A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Thursday, March 29, 2012

A Summit without Kings

Fewer than half of all Arab leaders are attending the Arab Summit in Baghdad. All the Gulf monarchs except for Kuwait failed to show, as did the Kings of Jordan and Morocco.  And note the irony in the previous sentence: except for Kuwait. Which, 21 years ago, was occupied by a rather different Iraq.

So the summit designed to mark the new Iraq's acceptance by the Arab world, isn't. The bloc of Sunni monarchies sent lower ranking figures. The Sunni jitters over Iran and conviction that Shi‘ite Iraq is a stalking horse for Iran is clearly showing.

1 comment:

David Mack said...

If the summit accomplishes nothing more than facilitating Iraq's return to the Arab world and detente between Iraq and Kuwait after over two decades of animosity, it will be positive. The Baghdad summits of 1978 and 1990 had great attendance, but they were real disasters for the region.