The chimera of Arab solidarity
By M K Bhadrakumar
"I will not divulge a secret if I say that this summit was very disappointing, particularly regarding the tragedy of Iraq. If I had the opportunity to make the Arab kings and presidents who met in Riyadh yesterday and the day before yesterday hear my voice, I would have told them that you met while your brothers in Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere were grievously suffering from injustice and occupation.
"What is strange is that the more the United States inflicts injustice on Iraq, the more the Arabs throw themselves in its arms. If the Arab rulers had some independence, they would dissociate themselves from the United States and stop revolving in its orbit inasmuch as it dissociates itself from our interests and supports our enemy.
"O Arab rulers, what do you have to say about these biased and unjust statements, which participate in killing us and in shedding our blood and which bless the shedding of Muslim blood? What do you have to say about the massacres that are being perpetrated against Iraq and our Palestinian brothers, and what can you do to support our brothers? What do you have to say about these US statements that collude with Israel to the point of crime and plotting?"
These are the words of an unidentified preacher delivering a Friday prayer sermon in Baghdad on March 30. The preacher was pouring out his sense of anguish and frustration over the inane outcome of the Arab League summit that had concluded in Saudi Arabia the previous day.
Indeed, the fizz has gone out of the summit. All the brave attempts by spin doctors (in the region and abroad) to portray the summit as coupling Saudi Arabia's weight with an Arab mandate for carrying the so-called Arab Peace Initiative to a new threshold never really carried any conviction.
In the popular Arab perception, there was no doubt that the real bet was on the ability of the Saudi leadership to get the United States and Israel to accept the Arab initiative. But even assuming that US President George W Bush is inclined to pressure Israel, the plain reality is that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lacks the personal or political credentials to take a major step toward peace in the Arab-Israel conflict.
He is the weakest prime minister Israel has ever had. Evidently, his priority is political survival in Israel's murky, vicious domestic politics. Meanwhile, he hopes somehow to keep the so-called peace process solely on the Palestinian track and to stick to the hardline stance vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
As Al-Ahram weekly put it, "Israel wants an Arab capitulation ... It saw how the Arabs changed their position in the past and it hopes for much the same again. Before 1967, Arabs saw Israel as an imperialist state. After 1967, they accepted a two-state solution. Then the Arabs offered full normalization to sweeten the deal. Now Israel wants more."
In fact, the Riyadh summit got off to an inauspicious start. Its credibility suffered when it came to be known that just days ahead of it, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had convened a meeting in Cairo of the intelligence chiefs of four Arab states, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan - the very same states that the summit came to endorse as composing the so-called Arab Quartet, which would act as a sort of coordinator with the international community in initiating an Arab-Israeli dialogue.
It didn't need much ingenuity to estimate that the Riyadh summit was to be an elaborate exercise of public diplomacy, whereas the US was in essence trying to bring together the pro-American Sunni Arab regimes and Israel in anticipation of a confrontation with Iran.
Senior Arab political observer Rami Khouri asked, "Which of the two meetings Riyadh summit or the Cairo meeting of intelligence chiefs was more significant and signaled the tone, content and direction of Arab state policies? Was this a natural interplay between three separate factors - US foreign policy, Arab security systems, and Arab leaderships? Or did the three converge into a single trend, where US foreign policy blended with Arab security policy?
"Rice's meeting with the intelligence chiefs was a novelty that deserves more scrutiny, for both its current meaning and for its future implications. Whatever the nature of Rice's meeting with the Arab intelligence chiefs, it seems like the sort of noteworthy development that Arab governments should explain to their own Arab citizens," Khouri wrote.
Quite naturally, there was always the lingering suspicion that one main purpose of the Arab League summit was to block what the beleaguered pro-Western Arab regimes in the region perceived as Iran's "encroachment" in the Middle East, Iran's ambition to capture the Palestinian card in particular.
To quote Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper in London, "The Riyadh summit took back the reins of the Peace Initiative from radicalism. The presidency of this summit Saudi Arabia is now responsible for the success of moderation and the fulfillment of its victory by explicitly defeating radicalism and extremism stretching from Sudan to Lebanon, via Palestine and Iraq, as a result of the direct Iranian intervention."
From the Saudi perspective, therefore, the Riyadh summit was a logical follow-up on the Mecca Accord, where the main thrust was again on arresting the growing Iranian capacity to set the tempo of developments in the Palestinian territories. According to the Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Syria tried in vain to give some substance to the initiative adopted at the Riyadh summit by pleading that the bottom line in any settlement with Israel ought to be the return of the Palestinian refugees.
The Saudis apparently rebuffed the Syrian attempt. A similar fate awaited the abortive Syrian attempt to restrain the Arab League from extending vehement support for Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government in Beirut, which Hezbollah opposes.
In the event, the Riyadh summit declaration voiced the Arab states' support for the Hariri tribunal (which Damascus has been stonewalling). Saudi King Abdullah criticized Hezbollah's agitation against the Siniora government. The Saudis made it clear that it was time that Lebanon was neutralized as a front of anti-Israel resistance. Furthermore, Saudi diplomatic sources have "leaked" that at their one-on-one, King Abdullah rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad.
