25 March 2006
From Sudan, a chronicle of Arab death foretold
How
morbidly revealing it was that
Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum on Tuesday could agree to little of consequence, even as they were
hosted by a regime that has efficiently engineered the slaughter and wretchedness
of hundreds of thousands of
civilians in Darfur. Only in repression, it seems, are the
Arab states truly resourceful; in diplomacy, however, it is
their cowardice and sterility that
consistently prevail.
The face-off over the Lebanese resistance
between President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora during a closed session at the summit
was awkward, but also bracing, coming
after the parliamentary majority sent a letter to the Arab
League questioning the president's legitimacy. Both episodes were rare signs of democracy in a venue where bigoted dinosaurs
mingle with tyrannical mummies. Khartoum reaffirmed that, all things remaining constant, the Arab states are heading toward self-inflicted political marginalization in the coming years.
Lebanese-Syrian relations provide a good case study of Arab thinking. It has become apparent that the coagulating
Arab consensus today is that Syrian
President Bashar Assad should survive politically, regardless of his regime's probable involvement in the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Several months ago, a senior Arab leader privately insinuated to a prominent Lebanese politician that the page had to be turned on Hariri. Today, both Egypt
and Saudi Arabia are taking unambiguous positions in support of Assad,
and are avoiding putting
pressure on Syria even where this can
be done, for example in drawing Lebanese-Syrian boundaries in the Shebaa Farms
area and in approving
Lahoud's ouster.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
is nervous that if Assad were
to fall, Islamists would inherit Syria.
Given that Mubarak's own Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood,
did especially well in last year's parliamentary elections, and that Hamas won a subsequent majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Egyptian leader sees beards everywhere,
and that worries him. He
also knows that if Assad tumbles,
as a leader who inherited his post from his
father, his failure would give
considerable sustenance to
Mubarak's political foes who oppose the president's plans to bring his son, Gamal, to power.
The Saudis have complex
calculations of their own. Like the
Egyptians, they don't like to see
an Arab leader forcibly removed from office, since that may
give ideas to their own opponents.
But the Saudis are worried, too, about how the Sunni-Shiite rift in Iraq may affect communal relations in the
kingdom, particularly in the oil-rich Eastern
Province where there is a substantial Shiite
population. Assad's downfall, they
fear, would provoke Sunni-Shiite tension in Lebanon, which, combined with the
tension in Iraq, may destabilize
the region and have serious repercussions in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh's sectarian sensitivities also explain why it
won't confront the Iranians over Syria
or Hizbullah. Finally, the Saudis are aware that a doomed
Assad might turn Sunni Islamists
against them in a retaliatory punch before dropping out of sight.
The Egyptian and Saudi positions on Assad are, therefore, justifiable from the perspective of traditional Arab "realist" politics. But they are also dismal affirmations of the inability of Arab states to adapt to a new
situation in the region and internationally. Assad may be
a member of the club, which makes him
untouchable, but he is also an avatar of potentially disastrous stalemate. If Mubarak senses that Assad
is the last bastion holding
back Syria's Islamists, it doesn't say much
about his legitimacy or that of his Baath Party. It also
implies that Arab leaders cannot see beyond the
short-term palliative of defending
a discredited Syrian regime, even though
its survival will doubtless increase the strength
of Islamists and the likelihood that the Baath's removal will be
violent.
It tells us something else
as well. Hariri's death showed that as far as the international community was concerned, high-profile killing was no longer business as usual. For
the first time, the Security Council
called for an investigation of a political
crime under its own authority, and this is
ongoing. Will the international body stay united? Probably not, and the council's
consensus has already started
fraying, with Russia and China now showing more of a willingness to feel Syria's pain than previously. However, a precedent has been
set, and though many Arab officials
prefer to look the other way on Assad,
their willingness to do so shows how little they grasp the
reality of an international order
where state sovereignty is proving gradually
less effective in shielding
criminals.
The true danger for the
Arab states is that as they become
less relevant in shaping the Middle Eastern agenda, the non-Arab peripheral
states - Iran, Turkey and Israel - are becoming more so. Already, the
Israeli elections have shown that Israel
is united around a unilateral drawing of its border with the Palestinians,
and it is
persuading the
international community of the
benefits of this. Meanwhile,
the Arabs offered nothing original on the Palestinians in Khartoum, while Arab publicists,
forgetting their onetime loyalty to secular nationalist Palestinian slogans, now loudly celebrate Hamas, oblivious to the fact that its
calls for a long-term truce give Israel
precisely the time it needs to pursue
unilateral policies.
As
for Iran and Turkey, the first is
intimidating and finagling its way
toward hegemony in the Gulf region,
seeking nuclear weapons, and meddling
in Lebanese affairs; the second is slowly
integrating into the European Union, whether it becomes
a full member or not. The
time is fast approaching where the Arab states will be ciphers
in their own backyard, pawns or barricades between far more powerful actors. Khartoum would have been a good forum to discuss avoiding this. Instead, like much
in Arab politics, it was a costly
waste of time.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY
STAR.
Copyright (c) 2006 The Daily Star