The Arab World, with 22 countries and 320 million people, larger in size than the US, Canada, Europe or China, with GDP of about 1.3 trillion US dolla...

The Arab World, with 22 countries and 320 million people, larger in size than the US, Canada, Europe or China, with GDP of about 1.3 trillion US dollars in 2007, and with such strong common ties as language, history, culture, ethnicity and religion has not only failed to achieve a modest level of cooperation, integration and development, but has also become a battleground for widespread inter-state and intra-state conflicts, has been subjected to occupation or foreign domination and has fallen behind in major human development indexes.
I will review the failures of the current two models of Arab co-operation and integration.

1. Arab Nationalism
The birth of the Arab nationalism project lies within the framework of Islamic reformism in the 19th century. The Ottoman Empire, a mighty force between the 13th and 17th centuries, began to show signs of stagnation and chronic weakness in the 18th-19th centuries in the face of rising European powers. Military defeats, European encroachments, internal mismanagement and secessionist movements have all turned the empire into “the Sick Man of Europe”. Reforms Tanzimat in the mid-19th century were the answer, but for whose benefit was the question. The Ottomans implemented several measures of political, religious and communal reforms but with administrative centralization and an emphasis on creating an Ottoman nationality Ottomanism to keep the empire intact and strong¹, while many local communities and nationalities used these reforms to gain greater autonomy, redefine their own identities and territorial borders. For the Ottomans, the struggle was against European expansionism and internal disintegration, but for the communities and nationalities, the struggle was against European imperialism and Ottoman authoritarianism.

The ideas of reforms in Islamic societies preceded the Tanzimat, and Egypt had an early start, both through conflict with, and educational missions to the West. The shock of Napoleon’s short-lived French Expedition to Egypt from 1798 to 1801 and the new encounters with European rising imperialism in Egypt, Syria and North Africa have aroused questions over the backwardness of Moslem societies, but without challenging the overall legitimacy of the Ottoman rule and its religious bond. Rafa'a Al Tahtawy (1801-1873) and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), both modern Islamic scholars, emphasized the ideas of liberalism, rationalism, law and public good to reform the ailing Islamic societies. Al-Afghani in particular, with his critical view of traditionalism, had an indirect role in the early development of Arab nationalism by “reinterpreting the Islamic past in modern and nationalist terms”². This emphasis on history took him to champion Pan-Islamism, uniting all Moslems under one reformed modern Ottoman Empire as the seat of the Caliphate³.

This historical emphasis, however, took Al-Kawakibi⁴ (1854-1902) to a different direction, although he shared Al-Afghani’s conviction that political reforms are the key to religious reforms⁵. By emphasizing ties of history, ethnicity, language, land and common rights, as opposed to religious ties championed by the Ottomans, Al-Kawakibi was able to redraw the boundaries of an “Arab” community thus redefining the struggle against fellow Moslem Turks on “nationalist” not religious grounds. The Arabs are the basis of Islam, the carrier of its message and have always constituted a distinct nation “Umma”. He used Ibn Khaldoun’s notion of the rise and fall of civilizations to argue that Arabism is being rediscovered not recreated.⁶.

Al-Husari (1879-1967) also emphasized language and history as factors that determine Arab identity and nationalism. According to him, “people who spoke a unitary language have one heart and a common soul. As such, they constitute one nation, and so they have to have a unified state.”⁷ Arab states are artificial creations, and the division of the Arab nation into these separate states was the reason behind the Arab defeat in the Palestine War of 1948-49⁸. People who are not aware of their Arabism have false consciousness and need to be enlightened. For him, nationalism is a living spirit that has an existence of its own regardless of the collective will or pure national origin. His ideas were much influenced by German Romantic nationalism of the 19th century. The political expression of these ideas was that Arabs should have one democratic and secular state that unites them all. Both Zureiq (1909-2000) and Aflaq (1910-1989) followed the same path.

It is clear from this brief overview that Arab nationalism is constructed as a living idea based on language and history. It breeds on culture not race, economic factors or temporal collective will. It has a mission and a national philosophy that need to be consciously embraced and transferred to future generations, and it is secular and democratic with a strong bend towards socialism. The aim is political unity in a single unitary state because the existing “individual Arab states are deviant and transient entities, their frontiers illusory and permeable, their rulers interim caretakers, or obstacles to be removed.”⁹

The political (mis)-use of this ideology was detrimental to the Arabs. The British used it in the context of World War I to encourage the Arabs to revolt against the Turks in exchange for an independent Arab state extending from Syria to Yemen after the war¹⁰. This was the Great Arab Revolt of 1916-1918 that helped the UK and France defeat the Ottomans. However, a secret agreement between these two countries divided the newly-freed land between themselves in betrayal to the Arabs¹¹. Syria, Lebanon and Northern Iraq fell to the French, while Palestine, Jordan, Southern Iraq and the Gulf to the British.

