Libyans' Lessons for Syrians

BEIRUT -- The imminent triumph of Libyan citizens who have fought successfully to overthrow the 42-year-long rule of Col. Moammar Gaddafi adds an important chapter to the book of revolutionary transformation that much of the Arab world has been writing this year. Four things in particular define the Libyan case: the warfare between the regime and its opponents, the military intervention by NATO, the protracted nature of the struggle for freedom and against entrenched authoritarianism, and the instrument of the National Transitional Council (NTC) as a tool for regime change. All four have important implications for the ongoing battles for liberty and democracy across much of the Arab world.

The Libyan revolution is especially significant because it represents the first case of the popular overthrow of a regime in those Arab countries where challenged regimes have fought back politically and militarily, in contrast with Egypt and Tunisia where the leadership collapsed and fled when confronted with massive street demonstrations. The military support of NATO was decisive, to be sure, but it followed the eruption of the uprising against Gaddafi by Libyans who initially concentrated their organizational efforts on the city of Benghazi and were prepared to fight and die for their freedom. The overthrow of Gaddafi sends a very strong signal to freedom fighters in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and perhaps other Arab lands to emerge that a determined struggle for liberty will result in victory.

I have been shocked in the last month to hear and read many commentators across the Western world express concern that the “Arab Spring,” as they call it, has bogged down into a hard winter of either regime reassertion and violence in places like Syria and Libya, or has failed to generate new and stable democratic systems in places like Egypt and Tunisia. The mistake, of course, was for such people to look at the Arab world as passing through a “spring,” a transitory and serene moment of transfiguration that moved swiftly to the splendors of summer. The reality -- from Western political history, especially -- is that wholesale national transformation takes time to occur, needs time to stabilize when it does occur, and experiences moments of both rapid advance and stubborn stagnation. 

The slow, inconsistent pace of the transformations across the Arab world since January are just about exactly what history would suggest we should experience, especially given two defining characteristics of Arab political systems: Some regimes, like those in Egypt, Syria and Libya have been defined by single-family or one-party rule for over four decades, and, the magnitude of the immediate challenges in this moment of transformation is too great for any new government to handle smoothly and swiftly, including economic expansion, reasserting security, and creating governance institutions that enjoy renewed legitimacy and credibility.

Bahrain and Yemen will need much more time to reach a decisive conclusion to the political confrontation that now defines them, mainly because their powerful neighbor Saudi Arabia has clearly acted to prevent regime change by street demonstrations. Therefore Syria will get the lion’s share of media and political attention now, and the Libyan experience will prove to be relevant. Military intervention from abroad is unlikely to happen in Syria if events continue in their current path. More pertinent is the very important Libyan precedent of the National Transitional Council as a tool for political warfare and national power transfer.

The NTC that was established early on in Benghazi provided three critically important dimensions to the struggle against Gaddafi: a coordinating and planning mechanism by which all elements of the opposition to Gaddafi could cooperate to achieve their common goal of regime change; a reassuring signal about what would follow the overthrow of the regime; and, an address where international supporters could call to register their support and provide practical assistance that has proved vital for success in Libya, and will do so in other cases as well. We are likely to see something similar happen in Syria in the months ahead, if the opposition groups can forge the minimum consensus needed for such a mechanism to work.

In Syria, the international pressure will come through economic sanctions rather than via military intervention, but political and diplomatic pressure will also play a major role in the months ahead if foreign countries drop their recognition of the Assad regime and instead deal with a Syrian transitional council of opposition movements. If such a council reflects domestic Syrian popular legitimacy as well as the recognition of regional powers, it would then also attract serious international support, and thus signal the domestic and international delegitimization end of the Damascus regime. The lessons of Libya in this respect are enormous, and provide a strong emotional impetus as well as logistical pointers to the way forward for other Arabs who similarly fight for their rights as citizens and free human beings in their own countries.