BAGHDAD - The Arab League is to reopen its
Baghdad office for the first time since the US-led
invasion of Iraq three years ago amid fears of
growing Iranian influence in Iraq and the
increasing scale-back of US troops there into
"enduring bases".
"They [the Arabs] are
worried about the future of Iraq and that it will
drift out of the Arab sphere of influence," a
former high-ranking Iranian foreign-policy
official told Asia Times Online in Tehran.
The 22-member Arab League, established in
1945, resembles the Organization of American
States, the Council of Europe or the
African Union in that it has
primarily political aims. All Arab League members
are also members of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference. In turn, the memberships of
the smaller Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab
Maghreb Union organizations are subsets of the
Arab League.
The newly appointed head of
the Arab League's mission in Iraq is Moroccan
diplomat Mokhtar Lamani. He is already in Baghdad
with a brief to consult with various Iraqi
factions and speed up the creation of an Iraqi
government that remains unformed over four months
after the December elections brought a Shi'ite
coalition to power. One of his first steps was to
meet with US Ambassador to Baghdad Zalmay
Khalilzad.
The Arab League has resisted
opening an office in Baghdad in a sign of its
disapproval for the non-United Nations-sanctioned
war. But Iraq's gradual collapse into civil strife
has prompted concerned Arab leaders to re-engage
with the troubled country.
Last month, top
intelligence officers from several Arab countries
and Turkey met secretly to coordinate their
governments' strategies in case civil war erupts
in Iraq, according to Arab diplomats quoted by the
Associated Press, and in an attempt to block
Iranian interference there, as that non-Arab
country is widely perceived as a threat to the
region.
Concern over Shi'ite Iran's reach
in Shi'ite-majority Iraq has bubbled over into a
series of anxious statements made by
Sunni-dominated Arab leaders in the past week.
"The threat of breakup in Iraq is a huge
problem for the countries of the region,
especially if the fighting is on a sectarian
basis," said Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal
on Tuesday as he discussed a massive air-defense
deal with a British delegation that could see
Saudi Arabia buy up to 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets
and upgrade its existing Tornado fighters. "This
type of fighting sucks in other countries."
Faisal's comments followed controversial
remarks made by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
last week to the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiyya news
channel where he accused Arab Shi'ites of holding
primary allegiance to Iran rather than to their
own Sunni governments. Mubarak's statements laid
bare the distrust with which the region's Sunni
rulers regard Arab Shi'ites and caused a storm of
protest by Iraqi politicians.
"Such
statements make it more difficult for any serious
Arab initiative in Iraq," said Joseph Bahout, a
Paris-based Lebanese political analyst. "They also
highlight the dangers of any open Arab alignment
in the US-Iran confrontation." This was a
reference to the fragile unity of the Arab League.
Nevertheless, the Arab League's return to
what was once one of the most powerful Arab states
signals an escalation in the Arab-Iranian struggle
over Iraq's future.
"The Arabs feel that
Iraq is a slippery fish," said the Iranian
official. "They want to catch this fish and bring
it to the Arab family. So they don't want there to
be a deal between Iran and the US on Iraq. They
don't want to see Iran being the gendarme
of the Gulf again."
Aware of Arab wariness
of Iran, US Vice President Dick Cheney made a rare
foray to the region in January, visiting US allies
Egypt and Saudi Arabia to suggest an Egypt-led,
Arab multinational force under Arab League
auspices. Iraqi politicians have repeatedly said
they might accept troops from other Muslim
countries, but not from any direct neighbors.
A possible Arab multinational peacekeeping
force would enter Iraq under Arab League or United
Nations auspices. Sources said Egypt would provide
most of the manpower and military hardware, with
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states concerned
about the rise in Iranian influence funding the
initiative.
But Middle East-watchers warn
that the entry of a pan-Arab force into Iraq could
turn the country into a proxy battleground with
Iran and dangerously escalate a regional
confrontation that has until now been simmering on
a diplomatic level.
"After the toppling of
Saddam [Hussein]'s regime, Arab countries totally
lost the situation ... which is why they support
the tensions in Iraq today, because they don't
have any more cards to play," said the former
Iranian official. "Several times they've said that
if Iraq is not an Arab country, then we won't
support any peace and tranquility there."
Tehran has sought to allay Arab fears
about its role in Iraq and about military
exercises held recently in the Persian Gulf, just
a few kilometers away from five key oil-producing
Arab countries. Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa
Mohammad Najjar was reported as saying by the
official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that
his country sought "peace and friendship" for
neighboring states. He offered joint military war
games with any of the Persian Gulf littoral
states, as well as the signing of a non-aggression
pact.
The US Embassy spokeswoman in
Baghdad said there was no "specific comment on
this Arab League issue" but added that "the
ambassador [Khalilzad] has spoken a number of
times on the importance of neighboring and other
Arab countries coming in to support the new,
democratic Iraq".
A secular Sunni leader,
Mubarak would be happy to crack down on Muslim
radicals such as the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi group, just as he virtually destroyed
indigenous Islamist movements in Egypt in the
early 1990s.
"The Egyptian regime has been
afraid of Iranian-inspired Muslim radicalism ever
since the 1979 [Iranian] revolution," said Middle
East specialist Juan Cole. "The opportunity to
counter Iranian influence in Arab Iraq could seem
attractive to the Egyptian military and also could
strike them as a form of self-defense."
On
the streets of Baghdad, the violence unleashed on
a daily basis has reached such proportions that
ordinary Iraqis are desperate for any intervention
that might end the circle of violence.
For
Waleed, an embassy driver from a Baghdad-based
Sunni clan, Iraq's leaders have proved they are
incapable of stemming the violence. "If they
brought a Jew in to run this country, he would do
it better than the people we have now," he said,
using an expression common among Arabs when
describing an untrustworthy person.
"We've
tried the Iraqis and they're useless. Now let's
try anyone who will govern justly."
Iason Athanasiadis is an
Iran-based correspondent.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
.)
