Arab Press Review
Arab volunteers to Iraq: token act or the makings of another Afghan jihad? Reports that Arab volunteers
are flocking to Iraq make headlines in the Arab press, as the US and Britain adjust their
military plans to take account of the unexpectedly fierce resistance their invasion has
encountered.
The combination of developments prompts Abdelbari Atwan, publisher/editor of pan-Arab
Al-Quds al-Arabi, to remark that with the invasion of Iraq only in its second week, it is
becoming a bigger predicament by the day for US President George W. Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and their odds of surviving it in office are
rapidly becoming smaller than Saddam Husseins.
The course military operations have taken suggests Iraq is gradually turning into
another Vietnam, while the influx of thousands of Arab and Muslim volunteers to join
the resistance, and the use of suicide attacks against US forces both in Iraq and by a
truck driver in Kuwait is giving it some of the trappings of the Afghan jihad against
the Soviet occupation, he says.
Atwan is baffled why the Americans themselves so fired up with nationalism by Sept. 11,
2001 that they are invading the world should have so underestimated the
intensity of Iraqi nationalism, and expected Iraqis to react to the invasion and the
bombing of their capital by capitulating en masse and dancing in the streets.
The steadfastness of the Iraqis has overturned all the calculations of the war
planners in Washington, and fuelled recrimination among the hawks in the Bush
administration about why it was not foreseen, he remarks.
The Americans and British are set to react to the military setbacks they have faced by
intensifying the ferocity of their campaign, Atwan writes, but the Iraqi, Arab and
Muslim martyrdom-seekers flocking to Baghdad will make them reconsider their calculations,
and kick themselves for having heeded the advice of various Iraqi mercenaries, counselors,
dissidents and spooks that Iraq would completely collapse as soon as the first missile was
fired at Baghdad.
In the Beirut daily As-Safir, publisher Talal Salman writes of one of his own relatives, a
former sapper in the Lebanese Army, who has signed up to go to Iraq as a volunteer to help
with bomb disposal, after finding it unbearable to continue passively watching on TV the
country being destroyed. If I remain here I will die of misery and frustration, but
over there I might at least save some child, old man or woman, or defuse a bomb that is
intended to kill people, the relative said.
Salman quotes his relative as saying that he would have enlisted to do the same in
Palestine if he could, but there was no way of traveling there, while Iraq is reachable
through Syria thanks to the courageous position taken by President Bashar
Assad. The Americans are now threatening him, but he wont be intimidated by
their threats. He replied to them, and yesterday I saw the pictures of the Syrian
volunteers in Mosul. Theyre so quick theyre there already. I also heard
that many volunteers from Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan are now in Baghdad or
on the way.
Salman writes that the former sappers sentiments reflect those of the majority
of Arab youth, in the Mashreq and Maghreb alike, who feel much the same about the US
war on Iraq as they do about the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
And they see the Arab governments who are helping out America (under the pretext that they
are its friends or allies) as mere stooges whose countries are not theirs but bases
for aggression against their kin, and whose thrones are at stake whatever the
outcome, he says. For the fight against the invasion plan will also be a fight
against them. The evidence, in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Egypt, is
too plain to require clarification.
Salman commends Syria for taking a strong stand against the occupation of Iraq and opening
its borders to Arab volunteers. Those Arab governments who say they are powerless to defy
the superpowers wishes are merely alienating their peoples, he says. If the
occupation triumphs it wont reward them it will no longer need them and if it
fails (and it cannot triumph and last) their punishment will be at the hands of their
peoples.
Other Arab commentators focus on Washingtons public warnings to Damascus to stop
supporting Baghdad or terrorists in general, prompting Arab League
Secretary-General Amr Moussa to caution that such charges are making the situation
more explosive.
Syrias ruling Baath Party daily Al-Baath accuses the US of trying to set Syria up as
a scapegoat for the setbacks it has suffered in Iraq, and to find pretexts for
expanding the aggression, by charging that Damascus has been sending military
equipment or night-vision goggles to Baghdad.
The paper says that, previously, the Americans tried to accuse Russia of having supplied
Iraq with jamming equipment, by way of explaining why their smart missiles have been
missing their carefully selected targets and killing innocent civilians far-off.
They also made similar allegations about Iran.
The truth is the Americans have been shocked by the intensity of resistance they have
encountered in Iraq, where people of all persuasions have rallied in defense of the
country. This has left the Pentagon hawks in a fluster, and stripped bare the true motive
of the invasion namely, the seizure of Iraqs oil.
Accusing Syria of supplying equipment to Iraq is nothing more than a pretext to
justify the failure that has accompanied the invading forces since they launched their
aggression, and also an attempt to divert attention from the crimes they have committed
against innocents, Al-Baath says.
In the Beirut daily An-Nahar, Randa Haidar says that although Israel has long been
accusing of Syria of helping Iraq acquire arms or hide banned weapons from UN inspectors,
the US has always dismissed these allegations.
