove to be its undoing, given the likely internal discord over what is agreed. Worse, there are no guarantees the National Coalition has much influence inside Syria, and Geneva may only highlight this if the groups on the ground reject political arrangements reached at the conference.

The Syrian opposition has failed to appreciate the shifting political context in which it is functioning, while the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers have. For instance there has been no planning for Geneva and the very real risks that the conference holds for the opposition, whether it participates or not.

Russia and the United States are going to Geneva with very different agendas, none of which favors Assad’s adversaries. For the Obama administration, Geneva provides an opportunity to begin a political process permitting America to evade a larger role in Syria. President Barack Obama had feared being pushed into such a role after reports came out that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against the rebels, crossing Obama’s red lines for American intervention. The president sent Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow and the accord over a conference bought Obama time to stay clear of Syria.

In other words, the Obama administration is going to Geneva largely to avoid Syria. Already, the administration has postponed discussion of arming the Syrian rebels, stating it does not want to undermine Geneva. If a political process is agreed there, the Americans will have a further excuse not to send weapons. The European states have also agreed not to supply weapons before August, to give Geneva a chance.

Russia, with a far clearer sense of what it wants in Syria, has another aim in Geneva: to consolidate Assad rule and put in motion a negotiating process that, at least temporarily, curbs the violence and divides the opposition. By helping Assad mount a successful offensive in the area around Qusair and reverse rebel gains near Damascus, the Russians have reinforced the Syrian president’s position, making it highly improbable that Geneva will seriously broach the matter of Assad’s departure from power. The Russians surely sense that Obama’s eagerness to be rid of the Syrian headache will push the U.S. to endorse a solution that avoids determining Assad’s fate.

The Syrian opposition cannot be blamed for the shameful American performance in Syria, but it can be blamed for failing to consider possible post-Geneva outcomes. Nor has it adequately addressed the very real doubts that have emerged over the participation in the Syrian uprising of the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda. The fact is that there are profound doubts that the opposition can fill the vacuum in Syria if Assad goes, which can only favor jihadist groups.

No one in the West, particularly the U.S., much cares that it was Western indecision over Syria that created an opening for the militant Islamists. As they see the opposition in disarray, one thing they do not want is a new Afghanistan in the Levant, which will destabilize Syria’s neighbors. And the neighbors are beginning to agree. Recall that associating the opposition with Al-Qaeda has long been the line of the Assad regime, which then made it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Syria’s opposition must regroup quickly, or else all will be lost. The tens of thousands of Syrians who have died at the hands of a barbaric leadership deserve better. But the chances are they will not get better.

An empty threat from John Kerry?

2013-05-24T14:44:00.000+03:00

In Jordan on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned that if the Syrian regime did not cooperate in forming a transitional government after the Geneva conference in June, the United States would consider giving military aid to the Syrian opposition.

“In the event that we can’t find that way forward, in the event that the Assad regime is unwilling to negotiate Geneva in good faith, we will also talk about our continued support, growing support for [the] opposition in order to permit them to continue to fight for the freedom of their country,” Kerry said.

The remarks probably impressed the Syrian opposition very little. They’ve heard it all before and know that their leverage in Geneva will be determined by the balance of power on the ground at the time of the conference. Weapons flows to the rebels remain limited, in part because the Obama administration does not want to compromise Geneva’s success. Whatever its difficulties in Qusayr, Bashar al-Assad’s regime has made military gains in recent weeks with the help of Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, who all view Geneva as an opportunity to transform those gains into political capital favoring Assad.

Diplomacy is frequently about using military advances to bolster a political agenda. President Barack Obama does not want to involve the United States in Syria’s war. That’s understandable, especially as American forces would in no way help resolve the Syrian crisis. However, he has also refused to use military means, including arming the rebels to achieve his diplomatic aims, which is incomprehensible.

Whereas the Americans appear to view Geneva as a confidence-building forum demanding compromise, the Russians and Iranians regard it as a means of consolidating Assad’s position - as uncompromising an attitude as one can imagine. That is one reason why the battle over Qusayr is so important to the Syrian president, and why we have seen an escalation in Tripoli. The combat between Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tebbaneh is a distraction to occupy Lebanese Salafists who might otherwise have gone to Qusayr and delayed a regime victory there.

There has been much talk that Geneva will fail, that Qusayr makes a conference improbable, and so on. In fact, Geneva is likely to become a milestone in the Syria conflict, because it will define the political climate that comes afterward. Unlike the Friends of Syria meetings that have become echo chambers, Geneva will bring Syrian and international antagonists together for the first time.

Moreover, the United States wants Geneva. This means that Russia can extract concessions from an Obama administration keen to find a mechanism allowing it to avoid a major commitment in Syria.

In that context, Kerry’s remarks pose a question: Is Obama really willing to ratchet up military aid to the Syrian rebels if Geneva goes nowhere? In fact, he may consider any political process that emerges from the conference as another excuse to put off arming the rebels. Much like the president’s “red line” on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Kerry’s warning may be as elusive as it is indeterminate.

And here we can ask another question. Does Kerry have the pull in the White House necessary to impose a Syria policy with which the president and his closest advisors are uncomfortable? Recall that he was not Obama’s first choice for the secretary of state post, suggesting that his ability to sway the president on Syria is limited.

All of this is not good news for the Syrian opposition, which itself has not created a credible structure to lead the fight against Bashar al-Assad. This shortcoming cannot be blamed on the United States, even if the administration could have done far more to impose unity in the ranks rather than allowing countries such as Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others to back contending opposition factions.

Today, it is unclear what the Obama administration wants from Geneva. Officially, it seeks a transitional government that would eventually ease Assad out of office. But unless Russia is on board (and it isn’t) that won’t happen. This leaves a second American priority, namely to avoid being drawn into the Syrian quagmire.

This second priority cripples the administration’s ability to push for the first. In order for Geneva not to founder, Obama would probably accept a political arrangement that buys him time, regardless of whether this harms the Syrian opposition. The U.S. is going to Geneva to keep away from Syria, while Russia is going to defend an ally.

Assad has already made it clear that he has no intention of stepping down, and Geneva will almost certainly not address the issue head-on because of Syrian and Russian opposition. At best the conference may create a political process that all sides can interpret as they wish: Washington will be able to say that the ultimate outcome is Assad’s departure, while Russia and Assad will be able to say that it is not. The subsequent phase will be shaped by that ambiguity as Assad and his enemies pursue efforts to press for the endgame they desire.

George Kennan once lamented the American tendency to make statements of diplomatic policy that they had neither the means nor the intention of implementing. The Obama administration does not have the will to get rid of Bashar al-Assad, notwithstanding Kerry’s remarks to the contrary. Geneva will only confirm this reluctance, because Washington won’t insist on unseating Assad if this undermines a political process that is agreed in Geneva. And when the magic word “process” is deployed in Washington, all else grinds to a halt.

Hizbollah cannot afford to stay long in Syria's quagmire

2013-05-23T14:50:00.000+03:00

Hizbollah is being drawn into the Syrian quagmire. as revealed by this week's reports of party members being killed fighting in the strategic Syrian town of Qusair.

Victory in Qusair is vital for the Syrian regime, as it would clear a corridor between Damascus and the coast, the stronghold of the Alawite community.

Much has been said of how Hizbollah's operations in Syria could destabilise sectarian relations in Lebanon. That worry is justified, and Hizbollah is caught between two imperatives: to bolster the regime of Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian president, or even help turn the tide of war in his favour; and to ensure that Lebanon remains calm, so that the party is not drawn into a debilitating domestic war against Sunnis.

Hizbollah believes it can reconcile these two objectives, and that ultimately the Lebanese situation is containable with the collaboration of the Lebanese army. However, the dangers are many.

In the short term, Hizbollah will want to ensure that the Qusair battle does not drag on. The party has been vital in the Syrian regime's effort to retake the area, reinforcing Mr Al Assad's ability to defend Damascus, transport weapons and men to and from the coast, and eventually perhaps even recapture lost territory in the north and north-east.

This strategy has benefited from Iranian and Russian assistance, intelligence and weapons. The prospect that Moscow will abandon Mr Al Assad in favour of a diplomatic solution today seems ludicrous. And yet this seems to be the view in Washington. The US is still focusing on the international peace conference in Geneva, and has delayed any talk of arming the Syrian rebels to prepare for the meeting.

The Russians and Iranians have a very different reading of the diplomatic track. They refuse to discuss Mr Al Assad's departure, and the offensive in Qusair suggests that they intend to help the regime reassert its military superiority before any political initiative is tabled. If Qusair falls to Mr Al Assad, then a conference would effectively serve to transform the military advances into political gains.

In this regard, Hizbollah is Iran's lever in Syria with the aim of avoiding an Assad defeat but also of preventing any diplomatic arrangement that might lead to the president's exit. The Russians have influence over Mr Al Assad, but were they to consider sacrificing him, he could always turn to Iran and Hizbollah to compensate. That may explain why Russia has supported him so completely.

It is still unclear how far Hizbollah will go on behalf of Mr Al Assad. Will it fight in areas outside Homs province and Damascus, where it is deployed today? Ideally, the party would prefer not to be caught up in an open-ended conflict - to limit its casualties, reduce sectarian pressures at home, and refocus on its paramount enemy, Israel.

This may be doable, if Qusair surrenders soon. While parts of the town have been recaptured, the rebels are putting up a ferocious fight in others. It's difficult to imagine anything other than a regime victory, since Qusair is virtually surrounded. Iran and Hizbollah have trained militias to hold the ground if they need to withdraw forces quickly back to Lebanon. The time frame and aftermath of a regime victory will define how Hizbollah's enemies react.

The Israelis are watching closely what happens in Qusair. The consolidation of a passage between the coast and Damascus would also provide geographic continuity between Alawite areas and predominantly Shia areas in Lebanon's northern Beqaa Valley, near Qusair. This could facilitate the transfer of weaponry from the regime to Hizbollah, especially in the event of a war between the party and Israel. Israel has already struck targets in Syria three times to prevent what it says were weapons shipments to Hizbollah.

More broadly, the takeover of Qusair may only harden the geographical divisions in Syria, with the regime controlling the coast, Damascus, and areas in between, while the rebels hold the rest of the country. Iran's sway on the ground could provoke the Israelis, since it means that Hizbollah has a wider area in which to function than previously. Particularly in Syria where there are no UN forces to supervise matters, Hizbollah could stockpile and transfer weapons, train combatants, and work around any eventual Israeli siege of Lebanon.

Israel can hinder this scenario, but its ability to fundamentally block it is limited. While Mr Al Assad has had close ties to Tehran for some time, he managed to maintain independence from Iran, generally keeping Syria out of fighting between Israel and Hizbollah. This will change if the Syrian leader owes his political survival to Iran. The cost could be Syria's greater integration into an Iranian-dominated security nexus in the two Arab states of the Levant.

