Oman as Iran’s Trojan Horse in the GCC

Prince Turki al-Faisal addressing the Manama Dialogue

Oman is emerging as Iran’s Trojan Horse trying to destroy the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) from within.

Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the monarch of Oman since 1970, reportedly played a key role in facilitating the secret U.S.-Iran talks leading up to the November 24 “historic” nuclear deal, according to The Associated Press.

Oman is isolated from much of the rest of the Arabian Peninsula by a formidable mountain range, while Iran is just across the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global oil shipments that has at times raised tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

As early as 2009, according to Wikileaks, the sultanate offered to arrange talks between the U.S. and Iran – which hadn’t had diplomatic relations for 30 years – on condition that they were kept quiet. But it was reportedly the hostage crisis of three American “hikers” that brought him into a mediating role between the two sides and helped win the release of the three Americans, who were arrested and accused of spying while hiking along the Iran-Iraq border.

With that success in his pocket, Sultan Qaboos offered to facilitate a U.S.-Iran rapprochement, the AP reports. In March, U.S. and Iranian officials met in Oman, Secretary of State John Kerry followed up in May, and the talks took on a momentum of their own after Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s June elections.

Sultan Qaboos wasn’t in front of the cameras in Geneva, but a news report in the Saudi daily al-Hayat this morning speaks of “fears within the GCC of Iranian-Omani efforts to break up” the six-member club grouping Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Oman and Saudi Arabia bickered publicly over the GCC’s future last week at the three-day Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, a forum on Middle East security.

A much-anticipated Gulf union is inevitable and will happen because people in the region are keen on it, Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former Intelligence Chief who also served as ambassador in both the United States and United Kingdom, told the conference.

He was commenting on remarks made Saturday by Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, the Omani foreign minister, who said his country rejected the Gulf union and would pull out of the club if the union were approved.

“Everyone has the right to express their opinions,” Prince Turki retorted. “However, this will not prevent the union from happening. Oman can join it then or later, or not at all,” he said.

On the nuclear talks in Geneva last month between the 5+1 world powers and Iran, Prince Turki said they lacked a “very important factor” – namely, the participation of Iran’s Gulf neighbors.

“I don’t know the reasons for that… because eventually we are the ones that will be affected by anything -- a military event or a nuclear leak or any earthquake that may hit the [nuclear] sites in Iran,” he remarked.

“No doubt we are now facing a big smile from the Iranian leadership in the way they are dealing with the Gulf.”

Prince Turki added: “Iran must take concrete measures before we can judge whether it is going forward with a smile, or simply showing its teeth.”

Prince Turki said television and radio stations in Iran are targeting the Gulf Arabs with inflammatory broadcasts tackling “sensitive issues in our Arab world.”

Addressing Iran, he said: “Why don’t you close them down and show us your good intentions? Show us you are serious about this real, wide smile you are showing us.”

The six GCC partners hold their annual year-end summit in Kuwait, tomorrow, Tuesday.

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of al-Hayat, has this word today to tell tomorrow’s summiteers:

The region is unlike the one that existed three years ago.

Governments are confused. Armies are anxious. Borders are violated or about to be…

Iraq’s disintegration is an undeniable fact. The dismemberment of Yemen is flagrant. What looked like a Syrian intifada turned out to be a sectarian war feeding tension into the neighbors’ arteries.

Lebanon’s institutions are in a coma and its doors are open to refugees and fire. Libya, which spent four decades under one leader, today terrorizes its people, neighbors and the world. From Yemen to Tunisia, al-Qaeda and its ilk are omnipresent…

Today’s world is much more dangerous than the world that witnessed the birth of the GCC in 1981.

Bar Israel, four key regional states will play a dominant role in this difficult phase depending on their respective internal stability, resources and alliances.

They are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Turkey.

GCC leaders who meet in Kuwait tomorrow are aware of the magnitude of the threats to stability and roles. They know the importance of adapting to change.

Oman’s attitude clearly unveiled that the Gulf union’s journey won’t be trouble-free.

But sensitivities should not forestall attempts to reconcile views of the various GCC member states on how to handle this phase of containing risks and assigning roles.  

Syria: Hezbollah defending “Iran’s 35th province”

File photos of Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Taeb (top) and parading Hezbollah fighters 

The Syrian opposition’s break with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Lebanese cat’s-paw Hezbollah is total and has come into the open.

The Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces posted a statement on its Facebook page overnight accusing Iran and Hezbollah of waging open war on the Syrian people.

