U.S. Trying to Preserve Status Quo, China Objects

John Kerry is in his first week as America’s top diplomat and already he has a problem – the East China Sea where Chinese frigates are locking on to Japanese naval and air force patrols with weapons-fire-control radar.

“Actions such as this escalate tensions and increase the risk of an incident or a miscalculation,” says State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, “and they could undermine peace, stability, and economic growth in this vital region.”

The possibility of vast oil deposits in the disputed area west of Okinawa have helped fuel the hostility over a group of tiny islands in the region, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

 

Secretary of State John Kerry, shown here at his Jan. 24, confirmation hearings in the Senate, faces his first major challenge on the job with the South China Sea dispute. Photo: AP

Secretary of State Kerry has already spoken separately with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi about the dispute. He hopes to contain the flare so that China can play “a much more significant role as a partner in any number of efforts globally.”

“We will be competitors in the economic marketplace, but we shouldn’t be viewed as adversaries in some way that diminishes our ability to cooperate,” Kerry says. “China is the other significant economy in the world and obviously has a voracious appetite for resources around the world, and we need to establish rules of the road that work for everybody.”

At the start of his second term, President Barack Obama also needs China to keep cooperating with the U.S. On issues such as Iran’s nuclear program, North Korea and Syria.

But it’s precisely these other global efforts that will suffer, says Chu Shulong, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University. He says Beijing sees Washington’s position on the East China Sea dispute as “America increasingly standing with the other sides against China.”

Then comes North Korea

And that, he says, is making it harder for Beijing to help out Washington when it comes to North Korea.

Successive U.S. governments have said Washington’s only stake in the Senkaku/Diaoyu standoff is keeping the peace. But it’s this status quo to which Beijing objects. It says Washington’s transfer of administration over the area to Tokyo in 1971 puts the Obama administration front and center in this dispute.

 

A Japan Coast Guard patrol boat approaches a Chinese fishing vessel Feb. 22, 2013 southwest of the disputed islands group in the East China Sea. Photo: (AP Photo/Japan Coast Guard 11th Regional Headquarters)

Justin Logan, director of foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, says the American position “has been confusing and unhelpful.” He says the U.S. Claim of not taking a position on whether the islands are Japanese or Chinese comes as it insists that the islands are covered by a treaty with Japan.

“You’ve got really white-hot nationalism burning, I would say, to a greater extent in China and to a somewhat lesser extent in Japan,” Logan says. “So it’s not just a case that this is a sort of a realist, get-the-map-out, secure-your-sea lines sort of dispute.”

“There are real burning historical beliefs at stake here. But there also is a fairly straightforward military issue about whose boats get to go where,” he adds.

At the Center for American Progress think tank, senior fellow Nina Hachigian says Kerry “would be wise to devote considerable energy to determining how the United States can help diffuse” an increasingly dangerous situation.

“The United States and China have no shared vision for what their future bilateral relationship could or should look like,” she says. “They have not articulated a clear understanding of how they could continue to co-exist in peace a decade or two down the road, and they need to develop a shared, tangible idea for the future of the relationship.”

“Without a credible alternative,” Hachigian says, “the default prediction for the interaction between a rising power such as China and an established power such as the United States is based on what has come before: inevitable violent conflict.”

Gilbert Rozman, Northeast Asia sociology professor at Princeton University, says Chinese aggression in the East China Sea is part of a more assertive foreign policy.

Picking a fight?

“It’s China that’s picking a fight,” Rozman says, adding that Beijing “wanted the fight as part of the overall change in identity and aggressiveness that’s been going on for a few years and now is likely to be accelerated by the new leadership of Xi Jinping.

“And that’s why I’m really disturbed about how to resolve these issues because I think China prefers to have the conflict than to go back to something like the old status quo,” Rozman says.

At Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies, professor Ren Xiao says Japan’s refusal to recognize the territorial dispute blocks any way out of it.

“The item high on the agenda is not who possesses sovereignty but rather what efforts they should make to soften the tension and prevent any military conflict. Washington has a responsibility to urge Tokyo to do so,” Ren says. “Erecting a protectionist umbrella is not favorable to getting beyond this crisis.”

Amid the recriminations, the Cato Institute’s Justin Logan says it’s “unnerving that you do hear both Chinese and Japanese sound an awful lot like they would fight a war with one and other over what — compared to the prospective costs of a shooting war — are worthless rocks.”

