By Rami G. Khouri

It has been eight months this week since that the first wave of citizen revolts across the Arab world was initiated in Tunisia. Two very important trends in that process now need to be better assessed and dealt with politically.

The first is the situation of stalemate between two equally strong forces representing the incumbent regime and the popular national opposition in several Arab countries. The second, in such situations and others, is the question of how and when foreign intervention is appropriate and can be effective. We may face these questions in the Arab world for some years to come.

The speedy collapse of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt clearly cautioned other vulnerable Arab leaders who prepared tougher responses to their own domestic challenges. The four most glaring examples are Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. The active use of international military force in Libya and the presence of an alternative Libyan government probably seal the fate of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. However, in the other three situations the confrontations between the regime and the opposition could drag on for many months. Syria is the state of most immediate concern and interest, because of the consequences of a regime collapse or internal strife in the wake of such an eventuality.

In Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, the government and opposition are both strong, determined, patient and, most importantly, legitimate in the eyes of their own constituency. It is possible that we could see in these countries weekly pro- and anti-government demonstrations for months ahead, without a resolution to the basic conflict. We have already witnessed about six months of such a situation in Yemen and Bahrain. If domestic challenges do not change or sufficiently modify an Arab regime, what then is the appropriate role for external intervention?

This question has again come to the fore with several international calls for the Syrian regime headed by President Bashar Assad to leave office or make a serious transition to democracy. This reached a new peak Thursday when the American president and the Turkish prime minister issued a statement calling on Assad to stop military actions against his people and start responding to the citizenry’s legitimate demands for a democratic transformation. This followed gestures last week by key Arab parties, including Saudi Arabia and the Arab League, in the same vein.

Syria is likely to ignore these statements and admonitions in the short run, but further down the road it would be wise to heed the experience of Libya and also Syria’s own history, especially its forced retreat from Lebanon in April 2005. Both those situations clarify the critical elements that must come together to force a country into a certain course of action. The critical pivot is the convergence among domestic popular sentiment, the positions of key regional actors, and legitimate international pressure via the United Nations Security Council. When those conditions are met, the pressure on an Arab regime becomes too strong to resist. It then collapses, leaves, or changes radically.

Those conditions were met in the Libyan case, when the Arab League and the U.N. both responded to indigenous Libyan demands and sanctioned the use of force to stop the Gadhafi regime from assaulting its own people. The same conditions were met in Lebanon in spring 2005, after the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, and 22 other people sparked a spontaneous popular uprising against Syria’s military and political domination of the country. The Syrians had felt and resisted Lebanese and international demands to withdraw from Lebanon before that, but they only realized they had to do so when Saudi Arabia and Egypt both told Damascus that they could not support its continued Lebanese presence. The result: Syria could not withstand the combined pressure of Lebanese, Arab and international pressure, so it headed for the exit.

Those conditions do not fully pertain in Syria, Yemen or Bahrain, so the regimes in place feel they can continue to rule while they explore means of staying in power. The Syrian situation is the closest to what is required to achieve compliance, particularly since this week’s clarity in the important positions of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and the slow motion, low-intensity moral stirrings of the Arab League. It is particularly telling, and correct, that the United States has declared the need for powers like China and India to join the drive to intensify sanctions against Syria, so that the call for the Assad regime to step aside is not seen mainly as an American exercise.

As the international consensus against Assad rule solidifies, the days of Assad will, correspondingly, be numbered. Bahrain and Yemen remain susceptible to the same equation, with Saudi Arabia’s role being the dominant one.
Syria learned the importance of “legitimacy” the hard way in 2005 in Lebanon, and now the same lesson seems to be coming through in the country’s domestic politics.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR.