7 March -- Manufacturing Unity

By Daniel Kimmage

     As rancorous exchanges at summit meetings underscored the inability of Arab states to fashion a unified stance on the crisis in Iraq, commentary in the press probed and bemoaned the fissures and fakeries of the Arab world's reigning political elite.
     Great expectations did not accompany the opening of the Arab League's 1 March summit. Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television conducted a pre-summit call-in show on 28 February titled, "Will the Arab and Islamic summits succeed in removing the specter of war?" Though callers expressed varied views on the Iraq crisis, they were despondent about the prospects for Arab diplomacy. Jabir al-Habbabi of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) sounded a note of exceptional -- if qualified -- optimism to prove the rule:
     "I want the summit to succeed. Naturally, we're optimistic about this summit...But if [the Arab leaders] can't come out with a unified resolution supporting Iraq, then they have become mentally ill..."
     In his concluding comments, political analyst and guest Mahmud al-Muraghi remarked on the striking unanimity of callers and Internet participants:
     "All of the comments on the Arab summit are negative, and those who contributed to the program have a right to be pessimistic..."
     A discussion program that aired the same day on al-Jazeera suggested that the presummit pessimism is rooted in a broader sense of frustration. Unambiguously titled "Why have the Arabs become the laughingstock of the world?" the program featured an uncompromising broadside against Arab leaders by writer and historian Ahmad Uthman. In his final comment, moderator Faysal al-Qasim noted:
     "Our time is up. I thank you. I have here...230, 240 comments. I couldn't find a single comment to read in defense of the [Arab] leaders. So...this is a referendum on the Arab leaders, with 99.99 percent against."
     The day-long Arab League summit in Sharm Al-Shaykh did its best to avoid conflict, shunning a divisive U.A.E. initiative to convince Iraqi President Saddam Husayn to relinquish power. Division surfaced unexpectedly, however, in the form of a vituperative exchange between Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi and Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah. Al-Qadhafi blasted Saudi Arabia for allowing American troops on its soil; Abdallah implied in response a foreign role in al-Qadhafi's own ascent to power.
     Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based pan-Arab daily "Al-Quds Al-Arabi," scathingly titled a 3 March front-page editorial "The summit of Arab buffoonery." In a rhetorical question that subsequent events would throw into even sharper relief, the editor asked:
     "...If the summit's open session witnesses such cursing and arguing, what happens behind closed doors? What sort of dialogue, and on what level, takes place between these leaders?"
     Atwan noted the spurned U.A.E. initiative:
"Yes...most of the Arab leaders speak in secret about the need for the Iraqi president to step down. It offers them an escape from their impotence and the dereliction of their Islamic, Arab, and moral duty to defend a country under attack, a country that faces occupation and extinction. But why did the U.A.E. agree to be a scapegoat, undertaking this dangerous task and sacrificing its reputation, stature, [political] capital, and leader in the Arab street? Is it a mere coincidence that this rush job of an initiative appeared only two days after [U.S. Secretary of Stat] Colin Powell called on the Arab leaders to ask the Iraqi president to step down?"
     Ahmad al-Rab'i, a columnist for the Saudi-financed, London-based pan-Arab daily "Al-Sharq Al-Awsat," wrote bitterly on 3 March of the summit's "colorless, tasteless, odorless" final declaration, which asserted an antiwar position but avoided any specifics that could prove embarrassing to Gulf states currently hosting American troops.
     "We have heard the dreary, repetitive puffery and verbiage of the summit declaration many times. Its most important feature is its lack of credibility."
     "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" editor Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, who has overseen and authored critical coverage of Iraq, contributed a personal note in a 5 March editorial on the Sharm Al-Shaykh summit. During a chance meeting, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri chided al-Rashid and his newspaper:
     "My dear Abd al-Rahman, there's nothing in Iraq you haven't taken care of! You've appointed a new government, ministers. All that's left is for you to appoint the employees..."
     But when the "mild-mannered, cordial" minister takes al-Rashid's hand and invites him to Baghdad, the editor turns serious:
     "I removed my hand from his and thought of saying that I'm too busy. But I knew he wouldn't believe me. Iraq is the most important issue in the world and the focus of journalists' attention. I told him, 'No...no, I'll send someone else.' I know that however friendly and pleasant ministers and diplomats are, security services -- especially in Iraq -- are not as pleasant. I learned from the tragedy of poor Farzan Bazoft. I passed through the same gate as he in the Baghdad airport, and in the same year, a few months before the attack on Kuwait in 1990. This poor Iranian-British journalist was accused of espionage and executed in the twinkling of an eye. This is a simple matter in Baghdad...I told [Iraqi Foreign Minister] Naji Sabri, 'I'd rather be a live, frightened cat than a dead, brave lion.'"
     Not all commentary on the Sharm Al-Shaykh summit was so incisive. A more "official" view comes from a distant corner of the Arab world and in a different language. Writing in Morocco's Francophone "La Gazette" on 3 March, Kamal Lahlou linked the Iraq crisis and the Palestinian question, providing a significantly more soothing view of the proceedings:
     "Arab leaders have finally followed the sentiment of the Arab street, repeating together at Sharm Al-Shaykh: No to the war against Iraq.... Speeches noted that aggression against Iraq will affect all of the Arab states and regimes from the Gulf to the Atlantic. Finally, the summit concluded that capitulation to the American administration would open the door to the elimination of the Palestinian cause and the creation of a Greater Israel.... The summit also asked how to safeguard common Arab security and support the Palestinian cause. The response to these questions is contained in the speech by His Majesty, King Muhammad VI, who insisted on strengthening ties between Arab states to further the development process..."