Since their independence from the UK and France, all other attempts at unity by the Arabs have failed¹². The United Arab Republic formed by Egypt and Syria in 1958 ended in 1961 with a coup in Syria. The Arab Federation between Iraq and Jordan in 1958 lasted six months and ended with a coup in Iraq, and the Tripartite Unity talks between Egypt, Syria and Iraq in 1963 also did not succeed.

The rise of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s caused much rivalry in the region between the progressive socialist republican states of Egypt, Iraq and Syria, and the reactionary monarchic traditionalist Gulf states and Jordan who gave it rhetoric support but opposed it in practice for fear of losing their power. This was the Arab Cold War¹³, which was exacerbated by foreign intervention, oil and the Arab Israeli conflict.

Arab nationalism also came into conflict with pan-Islamism. From an Islamic perspective, the bond should be religion without discrimination based on race, language, culture, colour or wealth. Pan-Islamism viewed Arab nationalism with suspicion as a foreign idea designed to divide the Moslem society. This was aided by the fact that most Arab nationalist thinkers were Christians who emphasized the personal nature of religion, and the universal nature of culture.

2. The Arab League
Having been successful in using Arab nationalism to break up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, the British resorted to a similar strategy during World War II to regain Arab public sympathy that was tilting towards the advancing Germans in North Africa. Eden declared in 1941 that the British government was sympathetic to the ideas of strengthening the cultural, economic and political ties among Arab states¹⁴.14 Consultations took place in 1943-1944 between the then seven independent Arab states¹⁵. The Alexandria Protocol was signed in October 1944, and the Charter of the League in March 1945.

The purpose of the League is to bring Arab states closer, achieve political coordination and cooperation in six general fields:¹⁶ 1- Economic and financial affairs: including commercial relations, customs, currency, and questions of agriculture and industry, 2- Communications; this includes railroads, roads, aviation, navigation, telegraphs and posts, 3- Cultural affairs, 4- Nationality, passports, visas, execution of judgments and extradition of criminals, 5- Social welfare and 6- Health affairs. The Charter also prohibits intervention in the internal affairs of other member states¹⁷ and the use of force to settle disputes¹⁸. In foreign policy, Article 9 states that “treaties and agreements already concluded or to be concluded in the future between a member-state and another state shall not be binding or restrictive upon other members”¹⁹. The highest decision making body is the Arab League Council which oversees the work and approves the recommendations of the specialized committees for each of the policy areas outlined above. It is composed of one representative for each member state.

From its inception, the Arab League was designed to be state-centered with very limited powers, and it stayed true to its character despite its remarkable growth in terms of institutions and policy agreements over the last 60 years. Article 7 not only removes any enforcement mechanisms²⁰, but it also obstructs unified agreement on important policies causing repeated postponements and delays.

In terms of institutions, several new councils were created including the Joint Defense Council²¹, the Economic and Social Council²², the Council for Arab Economic Unity²³, in addition to 12 ministerial councils for information, interior, justice, housing, transport, environment, communication, electricity, tourism, youth and sports, social affairs and health. Moreover, two important regional development funds were created: the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development (1967) and the Arab Monetary Fund (1976). Despite the positive contributions these funds have provided in terms of economic aid, their effect was within the state, not across, and it was project-based not target-oriented. It was more of a bilateral funding than multilateral cooperation.

Perhaps the most important institutional development has been the adoption of Arab Summits in 1964 as the highest decision making body in place of the Arab League Council, although this mechanism is not mentioned in the Charter nor in the Protocol. This shift highlighted the fact that Council was powerless in the face of continued bilateral disputes among Arab states, and that political agreement by the heads of states was the only way for agreements to move forward. However, this turned more into a curse rather than blessing as political disputes prevented the regular meetings of the Summits, and subsequently, important decisions were repeatedly deferred to next rounds for further consultations²⁴. Even agreement on where the Summit would be held became a subject for dispute²⁵.

