Just Foreign Policy News
March 22, 2011
*Action: Pressure Congress to Debate Libya
Whatever one thinks of the ongoing U.S. military intervention in Libya, President Obama has set a dangerous precedent by embarking on a major military operation in Libya without Congressional authorization. Eight Members of the House have brought forward H. Con. Res. 31, a bi-partisan resolution affirming that the President must obtain specific statutory authorization for the use of U.S. armed forces in Libya. Ask your Representative to join them in affirming that U.S. military action in Libya must have Congressional authorization.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/debatelibya
Congress Must Debate the Libya War
If President Obama can bomb Libya without Congressional authorization, then a future President Palin could bomb Iran without Congressional authorization.
http://www.truth-out.org/congress-must-debate-libya-war68643
Rep. Dennis Kucinich: U.S. Military Action Against Libya Absent Imminent Threat or Congressional Approval is Outside the Legal Scope of the Presidency
"Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly states that the United States Congress has the power to declare war. The President does not. That was the Founders’ intent."
http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=229992
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The US’ part in the Libya operation could ultimately hit several billion dollars – and require the Pentagon to request emergency funding from Congress to pay for it, the National Journal reports. The first day of the operation had a price tag that was well over $100 million for the U.S. in missiles alone. Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said Monday that U.S. costs could "easily pass the $1 billion mark on this operation, regardless of how well things go." Former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim estimated the Defense Department would need to send a request for supplemental funding to Capitol Hill if the U.S. military’s share of Libya operations expenses tops $1 billion.
2) An article in the New York Times asks whether the battle for Libya is "the clash of a brutal dictator against a democratic opposition," or is "fundamentally a tribal civil war." "It is a very important question that is terribly near impossible to answer," said a political scientist at Georgetown who has studied Libya. "It could be a very big surprise when Qaddafi leaves and we find out who we are really dealing with." Like the chiefs of the Libyan state news media, the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior, the Times notes. The eastern region around Benghazi had always been a hotbed of opposition to Qaddafi, in part because tribes there had enjoyed the favoritism of the former king, Idriss I, whom the colonel overthrew, while he in turn favored the tribes of the central and western coast, the Times notes.
3) The African Union said a panel established to negotiate a solution to the crisis in Libya was denied entry into Libya, Bloomberg reports. The panel "requested the required permission for the flight carrying its members to Libya" to comply with a UN Security Council resolution that imposed a no-fly zone, the AU said. "The committee was denied permission." The AU has opposed any form of foreign military intervention in Libya, though the three AU members on the UN Security Council, Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon, voted in favor of the no-fly zone.
4) Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch blasted President Obama for joining the air assault on Libya, saying he is "very, very troubled" by the decision to commit military assets to what Lynch considers a "civil war," the Boston Herald reports. "I think generally under the Constitution, there has to be a direct threat to U.S. national security," said Lynch. "I don’t see anything that would warrant the type of commitment we’ve made."
5) Illinois Republican Congressman Tim Johnson said he would introduce legislation to de-fund military action in Libya, the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette reports. Johnson said he would work with Rep. Justin Amash to draft legislation declaring the action unconstitutional. "Our country has no business enmeshing itself in another country’s civil unrest," Johnson said. "We were not attacked. Our national security interests are not at stake. It is the American people, through their elected representatives, who are constitutionally empowered to take this kind of action. Not the president."
Haiti
6) Haitians stayed away from controversial presidential elections in large numbers on March 20, writes Dan Coughlin in The Nation. A review of balloting at four large polling stations in three Port-au-Prince districts revealed a voter participation rate of less than 18 percent among a sample of more than 12,600 registered voters. Both candidates supported the 1991 and the 2004 coups against Aristide and both call for reinstating the repressive US-created Haitian army, which Aristide disbanded in 1995. Patrick Elie, a former adviser to both outgoing President Rene Preval and President Aristide, argued that the US has played an influential, behind-the-scenes role in the election, helping to put the extreme right in power in order to perpetuate the occupation of Haiti and keep its neoliberal policies in place.
Libya
7) Foreign military intervention, by helping armed rebels, actually magnifies the threat to civilians in Libya, and beyond, argues Alan Kuperman, author of The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, in USA Today. That is because armed uprisings, such as Libya’s, typically provoke massive state retaliation that harms innocents. By contrast, non-violent movements, as in Egypt and Tunisia, rarely trigger so brutal a response. Aiding the Libyan rebels also encourages copycat armed uprisings in other countries, proliferating the risk of atrocities.
Yemen
8) The French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé, became the first Western leader to call publicly for President Saleh to stand down, The Independent reports. Many feel that the defection of the top military commander to the opposition means the end of the Saleh regime. "There is a 60 per cent chance that this will become a bloodless coup," said one Yemeni government official.
Syria
9) Syrians chanting "No more fear!" held a defiant march Monday after a deadly government crackdown failed to quash three days of mass protests in the city of Daraa, AP reports. The unrest in Daraa started Friday after security troops fired at protesters, killing five people. A US spokesman said reports indicate the Syrian government "has used disproportionate force against civilians, and in particular against demonstrators and mourners in Daraa." Human Rights Watch said Syria should "cease use of live fire and other excessive force against protesters."
Israel/Palestine
10) Israeli mortar shells in Gaza killed three youths playing soccer and a 60-year-old grandfather leaving his house, the New York Times reports. Tuesday’s violence came amid a sharp increase in tensions along the Israel-Gaza border, with many fearing a repeat of the war two years ago.
Brazil
11) Brazil called for a cease-fire in Libya, Reuters reports. The goal of a cease-fire should be to protect civilians and pave the way for dialogue between the Libyan government and its opponents, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Costs of Libya Operation Already Piling Up
Megan Scully, National Journal, Monday, March 21, 2011 | 6:34 p.m.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/costs-of-libya-operation-already-piling-up-20110321
With U.N. coalition forces bombarding Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi from the sea and air, the United States’ part in the operation could ultimately hit several billion dollars – and require the Pentagon to request emergency funding from Congress to pay for it.
The first day of Operation Odyssey Dawn had a price tag that was well over $100 million for the U.S. in missiles alone. And the U.S. military, which remains in the lead now in its third day, has pumped millions more into air- and sea-launched strikes targeting air-defense sites and ground-force positions along Libya’s coastline.
The ultimate total that the United States spends will hinge on the length and scope of the strikes as well as on the contributions of its coalition allies. But Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said on Monday that the U.S. costs could "easily pass the $1 billion mark on this operation, regardless of how well things go."
The Pentagon has the money in its budget to cover unexpected contingencies and can also use fourth-quarter dollars to cover the costs of operations now. "They’re very used to doing this operation where they borrow from Peter to pay Paul," said Gordon Adams, who served as the Office of Management and Budget’s associate director for national security during the Clinton administration.
However, there comes a point when there simply isn’t enough cash to pay for everything. The White House said on Monday it was not prepared to request emergency funding yet, but former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim estimated that the Defense Department would need to send a request for supplemental funding to Capitol Hill if the U.S. military’s share of Libya operations expenses tops $1 billion.
[…] Such a request would likely be met with mixed reactions in a Congress focused on deficit reduction. And while many key lawmakers have been agitating for action in Libya, others have been more reluctant and have urged the Obama administration to send them a declaration of war.
Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Richard Lugar, R-Ind., says Congress should have had the opportunity to weigh in on what he said will be "a very expensive operation, even in a limited way." Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Lugar said, "It’s a strange time in which almost all of our congressional days are spent talking about budget deficits, outrageous problems. And yet [at the] same time, all of this passes."
[…] In a report released earlier this month, Harrison estimated that the initial stages of taking out Qaddafi’s coastal air defenses could ultimately cost coalition forces between $400 million and $800 million. But the coalition is now targeting his ground forces in an effort to protect civilians – a factor that Harrison said will drive up the initial costs of the operation.
[…] Meanwhile, Harrison initially estimated that maintaining a coastal no-fly zone after those initial strikes would cost in the range of $30 million to $100 million per week. If the coalition continues to strike ground targets, the weekly costs would be closer to the higher range, he said.