     The emergency summit of the Islamic Conference on 5 March in Doha, Qatar proved equally fractious. Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, enlivened his opening remarks with a comment about the Kuwaiti rulers' "treachery and scheming with the Zionists and imperialists." According to a transcript published in Kuwait's "Al-Qabas" on 6 March, the head of the Kuwaiti delegation rose to retort, saying, "This is hypocrisy...Be quiet, this is blasphemy, falsehood, and trickery. We will not accept this from you or from anyone else." Not to be outdone, al-Duri shot back, "Shut up, you child, you stooge, shut up, you monkey. Shut up. You stand before Iraq, curse you." By the time the emir of Qatar succeeded in restoring order -- reminding delegates at one point, "We are on the air" -- the damage had already been done.
     In its reaction to the spat, Kuwait's "Al-Ray Al-Am" offered unexpected insight on 6 March into how some outside of Iraq view inspections. The newspaper noted that, during the incident, Kuwaiti Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Shaykh Sabah's smile betokened "disdain and pain," explaining:
     "...disdain for the officials who have sown corruption, tyranny, and despotism. They speak of 'greatness' even as teams of inspectors search through their bedrooms and palaces."
     Kuwait's "Al-Watan" kept the rhetorical pitch high on 7 March, calling al-Duri "an underdeveloped criminal whose sense of culture derives from selling ice cream from a cart he pushes in the streets of Baghdad."
     Dr. Abd al-Razzaq Muhammad al-Dulaymi chose a somewhat different tone in a 6 March editorial in Iraq's "Babil," controlled by Saddam Husayn's elder son, Uday. Opening the article with an opaque reference to "cheap attempts (by some) to distract the Islamic conference from its goals," al-Dulaymi went on to note:
     "Our positions at the conference proceeded from our profound realization of the clout that Arabs and Muslims can wield if they show courage, wisdom, and skill. But the opposite can happen when such conferences are exploited as an opportunity for disparaging others and giving vent to sick behavior..."
     The Islamic Summit Conference closed with a statement of opposition to the war. Walid Shaqir took a skeptical view of this opposition in a 7 March op-ed in London-based pan-Arab daily "Al-Hayat":
     "It goes without saying that some of the Arab and Islamic countries will offer facilities to American forces under existing agreements. Other countries that do not have treaties with Washington want the war to happen and support it under the table even more than those with American troops on their soil. All of this takes place behind a screen of resolutions that reject the war and any participation in it."
     In a 6 March op-ed piece in Lebanon's "Al-Nahar" titled "From Summit to Summit to War," Ali Hamadah wondered whether the summits are of any use:
     "Perhaps there is some truth in a remark a European foreign minister made when his Arab colleagues visited him two weeks ago -- the Arabs are the main weak point in the antiwar campaign, and especially the Gulf countries, which are the Arabs' weak point. Which raises the question: What use is it holding Arab and Islamic summits when we send the world messages that our opposition to the war is merely a formality."
     Finally, a 6 March editorial in "Al-Quds Al-Arabi" decried the "bitter harvest of the Islamic summit." Surveying the sound and fury, it concluded:
     "The season of Arab and Islamic summits ended with much invective, many clashes, and few useful stands. In all instances, the Arab status quo emerged defeated, shredded, exhausted, and bereft of the power to act, or even react.
     If the Arab status quo is incapable of presenting a coherent, concerted antiwar stance, it is hardly because such a stance is absent in the Arab world. Majdi Husayn, leader of Egypt's embattled pro-Islamist Labor Party, gave a crystalline summary of what might be termed the populist antiwar stance. His remarks at a 27 February rally, which targeted the then-upcoming Arab League summit, were later reproduced online in party mouthpiece "Al-Sha'b":
     "We reject the continuation of the humiliating inspections, which have reached homes, mosques, and fields.... Second, we demand from the summit a clear statement against American aggression against Iraq...no use of Arab territory for American troops to strike Iraq...the liquidation of American bases, and a halt to providing military facilities to American forces throughout the Arab world.... Third, we demand that the Arab summit act on the collective defense agreement; an attack on any Arab country is an attack on all the Arab countries.... Fourth, we demand the acceptance of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed's proposal to use the oil weapon -- in any fashion -- to stop American aggression against Iraq..."
     For now, such blunt proposals remain at the margins both of Arab officialdom and the mainstream Arab press. A 7 March op-ed piece in "Al-Sharq Al-Awsat" by Samir Atallah notes, however, that the contrasts are becoming increasingly untenable:
     "We cannot take out an advertisement for Arab progress in 'The New York Times' in the same issue of the newspaper that prints the speech by Iraqi vice chairman [Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri] at the Doha conference.
     In the early 1990s, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait brought to the surface contradictions between rhetoric and reality that had long simmered beneath the surface in the Arab world, and introduced new contradictions that went unresolved in the ensuing decade. As a new, and potentially far deeper, crisis enters a critical stage, rifts once again honeycomb the edifice of Arab unity.