Gamal Nkrumah finds the Syrian imbroglio dominating the regional news Syria's freedom has emerged as the primary preoccupation of pundits even though Arab and international diplomacy over the political future of Syria has degenerated into a power tussle reminiscent of the Cold War -- the United States and its Western allies versus Russia and the People's Republic of China. Moscow and Beijing are the two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council that have vetoed Western interference in Syrian affairs. Let the Syrians free themselves emerged as the message emanating from Moscow and Beijing, but a majority of Arab commentators, however, are calling for urgent international intervention. Syrian cities are seeped in blood. And it is against this bloody background that celebrations in Syria took place to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the establishment of Syria's ruling Baath Arab Socialist Party. The official Syrian press was cautious in its exultation of the Baath regime and jubilation was markedly muted. Editor-in-Chief of the Damascene daily Al-Thawra, the mouthpiece of Syria's Baath Party, Ali Kassim, stressed that Al-Baath "expressed the aspirations of the Syrian people, army and leadership". Kassim lauded the "Syrian leadership's steadfastness in face of the conspiracies hatched against Syria" and in a revealing article rather ominously entitled "Renovation of Instruments" hinted that it was not quite party time. "What is now needed is a quick and thorough re-evaluation of the party's priorities and the techniques, or instruments of governance. Syria is in dire need of new experimentation to adapt to the rapidly changing world." Perhaps an oblique confession of Kassim's on the Baath Party's behalf of how best to deal with the Syrian stalemate. The London-based Pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat was replete with headlines highlighting the plight of Syrians and the desperate humanitarian situation in Syria and the mass exodus of refugees fleeing the fighting especially along the Turkish-Syrian border. In an op-ed in Asharq Al-Awsat Tariq Abdel-Hamid lambasted the Russians and in particular president-elect Vladimir Putin and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a tongue-in-cheek article entitled "We do not need Sheikh Lavrov." "Lavrov remarked that there are countries in the region that sought to establish Sunni Muslim rule in Syria after they oust the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. An Arab outcry followed immediately after. The Russians are now backtracking, noting the glaring impropriety and gross mistake of Lavrov's allegations�ê� What Moscow misunderstands, and what decision-makers in Moscow do not know is that the Russian veto at the UN to protect the tyrant Al-Assad has lost Moscow all credibility in the Arab world." "All that is needed is that Moscow stops protecting Al-Assad, the butcher of babies. The question is not about Sunni and Shia Muslims in Syria," Al-Hamid insists. The question of Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons also cropped up. The Lebanese pundit Selim Nassar in a thought-provoking op-ed in the London-based Pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat entitled "Delaying the War on Iran to Advance Obama's Chances" surmised that the White House had decided to refrain from warmongering against Tehran. He also claimed that attempting to calm things down for the time being, the US has opted to espouse a policy of postponing any talk about attacking Iran until after the American presidential elections. "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced the administration of US President Barack Obama because it hypocritically accuses Iran of attempting to create a nuclear bomb while the US itself has over 5,000 nuclear bombs," Nassar notes. "Former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed El-Baradei warned against a rash aggression against Iran or the orchestrating of a campaign of demonising Iran since this will only lead to an acceleration in Iran's quest to acquire nuclear weapons. El-Baradei also noted that blasting Iranian nuclear installations will not erase the knowledge that the Iranians have already acquired in the field of nuclear technology." However, Arab Gulf pundits also busied themselves with trying to decipher the complex Egyptian political landscape in the run-up to the country's long-awaited presidential elections. Every now and then great political parties and movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt suffer internecine convulsions. Commentators concur that Egyptian politics is in a state of flux. However, they also note that much of the malaise afflicting the Egyptian political scene is self-inflicted. The Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, that performed impressively in the parliamentary elections, now as the country approaches presidential election already looks to be damaged goods. Saudi political commentator Jamal Khashoggi also wrote in Al-Hayat concerning the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its fielding of Khairat El-Shater as its favoured presidential candidate. "The Muslim Brothers, like other Egyptians were surprised by the popularity of the Salafis at the parliamentary polls. Moreover, the Salafis were especially popular in impoverished and least developed constituencies. It is as if the voters in these areas reasoned that the old Muslim Brotherhood slogan 'Islam is the Answer' was their best bet," notes Khashoggi. The time has come for the Muslim Brotherhood and other political groups in Egypt to admit that the Salafis are a political force to be reckoned with. "The problem the Muslim Brotherhood has with the Salafis is that the former cannot boss or lord it over the latter," Khashoggi concludes. This week marks another important anniversary -- that of the culmination of the US aggression against Iraq with the official occupation of the country when US troops entered the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Then as now the conundrum concerning dictatorship deepens the Iraqi political crisis. Then it was the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, today, Kurdish leader Massoud Barazani accuses Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki of "dictatorship". How, Barazani bitterly remonstrated in Al-Hayat, could Al-Maliki be "prime minister, defence minister, interior minister, intelligence chief and commander of the Iraqi armed forces simultaneously". Al-Hayat quoted Barazani as threatening to hold a referendum on the secession of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iraqi and Pan-Arab media was rife with the repercussions of the decision by Al-Maliki, a Shia Muslim, after issuing an arrest warrant of Iraqi Vice President Tarek Al-Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim, who like his host Barazani accuses Al-Maliki of monopolising power. Al-Hashemi has taken refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan and is currently on a tour of key Gulf Arab states, predominantly and officially staunchly Sunni Muslim, and Turkey, another Sunni regional power. Sectarian strife was accentuated by tribal conflict in Yemen a scenario widely covered in the media. Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi attempted this week to flex his muscles and bring ex-president Ali Abdallah Saleh's loyalists and family members still holding key military positions under control. Al-Qaeda militants meanwhile blasted an army outpost in Lawder, Abyan Province, 250km southeast of Sanaa. The Yemeni leader, often dismissed as a rubber stamp president, ordered the dismissal of Mohamed Saleh Al-Ahmar, the ex-president's brother and air force commander. His summary dismissal led to the suspension of flights to and from Sanaa international airport and tanks rolled onto the tarmac of the airport's runway and Al-Ahmar's troops shot at the airport's surveillance tower. The Saudi daily Al-Watan reported that members of "Ansar Al-Sharia [an Al-Qaeda-affiliated militia group] besieged Lawder and that as a result of the fighting at least 33 people were killed." The Saudi daily Okaz tackled a number of regional issues but one particular sarcastic column aroused my attention deriding the latest effort by the Saudi authorities to combat female unemployment by permitting them to work as domestic servants. "Thousands of Saudi women graduates will rush to enroll in courses that teach Arabic with an Indonesian accent so that they will not lose the opportunity that the Human Resources Development Fund of Saudi Arabia now provides," cynically notes the sharp-witted Khalaf Al-Harbi. "Do you seriously want to convince me that the institutions that deem women drivers without a mihram [male relative chaperon] inappropriate will so easily accept Saudi women to work as domestic servants? Let us not fool each other," Al-Harbi concludes.