The statement said in part, “The direct involvement of Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in the killings, crimes and attacks on Syrians—under the pretext of defending the Assad regime – has been well documented since the beginning of the Syrian revolution.

“On top of that came fresh declarations by Iranian leaders, which can only be described as insolent meddling in the Syrian people’s affairs. The patronizing pronouncements amount to a declaration of open war on the Syrian people, such as the call for a rapid deployment force specialized in urban warfare to support the Assad regime.

“Iran and its lackey Hezbollah’s involvement in Syrian affairs, and their flagrant aggression against Syria’s people and national sovereignty are inadmissible and violate international law.

“The Syrian National Coalition strongly condemns repeated attacks on Syrian territory by Hezbollah fighters. The attacks are driven by Iranian declarations that smack of hateful colonial undertones. They expose the Iranians’ loss of political rationale and their advocacy of ideological rubbish.”

According to the Syrian opposition, fighting began on Saturday as Hezbollah fighters, in control of eight Syrian border villages, tried to move into three adjacent ones -- Burhanieh, Abu Houri and Safarja -- in the Qusayr region of Homs held by Syrian Free Army (FSA) forces.

Regime helicopters fired rockets at rebel positions to support the advancing Hezbollah unit, which included pro-Assad militiamen recruited from the villages it controls, residents said.

"The Hezbollah force moved on foot and was supported by multiple rocket launchers. The FSA had to call in two tanks that had been captured from Assad’s army to repel the attack," Hadi al-Abdallah of the Syrian Revolution General Commission told Reuters by phone.

FSA spokesman Louay al-Miqdad called the Hezbollah operation an "unprecedented invasion", according to Beirut’s independent daily an-Nahar.

"Hezbollah's invasion is the first of its kind in terms of organization, planning and coordination with the Syrian regime's air force," Miqdad was quoted as saying.

An unnamed Hezbollah spokesman confirmed three Shiite deaths, but without saying whether they belong to the group.

AFP news agency quoted the spokesman as saying the dead fighters had been acting "in self-defense.”

Several Syrian rebels were also killed in the clashes, which came days after a senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was killed travelling from Syria to Lebanon.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Revolutionary Guards commanding officer Hassan Shateri was ambushed and killed by rebels while heading to Beirut from Damascus (see my February 14 post, “Iran point man killed heading from Syria to Lebanon).

Shateri was a veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, and served in Afghanistan before going to Lebanon, where he posed as “Hessam Khoshnevis,” head of an Iranian agency set up to help rebuild Hezbollah-controlled areas devastated by the 2006 war with Israel.

On the eve of Shateri’s burial last Friday in his hometown of Semnan, some 150 kilometers east of Tehran, Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Taeb, a senior cleric from supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s inner circle, said Syria is so strategic to the Islamic Republic that it is considered as Iran's 35th province, and that losing Syria would result in losing Tehran.

He told university student members of the Basij militia: “Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic province for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan [in western Iran], the priority is that we keep Syria.... If we keep Syria, we can get Khuzestan back too. But if we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran."

Taeb – head of the Ammar strategic base, which is focused on cyber war and soft war -- also pointed to the Islamic Republic's support of Syrian militias through Iranian advisors inside the country.

He explained, “Syria had an army, but did not have the ability to manage a war inside Syria’s cities. It is for this reason the Iranian government suggested that, to manage an urban war you must form a Basij…The Syrian Basij was formed with 60,000  [members] of the Party of God (Hezbollah), who took over the war on the streets from the army."

Two Lebanese columnists, writing today for an-Nahar, slam both Hojjatoleslam Taeb and Hezbollah.

Rajeh el-Khoury says, “Blatant Iranian interference in Syria comes after a series of complicities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and at the side of Yemen’s Houthis. They also come after a long history of threats and claims to the right of being the region’s éminence grise at the price of poisoning intra-Muslim relations and mobilizing Sunnis to confront Shiites in the 35^th province.”

Ali Hamadeh believes the “inevitable consequence” of Hezbollah’s “diabolic” and “criminal” involvement in the killing of Syrians will be to bring the conflict to the “heart of Lebanon” at the cost of innocent Lebanese lives.

A propos Iran, the U.S. and Saudi foreign policy

U.S. and Iran footballers: A lesson for politicians?

Saudi foreign policy has to grapple with two key problems à propos change in the region and the world order.

One is Iran, which is not exactly a new problem. The other is the Obama Administration forging ahead with its strategic pivot from the Middle East to East Asia.

