Doaa El-Bey and Gamal Nkrumah write on the approach of Egypt's presidential campaign and how the crisis in Syria has receded somewhat from overwhelming media coverage Trendsetter Tunisia hosted a "Friends of Syria" highfalutin meeting that ended in tears for many of Syria's dissidents and opposition forces. What became of the Syrian political conundrum? In Tunisia, the Syrian opposition forces were tormented by their fragmentation. Their lack of cohesion served their tormentors in their tortured homeland well. In important respects, it has become clear that the Syrian crisis even though it still hits the headlines, has receded somewhat from the overwhelming coverage it commanded in the past month or two in the Arab papers. Perhaps the pundits have tired of regurgitating complex and prickly subjects pertaining to Syria. Pro-papers of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad focussed instead on the referendum in which Syrians were asked to approve a new constitution. The Syrian opposition meeting in Tunis barely got a mention and was largely ignored by Syria's state media. Commentators stressed that the opposition Syrian army was short of qualified commanders. And only pan-Arab dailies made reference to the newly-formed Syrian Patriotic Group, a splinter movement of the fragile Syrian National Council. 'Syrian opposition split hits Tunis meeting' read a front-page headline of the official mouthpiece of the ruling Baath Party in Damascus, Al-Thawra. The battle lines are being drawn. Al-Thawra persisted in the myth that Al-Assad has more natural political acumen than the opposition forces. The paper focussed on the referendum masterminded by Al-Assad to coincide with the Tunis meeting of the Syrian opposition and their foreign benefactors. The White House dismissed the referendum as "laughable" and Germany described it a "sham" and "farce". The Syrian government as expected applauded the referendum as an immense agendum. Syrians approved their new constitution noting that "China insisted that the international community must respect the decision of the Syrian people and respect the sovereignty of Syria and its territorial integrity." Al-Thawra also highlighted statements pertaining to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who reiterated his country's position towards Syria and warned that the world cannot contemplate "a recreation of the Libyan scenario". Getting Syria, and Yemen for that matter, back to work will not be easy. 'A new massacre in Syria�ê� Saudi Arabia warns against those reluctant to come to Syria's assistance' ran the headline of the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat. A series of global spats, involving Russia and China and attributed by Syria's ruling Baath Party to leadership overconfidence and miscalculations on key policy areas is blamed by the Syrian opposition forces on the international community's inability to accept the ascent of the Arab Spring. "Has Al-Assad not learnt the lesson from a regime that ended up devoured by the rats in the gutter?" writes the Moroccan commentator Ikram Abeidi in Asharq Al-Awsat. "The Arab rubs his eyes in disbelief. He cannot believe his eyes. He doubts the very reality of his experiences. He stares anew at the television screens. He vociferates, marvels, and he remonstrates�ê� believe it or don't. This scene of utter confusion and incomprehension was unprecedented, scarce and uncommon. Perhaps Lebanon was the only exception," writes Editor-in-Chief Ghassan Charbel of the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat. "The Arab president used to implant his incisors and his claws into the presidential palace. And, the constitution used to follow the president like a faithful guard dog. The term former president was indeed unthinkable," Charbel muses. "How better would it have been for Hosni Mubarak to step down and heed the call of reason? Would his resignation at the opportune moment not have saved him and his family so much anguish and humiliation? And wouldn't it have been far better for Muammar Gaddafi to have done away with his Green Book and saved his country from ruin and his compatriots from untold suffering and heartache?" Charbel's poignancy was echoed by several other Arab pundits. As if to confirm the import and application of Charbel's thesis, the front-page headline of Al-Hayat features the former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh presenting new Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi with the Yemeni national flag symbolising perhaps the trappings of power. The mannerisms of the genteel new President Hadi contrasted with the presumptuous and at times rather disdainful posturing of his predecessor. Yet Saleh has been humbled and as the pundits concurred that his fate appears to be far more preferred to that of the other Arab leaders who stand trial, like Mubarak, or were brutally murdered like Gaddafi. "I wish to emphasise that the Arab world is rich in its diversity and that is not a drawback," writes Mustafa El-Feki, Egyptian pundit and former head of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee under Mubarak. "I would like to state frankly that even though there is much that unites us and that makes the Arab world a unique complimentary unit, there are also forces that disunite us and that often makes us clash with each other. I recall how members of the European Parliament communicated with each other using translators. Unlike the Europeans we in the Arab world are blessed with a common language and we ought to capitalise on such an advantage," El-Feki said. El-Feki urges Arabs to make the most of their common cultural roots in the Arab Peninsula, the very cradle of Islam. Be that as it may, he laments that recently, and perhaps buttressed and emboldened by their fabulous oil wealth, some Gulf Arab states behave as though they and only they have a monopoly over Arabism. That somehow, the non-Arabian Gulf countries are second class Arabs. "I do not intend to generalise as far as this most sensitive question is concerned." One way to square the circle is to acknowledge that in spite of the commonalties the Arab world can be divided up into sub-units such as the Nile Valley encompassing Egypt and Sudan, the North African Maghreb states, the Fertile Crescent and so on. "In recent years, I have sadly detected a trend whereby some of our brethren in the Gulf Cooperation Council behave as if they are a cut above the rest. They address Arab issues with some arrogance feigning that the problems of poorer Arab countries are not a priority of the wealthier Gulf Arab states," El-Feki notes. However, he stresses that the interests of the Gulf Arab states are inextricably intertwined with those of the other Arab countries. "The Iraqi understands the Moroccan and the Yemeni laughs at the jokes of the Egyptians. We all communicate in the classical language even though we all have our own colloquial tongues and dialects. We have a shared historical heritage. We are one Arab nation with a common cultural heritage that goes back to over 15 centuries," El-Feki concludes. In much the same vein, albeit on a more technical and economic thrust, Saudi academic Ali bin Talal Al-Jahni argues that a rise in oil prices will not necessarily benefit the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. "In the second half of [February] we have witnessed a price hike in petroleum and petrochemicals�ê� We do know that the reasons behind this price rise are political and not economic. The main culprit is Western fears of Iran's determination to acquire a nuclear bomb and that it is secretly upgrading its nuclear facilities for military purposes, a charge Iran ironically denies," Al-Jahni surmises.
