SATURDAy, NOVEMbER 9 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A
BY LOVEDAY MORRIS
AND MICHAEL BIRNBAUMberlin — Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo marked the 30th anni-
versary of the fall of the Berlin
Wall this week with a nostalgic
tour of sites where he served with
NATO forces in Germany.
But whereas Pompeo’s deploy-
ment came at the peak of the
transatlantic relationship, when
U. S.-European cooperation
helped bring down the barrier
and eventually the Iron Curtain,
his administration has cast un-
certainty over that alliance and
the very institution w ith which he
served.
In a speech in Berlin on Friday,
he recalled his days as a young
Army second lieutenant in the
Bavarian town of Bindlach, just
months before the end of the Cold
War, p raising the U.S.-German co-
operation that had helped to
bring it to a close.
“We have a duty, each of us, to
defend what was so hard won,” he
said. “A nd we have to do it togeth-
er, because doing it alone is im-
possible.”
Behind closed doors, though,
President Trump has threatened
to pull out of NATO, the pillar of
Western security cooperation
against the Soviet Union during
the Cold War. Publicly, Trump has
called on Europe to contribute
more, deriding some of the Unit-
ed States’ closest allies as free-
loaders.
The dispute is among numer-
ous issues that have cleaved the
relationship, with Europe and
Washington at odds over the Iran
nuclear deal, the Paris climate
accord, Germany’s new gas pipe-
line from Russia and the sudden
U.S. withdrawal from Syria.
Trump has also sparked a transat-
lantic trade war by imposing tar-
iffs on European steel and alumi-
num, as well as symbolic goods
such as wine and cheese.
“Now the transatlantic rela-
tionship is more or less in dire
straits,” said Kristina Spohr, a his-
torian at the London School of
Economics. “There are all these
questions over the future of NATO
and America’s relationship with
Germany. T here’s d eep uncertain-
ty and, up to a point, instability.”
In Europe, where the United
States has long been a counterbal-
ance to Russian power, there is “a
lot of anxiety about suddenly be-
ing left alone,” said Spohr, author
of “Post Wall, Post Square: Re-
building the World After 1989.”
But the relationship was being
recalibrated well before Trump,
said John Kornblum, U.S. ambas-
sador to Germany between 1997
and 2001 and co-secretary of the
American Academy in Berlin.
“This administration is not themost careful tender to relations,
but the American engagement in
Europe has been slowly dwin-
dling away really ever since the
beginning of George H.W. Bush’s
administration,” Kornblum said.
“They started to pull away.”
Trump has derided the transat-
lantic relationship since the time
of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“I think our country needs
more ego, because it is being
ripped off so badly by our so-
called allies — i.e., Japan, West
Germany, Saudi Arabia, South
Korea, et c etera,” T rump told Play-
boy in March 1990 as the two
Germanys were swiftly moving to
reunify. “We Americans are
laughed at around the world...
for defending wealthy nations for
nothing, nations that would be
wiped off the face of the earth in
about 15 minutes if it weren’t for
us. Our ‘allies’ are making billions
screwing us.”
Since his election, Trump has
demanded that NATO partners
meet their obligations to pay
2 percent of their gross domestic
product on defense, to balance
the United States’s 3.5 percent
commitment.
Asked about NATO on Friday,
Pompeo said that he was “for it”
but that it risked becoming obso-
lete if partners did not properly
contribute.
French President EmmanuelMacron, however, blamed the
United States’s unwillingness to
consult its NATO partners for
contributing to “brain death” of
the alliance. “You have no coordi-
nation whatsoever of strategic de-
cision-making between the Unit-
ed States and its NATO allies,” he
told the Economist in an inter-
view published T hursday.
Macron’s s tatement gave a pub-
lic airing to mounting concern
within NATO. But German Chan-
cellor Angela Merkel pushed
back. “I don’t think that such
sweeping judgments are neces-
sary, even if we have problems
and need to pull together,” she
said.
German Defense Minister An-
negret Kramp-Karrenbauer
pledged Thursday that Germany
would reach its 2 percent defense
spending target by 2031.
Pushing Europe to do more was
long overdue, said James Bind-
enagel, who served as a U.S. am-
bassador to Berlin in the 1990s
and was deputy ambassador
when the wall fell.
“Germany has to take leader-
ship, and they are not prepared to
do that. But they have no choice,”
Bindenagel said. “If we want to
have a stronger pillar of the Euro-
pean relationship, they have to do
that.”
“We’ve decided, or the presi-
dent has decided, that we’ll with-draw,” he said, referring to U.S.
stewardship in Europe. “There is
a leadership vacuum, and the vac-
uum will be filled — I would
prefer that wasn’t by the Chinese
or the Russians.”