Saudi academician and writer Khalid al-Dakheel, in his weekly column today for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, believes the two problems have taken new dimensions.

He explains:

After gaining a foothold in Bilad al-Sham through its alliance with the Syrian regime, Iran proceeded to plant Hezbollah as its military arm in Lebanon.

Ironically, this was done under the smokescreen of “resistance” (to Israel) and a Saudi-Syrian “understanding” on Lebanon.

Having then bagged Iraq from U.S. occupation forces and enthroned its surrogates in Baghdad, Iran is now out defending the Syrian regime and striving to be the paramount power in the Gulf as a step to expand its influence throughout the Arab Mashreq.

Iran’s aim is to be the nation-state of the region’s Shiites and to be recognized as such by Washington.

To realize this dream, after ensnaring Syria and Iraq, Iran has to face the bigger challenge posed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt – more so Saudi Arabia because it is the Gulf’s richest country, sits on Iraq’s doorstep and is home to Islam’s two holiest mosques (al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and al-Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina).

Iran is aware that undermining Saudi Arabia is a tall order: the ethnic, sectarian and historical impediments are simply formidable and countless. That’s why Tehran chose instead to surround the kingdom with Iranian clients and hotbeds of unrest – northward in Iraq, southward in Yemen and eastward in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Egypt is as impregnable as Saudi Arabia, except that Egypt lies further away geographically and is currently beset with political and economic problems. This explains why Iran is trying to lure Egypt away from the Gulf with promises of financial aid and a collaborative solution for Syria.

With the Syrian regime now on its last legs, Iran can recognize the expiry of its sell by date, cut its losses and facilitate the transfer of power in Damascus. Or, it can continue backing the regime at the price of walking away with no more than a piece of a fragmented Syria.

Iran’s predicament is also the region’s. Therein lies the future significance of Saudi foreign policy and Washington’s pivoting from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region.

President Barack Obama’s pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region is all about China.

While the U.S. was off fighting its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, China’s amazing growth and the promise of its huge and expanding market turned the Asia-Pacific region into the global economy’s center of gravity.

A report last November by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) expects the United States to cede its place as the world’s largest economy to China as early as 2016.

Washington is equally concerned by China more than doubling its declared military spending from 2006 to 2012, roughly in keeping with economic growth.

There are two unmistakable signs Obama is forging ahead with steps to pivot U.S. foreign policy from the Middle East to Asia.

One is his perseverance in “leading from behind” on Syria. The other is keeping his “extended hand” to Iran.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as U.S. National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter, says the U.S. can deter and contain a nuclear Iran, such as it is still deterring North Korea from using its nuclear weapons against South Korea and Japan.

Also, confirmation of Chuck Hagel, Obama’s pick for defense secretary, remains blocked because he is soft on Iran and previously called for talks between Washington and Tehran without preconditions.

It seems America’s strategic shift to Southeast Asia, the accumulation of Arab crises and the Arab’s impotence in solving albeit one of them are pushing many Americans to support a political deal with Iran.

Strangely, all U.S. talk of such an understanding with Tehran makes no mention of Saudi Arabia.

So how would Saudi Arabia react? Could it face such an eventuality with its same old foreign policy tools and premises?

Saudi foreign policy needs to update its perceptions and tools to match up with America’s strategic rebalancing, Iran’s agenda and the current winds thrashing the Arab world, not to mention the sea changes in Saudi society, the region and the world order.

Can the foreign policy adopted at the height of the Cold War by King Saud and King Faisal, God bless their souls, remain unchanged after 50 years?

Clearly, the policy that failed in Iraq and Syria, was half-successful in Yemen and Bahrain and missed setting up stable and enduring alliances in the region needs reappraisal and revision.

Assad to get his cut from Kuwait aid conference

By www.facebook.com/rev.multimediateam

I've heard it said that mixed feelings, like mixed drinks, confuse the soul and mind. So I don’t know whether to hail or wail tomorrow’s international pledging conference for Syria in Kuwait City.

Hail, because over four million people are in need of assistance in Syria, half of them in Aleppo, Homs and Rural Damascus, plus another 704,314 Syrian refugees in neighboring countries and North Africa.

Wail, because UN fundraisers have already earmarked at least a third of the required humanitarian response for the next six months to President Bashar al-Assad’s tentacles.

Tomorrow, heads of state and representatives from UN agencies and non-governmental organizations will gather at Bayan Palace in Kuwait City to attend the first-ever high-level International Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria.