On the face of it, she writes, the warning issued to Syria by US Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld served notice that Washington will no longer turn a blind eye to arms smuggling
via Syria to Iraq, or the continued pumping of Iraqi oil to Syria. In other words, the
Americans are saying that Syria can no longer claim to be supporting the war
on terror while at the same time supporting Iraq in its confrontation with the
Americans and British.
But Haidar says Rumsfelds threats to both Syria and Iran cannot be viewed in
isolation from Israel, which is eager to get Washington to target both countries once it
is finished with Iraq, using the usual ploy of playing up the threat they pose
to it. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 they focused on Iran, but when that failed
to impress a US administration that wanted Irans cooperation in Afghanistan, the
Israelis turned the spotlight on the threat posed by Syrias backing for Hizbullah
and Palestinian fundamentalist groups.
Despite the assistance Syria gave Washington in its war on terror, Israeli is lobbying to
make Syria, Iran and Hizbullah its next targets, she says. Rumsfelds remarks have
thus done them a big service. And while the US has traditionally put its own
interests above Israels when deciding how to treat Syria, the danger is that
the current Bush administrations perception of US interests in the region and
Syrias role is identical to Israels.
Egyptian analyst Dia Rashwan writes that it was inevitable the conflict in Iraq would
quickly cease to be an internal Iraqi matter and have an impact on the other
Arab states.
He writes in the semi-official Cairo daily Al-Ahram that the prospective occupation of
Iraq can be expected to have the same kind of fallout on and within the countries of the
region as the Palestine question has had over the decades.
It is bound to encourage the hard-line government in Israel to try to impose its dictates
on the Palestinians, and wreck any prospect of a negotiated settlement, perhaps forever.
And it is certain to impact on the Arab regimes, many of whom have been presented with a
stark choice between complying with public demands for practical action against the war,
and preserving their close ties and diverse interests with Washington. If
forced to pick, most will probably start succumbing to domestic rather than external
pressures, Rashwan predicts.
They also face the prospect of the US setting out to reorder the regional map after the
war in keeping with its interests and Israels, a process liable to trigger violent
backlashes and fuel extensive tension and regional instability.
One cannot foretell all the likely regional repercussions of the invasion of Iraq,
but the one thing about which there is no doubt is that the Anglo-American military
campaign will not leave Iraqi freedom in its wake but shock and
awe throughout the Middle East and the Gulf, Rashwan writes.
In the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, Abdelwahhab Badrakhan says mounting calls in
Arab and Islamic countries for people to volunteer for jihad in Iraq are more
symbolic than practical.
But he finds them strangely apt, considering the increasingly religious flavor that senior
figures in the Bush administration have been giving the campaign against Iraq, such as
holding prayer meetings to invoke divine protection for the troops.
Many people warned that war on Iraq would be counterproductive, both for the war on
terror and for stability in the Arab world. But the Americans turned a deaf ear. For their
priority was the war itself, not the achievement of its declared objectives,
Badrakhan writes.
Now it looks as though the requirements of military victory will override any
moral considerations regarding the conduct of the war. For that, Bush,
Rumsfeld and Co. will not need more prayers, but more time to get the world accustomed to
news of slaughter in Iraq, as a prelude to deploying more banned weapons against the
country the Americans want to turn into the virtuous city of an Israeli Middle
East, he says.
In Doha, the Qatari daily Al-Sharq cautions against reading too much into the military
setbacks the Americans have suffered in Iraq. It says that while its true that
unexpectedly stiff resistance has slowed the Americans advance on Baghdad, fierce
sandstorms also played a big part in that.
The weather is likely to further inconvenience the Americans as the hot summer sets in, it
says. The Iraqis can also take advantage of the six-day halt that has been reportedly
called in the US march on their capital, both to bolster their defenses and mount attacks
behind enemy lines. The fact the US has been forced to amend its military plans can only
uplift the morale of Iraqi fighters further.
But the war is set to last weeks if not months, and it is premature to make predictions,
according to Al-Sharq. It would be correct to say that, so far, Iraqi steadfastness
has won the day. But the question is: To what extent will the new American military plan
allow that steadfastness to persist?
Jordanian commentator Mahmoud Rimawi suggests that Americas Arab allies need to be
more outspoken in their criticism of it over Iraq. He writes in the UAE daily Al-Khaleej
that while no one expects them to sever ties with America in protest at the invasion, they
can no longer persist in their habit of concealing their differences with Washington. That
will only enable it to deflect international criticism of its illegal and unilateral
actions by claiming that it enjoys the tacit backing of Iraqs neighbors, he reasons.
The Saudi daily Al-Watan meanwhile calls for international diplomatic action to halt a war
that promises to be far longer and bloodier than the Americans originally predicted. The
paper proposes the formation of an international commission of wise men to
formulate a peace plan. This should feature the formation of a broad national unity
coalition government in Baghdad, including some elements of the existing regime and
the army plus opposition representatives, which would decide Iraqs future without US
interference.
And if either Baghdad or Washington were to reject such a face-saving political
settlement, the international community could renounce any of its obligations vis-a-vis
the party concerned, the Saudi paper suggests.
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