Now it's over, now it's not
The war is not over in Iraq, and the roadmap is not the way to peace, at least not according to the Arab press, writes Amina Elbendary
Fighting between US occupying forces in Iraq and Iraqi armed groups continued to dominate much of the Arab press this week, especially as such deadly encounters spread. Analysts were still divided, however, in their evaluations of these operations.
Abdel-Bari Otwan, editor-in-chief of the London- based Al-Quds Al-Arabi, predicted in his editorial of 20 June that resistance to the US occupation would soon spread beyond the Sunni sectors of Iraq. Shi'ite leaders probably had their own reasons for delaying their resistance, but they were undoubtedly no less patriotic than the Sunnis, he argued.
In an interview with the London-based Lebanese daily Al-Hayat on 22 June, the Sunni Iraqi cleric Ahmed Al-Kabisi disagreed with interpretations of the attacks as being simply expressions of dissent on the part of dissolved units of the Iraqi army. They were not the expression of Ba'thist resistance, either. "The Ba'thists have fled, and they are now wary of the future when Iraqis have become aware of the crimes of the [previous] regime. They didn't fight when they had their battalions, fleeing in two hours, so how could they be resisting now," he asked.
Instead, Al-Kabisi saw the attacks as signalling Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. "The Americans didn't do anything. They only put pressure on the Iraqi people, which drove it to start the resistance. In its present stage, this is individual resistance. But resistance begins individually and ends collectively. It began in the Arab Sunni parts because this section of the Iraqi population had been the most ignored by the Coalition," he told Al-Hayat in Abu Dhabi.
Al-Kabisi had apparently returned briefly to the United Arab Emirates, where he had lived during his exile. The UAE is also the home of former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi, whom Al-Kabisi supports as a future leader of an interim Iraqi government "because he does not have an ideology that divides Iraqis. He is an Iraqi working to bring the various Iraqi forces together at this stage."
Iraqi commentator Hamid Ali Al-Kafa'i argued in Al-Hayat on 21 June that only unity among Iraqi political activists and politicians could bring sovereignty to the country. The Americans would only give up control when they had found a unified Iraqi front to fill the political vacuum, he wrote.
In Asharq Al-Awsat on 20 June, Maged Al- Samarra'i offered a pragmatic analysis of Iraqi reactions. The writer, a former Iraqi ambassador, did not support the anti-American operations in Iraq, which he saw as damaging to the Iraqi cause. He was also against attempts by various players in Iraq and the region to exaggerate the importance of these operations, which in turn only made the American clampdown and counter-violence more brutal.
The motives behind the Iraqi reaction lay in the devastating destruction imposed on certain areas of central and western Iraq by Coalition forces and their violation of traditional tribal values in these regions in the context of a national political and security vacuum, Al-Samarra'i wrote. Frustrations felt by some four million Iraqis living through a humanitarian crisis, compounded by the dissolution of several national institutions including the army, was not on the scale that had been represented, however.
While the Iraqi people appreciated the support of the US and its termination of a dictatorial regime, Al-Samarra'i said, for that sentiment to remain the US's programme of occupation and reconstruction would have to move forward. One of the main reasons why establishing independent Iraqi institutions and an independent administration had been delayed was the absence of an Iraqi national project and of mature programmes put forward by the various political players in Iraq, returning exiles and internal activists alike.
Meanwhile, on 23 June both the Lebanese dailies As-Safir and An-Nahar, as well as Al-Quds Al- Arabi carried news items on a visit by a representative of the Jewish Agency to Iraq. According to As-Safir's report, the US has urged Israeli companies to take part in the reconstruction of Iraq and to exploit the golden opportunities there. The US assistant secretary of the treasury told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that forthcoming economic legislation in Iraq would open the way for Israeli companies to invest there.
Opinions continued to differ sharply over the roadmap for Palestinian-Israeli peace, with more commentators opposing it than supporting it, on the grounds that it represented an unjust settlement of Palestinian rights, while at the same time maintaining that Israel would continue to ask for Palestinian compromises even to this already unjust settlement.
Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Abdallah Al-Qawasimi just as the World Economic Forum was about to convene in Amman, while US Secretary of State Colin Powell was visiting the region and in the wake of negotiations over a Palestinian- Israeli cease-fire was part of what Abdel-Wahab Badrakhan called Sharon's "diabolical game". In his editorial in Al-Hayat on 23 June, Badrakhan wrote that the Americans and Israelis must have received strong reassurances from Arab parties, or else discovered untapped potential on the Palestinian side, in order to have felt able to embark on such a flagrant course of action against the Palestinian resistance movement and to place such pressures on Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).
Perhaps, since the war on Iraq had succeeded from the US point of view without much Arab reaction, the Palestinian government would now be required to clamp down on the Palestinian resistance without generating fears of civil war, Badrakhan wrote. For, that government had effectively been asked either itself to implement Sharon's death lists, or to look on in silence as Israel did as it liked. There were no guarantees for the Palestinians in the roadmap, which gained its legitimacy solely from the US, Badrakhan said, and the US was totally biased in favour of Israel. Commitments had been demanded of the Palestinians only, and so Hamas was perceived as being at fault when it retaliated against Israeli assassinations, and Abu Mazen's government was expected to lend Israel a helping hand.
"This is the diabolical game that Sharon daily succeeds in marketing," Badrakhan concluded.
Yasser Al-Za'atera, writing in the Jordanian daily Ad-Dustour on 23 June, argued that neither Israel nor the US administration really wanted a cease- fire. For Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon it was obvious that the Palestinian resistance was the enemy, and Sharon wanted to see that resistance completely defeated as a sign of the Palestinian people's surrender. If Sharon did not receive this kind of total surrender, the roadmap would only lead him up a blind alley, as the Oslo process had. However, for Al-Za'atera achieving the defeat of the Palestinian resistance would be a difficult matter, given its zeal and determination.
On a sharply different note, Bassam Abu Sherif wrote in Asharq Al-Awsat on 20 June that a sovereign Palestinian state had become an American need. That is, such a state was now in the interests of the US, which was why the Bush administration was determined to get the roadmap implemented. In the past, he argued, the US had bent to Israeli pressures because it was in its interests to do so. "Now that the Middle East is a purely American estate," however, "there is no need to use Israel to secure American interests", he concluded. Does the Israeli prime minister realise that?
The future of Iran was also the subject of analysis, especially in the light of the recent student demonstrations. The question of what will happen to Iran after the US-led war on Iraq continued to inspire many articles.
In Al-Hayat on 22 June, Abdel-Hassan Al-Amin argued that even though Iran, with its sophisticated state institutions, was greatly different from Iraq, regional and domestic realities meant that internal reform was imperative. Iran had to choose between various possible regional roles at this historic stage: between becoming part of the peace process in the region or continuing its oppositional role. It also needed to choose between what he termed its "Asianness" and its "Middle Easternness".
Iran could play important and constructive roles in Central Asia and in its Afghan-Pakistani and Indian environments. On the other hand, its Middle Eastern role and its relations with the Arab world continued to be a challenge. An Iran that called for the destruction of Israel and that refused to accept a secular Turkey was not acceptable to the Americans, or maybe even to the Europeans, Al-Amin wrote. Iran might think of emulating India, rather than Pakistan or Turkey, since India, a democracy anchored in a traditional society was different from the Pakistani regime, based on a military coup and conservative religious support. Turkey, on the other hand, was a secular space defined by militarised constitution that was in contradiction with its religious and largely urban society.
Writing in Asharq Al-Awsat on 19 June, Amir Tahri argued that the US had two options: either to transform Iran into a friendly country, or to change the Iranian regime.
The American dilemma in dealing with Iran signalled different camps within the US administration, wrote Joseph Smaha in As-Safir on 21 June. Iran, he said, could easily be the embodiment of the West's nightmare: a country that possesses WMDs and has contacts with international terrorist organisations.
Some have argued, Smaha said, that the US was not capable of pursuing the military option against Iran, because of its increased involvement in Iraq and the potential failure of the roadmap. However, others have argued that it was precisely because of these predicaments that the US might turn on Iran, or that the US would not be able to deal with Iraq and Palestine without dealing with Iran first.
Regardless of the different American perspectives, Iran will be placed under great pressure in the coming phase, he said.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 26 June - 2 July 2003 (Issue No. 644)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/644/pr2.htm