But there is now a serious
“trust problem” with NATO’s se-
curity pact, he said: “I believe the
Americans will fulfill their com-
mitment, but there’s growing un-
certainty and mistrust. I hope
that it isn’t tested.”
In an op-ed this week, German
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
stirred controversy by making no
mention of the United States in a
list of those he thanked for reuni-
fication. “German unity was a gift
from Europe to Germany,” he
wrote, also thanking peaceful
protesters in East Germany, de-
mocracy activists in Eastern-bloc
countries and Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev.
After blowback from critics, in-
cluding Kornblum, the former
U.S. ambassador, Maas used a
joint news conference in Leipzig
to stress the importance of the
alliance — now and 30 years ago.
“Without the leadership of the
U.S., there wouldn’t have been
reunification,” he said. “This
friendship is the foundation for
all the things we intend to set in
motion in the future in the field of
international politics, wherever
we stand up to defend our interestin the world.”
But it is a different world today,
said Mary Sarotte, a historian of
international relations at Johns
Hopkins University.
The “outbreak of optimism”
that accompanied the fall of the
Berlin Wall 30 years ago appears
to have evaporated, she said,
“which is truly heartbreaking for
those of us who were in Europe in
1989.”
The starkest difference,
though, is that the current admin-
istration is more interested in
putting up walls than taking them
down, she said. She described
Pompeo’s attendance at the un-
veiling of a statue to President
Ronald Reagan on Friday as
“deeply ironic.”
The statue commemorates
Reagan’s famous 1987 speech in
which he implored Gorbachev to
“tear down this wall.”
Berlin had long rejected U.S.
requests for a Reagan statue,
deeming his status as an honorary
citizen enough. The U.S. Embassy
found a workaround by installing
it on a balcony overlooking the
location where he spoke — but
technically on U.S. soil.
[email protected]
[email protected]Birnbaum reported from Brussels.
luisa Beck in Berlin contributed to
this report.Amid U.S.-NATO strain, Pompeo touts alliances to mark fall of Berlin Wall
BY LOUISA LOVELUCK
AND MUSTAFA SALIMbaghdad — From Baghdad t o the
Shiite Muslim shrine city of Kar-
bala and farther south, Iraqis are
pushing for a revolution. They fill
central squares to sing and dance
from daybreak, a nd face down r iot
police when night f alls.
Iraq’s streets are no stranger to
power struggles. They’ve been a
stage for s ectarian conflict a nd f or
the Islamic S tate’s e mergence. But
the crowds are different this time,
and so is the threat posed by the
largest grass-roots movement in
Iraq’s modern history: A new gen-
eration raised in t he shadow of the
U.S.-led invasion is rising, a nd pol-
iticians from Baghdad to Te hran
have been caught on the back foot.
“To the generation of the sixties
and seventies,” r eads a sign flying
above Baghdad’s central square.
“We have more c ourage than you.”
Although the u nrest is c onfined
to mostly Shiite areas, leading
clerics for once have not mar-
shaled it, and Shiite-dominated
Iran, a powerful political and se-
curity force here, has been openly
excoriated. T he Iranian Consulate
in Karbala has been torched and
its flag ripped down. In scenes
reminiscent of the fall of Saddam
Hussein, protesters have used
their shoes t o beat photographs of
Te hran-backed militia leaders.
“If anything, these protests
have challenged the sectarian for-
mula of governance, which has
reduced Iraqis to their ethnic and
religious identities,” Harith
Hasan, a nonresident f ellow at t he
Carnegie Middle East Center,
wrote in a research note. Under
Iraq’s political system, power is
split among parties based on sect,
and economic spoils are divided
accordingly.
Fearful that its influence could
erode, Iran is stepping in to help
marshal a brutal response. D uring
an earlier wave of protest last
month, Iran’s leading general,
Qasem Soleimani, flew into Bagh-
dad to make clear that Iran would
be supportive o f efforts to shut the
protests down, according to Iraqi
officials. They say an Iran-backed
militia commissioned snipers to
shoot p rotesters in the s treets.
This time, government officials
say, Iran has pressured Iraq’s
weakened and embattled prime
minister not to step down and
fueled his belief that the protests
are a foreign conspiracy.
Since protests initially erupted
earlier this year, at least 264 peo-
ple have been killed and more
than 12,000 wounded, according
to the country’s human rights
commission.
Iraqi security forces fired tear
gas and live rounds into the air to
disperse protesters in central
Baghdad on Thursday, beating
young men they could grab, as the
biggest wave of anti-government
demonstrations in decades spread
across the capital. The human
rights commission said 23 people
had been killed, and more than
1,000 wounded, in the past week.