“People need to look very clearly into the abyss that is a shooting war between China and Japan, potentially with the United States roping itself in,” he says. “This is a very, very bad scenario.”

“So whatever people’s historical sensibilities, romantic ideas, or military aspirations may be,” says Logan, “they really need to square up to the costs and benefits of where the policies are headed.”

John Kerry, the new U.S. Secretary of State, greets his fellow diplomats at the State Department Monday, Feb. 4, 2013, as he begin his new job. Photo: AP

He Talks About His Boyhood Bicycle Ride Behind Iron Curtain

Much has been made of the new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s familiarity with the Foreign Service as the son of a former diplomat.

In his first day at the State Department, he spoke about the challenges of Foreign Service families “who have to uproot kids and uproot families and move from school to school and struggle with those difficulties.”

But Kerry has not always been so keenly aware of difficulties of diplomatic protocols, especially as a 12-year-old in Berlin.

Moving to Germany with his family in 1954, Kerry said he used to ride his bicycle up and down the Kurfurstendamm, and past the burned-out Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate.

Secretary of State John Kerry shows his new colleagues at the State Department his first diplomatic passport. Photo: AP

One day he used his diplomatic passport to cross into the East Sector, the Russian sector, where “I really noticed the difference between the East and West. There were very few people. They were dressed in dark clothing. They kind of held their heads down. I noticed all this. There was no joy in those streets.”

“And when I came back, I felt this remarkable sense of relief and a great lesson about the virtue of freedom and the virtue of the principles and ideals that we live by and that drive us. I was enthralled.”

His father, not so much.

“I got a tongue-lashing. I was told I could’ve been an international incident. He could’ve lost his job. And my passport,” he said raising a faded green diplomatic passport, “this very passport, was promptly yanked. And I was summarily grounded. Anyway, lessons learned.”

“If the tabloids today knew I had done that, I can see the headlines that say, “Kerry’s Early Communist Connections,” something like that. That’s the world we live in, folks.”

Living overseas as a boy was a great adventure, Kerry says. And 57 years later, he begins what he expects will be another great adventure at the State Department.

“What other job can you have where you get up every day and advance the cause of nation and also keep faith with the ideals of your country on which it is founded and most critically, meet our obligations to our fellow travelers on this planet?”

“That’s as good as it gets,” he told employees at the State Department. “And I’m proud to be part of it with you. So now let’s get to work.”

China claims vast maritime areas in the South China Sea, including waters also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and others. Map: VOA

Where does President Obama Go in His Second Term?

Barack Obama’s decision to steer his foreign policy more toward Asia could face sharp challenges when it comes to the South China Sea. That’s where China is squaring off with some of its neighbors over who has sovereignty over the maritime region and its potentially vast oil and mineral riches.

So far the disputes have been relatively peaceful, even though China has sent naval patrols into areas its neighbors say is their sovereign territory. Now the rivalry enters a new phase as the Philippines takes its dispute with China to the United Nations.

Gilbert Asuque, assistant foreign affairs secretary of the Philippines, says the U.N. law of the sea tribunal should decide the issue. Photo: AP

“We want the [Law of the Sea] tribunal to establish the rights of the Philippines to exclusively exploit the resources in our continental shelf in the West Philippine Sea,” says Philippine Assistant Foreign Affairs Secretary Gilbert Asuque.

China says the dispute is strictly between Beijing and Manila and that the Philippines’ move only makes the issue more difficult to resolve.

“China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and adjacent waters,” says Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei. “The key and root of the dispute over the South China Sea between China and the Philippines is territorial disputes caused by the Philippines’ illegal occupation of some of the Chinese islets and atolls.”

China’s many maritime disputes

China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all have conflicting claims across more than 3.5 million square kilometers of ocean from Singapore to the Strait of Taiwan.

Cato Institute foreign policy studies director Justin Logan says China is trying “as much as possible to keep this bilateral — between itself and all the disputed parties — and to prevent it from being internationalized in a systematic way. So what the Philippines have done is to move toward internationalizing it in a systematic way.”

The way Manila sees it, it might have a better chance in an international forum rather than butting heads with the regional superpower. But even if Manila wins at the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, who would enforce the ruling?

“If enforcing findings means a shooting war with China, you may see findings that go unenforced,” Logan says.