The one-day conference will give member states an opportunity to continue supporting the much-needed humanitarian response. So far, only a small percentage of the funding has been received, limiting the ability of UN agencies and their humanitarian partners to reach people who desperately need help. 

Hosted by Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah and chaired by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the conference will address the funding gaps for the Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan (HARP) for Syria and the Syria Regional Refugee Response (SRRP).

Together the plans seek $1.5 billion to assist millions of civilians affected by the Syria war over the next six months, including those inside the country as well as many others taking refuge beyond its borders.

About $1 billion is for the SRRP, which will support more than 700,000 refugees who have fled Syria to Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt and Algeria.

HARP requires more than $519 million to help over four million people inside Syria, including an estimated two million internally displaced persons.

Problem is the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has unashamedly said all humanitarian assistance is, and will continue to be, delivered “with full respect to the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic” during the implementation of this Response Plan.

“This Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan aims at supporting the Government of Syria’s efforts in providing humanitarian assistance to the affected populations.  It will cover the period from 1 January 2013 until the end of June 2013.  The financial requirements amount to $519,627,047,” according to unocha.org.

And here is how HARP will disburse the $519,627,047 to Assad’s government ministries:

Agriculture & Agrarian Reform: $196,896,716

Health: $81,905,133

Education: $23,024,800

Foreign Affairs: $9,438,752

Labor & Social Affairs: $20,547,692

Local Administration (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene): $43,417,139

Labor, Social Affairs, Local Administration and Municipalities (Non-Food Items and Shelter): $110,771,867

Agriculture & Agrarian Reform, Labor & Social Affairs and Local Administration Labor (Livelihoods): $19,670,111

Logistics, Emergency Telecom and Staff Safety Services: $13,954,837

I wonder if UN budget planners had the wisdom of consulting Assad about his own destruction chart for the next six months to at least work in synch.

The Syrian Expatriates Organization (SEO), the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations (USMRO) and the Syrian Americans for Democracy (SAD) have all deplored the UN decision assigning Assad’s government to manage the humanitarian aid inside Syria.

The Local Coordination Committees, a network of grassroots activists in Syria, said the proposed aid amounted to "blatant support for the regime to continue its savage crimes to repress the Syrian revolution.”

The Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces wondered in a statement, “Is it logical to provide aid to a regime responsible for destroying cities, bombing hospitals and bakeries and displacing a population, so it can fix the dire situation it created?”

It said, “Humanitarian aid to the widows and orphans, the hungry, wounded and displaced in Syria, should not be delivered to them through the same party that caused their suffering and pain, for it would be an added humiliation and degradation.”

Avaaz, the international activist network, has condemned the HARP plan as a “crazy handout” to the Syrian government. It has called for donors to bypass the Kuwait conference and give money instead to the relief efforts of “the Syrian National Coalition, the recognized and legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”

Muslim Brothers, Omar Suleiman & the year 2013

Egypt candidates for president (Photo from Ahramonline)

Gulf media tycoon Ahmed al-Jarallah today lays into the Muslim Brotherhood for risking turning Egypt into another Afghanistan.

Jarallah’s editorial in his Kuwaiti daily al-Seyassah coincides with an op-ed by Mohamed el-Menshawy for Egypt’s Shorouk News acclaiming the “Brotherhood’s successful storming of Washington.”

MENSHAWY

Menshawy says the overwhelming majority of people contacted by Shorouk thought the group’s first delegation visit to the U.S. last week was a triumph.

The four delegates – Abdelmawgoud al-Derdary, Hussein and Khaled al-Kazzaz, and Ms Sondos Asem (a 24-year-old graduate student at the American University in Cairo) – are all members of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).

The FJP representatives, according to Menshawy, were not only fluent in English and familiar with U.S. culture, “but they surpassed themselves” in wooing their interlocutors.

They held meetings at Georgetown University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment and the Brookings Institution, as well as with Pulitzer-prize-winning journalists and low-level White House, State Department and National Security Agency staff.

JARALLAH

Jarallah, however, is more impressed by three proven Egyptian “statesmen like Omar Suleiman, Amr Moussa and Ahmed Shafiq,” who have chosen to run for president next month’s in the hope of stopping Egypt’s slide from liberalism to extremism.

Suleiman was intelligence overlord during the Mubarak era, a position he held from 1993 to 2011.