There are fears that the loss of Qusair could provoke a violent Sunni backlash in Lebanon. Hizbollah reportedly expects car bombs to target Shia areas. The northern city of Tripoli, where Sunnis have fought Alawites sporadically for years, saw at least 10 deaths in sectarian fighting yesterday. There is speculation that Sunni gunmen may try to storm the mainly Alawite quarter, Jabal Mohsen.

To make matters worse, Lebanon is entering a political vacuum. The parliamentary elections planned for this summer are unlikely to take place, given the absence of an agreement over a new election law.

The prime minister-elect, Tammam Salam, appears far from forming a new government, owing to conflicting political demands and uncertainty over the situation in Syria.

Lebanon is used to politically tense summers, but the coming months could be the most treacherous for some time, as the country continues to suffer from the struggle next door. If Hizbollah really wants to avoid the worst, it will have to walk a tightrope successfully.

March 14 drifts away from the state

2013-05-23T14:14:00.000+03:00

From the start of the debate over a new election law months ago, Hezbollah had a strategic objective, which it defined as a consequence of the fighting in Syria. The party’s overriding aim in the event of the decisive erosion or collapse of President Bashar Assad’s regime was to ensure that any law would guarantee Hezbollah and its allies a majority in parliament, or at least deny one to March 14.

Unfortunately, the reaction of disparate forces in March 14 was not to focus on what Hezbollah sought to achieve, but to satisfy their own parochial interests, accelerating the breakup of the opposition. Hence, the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb, who realized that the 1960 law would again win them only small parliamentary blocs, supported an Orthodox proposal that would have expanded their representation in parliament, but also have likely ensured that March 8 won a majority.

Geagea has since reversed himself on the Orthodox proposal. That’s commendable, for the law would not only have been bad for Lebanon’s national unity (with all the caveats in that idea), but also for Christians, who would have seen their divisions institutionalized.

Geagea’s about-face was justified by the fact that the Orthodox proposal could not have passed in parliament. That’s perhaps true, but the law he ended up supporting, namely a hybrid law, had very little chance of being approved either. And the systematic undermining of the 1960 law by most Christian politicians only ensured that no election law would ever apply. This leaves Lebanon on the threshold of a prolonged political vacuum, without a new parliament and with Tammam Salam seemingly unable to form a government.

This void at the top may have a serious impact on the armed forces, many of whose senior officers, including the commander, Jean Kahwagi, have either retired or are slated to retire this year. Without an effective government in place, replacing these officers will be delayed, at a time of great political tension. All those who rejected the 1960 law outright, when they could have said it would apply in the absence of any agreed alternative, have left Lebanon dangling.

The Lebanese Forces have reacted with anger against those making this claim. Their response has been to defend the need to ameliorate Christian representativeness. No one is suggesting that this is not important (even if it became clear that the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb were preoccupied mainly with their own representativeness), but they should have looked at the bigger picture, the same picture that Hezbollah, for our misfortune and similarly opposed to the 1960 law, never abandoned.

That picture is the control of the Lebanese state, its government, president, parliament, the armed forces and security agencies. Today March 14 is no longer advancing on that front. Instead, its main Sunni component, the Future Movement, has seen its ties with the Lebanese Forces deteriorate thanks to disagreement over the Orthodox proposal. One can fault Geagea, but it’s equally true that Future failed to adequately gauge Christian dissatisfaction, which would have allowed March 14 to devise a consensual approach to the election law.

The loss of momentum in March 14 began some time ago, with the defection of Walid Jumblatt the first and most severe of its setbacks. The absence of Saad Hariri, whatever its cause, has little helped the situation. And the discord generated by the election law has completed the transformation of the coalition emerging from the 2005 emancipation movement into a shadow of its former self.

This steady decline was most powerfully reflected in the elections at the Order of Physicians last weekend, While one should not go too far in reading March 8-March 14 dynamics into the process, since other factors were at play, the reality is that the outcome nevertheless confirmed in the mind of the public how weak March 14 had become.

This would not really matter if Lebanon’s identity and future were not at stake. March 14 once set itself up as a defender of the state. That mantra disappeared during the mandate of Najib Mikati, when the prime minister became a favorite target of March 14. Perhaps this was explicable, in that March 14 could not applaud a state dominated by Hezbollah and its allies. But in the process confidence in the state itself suffered, and March 14 lost its bearings and its cohesiveness.

The conflict in Syria further complicated the situation for March 14. The revolt against the Assad regime unleashed political forces that from the beginning threatened to engulf Lebanon. Hezbollah’s direct participation in the fighting took these risks to a higher level. The imperative for March 14 in this context was to help secure the stability of the state and do what it could to prevent Lebanese society from going down the path to civil war. That is not to say that the coalition should stay silent about Hezbollah’s actions, but rather that it should keep its eye on safeguarding peace in a state that March 14 intends (or must intend) to take over again one day.

This is impossible, some will respond, because of Hezbollah’s operations in Syria. No one can justify the party’s participation in the Assad regime’s repression, but did we ever expect it to behave otherwise? The Lebanese can wish the Syrian revolution the very best, but not adopt measures to endanger civil peace at home. And if Hezbollah ignores the impact on civil peace, then March 14 must exploit its shortcoming to win back levers in the state, without falling into the trap of sectarian strife. March 14 has no convincing project other than the state. It should not surrender it to Hezbollah.

Viable Arab democracies still possible despite violence

2013-05-21T12:48:00.001+03:00

In his 2009 book No Enchanted Palace, the historian Mark Mazower examines the ideological origins of the United Nations. He argues that far from being an idealistic innovation, the UN was initially seen by many of its leading supporters as a body that could strengthen great power rule internationally.

This also reflected a world view with relevance today for the Arab world as it goes through considerable instability.

For Mazower, the UN was very much an updated version of the League of Nations. And in this context there was little opposition initially to the notion that some states were superior to others, and that the more advanced states were entitled to lead less advanced states until they reached a higher level of political development.

After the First World War, this principle was embodied in the mandates system. In the Middle East, it allowed European powers to take control of former Ottoman territories. This was imperialism under another name, even if the League of Nations was allowed, in theory at least, to supervise how the mandates were governed.

Today such an approach arouses indignation. Concepts of superior and inferior states cannot be readily expressed in a world wedded to equality, and the UN itself, between the 1950s and 1970s, became an institution of which many of its member states had overthrown European imperialism. And yet there is still a widespread view, when discussing democracy, that many societies do not have what it takes to sustain democratic orders similar to those in the West.

Take the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, who once wrote that the end of the Cold War had brought an ideological "end of history", in which liberal democracy had won in the struggle of ideas. Mr Fukuyama revised his views in a book published in 2006: America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy. In the book, he argued that democracy was not a "default regime" to which societies reverted when dictators were removed. On the Middle East, he affirmed that Arab societies were both culturally and institutionally unprepared for democracy.

This view reflected Mr Fukuyama's unease with the war in Iraq. If a true democracy was not forthcoming in Iraq, then why go to war in defence of democracy?

Mr Fukuyama's scepticism was echoed by others. Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to former president George H W Bush, made a similar statement in a 2004 interview: "It's not that I don't believe Iraq is capable of democracy. But the notion that within every human being beats this primeval instinct for democracy has not ever been demonstrated to me." Implicit in his remarks was that those George W Bush would be liberating in Iraq would not necessarily turn into model democrats.

Both Mr Fukuyama and Mr Scowcroft are not racists, and their arguments were hardly designed to justify an American mandate over Iraq. Quite the contrary. In looking at what is happening in many Arab societies today, from Egypt to Tunisia, and from Libya to Syria, it's easy to share their doubts. However, views like theirs are understood not very differently from those of individuals who believe that certain societies must dominate the world by virtue of their ability to manage stable democratic orders.

It is unavoidable, given the chaos that has gripped the Middle East and North Africa since December 2010, to wonder why it is that Arab societies seem incapable of navigating smooth transitions toward open, representative orders. But then, regardless whether it has become a reality, democracy is an ideal and in that sense the Arab impulse for emancipation has been remarkable. In Egypt, Libya and above all Syria, the number of people who have died supporting the overthrow of a dictator has reached levels unheard of in the West.

Arab societies may not be culturally or institutionally apt for democracy, to borrow from Mr Fukuyama, but several of them have been willing to fight undemocratic regimes they knew would not respond with pity or humanity. Fighting tyranny does not on its own guarantee democracy, some would argue, and it may heighten the contradictions making democracy less likely.

There is no doubt that the grinding interplay between state and society, between leaders and their people, is what helps open governing institutions up to the popular will. That is what we are witnessing in Egypt today, although whether this is destined to produce more democracy is questionable if the resulting instability brings back military rule. And in Iraq, the facade of democratic institutions may collapse if the autocratic methods of the prime minister, Nouri Al Maliki, precipitate a sectarian war.

Historically, political power in the Arab world has been anchored in top-down systems, with the ruler being the source of most authority. This was consolidated by a desire in many societies for stability, favouring autocrats who imposed it. So, the first step towards more representative orders is greater pluralism and a delegitimisation of the need to resort to violence, the ultimate weapon of autocrats.

Pluralistic orders are more difficult to hijack, even if they are not necessarily democratic. They create spaces independent of the state that can resist the overreach of a state's security organs. In the absence of fully functioning democratic institutions, expanding pluralism, particularly through civil society, is the best alternative. A more democratic system can slowly emerge from spaces of autonomy.

The idea that societies are superior or inferior to each other tells us little. But not all societies manage democratic institutions in the same way. There is no golden path to democracy, even if anchoring political and social pluralism provides one path. And that is perhaps what Arab societies should now focus on doing, as they look for ways out of the dilemmas created by the sudden onrush of freedom.

Washington blunders yet again in Syria

2013-05-21T12:41:00.001+03:00

It is not reassuring that we know next to nothing about the details of the international conference on Syria that has been endorsed by the United States and Russia. It is even more worrisome that both countries view the conference in very different ways.

For the Obama administration, a conference would help initiate negotiations between the Syrian opposition and the regime, preferably leading to a transition away from Syrian President Bashar Assad. It could also lower the tension in Syria at a moment when the conflict there is threatening to engulf neighboring countries. And it would create an opening to address the fate of hundreds of thousands Syrian refugees in more practical ways.

Implicitly, talks would also help marginalize the most radical groups opposing Assad, by giving mainstream opposition groups room to shape a settlement. Given that many Syrians are likely to welcome measures to reduce the violence, so-called moderates would gain the upper hand, while the Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front, which opposes negotiations, would find itself increasingly isolated.

For Russia, a conference must allow Assad to gain the upper hand in Syria. From the start the Russians have sought talks between the Syrian president and opposition forces amenable to a dialogue with him. This failed, but it is still the belief in Moscow that once any talks begin, they would allow Assad to bargain from a position of strength. Even in the doubtful event that talks were to lead to his exit, the reasoning is that his system would remain in place, and with it many of those with whom Russia has collaborated in Syria.

