Reconciliation between Arab leaders should not be an aim in itself, but only a means to attain greater ends, writes Hassan Nafaa When the Damascus summit, which only managed to gather with extreme difficulty, was held this time last year it seemed that the Arab League was clinically dead and that all that remained was for the squabbling tribes that had assembled beneath this umbrella to turn off the artificial respirator that kept it in contact with a world in which it was no longer able to survive. But those tribes gathered around the dying body remained still, unable to summon the resolve to take a decision of this sort. Cutting off the life support for a body whose pulse they had long tried to keep blipping on the screen would suddenly open the doors to a rush of other questions, the most important being, "And now what?" At this point, they realised that they would be facing two alternatives. Either they could all go their own way and search for their own means of salvation. Or they could set up another umbrella -- or tent -- to protect them from the desert storms that were gathering on the horizon. After calculating all the costs and benefits, the squabbling tribes decided that the consequences were too much to bear. So they settled upon the easiest solution, which was to keep the life-support machinery working until God decreed the inevitable. This was how the state of the Arab world appeared to me on the eve of the Damascus summit last year. As it is impossible to make time stand still, the tribal leaders that had assembled at Damascus or that had preferred to stay home at the time found that they could no longer remain ensconced in their old trenches. Sudden developments had since whipped up some nasty winds, the worst being the global financial crisis that threatened to sweep away the savings of the wealthier tribes, and the war on Gaza that struck the poorest of them. However, instead of opening their eyes to what was going on around them and setting aside their differences in order to pitch in together to confront the dangers that had struck, or were still looming, the tribal leaders futilely scrambled to save their own skins. If the fallout from the financial crisis had begun to seep into the nooks and crannies of the scanty cupboards of the poorer relatives, the rivers of blood from Gaza oozed through the satellite networks into the bedrooms of all, leaders and rabble alike. When the criminal war lasted longer and began taking a higher toll than many had expected, due to the amazing and unanticipated heroic steadfastness of the Palestinian resistance, the Arab street stirred into action, clamouring for an end to the horrific massacre. The public pressure on Arab officialdom soon erupted in the form of the "war of the summits" which broke out in Doha, spread to Sharm El-Sheikh, and threatened to engulf the summit in Kuwait, which not a few people had predicted would end with an official proclamation of the death of the Arab League. However, a sudden and unexpected move on the part of the Saudi monarch saved the situation at the last moment. No one had imagined that the Saudi action would trigger a radical shift in the mode of inter- Arab relations, which had reached a new peak of acrimony. Even the most wildly optimistic could only pray that it would keep the situation away from the brink of disaster and permit for some quick repairs in advance of the summit in Doha. And this is what in fact occurred. The Saudi move succeeded in creating a kind of truce in the Kuwait summit, after which Riyadh moved to clear the air in its tense relations with Syria, then tried to ease the tensions in the even more strained relations between Cairo and Damascus, thereby paving the way for the quadrilateral summit in Riyadh in which Kuwait took part along with Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Only then did many regain new hope in the possibility of re-cementing the Arab order. The Egyptian- Saudi-Syrian troika, which had always served as the engine of this order, now seemed to come to life again. As a consequence, many anticipated that Doha would emerge as "the mother of all summits", as some have already dubbed it, setting into motion an unprecedented thrust towards inter-Arab collaboration. True, the quadrilateral summit had not completely succeeded in clearing the air in Arab relations, especially after certain parties began to come up with some new made-in-the- USA jargon for "conflict management". However, this was not unnatural in the course of what would be a difficult birth of Arab reconciliation under extremely complex circumstances. No one could have predicted that the Doha summit would come in for a heavy shock. To everyone's surprise the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs did not take part in the preparatory meeting for the summit, delegating the director of his office to attend instead. Within a few hours, it became clear that President Mubarak would not appear in Doha and that Egypt would be represented by a delegation headed by the minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs. Like many others, I knew that the climate between Cairo and Doha was not at its most harmonious, and that Mubarak was angry over the way Sheikh Hamad behaved during the Israeli war on Gaza. However, I had thought that, after meeting face to face in Kuwait and then again in the reconciliation meeting sponsored by King Abdullah, the tensions between the two had eased. But even presuming that they had not, I would never have imagined that things would go so far as for Mubarak not to attend personally and to reduce the level of Egypt's representation to that degree. I have no desire, here, to try to analyse why Mubarak decided to boycott the Doha summit, a decision that augurs a very serious turn of events. Obviously, behind the declared reasons for not attending -- which to me seem very petty when compared to the potential consequences of such a decision at this very delicate moment when strenuous efforts are in progress to bring the Arabs back together, to which Egypt itself is contributing through its crucial drive to broker a reconciliation between the Palestinian factions -- there lurk some hidden reasons which I do not want to go into now. Here, I would like to draw attention to the highly significant fact that this decision seems very inconsistent with the concept of "conflict management" as it is properly understood and over which the Arab League had given assurances that the Arab leaders were in agreement. One major aspect of "conflict management" is to avoid personalising differences, and to turn to set rules and institutionalised procedures for sorting them out. Yet, if every head of state takes his differences with another head of state as sufficient justification to boycott the institution charged with or presumably charged with the business of arbitrating or mending fences, then this can only undermine the efficacy of the rules and procedures and destroy all possibility of rational conflict management. I do not want to belittle the importance of the climate of reconciliation that prevailed in Qatar, or the efforts that were dedicated to giving reconciliation the impetus to open the way to building a more capable and effective Arab order. Indeed, my deepest wish is for the success of efforts to alleviate tensions between Mubarak and Sheikh Hamed, and between Muammar Gaddafi and King Abdullah, and between all Arab leaders, because the Arab order cannot function without them. However, it should be borne in mind that reconciliation between political leaders should not be an aim in itself, but rather a means to attain a greater aim, which is to fortify the Arab nation against dangerous conspiracies that are being hatched against it both abroad and inside it. If reconciliation is not a prelude to real and effective inter-Arab collaboration aimed at rescuing the Arab world from its current straits then there is little point to it. In all events, honesty demands that we avoid self-deception and acknowledge that a structural problem resides at the very heart of the Arab order. There can be no "conflict management" without institutions and mechanisms that operate in accordance with a clear set of rules and regulations that are unanimously accepted and binding upon all. But how can Arab states, which have no properly institutionalised governments of their own, possibly create institutions to which they would adhere at the regional level? Unfortunately, the answer is that they cannot. The Arab order will not have effective institutions until such institutions exist at the national level. I am therefore led to conclude that the Arab world is experiencing the end of a phase, but the shape of the next phase remains murky. This article expresses the ideas of the author in a personal capacity and not as secretary-general of the Arab Thought Forum.
