Whither Arab Independence?

With the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1441 on Iraq, the countdown for war has begun. No one wants this war -- not the United States's allies or its opponents; and neither governments nor peoples. Even American public opinion, which became hawkish after 9/11, is expressing strong doubts. The only people seeking this war are a handful of neo-conservative American officials who have managed to put a war on Iraq at the centre of American foreign policy as a step in a broader programme to strengthen American hegemony over international political and economic affairs.

Certainly, Iraq has no choice but to accept the Security Council resolution and make a show of cooperation with the international team of inspectors. This is perhaps the only path it may take to avert another destructive war in the region, its occupation and the dawn of a new era of American dominance. The problem, however, is that 1441 is a bad resolution, despite all the amendments that were made to the original Anglo- American text. The premise of the resolution is that Iraq has failed to fulfill its obligations to the UN. The document stipulates that the government of Iraq shall provide the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) with full information on its programme to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other delivery systems no later than 30 days from the date of the resolution, which was issued on 8 November. According to 1441, false statements, omissions in the Iraqi declaration or Baghdad's failure to cooperate shall constitute a further breach of its obligations which could be used by the US as a pretext for war. Other articles grant UN inspectors access to any site in the country, including those pertaining to the office of the president; the resolution allows inspectors to declare areas exclusion zones, take Iraqi officials to foreign countries for questioning and require that Baghdad provide inspectors' facilities with UN security guards. In more than one respect the resolution violates Iraq's sovereignty, not to mention giving an appearance of having been designed to invite a future Iraqi response. The outcome of such a response is obvious: an immediate American attack.

Those throughout the world -- governments, public figures, students and civil society forces -- who expressed their opposition to US policies towards Iraq, before and after the passing of the Security Council resolution, realise that Washington is bent on attacking Iraq. Absent from this growing anti-war movement is the Arab voice. Major and minor Arab states, intellectuals and the masses have all failed to shoulder their responsibilities with respect to the Iraqi question. While the world is becoming increasingly aware of the dangers from the projected American war on Iraq, the Arabs, like the anti-heroes of Greek myth, seem to have resigned themselves to what they view as an inescapable fate. Throughout the two months of struggles in the UN Security Council between the US on the one hand, and France and Russia on the other, the Arab role was virtually non-existent. Not a single pan-Arab meeting on any level was held to express the position of Arab states on the possible destruction of this major Arab country. Even in regard to the Iraqi internal situation, Arab governments refrained from intervening to address the relations between the Iraqi regime on the one hand, and its people and opposition groups on the other.

The meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on 9 and 10 of November, two days after the passing of the Security Council resolution, was hastily organised and lacked substantive goals. Its only aim seemed to be to placate the Arab street and provide Iraq a Arab cover to accept the resolution. The main outcome of the meeting was that Arab ministers declared their approval of a resolution, the formulation of which they had not contributed, and they advised Iraq to accept it without having any idea about whether they will have any influence over the dynamics it unleashes.

The Arabs, however, were not entirely absent. Since the escalation of American threats and the reemergence of Iraq as a hot issue on the international agenda, American officials have made no secret that several Arab countries are prepared to support and facilitate military efforts for a regime change. While Arab states were expressing their opposition to the war scheme, reports originating from various Western quarters indicated a steady mobilisation of forces on American bases in the eastern part of the Arab world -- something over which Arab governments effectively have no control. American forces are also being deployed in the region via long and short-term logistic facilities, or under the guise of military training programmes with Arab armies -- programmes that have turned into permanent institutions. If war breaks out, it is widely believed that few countries in the Arab east would avoid becoming involved one way or another. The problem that can no longer be ignored, and which has yet to become the subject of public debate in the Arab world, is that the Arab region, in terms of its independence and sovereignty, has regressed to the levels of several decades ago. The international status of many Arab countries is now effectively not much different from that of the pre- independence era.

Western imperialism has made a comeback in the Arab world, not only through cultural, economic and financial peripherilisation, but also through an old-fashioned military presence in the form of army, air and naval bases, as well as command centres and supply facilities. Instead of the British military bases in Suez, Habbaniyya and Aden of the pre-independence era, and of treaties of military cooperation imposed by the French and British imperialists on clientele governments of the region, there are now an increasing number of American and British bases that aim to threaten the security of Arab countries and peoples. The undeniable fact of the Arab situation is that the present Arab generation of statesmen, intellectuals and opposition forces, who inherited from their fathers and grandfathers countries largely free of foreign occupation, are about to deliver these countries to their sons reoccupied.

In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse and as institutions of liberal democracy spread throughout eastern Europe, the Arab cultural arena witnessed a heated debate about the lack of democracy and the persistence of political authoritarianism in the Arab world. This debate peaked with the publication of a UN report about development in the Arab League states a few months ago that was prepared by a group of Arab experts and academics. The report contained a detailed indictment of the high level of illiteracy, the marginalisation of women, the fragility of economic development and the absence of democratic institutions in Arab societies. Employing Western criteria of development, the framers of the report implied the existence of close correlation between the lack of democracy and the fragility of social development. The discourse embedded in the UN report is reflected in the discourse of the Iraqi opposition intellectuals, known for their relations with the pro-war circles in the American administration. From the perspective of this group of Iraqi intellectuals, the American occupation of Iraq is projected as a benevolent enterprise for the construction of new Iraq, an Iraq that is democratic, open to the world market and world culture, which is to emerge under American military rule as a beacon of prosperity, and which will subsequently engender a total transformation of the whole Arab region. This discourse represents the other face of the entrenched Arab crisis. It overlooks the principal question of foreign control and loss of sovereignty and sinks into a futile debate about power sharing and representation while, in the meantime, the very foundation of the modern state in the Arab world is being undermined or destroyed.

Since the birth of the post-colonial state in the Arab world, it has become clear that preservation of independence and achievement of prosperity were impossible without the emergence of a certain level of pan-Arab cooperation and consolidation. However, and despite the ubiquity of Arab unity slogans, Arab ruling elites opted for the reassertion of state interests and borders -- regardless of how surreal those borders were. Gradually, inter-Arab rivalries led the Arab state to appeal to foreign influence and foreign forces in order to protect itself from other Arab states. Sovereignty, which resisted all attempts at establishing an Arab system, has been surrendered to foreign political influence and military presence which is pulling the region into a new era of direct imperialist control. There is no doubt that the future of Iraq is becoming a major Arab question. Beyond Iraq, nonetheless, lies a bigger question, the question of reestablishing Arab national independence.