However the Beijing-Manila dispute works out, Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations says there is “no room for complacency” if President Obama is serious about pressing a new emphasis on Asia – what Washington foreign policy experts have called the “Asia Pivot.”

Unfinished business

Economy says the president needs to finish the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and restock the region with U.S. military personnel and hardware. If he doesn’t complete those tasks first, she says, Mr. Obama runs “the real risk that the pivot will prove without real substance and the naysayers―those who keep questioning the long-term commitment of the United States to the Asia-Pacific―will win the day.”

John Kerry, confirmed by the Senate Jan. 29, 2013, to become the new U.S. secretary of state, now inherits the South China Sea issue from outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Photo: AP

To complicate matters further, the president’s rivals questioned his handling of the South China Sea issue and China in general during confirmation hearings for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to be his second-term secretary of state.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, said the Obama administration cannot let China go unchecked.

“China is being increasingly aggressive about their territorial claims and their neighbors are looking to the United States and U.S. leadership as a counterbalance,” Rubio warned.

But Kerry sought to counter that by saying he was “not convinced that an increased military ramp-up is critical yet.”

“We have a lot more bases out there than any other nation in the world, including China today,” Kerry said. “We have a lot more forces out there than any other nation in the world, including China today.”

Jacques deLisle, East Asia studies director at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, says part of the problem is that the United States and China have very different perceptions about their own actions in the South China Sea region.

Perception is key

“The U.S. views it’s doing stuff that is inoffensive, and China sees it as aggressive,” deLisle said. “So what China then does, the U.S. sees as aggressive — an attempt to acquire force-projection capabilities and area-access-denial capabilities — which the U.S. sees as trying to change a status quo in which there is an order that has worked for everybody.”

And Princeton University professor Gilbert Rozman believes tensions over the South China Sea could cause problems between Washington and Beijing in other areas as well.

China blames outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, shown here at an appearance in Washington Jan. 29, 2013, for stirring up opposition to its South China Sea claims. Photo: AP

“China is playing a very different game now,” Rozman says. “The struggle has really intensified. And if the U.S. doesn’t back down in its cooperation with Japan or the Philippines, the U.S. can expect a price to be paid on other issues including North Korea.”

Rozman says Manila’s decision to take the maritime dispute to the United Nations clearly escalates the standoff. He worries that it will put pressure on Washington to do something. As of now, he says, China is “blaming the U.S. for stirring up the trouble.”

Political science professor Chu Shulong of Tsinghua University in China says Beijing has reason to blame Washington, in part because of a speech outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made in 2010 focusing attention on the rival claims over the South China Sea.

“Yes, there always has been a troubled, disputed area, but the tension was not as high before Hillary [Clinton's] speech in 2010,” he said. “And we certainly see that affect, that reality that the U.S. has caused the higher tensions by focusing on disputed issues in the South China Sea.”

Hillary Clinton, shown here at an event Nov. 16, 2012, will soon leave her job as Secretary of State, but speculation is growing that she is considering a run for the presidency in 2016. Photo: AP

Early Polls Show Her Leading Potential Challengers for 2016

The close of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State will start one of the most watched political retirements since Richard Nixon.

When Nixon lost California’s 1962 governor’s race just two years after losing the presidency, he famously told reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

Clinton steps away with decidedly more sympathetic press, ending a widely regarded turn as America’s top diplomat. But at the same time, she’s keeping her supporters hoping for another run at the presidency by dismissing talk of “retirement.”

“Well, I don’t know if that’s the world I would use,” Clinton says. “Certainly stepping off the very fast track for a little while.”

Nixon used his time outside Washington to speak abroad, write a best-selling book, raise money for fellow Republicans, and campaign for party candidates in mid-term elections.

In 1968, that support made him the clear front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and helped turn back primary challenges from three popular governors on his way to winning the White House.

Should she run for president in 2016, Clinton would likely pursue a similar path — speaking about social issues, including maternal and child health, while campaigning for Democrats much as she did ahead of her 2008 run for the presidency.

Candidates and their best-sellers

Already a best-selling author for It Takes a Village and the autobiography Living History, Ms. Clinton he could use another book (and the sure-to-be-hefty advance) to set up her campaign narrative, much as Barack Obama used his book,  The Audacity of Hope.

