Arab League leaders are meeting in Baghdad this week, with efforts to finish the violence in Syria high on their agenda. The summit marks important milestones inside the Syria crisis, Iraq’s emergence from seven years of war, and a remarkable evolution inside the Arab League itself.
As Arab leaders were gathering, amateur video continued to come back out of Syria showing fresh government shelling of opposition strongholds. Stopping the violence in Syria is a key agenda item for the summit.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to the U.N.-Arab League envoy's peace plan, which demands a right away ceasefire.
With the govt crackdown at the Syrian opposition continuing, however, Western officials and experts suspect a delaying tactic other than a sincere change of policy. And so they don’t expect the Arab League meeting to make much difference. Syria won't attend the summit because it was expelled from the League, and says this may reject any new initiatives the meeting produces.
Possible fallout of leadership change
Speaking via Skype, Anthony Skinner, director of Middle East analysis on the Maplecroft risk assessment firm, said the change of League chairmanship from Qatar to Iraq may very well be a setback for efforts to force Assad to back off.
"Qatar was previously chairing the Arab League. It was equipped of authority. But now, obviously, this leadership role has transferred to Iraq. And from the point of view of Bashar al-Assad that's arguably a terrific thing. Al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, has taken a far softer approach,†said Skinner.
Still, the Arab League's effort to play an immense role inside the Syria conflict reflects its new position inside the wake of the Arab revolutions, and the coming of its new secretary general Nabil al-Araby.
New energy pervades Arab League
At London’s Center for Arab and Iranian Studies, director Alireza Nourizadeh said the League have been revitalized by the past year’s events.
"These types of Arab governments, by themselves, they don’t enjoy such respect and support inside the international community. However the Arab League isn't just talking for the governments. They're representing 'the people,' as they call it now. And it'll be handled more seriously," said Nourizadeh.
Iraqi leaders are also hoping the realm will see their country differently after this summit, especially Sunni leaders in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere - a number of whom are boycotting the summit attributable to suspicions about largely Shiite Iraq’s ties to Iran.
"They appear at this summit as some way of coming back to the Arab World. So it's a tremendous think about the way forward for Iraq,†said Nourizadeh.
The Arab League summit has many dimensions - including Iraq’s re-emergence as a regional player, the League's new activism and its efforts to finish the violence in Syria. But analysts say significant movement on any of these fronts could be difficult to accomplish.
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