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Arab civil society presents leaders with
‘popular initiative’ to prevent war
An Arab press review, By The Daily Star
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With Arab leaders poised to meet in Sharm
el-Sheikh on Saturday, the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat reports that
hundreds of Arab grassroots organizations are lobbying them to adopt a
“popular initiative” aimed at preventing an American invasion of Iraq.
They have issued an appeal to the impending Arab summit conference, signed
by 360 rights organizations and 120 prominent public figures, urging the
Arab regimes to collectively oppose any US military action against Iraq
and refuse to assist it, while simultaneously overseeing a process of
Iraqi internal reform.
Under the plan they are proposing, the Arab League would convene a
“broad conference of all Iraqi political forces and players, in and
outside government and in and outside Iraq, to establish the basic
principles and guarantees needed to pave the way for a national
reconciliation based on solid foundations, which at the same time sets the
stage for free and fair elections under direct UN supervision with the
participation of the Arab League and the European Union (EU).”
The Arab states would meanwhile “reject and condemn” the war plans of
US President George W. Bush’s administration and its threats to change
the Iraqi regime by force, and support the Franco-German blueprint under
which UN arms inspections in Iraq would be expanded and given sufficient
time to complete their task.
The document’s authors also stress the role that “world civil
society” has played in opposing the US drive toward war, and proceed to
“call on the Arab governments to lift the restrictions that prevent the
peoples and their dynamic forces from exercising their right to express
themselves freely in all areas, and not just to voice solidarity with the
Iraqi and Palestinian peoples.”
The appeal continues: “It is shameful that our Arab world should
constitute the weakest link in international civil society’s opposition
to war and American hegemony, and be the only place on earth whose peoples
are prevented from collectively expressing their solidarity with the Iraqi
people, while massive resistance to war on Iraq and hegemony over our
region is mounted by other peoples around the globe who enjoy genuine
freedom and independent means of organization.”
The document goes on to warn: “The Arab world’s regional system is
threatened with total collapse unless all its components rise above
traditional inter-Arab sensitivities at this delicate historical moment
and assume their responsibilities toward the Iraqi people, and unless they
refrain from offering any facilities that enable Arab territories and
resources to be used as deployment or launching pads for forces invading
Iraq.”
Veteran Egyptian commentator Salaheddin Hafez expects the Arab summit to
replicate the three-way split that emerged after Arab foreign ministers
met in Cairo earlier this month to discuss the proposed emergency meeting
of Arab leaders which Egypt had originally wanted to convene.
At the time, he writes in his weekly piece in the semi-official Cairo
daily Al-Ahram of which he is the managing editor, one group of Arab
states formed an anti-war “front” demanding that no Arab country
provide military bases or facilities to US troops poised to invade Iraq.
Others came together in a rival caucus “that considers itself opposed to
war but incapable of preventing it and equally incapable of denying bases
and facilities to America, both because of the defense treaties binding
them and also because of their longstanding dream to be rid of the Iraqi
regime that invaded Kuwait and threatened the security of the Gulf states
in 1990.” A third faction of Arab states kept themselves aloof from the
whole row, he observes.
Hafez writes that the current split in the Arab world is more profound and
serious than the one that preceded the 1991 Gulf War, and warns that if it
is not quickly overcome “it could bring an unhappy end not only to
the institution of the Arab summit, but to the entire Arab regional
order.”
The stakes could not be higher: War threatens to destroy Iraq and spread
devastation throughout the region, “perhaps deliberately” so the US
can proceed to “reshape” it to better serve its interests. Israel
threatens to exploit war to escalate its ongoing campaign against the
Palestinians in the hope of annihilating them and burying their cause
forever. And the Arabs are faced with the prospect of direct or indirect
recolonization by the US as it fills the region with military bases and
deployments.
“We have lost our national and pan-Arab independence in the fundamental,
profound sense of the word, something we barely tasted for five decades
following five centuries of Ottoman and then British, French, Italian and
even Israeli occupation,” Hafez remarks.
And further compounding the crisis are the serious pent-up political,
social and economic frustrations in the Arab states, most of which are
plagued by “socio-economic crises, political and sometimes confessional
and sectarian conflicts and growing poverty and unemployment sure
recipes for hopelessness and despair, extremism and bigotry, and
corruption and tyranny.”
It is to this backdrop that “the latter-day colonialists are
regenerating the claims of the old colonialists, who always used to say:
We’ve come to modernize you, develop you and teach you the rules of
government and the principles of civilization,” writes Hafez. “Is that
not what we are hearing today? And do these threats not make the Arabs’
customary quarrel and divisions seem comparatively trivial and silly?”
With Al-Ahram opening its pages to an ongoing debate about the future of
“the Arab system” in light of the Iraq crisis, Cairo University
Professor Ahmed Youssef Ahmed contributes an article challenging the
assumption that the Arabs are incapable of preventing war.
He suggests that the impending Arab summit can and should adopt a common
approach to Iraq based on four components:
1. A proper assessment of the situation namely that what we are facing
in Iraq is “a hurricane which could kill us all and not a mere storm
that will pass over us if we bend to it,” he says. The hurricane will
begin in Iraq, but US control of the country is intended to be “only a
step along a second “road map,” which the US has drawn up for the Arab
world, in order to reshape it in a manner that suits and reinforces its
exclusive hegemony over the world.”
