While regional organizations are going to be the mainstay in international politics in the post-cold war world, one of the old regional organizations Arab League (formed in 1945) has shown all weakness of a broken house with members failing to take coordinated position on any of the raging international issues. A simple juxtaposition of the Arab League summit with the BRICS summit, held on the same date 29 March 2012, brings stark contrast how coordination in one part of the world is failing acutely, while on the other part the rise of BRICS in global arena is a foregone conclusion. While the Arab League, as the recent summit at Baghdad revealed, has become known for all differences, whether on Syria or Iran or on issues of conflict resolution, the BRICS countries developed commonalities on many issues including that of Syria and Iran. That the summit schedule was shifted twice before this one at Baghdad, and that only 9 member countries out of total twenty two countries participated in the summit itself reveals a poor story of the League. Even the nine countries participating in the summit did not send their top leaders; rather the member countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar sent junior officials instead of head of states to participate in the summit.
Tag: Arab League
In the spirit of bridging understanding, reader westiseast responded to my request to give a quick analysis on why he thought there is “zero balance whatsoever” (refer to his original comment as it was a…
Up until the Arab League Observer Mission had been sent to Syria on December 24, 2011, there had been two main narratives describing what was happening in Syria. One was that the violence in Syria…
It’s an intrigue befitting the machinations of classical colonialism in past centuries, such as the Sykes-Picot carve-up of the Middle Eastern Levant territories, or the betrayal of the Arabs after World War I, or the theft of Mesopotamia’s oil by British capitalists. Only this time, it is Arabs who are helping the neocolonial powers to deceive and subjugate other Arabs. Enter the Arab League. Over the past year, the 22-member organization has emerged as a useful deceptive cover for Western powers as they seek to redraw the political contours of the Arab World, and beyond, for their own strategic interests. The momentous popular upheavals that began in early 2011 across the Arab World have in many ways been co-opted or manipulated by Western imperialist powers to minimize democratic gains and to refashion the political map to their continuing advantage. A feat of achievement considering that these same powers have for decades supported the repressive regimes that have inflicted so much misery and suffering.
Here’s a crash course on the “democratic” machinations of the Arab League – rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud. Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what’s going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France – enthusiastically supported it. It’s telling that Syria’s neighbor Lebanon did not. When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report … surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line – which is that the “evil” Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.
On February 4 the UN Security Council (UNSC) held a new session devoted to Syria. This time the targets of the strike were Russia and China. It was done in an open and demonstrative way….
“Viscous nasty business” … “aggressive pressure … by US diplomats”, “ferocious pressure on weaker non-permanent members”, the “type of pressure [that] is very, very difficult for weaker countries … to resist.” That’s how a former…
The United States is working with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Arab League to push through a resolution for the United Nations Security Council to lay the basis for military intervention along…
Once again, we see the frightening collusion of the U.S. Imperial government with their war partner British colonialists, but this time not in Iraq but in Syria. Immediately upon the arrival of the UN sponsored…
The Arab League Observer Mission succeeded in providing a different perspective from that of the mainstream western media about what has been happening on the ground in Syria. After a resolution by the Arab League…