Clinton leaves the State Department more popular than she was four years ago, with near-universal name recognition, and with the gratitude of the president — both for her own diplomacy and for her husband’s 2012 convention speech and campaigning on his behalf.

If the Obama administration ends well, Clinton benefits from having helped shape its foreign policy. If the Obama administration ends poorly, Clinton benefits from having gotten out when she did.

Clinton also has an influential backer in husband Bill Clinton, the former president. They are shown here at her 59th birthday party in New York, Oct. 26, 2006. Photo: AP

Washington chatter about another Clinton presidential campaign grew louder with her decision to step down at the start of the president’s second term. She’s kept that buzz going while insisting that she presently has no interest in further elected office.

Publicly reminiscing with deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, Clinton recalls telling her husband about “this incredibly bright rising star – Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School. And my husband said, ‘Well, if he ever learns to play the saxophone, watch out.’ ”

“Now we travel all over the world together and people say how excited they are to meet a potential future president of the United States.” Pause. “And of course they mean Jake.”

If Clinton does run, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says his Republican Party “is incapable of competing at that level.”

“First of all, she’s very formidable as a person,” Gingrich told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “She’s a very competent person. She’s married to the most popular Democrat in the country. They both think [it] would be good for her to be president. It makes it virtually impossible to stop her for the nomination.”

A formidable competitor

In a hypothetical 2016 race, Clinton leads most prospective Republican opponents by double digits, according to Public Policy Polling. She is up 51 percent to 37 percent over former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, 51 percent to 37 percent over Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and 53 percent to 39 percent percent over Mitt Romney’s running mate, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.

Only New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is within the poll’s margin of error, trailing Clinton by just two points. But Christie has problems with leaders of his own party for the common-man frankness that makes him popular, for praising the president’s response to Hurricane Sandy ahead of November’s vote and for criticizing lawmakers delaying relief funds.

Recent public opinion polls show Clinton defeating hypothetical 2016 presidential candidates, from left, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Photo: AP

The poll of 1,100 American voters shows Clinton well out in front of Vice President Joe Biden for the 2016 Democratic nomination, 57 percent to 16 percent.

But as Clinton prepares to slow down, at least for the short term, the vice president is starting the second term with a decidedly higher-profile — stepping in to save negotiations with congressional Republicans over the so-called “fiscal cliff” and leading the president’s very public drive for tougher gun control.

Clinton loyalists don’t fear facing Biden again. (He got less than one percent in the 2008 Iowa caucus.) But they are mindful of his blue-collar appeal.

“As my dad has said publicly, that’s not something that he’s focused on for the next several months and years,” Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden told the MSNBC television network. “Look, would I think my dad would make a great president in 2016 and going forward? Of course.”

Leaving his polling station on Election Day last November, Biden was asked if that was the last time he’d vote for himself. His answer: “I don’t think so.”

If he chooses to run, Biden has some history on his side. The last time a sitting U.S. vice president sought his party’s nomination and lost was 1952.

Like Biden, Harry Truman’s vice president, Alben Barkley, was a long-serving senator in his 70′s who knew how to fire up a crowd. The Democratic Party dropped him from the ticket altogether, choosing instead the younger Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and the more conservative Alabama Senator John Sparkman.

They lost badly to World War II general Dwight Eisenhower and the new California Senator Richard Nixon.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, right foreground, meets with her assistants Jan. 7, 2013 after returning to work following treatment for a blood clot near her brain. Photo: State Department

Clinton Hopes For Strong Finish After Disappointing December

This is not how Hillary Clinton imagined ending her run as secretary of state.

After a month of recovering from a stomach virus, a concussion, and a blood clot between her brain and skull, she returns to work this week with senior State Department officials already prepping Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to replace her.

After 112 countries of face-to-face diplomacy over the past four years, Clinton is being kept close to home by doctors monitoring blood thinners dissolving the clot behind her right ear.

With the Senate reconvening mid-January and fellow lawmakers expected to confirm Kerry quickly, Team Clinton has little time to regain the valedictory momentum it was building in public policy appearances designed to define her diplomatic legacy and keep boosters eager for more – possibly a run for the presidency in 2016.

Before sickness forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East in early December, that campaign hit its stride with a gala dinner for Brookings’ Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

An effusive, highly-produced video tribute featured Clinton embracing Aung San Suu Kyi, looking across the Korean demilitarized zone, and rallying NATO action against Moammar Gadhafi.