“The biggest responsibility is
on the security f orces,” a represen-
tative of Iraq’s leading Shiite cler-
ic, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,
said Friday, as the latest round of
protests entered its third week.
“They must avoid using excessive
force with peaceful protesters.”
Since Oct. 25, Baghdad’s Ta hrir
Square has become a vision of a
different sort of Iraq. G overnment
authority is largely absent. Young
men and women clean the streets
and paint walls with pictures of
their revolutionary heroes andtheir dead. Hundreds have
pitched in to cook for the crowd,
stirring steaming pots of rice,
chopping meat and brewing tiny
cups of t ea drenched in sugar.
“When I walk out into that
square today, I know that if I’m
hungry, someone will feed me. If
I’m wounded, someone will carry
me away,” said Al-Hassan Fahmy,
leaning his e lbow against a grubby
mound of blankets. “This is a dif-
ferent society h ere.”
In front-line clashes, predomi-
nantly at night, demonstrators
have held their ground with a mix
of nihilism and glee. As adrena-
line-pumped teenagers confront-
ed riot police on a recent night,
scampering among the tear gas
trails and throwing stones back
where they could, the crowd
pumped fists in the air and bel-
lowed in unison: “A re y ou Iranian?
No. Are you American? No! Are
you Baathist? No? Are you Iraqi?”
The cheer was deafening.
Almost 60 percent of Iraq’s p op-
ulation of 40 million has g rown upwith a political system molded by
the United States after Hussein’s
ouster in 2003. Allocating power
among religious and ethnic
groups, it has entrenched corrup-
tion and become a vehicle for Iran
to spread its influence. Iran has
backed powerful militias that an-
swer to the state in theory but
operate with impunity in practice.
“We need a government with-
out militias and without religion.
We need a government of human
beings, not militias who control
everything,” said a 19-year-old
medical volunteer, Mohammed,
in Ta hrir Square, resting a knee
injury from days earlier when a
gas canister smashed the bone as
he ferried wounded men to safety.
Like others, he s poke on the condi-
tion that only his first name be
used, citing concerns for his safety.
“I need a good school — just one
good school — and instead I’ve
seen protesters with their heads
smashed open and bullets in their
chests.”
Scrawled across his bandages:“My knee for my country.”
In m ostly Shiite southern c ities,
protesters have burned militia
headquarters and mobbed the
ambulance o f a leading member o f
the powerful Iranian-backed mili-
tia Asaib Ahl al-Haq. His death
was captured on video when he
was pulled into t he crowd.
Although unrest has n ot spread
to the country’s mostly Sunni
Muslim northern and western
provinces, young m en a nd w omen
there said it was not for lack of
grievance. The Islamic State’s rise
to power t here in 2 013 began w hen
the militants capitalized on anti-
government protests to hold
ground. Students in the city of
Mosul, still reeling and partly in
rubble, have joined civil-disobedi-
ence campaigns t his week but s aid
they could not go o ut to the s treets.
“Everyone knows what hap-
pened here before. We couldn’t
protest even if he wanted to,” said
Heba, an architecture student.
She and others said they believed
that the government w ould a ccuseprotesters of trying to bring back
Islamic State militants. In the
western province of Anbar, Iraqi
security forces have arrested sev-
eral men who expressed support
for this month’s protests on their
social media accounts.
The growth and persistence of
the p rotests, w hich b egan O ct. 1 as
a small-scale cry against corrup-
tion, have caught elites, and m uch
of the country, b y surprise.
During his v isit to Baghdad e ar-
ly last month, Soleimani told Iraqi
officials that Te hran knew how to
deal w ith p rotests, r ecalling that it
had gotten them under control
when they previously erupted in
Iran, a ccording to two people with
knowledge o f the meeting.
The crackdown in Iraq intensi-
fied quickly, with s nipers d eployed
on rooftops, media outlets at-
tacked and leading activists ab-
ducted. Protesters in Ta hrir
Square this week s aid the v iolence,
initially focused on a mostly poor
crowd from Shiite suburbs, in-
flamed wider anger, persuading a
broader demographic of sects and
ages to take to the streets in the
second wave.
In repeated speeches to the na-
tion, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel
Abdul Mahdi has voiced support
for the crowds’ demands, promis-
ing reform and condemning vio-
lence on all sides. But his early
promises to step down h ave disap-
peared, and in a n address to Iraq’s
cabinet Tuesday, he described res-
ignation as the “easiest” way o ut.
Two government officials said
Abdul Mahdi had prepared a res-
ignation speech but abandoned it
after pressure from advisers and
officials l inked to Iran.