[…] On the first day of strikes alone, U.S.-led forces launched 112 long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, which cost about $1 million to $1.5 million apiece, from ships stationed off the Libyan coast. That totaled $112 million to $168 million. Since those first strikes, U.S. and British forces have launched at least another 12 Tomahawk missiles.
The Defense Department typically buys about 200 Tomahawks a year. While the military likely can put off buying new missiles for months, it will ultimately need to boost planned procurement rates to refill its stockpile.
[…] Meanwhile, it generally costs $10,000 per hour, including maintenance and fuel, to operate F-15s and F-16s. Those costs do not include the payloads dropped from the aircraft. The B-2s dropped 45 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMS, which are 2,000-pound bombs that cost between $30,000 and $40,000 apiece to replace.
[…] Ultimately, the length and scale of the operation – and of the U.S. role in it – will be key to how much it costs. A weeklong operation involving a limited number of U.S. troops would be manageable within the existing defense budget. But if Odyssey Dawn drags on for weeks and months, the Pentagon would likely have to do some maneuvering to replenish its accounts.
[…] Complicating matters, however, is the fact that most of the coalition nations’ militaries, which operate on a fraction of the Pentagon’s yearly allowance, are grappling with budget pressures of their own. While the Defense Department hopes to transfer control to coalition partners in the coming days, the longer the operations over Libya continue, the more difficult it will be for allies to take the lead.
"If it goes on more than a month, we’re going to be in the forefront [of operations] or we’re going to let Qaddafi stick around," predicted former Defense comptroller Zakheim, who served under President George W. Bush.
[…]
2) A Libyan Fight for Democracy, or a Civil War?
David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22tripoli.html
Tripoli – The question has hovered over the Libyan uprising from the moment the first tank commander defected to join his cousins protesting in the streets of Benghazi: Is the battle for Libya the clash of a brutal dictator against a democratic opposition, or is it fundamentally a tribal civil war?
The answer could determine the course of both the Libyan uprising and the results of the Western intervention. In the West’s preferred chain of events, airstrikes enable the rebels to unite with the currently passive residents of the western region around Tripoli, under the banner of an essentially democratic revolution that topples Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
He, however, has predicted the opposite: that the revolt is a tribal war of eastern Libya against the west that ends in either his triumph or a prolonged period of chaos.
"It is a very important question that is terribly near impossible to answer," said Paul Sullivan, a political scientist at Georgetown University who has studied Libya. "It could be a very big surprise when Qaddafi leaves and we find out who we are really dealing with."
The behavior of the fledgling rebel government in Benghazi so far offers few clues to the rebels’ true nature. Their governing council is composed of secular-minded professionals – lawyers, academics, businesspeople – who talk about democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law. But their commitment to those principles is just now being tested as they confront the specter of potential Qaddafi spies in their midst, either with rough tribal justice or a more measured legal process.
Like the Qaddafi government, the operation around the rebel council is rife with family ties. And like the chiefs of the Libyan state news media, the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.
Skeptics of the rebels’ commitment to democracy point to Libya’s short and brutal history. Until Colonel Qaddafi’s revolution in 1969, Libya could scarcely be considered a country, divided as it was under its former king into three separate provinces, each with myriad tribes of rural, semi-nomadic herders. Retaliatory tribal killings and violence were the main source of justice.
Although Colonel Qaddafi worked hard to forge the provinces into a single state, he did little to calm the culture of violence, among other things ordering his revolutionary committees to shoot the "stray dogs" of the revolution and staging public hangings of his political opponents in neighborhood squares or even school gymnasiums.
[…] In the neighborhoods of the capital that have staged major peaceful protests against Colonel Qaddafi, many have volunteered – speaking on the condition of anonymity – that their demonstrations were nonviolent mainly because they could not obtain weapons fast enough.
[…] That stands in sharp contrast to Libya’s neighbors, Tunisia and Egypt. In Egypt, in particular, the young leaders of the revolution were so seized with an ethic of nonviolence that in the middle of winning a battle of thrown stones against a loyalist mob, two young protesters said they believed they had lost, simply because they had resorted to violence.
