The All-Arab Army?

Why the Arab League's New Force Spells Trouble

L ast week, Sharm el-Sheikh hosted the 26th Arab League summit. It ended with a
bang. In the final communiqué, the organization of 22 Arab states announced the
establishment of a "unified Arab force" to address regional security challenges.

At first glance, the Arab League’s decision seems laudable. Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi hailed the decision as a historic step to fight extremism and "to protect Arab
national security." Arab League General Secretary Nabil Elaraby celebrated the resolution
as a watershed given the "unprecedented unrest and threats endured by the Arab world,"
and U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter endorsed the plan as "a good thing." The Saudi
pro-government daily al-Riyadheven proclaimed the rebirth of the Arab League as a
“resurrected breathing, speaking, acting body."

However, the envisioned Arab League military force would have severe negative
repercussions for sectarian relations in the greater Middle East. After all, the announcement
was made as a Saudi-led military force continued to bombard alleged Iranian-backed Shia
insurgents in Yemen and as Western negotiators raced to finalize a framework nuclear
agreement with Iran.
A Saudi soldier loads ammunition at his position along Saudi Arabia's border with Yemen April
6, 2015. (Faisal Al Nasser / Reuters)

Escalating tensions with Iran and the unprecedented rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and
al-Sham did energize the Arab League. But some skepticism is in order about the new
force’s ability to serve as a pillar of regional stability.

So far, details of the proposed Arab force remain vague. The summit formally requested
participating nations’ chiefs of staff to draft a comprehensive plan to be presented to the
Arab League's Joint Defense Council within three months. Until then, the scope and
character of the envisioned force can be assessed only through press statements. Officials
have described it as comprising up to 40,000 elite troops, supported by naval and air
capabilities. Saudi Arabia is expected to provide most of the funding, and Egypt is likely
to contribute the bulk of the personnel. Other Arab countries, such as Jordan, the United
Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, will make smaller contributions. The headquarters will
probably be in Riyadh or Cairo.

In an article on ForeignAffairs.com a year ago, I wrote about the Arab League’s

diminishing role in regional politics. I argued that the Arab League needed to “transform
from an ineffective forum for debate into a venue for genuine decision-making." At the
time, I expressed some hope that the ongoing disaster in Syria would “do for the Arab
League what the Rwanda genocide did for the African Union.” In 2004, spurred by the
humanitarian disaster, the African Union had parted from its principle of nonintervention
and state sovereignty by establishing a 15-member Peace and Security Council for the
“prevention, management and resolution of conflicts.”

In a sense, escalating tensions with Iran and the unprecedented rise of the Islamic State of
Iraq and al-Sham did energize the Arab League. But some skepticism is in order about the
new force’s ability to serve as a pillar of regional stability.

Essentially, last week’s announcement resulted in the factual exclusion of Shia Arabs from
Mesopotamia to the Levant from the heart of the organization, and has thus greatly
increased polarization within the Arab world. As a consequence, the Arab League might
become more effective, but it will certainly become less comprehensive and inclusive.
Action will come at the expense of division.

Already, the cracks are plain to see. The Arab summit based its call for new force on the
Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation agreement, signed by the founding members of
the Arab League in June 1950. Confronted with defeat in Israel’s War of Independence,
the signatory states pledged "to draw up plans of joint defense." The implicit target was the
newly founded Jewish state, and Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen
raised no formal objection, although they never followed up with significant concrete steps.

A member of the Egyptian Republican Guard signals ahead of the Arab Summit in Sharm el-
Sheikh, March 28, 2015. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters)
Today is a different game. Damascus was already suspended from the Arab League as of
the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and thus could not object to the proposal, but both
Beirut and Baghdad voiced serious reservations. That is unsurprising, given that both
countries are home to significant Shia populations and powerful Shia political parties.
Thus, on the final day of the summit, General Secretary Elaraby was obliged to announce
Iraqi objections "due to the lack of preliminary dialogue about the initiative." Only shortly
afterward, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraqi minister of foreign affairs, warned of “Arab-Arab
conflict” and the opening of “a new page of war,” referencing the intervention of Saudi
King Salman in Yemen. Similarly, the government of Lebanon urged the Arab League to
carry out only “unanimous Arab decisions,” which echoed Hezbollah’s earlier criticisms
of the intervention in Yemen as "unjust aggression."

The Arab League does require unanimity for binding decisions, so supporters of the joint
Arab force were forced to label contributions as voluntary. As a consequence, any future
joint Arab force under the umbrella of the Arab League is likely to look very much like the
coalition of Sunni states currently engaged in Yemen. Thus, instead of becoming a forum
for pan-Arab unity, the force may very well transform the Arab League into a tool of Sunni
sectarianism.

That is, if the force ever becomes a reality. Even among Sunni states, decadelong tensions
have hardly been resolved. Certainly, a rapprochement between Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi
Arabia is noticeable. For years, they had remained at odds over Qatar’s support of the
Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt withdrew its envoy from Doha in January 2014, and only last
week, the Qatari ambassador returned to Cairo. On the one hand, the closing of Sunni ranks
in Yemen could prove to be a lasting anti-Iranian front between the different Sunni states.
On the other hand, the question of how best to act in Libya, Syria, and the areas under de
facto ISIS control in Iraq, for instance, will remain hard to answer with one common voice.

And that isn’t even accounting for the political difficulties in pooling sovereignty in the
sacrosanct field of Arab security apparatuses. Given the weak track record of Arab
cooperation even on less controversial issues, setting up comprehensive and formalized
hierarchical military structures will be a substantial political challenge. Consider the track
record of military and security cooperation of the Arab League’s northern neighbor: the
European Union. Despite comprehensive political integration including a common market,
a common currency, and myriad other institutions, the European Union still regularly
struggles to find a common voice on foreign and security issues. That is not, however, for
lack of trying; the very notion of a joint European military predates even the founding of
the European Community. Winston Churchill called upon the Council of Europe in 1950
to create “a European army under a unified command," a call echoed two months laterby
French Premier René Pleven. More recently, similar plans resurfaced in calls from EU
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to set up “a joint EU army.”

No such institution has ever materialized. Although member states have enlisted EU “battle
groups” for humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, these forces have never been
deployed. The reason: a common European military would have to be the result of a
common European foreign policy, not its initiator. Imagine how much greater the
challenges will be for the Arab League.

Against this backdrop, the Sharm el-Sheikh summit appears not so much a breakthrough
or a breakdown but, rather, a public celebration of sectarian confrontation against Shia
Arab communities and Iran. Although the establishment of a truly representative Arab
force operating under the auspices of a reformed and comprehensive Arab League and in
accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter would be a welcome addition
to the region, the suggested “unified Arab force” is not. Such an approach might be helpful
in glossing over underlying tensions among Sunni states, but it has the potential to weaken
the Arab League as a whole and to fuel already broiling Arab-Iranian tensions. Just like his
role model Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sisi concluded his summit remarks by exclaiming “long
live the Arab nation” three times. In the new Arab League, however, the Arab nation seems
to only extend to Sunnis. Welcome, then, to the Sunni League.