Praise from her peers

There were testimonials from Arizona Senator John McCain: “Her public service…has endeared her to millions and millions of people all over the world;” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “I don’t think we’ve heard the last of Hillary Clinton;” and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair: “I just have an instinct the best is yet to come.”

“In all those foreign trips, despite all that jet-lag, you’ve represented the very best of America,” President Obama chimed in with his own video. “Through it all, I’ve relied on the shinning qualities that have defined your life: your conviction, your optimism, your belief that America can and must be a force for good in the world.”

Clinton was clearly pleased.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry smiles Dec. 21, 2012, as he is nominated by President Obama to succeed Hillary Clinton as U.S. secretary of state. Photo: AP

“I am somewhat overwhelmed, but I’m obviously thinking I should sit down,” she told the Brookings audience to much laughter. “I prepared some remarks for tonight, but then I thought maybe we could just watch that video a few more times.”

“There wasn’t much doubt about the ultimate direction,” The New Yorker’s David Remnick writes of that night. “2007-8 was but a memory and 2016 was within sight. She’s running.”

All the more reason she find a way to finish strong. But Clinton advisors working to get her back on track must first get her past the Benghazi disaster, in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed by gunmen last September.

Deputies Bill Burns and Tom Nides took the brunt of Congressional criticism over an independent review report concluding that managerial failures at the State Department had undermined security at the Libyan diplomatic facilities.

Republicans have questions

Clinton was excused from congressional testimony after fainting at home, but Republicans expect her to answer their questions now that she has recovered.

Is a presidential run in 2016 in the cards for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, shown here at a news conference last November? Photo: AP

“It’s imperative that she come before this committee,” said Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. “I think it would be really a shame to turn the page on this and go to a new regime without her being here.”

If she does testify about Benghazi, she could face tough questions from Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is considered a likely presidential candidate as well in 2016.  Rubio is on record questioning how high State’s managerial failures went, saying he is puzzled by the review report placing so much blame on lower-level assistant secretaries.

“Why I find that quite puzzling is that because Benghazi, and Libya in general, is not some remote outpost. It’s not Luxembourg,” Rubio said. “I mean this is a country that we were involved in militarily not so long ago in a high-profile intervention.”

That intervention, in March of 2011, looked like a big success for the Obama administration, something that someone closely associated with might use in a subsequent presidential campaign.

Despite the Benghazi issue and current confusion atop the new government in Tripoli, Cato Institute analyst Malou Innocent believes Clinton’s tenure at State helps her politically.

“As foreign policy wonks in Washington, D.C., we can sort of dissect here and there,” Innocent says. “But for the majority of the American people, they are going to look at her resume, which has been stunning. So certainly that will help her in 2016.”

Extremist rebels have taken control of much of northern Mali since March and have allied themselves with the Tuareg people of the region. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is holding talks on ways to deal with the issue.

The best chance for breaking the extremists’ hold on northern Mali may be persuading the region’s moderate Tuareg people to reconcile with the military-controlled South of the country.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Algeria this week seeking the country’s support for a West African force to help Mali’s military regain control of the north. And her talks with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika were dominated by the issue of how to deal with the terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists who took control of more than two-thirds of Mali after a coup toppled the government in Bamako last March.

Since then, the extremists have allowed the terrorist group al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, to extend its already-considerable reach throughout the Sahel region.

Secretary Clinton says AQIM is working with other extremists to undermine democratic transitions in North Africa. She adds that the group was part of the attack on the U.S. mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in September.

 One possible approach to countering the extremists and their terrorist allies came up during Secretary Clinton’s meeting with Mr. Bouteflika — that Algeria might intercede with the Tuareg people of northern Mali, many of whom have allied themselves with the extremists. The idea was that without help from the Tuaregs, the extremists would lose their support, allowing Bamako to re-establish its control of the north.

 The ECOWAS Force

A military approach also is in the works. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is working with Mali’s military-backed transitional authority in Bamako on plans for a 3,300-strong military force to help retrain the army and retake the north.

Like the East African AMISOM force in Somalia, that West African force will depend heavily on international support for military intelligence and logistics. So Algeria’s help is crucial.

“A whole range of countries in the region really look to Algeria for leadership on this,” says a senior U.S. official traveling with the secretary of state. “Obviously, they’re not ceding sovereignty, but they know Algeria has unique capabilities that no one else in the region really has — the strength of its military forces, its intelligence-gathering capability.”

