On the 12th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that was
reversed seven months later by a massive US-led blitz, the prospect
of another Gulf war looms large in the minds of Arab commentators.
Talal Salman, publisher of the Beirut daily As-Safir, believes it
was “a smart move” for Baghdad to cancel this year’s celebrations of
the “historic blunder” it committed on Aug. 2, 1990, for which the
Arabs, chiefly the Palestinians, have been paying ever since.
“That historic blunder spawned many others, all but drowning the
Arabs in a sea of blunders that cost them dearly in terms of their
resources, political role, cultural influence, self-respect and by
extension the world’s respect for them,” he writes.
The latest example of the world’s continuing contempt for the Arabs,
according to Salman, is UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report
into the Israeli assault on Jenin refugee camp, “which so distorted
the facts as to virtually accuse the Palestinians of imploding their
refugee shacks over their own heads and then blowing up each other
to impede the progress of Israel’s march to peace!
“The daily examples of such contempt are too many to count.
They apply to all fields and don’t exclude the Arab states close to
America and friendly with the Israeli enemy.” By failing to stand up
for themselves, Salman continues, the Arabs “have lost their right
to self-determination, and it is now acceptable for anyone to
venture an opinion about the state they ought to be in.”
“Thus, for example, everyone on earth, including nations great and
small, currently has a say about whether Iraq should be ‘hit’ and
about its future if it should remain one state or become several
(Arab, Kurdish, Turcoman, Sunni, Shiite, Chaldean, Hittite etc,)
except the Iraqi people.”
And as governments, international bodies and think tanks determine
the future of Palestine, the Palestinian people are excluded from
the debate.
“The same applies to Hizbullah in Lebanon, the dispute between Spain
and Morocco over Leila Island, the latest agreement in Sudan between
the government and the southern rebels, and so on,” Salman says.
Indeed, the world is now taking military action against Iraq for
granted and only debating its aftermath. “And the Arab media the
vast majority official, i.e. government-run parrot American
reports and Israeli analyses of what will follow that war, like
echoes of their masters’ voice.”
Now that we have stopped celebrating blunders, Salman says
the real question is: “When will we start finding our way to the
correct path, which is very well known to those who care to see?”
Abdelbari Atwan, editor in chief of the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds
al-Arabi, urges the Arab states not to repeat the same mistake they
made during the 1990 crisis, when they split into bitterly hostile
pro- and anti-war camps.
While some Arab countries then backed an American-led attack on Iraq
because of its occupation of Kuwait, this time all of them deem war
as unjustified, he writes
King Abdullah of Jordan flew to Washington to convey a “clear
forewarning” to the Americans “on behalf of all the Arabs” about the
“catastrophic” consequences an attack on Iraq could have, Atwan
writes. But before even granting him a hearing, President George W.
Bush reiterated that he was determined to use any means to topple
President Saddam Hussein.
“The tone and substance of the message he (Bush) thus sought to
deliver to Arab leaders was obvious and can be summed up in a few
words: I’ll listen to you, but I’ll do what suits our interests and
those of our principal strategic ally, Israel, and those who don’t
like that can drink the sea.”
“And it is not a question of weapons of mass destruction, nor of a
dearth of human rights and democracy in Iraq,” says Atwan.
“Bush wants to occupy Iraq and install a puppet regime in Baghdad to
intimidate Iran, remove the last obstacle to total Israeli hegemony
over the Arab world and turn the Jewish state into the new sponsor
of the Gulf rulers and a trustworthy guardian of the oil wells and
supply lines,” he writes.
“The US faces economic calamity and financial collapse, plus
a material and psychological war of attrition due to its ongoing war
on so-called terror, and Bush’s only way out is to export his
predicament, open Iraq’s coffers to corporate America and turn on
Iraq’s oil taps to flood the world with cheap oil,” Atwan remarks.
“And the hyenas in the Bush administration are thirsting for blood,
Arab blood in particular. They are pushing for war and paying no
heed to all the voices of reason that counsel caution and warn of
the consequences.”
The new “mother of all battles” that America is planning for Iraq
will make the one waged in 1990 seem minor in comparison, he warns.
“And it is incumbent on the entire Arab nation to stand behind this
Arab country to deter aggression against it, and remain behind it in
all circumstances,” he appeals.
“The first mother of all battles divided us. Some of us
committed the sin of joining a foreign war against a fellow-Arab
state, destroying its capabilities and subjecting it to an unjust
siege. The forthcoming mother of all battles ought to unite us and
rally us in defense of a deep-rooted Arab people,” Atwan says.