Moreover, the Russians feel this would vindicate their decision to arm Assad and provide him with intelligence assistance and military advice. Therefore a conference would consolidate his army’s recent advances, even as the Obama administration has decided to suspend plans to arm the Syrian rebels, to give the conference a chance. This decision has encouraged the two European countries most insistent about suspending the arms embargo on Syria, France and the United Kingdom, to become more hesitant about going ahead with that plan.

The poor American preparation for a conference has been criticized. In a recent article for the Foreign Policy website, Michael Weiss of the Institute of Modern Russia noted that the conference would be based on the Geneva Protocol of June 2012. This calls for a “Syrian-led political process leading to a transition that meets the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people.” The protocol demands an end to armed violence by both sides and the release of political prisoners. It allows journalists greater freedom of movement throughout Syria. And it seeks the “consolidation of full calm and stability.”

However, Weiss adds, “since this would-be road map was cobbled together almost a year ago, more than 50,000 Syrians have died in the Assad regime’s desperate attempt to crush the uprising.” In other words, a return to Geneva takes into consideration neither the gains made by the opposition nor the crimes of the Syrian leadership.

The Americans have locked themselves into a situation where the pursuit of their stated objectives in Syria seriously risks undermining the interests of their allies, while Russia is under no obligation to surrender anything, and will continue to supply arms to the Syrian government. Nor are Iran and Hezbollah a part of the process (and the U.S. does not want them to be), so Hezbollah can continue attacking rebel-held areas in and around Homs, which will only strengthen the Russians’ hand.

Of course, the Syrian opposition can always say no to an international conference. But such a rejection would alienate the U.S. at a time when the military momentum appears to favor Assad’s forces. And while the Obama administration does not want to push the Syrian opposition more firmly into the hands of radical Islamist groups, it probably feels that such groups could be contained if a consensus to resolve the Syrian crisis peacefully is reached at a conference.

It is equally unclear how the U.S. plans to bring about Assad’s departure, a position Secretary of State John Kerry reaffirmed in Rome following his visit to Russia. After all, it is Assad who will attend or be represented at any international gathering, which will bestow on him undeniable legitimacy, backed by Moscow. To expect him to then agree to a political process that may ultimately lead to his ouster, in response to the demands of a Syrian opposition that currently finds itself on the defensive, is downright laughable.

The Obama administration’s mistake has been to suspend discussion of arming the rebels, when it should have done precisely the contrary: bolster the opposition militarily so that it would come to a conference in an advantageous position. But for the Americans, diplomatic success is all about mood and mutual confidence, and so goodwill gestures are necessary, even when they happen to be self-defeating. How odd for an administration that embraces political realism.

The Russians in turn, have every intention of sending Assad to a conference well positioned to resist all efforts to make him step down. Indeed, the Syrian president will likely impose many conditions before agreeing to be present at a meeting that, he and the Russians know, the U.S. is keen to see succeed, since it would allow Barack Obama to resist mounting calls for greater involvement in Syria.

Peace in Syria is desirable, but not at any price. American miscalculations will further damage the Syrian opposition and give Assad the means to use negotiations to impose his will on his depleted rivals and remain in office. Neither Russia nor Iran will challenge this. And with a short-sighted, risk-averse, amoral administration in Washington, they know they can get their way.

It’s vacuum time, again

2013-05-17T13:08:00.000+03:00

Rejoice, the Orthodox proposal has now been declared dead. But the question, now that an alternative hybrid election proposal has also been withdrawn, is what comes next, amid signs that Lebanon may be entering a prolonged political vacuum?

The maneuvers and insincerity surrounding the Orthodox proposal were dizzying. Samir Geagea drove the final nail into the coffin of the scheme by declaring that it had no chance of being passed, and backing the hybrid proposal that blended a winner take all system with proportional representation. Geagea did the right thing in abandoning a law that would have been a disaster for his Maronite community, for Christians in general, and for the March 14 coalition.

The greatest anomaly was Michel Aoun. He is now attacking the Lebanese Forces for having dumped the Orthodox proposal. In reality, Aoun was trapped by his opposition to the 1960 law, because, tactically, he felt this would win him more popularity in the Christian community. What he wouldn’t say is that the 1960 law was the best thing that ever happened to him. It ensured that pro-Aoun Shiite electorates in Baabda and Jbeil, and even Kisirwan and the Metn in very tight races, would turn the tide the Aounists’ way.

This reality is what gave the general such large majorities in the last two elections, even though at the popular level the Aounists managed to lose Christian votes in relative terms. If anything explained Geagea’s rejection of the 1960 law, it was the fact that it twice gave Shiite electorates the deciding vote in Christian areas.

Now Aoun has accused the Lebanese Forces of not being serious about the Orthodox proposal (when they were), which means that he finds himself defending a project that would have lost him many seats in parliament. For the Orthodox proposal, whatever its many shortcomings, would have weakened Aoun significantly.

Under the Orthodox proposal the general would have won seats in proportion to his appeal among his coreligionists. And since the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb, as well as other Christians opposed to Aoun, make up a sizable number of Christians, perhaps even a majority, there is no way that Aoun could have held on to the same bloc of seats that he had won under the 1960 law.

Most interesting in this entire episode was how the Lebanese Forces kept lines open to the speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri. It was Berri who came up with the idea of a hybrid law as a compromise when the Orthodox proposal proved so divisive. He had initially urged March 14 to present its own preferred project which he could put to discussion before parliament against the Orthodox proposal. For weeks March 14 failed to come up with one, until Geagea agreed to drop the Orthodox proposal and re-enter the March 14 fold. Precisely what he was offered for this reversal is not yet clear.

Hezbollah supports Aoun on the Orthodox plan, but in reality its paramount aim is to deny March 14 a parliamentary majority. Now that the Future Movement has rejected the hybrid proposal (implicitly because it would bring in a March 8 majority), parliament will see its mandate extended, freezing the situation that we have today. In other words, Walid Jumblatt will continue to hold the balance between March 8 and March 14, depending on the issue.

The real concern underlining the election law was who would control the Lebanese state in the event of the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. This was Hezbollah’s preoccupation, and it still is. The party cares little about the intricacies of election laws for as long as they achieve two objectives: ensure that Hezbollah maintains a headlock on the Shiite community; and prevent the party’s opponents from taking over the government, parliament, and presidency.

That is why Hezbollah’s focus today is on the government. Tammam Salam has struggled to cobble a cabinet together, and Hezbollah has rejected his idea of an 8-8-8 configuration of ministers (split equally between March 8, March 14, and centrists). “How can 45 percent of Lebanon’s parliamentarians who are from our coalition be represented by just one-third of ministers?” declared Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, on Wednesday.

One would be tempted to answer that there is no constitutional stipulation that a government must reflect the weight of seats in parliament, but Qassem’s reaction shows that Salam’s headaches are far from over. With parliamentary elections unlikely to take place any time soon, suddenly the identity of Salam’s government – namely one that is in for the long haul, and that must embody national unity – has been imposed by political circumstances. And this is precisely the kind of government Hezbollah that has been calling for.

Everyone, it seems, has an interest in postponing elections, Hezbollah above all. With the situation in Syria having the potential to shift the party’s way thanks to its intervention in the area of Qusayr, the party prefers to wait and see if Bashar al-Assad regains the upper hand before allowing decisive elections. This would give it greater leverage to impose the election law it favors and shape the post-election climate.

Everything today in Lebanon is about Syria. And until outcomes are more certain there, the Lebanese will float aimlessly, without an election, and possibly without a government.

FATCA finally comes home

2013-05-10T13:13:00.000+03:00

Americans living abroad will be watching to see what happens now that Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has introduced a bill to repeal provisions of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

FATCA has released shock waves among Americans overseas, because it compels foreign financial institutions to report on their accounts to the US Internal Revenue Service. The IRS will thus be able to check their private accounts against what they report on their tax returns. Worse, it gives the US government an eye into the personal affairs of these Americans, allowing it to see what sums have entered or left their accounts, to and from whom, and when this occurred.

This is a level of interference that Paul, who represents the libertarian wing of the Republican Party and may be a presidential contender in 2016, has found intolerable, understandably so. In a press release the senator spelled out his rationale: “FATCA infringes upon basic constitutional rights, for under FATCA, private data of anyone considered a ‘U.S. Person’ would have details of their financial assets provided to the IRS without a warrant requirement, suspicious activity report (SAR), or any allegation of wrongdoing at all.”

Paul has also pointed to other aspects of FATCA worthy of contestation. The United States has ignored the sovereignty of states by imposing costly reporting requirements on foreign financial institutions. That’s because non-compliance with FATCA will entitle the American government to withhold 30 percent on all transactions by these financial institution conducted in the US.

FATCA does something even more objectionable. In many countries its implementation would lead financial institutions to break domestic laws barring the reporting of bank information to third parties or foreign governments. In other words financial institutions are asked to contravene domestic legislation in order to comply with the diktat of a foreign entity, the IRS. This absurd situation has pushed the US Treasury Department to negotiate inter-governmental agreements, or IGAs, with foreign countries to override such legal barriers.

The core of the IGAs is reciprocity: The United States promises to give foreign states information on their nationals with accounts in US financial institutions in exchange for their implementation of FATCA. While the US is virtually alone in taxing its citizens on their worldwide income, many countries are nevertheless interested in knowing what their citizens hold in accounts overseas, for the day when they decide to return home and re-enter the tax system.

It is at this stage that FATCA, which until then was under the radar of American political consideration, emerged as a potent issue. American banks, realizing they too would be saddled with costly reporting requirements to IGA partners, in other words to dozens of foreign governments, went to court. Both the Texas Bankers Association and the Florida Bankers Association filed a federal lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the IRS saying they would lose billions of dollars from the measure, and that the regulations imposed on them were improper.

The negative constitutional implications of imposed reciprocity were echoed by Paul. “[T]he Treasury Department, without the consent and authority of Congress, will force U.S. financial institutions to provide the bank account information of private customers to foreign nations,” his press release read.

Once FATCA was an American concern it became more vulnerable, even if the conventional wisdom is that that repeal will fail because Congress is too divided. There are several barriers before a bill can become law. Paul’s proposal is long overdue, but it will quickly be redefined as one to protect tax evaders, which will muddle party considerations. The IRS is a powerful actor in Washington. And at a time when President Barack Obama is keen to secure new revenues for an economy reviving only slowly, few Democrats (and perhaps even some Republicans) will want to side with Paul, especially if Obama is likely to veto the decision.

But legislative battles can also awaken diverse interests, and this is what Paul is betting on. The US banking sector, which doesn’t like FATCA’s implications, is influential in Congress. More generally, the United States will lose money if foreigners, who don’t want their finances revealed back home, start closing accounts and taking their money elsewhere.

The Credit Union National Association, which represents a majority of American credit unions, has also backed Paul’s bill. Like the banks, it fears that the IGAs will impose high costs on credit unions and undermine the privacy of their members.