Nor did Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya ever do much more than place a veneer over the long-simmering tribal animosities.
The eastern region around Benghazi had always been a hotbed of opposition to the colonel, in part because tribes there had enjoyed the favoritism of the former king, Idriss I, whom the colonel overthrew, while he in turn favored the tribes of the central and western coast.
When the uprising came, many of the most significant defectors – including Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, the rebel army head and a former interior minister – were members of the eastern tribes.
But the legacy of such tribal rivalries in Libya may in fact be fading, thanks in part to the enormous changes that Colonel Qaddafi – a modernizer, in his idiosyncratic way – helped bring about. Coming to power just before the oil boom, he tapped Libya’s new wealth to provide schools, hospitals and other benefits for Libya’s desperately poor, semi-nomadic population.
Gradually, Libya became overwhelmingly urban, with about 85 percent of its populations clustered around its two main urban centers – Tripoli and Benghazi.
[…]
3) African Union Panel Is Denied Permission to Land in Libya
William Davison and Oudaa Marouf, Bloomberg, Mar 21, 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/african-union-negotiating-committee-is-denied-permission-to-land-in-libya.html
The African Union said a panel established to negotiate a solution to the crisis in Libya was denied entry into the North African country.
Representatives from South Africa, Uganda, the Republic of Congo, Mali and Mauritania had planned to travel to Libya yesterday to meet officials from Muammar Qaddafi’s government and rebels opposed to his rule.
The panel "requested the required permission for the flight carrying its members to Libya" to comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution that imposed a no-fly zone on Libya, the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia-based organization said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. "The committee was denied permission."
[…] The AU has opposed any form of foreign military intervention in Libya, though the three AU members on the UN Security Council, Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon, voted in favor of the no-fly zone.
The AU Commission will hold a meeting in Addis Ababa on March 25 with representatives from the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the European Union and the United Nations to discuss ways of resolving the crisis in Libya, it said.
4) Rep. Stephen Lynch opposes call to arms over Libya
Congressman ‘troubled’ by U.S. role
Marie Szaniszlo and Jessica Fargen, Boston Herald, Sunday, March 20, 2011
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1324675
Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch is blasting President Obama for joining yesterday’s international air assault on Libya, saying he is "very, very troubled" by the decision to commit military assets to what Lynch considers a "civil war."
"I think generally under the Constitution, there has to be a direct threat to U.S. national security," said Lynch, of South Boston. "I don’t see anything that would warrant the type of commitment we’ve made."
[…] "This is completely gratuitous," Lynch said. "You would think being in the middle of two wars, we might be reluctant to commit to a third military action."
[…]
5) Johnson opposes military action in Libya
Tom Kacich, News-Gazette (Champaign, IL), Tue, 03/22/2011
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/politics-and-government/2011-03-22/johnson-opposes-military-action-libya.html
U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Urbana, who already opposes U.S. involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, today said he would introduce legislation to de-fund military action in Libya.
The six-term Republican said he would work with Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., a freshman congressman, to draft legislation declaring the action unconstitutional.
"Constitutionally, it is indisputable that Congress must be consulted prior to an act of war unless there is an imminent threat against this country. The president has not done so," Johnson said. "In fact, this is the same man who questioned President Bush’s constitutional authority to commit troops to war.
"Our country has no business enmeshing itself in another country’s civil unrest. We were not attacked. Our national security interests are not at stake. It is the American people, through their elected representatives, who are constitutionally empowered to take this kind of action. Not the president.
"We have spent $443.5 billion in the war in Afghanistan since 2001. We have spent $805.6 billion in Iraq in that time. We are already beyond broke for largely unacceptable reasons, and the president has just added to that dubious legacy, committing American lives and dollars without our consent and no end game in sight.
"The first night of this attack, we fired 112 Tomahawk missiles. Each of these missiles can cost up to $1.5 million. That’s $168 million for one night’s assault. Estimates to maintain the no-fly zone, depending on how much of the country we want to dominate, can cost $30 million to $100 million per week. Our commitment to that goal is to date open-ended."
