Summit Failure, but Hope, Withal
The Arab states that refused to send high-echelon emissaries to the Damascus Arab summit had little faith going into the event that anything substantial and useful would come out of the bargaining sessions. Syria remains adamant about her right to continue destabilizing the region. The current black sheep of the Arab federation. Not that Syria has ever been a biddable and reliable member, anxious to cement good relations with its neighbours, ever.It's the perennial dabbler in creating those shocking moments of breath-intakes. A nasty bully of an administration, fully engaged with a continuation of the black work ethic of Hafaz al Assad in colonializing Lebanon, extracting its natural resources, partitioning its people, was handily replaced by an Assad clone in his son, Bashar al Assad. And he adamantly held that the responsibility for the success of the Arab League summit rested with all Arab states, not Syria.
Syria would "adhere to the resistance", not "relinquish its principles". And as a result, Libya's Moammar Gadhaffi expressed his diplomatic view that "The most important thing about the summit is that there has been some acknowledgement of the divisions and problems and hatred between the Arab states." They needed a summit to produce that result? What was the accomplishment, other than to ensure a wider rift?
On the good news front, however, there is a Progressive Socialist Party whose leader opposing the royal reign of Bashar al Assad would love to rectify matters by removing the country's tyrannical president. He deplored the presence of the summit in Damascus, as an undeserving site for the Arab League meeting; that holding it in the Syrian capital was tantamount to supporting the rule of the Syrian president.
Their very presence in Damascus, it was claimed, would be a blow struck against the Syrian people's right to life and freedom.
Other hopeful matters resulted from the summit, though, one of which was a Damascus Declaration that Lebanon elect a consensus president to fill the present void. Another common sense declaration re-endorsed the Arab initiative for peace with Israel. And lastly, one urging Iraq "to disband all militias without exception". Important declarations, all.
For the first; an encouragement to Lebanon to proceed with its intent toward stabilization: stickler, Hezbollah's intent to overpower and subvert all other interests but its own. For the second, a hopeful sign that patience and a full recognition of the need to continue offering Israel hope for acceptance in the region as a legitimate entity continues. For the third, easy enough to say, how to accomplish?
And for all three, declarations of support and advice will not suffice. How will the Arab League follow up? Will the time ever be right for a true federation, with emphatic powers to encourage, to materially aid, to forcefully insist on all member states to act in the best interests of the entire geography, and lay aside their petulant differences for the greater good?
As for the phenomenon of what is perceived to be rising Islamophobia, that too is a problem, intractable it seems, but perhaps not entirely. Provocations from the West to prick the sensibilities of the Muslim world have resulted from horrendous incidents of terror wrought by jihadists claiming to be doing the work of Allah in the name of the Prophet, citing dictums from the Koran.
These truths must be recognized, confronted and a plan of action undertaken. There are no sacred icons in the West. We are iconoclastic because Westerners are more adamantly individualistic, encouraged to question, to debate, to demand answers. The psychological divide between the West and the Muslim world exists because the latter will not question, is not prepared to debate, and will not demand answers of those who claim to represent them.
There are no easy answers. It's ironic that Muslims are increasingly facing difficulties in the very countries which accept pluralism and equality. That's a moderately acceptable risk when migrating to countries practising other social and cultural mores, for the opportunity of advancing one's own self-interests, leaving countries more theistically structured to control every aspect of peoples' lives through rigid dictates of faith adherence.
It contrasts relatively beneficently against determined warriors of Allah seeking to violently usurp Western influence by destroying public and civic infrastructure, by viciously destroying the lives of vulnerable populations. In the one instance people who adhere to a strict religion that forbids their accepting many of the traditions of an accepting country can be faced with suspicion and public censure.
In the other, people who relinquish the need to practise religious faith, or those who moderate their allegiance to religion, have become targets for obliteration by a horribly disaffected and violence-prone jihadist contingent of Islam's fundamentalist misanthropes. Having said which, there is plenty of room for adjustment on all fronts.
Humankind has always faced the very real threats it suffers from others of their kind whose bleak vision of existence and psychopathic delusions of paranoia have marked them as a deadly threat to the vastly larger moderates among us. The Arab League's concerns are not far removed from those of any other portion of allied humanity, from the African Union, to the European Union, to Asia, and North America.
We infelicitously insecure human beings must make more sincere, imperative efforts to be more accepting of one another. We have far more in common with one another, no matter what our beliefs are, wherever we live on this globe, than what sets us apart.
Much depends upon our transcending fear and suspicion.
Labels: Justice, Social-Cultural Deviations, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 31, 2008
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