As for businesses, they have been ambiguous about FATCA. To the displeasure of multinational corporations, Paul has held up Senate approval of several tax treaties, on the same grounds that he has contested FATCA. Corporations like predictable business environments and Paul’s resistance has prevented this. However, Americans in many countries have been unable to open bank accounts, because banks do not want the headache of reporting back to the IRS. This has created difficulties for American employees of American companies operating abroad. So while businesses prefer not to upset the IRS, if Paul’s repeal effort gains momentum, they may support it.

All this comes at a fluid time when there has been discussion of rewriting the US tax code and public unease with efforts to expand the government’s powers of surveillance. To Paul’s credit, his hostility to FATCA is primarily grounded in his concern for privacy. That is, indeed, what is most shocking in the legislation, which asks foreign institutions to gather data on Americans without oversight or security guarantees, when most Americans at home would reject such monitoring.

Rand Paul has suddenly made FATCA an internal American affair. He may succeed in repealing the legislation, or he may not, but Americans abroad finally see that someone is speaking on their behalf. What a shame that their government has failed to do so.

Culture clashes can be moveable beasts

2013-05-09T12:40:00.000+03:00

It is a fact that the notion of a clash of civilizations, first popularized by the American academic Samuel Huntington, is more relevant than ever in the minds of many people. Especially when it concerns Muslim-Western relations, there is a view that Muslim and Western values are incompatible. And yet Huntington’s argument that after the Cold War conflict would be defined not by ideology or economics, but by cultural differences, was prophetic as culture has become the principle basis for differentiation, even if it is often viewed in far too static a way.

The reaction to Huntington’s conclusion was generally one of unease. If what he said was true, then the future of the world could be very bleak indeed. Cultural differences would be regarded as sinister rather than as foundations of invigorating diversity. For many, Huntington seemed to be looking at the glass half empty, when the very concept of global interaction, and globalization in general, imposed a far more heartening reading of the situation.

Both sides had a point. Huntington was prescient for realizing that the causes of conflict would shift away from ideological antagonism (though the argument with respect to economics was less persuasive), even if they remained firmly in the realm of ideas. However it is also true that, in his rendering, global relations seemed to reflect an apocalyptic vision – that of perennial discord and enmity.

There is nothing wrong with discussing the disparities between Western and Muslim values, but to lend to the discussion unchangeable qualities on both sides is to miss the adaptable nature of culture and the ability of humans to modify cultural reactions in changing environments.

If one wants to question Huntington’s paradigm, it is in the sphere of perceptions where that has to be done. For many people in the West, the Arab uprisings since 2011 have been a case in point. These people have come to believe that what began as a yearning for democracy and freedom has ended up favoring Islamist groups that are neither particularly democratic nor tolerant of freedom, and who have usually sought restrictive legislation against women, a substantial portion of their populations.

But the reality lies in the nuances. For example, in Egypt and Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda have taken over major state institutions. While they have allowed behavior unheard of under the old regimes, they have also become increasingly contested as they have retained powers allowing them to restrict certain freedoms, such as freedom of expression, while riding roughshod over representative bodies.

Acknowledging the complex undercurrents of the Arab revolts is necessary in order to grasp what is going on. The notion that there is something irreconcilable between the aspirations of Arab societies and those of Western societies is simplistic, and often wrong, just as it is equally naïve to expect Arab societies in ebullition will wholeheartedly embrace Western values, such as secularism, the primacy of the individual at the expense of the group, and so on.

To demand such an embrace, no less than declaring it impossible, is to believe that culture talks in absolutes.

In the last 12 years since the 9/11 attacks, familiarity has led to a better Western understanding of the complexities in the Muslim world, while far-reaching changes in the Muslim world have undermined a black and white view of the region in the West. When Syrians revolted two years ago, they had no hesitation in asking for Western help, just as the overthrow of pro-Western autocrats was regarded favorably in the United States and Europe.

A Syrian or Egyptian still regards freedom much as a Frenchman or an American does, even if the preferred social contract each will advocate to protect those freedoms differs. Perhaps some will want more secularism, others more religion. But if the preferred social contract ends up undermining those same freedoms, then the chances are that new rebellions will occur at some stage.

Huntington was correct in looking toward culture as the boundary between Western and Eastern societies. But boundaries are ever-changing and values cross over between cultures by osmosis. To assume cultures are autarkic and rigid is as erroneous as to assume that cultural distinctions are invariably resolvable. The truth about culture lies in the middle; values are transposable, which is why identity is most enthralling when they are tethered the least.

Bad chemistry in Washington

2013-04-26T13:14:00.000+03:00

Admire the Obama administration for its doggedness in redefining crises overseas to ensure that the United States does not get involved. The latest example is the American admission that chemical weapons were used last March in Syria, near Aleppo as well as in Homs and Damascus, most probably by the Syrian army.

The disclosure came with caveats allowing Washington to downplay any response. In a letter to Senator Carl Levin, the White House noted that U.S. intelligence agencies had “assess[ed] with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.”

This came after Israeli officials earlier this week had reached a similar conclusion. Itai Brun, who heads the research division of Israel’s army intelligence service, declared, “To the best of our professional understanding, the [Syrian] regime used lethal chemical weapons against gunmen in a series of incidents in recent months.”

Another Israeli general echoed that view, suggesting that a “sarin-like” chemical had been employed, probably on five occasions.

Earlier, there were reports that the United Kingdom and France informed the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, last March that soil samples and interviews with victims indicated that chemical weapons had indeed been used in Syria.

Confirming all this is important, because President Barack Obama has said that the use of such weapons would be a “game changer” and could prompt American intervention in Syria. Yet even after the Levin letter, U.S. officials continued to affirm that they needed to corroborate the information. And reference to the “small scale” use of chemical weapons seemed a craven attempt by the administration to highlight the purportedly limited nature of the crime.

Such dissembling was already evident when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel refused to cede ground on the matter after the Israeli generals had made their views public. “Suspicions are one thing,” Hagel told journalists. “Evidence is another.” Secretary of State John Kerry, in Brussels for NATO meetings on Syria this week, also waffled, noting that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “was not in a position to confirm” what his generals had said.

Obama is understandably reluctant to be drawn into a war that is increasingly vicious and complicated. But the president is the one who had made chemical weapons use his red line, perhaps hoping that Russia would prevent Bashar al-Assad’s regime from resorting to such weapons on the battlefield. If so, that showed a poor reading of the relationship between Assad and Moscow.

Assad has long had the Russians’ number. He knows they must look the other way on his transgressions, because their strategy is to keep him in office whatever the cost; or, at the most, use his negotiated departure as leverage to safeguard their Syrian interests and allies. Since Assad has given no indication that he intends to step down, the Russians have bolstered his regime whatever he does, and have played a significant role in organizing its military operations.

The repeated use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces was, in part, a way of testing the American reaction. And what they’ve seen must be greatly reassuring: an administration looking for shelter in the fine print, not at all intent on imposing its prohibitions.

It is interesting that Obama’s warnings against the use of weapons of mass destruction, when he made them, were offered less out of solidarity with the Syrian people than to reassure Israel. Washington’s concern with Israel explains Obama’s refusal to arm the foes of the Assad regime, fearing that Israel might become their next target.

Syrian officials have insisted that it was the rebels who used chemical weapons, pointing to the fact that Syrian troops were exposed to chemicals in the village of Khan al-Asal, near Aleppo, on March 19. Intelligence officials in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, dismiss this, believing the soldiers were affected by weapons fired from their own side. The UN has tried to send a team to Syria to investigate the incident, but the Syria government has refused to allow them access to sites other than Khan al-Asal.

Today, Obama’s credibility is on the line, and the dependability of the United States’ commitment to curtailing the employment of weapons of mass destruction. That the Obama administration wants to be careful in reaching a conclusion is defensible, but the impression today is not that it is after the truth in Syria, but that it is only looking for ways to avoid the consequences of the truth.

Obama still has no cohesive Syrian policy. American troops on the ground is a bad idea, but there are options short of that that the president has made no effort to advance. Russia will soon be on the defensive, backing a man who uses weapons of mass destruction against his own population. This can be exploited diplomatically, and if Obama wants to avoid a risky American military commitment, he will have to push Moscow hard. But for now, the president awaits a UN evaluation, which buys him time to review his options.

Whatever course Obama decides, the worst thing the administration can do is to continue to show that it is looking for an exit from its stated policy. If Obama never had any intention of upholding his line in the sand in Syria, he shouldn’t have drawn it in the first place.

Failures at the UN on Syria bode ill for the body's future

2013-04-25T12:57:00.000+03:00

The United Nations has been unable to secure authorisation to visit Syria and determine if chemical weapons were used in fighting last March near Aleppo, and in Homs and Damascus. However, in a letter to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, France and the United Kingdom have affirmed that soil samples and interviews with victims led them to believe that such weapons were used.

The French and British assessment did not have the same impact as would that of the United Nations. And yet the international organisation has been helpless in Syria amid disagreements between the five permanent members of the Security Council. The mood in New York is reminiscent of that during the Cold War, when UN diplomacy was often hampered by the irreconcilable interests of the United States, the Soviet Union and their respective allies.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. When Barack Obama became US president, hopes were high that multilateral diplomacy would gain momentum. So, when bestowing the Nobel Peace Prize on Mr Obama in 2009, the Norwegian Nobel committee praised his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".

However, since then, international diplomacy through the UN has more often than not been a tale of discord, and Mr Obama has not pursued it with any vigour. What has best illustrated the UN's ineffectiveness is the Syrian conflict. It has lasted for over two years, with horrific loss of life and an expanding refugee crisis, without the Security Council striving to collectively end this situation.

Two levels of disagreement between the United States, France and the United Kingdom on one side, and China and Russia on the other, have hindered a solution.

The first involves principle. Moscow and Beijing refuse to give the Security Council powers that may possibly lead to the overthrow of the Syrian regime. They refer back to what happened in Libya in 2011, when they believe a UN resolution to protect civilians was surreptitiously turned by the West into an instrument to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi militarily.

The second has to do with self-interest. In Libya, both China and Russia had economic stakes that were undermined by western policy. Their tangible interests in Syria, particularly Russia's, are not what they once were. But in terms of projection of power, both Moscow and Beijing have chosen to take a stand against the western countries there to affirm that their interests must be accounted for whenever there is major international action in the region.

But the Russian position in particular goes beyond that. The Russians have developed networks of relationships in Syria's military and intelligence hierarchy over the decades, and are reluctant to surrender these. There is also a fear that victory by an Islamist-led opposition may have repercussions closer to Russia, particularly in its Muslim-majority republics in the North Caucasus. In that context, the recent Boston bombings carried out by two men of Chechen origin will likely be used by the Russians to validate their behaviour in Syria.

From the start of the Syrian uprising, Russia and China have vetoed UN resolutions that could be used to justify western military intervention, that targeted President Bashar Al Assad, or that challenged their desired endgame. At the same time, the Security Council has agreed to lesser measures, such as issuing presidential statements, and authorised deployment of UN observers in April 2012, to bolster the option of negotiations. The mission ultimately failed as violence escalated, and the observers were withdrawn.