What emerges is that the "Arab solidarity" that appears to have formed under Saudi Arabia's leadership is in actuality a chimera. The members of the Arab League have not been able to sort out their internal differences. The legitimacy of the Arab Quartet to represent the Arab opinion on the Palestine problem will, therefore, stretch credulity as time passes. Hamas and Hezbollah have acquiesced with the new Saudi role. They see the Saudi role as in essence an expedient attempt to create a false hope in the Arab public opinion that peace with Israel is possible under the Bush administration.
It suits the Bush administration if the Saudis lend a hand in neutralizing the rising anger and dissatisfaction directed at the US (and the pro-American regimes) at this juncture when a confrontation with Iran may become necessary and the need may arise for the use of the Gulf Arab states as "launching pads". The carrot of establishing a Palestinian state was successfully used in the past to temper the Arab opposition to the US aggression in the region in the 1990 Gulf War and in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
To be sure, Iran is taking the new Saudi role very seriously. On the one hand, Iran continues to explore the potential of the Iran-Saudi "dialogue" for keeping the Saudi antipathy toward Tehran's regional influence within acceptable limits. On the other hand, Iran counts on the traditional duality (between Westernism and Arabism) and caution that characterize Saudi policies.
Iran is also mindful of the contradictions that exist in Saudi-US relations, especially during the period since September 11, 2001. But it remains alert that intrinsically the Saudi regime is tightly tied to Washington on multiple planes that are virtually impossible for Riyadh to break even if it wishes to.
Tehran may draw some comfort that even while promoting the US line in regard of the regional security and stability, the Saudis do not buy entirely the US argument that the real enemy of the Arabs is Iran - and not Israel. It was apparent that even as key officials of the Bush administration - Vice President Dick Cheney, Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - were descending on Riyadh with the brief to form a bulwark of anti-Iranian "moderate" Arab states, King Abdullah was dispatching Prince Bandar to Tehran for extending an invitation to President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to visit Riyadh.
Iran is savvy enough to know that it is not at all in its interests to make the already insecure pro-American regimes in the region feel further rattled. Its rhetoric is, therefore, focused on US hegemonic designs in the region. On this score, the religious leadership in Iran has closed ranks and has been speaking with one voice in the recent weeks.
(In a telling remark on March 12, while addressing the newly elected Expediency Council headed by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei complimented the leadership of Ahmadinejad, saying, "At this stage, the country is in a very good condition and is making extraordinary advances in the scientific, social and cultural spheres." Khamenei pointedly called on the Expediency Council to become the "symbol of the unity of the Iranian ruling system".)
The religious leadership in Tehran has figured out that at the end of the day, Iran has the maximum to lose in any aggravation of the Sunni-Shiite polarization, since the sectarian issue tarnishes the legacy of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, apart from relegating Iran to a leadership role within a fringe 10-15% of the Islamic world. Rafsanjani said on March 16, "The problems in the regional countries, especially in Iraq, stem from the US plots to create division, and today we can see the United States behind all problems in the region."
A week later, in a major speech in Mashhad, Khamenei said: "Frightening the southern neighbors of Iran is another aim of American psychological warfare. Such efforts have continued since the beginning of the revolution. Some of our neighbors in the Persian Gulf have clearly realized this, while many others fall in its trap ... Since the revolution, Iran has consistently extended a hand of friendship to these neighbors. Iran believes that the Persian Gulf countries themselves should provide security for this important region through cooperation."
Last Friday and Sunday, Khamenei came back to the theme of the importance of Islamic nations and governments getting closer to each other and relying on the "strength and abilities of their own citizens" rather than on "American politicians".
On Saturday, in an unusually explicit statement, Rafsanjani exclaimed that Hezbollah in Lebanon has "brought honor to the Arabs" by defeating Israel. The veteran statesman continued, "Some regional states consider Iran's advancement to be against their own interests. This is at a time when Iran's progress and development are to be related to the world of Islam."
The pro-American regimes in the region may become further nervous that Iran's standoff with Britain has only helped to enhance its standing on the Arab street. The Iranian president's swagger as he announced the release of the 15 British sailors has certainly caught the imagination of the Arab street.
His defiance of the West goes a long way in assuaging the collecting sense of shame and humiliation in the Arab collective psyche. The Financial Times reported from Cairo, "The fact that Ahmadinejad is the leader of a Persian, predominantly Shi'a nation seemed not to matter ... ordinary Arabs see Ahmadinejad as a breath of fresh air.
"The feelings are compounded by the perception that moderate Sunni states, such as US allies Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, simply follow Washington's bidding. The Iranian leader strikes a balance that resonates in the Arab world: candid and outspoken in his criticism of the West and Israel, while appearing as a humble man of the people."
In a way, that was also the angst that the untutored, obscure preacher giving the Friday prayer sermon amid the ruins of Baghdad was striving to convey.
Original article posted here.
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