The Arab Summit in Baghdad reflected the reality of the new Arab World. It is a world that stands at a critical phase, amid a Spring in which political Islam has bloomed, between Salafism with no experience in politics and rule, especially in multi-confessional countries, and fundamentalism experienced in politics for decades but which has never ruled (the Muslim Brotherhood). As for the Islamist political parties in power in Iraq (the Dawa Party, its allies and those who oppose it), they have returned to a historical conflict that modern state institutions (the parliament, the presidency and the constitution) have been unable to separate from its ideological background, which threatens Mesopotamia with division on confessional and ethnic bases. Those coming to Baghdad from Tunisia, Libya and Morocco have brought with them their victories and their slogans – slogans that have replaced the slogans of Arabism and Arab unity, class struggle, the struggle between Right and Left, and between progressivism and reactionary conservatism, etc… all of them notions that prevailed until the 1980s, and were considered the standard of modernity and of belonging to the present age. All of this was absent at the summit. And the new has not yet appeared. In other words, the tolerant Arabism that is accepting of ethnic and religious minorities is not yet a reality, despite a Kurdish Talabani assuming the presidency, and an also Kurdish Zebari endeavoring to promote it and speak in its name. The region is wavering between an old Arab order that is collapsing and a new one that has not yet taken shape. This is why Lebanese President Michel Suleiman's speech seemed removed from reality, as it was the only one that spoke of Arabism and Nationalism. He said that he saw “the utmost need to commit to unifying Nationalist thought, to true democratic Arabism, and to the rules of governance based on citizenship and equality, with the necessity of preserving diversity within unity in pluralistic societies. And this requires applying democracy in a manner that would allow the preservation of the diverse human constituents of Arabism, as represented by the various sects and confessions that exist in Arab lands…” Suleiman's call, based on fear for minorities, and on the experience of civil wars that have not finished unfolding, seemed like an old dream that would be difficult to fulfill. Indeed, Arabism as we knew it is unlikely to renew itself, and there are many indications of this. Suffice it to look at the changes it has gone through in Baathist Iraq and Syria. In Iraq it has become a label applied to a particular sect, and in Syria it is being torn apart by confessional conflict. Perhaps the Arab Summit's untraditional decisions, i.e. those unconnected to the Palestinian issue and to the development of the Arab League, represent the best expression of this reality. Those convened in Baghdad decided that the Syrian crisis had become an international one, and that Kofi Annan was a schizophrenic “Arab and international” envoy. The Arabs attended the Baghdad Summit, but Arabism was absent.