2. “Completely halting” the practice of laying the blame for the
deterioration of the situation solely, or even primarily, on the Iraqi
leadership. “The crisis is an American creation from A-to-Z,” Ahmed
reasons, “so the summit should send a clear message to Iraq welcoming
the way it has dealt with UN Security Council Resolution 1441 while urging
it to avoid anything that could be used as pretext to claim it is
violating it.”
3. “Sending an unequivocal message to the US administration containing
the very simple proposition that the Arabs are committed to international
legality. Accordingly, they want the crisis handled exclusively via the UN
Security Council, and will consider any military action against Iraq
without unambiguous and direct Security Council authorization to be an act
of aggression.”
Ahmed suggests it is in this context that the row between Arab states over
the provision of base facilities to US forces can be resolved. The summit
can spell out that, if the UN does not authorize military action,
individual Arab states will be bound not to assist it in any way.
Meanwhile, Syria, the Arab representative on the Security Council, can be
mandated to vote on behalf of all the Arab states against any second
resolution authorizing military action.
4. Building “immediate bridges of cooperation and understanding”
between the Arab states and all the other international players opposed to
war. “This would most certainly infuriate the US administration,”
Ahmed writes, “but the situation is much too dangerous for our principal
consideration to be not to upset America.” The Arab system, as
represented by the impending summit, “does not have the luxury of opting
for indolence, for that would amount to writing its own death certificate,
and burying itself before others kill it.”
Also in Al-Ahram, Egyptian analyst Diae Rashwan, of the Ahram Center for
Political and Strategic Studies, forecasts that the Iraq crisis will
increasingly become inextricable from the whole issue of “international
terrorism” once the US military goes into action in Iraq.
The two things are already fused in the minds of US decision-makers, he
remarks. They portray their impending invasion of Iraq as “one battle”
in a protracted and multifaceted campaign to totally eradicate
“terrorism,” dry up its human, ideological and material wellsprings,
and eliminate all forces and nation-states that have the potential to aid
it. It is therefore self-evident that Saudi Arabia and Iran are, in their
different ways, set to be subsequent targets of the US campaign after
Iraq.
The “two crises” are also linked in another way, Rashwan points out:
The invasion of Iraq is certain to inflame anti-American feelings in the
Arab and Islamic worlds, probably triggering attacks on American targets,
personnel and interests in these regions. War on Iraq will, given the way
the US has reacted to Sept. 11 and supported Israel’s throttling of the
Palestinians, reinforce the prevalent impression that what the Americans
are engaged in is not a “war on terror” but an anti-Muslim
“Crusade.” Osama bin Laden was quick to foresee that in his
broadcasts, urging resistance to an American invasion of Iraq.
Attacks on US targets are likely to be stepped up both by Qaedat al-Jihad
the coalition formed by bin Laden’s group, Ayman Zawaheri’s faction
of the Egyptian Jihad, and a number of other factions and the much
looser network of like-minded groups worldwide which the Americans
generically refer to as “Al-Qaeda,” writes Rashwan.
He adds that as well as provoking such attacks in Arab and Muslim nations,
an American invasion of Iraq is certain to turn the country, “within
weeks of the start of war, into a magnet for thousands of volunteer
fighters who, out of a diverse array of motives, want to confront the US
on its soil.” The resultant conflict, Rashwan suggests, could end up
combining features of the Vietnamese liberation struggle, the Spanish
civil war in which thousands of foreign volunteers fought, and the Afghan
anti-Soviet jihad with its religious overtones.
A huge influx of Islamists can be expected into Iraq to confront the
“Great Satan” after it has installed itself there, he says, mainly
from the neighboring Arabian peninsula which has easy overland access
to Iraq, where support for Al-Qaeda and resentment of the US military
presence is strong, and which is home to a large percentage of the Arab
volunteers who helped kick the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan and believe
they can do the same to the Americans in Iraq.
In Syria, the government-run daily Tishrin highlights Israel’s manifest
passion for an American invasion of Iraq at a time when it has been
stepping up its murderous mugging of the Palestinians, killing more people
and destroying more property and infrastructure on a daily basis under the
Bush administration’s protection.
Israel’s actions on the ground and its very active “incitement” of
an American invasion of Iraq are inextricable, the paper says.
It has already exploited the world’s preoccupation with the Iraq crisis
to get away with mass murder in Palestine, “and one can be sure that it
is planning on more of the same under the cover of the planned US
aggression against Iraq,” it warns.
Tishrin says this is further reason for the international community to
oppose war on Iraq and insist that the crisis be resolved “by peaceful
means and in the context of the United Nations and of Security Council
Resolution 1441.” The resolution, it stresses, “was adopted from the
outset to avoid military action against Iraq and resolve the emerging
problem by peaceful means. Such a solution is possible, and it is
achievable if the international inspectors are given the opportunity to
complete their mission.”
The Syrian daily concludes: “The prospect of a peaceful solution to the
Iraq crisis may be perturbing to Israel, but it is a vital requisite for
the Arabs and the world at large, and would be in the interest of all of
humanity, if only the US administration would appreciate that.”