By Rami G. Khouri

I was in Cairo last weekend, from where I followed the continuing drama of Arab League monitors in Syria. The city is the headquarters of the Arab League, and is where Egyptians have been engaged in their own epic struggle to shape a new political order after a citizen revolt removed the former regime from office. The contrast between the Syrian and Egyptian situations today captures one of the most important and recurring dynamics of the modern Arab world: foreign intervention in the affairs of sovereign Arab states in transition.

Last Friday it was quiet in Cairo, mainly because it was a day of prayer, but also because all eyes were on other venues beyond Tahrir Square: the court trial of President Hosni Mubarak and his officials; the parliamentary and constitutional processes under way; a fascination among some with incumbent Islamists forming a parliamentary majority; the upcoming presidential election; and the looming anniversary of the Jan. 25 revolution.
But just off Tahrir Square, at the Arab League headquarters, Arab officials gathered to assess the first report by the Arab League monitors in Syria.

Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen have witnessed a range of foreign interventions in the past year. There was NATO’s war in Libya and Saudi Arabia’s dispatch of a symbolic number of troops to Bahrain. There is also the Arab League’s monitoring mission in Syria, with the aim of determining the Syrian government’s compliance with an agreement to end the killing there, after the Gulf Cooperation Council’s diplomatic intervention to solve the crisis in Yemen. Tunisia and Egypt removed their dictators without overt foreign intervention, which remains defined today mainly by Arab and Western money flowing into assorted political quarters.

We now have three models of Arab political change that reflect, respectively, a home-grown process, another that relies on foreign military and diplomatic intervention, sometimes involving sanctions, and a third that includes a major role for regional Arab bodies like the Arab League and the GCC.

The importance of the Syrian situation with its Arab League monitors is that it combines elements of all three. If it succeeds – which is debatable right, given the mediocre performance of the monitors during their initial days – it could usher in an important new role for the Arab League at a moment when this long ridiculed and impotent body has shown signs of trying to regenerate itself. We may have a hint of this in the coming days, after the Arab League met Saturday to assess the monitors’ initial report and decide its next steps.

The critical link for why the Arab League’s approach to resolving the Syrian situation may be significant is its already expressed intention to refer the Syrian situation to the United Nations Security Council and other international organs if the Syrian government does not implement its agreement with the Arab League. In other words, the Arab League seems to be repositioning itself as a link between indigenous Arab efforts to ensure peace and security and the available global mechanisms to do this.

This is potentially historic because it would provide that legitimate deterrent mechanism that has always been missing from the Arab League’s toolbox of political action. The organization could also play the critical role of blending established global norms of human rights and lawful behavior with prevailing social, cultural and political norms in the Arab world.

This is important because in some cases Arab miscreants and criminals who kill their own people – whether government officials or civilian thugs – tend to be more amenable to indigenous conflict-resolution efforts and hesitant to change in the face of foreign (in other words Western-dominated) pressure, sanctions and threats.
The monitoring mission in Syria has been unimpressive due to a combination of logistical constraints and management weaknesses. This reflects the two structural sources of its weakness: the Arab League, being a collection of Arab governments, suffers chronic incompetence; and the Syrian government does not seem to be serious about implementing its agreement with the Arab body, which requires it to stop killing peaceful demonstrators.

Sadly, Syrians struggling for their freedom and rights will continue to die by the dozens every day, it seems, until some other mechanism is found that forces the government to end its policy of mass murder.

The weakness of the monitoring mechanism to date could be offset by the determination of the Arab League to go to the next step and take the issue to the U.N. Security Council or even seek indictments of Syrian officials at the International Criminal Court. Neither of those options guarantees that the killing will stop, or that Syrians can expect a peaceful transition to a democratic system of government. Yet for the Arab League to embark on a path that ultimately leads to these two bodies is a novelty worth monitoring.

The contrast among the six Arab countries that have experienced serious citizen revolts is striking, and reminds us again that each country must be analyzed in its own context. Egypt and Syria remind us that national transformations in the Arab world will take place along very different trajectories, blending local, regional and global pressures as needed.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR.