Obviously Arab leagues are still odd with US over Egypt's General Sisi vs Morsi, the response is not surprise here.
Arab Allies Withhold Public Support for U.S. Strike on Syria
August 27 2013
The U.S. is moving toward possible military strikes against Syria without the public support of any major Arab ally, reflecting broad unease in the region about another Western military intervention.
The lack of public endorsement from Arab governments, even from Saudi Arabia and other countries that have helped arm, train and fund rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leaves the West with little political cover regionally should any Western-led attack go badly.
Arab League delegates on Tuesday urged the United Nations Security Council, rather than the West, to take "deterrent" action against Syria to prevent a repeat of alleged chemical attacks on Aug. 21 in the suburbs of Damascus. In Cairo, Egypt Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy appeared to side against intervention, saying on Tuesday, "The solution for Syria must be diplomatic, not militaristic."
While senior Saudi officials have been urging the U.S. and others behind the scenes to support tougher action in Syria, Arab leaders for more than a year have publicly maintained that any international military action there should be sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, where Russia and China have blocked action.
In an atmosphere poisoned by persistent violence in Iraq 10 years after the U.S. invasion there, and by top-level disputes between the U.S. and its Mideast allies over the international response to revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere, the Arab world at large is split over whether the West should intervene.
"Don't expect a big cheer from us," said AbdulKhaleq Abdullah, a political-science professor in Dubai, of the likely response from the region.
"If the results are fine, and the damage is very limited, I think that is gonna be a good sign. Maybe, 'Wow, give America a D.' "
Turkey, in a newspaper interview by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu published Monday, became the first major Muslim Middle East ally of the U.S. to announce it would join an international military coalition against Syria, even without advance U.N. approval.
The
weakest Arab states, Lebanon and Jordan, particularly fear possible retaliation and a further deluge of Syrian refugees in the event of a Syria strike.
In June, after a U.S. finding that Syrian government forces had used chemical weapons, U.S. military officials decided to keep fighter jets and Patriot missile batteries in Jordan.
A meeting of U.S., Saudi, and other Western and regional top military officials on Sunday and Monday was devoted mainly to reassuring Jordan of protection in the event of any disruption following a strike on neighboring Syria, as well as to try to plot responses to any further alleged use of chemical weapons by Syria, according to officials in Jordan and in the Gulf familiar with the proceedings.
In Jordan, where a U.S.- and Saudi-backed effort is helping train Syrian rebels, Jordanian King Abdullah publicly called for peaceful settlement. Jordanian officials have repeated that line over the past week.
Jordan already has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria. Its fear is being "dragged into retaliation and war," a senior Jordanian official said.
Saudi Arabia—for more than a year the strongest advocate of international action on Syria—has limited its public response to last week's alleged chemical attack to statements by Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal calling for unspecified, decisive action under the U.N.
A Saudi cabinet statement repeated that position Monday night, after the U.S. made clear it was considering a military strike on Syria.
"Not yet," a Saudi government spokesman said, when asked if the Saudi government had said whether it would support a military strike on Syria.
In principle, and in private, Saudi Arabia probably "would support any act to stop that war, or stop the use of gas," said Anwar Eshki, a former adviser to Saudi Arabia's council of ministers, or cabinet, and the head of a Saudi-based strategic research center. Mr. Eshki was referring to the use of poison gas.
Arab leaders, however, for regional political reasons, would think twice before saying in public that they back a Western-led attack on an Arab country, said Mr. Abdullah, the political-science professor at Emirates University in Dubai.
Overall in the Arab world, "People would just look the other way, and hopefully it is brief and surgical and doesn't extend too far," Mr. Abdullah said.
And if any intervention went wrong? "A big backlash, probably," he predicted.
That response could be guided in part by how the Arab leadership publicly addresses the issue. "There has been no preparation done of Gulf audiences by leaders," that would help reconcile Gulf and other Arab populations to an international military strike on Syria, said Michael Stephens, a Middle East analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar.
Many Arabs describe themselves as divided—wishing for action that would stop the killing in Syria, but not trusting the U.S. to do it right.
"Sometimes I do wish they would interfere, and sometimes I fear the same things that happened in Iraq will happen there. It's a matter of trust, and now we don't trust anyone," said a Jordanian university professor working in Saudi Arabia, leaving a mosque set inside a sprawling Riyadh shopping mall after sunset prayers Monday night.
—Reem Abdellatif in Cairo contributed to this article.
