Arab Unity Writ Large

What more distinguishes Arab Muslim countries than their fractiousness? Their incapacity to get along, to agree on much of anything. Their culture of suspicion and distrust leading to accusations and conflict is legendary; so it has been, so it appears it will always be. At the latest Arab League meeting held primarily to discuss the situation in Syria, the divisions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar were front and center.

Saudi Arabia is in full support of the Sunni Syrian rebels and their jihadi counterparts doing their utmost, pouring in from Libya and Algeria and Iraq to complement the Free Syrian Army, itself fractured and comprised of as many disparate militias as in Libya. To them Saudi largesse provides the latest in arms and munitions. Qatar, on the other hand, has aligned itself with Iran, and is providing funding for arms for the Syrian regime.

Not so front and center was the additional meeting between the Saudi and Qatari representatives taking place in a chamber excluding the bulk of the Arab League representatives following the main theatre, when voices were raised in accusation and counter-accusations and blows rained down from one to the other in a violent confrontation that equalled in passion if not in destructive force what is occurring in Syria itself.

At the meeting in Doha, Syrian opposition figures representing the Syrian National Coalition were invited to take their place as the Arab League's newly-legitimized Syrian authority in place of the suspended al-Assad regime. The newly elected Ghassan Hitto as prime minister of the transitional interim government has been rejected forcefully by the Free Syrian Army leader, along with other opposition leaders.

So much for cohesion and cooperation.

Leader Mouaz al-Khatib, who resigned from his post in indignant criticism of the international community for not responding adequately and forcefully to the situation in Syria, by arming the rebels with advanced weaponry, by agreeing that NATO must intervene as it did in Libya, has sighed that the SNC is unwilling to accept his resignation, leaving him the option to reverse his impassioned decision.

The Arab League unequivocally endorsed the "right of each state" to provide the Syrian people and the rebel Free Syrian Army with "all necessary means to ... defend themselves, including military means". Interesting. What has taken them so long? Why is the Arab League, with money to burn and in possession of the most advanced military technology with standing armies to use them effectively, not offering the practical assistance to the rebels that they insist must come from the West?

For his part, Bashar al-Assad has taken to appealing to the BRICS group, newly influential for their emerging economic status and ripe for appeal to their collective conscience. A leader of one country reaching out to the leaders of Russia, India, China, Brazil and South Africa. As a balancing mechanism to the choices of the European Union, the United States and the United Nations.