Lebanonwire, April 1, 2003

The Daily Star

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 Hussein’s.”
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 won’t be intimidated by their threats. He replied to them, and yesterday I saw the pictures of the Syrian volunteers in Mosul. They’re so quick � they’re 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 sapper’s 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 superpower’s wishes are merely alienating their peoples, he says. “If the occupation triumphs it won’t 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 Washington’s 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.”
Syria’s 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 Iraq’s 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 Rumsfeld’s 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 Iran’s cooperation in Afghanistan, the Israelis turned the spotlight on the threat posed by Syria’s 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. Rumsfeld’s remarks have thus done them a “big service.” And while the US has traditionally put its own interests above Israel’s when deciding how to treat Syria, “the danger is that the current Bush administration’s perception of US interests in the region and Syria’s role is identical to Israel’s.”
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 Israel’s, 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 it’s 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 America’s 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 Iraq’s 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 Iraq’s 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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