The New Egypt Notion of a New Arab Nation

One of the great novels in Arabic is "The Return of the Spirit" (Awdat El-Roah), by Tawfik Al-Hakim.  In this blog posting, I shall borrow his title for a contemporary context.  Namely the return to the Arab Nation of its spirit.  Enunciated by El-Sisi as Chairman of the recent Arab Summit of late March in Sharm El-Sheikh, Sinai, Egypt.

Closing his inaugural summit speech before all top representatives of 22 States, members of the League of Arab States, minus one -Syria, the Egyptian President, three times intoned: "Long Live the Arab Nation."  An apt reminder that after 4 years of the Arab Spring uprisings, the Arab world was discovering, in Egypt, the broad lines of an Arab concordat.

It is therefore a time for outlining the notion now held by the most populous Arab State, Egypt, of the newly resurrected Arab Nation.  Adversity, like need, breeds reinvention.  The Arab adversity has been the destructive side of the Arab Spring.  Fear has gripped "the Arab World." Now after the Declaration of Sharm El-Sheikh of March 29, 2015, it has been renamed "The Arab Nation."

The wave of fear began to thunder from barbaric terrorism.  Its gusts were submerging the Arab identity.  Arab capitals, namely, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa, were being renamed by extremist Iranian triumphalists as "cities within the Persian Empire."  Persian versus Arab has become current lingo.

The issue here was misunderstood by the Western media as sectarianism (Sunni vs. Shii).  Wrong characterization.  It was Farsi vs. Arab.  And the Arabs were insulted by it.  Said "Amre Musa," former Secretary-General of the League of Arab States: "I have never felt so insulted in my whole political life."

As Sanaa was being run over by the Houthis, supported by Iranian funds and arms, the Arab leadership, including the exiled Yemeni President, Abdu Rabbut Mansour Hadi, hurried to the Arab summit at Sharm El-Sheikh.  They were in search, not for identity, but for affirmation of what to do about refurbishing their ID.

Saudi Arabia led the purposeful parade; the Gulf States coalesced, including Qatar; El-Sisi and his team, together with the institutional host, the League of Arab States, prepared the ground work; the Saudi air campaign which brought together an Arab Coalition of 9 other States was disrupting the Houthis advance towards Aden; and a revitalized Arab Nation was taking shape, pushing back against what a third of a billion Arabs perceived to be a revival of a massive inter-cultural clash with Tehran.  A clash with massive geo-strategic dimensions.

So what were the policy ingredients of Cairo's notion of a New Arab Nation?  These ingredients are still not receiving a unanimous vote of support from the other 20 Arab capitals.  Nonetheless, the broad framework is emerging.  Its shape is crystallizing along the following lines:

