The council of the Arab foreign ministers tried to walk on the hot Syrian sands during its last Cairo meeting. There was a desire – mainly from the part of the Secretary General, Nabil al-Arabi – to preserve the role of the League in settling the Syrian crisis. The ministers responded and stood in the middle: neither did they suspend Syria's membership at the League, which would have led to acknowledging the National Council as some overzealous ministers were calling for; nor did they abstain from interfering in what Damascus deems an “internal affair,” as Syria and all its allies in Iraq and Lebanon had wished for. This means that the Arab ministers are keen on following a different path than the one that they had followed during the confrontation of the Libyan intifada. The strange thing is that, at a time when they had tried to spare the Syrian revolution a slip towards the external interference (until now), it seems that Damascus is the one using this interference as a power card. The best proof to that is that the Syrian delegate to the League praised the Syrian and Chinese veto at the Security Council. This veto was criticized by the protestors in the Syrian cities and they thought it was a green light for the security forces to proceed with the killing of the protestors. But this Arab role will remain confined to the time limit that it had set for itself (15 days) and connected to the Syrian approval. This is because Damascus had dealt with the League council's previous position “as if it never was,” and then expressed “reservations” concerning the latest position of the council. Thus, Damascus is not likely to accept to meet with its opponents in a dialogue conference in Cairo or anywhere else, after having made all sorts of accusations against them, and after having called them traitors, and charged them of arming themselves with Israeli weapons. This is a new charge to be added to that of the “armed terrorist groups,” which is now part of the Syrian school book. On top of that, many members of the opposition have also grown to have reservations on holding a dialogue with a regime that they are calling to oust following the amount of blood that was spilled in the Syrian streets. Syria's stand concerning the Arab effort that aimed at playing the role of a mediator in its current crisis does not mean that Syria opposes the League's role in solving internal crises in the Arab countries in general. It only opposes this role when it does not fit its own interests. History is a witness to that Damascus has agreed, and even worked, through many crises lived by the Arabs in the past decades, to obtain an Arab cover from the League in order to assist it in implementing its own policies, many of which were based on interfering in other countries' affairs including Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq. This brings to mind the cover that the Arab summits provided for Syria to interfere in the Lebanese war. Damascus never thought of that war as “an internal Lebanese affair.” Then Syria flipped against the Arab roles and used the resolutions related to settling the Lebanese crisis and to the “Arab deterrence forces” (practically the Syrian forces) in its own way all the while disregarding the real Arab stand and the Arab resolutions related to Syria's role in this country. Furthermore, the Syrian leadership, under President Hafez al-Assad, voted for the Arab resolution that condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and that set the road for liberating it. Damascus' approval of that foreign interference in the affairs of its neighbor and Baathist brother was only given because the price of that approval was ready. Syria's current ally, General Michel Aoun, might remember that very well. The man is credited for his excellent military and strategic decisions. Damascus' current rejection to the Arab solution will lead to the fall of this solution and will thus push the Arabs to find other ways out in order to save the lives of the Syrian people who are being killed on a daily basis. The talk about a “conspiracy” against Syria and the reiteration of the accusations against the “armed gangs” cannot be taken seriously at a time when Damascus is slamming the door in the face of the international humanitarian organizations and the neutral media outlets wishing to double-check these accusations.
