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The Arab summit and the Yemen crisis

Mar 31,2015 - Last updated at Mar 31,2015

A meeting that brings together leaders of 22 Arab states, or their representatives where they could not personally attend, should normally leave a bigger impact than the latest such gathering in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh just did.

For over a decade, Arab summits have been held annually, supposedly to review the situation in the Arab region. But despite the effort, the Arab situation continued to worsen.

That could be one reason why Arab crowds do not watch with any considerable attention the work of their leaders.

Summits are generally viewed as ritual public relations events that neither heads of Arab states nor Arab individuals take seriously.

This latest Arab summit was no exception.

It is hard to find in the concluding statements, often prepared beforehand, any promise that the fast-deteriorating Arab affairs would be reversed anytime soon.

Just as the meeting was due to start, Saudi Arabia decided to bomb Yemen.

The drastic Saudi decision, which had already been granted support by a significant number of Arab states just before the summit, also saved Arab leaders any effort to debate the move and decide accordingly.

Except for reservations from some Arab delegations, the majority of Arab leaders approved the Saudi military intervention in Yemen. They went even further, suggesting that a joint Arab force be established to deal with similar violations of Arab states’ legitimacy in the future.

In the case of Yemen, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was flown to the summit from his last secure location in Aden, was recognised as the legitimate leader of a country run over by an anarchic militia, the Houthis, or Ansarullah, which destroyed government structures, dissolved an elected parliament, passed their own illegal constitutional decrees, looted private and public property, occupied military installations, took the law in their hands, committed atrocities, performed a coup d’état, imposed their control over most of the country and refused to even sit with the other Yemeni factions to negotiate a political settlement.

Saudi patience only ran out when the Houthis decided to chase Hadi in Aden and to take control of the entire country by force of arms.

The instant Arab support for “Operation Storm of Resolve”, the name given to the Saudi-led military operation in Yemen, was mainly due to growing Arab concern that the Houthi takeover was basically just another Iranian expansion in the Arab region following the spread of the influence of Iran in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Lebanon. That was the straw the camel’s back could not bear.

There is no question that the supposedly Iran-supported conspiracy in Yemen, mainly between deposed leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, who never gave up his malicious intent to regain what he had lost even if that meant the destruction of the entire country, and the Houthi militia left the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia in particular, with no other option but military.

Before that, there were calls for political dialogue in the Saudi capital of Riyadh to work out a compromise, which the Houthis arrogantly refused to attend.

In the meantime, forces loyal to Saleh, along with the Houthis, continued their advance towards Aden in a clear attempt to topple what was left of the legitimacy of the government and to create new political facts.

If that leaves little doubt that military action was the only remaining option for the Saudi airforce in Yemen, and therefore the summit endorsement of the Arab-supported Saudi move was right, too, it remains to be seen if the war, even if not a choice, will solve the problem.

Many analysts are right to believe that this war would not alone be able to solve the Yemeni crisis.

One prominent Saudi commentator confirmed that the intention of the military strikes is primarily to pressure a weakened militia to negotiate, rather than to destroy the Houthis.

And because a war of this nature could last for years, and may precipitate enormous destruction and human tragedy, as well as grave side effects throughout the region, which is exactly happening in Syria, it might be wise to realise, right from the beginning, that the situation is similar to Syria’s and that this crisis could only be resolved politically.

Military action should therefore be measured and strictly limited. It should not be allowed to run its course freely, as that can be catastrophic and create endless complications involving great risks.

The war in Yemen, no matter how justified when addressing a specific short-term local issue, is, in its larger manifestation, an alarming expression of regional polarisation along sectarian lines.

The current military action has been mainly supported by Sunni states and was opposed by states that have tighter links with Shiite Iran.

Allowing this kind of secular polarisation to escalate is the worst kind of handling the region’s declining conditions.

Long-term regional stability requires serious and decisive action to end sectarian conflicts and to stop demonising Iran on the basis of unproved perceptions.

Iranian political ambitions should indeed be carefully monitored and dealt with accordingly, but it serves no purpose to create new enemies prematurely and quite unnecessarily. After all, it is the weakness of the Arab order, as well as the failure of the Arab armies to defend their lands and their peoples, that sucked Iran into the Arab body, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and now in Yemen.

Last week’s Arab summit could indeed have been a valuable opportunity to couple support for the Saudi military action in Yemen with a renewed call for a negotiated settlement.

Even if there had been little chance of reasonable response from the Houthis, the summit could have proposed a limited ceasefire and called again for negotiations, mainly between the Houthi movement (not with deposed president Saleh, whose hand in destroying his country is deeply soaked) and the legitimate Hadi government.

If not more effective, war, any war, could be less destructive if used as a tool to buttress diplomacy. This option should have been explored while the summit was still in session.

It may still be not too late. The Arab League could do something useful for a change.

The Yemeni crisis is a very serious development. It is loaded with dangers and risks. It deserves commensurate attention.

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