That the discord at the UN reminds us of the Cold War should not detract from the fact that the conflicts the organisation deals with today tend to be different to those during the years of superpower rivalry. As the author William Shawcross wrote in his book, Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict, established patterns of conflict broke down in the post-Cold War period as combating parties, no longer benefiting from American or Soviet patronage, relied on messier networks of support, giving local warlords more latitude to set their own policies. Shawcross called this phenomenon unstructured or destructured conflict.

In other words, even as Russia and the United States have supported the contending sides in Syria, they have not really controlled dynamics on the ground. That poses the obvious question: can the UN resolve the Syrian conflict if local actors are pushing it in a very different direction?

Many have spoken of a package deal that the United States and Russia might reach over Syria. But that is unlikely. Instead, the Security Council can at best use creative diplomacy to profit from the stalemate, and then only if the warring sides are ripe for a deal and see stalemate as being to their disadvantage.

That is not the case today. Mr Al Assad views deadlock as useful in forcing the opposition to engage with him. Russia, too, has adopted this strategy, hoping that eventual negotiations will stop the war and bolster their Syrian allies. But that would imply asking the opposition to disregard over 70,000 victims and the use of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles against civilians, a tall order indeed.

The UN has failed in Syria, but it has done so because the conflict represents something different for each of the actors involved, and the international community is too divided to define a consensual solution. Instead, to facilitate such a consensus, the parties have sought to give their Syrian allies a military advantage and compel the other side to compromise. This does not bode well for the UN, which invariably mirrors the pathologies of the international order.

Hezbollah’s mad gamble in Qusair

2013-04-25T12:36:00.000+03:00

It’s still too early to tell whether Hezbollah will succeed in its bid to clear the area of Qusair of Syrian rebels, in that way assuring Syrian regime control over the passage between Damascus and the coast, via Homs, and between the coast and Lebanon’s Hermel region.

Hezbollah is perfectly aware of the great risk it has taken by intervening in Syria. The fact that it has done so regardless suggests that the decision was an Iranian one. Hezbollah’s risk is twofold: Its intervention has provoked domestic discontent, increasing Sunni-Shiite tensions, while undermining the policy of Lebanese non-intervention in the Syrian war; perhaps more dangerously for the party, it may be sucked into the Syrian conflict, unable to extirpate itself, taking ever greater losses in someone else’s fight.

Conceivably, Hezbollah may find itself in much the same situation as the Israelis in southern Lebanon until 2000: operating in a foreign land on unfamiliar terrain and engaged in guerrilla warfare against a determined foe defending his territory. There are reports that Hezbollah has taken significant losses. If so, the Shiite community will accept this for a time, but unless Hezbollah can achieve its objectives relatively quickly, discontent will rise if the war in Syria turns into a grinding campaign that provokes many more Lebanese casualties.

Nor can the sectarian aspect of the conflict be ignored. Lebanese Salafists have called for a jihad in Syria, which could seriously destabilize the situation in Lebanon. The fight against Hezbollah could become a magnet for jihadist groups keen to do battle with Shiites – whether Syrian, Lebanese or Iraqi. Already, the Nusra Front has threatened to strike against Beirut if Hezbollah is not prevented from participating in the Syrian conflict. Though the Nusra Front is hardly one to talk, this situation is precisely what everyone had sought to avert, and which Hezbollah, with Iranian encouragement, has suddenly and quite recklessly made more likely.

Hezbollah’s Syria strategy has also virtually ensured that Lebanon will not have an election this summer. Despite the calls for one, the reality is that the political climate is too tense for any kind of agreement over an election law, let alone for a voting process that may be divisive and volatile, particularly in mixed confessional districts.

Nor would most of the major political actors be unhappy. At a sensitive time for Hezbollah, the party prefers to avoid the uncertainty of an election that may alter the balance in Lebanon. The Future Movement as well would not oppose postponement, with its leader out of the country, its patronage power much reduced, and its majority (albeit an unstable one) in parliament. Walid Jumblatt, too, has no interest in surrendering his balancing role, especially if elections are held on the basis of legislation different than the 1960 law, which guarantees him a leading role in Aley and the Chouf.

Among the Christians, Michel Aoun, similarly, prefers to delay elections, to safeguard his status as the dominant Christian in parliament. Only Samir Geagea seems eager to go ahead with the voting, in large part because the Lebanese Forces have a relatively small parliamentary stake to defend by embracing the status quo, and feel that they would gain if elections went ahead.

More urgent than elections is the formation of a new government. Hezbollah, keen to protect its rear, seeks a government of national unity that can stabilize the situation in Lebanon, and that would once again endorse the formula of “the Army, the people, and the resistance.” Yet achieving this is tricky, since the Future Movement will not join a government that legitimizes Hezbollah at a time when the party is engaged in Syria. Nor is it realistic to seek a reaffirmation of the Army-people-resistance triad when Lebanon is so divided, and when no Sunni leader, least of all the prime minister-designate, Tammam Salam, can afford politically to reaffirm it.

Despite claims that Hezbollah controls Lebanon, the party has overreached, inviting a potentially dangerous Sunni counter-reaction. If it’s true, as some have claimed, that the party has committed crack troops in Syria, that means it has depleted its vanguard units facing Israel. How revealing that like Bashar Assad’s troops redeployed from the Golan front toward Syria’s interior, Hezbollah will forget Israel when tasked with a project of repression.

If Hezbollah gets caught up in a Syrian quagmire, we can expect a far more perilous situation in Lebanon as the party finds itself simultaneously challenged internally and in Syria. Some may regard this as an opportunity to extract concessions from Hezbollah, but the greater likelihood is that it will only push the party to take harmful measures to protect itself, exacerbating the situation.

Hezbollah’s becoming cannon fodder for the Syrian regime, at Iran’s request, is not something the party must relish. It may be understandable for Hezbollah fight in Syria, since the downfall of Assad would represent a far-reaching defeat for Iran and the party. But there is a price to pay for Hezbollah’s pushing the boundaries of Lebanon’s sectarian system to its limits. And this price may be the party’s gradual destruction, or worse a Lebanese sectarian civil war.

Obama rewrites the U.S. contract abroad

2013-04-21T12:25:00.001+03:00

After the bomb attacks in Boston Monday, President Barack Obama hesitated to call them acts of terrorism. Obama and his officials soon rectified their conscious error, but the president’s reaction told us much about his refusal to define events in such a way that he might become a prisoner of his response to them.

Obama acted like any lawyer would. Had he defined the bombings in Boston as terrorism, this would have tied his hands. He was right to be wary. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush declared a “war on terrorism” that set in motion an array of far-reaching governmental measures. Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, with its restrictions on civil liberties; there was metastatic growth in U.S. intelligence agencies, creating a vast bureaucracy whose effectiveness remains questionable; and soon there were wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I supported those wars, but the mass murders in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania were not linked to Saddam Hussein, despite administration efforts to draw such a link.

All this must have gone through Obama’s mind when he heard of the explosions at the Boston Marathon. The president didn’t want to use a word that would give law-enforcement, the military and intelligence agencies leeway to take measures that he might oppose but would also have to endorse. As usual, Obama read the world as he would a contract, but in this case his failure to call a spade a spade backfired, as he sidestepped what seemed obvious to all, before later undermining his thinking by using the “terrorism” designation.

The impulse to keep doors closed is very much a part of Obama’s approach to foreign policy – and it is fair to assume that his initial reading was that the Boston attacks might have been the result of foreign involvement, regardless of who was actually behind them. But Obama is hardly alone. U.S. policy abroad has always been reactive, tied into the vicissitudes of domestic politics, formulated without foresight or a clear strategy. That is why it tends to be ad hoc, waxing and waning depending on political realities and the public mood.

This was the view of George Kennan, one of the great observers of American foreign policy, who, as a diplomat in Moscow after World War II, inspired what became America’s Cold War grand strategy: containment of the Soviet Union. As John Lewis Gaddis recounted in his biography of Kennan, he lamented the U.S. propensity to fight wars without an “eye on the future.” Paraphrasing Kennan’s thoughts, Gaddis wrote “the U.S. government was woefully deficient at grand strategy, if by that term one meant the ability to coordinate all available means with fundamental policy ends.”

Containment was of course a major exception, even if, over time, it was repeatedly transformed and revised as it hit against global realities. Presidents after the Cold War, with containment no longer there to guide them, have struggled to lend overriding meaning and consistency to American behavior overseas. Bill Clinton usually sought to work through multilateral channels on crises. This led to the United Nations’ humanitarian effort in Somalia, which precipitated a military failure and withdrawal. Clinton acted boldly in the former Yugoslavia, through the NATO alliance, when European efforts had failed to put an end to the Bosnian conflict. And the U.S. did the same in Kosovo, from where NATO forced Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces.

Bush, who initially seemed to promise American foreign policy minimalism, was transformed by the September 2001 attacks. In the aftermath he sought to justify pre-emptive military responses to emerging threats, before emphasizing democratization. Both these approaches were seen as creating a framework for aggressive interventions abroad, and for regime change. When Obama came to office he reversed this through more restricted foreign policy realism, where the U.S. would only pursue its vital interests.

Yet Obama’s foreign policy has belied this. The situation in the Middle East dramatically changed after December 2010, when the Arab uprisings broke out. Yet Obama never adapted American policy accordingly. Instead, he disengaged from the Arab world, having already accelerated the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009, then wasted two years before altering his position on the war in Syria (and even then ever so timidly), though Bashar Assad’s downfall will surely weaken Iran, America’s main regional adversary.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. has had no consistent rationale for its presence. Under Obama, it first expanded its military deployment and adopted a counterinsurgency strategy, only to change tack and focus on counterterrorism, before announcing that it would withdraw its troops by 2014. As the academic Vali Nasr has written in a scathing new book on Obama’s policies, there was no real political component to Afghan policy, with too much ceded to the military and to inexperienced political operatives around Obama.

Nasr was an aide to the late Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why his criticism stings. “The Obama administration’s reputation for competence on foreign policy,” he argued, “has less to do with its accomplishments in Afghanistan and the Middle East than with how U.S. actions in that region have been reshaped to accommodate partisan political concerns.”

Nasr has been no less severe on the Syria policy, writing that Washington’s “lean back and wait” approach “has squandered precious opportunity to influence the course of events in the Middle East.”

Doing less is not always bad, and Obama’s restraint on the Boston bombings reflected an understandable skepticism with America’s tentacular security apparatus. But the president is also a great believer in big government, except overseas. There, Obama has done little thinking, and offered even less attention, embracing a standoffishness and lack of imagination that are difficult to explain.

Played for fools - Geagea is in a tough spot

2013-04-19T12:08:00.000+03:00

Perhaps it's slowly dawning on the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb that they have been played for fools by Hezbollah, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and Michel Aoun.