Haiti
6) Haiti Abstains
Dan Coughlin, The Nation, March 22, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/article/159388/haiti-abstains
Despite a massive UN mobilization, Haitians stayed away from controversial presidential elections in large numbers on March 20, raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the government poised to take power.
"The majority of the Haitian people did not vote in this election because the majority of people stand behind Lavalas," said Wilnor Moise, a 29-year-old former bus conductor from Cité Soleil, referring to Fanmi Lavalas (FL), the democratic movement of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which was barred from participating in the elections.
Haiti’s disputed parliamentary and presidential poll, culminating in the final round of voting this past Sunday, is key to the future of billions of dollars in pledged earthquake aid and to that of the 14,000-strong UN force that has occupied Haiti since the 2004 coup d’etat that overthrew Aristide and his party.
The banning of progressive parties and the FL from this year’s polls, allegedly because of procedural and technical issues, opened the electoral landscape to two neo-Duvalierist presidential candidates: Mirlande Manigat, 70, the wife (and some say surrogate) of a former right-wing president, and Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, 50, a popular konpa musician.
Martelly appeared to emerge as the victor, although preliminary results won’t be announced until March 31 and final ones on April 16.
Both candidates supported the 1991 and the 2004 coups against Aristide and both call for reinstating the repressive US-created Haitian army, which Aristide disbanded in 1995.
Patrick Elie, a former adviser to both outgoing President Rene Preval and President Aristide, argued that the United States has played an influential, behind-the-scenes role in the election, helping to put the extreme right in power in order to perpetuate the occupation of Haiti and keep its neoliberal policies in place.
"For twenty-five years, the US and the international community have sought to remove the people and the population from the political scene, and the plan has succeeded for the time being," said Elie, referring to what British academic Peter Hallward called one of the most prolonged and intense periods of counterrevolution anywhere in the world.
"But the victor of these elections will have very little popular legitimacy," Elie said, arguing that the electoral process has been a farce. "And because of that the victor will be the puppet of the international community and will have no card to play and no real popular support."
In Cité Soleil, a vast and extremely poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, heavily armed UN soldiers patrol the streets. Graffiti proclaims "UN = misery" and "NGOs = misery," references to the dominant role the international UN system plays in Haiti. (The UN military mission is the third largest in the world after Darfur and Congo.)
"This is an election of social exclusion; this is a selection," said Wilson St. Val, 35, sitting in the shadow of a Brazilian-manned armored personnel carrier outside a Cité Soleil polling booth.
A former Presidential Service guard under Aristide, St. Val – like hundreds of Lavalas supporters – was beaten and imprisoned without charge after the 2004 coup. He walked free after five years in jail when the earthquake damaged Haiti’s notorious National Penitentiary.
"Our roots are numerous under the ground, truly numerous. We will not allow those people to exclude us from society at all. They call us bandits, they call us gangs, they call us kidnappers. But we won’t give up," he said.
Despite the high stakes for the international community, Sunday’s balloting suffered from widespread administrative flaws and massive abstention by Haiti’s 4.7 million voters. And UN forces shot and killed at least one person on election day.
A review of balloting at four large polling stations in three Port-au-Prince districts revealed a voter participation rate of less than 18 percent among a sample of more than 12,600 registered voters.
[…] Patrick Elie warned that the new government, given its lack of popular legitimacy, may resort to repression to maintain control, with crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly likely.
"There will be a clash between what the international community and neo-Duvalierists want and what the population still wants," said Elie. "And it might start earlier rather than later because the extreme right has no popular base and because these candidates are totally anti-popular."
Libya
7) With Libya ablaze, 5 things the U.S. should consider
If this hasty intervention is broadened, the very civilians whom we aim to protect could suffer even further
Alan J. Kuperman, USA Today, March 22, 2011
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-03-22-column22_ST_N.htm
[Kuperman is a professor at the University of Texas- Austin, author of The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, and co-editor of Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention.]
