KOLKATA - The Arab world is in a dilemma. Never
before have internal dissension and the ills facing it
been so numerous, mirrored in the just-concluded Arab
summit in Tunis. Arab unity has never been legendary.
Contradictions and discord have plagued the Arab League,
older than the United Nations, almost since its
inception in 1944.
With vague promises of
political reform, concern about Arab bloodshed and a
mood of powerlessness, heads of the 22-member Arab
League publicly insisted that they had made history with
their calls for human rights and modernization. But they
did not say how or when such reforms would take place.
Contradictions crystallized in the league during
the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 - the occupation
of one Arab country by another, which fueled the first
Gulf War, and which Arabs were unable to avert. However,
in its wake came the Madrid Conference, and the Oslo
peace process between Israel and the Palestinians was
launched. The Arab world was to some extent placated.
In 2000, the Palestinian intifada began and the
Arab world had to face afresh the challenge of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the following year the
events of September 11 occurred, which threw the Arab
world into the worst turmoil it had ever faced. All 19
hijackers were Arabs, and 15 of them Saudis - citizens
of the closest Arab ally of the United States in the
Middle East. Then began the "war on terror", which is
perceived by many in the Arab world to be a war on Arabs
and on Islam.
The war in Afghanistan that
followed September 11, 2001, drew overwhelming sympathy
for many of the innocent Afghan lives lost.
Nevertheless, Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, whose
regimes were dependent on the US for political survival
supported and aided the latter in its war against
al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Saudi Arabia was one of the
only two countries to have ties with the Taliban (the
other being Pakistan), and was reported to have provided
US$500 million to al-Qaeda. The Saudi regime spent
millions on damage control and public relations, trying
to improving its image in the United States.
Since Arab governments supported and aided the
US in its war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, some
positive returns in the form of support for the
Palestinians - "the core issue in the hearts of
everybody in the Middle East", as King Abdullah of
Jordan said last week in an interview to Newsweek - was
expected in the region, to placate their own
populations. Things turned out to be otherwise.
The Israel-Palestine conflict escalated, with
Israel declaring its "own war on terror". Images flashed
by Aljazeera and other Arab TV channels had the Arab
public seething with anger. Huge demonstrations were
witnessed throughout the Arab world, money was donated
for the Palestinian cause, and Arab governments were
expected to take some action to halt the conflict.
Therefore, at the Arab summit in Beirut in 2002, the
Arab League presented the Saudi peace plan, which
provided for Arab recognition of Israel in return for
the latter's withdrawal from all occupied Arab lands.
Israel refused to accept the plan and continued its
military operation against the Palestinians. The Arabs
were unable to lobby the US to stop all violence and
accept the plan. They were even unable to pressure the
US and Israel into allowing the Palestine Liberation
Organization's Yasser Arafat to attend the Beirut
summit, although the topic on the agenda was the
Palestinian issue.
The same summit also
"categorically" rejected and warned against any attack
on Iraq, which would be seen as "a security threat to
the Arab states. We demand the respect of Iraq's
independence, sovereignty, security and unity."
But almost exactly a year later, in March 2003,
the Arab League convened a summit when it was clear that
a military operation by the US against Iraq was
imminent. Unable to avert war, states such as Qatar,
Kuwait and Bahrain began extending their facilities to
the US military. Pandemonium broke out, with the Kuwaiti
and Iraqi delegates hurling abuse at each other. A few
days later, Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched. The
Arabs had as usual failed to deliver. Ghada Karmi, a
London-based Arab writer, commented: "This ... exposes
as diplomatic froth the meetings of the Arab League ...
that claimed a unified Arab rejection of aggression
against Iraq."
Today, the Arab world is faced
with two flash points in the region - the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is ever escalating,
and the quagmire in Iraq, where the occupation forces
have no exit strategy to date. Added to that have been
the call by the US for Arab states to reform and start a
process of modernization and democratization, as
underlined in a speech last November by US President
George W Bush calling for a Greater Middle East
Initiative. Though the initial reaction to the proposal
in the Arab press and Arab world was negative, Arab
liberals and intellectuals had long been calling for
change.
Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian
legislator who was then spokesperson of the Arab League,
said in 2002: "If the Arab world does not change by its
own will, then it will be changed. If there is no
peaceful transition to democracy, it will take place
violently. There is a public opinion in the Arab world
that is simmering ... for serious change and reform."
In September 2000, prominent Syrian
intellectuals issued an "Intellectuals' Manifesto" to
their government, which called for such reforms as an
end to one-party rule, a return to civil society, and a
release of all political prisoners.
Similarly,
intellectuals in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, and other
Arab countries had long been calling for changes and
reforms within their societies. Eten Mahcupyan, a
columnist with the Turkish daily Zaman, wrote in an
article on May 5 that there is "a clear-cut dilemma in
Arab societies: People are [caught] in between the anger
directed against the aggressive and authoritarian US
policy, and the rising energy against the authoritarian
administrations of their own states."