Both of the Christian parties had expected there to be a vote in parliament on the so-called Orthodox proposal, but the signs today are that this will not happen. If so, they will have to admit that they ran into a trap, led to endorse a proposal that would break March 14 apart and prevent it from winning a parliamentary majority.

What is most disturbing is that the Lebanese Forces, from the start, were dishonest about their intentions toward the Orthodox proposal. Facing a strong backlash from the Future Movement, Samir Geagea, and his aides hinted that they were not that keen about the project and would not vote for it in parliament, while arguing that they had to publicly approve of it because most Christians did.

The fact is that the Lebanese Forces always had the most to gain from the Orthodox proposal. Any scheme that mandates voting for candidates only from within one's own sect gives Geagea a boost in his rivalry with Aoun. The Lebanese Forces leader couldn't stomach the 1960 law because it ensured that Aoun would benefit from Shiite backing in key districts such as Baabda, Jbeil, and even Kisirwan and Metn, whereas in a straight competition between Maronite voters, the Lebanese Forces would do far better than under the 1960 law.

The view in the Lebanese Forces is that the party could not afford another election in which it won fewer than 10 seats, with Sunni and Druze voters (in the Shouf and Zahleh) alone permitting them to achieve that. The Kataeb adopted a similar rationale, believing that proportionality in the Orthodox proposal allowed them to win more than the paltry numbers they could expect under the present law.

And now the rug is likely to be pulled out from under their feet, as Berri fails to bring the proposal to a vote. That's understandable, because Berri, Hezbollah, and Aoun are not keen to see the Orthodox scheme become law, despite claims to the contrary. Berri and Hezbollah don't like to be tagged as exclusively Shiite parties, especially when they can bring non-Shiites into parliament on their lists. And Aoun has no interest in giving Geagea and the Gemayels a larger number of parliamentarians than they have today. For all his grumbling about the 1960 law, Aoun was one of its main beneficiaries.

Having been drawn out onto a limb, the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb then decided to saw it off by declaring that they would not participate in elections held on the basis of the 1960 law. Since that law is one of the few means that March 14 has of gaining a majority in parliament, and since the parties' attitude will lead to a vacuum if no alternative election law can be agreed, the decision is astonishingly reckless. The Lebanese Forces and Kataeb are denying March 14 a victory through an attitude that may carry Lebanon into a destabilizing political void.

One of Geagea's advisors, in explaining his party's position on the Orthodox proposal, told me that the Lebanese Forces leader "was playing chess while the others were playing checkers." As things appear now, Geagea is a piece on Hezbollah's chessboard, and anyway it's better to be a good checkers player than a bad chess player.

From a Christian perspective, Geagea has won nothing. His strong card had been that he was the person ideally suited to steer a rapprochement between the Maronite and Sunni communities, something vitally important in light of the situation in Syria and the probable downfall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Instead, his embrace of the Orthodox proposal, while it was principally directed against Aoun, has been largely construed by Sunnis as targeting them.

That said, Geagea's political gymnastics have betrayed anxiety that a Sunni triumph in Syria might alarm Lebanon's Christians, who fear an upsurge in Sunni Islamist groups. There also seems to be on Geagea's part understated resentment of Saad Hariri, who has been absent from Lebanon since 2011, leaving his allies in the lurch. So there may be some truth to the view that Geagea is not as well disposed to his Sunni allies as he once was.

The Christians are still paying a heavy price for the rivalry between Geagea and Aoun, as if one bout of communal self-destruction were not enough. How odd to hear Geagea speak about revitalizing the Lebanese state when he now backs a plan that will only further break up the state. And it is not being naïve to say such a thing, as if we were not wise to the sly political calculations of the Lebanese Forces leader. The reality is that both Geagea and the Kataeb have tied themselves up in knots through their maneuvering, and the Lebanese in general as well as Christians in particular lose from their choices.

For instance how are Christians living in mixed districts to fare when two of their leading communal political parties are pursuing greater isolation? Did Geagea and the Gemayels think of them at all when they approved of the Orthodox proposal? Or did that other devouring Maronite egotist, Patriarch Bshara al-Rai, who is too besotted with his own purported importance to grasp that many Christians live in mixed confessional districts, therefore need to coexist in harmony with their Muslim brethren?

The stupidity of the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb is painful to watch. At a moment when the overriding necessity, in light of the Syrian conflict, was to gain a parliamentary majority for March 14, or at least prevent Hezbollah from doing so, the two parties preferred to pursue their own trifling agenda. To hell with Lebanon, they have told us, as long as we can get a few more heads into parliament.

Political moves in Lebanon will test Beirut's stability

2013-04-18T12:50:00.000+03:00

A Sunni politician from Beirut, Tammam Salam, has been designated to form a new Lebanese government. The main problem he is facing today is disagreements over what role the government should play, with elections scheduled to begin next June.

Mr Salam's appointment followed intense manoeuvring after the resignation of Najib Mikati. Hizbollah had wanted Mr Mikati to head a new government, while the party's main opponent, Saad Hariri, was apparently preparing to name Ashraf Rifi, the former head of the Internal Security Forces, as his bloc's candidate.

Neither man would have been ideal: Many Sunnis resented Mr Mikati for associating with Hizbollah in his previous government, while Mr Rifi would have been regarded as a provocation by Hizbollah, which sees the ISF as the security agency of the rival March 14 coalition.

Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader who holds the balance in parliament between March 14 and the Hizbollah-dominated March 8 coalition, broke the deadlock. Mr Jumblatt cannot afford Sunni-Shia conflict, as his base region is caught between majority Sunni and Shia districts. He travelled to Saudi Arabia to persuade the head of the Saudi intelligence service, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to back Mr Salam, a notable moderate. Though this was not easy, the prince finally agreed, obliging Mr Hariri, Lebanon's preeminent Sunni politician, to endorse Mr Salam.

Mr Salam's appointment as prime minister was widely welcomed by the Lebanese, who in previous weeks had sensed that their country was slipping into sectarian strife and economic decline. The Syrian conflict has been the primary cause of this development, with Hizbollah militarily backing the regime of the president, Bashar Al Assad, and most Lebanese Sunnis staunchly behind the rebels.

Lebanon's economy, too, has suffered from the fighting, which has reduced the export of goods to the Arab world. The Syrian war has discouraged tourists from visiting Lebanon in the past two years, a blow to the country's tourism sector.

Mr Mikati's government itself was wracked by divisions and perennial dissonance. Though it included political forces that were not necessarily antagonistic to each other, the government was undermined by the conflicting interests of its members, and Mr Mikati had perhaps hoped that by stepping down he would be able to form a more cohesive government. It is not surprising, then, that his resignation calmed the atmosphere by removing a source of frustration.

Still, Mr Salam's task is not an easy one. The major point of contention is what type of government he will form: will it be small, made up of non-partisan ministers whose principal role will be to organise parliamentary elections before resigning? Or will it be a national-unity government, Hizbollah's preference, with more political figures as ministers, which would last longer than Mr Salam would like?

Mr Salam has insisted that his priority is holding elections. He realises that a political government would be one that he has trouble controlling and whose legitimacy would be questioned if elections are indefinitely delayed. Last Monday, the March 8 coalition offered a compromise. It said it would support a non-partisan government if a parliamentary election law were agreed before the government's formation. The offer seemed reasonable, designed to avert a political vacuum, but Hizbollah's aim was rather different.

Hizbollah has been trying to prepare the political context in Lebanon for the possible fall of the Al Assad regime in Syria. Its prime objective is to gain control of the levers of the Lebanese state to protect itself and its weapons once the Syrian leader goes. Hizbollah's strategy is to win a majority in parliament, with its allies, or at least to prevent March 14 from winning one. A majority would allow the party to vote in a president and select a speaker of parliament, as well as to name all of Lebanon's senior military and security officials.

But for Hizbollah to achieve a parliamentary majority, it needs an election law that would guarantee it a victory. The party has succeeded in shifting the debate away from the present law, which would probably return a March 14 majority to parliament. It has also backed two other suggestions, a proportional voting system and the so-called Orthodox proposal, which would allow voters to vote only for candidates from their religious sect.

The Orthodox proposal has been criticised by those who say it will divide Lebanon further. The scheme will probably not be approved by parliament, but its offensiveness has pushed political forces to consider a fallback project of a mixed system that would include both proportional representation and a winner-take-all system. All these ideas have one overriding advantage for Hizbollah: they make the current law ever less likely and will weaken the electoral power of Mr Hariri, satisfying the party's aims.

That is why Hizbollah is so keen to push for a quick agreement over an election law. Once the party can secure a law that it views favourably, it matters little what Mr Salam does with his government, as he will be in office for a limited time. No one expects elections in June, however, making a delay likely. After that, Hizbollah wagers, it will be in a position to win a majority and form a pliable government.

But what that would mean is that Mr Salam, by insisting that elections take place on time, is doing precisely what Hizbollah wants. The party is using this as leverage for quick passage of a law it wants. Elections may ultimately take Lebanon back to the foul mood of some weeks ago, as Sunni-Shia tensions rise again. No wonder Mr Salam is not keen to manage the unwieldy Lebanese beast for too long.

The Obama delusion

2013-04-12T12:04:00.000+03:00

One still marvels at the self-delusion of the Norwegian Nobel Committee when it decided in 2009 to bestow the peace prize on President Barack Obama.

The decision was a backhanded swipe at George W. Bush more than an acknowledgment of Obama’s qualities. At the time the new president was only nine months into his first term and had done relatively little of consequence. But for the Nobel Committee, it was necessary to show that the world expected Obama to be very different than his predecessor (and the committee’s implicit identification of itself with “the world” surely displayed Nobel-standard hubris).

Now, with Obama in the early months of his second term, we can see how wrong the committee was. Yes, Obama is hardly a warmonger, and has definitely broken with the Bush style. But in praising the president’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the committee was thinking of a dynamic internationalism built on laws and activist institutions, where resolutions of global problems demanded commitment from a United States working with myriad partners.

But as Obama showed, being different than Bush hardly means meeting the expectations of a panel of idealistic Scandinavians. Instead, the president has, at best, proven himself to be an amoral minimalist, seemingly unresponsive to human rights abuses and international law, for whom internationalism means that the world should do more so that the United States can do less, as it rebuilds its economy and focuses on gay marriage and gun-control legislation.

Obama has substantial backing at home for this approach. Americans, after a decade of military involvement overseas, have had enough. They prefer to look inwards and wrestle with domestic priorities. Recall that this same insular impulse undermined George H. W. Bush’s re-election bid in 1992, as voters turned against a president more taken by foreign affairs than by American pocketbooks.

Bush could have defended himself by saying that wrapping up the Cold War and removing the Iraqi army from Kuwait necessitated a rather longer attention span than most Americans were willing to concede to overseas matters. When Bill Clinton insisted that “it’s the economy, stupid!” Americans liked what they heard. And when Clinton’s eight years ended, they thought they had found in George W. Bush someone similarly preoccupied with internal issues.