The U.S. has started bombing Libya to implement a U.N. resolution authorizing all necessary measures to "protect civilians and civilian populated areas." But intervention also is bolstering anti-government forces by attacking the Libyan army, especially near Benghazi, enabling the rebels to resume their offensive Monday from that stronghold.
Proponents of such intervention claim it is the only way to protect Libya’s populace. But intervening actually magnifies the threat to civilians in Libya, and beyond. That is because armed uprisings, such as Libya’s, typically provoke massive state retaliation that harms innocents. By contrast, non-violent movements, as in Egypt and Tunisia, rarely trigger so brutal a response.
By helping rebels, we thus increase the risk of retaliatory massacres or even genocide. Indeed, The New York Times reported that violence threatening Libya’s civilians was "provoked by rebels." Aiding the Libyan rebels also encourages copycat uprisings in other countries, proliferating the risk of atrocities.
Counterproductive intervention started weeks ago. The United Nations imposed sanctions, President Obama declared that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "must step down" and Egypt reportedly provided weapons. These steps emboldened the rebellion and intensified the brutal Libyan military response.
But did Gadhafi massacre civilians or plan to commit genocide?
His forces certainly harmed innocents while defeating rebels in urban areas, as U.S. forces have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he did threaten "no mercy" in Benghazi, but Gadhafi directed this threat only at rebels to persuade them to flee. Despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras, there are no images of genocidal violence, a claim that smacks of rebel propaganda.
Indeed, Libya’s rebels started the war knowing that they could not win on their own, and that their attacks would provoke harm against civilians, aiming to draw in outside support – and it worked. Tragically, this same dynamic has cost thousands of lives in other wars.
In Bosnia’s conflict of the early 1990s, for example, the most influential Muslim politician, Omer Behmen, later told me that his whole strategy was to "put up a fight for long enough to bring in the international community." The result? Three years of war and 100,000 dead.
In Kosovo, a senior ethnic Albanian official, Dugi Gorani, confessed on BBC: "The more civilians were killed, the chances of international intervention became bigger, and the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) of course realized that." NATO’s intervention backfired by escalating the conflict, leaving 10,000 dead and a million expelled from their homes.
In Darfur, Sudan, the top rebel leader fought for three years and then rejected a peace offer in 2006, despite retaliation that killed more than 100,000. Abdul Wahid al Nur later explained that he was waiting for greater U.S. and British intervention "like in Bosnia."
Based on these missteps, I propose five principles to guide humanitarian intervention, all of which apply to Libya:
•Do not intervene on humanitarian grounds in ways that benefit rebels unless the state’s retaliation is grossly disproportionate. This policy discourages both rebel provocation and state reprisals against civilians. In Libya, we should intervene no further unless Gadhafi’s forces massacre civilians.
•Deliver purely humanitarian aid – food, water, sanitation, shelter, medical care – in ways that minimize the benefit to rebels. The United States admirably is delivering supplies to Libyan refugees across the border in Tunisia and Egypt. But we should ensure that relief sites do not become rear bases for Libya’s rebels. If local governments are unwilling to patrol the refugee encampments, we should organize multilateral policing.
•Expend substantial resources to persuade states to address the legitimate grievances of non-violent domestic groups. Ironically, Obama has applied little pressure on Yemen and Bahrain, which slaughtered peaceful protesters, but he bombed Libya for responding to armed rebels. This sends precisely the wrong message to the Arab street: If you want U.S. support, resort to violence.
•Do not coerce regime change or surrender of sovereignty unless also taking precautions against violent backlash – such as golden parachutes, power-sharing, or preventive military intervention. If the White House insists on Gadhafi’s departure, it should guarantee asylum for him and a continuing share of power for his senior officials and allied tribes. Simply demanding regime change could drive him to genocidal violence as a last resort, while the international community lacks the will for a preventive deployment of ground troops.
•Do not falsely claim "humanitarian" grounds for intervention driven by other objectives. If Obama is intervening because of Gadhafi’s past misdeeds, rather than recent humanitarian offenses, he should say so publicly. Otherwise, the White House encourages further rebellions that aim to lure U.S. intervention by provoking retaliation.