U.S. Involvement

Secretary Clinton was in Algeria Monday, Oct, 29, seeking help from President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (left) in dealing with the rebels in northern Mali. Photo: AP

Greater U.S. involvement in that effort should go some way toward soothing Algerian unease about the prominent role that the French are playing in preparing the ECOWAS force. That U.S. involvement is an extension of Washington’s existing counterterrorism cooperation with Algiers.

“The whole reason to have ECOWAS out front along with Malian forces is to have an African lead,” says a senior U.S. official. “So the question then for the United States, for France, for Algeria, for other interested states, is how to support that force.”

Recognizing the security threat along its own 2,000 kilometer border with Mali, Algeria is looking for a political solution.

In his talks with Secretary Clinton, President Bouteflika spoke of Algeria’s historic role as a mediator between Bamako and the Tuaregs, an ethnic Berber people who inhabit parts of Mali and other nations in the Sahara region. He also spoke about how the extremists in northern Mali are trying to exploit Tuareg grievances.

With this in mind, Secretary Clinton says the counterterrorism efforts and a political process must therefore be mutually reinforcing.

“We need to ensure that the political process within Mali addresses the legitimate grievances of the moderate faction of the Tuaregs so that they see their future as lying within a democratic, unitary Mali, and to reduce the space for extremists to act,” says a senior State Department official.

The targets for that effort are more the moderate elements in the Tuareg rebel militia, Ansar Dine. It is believed these elements may be more approachable than more extreme factions such as the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa.

U.S. officials say there is also a push to counter the way the extremists are financing their activities through kidnapping for ransom. Efforts are being made to cut links between the Mali extremists and organized crime and drug cartels, the officials say, and to have Algeria’s foreign ministry organize more regular contacts with counterparts in Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, and Tunisia.

“We have an awful lot at stake here, an awful lot of common interests,” says a senior U.S. official, “and there’s a strong recognition that Algeria has to be a central part of the solution.”

Boys play football amid the civil war wreckage in Homs, a city that has been in the center of the fighting for almost 20 months. Photo: Reuters

 Concern About Broader Autonomy Undermines Support for Uprising

Kurdish reluctance is frustrating efforts by opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to form some kind of transitional administration that could win support from foreign governments.

Syrian Kurds have walked out on several attempts to form a unified opposition, complaining that expatriate politicians don’t adequately recognize their status as a people, or their long-standing demands for autonomy. Some opposition leaders are saying the Kurds won’t sufficiently commit to a unified post-Assad Syria.

“It is absolutely the case that the relationship between the mainstream opposition in exile and Syria’s Kurds has been largely antagonistic and very, very tense,” says Steve Heydemann, senior advisor for Middle East Initiatives at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “That gets back to the question of this mutual lack of trust.”

President Assad moved to encourage that mistrust early in the 20-month-old Syrian conflict by granting Kurdish communities greater political freedoms.

“This really put them on their heels,” says Cato Institute Middle East analyst Malou Innocent. “They said: ‘Well, should we continue our assistance to the rebellion or should we actually stick this out and see if Assad continues to hold onto power?’ They are in the middle.”

A Decisive Minority

Innocent says Kurds are Syria’s “decisive minority, and they have been on the fence.”

Heydemann credits Kurdish leaders for largely resisting President Assad’s bid to secure their loyalty. But on the other hand, he says, “they have also resisted efforts by the opposition leadership to draw the Syrian Kurdish community firmly onto the side of the revolution.”

Kurdish misgivings over the composition of Syria’s political opposition create gaps that Heydemann says “remain very, very large. Efforts have continued to try to bridge those gaps, but they haven’t made a great deal of progress.”

Chief among the so-called “Friends of Syria” trying to bridge the gaps is the United States.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says the Obama administration has repeatedly stressed the need to see “all of the groups in Syria working together on a future that provides a place for Syrians of all different stripes, whether they are Alawi, Sunni, Kurd, Druze, Christians — whomever they are.

“So from that perspective,” Nuland said, “we have consistently encouraged the opposition groups to incorporate the Kurdish opposition as well.”

Nuland says some Kurds are cooperating with the opposition Syrian National Congress.