Bush, of course, proved otherwise. But even those who consider him a yahoo don’t realize that the president functioned mainly through international institutions and multilateral contact groups for much of his tenure, particularly in the Middle East. Other than Iraq, indeed because of Iraq, the president usually sought consensus in addressing regional problems. Whether it was the Iranian nuclear file, Palestinian-Israeli talks, the situation in Lebanon after Rafiq Hariri’s assassination, or Afghanistan, Bush was no unilateralist.

And to his credit, when the situation in Iraq began seriously deteriorating in 2006, Bush did not abandon the Iraqi population to a sorry fate. Yet this is precisely what Obama may soon do in Afghanistan, the “right war,” as he draws down American forces there. For all the high regard that people have for Obama, the president has seemed largely unperturbed by threats to peace in the world and the obstacles to collective international action.

Nowhere has this been more evident in Syria, which will one day be seen as a stain on Obama’s legacy. From the start of the conflict, the president has refused to take a lead in fashioning an international response to the conflict. The United Nations has been deadlocked, and Obama has done nothing to break this deadlock. Well over 70,000 people have been killed by a barbaric regime, most of them civilians, yet Obama has not even managed a stirring speech on their tragedy. The president once said that Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons were a red line for the United States, and yet he has been largely silent on the Syrian government’s refusal to allow a UN team into the country to ascertain if such weapons were used.

Obama is not truly interested in what is going in the world, and the impact on America’s credibility. He is a detached leader on matters that do not involve Americans. Remember how the president was once viewed as having a global cultural sensibility, with his African father and his time spent in Indonesia as a boy? The reality is quite different. Obama is the man we feared George W. Bush would be: stubbornly unwilling to involve himself in the tribulations of other nations, even if this means abandoning American values.

Underpinning all this is Obama’s failure to formulate a cohesive foreign policy strategy. The president has been good at making loud pronouncements that lead to inaction. There is no sense that he has an integrated, overriding philosophy for dealing with the world. A realist, he has nonetheless skirted issues harming American interests. His secretaries of state have been competent managers, but not people of imagination and vision, who take the long view of foreign policy and tie this into America’s identity as a global actor.

What are the sources of American conduct? The Norwegian Nobel Committee didn’t ask the question, perhaps because they too readily assumed that the answer reflected their own preferences. But the fact is that Obama himself has never answered what America must stand for, so reluctant has he been to be tied down with absolutes.

What crises that appear, the president prefers to sidestep, his high rhetoric concealing the fact that he’s escaping through the back door. Some call this prudence. Others regret a United States for whom evasion has been elevated to the level of a virtue. All pay a price for the instability left by an unwilling America.

Russian role in Syria will not end when the regime falls

2013-04-11T12:49:00.000+03:00

Russian President Vladimir Putin called last week for an end to the carnage in Syria, and strongly advocated negotiations between the parties. This sounded hypocritical from a leader whose country has contributed to the carnage by supplying weapons to President Bashar Al Assad's regime. Perhaps sensing the apparent duplicity, Mr Putin called on Monday for an end to arms supplies to all sides in Syria.

His contradictions notwithstanding, the Russian president's comments point to another reality, one reinforced by fears that the fall of Mr Al Assad would not bring peace, because the minority Alawites would see the new Syria as an existential threat and continue the fight. This reality is that, regardless of Moscow's behaviour until now in Syria, the Russians will be essential in helping pave the way towards a peaceful endgame.

Why Russia has sided with Mr Al Assad is a matter of debate. Some argue that Mr Putin sought to prevent western countries, especially the United States, from doing in Syria what they had done in Libya. Another view is that the Russians feared that a triumph by Sunni Islamists against Mr Al Assad would provoke similar yearnings in Russia's Muslim republics, among Islamists hostile to Moscow.

That could be true. But nothing seems likely to save Mr Al Assad now, as his forces lose control over large swathes of territory in Syria's north and south. And if the president goes, then the nature of Russian involvement in Syria will change. From being a defender of the status quo, Russia may become a guarantor of minority groups, above all the Alawites.

Few are better placed than the Russians to address the fears of the Alawites. This may not be to the liking of an Islamist-dominated post-war Syrian government, but ultimately that government's priority will be to stabilise the country, and that could make dealing with Russia unavoidable. Addressing the apprehensions of minorities will be a primary responsibility of any post-Al-Assad leadership.

The United States is unlikely to help much in this regard. The Americans are disengaging from the Middle East, and their ties to the Alawites and other minorities are negligible. The Europeans don't have the sway to take the lead on minorities, even if they contribute to a general settlement. Russia is mistrusted by the Syrian opposition, but it can contribute to normalisation by reassuring minorities. Therefore its influence may be more significant than we imagine.

Where Russia might make a difference is in maintaining open channels between a post-Al Assad government and former Alawite army and intelligence officers and other minority representatives, who could potentially lead resistance to the new authorities. And if Mr Al Assad still holds power in some Alawite enclave on the coast, only Russia would have the credibility and contacts to push him in directions that facilitate an overall resolution of the conflict.

A reason why western states may see benefit in granting this latitude to Russia is that they would prefer Russia over Iran to fill a post-war vacuum. While both countries are bolstering the Syrian regime, their motives are different. Russia seeks to avoid the blowback of an Islamist-led uprising in Syria; Iran needs to protect its assets in the Levant. Where the Russians aim to avert chaos, the Iranians may see in chaos an opportunity to fill the vacuum to their advantage.

One Iranian priority is to carry on supplying weapons to Hizbollah via Syria, if needed. That may be why Tehran has organised and trained Syrian minority militias. This takes us back to 1982, when Iran established and armed Lebanese Shiite groups during the Israeli invasion, to have leverage in the post-conflict phase. By securing lines of communication between Syria's coast and the majority Shiite Baalbeck-Hermel district in Lebanon, Tehran could guarantee arms deliveries to Hizbollah if Lebanon were besieged in a war with Israel.

Russia, which has a good relationship with Israel, has no such ambitions. On the contrary, from Israel's perspective, Russian influence in a post-Assad Syria may be welcome, given Israeli fears that a void might lead to attacks in the Golan Heights.

Any political formula that helps resolve the Syrian conflict is one that Israel cannot help but endorse, particularly at a time when the United States has adopted an increasingly minimalist approach to the region.

And the Russians may have another, commercial, incentive in mediating in Syria. Recently, Russia's Rosneft partnered with ExxonMobil to bid jointly on a tender to develop Lebanon's offshore gas and oil reserves.

Lebanon's stability is tied in to that of Syria, and Syria's offshore gas and oil sector will, once peace is achieved, become a lucrative magnet for Russian investment. Gone are the days when Russia's principal focus was on weapons exports to the Arab world. Today a stake in Syria's and Lebanon's economies may be far more effective in extending Russian influence in the region.

Nor will this necessarily lead to friction between Russia and the United States, despite their disagreement over Syria. Ultimately, Washington, too, is looking for a negotiated outcome, and worries that a military solution will lead only to Syria's fragmentation.

With this in mind, it may be time for the US and Russia to begin informal consultations over a post-Assad Syria, so that they see eye to eye on any Russian intercession.

The protection of minorities concerns both countries, even as they prepare to engage with the majority.

Syrians are no doubt justified in blaming Russia for many of their woes today. From the start, Mr Putin has been on the wrong side of the Syrian revolt. But Russia may well prove to be indispensable to a Syrian peace, and the time to start thinking about this eventuality is now.

Lebanon’s minorities have Syria in mind

2013-04-11T12:16:00.000+03:00

Lebanon’s latest political psychodrama is about whether the deadline for candidacies to the forthcoming parliamentary elections should be extended or suspended. This has produced some strange bedfellows, namely the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb on the Christian side, and Hezbollah and Amal on the Muslim side.

At the heart of the problem is the 1960 election law, which the main Christian parties reject out of hand. If elections are held on the basis of the law, these parties have vowed not to participate. For them, as for Hezbollah and Amal, extending the deadline for candidacies under the 1960 law means legitimizing that law. So they prefer the proposal of the Parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, to suspend candidacies altogether, challenging the 1960 law and possibly precipitating a political vacuum if no agreement on an alternative is reached.

The behavior of the Lebanese Forces is, perhaps, most difficult to explain. The party has backed the Orthodox proposal, but in the face of withering criticism, Lebanese Forces officials sought to explain their position. In fact, they only confused matters more.

The gist of their argument went something like this. Under the 1960 law, the Lebanese Forces are at a disadvantage. The party cannot afford to win the same relatively small number of seats that it did in 2009, as this would lead to permanent marginalization. Most Christians support the Orthodox proposal. So, Samir Geagea had to endorse it, especially as Michel Aoun has done so. But in reality, Geagea is open to a law that would be agreed with March 14 and that satisfies his political objectives. “Geagea is playing chess while the others are playing checkers,” a party official explained to me.

Soon thereafter, there were reports that if the Orthodox proposal came up for a vote in Parliament, the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb would not vote in favor. How true this was is anyone’s guess, but it begged the question: If backing the Orthodox proposal was merely a tactical ploy by Geagea, then why would he undermine it by opposing the proposal when his approval mattered the most?

In fact, what we saw was something rather different. When Berri called for a parliamentary session to take up the matter of an election law, he did two things. First, he asked March 14 to come up with an election proposal of its own to place against the Orthodox proposal; and he called for the full suspension of candidacies, rather than a delay in the deadline. To the first request, Berri received no response, as March 14 remains divided over a preferred proposal, and the Future Movement, wanting to avert a greater rift with Geagea, has formulated no election project of its own.

In turn, Berri’s suggestion that candidacies be suspended under the 1960 law was welcomed by all the major Christian parties. Perhaps it was another chess move by the Lebanese Forces, but the message was unmistakable: The party would side with Hezbollah and Berri to torpedo the 1960 law, regardless of whether this might lead to a constitutional vacuum, and regardless of whether it helps ensure that March 14 will not win a majority in the next Parliament.

This dilutes the protests of the Lebanese Forces officials who have always insisted that their primary aim is to strengthen March 14. As for the Future Movement, whose interests are harmed by Christian approval of the Orthodox proposal, it has advanced a compromise: Candidacies would be suspended until May 19, allowing time for talks to reach agreement over a consensual election law. This was approved on Wednesday.

But for one senior politician, the tacit alliance between the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb, Berri and Hezbollah may suggest something more than electoral maneuvering. Instead of thinking about March 14, Geagea and his deputy George Adwan are actually concerned about the aftermath of the conflict in Syria.

Because Christians fear Sunni affirmation following the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime, quite possibly in an Islamist guise, Geagea, the Kataeb, and the Aounists are laying the basis of an alliance of minorities with the Shiite community. Their accord over the Orthodox proposal proves this, as does the Lebanese Forces’ and the Kataeb’s refusal to be mere accessories of the Future Movement, which the 1960 law guarantees.

