Arab League Summit in Jeopardy as Sunni-Shiite Rift Widens

David E. Miller
Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Iraqi leader’s remarks spur call by Gulf powers to cancel Baghdad summit

An Arab League summit scheduled to take place in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad next month is in jeopardy, amid signs that Arab unity is taking a back seat to a growing Sunni-Shiite rift.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa announced on Tuesday that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which groups Saudi Arabia and six other Arab powers in the Gulf, asked Arab League’s secretary-general to cancel the summit.

Al-Khalifa gave no explanation for the request, but analysts say that mounting tensions between Iraq and the Gulf states are behind the move. Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Al-Maliki, installed last November, is a Shiite and looked at with suspicion by the Saudis as too friendly with Shiite Iran, their arch rival for dominance in the region.

"The Saudis aren’t on speaking terms with Al-Maliki, who they view as a close ally of Shiite Iran," Abdullah Al-Shaiji, head of the political science department at Kuwait University, told The Media Line. He added that concerns regarding the safety of Baghdad, which has been wracked by bombings, added to the GCC decision.

Largely kept in the background, the Sunni-Shiite rift has widened since Saudi Arabia led a GCC deployment of troops to the island state of Bahrain, where a Sunni monarchy has been fighting to end mass protests by its majority Shiite population. In many ways the sectarian split has overshadowed the Arab Spring, which has toppled two Arab League leaders and threatens others.

Established in Cairo in 1945 as a counterweight to Western power, the Arab League incorporates 22 member states and is meant to "draw closer the relations between member states and coordinate collaboration between them." Although it has rarely lived up to its goals, canceling a meeting altogether marks a setback, analysts maintained.

"The Arab League was certainly dealt a major blow," Al-Shaiji said. "Even though no serious decisions are made there, it’s always been a tool to display minimum Arab solidarity."

Baghdad has been campaigning hard to host the summit to mark its return to the Arab fold after years under the rule of Saddam Hussein and civil war. The summit, which was originally planned for March, had been postponed due to unrest in the Middle East. But Al-Maliki risked it all last months when he criticized the GCC’s intervention in Bahrain, which has been portrayed by Bahrain's Shiite-majority neighbors Iraq and Iran as a Sunni incursion.

"Bahrain is different than Libya and Egypt," Al-Maliki, a Shiite, was quoted by the London-based Saudi owned daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat as saying. "The matter has become a Sunni-Shiite one. The entry of forces from Arab countries categorized as Sunni to aid the Sunni government has given Shiites the sense that there is a Shiite campaign against Sunnis."

Ali Al-Saffar of the EIU said Iraq's newfound assertiveness in international affairs is a symptom of its growing self-confidence and a sign of a greater sense of security. But Shiite-ruled Iraq will probably suffer from the troop deployment in Bahrain, which was taken unanimously by all GCC foreign ministers, said Al-Shaiji

"Iraq will become even more assertive in the future," Al-Saffar said. "It is a country with historic weight in the Middle East."

Divisions in the Arab League are more common than not, and many analysts discount its importance except as a symbolic vehicle of Arab unity.

"The Arab League has always been extremely divided and was never a serious vehicle for political change," Ali Al-Saffar, an Iraq expert at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), told The Media Line. "Today its influence is more negligible than ever."

Perhaps the most significant display of accord in decades was the League's March 12 decision to back a Western-enforced no-fly zone over Libya, where rebels are fighting strongman Muamar Al-Qaddafi. But barely a week went by before the League’s secretary-general, Amr Mousa, questioned the campaign, saying the high civilian death toll was excessive.

Last Sunday Mousa said he would ask the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip, which has been subject to Israeli raid in response to rockets attacks.

Al-Saffar said the weakness of the Arab League beckoned in a new phase in Arab diplomacy, where initiatives are taken by individual countries without any pretense of Arab consensus. He said that Qatar, a GCC member, was the best example of this new approach.

"Qatar decided to send fighter planes and ships to Libya and recently announced that it would market the Libyan oil on behalf of the rebels," Al-Saffar said. "All the Arab League did was issue a statement."

Al-Shaiji and Al-Saffar said that without GCC participation, the Arab summit is likely to be canceled.

Copyright © 2011 The Media Line. All Rights Reserved.

Source: The Media Line.
Link: http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=31902.