The League, Turkey and Syria’s Trojan Horse

Trojan Horse illustration from Wikipedia

By Abdul Rahman al-Rashed  *

Many people’s hopes the Arab League is the doorway to a Syria solution were shattered over the past four months. The League, knowingly or stupidly, aborted solitary international initiatives, purposefully shut out Turkey and dragged out management of the crisis for months. Lastly, it gave the Assad regime an exoneration report on the Arab observer mission blaming violence on the dead and their families. How and why?

Though puzzling, the League’s contradictory positions revealed two camps in its ranks on the Syria issue.

The League’s position was originally proactive. Eight months into the crackdown, it stood ready to adopt the strongest sanction against the Syrian regime. Expulsion is the most potent measure the League could take against any of its member-states.

On November 12, the Council of Arab League Foreign Ministers decided to suspend membership of the regime if it did not end its crackdown within a fortnight. Eighteen states voted in favor of the suspension and only two against. (Syria) answered: the League is the West’s pawn… Syria’s ambassador followed up with vulgar language against the League and most of its members, eliciting requests for his expulsion.

We wondered: if the League leadership is unable to even boot out an insolent ambassador, how can it handle a vicious regime?

We did not expel the ambassador and we did not suspend Syria’s membership. We then discovered Assadists had infiltrated the League when the latter’s attitudes, positions and language faltered…

The calamity is the new secretary-general’s leaning toward Damascus. Is it Nabil Elaraby’s inclination or that of official Egypt, which historically formulated the secretary-general’s standpoints? And why would post-revolution Egypt endorse the most hideous and brutal Arab regime? In truth, we found no proof confirming that.

Doubts then hovered around Elaraby’s affinities, since his positions parallel the views of Mohamed Hassanein Heikal who believes events in Libya, and now Syria, are part of a Western conspiracy… This does not make sense either for, even if Elaraby believed in the silly conspiracy theory, he wouldn’t stand behind a doomed regime. But notwithstanding his opinion, Elaraby’s words and his actions have aggrieved and infuriated the Arab street.

Then came the ridiculous idea of deploying Arab monitors to Syria under the command of an intelligence officer from the Sudanese regime of Omar al-Bashir, an ally of Assad. So instead of being the “favorite stallion” to save the Syrian people, the Arab League became Assad’s “Trojan Horse.”

The farce of monitors transpired when the Sudanese head of the observer mission wrote a progress report blaming the violence on the regime and its victims. The Russian used his report to veto the UN Security Council draft resolution on Syria.

Had the League done nothing, the outcome would have been more fitting.

The League has been used to block a European move (on Syria) and to plot against Turkey at the (November 15) League meeting in Rabat, when an “Arab solution” – read that excludes Turkey -- was the option chosen.  The Turks were incensed, saying bluntly, “We leave the matter to you then.” They are aware no nation-state can stand up to the Syrian regime except Turkey.

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* The author is head of Alarabiya TV network. He wrote this think piece in Arabic for today’s edition of the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat

“Fasten your seatbelts for 2012”

Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Saudi AlArabiya TV, believes that after the 2011 Arab Spring unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, the year 2012 will prove to be tough for all Arab countries. Consequently, he writes for the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, “All of us -- the countries rocked by revolts and the countries fearful of revolts – need to tightly fasten our seatbelts because 2012, I think, will prove to be the most hazardous of all.”

Where Syria is concerned, Qatar’s Aljazeera portal says there was no let-up in violence there on Monday, when security forces killed 24 civilians in the Damascus suburbs, Homs and Hama.

But Arab print and electronic media have different readings of Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby’s take on the League’s observer mission in Syria.

Elaraby, speaking at a news conference in Cairo on Monday, said persistent shooting in Syria must cease, warning that snipers remain a threat. “Yes, there is still shooting and, yes, there are still snipers,” he said. But heavy weapons, including tanks and artillery, have been removed from residential areas. Elaraby also vouched for Sudanese Gen. M. al-Dabi, the controversial head of the monitoring team.

A sample of Syrian press headlines on Elaraby’s remarks:

Al-Watan – “Elaraby confirms the end of armed presence in cities and the release of 3,484 detainees”

Al-Baath – “Elaraby: Some criticisms are misplaced”

Tishreen – “Elaraby: Mission is making progress and the media need not prejudge”

Champress – “Elaraby: Damascus gave free access to 130 media outlets and barred three TV networks” (presumably Aljazeera, AlArabiya and France24).

Saudi Alawsat, however, prefers to underscore on its front page the following remark by the Arab League secretary-general: “We were asking for the Palestinians’ protection, we’re now asking for the Syrians’ protection.”

In his leader comment, Alawsat’s chief editor Tariq Alhomayed sounds unconvinced by Elaraby’s words. He still wants Gen. al-Dabi replaced and the mission of “Arab League spectators” restructured “with the help of a ranking international organization and a number of competent and respectable figures.”

Better still, Alhomayed writes, “it’s time to start handing over the Syria file to the UN Security Council – not necessarily by the Arab League, but by a distinct committee comprising Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Turkey and whoever else wants to put an end to the killings in Syria. The committee would lobby Russia, the U.S. and Europe for a UN resolution providing the Syrians with buffer and no-fly zones.”

Abdelbari Atwan, publisher/editor of the pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi, says Arab governments have only themselves to blame for choosing al-Dabi, an army general accused of overlooking atrocities during the Darfur genocide, to lead the Syria observer mission.

“Gen. al-Dabi is not a Swede. Like most of his fellow Arab army generals, he belongs to institutions that usurped power through military coups. He was not an American or international nominee to the post. His selection was purely Arab and was made by a task force of foreign ministers belonging to the Arab League. If choosing him was wrong, the blame should not fall on him or his country, but on those who named him for the job in the first place,” Atwan suggests.

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