Unity is not a joke

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Events witnessed by the Arab world during the past couple of weeks have revealed gaping holes in the wall of Arab unity, undermining the elaboration of a pan-Arab project aimed at consolidating the integration of the Arab region's increasingly fragmented and disparate parts, despite over half a century of pan-Arab nationalism.

Ironically, all this seems to underline that the concept of regional integration, the most sophisticated form of which has been expressed through European unity, remains barely developed in the Arab world.

Arabs, it seems, are yet to view their region as an integral unit; that the long-touted idea of pan-Arab unity is able to absorb a great many commonalties, linguistic and cultural, expressed in terms of shared history and heritage. The bickering among Arab regimes seems to continually ignore -- despite the rhetoric -- the glaring fact that this is the moment of regional and super-national blocs in world history. And while the rest of the world seems to be rushing forward to seize the moment, the Arab states seem congenitally unable to realise that their place in the global configuration of power, individually, is wholly contingent upon the place they are able to carve out for themselves as a group.

The failed union between Egypt and Syria (1959-1961) is still being held up as a pretext for ridiculing the very notion of Arab unity. Pan-Arab nationalism and calls for integration are being made synonymous with populist authoritarianism, though no logical linkage can be established between the two -- evidence the European Union. The Arab's historical experience itself shows that you can be for Arab unity and be a dictator as easily as you can be opposed to Arab unity and still be a dictator.

The Arabs today are confronted with formidable challenges and historic choices: either to establish themselves as an integrated regional system, one able to fill, with sufficient determination and urgency, the huge gaps in their developmental and reformist needs. Otherwise, others will take it upon themselves to fill those gaps, deepening the Arabs' fragmentation and transforming them into a dependent and docile sub-system of a greater system imposed from without.

What took place in Tunis lately does not bode well for the stand Arab governments are willing to take.