In terms of policy agreements, there are several, such as the Cultural Treaty (1946), the Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement (1950), the Economic Unity Agreement (1957), the Arab Common Market (1965), the Strategy for Joint Arab Economic Action (1980), the Joint National Economic Action (1980), the Convention to Facilitate and Develop Trade Exchange among Arab States (1981), the Standard Convention for the Investment of Capital in the Arab States (1981), the Arab Charter on Human Rights (1994), the Arab Free Trade Area (1997) and the Arab Convention for the Combat of Terrorism (1998).

With this rich array of institutions and policy agreements, it is hard to imagine that inter-Arab trade has not surpassed 10% of total Arab foreign trade, except in 2002 and 2005, since the League’s establishment in 1945²⁶, that restrictions on the movement of people, goods and capital are still in place region-wide, that several violent conflicts have broken out between member states, and that threat perception in some Arab countries focus on other neighboring Arab states rather than on non-Arab states²⁷.

Following the crushing Arab defeat in 1967 and the oil boom in the Gulf states in the 1970s, Arab nationalism lost ground and the Arab system moved into further chaos during the 1980s. With Egypt’s suspension from the Arab League in March 1979 because of its peace treaty with Israel²⁸, the threat posed by the Iranian revolution of 1979 with its declared aim of exporting Islamic revolution to neighboring Arab countries, the break up of the Iraq-Iran war in 1980, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent intensification of Arab rivalries, a new trend emerged for cooperation - the establishment of regional groupings. Whether such groupings signaled the break-up of the Arab League system or a move towards greater cooperation between countries closely connected in accordance with the objectives of the League became a matter of dispute²⁹.

Three groupings were established in the 1980s: the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981³⁰, the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU)³¹ and the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) in 1989³². Of the three, the GCC has been the most successful. Building on a strong and similar oil economy, close social and cultural makeup, Islamic legal code and common security threats, the GCC established a small joint military force, a Free Trade Zone in 1983. It has plans to establish a common market and a custom union by the end of 2007 and a single currency by 2010. It has unified many of its legal codes including Personal Law, Civil Law and Penal Code³³. However, the GCC is not without disputes. Both Bahrain and Oman have unilaterally signed a free trade agreement with the US, causing further disputes within the GCC on the pace and depth of economic integration plans, possibly forcing a delay in implementation of those decisions.

The other two groupings have been less successful. The Arab Maghreb Union is stalled by the Moroccan Algerian dispute over Western Sahara’s independence, which Morocco accuses Algeria of supporting. Members have complied with the UN-imposed sanctions on Libya for its role in Lockerbie which pushed Libya to effectively end its participation in the AMU and turn towards Africa. Algeria went into a violent civil war for 10 years when the parliamentary elections of 1991 brought Islamists to power, but the results were annulled by the army. Mauritania experienced several coups. None of the objectives of the AMU were achieved. The Arab Cooperation Council barely completed a year before Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and brought the organization to a halt. Jordan sided with Iraq while Egypt supported Kuwait, effectively ending the Council which was dissolved in 1994. Unlike the GCC, membership in the AMU and the ACC was open to other Arab states.

The drama of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and its aftermath opened a new chapter in Arab vulnerabilities, and further manifested the inadequacy of the Arab League system. Not only has a member state of the League occupied another, but the League has also failed to mediate and avert the conflict, or compel Iraq to withdraw except through the help of an international force. The Arab League decision was even labeled illegal by some³⁴.

The Arab League was not designed or equipped to handle such complex political and economic issues, and has not developed the appropriate institutions and processes to respond effectively to such challenges. It fits perfectly the Federalist criticism of the Articles of Confederation as weak and ineffective.

Arab nationalism, as a centralist ideology aiming at creating one single unitary state, and the Arab League, as a very loose inter-governmental organization aiming at enhancing cooperation and coordination among Arab states have both failed to achieve the aims they have set for themselves. The Arab world, despite huge potential, continues to be weak, divided and underdeveloped. This failure has to do more with the unsuitability of these two models to the task at hand than the way they were implemented. This brings us to consider whether federalism could be a more suitable and successful alternative.

