Teenage stuff

The current Arab situation can also be called political adolescence. Rasha Saad writes

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As the Arab summit convened, pundits were keen to pinpoint challenges facing it. In "Riyadh summit... potential success", Ahmed Al-Rabie wrote in the London- based Asharq Al-Awsat that Arabs must race to make the summit a success.

"Facts have proven that finding a solution to Arab problems is in the hand of the Arabs and that by relinquishing their role, not taking the initiative, and failing to resolve their problems, they create a political vacuum, thus allowing outside forces to interfere," Al-Rabie wrote.

Jamel Theyabi on the other hand perceives that the Arabs' challenge in the summit is not only limited to unresolved political, economic and social issues in the Middle East and North Africa. In the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, Theyabi referred to what he called "Arab political adolescence" as a major challenge. He said "political adolescence, internal crises and foreign challenges are a triad in which each represents a serious illness as it plays its role in destabilising joint Arab work."

According to Theyabi, since 1964, when the first Arab summit was held, Arab countries have been living in a stage marked by brazen adolescence. Theyabi thus argues that the aim should be "to bring Arab runaways" back to Arab ranks, especially during this critical period. Political adolescence has become particularly evident after the policies adopted by some countries scandalously became based more and more on individual work which has made others lose the capability "to focus on how to deal exemplary with crisis-ridden Arab files in order to silence rivals."

It is well known, Theyabi continues, that teenagers, whether they are individuals or part a state, are possessed with many desires to achieve their own interests. They shout, fight with adults, have rows over futile things, get into trouble, and do not care about the feelings and opinions of others.

Political adolescence is thus, according to Theyabi, the most dangerous stage countries go through, "especially if they lose their mental balance, think of themselves bigger than what they really are or regional roles actually are, and are dominated by an impulse that looks for disputes and revenge, until they run into an accumulated wall of problems and crises. At that point, their mind is hit by grandiose delusions," Theyabi warned.

Marking the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq this week was also the focus of Arab pundits. "Four years of stupidity" is how Hussein Shobokshi in Asharq Al-Awsat summed up the whole story since the US occupied Iraq. Shobokshi described the invasion of Iraq as "an impractical adventure that was falsely sold to the world."

Reminding readers that the main pretext behind the war on Iraq was that it was part of the war on terror and a pre-emptive war to eliminate a regime that possessed and was braced to use weapons of mass destruction, Shobokshi maintains that, "today the mulberry leaves fall one after another in a flagrant, shameful manner that reveals the lies and deception of a group of neo-cons in their stupid proposal 'on the benefits of liberating Iraq.'"

However, Shobokshi underlines that, because "America is still a country that is governed by institutional ethics and rules and regulations -- although the current administration has been endeavouring to neutralise many of these -- anti-war voices have a powerful and resounding tone even within the Republican Party."

Shobokshi also referred to the increasing number of books published in America that expose political, military and information failures and the extreme abuses and excesses by the authorities to profit as a result of what is taking place in the battlefield.

Shobokshi insists that as a regime, America is capable of self-criticism and can provide alternative solutions. It is a country that was founded on a free system with fundamental moral rules. "For a group to have disrupted it is not the end of the world even if they wanted so." Shobokshi concludes that four years have stifled the world amid mounting dissatisfaction with the idiotic policy adopted by the administration. "However, all those who respect America and its heritage and capabilities are betting that it is capable of rectifying itself and remedying the farce that has occurred," Shobokshi wrote.

Also in Asharq Al-Awsat, Diana Mukkaled focussed on news coverage in Iraq both in the Arab and Western media. Mukkaled wrote that in the United States, where the dominant media trend was one of campaigning to promote the war in 2003, attempts are actively being made by independent organisations and entities to pressure major media outlets and newspapers to tackle the events in Iraq in a better, more in-depth and balanced manner than what it was before and after the war began.

The American campaign operates under the slogan 'say the truth!' and, Mukkaled explains, has emerged from a thorough and documented assessment of the US media's performance before and after the war on Iraq.

Backed by important statements made by journalists and senior commentators in major American media institutions, the campaign is also supported by the unsubstantiated claims made by President George Bush's administration and the information and justifications given to go to war, allegations that were later proven wrong. Furthermore, Mukkaled adds, a mechanism has been put in place to tackle the way in which the American media deals with the reality unfolding in Iraq.

However, Mukkaled wrote that such an evaluation is more urgently required in the Arab media whose worst shortcoming is its "glaring failure to stay updated on the truth of the present Iraqi suffering except from the angle of sectarian clashes. "Accountability and self-assessment as terms and concepts are still not part of our dictionaries," he wrote.