“There are also a number of reports from inside Syria of some of the liberated areas where Kurdish populations and Sunni populations are working well together,” she says. “That’s certainly the direction that we encourage for the Syria that emerges from this — to be representative of all and welcoming of all.”

Concerns in Washington

But Washington remains mindful of the ties between Syria’s largest Kurdish political group — the Democratic Unity Party, or PYD — and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, that the European Union and the United States both consider a terrorist group.

“The Turkish government has been very explicit in stating that if they perceived any direct effort by the PYD to engage in anti-Turkish activities, especially across the border, that they would respond very forcefully,” Heydemann says.

“So the components are there for some significant tensions to emerge as the Kurds try to exploit this opportunity of the uprising to advance some long term relationships and use their connections to other regional communities as a bargaining chip in doing so.”

Tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the civil war violence have taken refuge in neighboring nations. Shown here is a refugee family in the Al Zaatri camp near Mafraq, Jordan, Oct. 24, 2012. Photo: Reuters

Heydemann says some Syrian Kurds are receiving military training in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he says there is also political consultation about the best bargaining positions.

“I don’t think they intend to play the regime against the opposition,” he says. “But they do feel that they have an opportunity to use this moment to try and advance some of their long-standing concerns that they don’t feel either side has really responded to yet.”

Malou Innocent believes many Kurds have still not decided where their loyalties should be placed.

“They don’t know how this will pan out,” she says. “Especially when we see the FSA, the Free Syrian Army. They do have light weapons. They have been somewhat effective. But they are still up against a very capable Syrian army, one of the strongest militaries in the region.”

With the fighting in northern Syria driving more than 100,000 refugees into Turkey and Iraq, it’s especially important to have Kurdish participation at upcoming talks in Doha toward an opposition “leadership council.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the idea is to create a “leadership structure that endorses inclusion, democratic process, peaceful political transition, and reassure all Syrians, particularly those who are in minority groups, that there is a path forward if everyone supports it.”

AU Awaits Mbeki Report

The long term success of an oil and security deal between Sudan and South Sudan could depend on the much disputed Abyei border region.

That’s why Princeton Lyman, the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, says Abyei’s exclusion from the agreement between presidents Omar al-Bashir and Salva Kiir is “a big, big loss.”

And Lyman says it’s going to take a lot of work, by both governments, to demilitarize the border and deal with remaining issues such as Abyei and humanitarian access to the border regions of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

“They should not let these things slip,” he warns.

Thabo Mbeki, the African Union chief mediator, is trying to keep momentum going with talks in Khartoum and Juba ahead of his October 21 report to the AU Peace and Security Council.

Lyman says that’s an opening for the international community to back AU recommendations on Abyei, a 10,000 square kilometer region straddling the still undefined border between the two nations.

“We didn’t make a lot of progress there,” Lyman says. “This has to be now a very high priority for the international community.”

The Abyei region, stradding the border region between Sudan and South Sudan, is highly contested because of its strategic location and possible mineral deposits. Map: VOA

Solution is “imperative”

John Prendergast is co-founder of the Enough Project, a Sudan advocacy group. He agrees.

“Despite Abyei’s central role as a catalyst for North-South tensions, the international community has historically dodged the difficult issue of the area’s final status,” Prendergast writes. “Determining the final status of Abyei and resolving the other outstanding issues is imperative for any sort of sustainable peace between the two countries.”

The African Union offered an Abyei solution in the September oil and security plan. But Khartoum refused a proposed referendum because it did not include Arab nomads among eligible voters. Those Messriyah nomads graze cattle several months a year in an area that is home to nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms.

Jennifer Christian, a Sudan policy analyst with the Enough Project, says Mbeki’s report should help the international community frame its response to the outstanding issues between Sudan and South Sudan, including the final status of Abyei.

“If history teaches us anything, it’s that a failure on the part of the international community to take a strong stance on Abyei now will very likely result in further violence on the ground in the near future,” Christian writes, calling on the AU to push for U.N. ratification of the plan “as the final resolution of the two Sudans’ dispute over the area.”

Referendum opposed

The Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman, Al-Obeid Ahmed Marawah, says his government prefers a political agreement over a plebiscite because “the referendum would end by attributing Abyei to one of the two countries.

“And this will not satisfy the other party. Therefore, this could cause a new conflict between the two people [ Messriyah and Ngok Dinkas] of Abyei and it might extend to between the two countries,” Marawah says.