1 Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997).
2 Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Dan al-Afghan: A Political Biography (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972), p. 2.
3 Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, pp. 103-160.
4 Born in Aleppo, Syria, studied in Syria and Turkey, started his active public life writing in different newspapers, held many governmental posts and served several prison sentences for anti-Turkish writings. Fearing for his life, he fled to Cairo in 1899 where he published his two books in Arabic Characteristics of Tyranny and Umm al-Qura (Mother of the Cities) referring to an imaginary meeting in Mecca by representatives from all Islamic cities to discuss political reforms. He died in 1902 presumably from poison on the order of the Ottoman ruler.
5 Al-Kawakibi, “Umm al-Qura”, in Mohamed Jamal Tahan, The Complete Works of Al-Kawakibi (Beirut, Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1995), pp.265-411.
6 Ibn Khaldoun 1332 – 1406, a pioneer Arab historian, philosopher and sociologist.
7< Abu Khaldun Sati Al-Husari, What is Nationalism? (Beirut, Dar al-Ilm lil Malayeen, 1963), p. 57 (in Arabic).
8 Al-Husari, Arabism First (Beirut, Dar al-Ilm lil Malayeen, 1965), p. 149 (in Arabic).
9 Walid Khalidi, “Thinking the Unthinkable: A Sovereign Palestinian State”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 56, No, 4 (July 1978), p. 695.
10 Letters exchanged between Hussein, ruler of Mecca and McMahon, British High Commissioner in Cairo, known as Hussein-McMahon Correspondence.
11 Sykes Picot Agreement
12 Youssef Khoury, Arab Unity Projects 1913-1987 (Beirut, Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1988) (in Arabic).
13 Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War 1958-1964: A Study of Ideology in Politics (London, Oxford University Press, 1965).
14 Ahmed Gomaa, The Foundation of the League of Arab States: Wartime Diplomacy and Inter-Arab Politics, 1941-1945 (London, Longman, 1977), p. 103.
15 Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan (Jordan), Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
16 Article 2: The purpose of the League is to draw closer the relations between member States and co-ordinate their political activities with the aim of realizing a close collaboration between them, to safeguard their independence and sovereignty, and to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries.
17 Article 8: Each member-state shall respect the systems of government established in the other member-states and regard them as exclusive concerns of those states. Each shall pledge to abstain from any action calculated to change established systems of government.
18 Article 5: Any resort to force in order to resolve disputes between two or more member-states of the League is prohibited.
19 This is much toned down from the original Article 1 of the Alexandria Protocol stating that “In no case will the adoption of a foreign policy which may be prejudicial to the policy of the League or an individual member state be allowed” and prohibiting the conclusion of agreements which “contradict the text or spirit of the present dispositions”.
20 Article 7: The decisions of the Council taken by a unanimous vote shall be binding on all the member States of the League; those that are reached by a majority vote shall bind only those that accept them.
21 It was established in 1950 under the Arab League Council.
22 It was first established under the name of the Economic Council according to Article 8 of the Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement of 1950, later renamed to Economic and Social Council by the Arab League in 1977. It was entrusted with the supervision of the specialized ministerial committees.
23 It was created in 1964 to implement the Economic Unity Agreement of 1957, and it has helped establish 30 unions and federations for Arab industries, business, labour and services.
24 The latest example was the Tunisia Summit in 2004 in which important decisions on Arab League reforms were expected, but the Summit never took place because of political disputes. The Arab Court of Justice (Article 19 of the Charter) had been on the Council’s agenda for several decades, but no consensus was reached to create it.
25 Libya objected holding the Summit in Riyadh in 2007 because it was accused by the Royal Saudi family to have supported an earlier assassination attempt on its Crown Prince.
26 Arab Monetary Fund, Annual Economic Report 2006, p. 147.
27 James Leonard (et al.), National threat perceptions in the Middle East (New York, United Nations, 1995).
28 Egypt resumed its membership in 1987 and the headquarters moved back to Cairo from Tunisia in September 1990.
29 Article 9 of the Charter states that “the States of the Arab League that are desirous of establishing among themselves closer collaboration and stronger bonds than those provided for in the present Pact, may conclude among themselves whatever agreements they wish for this purpose”. See for example Khalid Sekkat, Regional integration among the Maghreb countries and free trade with the European Union (Cairo, Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran, and Turkey, 1995).
30 It is composed of the six Gulf states: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain.
31 It is composed of five states in North Africa: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.
32 It is composed of four states in the center of the Arab World: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen.
33 The Muscat Instrument for a Unified Personal Law was ratified in 1996, while the Kuwait Instrument for the Unified Civil Law and the Doha Instrument of the Unified Penal Code were ratified in 1997.
34 Article 6 states that in case of aggression “the Council shall determine the necessary measures to repel this aggression. Its decision shall be taken unanimously”. Libya argued that it had objected to the council decision to join in the liberation of Kuwait but its objection was ignored, and thus the council decision is illegal because it was not unanimous.