'Arab Spring' Gives Way to an Uncertain Autumn
Source: WSJ
Libyan rebels' seizure of large parts of Tripoli marks a dramatic
advance for revolutionary movements in the Middle East, but the impact
depends on how the Libyans' success affects the potentially more
important rebellion in Syria.
While the Libyan rebels continue to
face resistance, their swift march into the capital likely will be seen
in the region as a lesson that not even widespread government brutality
can deter citizens fed up with decades of abuse by authoritarian
regimes.
Arab Summer
The pro-democracy movement is showing widely disparate outcomes across North Africa and the Middle East seven months after it began; here is an update.
That is an
ominous sign for Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, who has been
shelling rebellious cities in an attempt to snuff out a similar
six-month-old uprising. Already there are signs Libya is giving
inspiration to the rebels trying to oust Mr. Assad.
On Monday, Syrian protesters took to
the streets chanting "Gadhafi tonight, Bashar tomorrow." Rami Nakhle, an
activist with the Syrian opposition's Local Coordination Committees,
said he was encouraged by TV images of a rally on Tripoli's central
square, especially when the Libyans started chanting slogans of
solidarity with Syria's pro-democracy campaigners.
"Syria is very different from Libya,
and for us, there are different scenarios, but what a boost to know that
all scenarios lead to the end of the dictator," Mr. Nakhle said.
There are crucial differences between
Libya and Syria, and the Libyan template will be hard to replicate in
Damascus. The Libyan rebels managed their advances only thanks to
extensive intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That
kind of military involvement seems highly unlikely in the case of Syria,
a nation with a more adept army, more allies and the ability to set off
a regional conflict by drawing neighboring Israel into any fight.
European Pressphoto Agency
Syrians backing President Assad gathered in Damascus on Monday.
Moreover,
the assault on Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, like the disastrous
fates experienced by deposed leaders Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine
el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, could induce Mr. Assad to simply dig in
harder to save himself. In sum, the Libyan episode may serve simply to
sharpen the conflict in Syria: both spurring on the dissidents and
strengthening Mr. Assad's resolve to hold on.
Unlike Libya, which sits
geographically and politically at the edge of the Arab world and has
been run by an erratic leader on the margins of Arab politics, Syria
lies at the heart of the Middle East. Its fate is crucial not only to
the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians but also to the
strength of Iran, a country Syria has staunchly supported in defiance of
other Arab nations.
Jubilation turned to uncertain disquiet late
Monday in Libya's capital, with persistent reports of random shootings
in the capital, with some pockets of outright fighting. Jeff Grocott has
the latest on The News Hub.
Changing power
in Syria will remain "a very heavy diplomatic lift," said Andrew
Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The
key to success in replacing Syria's government—a goal President Barack
Obama explicitly embraced last week—is more likely to be found in
diplomatic and economic pressure rather than in military pressure from
the outside, many analysts say.
Sanctions imposed last week on Syrian
oil sales could have the greatest effect. The Assad regime is estimated
to derive roughly a third of its revenue from oil sales to Europe.
Some observers expect the combination
of such economic and political pressures and Libya's example eventually
to seal Mr. Assad's fate, one way or the other. "He has only one choice
now, and that is to choose the manner in which he leaves office," said
Rami Khouri, an Arab political commentator and columnist.
Beyond Syria, a new dose of energy
provided by Libya's uprising could ripple out to other nations in the
region. In particular, U.S. officials hope it will reinvigorate a
protest movement that arose inside Iran in 2009 to challenge President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election. U.S. officials say Iranian security
forces have been largely successful in putting down Iran's "Green
Movement."
Syria has served for 30 years as
Iran's closest strategic ally in the region. U.S. officials believe the
growing challenge to Mr. Assad's regime could motivate Iran's
democratic forces. "The Iranian government has a huge stake in what
happens in Syria," a senior U.S. official said.
Seeing the Gadhafi regime collapse, if
that happens, also might rekindle simmering uprisings in Bahrain and
Yemen, say analysts and diplomats. Some say it could possibly spark
fresh unrest in countries relatively unscathed by the region's upheaval,
such as Algeria, Morocco and Jordan.
"In recent months, people had started
losing hope that they could achieve change. But if Gadhafi can be
removed, this means democracy and popular revolutions can happen in the
Arab world," said Mansoor al-Jamri, a leading Bahraini pro-democracy
campaigner who edits the island's al-Wasat newspaper. "The idea that a
security crackdown can stop the aspirations of the people is gone."
The violence that erupted in Libya in February ended what initially
seemed a wave of largely peaceful uprisings pushing for democracy to the
region. In neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, local armies refused orders
to shoot unarmed protesters in January, leading to the downfall of
presidents Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.