And that, in turn, threatens the new deal over the sharing of oil-revenue, which Ambassador Lyman says “holds tremendous potential benefits for the people of both countries, particularly in South Sudan where there has been serious rises in food prices, shortages of fuel, and insecurity on the border.”

Oil revenues account for more than 90 percent of Juba’s budget. So the suspension of exports earlier this year – to protest of higher fees for using Khartoum’s pipelines and port — set back ambitious infrastructure goals for the new nation.

“By restoring this income, the country can go back to investing heavily in development,” Lyman says. “While the production was down, all the resources were just to keep things going, keep things in place as much as possible. They couldn’t go ahead with roads.”

Lyman says Sudan benefits not only from an additional $15 a barrel surcharge over three-and-a-half years, but also from increased security along the border “where people are hurting, the economy is in difficulty, and there is too much attention to war and conflict.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi at U.N. headquarters September 25. Photo: Reuters

Envoy Appears in No Rush to Put Forward Plan to End Violence

In their first meeting since Lakhdar Brahimi became the U.N. Special Representative to Syria, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked him to help unify opponents of embattled president Bashar al-Assad.

“The Secretary was very much encouraging Special Representative Brahimi to himself be very focused on this element of it,” says a senior State Department official who was in their talks, “that as he tries to pursue diplomacy, it is in his interest to help contribute to a more cohesive opposition that can play an effective role in carrying out the transition.”

The failure of civilian and military opponents to come together behind a single strategy has complicated efforts by the so-called “Friends of Syria” to fund and arm their campaign against Damascus.

That comes as no surprise in a country where the Assad family has spent years sowing division among the minority groups, says Cato Institute Middle East analyst Malou Innocent.

“There is infighting in terms of what they want from the Assad regime. Some want a no-fly zone. Some don’t want any Western interference,” she says. “Some want more rights from the Assad regime. Some only recently have been willing to not speak with the Assad regime.”

“The one thing that is uniting them is opposition to Assad and his crackdown, but not really an inclusive vision of what they want in a post-Assad Syria,” Innocent says. “That inability to cobble together a meaningful political settlement in the future is really what’s dividing them and limiting their ability to create more cohesion.”

Friends of Syria meet in New York

Some foreign ministers from “Friends of Syria” countries will meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, and U.S. officials say opposition disunity will again top the agenda. More than 80 nations have taken part in meetings of the “Friends of Syria” group, which is largely made up of the United States, the European Union and members of the Arab League.

“This is a complicated, multi-sided, diplomatic effort involving people on the inside and people on the outside, involving people of different backgrounds and different professions and different regions of the country,” says a senior State Department official. “It is not surprising that it takes both time and real spadework to try to create a cohesive opposition that can effectively steward a transition.”

“Taking steps related to opposition cohesion is something I think [Secretary Clinton] sees as an important predicate to an effective transition, an effective diplomatic process that produces the result we’re looking for.”

Kurds have been stumbling block

Lakhdar Brahimi, shown here at the Al Zaatri refugee camp in Jordan September 18, is taking a methodical approach to Syrian peace efforts. Photo: Reuters

Among the obstacles to that cohesion is the position of Syria’s Kurds, who have walked out of previous efforts to unify the opposition.

At the start of the uprising, President Assad granted political rights to Kurds in an attempt to keep them from joining rebels. Analyst Malou Innocent says that has successfully led to divisions within the Kurdish community.

“They don’t know where to put their loyalties,” she says. “They don’t know how this will pan out, especially when we see the FSA (Free Syrian Army) with light weapons. They have been somewhat effective, but they are still up against a very-capable Syrian army and one of the strongest militaries in the region.”

Given Syria’s military stalemate, U.S. officials say Special Representative Brahimi appears in no hurry to offer another peace plan following the failure of his predecessor, the former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

“Brahimi is very focused on how you create the conditions for some kind of diplomatic process to unfold,” says a senior State Department official. “But he was also realistic; that right at the moment, we’re not around the corner from a diplomatic process being launched, and more work needs to be done to lay the ground.”

“He was clear with [Secretary Clinton] that he is not going to rush into putting a plan on the table,” the U.S. official says, “that he wants to be systematic in doing his consultations, he wants to look for opportunities and openings, he wants to find as many building blocks as he can piece together to ultimately come up with a strategy that he believes is workable.”