“The destruction and occupation of Iraq would be the destruction and
occupation of all the Arab states and the prelude to a period of
fragmentation and redrawing of borders, as when the old colonial
powers came together to devour the corpse of the Ottoman Empire and
share out its spoils.”
Jordanian commentator Salameh Nematt, writing from Amman on the
opinion page of the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, warns that
Israel could exploit an American blitz on Iraq to take draconian
measures against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
“Israel wants to match American plans against Baghdad with plans of
its own to topple the Palestinian Authority (PA) and impose a new
dispensation that could involve the establishment of a civil
administration in the occupied Palestinian territories as a prelude
to installing an autonomous Palestinian administration while keeping
the occupation in place indefinitely,” he explains.
But the persistence of Palestinian resistance operations,
despite all the measures taken by Ariel Sharon’s government, has
shown the Jewish state that it cannot restore the status quo before
Oslo by simply reoccupying Palestinian towns and villages.
“Given its failure to achieve security for Israelis, it may resort
to more radical and extreme plans than it has been implementing so
far, using a likely US military campaign against Iraq as political
cover,” he warns.
“Israel (the regional superpower) thinks that just like Washington
(the global superpower) it does not need to convince international
opinion of its point of view. Why shouldn’t Israel, just like
America, change ruling regimes and redraw political maps so long as
it has the power to do so? And just as Washington helps keep Israel
above the law, it might also allow it to apply the law of the
jungle, so long as its behavior doesn’t undermine or detract from
American interests.”
Raghida Dergham, Al-Hayat’s New York bureau chief, warns that
powerful forces in the United States want the Bush administration to
allow Sharon to use an attack on Iraq to fulfil his “Jordan is
Palestine” dream, via a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both
Israel proper and the Occupied Territories.
These forces are “frightening” because they currently “hold the key”
to policymaking, she writes in her weekly commentary on the debate
now raging in the US about a prospective war on Iraq.
They see this as the time to exploit the events of Sept. 11 to the
full and to pursue what they make out as America’s strategic and
material interests under the guise of combating terrorism. “And
these interests, in their view, dictate abandoning old relationships
and formulating alternative ones, on the basis of new maps in the
region.”
They perceive unleashing Sharon against the Palestinians as part of
an overall strategy that also entails waging war on Iraq and curbing
the power of OPEC, Dergham writes. And the justification they will
invoke is that such changes are intended to “help” the Arab peoples
get rid of undemocratic regimes.
“Having convinced themselves that it would be possible, for
example, for a war, invasion and massive military operation against
Iraq to be marketed as being for the Iraqi people’s sake, they
choose to overlook the cost of that war to the thousands of Iraqis
who would be its victims if it doesn’t lead to the use of weapons
of mass destruction, which Baghdad might possess,” she writes.
Baghdad might use such weapons itself; or the facilities where it
allegedly produces them could be bombed, releasing them into the
environment; or the US could use them if it believes Saddam is going
to. Dergham argues that if the voices of “wisdom and reason” in the
US are to hold back the war mongers, the onus is above all on
Baghdad to act to deny them pretexts.
While it would be too much to expect Saddam to stand down to spare
his country an attack, Baghdad could unconditionally agree to
readmit UN arms inspectors, Dergham suggests. Doing so now, rather
than waiting until the last minute, could help generate
countervailing international pressure to the American war drive.
But that would still not be enough, she believes. Baghdad has
to break radically with its old ways of doing things, if not out of
conviction, then because “it desperately needs the Iraqi people, and
Iraq’s neighbors, to be its partners in opposing the American war.”
To bring them on board, Baghdad would have to introduce a new
pluralist constitution, cease political repression and persecution,
allow political parties to work, schedule genuine and credible
elections, “and acknowledge that Iraq’s revival requires the
resuscitation of the middle class, which Baghdad and successive US
administrations have jointly decimated via a combination of tyranny
and sanctions.”
“The states of the region, in turn, must stop seeing the survival of
the regime in Baghdad as a safety valve, whether to keep the Iranian
revolution at bay (as was the case) yesterday or for oil-related
reasons (as is the case) today. They too will have to decide between
initiating fundamental reform quickly and seriously or sliding
toward anarchy and submitting to plans in which they no longer have
any say or hand,”
Dergham writes. “For this war is against them too.”