This
March, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Yemen and Tunisia submitted
proposals to the Arab League and the Arab summit, seen
to be an effort to counter reform initiatives that may
be imposed from outside.
Yet the Arab League had
to cancel this summit. The extent of fractiousness was
revealed when the reasons cited were disagreements among
members on key agenda items, such as a US reform plan
for the region and the two-year-old Arab peace
initiative for Israel.
The summit was ultimately
convened this past weekend, when events had become
particular harrowing. The crisis in both core issues had
deepened. Israel conducted military operations in the
Gaza Strip that last week left about 42 Palestinians
dead, many of them children, over just three days, and
destroyed scores of Palestinian homes in southern Gaza
in a bid to stop weapons smuggling from Egypt to the
Strip. The action was condemned by the international
community, including the US. In Iraq, the abuse of
prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison had come to light
against the backdrop of Sunni insurgency and Shi'ite
militias battling the occupation forces.
Meanwhile, Bush endorsed a plan proposed by
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to retain many
Jewish settlements in the West Bank and to reject the
right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.
The enormous loss of Iraqi civilian lives in
both Fallujah and Najaf, the humiliation of Iraqi
prisoners and the destruction and killings in Gaza - the
pictures of Arab humiliation - enraged the Arab world,
hardening both Sunni and Shi'ite opinion against the US
occupation in Iraq and US backing for Israel's policies
in the Palestinian territories.
The Arab regimes
are also under pressure - if on one hand they have the
example of Saddam Hussein and his fate at US hands,
there is also the memory of president Anwar Sadat of
Egypt and his assassination at the hands of internal
dissidents for being too pro-American and pro-Israel.
The regimes are viewed as being impotent, unable either
to avert or quell the negative trends in the region.
"This is a summit of terrified leaders who want
to protect their regimes from internal and external
calls for reform," Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of
London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, told Aljazeera.net on the
eve of the summit. It was as expected - the summit was
strong on rhetoric, short on action, condemning the US
and Israel, without proposing concrete measures to check
their actions in the region.
While many common
people may have hoped for some concrete results, the
summit went largely as political analysts and followers
of Arab events expected. Sami Moubayed, a Syrian
political analyst who has specialized on the modern
Middle East, feels that the Arab governments are
terrified at the prospect of a fate similar to Saddam's
befalling them. "It [Arab League] is dealing with a
disunited, corrupt, weak and frightened Arab command
that is still in shock from what happened to Saddam
Hussein."
So although Jordanian Foreign Minister
Jamil al-Muasher called it a successful summit, Moubayed
feels the "summit was terrible" and this was expected as
it was "postponed, and hovered on the edge of being
called off altogether, due to disagreement among our
leaders. After all, eight leaders did not show up. The
league is a dead organization - with little to no
authority in the Arab world."
The US was
criticized for imposing sanctions on Syria, under the
Syrian Accountability Act, but beyond that no action was
proposed. There was a minute of silence for the victims
of the Rafah carnage and a call for an independent
Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and
condemnation of Israel's actions in the Palestinian
territories, but no pressure was put on Egypt or Jordan
to break ties with Israel.
As Atwan had
predicted: "... Palestine means confronting the US, and
the Arab regimes cannot afford to do that." There was
also condemnation of the abuse of prisoners in Abu
Ghraib prison and calls for the United Nations to play a
greater role, without any Arab plans being presented for
a solution to the Iraqi occupation and the spiraling
violence.
A 13-point plan was adopted, the first
of its kind, which will form the basis of the "New
Middle East", but on the insistence of Syria the word
"reform" was removed and replaced with "development and
modernization". Though the plan has been adopted, a
mechanism to implement it has not been.
Tunisian
Foreign Minister Habib Ben Yahia explained: "It has been
done in a way that it is a homegrown process, because
the reforms are from within the countries ... according
to our own culture and our own terms of reference."
This may yet result in non-implementation of
reforms or slow-paced ones, and the adoption of such a
plan may be to deflect US pressure to impose a plan on
the region. After all, the United States will discuss
its plans for a new Middle East at the upcoming summit
of the Group of Eight (G8) nations, where it will seek
support from the other members for its plans.
It
may also be a bid to deflect Arab pressure on the issues
of Palestine and Iraq. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi provided
some drama by walking out in response to league
secretary general Amr Moussa's rebuttal of Arab states
that act unilaterally - thought to be a veiled reference
to Libya's renunciation of weapons of mass destruction -
again testifying to Arab disunity.
In short, the
summit was unable to come up with any solutions for the
many woes facing the Arab world. So why do Arab League
summits usually end up paying nothing but lip service to
Arab issues? "The Arab League, in a sense, cannot move
ahead of the nature of the Arab states themselves. The
problem of the Arab states [is] the nature of the
regimes, centralized systems, no system of
accountability, so the regimes can fail time and again
and still remain in power," argued Dr Ashrawi.
So the Arab world will simply have to watch and
wait for the next Arab summit, or the start of the
reform process, whichever comes first.
Aditi Bhaduri is a columnist based in
India.
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