“He wanted to resign, but a fter a
long meeting, they convinced him
not to,” s aid one official, speaking
on the condition of anonymity be-
cause of the sensitivity of the sub-
ject. “The Iranian side considers
this as their government, and for
the first time they have control of
the decision-making. They don’t
want to lose t hat easily.”
The prime minister is increas-
ingly isolated, people close to him
say, convinced by those around
him that the demonstrations, far
from being a response to s ocioeco-
nomic conditions, are a conspira-
cy s toked b y the United S tates and
Israel.
“This is the largest grass-roots
movement i n Iraq’s modern histo-
ry,” said Hasan, of the Carnegie
Middle East Center. “The govern-
ment lost the narrative in the face
of a very vibrant movement.”
l [email protected]In Iraq, grass-roots unrest unnerves Baghdad, Tehran
KHAlId moHAmmed/AssoCIATed press
Soldiers try to prevent anti-government protesters from crossing the al-Shuhada bridge in central Baghdad on Wednesday.
Demonstrations that began weeks ago to protest corruption are now also taking aim at the influence of Iran and Iranian-backed militias.president-elect Alberto F ernán-
dez, who has feuded with Bolson-
aro a nd called for Lula’s r elease.
When Lula left o ffice in 2010, he
had an approval rating of 80 per-
cent and enormous popularity
across the country, particularly
among the poor, whose travails he
made central to his governance.
His social welfare programs are
credited with h elping to bring mil-
lions o ut o f poverty.
Now he is widely expected to
enter the political realm once
more, potentially further polariz-
ing the c ountry. L ula said h e plans
to head out a cross the c ountry.
Critics of Lula expressed out-
rage a t the r uling.
“They release p risoners and d is-
arm citizens,” said Eduardo Bol-
sonaro, son of the president and a
federal congressman. “Poor Bra-zilians.”
But t hose on the l eft cheered his
release.
“We are pinching ourselves to
make sure this is a ll t rue,” Gilberto
Carvalho, Lula’s former chief of
staff and one of the leaders of the
Workers’ Party, told The Washing-
ton Post.
The legal path ahead of Lula,
Brazil’s first working-class presi-
dent, remains t reacherous. He f ac-
es eight other trials on charges of
corruption and money launder-
ing. In 2016, as part of the Opera-
tion Car Wash investigation, Lula
was accused of peddling govern-
ment influence for renovations to
his beachfront property.
t [email protected]marina lopes in sao paulo
contributed to this report.BY TERRENCE MCCOY
AND HELOISA TRAIANOrio de janeiro — Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva, a former Brazilian
president who wielded enormous
influence over Latin America for
decades, was released f rom prison
Friday on grounds that he was
denied due p rocess, s ending p olit-
ical shock waves through a coun-
try bitterly divided by his impris-
onment.
The decision came after the
Brazilian Supreme Court ruled
Thursday night that defendants
should have the opportunity to
exhaust all of their appeals before
their imprisonment, a decision
that has the potential to benefit
thousands of people, including
dozens of powerful politicians en-
snared by the sprawling corrup-
tion probe known here as Opera-
tion Car Wash.
Judge Danilo Pereira Júnior
ruled Friday afternoon that he
didn’t see any reason to keep Lula
ja iled and ordered him released
while he appeals his conviction,
which led to a sentence of 12 years
in prison last year.
“There are no grounds for the
continuation of this provisional
criminal enforcement,” the judge
declared.
A charismatic l eader known f or
his knack for political theater,Lula emerged from the prison in
the southern Brazilian city of Cu-
ritiba at dusk, dressed in black,
beside leaders o f his Workers’ Par-
ty. Hundreds of supporters
thronged him, wearing red and
chanting h is name.
“You have no idea of the mean-
ing of me being here with you,” he
told them moments after his re-
lease. “I, who have been speaking
to the Brazilian p eople through a ll
my life, did not think that I would
be able to speak today.... Every
day you were the democracy’s fuel
I needed to exist.”
He condemned the people who
had imprisoned him. “They did
not jail a man, they tried to kill anidea, and ideas don’t disappear,”
he said.
Lula’s imprisonment last year
fundamentally altered the arc of
Brazilian politics. He was leading
in the p olls a nd a ppeared poised to
reclaim the presidency. His jailing
on charges of corruption cleared
the path for Jair Bolsonaro, a for-
mer fringe politician known for
making incendiary c omments and
lamenting the collapse of Brazil’s
dictatorship, to win t he election.
Lula’s release marks another
political pivot point in Latin
America’s largest country. Sup-
porters a re p lanning r allies. There
are reports he will be invited to
t he inauguration of ArgentineFormer Brazilian leader Lula freed f rom prison