By Ibrahim Nafie In 1999 the challenges posed by globalisation and the technological revolution loom greater than ever. The introduction of the Euro and the emergence of other regional organisations, in southeast Asia, the countries of the Pacific rim (APEC), North America (NAFTA) and Latin America (MERCSUR), are a constant reminder that sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab World stand alone, at the threshold of the 21st century, in lacking any regional format for economic cooperation. It is true that a scheme for an Arab Common Market was ratified by the Council for Arab Economic Unity in 1964. However, it comprised only seven Arab countries and, after more than three decades, inter-Arab trade has not exceeded 7 per cent of the total volume Arab trade. In light of this, the Arab summit in Cairo in 1996 moved to establish an Arab Free Trade Zone. Nineteen Arab countries joined, but here, too, the record of implementation does not bode well. The list of products exempted from the agreement contains some 600 items. Also, with the exception of Yemen, none of the participatory countries has effected the required reductions in customs duties. In short, it is highly unlikely that the Arab Free Trade Zone will meet the deadline, set for 2007, for the deregulation of inter-Arab trade. There have also been a number of sub-regional and bilateral experiments at economic cooperation. Yet, these, too, have been beset by the dual plague of failure to meet deadlines and lists of exempted goods and products. It is surprising, in light of the grim implications for the future of the Arab World, that Arab public opinion, through the media, has not played a more active role in monitoring the implementation of agreements. And the situation, if anything, looms more acute in light of recent sharp drops in oil prices. Oil prices, in real terms, are now lower than before the 1973 war. Nor, in light of the drop in international demand and the emergence of alternative sources of oil, does it appear that they will rise in the foreseeable future. In short, as one observer remarked, the party is over for the Arab World which, for a quarter of a century, had depended almost exclusively on oil for development. It had originally been my intention to discuss the lessons that could be drawn from the past, so that the Arab World could better equip itself to overcome the pitfalls that led to the situation described above. However, the actions of Iraq over the past few days have brought to the fore a more urgent problem. If our attempts to reach cooperative arrangements have floundered, it is because certain Arab regimes, such as that in Iraq, have remained content with outdated bravado and invective. Iraqi adventurism, against Iran and then Kuwait, has cost the Arab World enormous resources. Yet the issue goes beyond this copious waste of resources. Until now, the Iraqi regime has not made the slightest concession towards an admission of its wrong doings. Instead, the Iraqi regime appears once again to want the rest of the Arabs to follow it down that destructive path it has taken since Saddam came to power. Saddam Hussein may have deceived the Arab World with his claims to be protecting his neighbours against Iran. He may have tried to dupe it once again by attempting to annexe Kuwait under the spurious pretext of realising Arab unity. Now, it appears, he is trying to lure us behind him in his confrontation with the US and the international community. The recent meeting of Arab foreign ministers provided the Iraqi regime with an opportunity to draw closer to other countries in the Arab World. In his favour was the general sense of outrage against America's excessive use of force and the general sympathy for the plight of the Iraqi people. Instead, however, Saddam used the forum as a vindication for his crimes and attempted to goad Arab nations into joining him in his defiance of the international community. President Hosni Mubarak reminded the Iraqis that the Arab nation could not follow Iraq as long as the Iraqi regime refused to take certain difficult decisions. Iraq was the aggressor in the Gulf War and, for seven years now, it has refused to offer an apology, or even admit to its crimes. In response to this advice, the Iraqi media machine erupted with its customary invective, accusing Cairo and other Arab governments of treachery, opportunism and defection against higher Arab interests the protection of which, it would appear, divine providence has entrusted to a clique of criminals in Baghdad, or so we would think if we believed Tarek Aziz, Taha Yasin Ramadan and the volatile Udi Saddam Hussein, son of the current Iraqi dictator. More absurd yet is the fact that this spew of obscenity was emitted in the name of the Arab masses whose sympathy for the Iraqi people was read by the Iraqi leadership as support for the Iraqi regime -- the most brutally oppressive regime in Arab history, as more than three million refugees from its persecution and five million northern Iraqis who choose to accept foreign protection rather than face the terrors of the Iraqi machine of destruction serve to testify. Such is the image, albeit in one of its most extreme manifestations, of an illness that poses an insurmountable obstacle to all Arab efforts to rise to the challenges of the contemporary world. Sadly, the Arab nation has already paid dearly for the sort of totalitarian regime, proficient only in the cult of demagoguery and tumultuous rhetoric, that appoints itself the god of Arab unity and dispenses blessings and curses as serve its interests. Such a regime is trying once again to drag the Arab nation behind its false slogans into another of those battles that inevitably end in defeat while the regime itself claims victory because, miraculously, it has been left intact. I, personally, can see no hope for the future until such regimes change. Firstly, they must accept the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other Arab nations. Secondly, they must recognise the right of other Arab nations to express their interests and dispose of their material resources. Thirdly, they must come to terms with the contemporary world through the application of democracy and rational dialogue. Finally, they must own up to responsibility for their actions. These conditions are the prerequisites for any successful Arab meeting, whether at the foreign ministerial or at summit level. Only if such prerequisites are met will we be able to generate the climate that will not only extricate Iraq from the predicament its regime has placed the country, but that will also pave the way for the formulation of a vision that will enable the Arab World to meet with the demands of the coming century.
