It is usually common for heads of states to make stopovers while flying from one destination to another. Normally, the places chosen for such stopovers are friendly countries and they last for a couple of hours, the time for refuelling or a quick meeting with the heads of states or governments concerned. In most cases, these stopovers are called technical stopovers. In short, they do not constitute either an official visit or a working visit. On 20 June 2014 this rule was broken. On his way back from Morocco, where he was spending a vacation, to Riyadh, the Custodian of the Holy Places, King Abdullah Ben Abdel-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, made a stopover in Cairo International Airport where he met the newly elected Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. The Saudi king was the first head of state to pay an “official visit” to Cairo after the swearing in of the Egyptian president. The Saudi royal house issued a statement on 20 June in which it announced that the Saudi king would pay an official visit to Egypt. The meeting between the two took place on the royal plane, which took many by surprise. I received some queries from journalists about how convenient it was, from a protocol point of view, to hold official talks between a visiting head of state and the president of the host government on the plane of the former. Of course, it is not customary but the fact that the Egyptian president went up the Saudi royal plane is, in itself, a symbol of how developed and strong Egyptian-Saudi relations have become after political developments in post-June Egypt. And this renewed alliance between the two strongest Arab powers grabbed headlines in the Arab world. The strategic significance of the Cairo visit heralds a new chapter in Arab and regional politics. On the bilateral level, the visit will give a very strong boost to relations between the two countries in almost all fields. The Saudi king proposed earlier this month, on the occasion of the election of the Egyptian president, a donors' conference to help the Egyptian economy. The proposal definitely reflects Saudi preoccupation with the impact of the critical economic situation in Egypt, after three years of political upheaval, on the stability and security of the country and the success of the new government in gaining added legitimacy. The Saudis, as well as other Gulf countries, like the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, realise full well that the Egyptian economy could prove to be the Achilles heels of the new political set up in Cairo. According to press reports, the response to the proposal has been favourable, and although no date has been fixed yet for convening the conference, the guess is that it could take place before year's end. Undoubtedly, this conference in itself will be a vote of confidence in the new Egyptian government, and provided the new Egyptian cabinet submits a well-detailed economic plan, it would give a great push for the struggling economy. The political weight and financial clout of Saudi Arabia will be of great value and relevance for Egypt in this conference. If the conference takes place, it will be a golden chance for the Egyptian government to secure international and Gulf backing for putting the Egyptian economy back on track. There is no denying that Saudi support is extremely crucial in this respect. The visit of King Abdullah to Cairo last Friday incarnates such support. The talks between the two heads of state came in a widely changing regional landscape. Ten days before the Egyptian-Saudi meeting, Iraq, the Middle East and the whole world was jolted by the fall of Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city, to the group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The threat of the territorial disintegration of Iraq and Syria has become real for the world. The Arab response to this unprecedented tragedy has been disappointingly slow. Hopefully, the Egyptian-Saudi talks last Friday could lay the foundation for a new Arab policy, not only towards the unfolding events in Iraq, but also Syria and Libya. The positions of the two countries on all these issues are not identical, but the threats posed by transnational mobility of terrorist organisations affiliated to Al-Qaeda, or ISIS, compel Egypt and Saudi Arabia to lead the Arab world with the objective of reshaping solutions to Arab crises. The last three years and a half have proven disastrous to two major Arab powers — namely, Syria and Iraq. The question today is not about democracy or human rights, however important they are on the theoretical level, but rather the territorial integrity and sovereignty of these two pillars of stability in the Levant and the Gulf region. One of the major differences in the positions of Egypt and Saudi Arabia in this respect is how to perceive and deal with Iran in the years to come, especially if a final agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme is signed next month. Such an accord would open the way for the reintegration of Iran both in the international system but also in the Middle East and the Gulf through the expected normalisation of relations between Iran and the West, particularly the United States. Already, Washington has been open to the idea of cooperating with Tehran in stopping the advance of ISIS towards the Iraqi capital. Egyptian diplomacy should try hard to prevent a costly and fruitless showdown between Shiites and Sunnis across the Levant and the Gulf. A case in point, Moqtada Al-Sadr, the well-known Shiite cleric who had fought American forces in Iraq before the American withdrawal in 2011, called on his Mahdy Army to parade in the streets of the Iraqi capital on Saturday, 21 June. Watching them on TV screens, I came away with the impression, based on my military experience as a former army officer, that they are much better trained than the volunteers that headed for a one day training to face the better-trained and battle-hardened ISIS. I am afraid that the outbreak of a possible confrontation between Sunnis and Shiites would make Arab crises intractable. Another question that needs more coordination between the Egyptian and Saudi positions is the situation in Syria. It is an open secret that the Saudis have been funding and supporting armed groups to topple the Assad regime. Taking into consideration the fast-changing situation on the ground in Iraq, and the resilience of the Syrian government, I think the time has come to reconsider priorities in Syria. In other words, I doubt very much that bringing down the Syrian regime has any strategic significance today either for Saudi Arabia or for other Arab powers who have worked tirelessly for the overthrow of the present government in Damascus. Things have changed. We cannot continue business as usual, for what is at stake is no less than the idea of the nation-state in the Arab world. It is no surprise that upon taking Mosul, ISIS wrote on its website, “Bye, Bye, Sykes-Picot.” In other words, they are out to bring down not only the Syrian and Iraqi regimes but also the Arab system itself. President Bashar Al-Assad had said, in an interview with a Lebanese paper two weeks ago, that Damascus has received messages from Western governments lately. The Saudi royal visit to Egypt is a clear message to international and regional powers that Egypt does not stand alone, that there is a more powerful configuration of forces in the Middle East and the Arab world engineered around the Cairo-Riyadh axis. Axis, in this respect, should not be taken to mean that this new configuration of forces is directed towards other powers, whether within the region or without, but rather a configuration aimed at defending Egypt in the first place, and the Arab system as a whole in consequence, in face of threats of disintegration amid the onslaught of terror and mayhem under the meaningless slogan of resuscitating a mythical Islamic caliphate. The visit of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to Egypt augurs well not only for the future of bilateral relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also for the Arab world and Muslim countries. The new alliance between the two Arab heavyweights should encourage forces of moderation across Arab and Muslim countries and help in containing forces of extremism and terrorism, and ultimately defeating them. The writer is former assistant to the foreign minister.