But in Syria, as in Libya, troops had
no such qualms after anti-government demonstrations broke out. Mr.
Assad's regime has since caused an estimated 2,000 deaths. In Bahrain, a
Saudi-led military intervention helped quash the protests in March. In
Yemen, meanwhile, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has resisted calls to
step down, pushing his country to the brink of civil war.
NATO's military muscle made the path different for rebels in Libya, even as dissidents suffered elsewhere in the region.
An Allied bombing raid in late March
prevented Col. Gadhafi's forces from overrunning the rebel capital of
Benghazi. After that, NATO warplanes served as the rebels' de facto air
force, coordinating with rebel units on the ground. NATO warships,
meanwhile, kept the supply lines by sea open to the besieged city of
Misrata.
"The success of the Libyan
uprising…shows that the change of Western policy is the deciding factor
when it comes to freedom in the Middle East," said Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi
dissident who heads the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C.
At this stage, at least, no such
Western intervention is in the cards for Syria, a country with more than
three times Libya's population, a volatile mix of religions and
ethnicities, and an unresolved conflict with neighboring Israel. "Having
NATO getting involved with Syria could also drag it much deeper into
the quagmire of all quagmires, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,"
cautioned Paul Sullivan, a professor at the National Defense University.
Mr. Assad isn't without friends. He
draws his support from the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam
to which he and much of Syria's ruling elite belong, and his regime
still retains a degree of allegiance from the Sunni business class and
religious minorities such as the Christians and the Druze.
Unlike the largely friendless Col.
Gadhafi, Mr. Assad also has powerful regional allies. Besides Iran, the
Syrian government has friends in the Shiite Hezbollah militia that play a
role in governing Lebanon, and even within the Shiite-dominated
government of neighboring Iraq, says Abdallah BouHabib, a former
Lebanese ambassador to Washington and director of the Issam Fares Center
think-tank in Beirut.
"Gadhafi is alone in this game. Nobody
wants him, nobody is close to him, nobody likes him," Mr. BouHabib said.
"Syria is a whole different ball game."
The Syrian campaigners, like the
Libyan rebels in the early days, have largely rejected the idea of
Western intervention, a position acknowledged by Mr. Obama last week.
But as the Syrian military pounded
several cities in recent weeks and the NATO military campaign against
Col. Gadhafi began to pay off, some parts of the Syrian opposition have
started to shift course.
Syrian officials have repeatedly used
NATO's intervention in Libya as an example of what they describe as
Western neocolonial meddling in the Middle East. "Our sovereignty is not
to be discussed under any circumstances," Mr. Assad proclaimed in an
interview with Syrian state TV Sunday, warning that Western countries
would face consequences they couldn't bear if they moved militarily
against Syria.
Yet the international community is
taking a series of steps that could lead to efforts to force change in
Syria. European nations and the U.S. formally abandoned hopes that Mr.
Assad might introduce reforms by openly calling on him last week to step
down.
The Western countries made the move
after Saudi Arabia led the Persian Gulf monarchies in withdrawing
ambassadors from Damascus, voicing blistering criticism of the Syrian
regime and further isolating it in the Arab world.
Regional Upheaval
Track events day by day in the region.
The U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman,
discussed the Syrian crisis with Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al
Araby in Cairo Monday. Mr. Feltman reminded listeners at a joint news
conference it was an Arab League decision in March that paved the way to
NATO's campaign against Col. Gadhafi.
So far, Russia and China have blocked
United Nations Security Council action to punish the Assad regime. But
efforts to build a legal mandate to further pressure Damascus, through
U.N. sanctions or a referral to the International Criminal Court, may be
reinvigorated if the campaign against Libya is seen as a success,
analysts say.
Col. Gadhafi's downfall could prompt
international pressure for "far stronger action against the even more
bloody-minded Assad regime and its continued depredations," said Wayne
White, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former
senior State Department intelligence official.
"Until now," he added, "the
distraction of NATO and the U.S. [in Libya] has been accepted by some
Syrians as reason for less action to address their plight. Syrian
popular impatience in that respect is sure to rise."
Syria's big neighbor Turkey, with one of NATO's largest armies, is likely to play a central role in this dynamic.
The government of Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long cultivated the Syrian and Libyan regimes,
and initially strongly opposed the Western intervention in Libya. Faced
with a backlash in the Arab public opinion, however, Turkey has since
reversed course. In a thinly veiled warning to Damascus, Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davugtolu said the transition in Libya should be "a
lesson for everyone in the region."
U.S. officials said in recent days
they are also encouraged by the growing splits among the interest groups
that have held sway in Syria since the 1960s, and in particular the
growing alienation of the country's Sunni business elites.
—Matt Bradley and Joe Parkinson contributed to this article.
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