The key to the Arab world's future stability is in Iraq, and Amr Moussa knows it, writes Abdel-Moneim Said* There is no better description of Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa's visit to Baghdad than the American saying "better late than never". Moussa indeed arrived very late to Baghdad, but the sell by of his trip has not yet expired. There still remain opportunities that may be exploited, particularly if the secretary-general's arrival is not a substitute for but rather the beginning of a real Arab presence in Iraq. It is no secret that Arab League resolutions on Iraq, which have started to approach the number issued on the Palestinian problem, all declare the necessity of resuming ambassador level diplomatic relations between Iraq and League member states. They also assert that economic and trade relations between Baghdad and other Arab capitals must be supported. Yet the fate of these resolutions on Iraq has not been much different from those issued on Palestine; in both cases the Arab position has been one of political hypocrisy, saying one thing and doing another, often the opposite. Yet Moussa did finally arrive in Baghdad and in all probability the Arab world, represented through its states, also arrived, at least from an intellectual and political perspective, in a symbolic visit that may be followed by concrete actions. If so, this may indicate a developing perspicacity in Arab countries. Since the beginning of the Iraqi crisis it has been crystal clear that war would lead to the restructuring of Iraq, and with it or following it, the rest of the region. The choice has been to either participate in this process of restructuring or to keep distance from it, leaving others to bear the responsibility and paying the price. This is the option most Arab states chose, with only limited mobilisation taken in the form of resolutions which are not implemented but which rather suffice with throwing dust in the eyes of the Americans and Iraqis, exactly as happened with Palestine and the Palestinians. Although most Arab governments are conservative in nature and structure, and have close bilateral ties with the US, radical opposition logic, based on boycotting and negativism, has reigned in the Iraqi matter. As the occupation has continued, the untouchable status of the occupier has been passed to the occupied, as though it were destiny for Iraq to be lost as Palestine was. As Arab world arrives late, Iraq has already been the theatre of numerous agendas to the exclusion of Arab ones. Of course there was the American agenda that viewed Iraq as a new Germany in the heart of a soon-to-be-changed Middle East. Alongside the American agenda sprung a counter agenda based on the principles associated with Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi and which aim, in part, to establish a Sunni state, in the manner of the Afghan Taliban, to serve as a base for terrorism in the rest of the region and indeed the world. This has not been the only counter agenda, however, for the remains of the prior political regime -- Baathists and members of the many Iraqi intelligence agencies -- have joined forces to return Iraq to its previous status through "resistance" and assassination of collaborators with the occupation. And yet the agenda that was destined to be implemented in stages was a reflection of Iraqi political, social and economic circumstances as they actually are and neither as the Americans hoped nor as the Zarqawis and Baathists feared. The new Iraqi state that has begun to form through elections and the drafting of a constitution is neither a liberal secular state as the Bush administration has hoped nor a religious state as Al-Zarqawi and some in Tehran had dreamed of. Nor is it a centralised authoritarian state, as the Baathists would have preferred. The result is that we now have a different Iraq than the one the region, and certainly the Arab League, once knew. It is not an Iraq brimming with slogans, but rather has become an Iraq that, like many of the Arab states, is now attending to its own accumulated internal problems. It has also become an Iraq that is a reflection of its complex ethnic and sectarian composition. This is perhaps what drove the Arab League, and behind it Arab states, to visit Baghdad after its long neglect, and even doubt as to whether the occupation took place against its wishes or with assent and acceptance. It has now become possible to leave such matters for history to determine, but what cannot be forsaken is the fact that the new Iraqi reality forms a challenge to the Arab region, regardless of whether it succeeds or fails. If the Iraqi model based on forms of sectarian balancing succeeds, a number of Arab states will start to talk about similar balances. Such talk will become action before long, and this action will result in changes on the ground. In the past, the Lebanese model was considered nonreplicable, yet with success in Iraqi, the model would become apt for universalisation. Disregard of sectarian issues in the Arab world, lack of respect for minority rights, and political sweet nothings about widening circles of participation at the actual speed of a tortoise, all make the Iraqi model suitable for application and much more so than was the Iraqi Baath regime whose boorishness and cruelty led to its rejection in Arab countries. Yet if the Iraqi model fails, the results will not be any better. A fragmented Iraq mired in civil war and sectarian strife would not only be a base for terrorist thought and practice, nor merely an open opportunity for the dreams of conservatives in Iran to extend the Islamic republic into Arab territory. It would also serve as a breeding ground for political and economic insecurity in the region. When the best choice among political models is itself a bitter one, what remains is a dilemma from which one cannot remain distanced, for the matter will not disappear, nor its threats dissipate, without action. Yet to the Arab League's good luck, the current Iraqi model is in need of the Arab world, for it realises that the American occupation has a time limit whose end is approaching. It also realises that geographic, political and knowledge-oriented limitations make Iraq the weaker party in every potential Iranian expansion, just as it knows that the Baathist and Iraqi agendas will find no place in the region or world. It likewise realises that its success hangs on the acceptance of Sunni Arabs, even with some amendments to the model, and that as long as the Sunnis are not able to accept being a minority within Iraq a solution is to put them into a political equation in which they are part of a Sunni majority in the greater Arab world. This, in particular, is where the new interests of Iraq and the Arab world come into mutual contact. And if this contact is a success, it will make way for ending the occupation, stripping Al-Zarqawi of legitimacy, finding an avenue for an unarmed Baath movement, and calming worrisome sectarian issues in many Arab countries. * The writer is Director of Al-Ahram's Centre of Political and Stategic Studies.