Gadhafi once was a sponsor of terrorism. After 2003, however, he converted to a U.S. ally – surrendering weapons of mass destruction, paying compensation for past attacks and providing intelligence against radical Islamists. If the U.S. now demands wholesale regime change, it not only could trigger a humanitarian disaster, it also would signal that Washington is an untrustworthy ally. And it could create a failed or hostile state that poses a greater threat.
President Obama and America’s allies should avoid intervening in ways that do more harm than good.
Yemen
8) Yemen’s President on brink as army switches sides to join rebels
After Friday’s massacre of 52 protesters, military is now lining up tanks to protect crowds calling for end of 32-year reign
Jeb Boone, The Independent, Tuesday, 22 March 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemens-president-on-brink-as-army-switches-sides-to-join-rebels-2248918.html
Sana’a – Yemen’s embattled President was hit by a wave of defections among his generals yesterday as tanks from rival factions took to the streets of the capital in a setback to his attempts to stay in power.
The regime vowed to counter any attempts at a coup after the country’s top military commander switched sides and joined the protesters calling for end to the 32-year rule of Ali Saleh.
President Saleh appeared increasingly isolated after some ambassadors, religious and tribal leaders and sections of the military all turned on him. The military defections put more than 50 per cent of the military on the side of the rebellion.
Anti-government protesters based at Sana’a University were ecstatic to hear of the general’s defection. Soldiers moved freely in and out of the protest camp, drinking tea, posing for photographs and receiving kisses from demonstrators who have camped there for more than a month demanding a change in regime.
The defections appeared to be in response to the regime’s decision to use increased violence to fight protests against President Saleh’s rule. Rooftop-based snipers loyal to the regime killed 52 protesters on Friday, prompting the President to sack his cabinet and declare a state of emergency.
The top commander, Major General Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, a former close ally of the President, yesterday condemned the Saleh regime and declared his support for the revolution on behalf of the military. "Repressing peaceful demonstrators in public areas around the country has led to a cycle of crises which is getting more complicated each day and pushing the country toward s civil war," he said.
The general’s forces on Sunday took up positions around a protest camp at Sana’a University. Once in position, he declared that his men would now protect the anti-government protesters from further attack. The general also sent tanks to the central bank and other strategic centres.
Following the defection, the Defence Minister, Mohammad Nasser Ali, claimed that the army still backed the President. "We will not allow an attempt at a coup against democracy and constitutional legitimacy, or violation of the security of the nation and citizens," he said.
An elite military force of Republican Guards led by the President’s son and one-time heir apparent deployed tanks and armoured vehicles outside the presidential palace.
However, many feel that General Ali Muhsin’s defection means the end of the Saleh regime. "There is a 60 per cent chance that this will become a bloodless coup," said one Yemeni government official.
[…] The French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé, yesterday became the first Western leader to call publicly for the President to stand down. "We say this to Yemen, where the situation is worsening. We estimate today that the departure of President Saleh is unavoidable," he said.
[…]
Syria
9) At defiant march, Syrians shout ‘No more fear!’
Bassem Mroue, Associated Press, Mon Mar 21, 7:24 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110321/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_syria
Daraa, Syria – Syrians chanting "No more fear!" held a defiant march Monday after a deadly government crackdown failed to quash three days of mass protests in a southern city – an extraordinary outpouring in a country that is known for brutally suppressing dissent.
Riot police armed with clubs chased the small group away without casualties, but traces of earlier, larger demonstrations were everywhere: burned-out and looted government buildings, a dozen torched vehicles, an office of the ruling Baath party with its windows knocked out. Protesters also burned an office of the telecommunications company Syriatel, which is owned in part by the president’s cousin.
The unrest in the city of Daraa started Friday after security troops fired at protesters, killing five people. Over the next two days, two more people died and authorities sealed the city, allowing people out but not in, as thousands of enraged protesters set fire to government buildings and demonstrated around the city.