Ahmed al-Jarallah

Moussa served as foreign minister from 1991 to 2001. He was then removed from his post by Mubarak and made Arab League secretary-general, a position he held until 2011.

A former commander of the Egyptian Air Force, diplomat and politician, Shafiq served for 33 days as prime minister in the final stretch of Mubarak’s rule.

One of them – hopefully Omar Suleiman, Jarallah suggests circuitously – can save Egypt from turning into “worse than Afghanistan now that pseudo-Islamist forces seek to monopolize power on the the strength if their dubious parliamentary majority.

“Egypt’s presidentials are certainly an internal affair… But Egypt is also the region’s barometer by virtue of its geographic, political and economic sway… We’ve seen already how Muslim Brotherhood offshoots exploited the group’s rise in Egypt to pounce on state institutions in Tunisia, Libya, Jordan and even Kuwait.”

The Brotherhood, Jarallah continues, “knows no conduit to its goals other than violence… It is now donning the cloak of pluralism and democracy in Egypt and other Arab countries in the hope of monopolizing power, not sharing it.”

ADEEB

Speaking of the May 23 elections in Egypt, leading Egyptian political analyst and the Middle East’s pioneer talk show host Emad Adeeb wrote yesterday in the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat: “The showdown between Omar Suleiman and the Muslim Brotherhood will be the culmination of a power struggle between the Military and a sweeping religious current.”

In his column today for the same newspaper, Adeeb intimates his expectations.

He writes:

“It’s time to meditate on the likely, but momentous, regime changes around the world.

“The likely causes for such changes are four:

1. “Some 58 presidential and legislative elections are on the cards between January and December this year. They could produce unexpected results or swings globally. The most important of these ballots will take place in the United States, France, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and some European Union, Asian and African countries.
2. “The sudden incapacitation of this or that ruler, but this is in the hands of the Almighty.
3. “Internal parliamentary or constitutional crises that could lead to a collapse of otherwise stable governments or political coalitions.
4. “Revolutions or military coups, most probably in the Arab world and Black Africa as happened recently in Mali.

“Experts dubbed 2012 as the year shaping a new world map. “Look to 2013,” they say. In 2013, Washington and Moscow will define their bilateral relations; Beijing will chart its economic outlook; France and Germany will sketch out their headship of unified Europe.

“The year 2013 is when the world will assess the Arab Spring’s untainted outcome and when (Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin) Netanyahu’s internal state of slumber and peace of mind will come to an end.

“The year 2013 will determine the exact course of Iran’s nuclear program -- whether the program is meant to be a potent weapon or a source of energy and an instrument of deterrence and political bargaining.

“The year 2013 will show who is ruling Egypt – the army by remote political control or the turbaned (Islamists).

“The year 2013 will be the world’s most precarious.”

Call for post-Arab Spring "Marshall Plan”

Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist now heading Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal’s new Arabic news channel Al Arab launching at year’s end with a 300-strong staff, is calling for an Arab Marshall Plan to put Arab Spring countries back on their feet.

The United States launched its five-year Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), in 1947 to rebuild European economies after the end of World War II.

The Arab Spring upheaval cost its worst affected countries at least $56 billion in lost GDP in 2011, according to a report by consultancy group Geopolicity. The figure is approximate and does not take into account losses to human life, infrastructure or business and foreign direct investments.

“We Arabs won’t let down Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco or any of the Arab Spring countries. Better we worked as partners for an Economic Arab Spring,” Khashoggi writes in an op-ed piece today for pan-Arab al-Hayat. Stable Arab states would devise “an Arab Recovery Program akin to the Marshall Plan for all countries affected by the Arab Spring.” The Gulf Cooperation Council would fund the ARP via the Arab League.

Khashoggi says the program would “dwarf Saudi money going to Egypt or Tunisia and evaporating there, or an Abu Dhabi disbursement to build a road in Morocco, or Kuwait earmarking a sum to rebuild a school destroyed in Homs.”

Much as postwar Europe, says Khashoggi, the Arab World needs an Arab Marshall Plan after going through “60-years equivalent to a world war caused by the Baath Party, Nasser, Gaddafi, Saddam and the Assads” – an era marked by “economic disarray, social disintegration, military debacles and the loss of a homeland and its holy sites.”

“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.

Eye-opening reads:

Syrian assassinated in Germany

Banking fallout from Arab Spring

Eye-opening videos:

Arab League observer hugs Syrian child on New Year’s Day

Tanks crush protesters’ mopeds in Idlib