Is this true? The long absence of Saad Hariri has created a void in the Sunni community, the consequences of which, Christians worry, will be greater Sunni radicalization. In response, the Christian parties had an opportunistic interest in making it appear to their co-religionists that they would defend them against a Sunni resurgence. But they also saw an advantage in preparing for the endgame in Syria, and the Orthodox proposal, whereby each minority can shape its own destiny free from other communities, allegedly was the way to do so.

Certainly, Geagea has lost the esteem he enjoyed among many Sunnis, preferring to rally Christian support through actions addressing communal anxieties. In tactical terms this has increased his electoral leverage over Hariri. However, the leverage means nothing if there are no elections because the Christian strategy has led to a void; and it means nothing if the Lebanese Forces decide, henceforth, to position themselves as the defenders of Christians against a Sunni renewal.

An alliance of minorities may be attractive to many Christians, but what it means is that the community could find itself once again standing against the overwhelming majority in the Arab world. This is what happened during the war years, and the result was a collapse in Christian fortunes and numbers. To adopt such a position when Sunnis may be about to triumph in Syria is not only stupid, it is suicidal. Geagea grasped this reality not so long ago, which makes his contortions on the election law all the more incomprehensible.

Rocky start to Hariri tribunal is a test for Lebanese politics

2013-04-10T13:51:00.001+03:00

On March 25, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was to begin the trial of four Hizbollah members accused of participating in the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister. This was delayed by the pretrial judge to give the defence more time to prepare its case. No new trial date has yet been set.

In Lebanon, the postponement hardly caused a ripple, a sign of how low expectations are for a process that has dragged on for years. And yet in the political climate today in the country, the trial is bound to add to the ambient tension between Sunni and Shia. At the same time, this uncertainty will have an effect on the trial process.

Take the recent retirement of Ashraf Rifi, the director general of the Internal Security Forces. There were expectations that Mr Rifi's term would be extended, but this was not to be. Prime Minister Najib Mikati pushed for an extension in his government, but a majority, led by Hizbollah and Michel Aoun, refused to endorse the proposal. This precipitated Mr Mikati's resignation, as he could not afford to abandon Mr Rifi, like him a Sunni from Tripoli.

Mr Rifi closely collaborated with the United Nations investigation of the Hariri assassination. He took over at the ISF from Ali Al Haj, one of the four generals jailed for their alleged involvement in the killing, then released for lack of evidence. Once the head of Mr Hariri's security detail, Mr Al Haj later spied on him for the Syrians. Mr Rifi, in turn, has been regarded as a rare pro-March 14 commander (and therefore, anti-Syrian) in the security services. That is principally why his mandate was not extended.

From the special tribunal's perspective, Mr Rifi was a choice Lebanese interlocutor. Two of his officers, Samir Shehadeh and Wissam Eid, played a key role in linking telephone data to Hizbollah, which formed the basis of the current indictment. Mr Shehadeh was the target of an assassination attempt in September 2006, and left Lebanon soon thereafter. Mr Eid was killed by a car bomb in January 2008.

Another of Mr Rifi's senior officers, Wissam Al Hassan, headed the security force's intelligence branch, before he, too, was assassinated last October. Many suspected Hizbollah, because of its widespread security network, of being behind that assassination as well as the attacks against Mr Eid and Mr Shehadeh. The party has denied this.

With Mr Rifi gone, the tribunal will be looking to see if cooperation with the ISF will continue, and if any further requests for assistance will be addressed in a positive way.

The ISF director general officially stepped down last weekend, to be replaced by his deputy, Roger Salem, who himself is scheduled to retire in a few months. The ISF leadership is generally held by a Sunni, and the fear in March 14 was that once Mr Salem left, he would be replaced by Mr Al Haj, due to seniority.

The advent of Mr Al Haj would be regarded as a provocation by pro-Hariri Sunnis. Many do not see him heading the ISF, because this could provoke domestic unrest. Indeed, some foreign embassies in Beirut have warned senior Lebanese politicians that they could not tolerate a return of Mr Al Haj, who would have latitude to influence embassy security and might opt, at Syria's request, to arrest and deport Syrian opposition figures in Lebanon.

If Mr Al Haj is sidelined, the senior Sunni in the ISF is Ibrahim Basbous, considered to be politically neutral by insiders. This cannot reassure March 14, which seeks an active ISF chief who will protect them - understandable in a country vulnerable to political assassinations. But given the importance of the special tribunal to Sunnis in particular, Mr Basbous will find it difficult to resist cooperation with that body if he takes over the ISF.

One scenario being discussed is that parliament will soon vote to raise the retirement age for senior security figures, in response to a petition signed by 69 parliamentarians. This would resolve the Rifi problem, allowing the general to be brought back from the reserves to again command the ISF. This, in turn, would facilitate the extension of the commander of the Lebanese Army, Jean Qahwaji, later this year, averting a vacuum at the head of the major security institutions.

The special tribunal would welcome such a development. Continuity is essential to its work, above all when there is no functioning Lebanese government and the political system is divided and deadlocked.

And yet once the trial starts, it is unlikely to do much good for national reconciliation. It would shine a bright lamp on Hizbollah's alleged participation in a crime that Sunnis regard as having been directed against their community, through the elimination of a communal champion. This could further exacerbate Sunni-Shia ties, even as the communities already differ deeply over Syria, Lebanon's parliamentary elections and, now, Mr Rifi's fate.

Lebanon has a vested interest in reassuring the special tribunal that it stands behind its work. Once the trial begins, the suspects will most probably be tried in absentia, as none have been arrested. This will not help Lebanon's reputation internationally, least of all if Hizbollah remains in government. One way to compensate is to ensure close Lebanese collaboration with the tribunal, and this concerns most visibly the justice minister, the interior minister and the ISF chief.

Whether Mr Rifi is back at his post or not, Lebanon must prove it can respect its international obligations. This is easier said than done. The country is passing through great instability, and the success of the special tribunal may suffer as a consequence. For a long time, tribunal officials insisted their work was unconnected to internal Lebanese politics. Their bubble of splendid isolation may soon be burst.

In search of enemies

2013-04-05T13:21:00.000+03:00

Michel Aoun has said that he would not accept a return of Najib Miqati as prime minister. That’s understandable, since the biggest loser when Miqati chose to step down was Aoun.

But is the General really surprised? To be allied with Aoun has always been a risky venture, given that his opportunism invariably sinks his partners. Aoun not only alienated Miqati (the performance of Aounist ministers was an endless source of frustration for the prime minister), he has also antagonized the speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri. Only Hezbollah has been spared Aoun’s duplicity, largely because the party is so much more powerful than he is.

There has been talk recently that Hezbollah’s patience is limited. Aoun’s maneuvering at Miqati’s expense – for instance, his backing of the so-called Orthodox proposal and of a pay raise for the public sector, both of which the prime minister opposed – helped push Miqati to the door, something Hezbollah did not want. Perhaps, but officially the party was fairly close to Aoun on both these issues, and at a moment when the Assad regime in Syria seems so vulnerable, Hezbollah cannot afford to lose its main Christian ally.

But has Aoun done anything with this leverage? Hezbollah helped win him 12 ministers in the Miqati government, but then the General squandered this advantage by systematically undermining the prime minister. Aoun’s gift for angering potential allies always seems to harm his political interests. Berri cannot stomach him, nor can Walid Jumblatt, whom Aoun accused on Tuesday of not being normal, after Jumblatt stated his opposition to a return of Free Patriotic Movement ministers to the Telecoms and Energy Ministries.

Gebran Bassil and Nicholas Sehnaoui irritated the so-called centrists in the government, which explains Jumblatt’s reaction. Bassil’s management of the offshore gas projects has long elicited Miqati’s mistrust, while his sending fuel oil to the Syrian regime discredited the prime minister in the eyes of his own community.

As for Sehnaoui, he repeatedly refused to hand over telephone and internet data to the Internal Security Forces in the investigation of Wissam al-Hassan’s assassination. Sehnaoui’s refusal was defendable, as he sought to protect privacy, but to Miqati and the centrists it looked like yet another effort to impede the Hassan inquiry.

Aoun has viewed conflict as beneficial to his power, even if he has had a knack for losing his most important battles. From his ruinous uprising against the Syrian presence in Lebanon over two decades ago to his more recent wager on the ultimate triumph of Bashar al-Assad against the Syrian revolt, Aoun has miscalculated. He may be skilled at playing on Christian fears of marginalization, which led him to favor the Orthodox proposal, but this is hardly challenging. When it comes to reading the longer-term outlook for Lebanon and the region, Aoun has usually reasoned like an ignorant provincial bigot.

The General’s most damaging habit has been to keep up his hostility to the Sunni community, seeing this as a way of rallying the support of Christians, given their historic apprehension of the Sunni majority in the region. But this is not particularly smart at a time when we are witnessing a Sunni revival, and when Aoun’s ally Hezbollah is on the defensive given the likely overthrow of Assad in the foreseeable future. Worse, Aoun’s behavior has prompted negative reactions from the Gulf states, where more than 100,000 Lebanese work.

When given the choice between pursuing short-term gain or laying the groundwork for long-term advantage, Aoun has usually chosen the former. After the elections of 2005 the General became the natural choice to succeed Emile Lahoud as president, given that he had emerged as the leading Christian representative. All Aoun had to do was to navigate a neutral path between the March 8 and March 14 coalitions, open to both sides yet committed to none.

In that situation, any effort to deny him the presidency in 2008 would have been regarded by Christians as an effort to disregard their preferences, which neither March 8 nor March 14 could afford. After all, Berri had stayed in office because the Shiites demanded it, and Fouad Siniora had become prime minister because Sunnis demanded it.

So what did Aoun do? He sided with Hezbollah against the same majority in parliament necessary for his eventual election. This he did because he felt that an alliance with Hezbollah would improve his chances, and he sensed that Christians would support him against Saad Hariri and Jumblatt following the quadripartite agreement between Hariri, Jumblatt, Hezbollah, and Berri in the elections of 2005, which many Christians viewed as a betrayal.

Soon, Aoun’s partisans conveniently forgot that Hezbollah had been part of that agreement. Hezbollah never seriously pushed for a Aoun presidency, and by opposing the parliamentary majority the general lost any chance of being elected, thwarting his principal ambition.

This may have been par for the course for the erratic Aoun, but it was also a debilitating setback to a rare consistent aspiration in a political career marked by contradiction and obfuscation. After Michel Suleiman came to office instead of Aoun, the Free Patriotic Movement leader found that he had hit a glass ceiling. He has continued to play politics, but having been denied the ultimate prize, he has done so without much sense of purpose. Instead Aoun has aggressively struck out in all directions, in seeming frustration at his pointlessness.

This is the man whom too many Christians regard as a model. But a model of what? Of political failure and cheap populist pandering? Of sectarian narrow-mindedness? Of personal ambition regardless of what this might cost Lebanon as a whole? The sad thing is that Aoun has always been in a position to offer much more than that, but he has never been able to resist the pull of his darker side.