Among the victims was 11-year-old Mundhir Masalmi, who died Monday after suffering tear gas inhalation a day earlier, an activist told The Associated Press. The activist asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor complained Monday that reports indicate the Syrian government "has used disproportionate force against civilians, and in particular against demonstrators and mourners in Daraa."
Human Rights Watch said in a statement that Syria should "cease use of live fire and other excessive force against protesters." On Monday, an Associated Press team was allowed into Daraa, accompanied by two government minders who kept them away from protesters and would not allow photographs of demonstrations. Army checkpoints circled the city and plainclothes officers were deployed in key areas.
[…] Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, said he does not see that what is happening in Syria is similar to those of Arab states, because Syria has a history in which riots don’t spread to other cities. "In 1982, clashes were in Hama and did not spread," he said. Khashan said unlike Daraa, where thousands have protested, only few hundreds marched in other cities.
[…].
Despite political repression and rights abuses, Assad remains popular among many in the Arab world, in particular because he is seen as one of the few Arab leaders willing to stand up to Israel.
Israel/Palestine
10) Israeli Attack on Gaza Militants Kills 4 Civilians
Fares Akram, New York Times, March 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/world/middleeast/23gaza.html
Gaza – An Israeli attempt to hit Palestinian militants who had fired rockets at Israel went horribly wrong on Tuesday, with mortar shells killing three youths playing soccer and a 60-year-old grandfather leaving his house.
Later, in an unrelated attack, the Israeli Air Force killed four militants in a car, all members of Islamic Jihad, the organization and the Israeli military said. The army said the men had been on their way to launch rockets at Israel.
Tuesday’s violence came amid a sharp increase in tensions along the Israel-Gaza border in recent days. Hamas has fired more than 60 rockets at Israel since Saturday, and Israeli warplanes and artillery units have carried out repeated attacks. Both sides claim they are retaliating and not seeking an escalation in the conflict, but fears of a repeat of the Israeli war here two years ago were palpable.
After rockets were fired from a citrus grove behind houses in eastern Gaza City on Tuesday afternoon, the Israelis fired mortar rounds at the source. Three shells landed on a sandy street in front of a home about half a mile from the border, killing three members of the Helou family and a neighbor.
The dead were Yasser Hamed al-Helou, 60, who was just coming out of his garden by the street, his 15-year-old grandson, a 10-year-old relative, and a 17-year-old neighbor, Mohammed Harrara. The boys had been playing soccer, witnesses said.
[…] Hamas appears to have ended a two-year cease-fire that had held since the three-week Israeli military operation in Gaza ended in early 2009. But it was unclear if policy had shifted; there have been signs of a rift between Hamas’s hard-line military wing and the government, which may have led to the escalation. Hamas statements have said the recent attacks are a response to "ongoing Israeli crimes."
Abu Obaida, a spokesman for the military wing, told reporters on Tuesday that his men "cannot be deterred" by Israeli attacks.
He said that Hamas respected the cease-fire with Israel and had tried to enforce it, but that "the resistance cannot control itself forever." He added that if Israel stopped its attacks on Gaza, Hamas would hold back as well.
Overnight on Monday, Israeli F-16s carried out eight airstrikes, hitting a Hamas training camp, a brick factory, a metal workshop and a mechanic’s garage. Local reports said that at least five people, including a woman and two children, sustained moderate injuries.
Brazil
11) Brazil Calls for Ceasefire in Libya
Bruno Marfinati, Reuters, March 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/03/22/world/africa/international-us-libya-brazil.html
Sao Paulo – The Brazilian government called late on Monday for a cease-fire in Libya, where air attacks by the United States and its allies sought to stop the advance of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces on rebel-held towns.
The goal of a cease-fire should be to protect civilians and pave the way for dialogue between the Libyan government and its opponents, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement made just hours after a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Brazil.
"After regretting the loss of lives because of the conflict in the country, the Brazilian government hopes that an effective cease-fire be implemented as soon as possible to allow the protection of civilians and the start of dialogue," the statement said.
Last week, Brazil, China, India, Germany and Russia abstained from passing a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to impose a no-fly zone in Libya.
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