• Egypt now describes itself as "The Home of the Arab Family ."  A softer definition and a lesser involvement, and at a much lesser cost than "The Arab Leader."  The Nasserite ideology has become a museum piece;
• Recognition that the primary challenge facing the New Arab Nation is not ISIS, Khorasan, Al-Qaeda, or Al-Nusra.  Egypt, especially now with the release of previously-withheld US offensive armament, is confident of its combative efforts on these transitory fronts.  
• The main challenge is posed by outside neighborly powers (Iran; Turkey) whose regimes are looking westward, in the case of Iran, and eastward, in the case of Turkey.  "The cultural war" is no longer a term which is reserved to "a religious revolution;" it has been expanded into a confrontationist term which is backed not only by sermons, but by swords as well;
• "The New Arab Nation" is regarded as an amalgam of various faiths, creeds, allegiances and manners of worship.  The reference to a "Muslim Nation" seems, at present, to denote a Sunni/Shii amalgam where Al-Azhar, Kufa, Karbala, Najaf, and Qom shall continue to hold religious sway.  Within that concept of Arabism, the attacks on Christians, especially after the Libyan massacre of the Copts, have become attacks on Arabism.  For Egypt, at least, there can be no more repetition of the attacks on the All-Saints Church in Alexandria on the eve of celebration of the new year of 2011.
• "The New Arab Nation" is now sounding the alarm regarding the fragmentation in more than one Arab State into Statelets.  Especially in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.  Sectarianism, especially with funding from the outside, is the trojan horse whose objective is to replace the flag of the State by tribes with flags.  El-Sisi at the 26th Arab Summit, described this process as the "kidnapping the homeland."  This call for the need of a coordinated inter-Arab push-back was reiterated by a former Egyptian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Muhammad Al-Orabi.  In a speech in Abu Dhabi (the Emirates), he, on March 31, stated: "Today's challenges impose on all Arab States the obligation of interdependency in order to escape the dangers of this bottleneck (of simultaneous challenges)."  Minister Al-Orabi had, on March 1 launched an initiative called "With Our Money We Build Our Army."
• At the Sharm Arab Summit, the League of Arab States was resurrected.  From dormancy to vibrancy, through the decision to create a unified Arab armed force for quick intervention.  No more total dependency on a Western military handout which at times, especially in the case of the U.S., was held hostage to the whims of internal politics.  
• El-Sisi advocated; Saudi Arabia led; the other Gulf States coalesced; air forces were scrambled for a showdown over who rules Yemen: the Houthis and a deposed ruler (Saleh) or the Hadi government which came to power through consensus.
• The Arab summit resolution on a unified Arab military force, adopted toward the end of March, had no non-Arab finger prints on it.  Propelled by real concern for fraud committed on the Arab ID card, it had an old and nearly forgotten foundation: The Arab Defense Pact of 1950.  
• But that was only a part of the legal context.  The Charter of the League of Arab States, set forth in Alexandria in 1945 well before the drafting of the UN Charter, was invoked at Sharm.  And the UN Charter was also cited (by implication Chapter VIII, on regional organizations).
• That Arab expeditionary force, to be created in a few weeks before having the Arab Defense Council issue its birth certificate, has become the center piece of the functioning of the New Arab Nation.  Its creation, declared both the Arab League Secretary-General, Dr. Nabil El-Araby, and Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri, was largely due to "unprecedented challenges." 
• That Arab expeditionary force benefits also from a political road map: membership in it is voluntary; not intended as a threat to a neighbor or another Arab State; defensive in nature.  
• However the triple threats of terrorism, fragmentation and external intervention  were cited geographically by President El-Sisi in his inaugural address to the Arab Summit.  These were: Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and Israeli illegal practices in the occupied Palestinian territories.
• Other aspects necessary for the resurrection of a New Arab Nation, were not left out.  All the 21 Arab States (with the Syrian seat remaining vacant for now) addressed complementary issues needed for an Arab national renaissance: economic and social development; emphasis on equality before the law; the role of religious institutions in combating terrorism, the elimination of illiteracy by 2024, and the inclusion of women and youth in the efforts of an Arab Nation now under construction.
• In an interview with "The Voice of Lebanon," Amre Moussa, on March 30, commented as follows: "There are basic strategic considerations behind this regional Arab surge towards coordinated action.  Egypt has also a primordial interest in maritime security in the Red Sea and in the national security of Saudi Arabia."
• In that context El-Sisi's visit to Riyadh in very early March, and the meeting of minds between him and King Salman of Saudi Arabia have laid the ground work for the historic Arab summit held in Sharm.
• The Gulf's financial liquidity, now partly channelled through these new defensive inter-Arab structures, shall make non-Arab financial support to States like Egypt less conditional on meeting the donor's restrictions.

As the British adage goes, "nothing succeeds like success."  The anti-Houthi coalition now count 10 States: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, the Emirates, anti-Houthi Yemen and the Sudan.  Add also Pakistan, a Muslim non-Arab State.

US logistical and intelligence support to that formidable coalition, to which Egypt offered ground troops, cannot be underestimated.  Nor can the timely action by President Obama removing the weapons freeze against Egypt on March 31.  A thoughtful New York Times reporter, Peter Baker, attributed that action to Washington "seeking to repair relations with a longtime ally (Egypt) at a time of spreading war in the Middle East."

Despite continued terrorist attacks in Sinai, including the human loss by the security forces on April 3, there is one clear indication as to where the forces of destruction, and the forces of the New Arab Nation are heading: The former, downward to extinction, the latter upward to a new rebirth.  It is Easter time.  Like in the bible, the Quran provides that "Christ is Risen."  "The Arabs want to be in that number, when the saints come marching in."