The Arab League’s proposed Joint Arab Force looks likely to be used to intervene in the failed states in the Middle East, thus backing the important agenda of the majority surviving Arab powers to help restore working national governments in the current failed states and stop the slide into increasing anarchy.
This work has started with a series of different coalitions that have been adapted to the particular circumstances of the different countries where Arab forces are engaged. The new force will probably not replace the ad hoc coalition that has been assembled to fight Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Iraq as its membership reflects the complicated political balancing that includes some Arab states in the Iraq action but not others. It will probably not replace the Qatari and Saudi efforts to support the US in rebuilding the secular Syrian rebels.
But the new joint force could supplement the ad hoc coalition in Yemen fighting the Al Houthi rebels, as the backers of the joint force all agree that the Al Houthis need to be stopped. This week’s Arab summit in Sharm Al Shaikh defined the purpose of the new joint Arab defence force as to be deployed at the request of any Arab nation facing a national security threat and that it would also be used to combat terrorist groups.
The Joint force was not announced by the Arab League Secretary-General, Nabeel Al Arabi, but by the host, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, who used his closing address to tell the world that the force would be set up. In his opening statement at the conference, Al Sissi had spoken of the need to fight terrorism in Libya and to arm the Libyan government, which has been interpreted as a hint to where the force might get its first deployment orders.
The details of the force remain unclear, but the structure and operational mechanism will be worked out by a high-level panel under the supervision of Arab chiefs-of-staff. But it does seem that it would be made of troops permanently assigned to the Joint force who would train together as a coherent unit. This would make it far more effective than if it was made up from units from different countries who met annually to train together.
Egyptian military and security officials have said that the force would be substantial and would consist of up to 40,000 elite troops backed by jet fighters, warships and light armour and would be based in either Cairo or Riyadh. Other commentators said it would be headquartered in Saudi Arabia.
Al Arabi later announced that the chiefs-of-staff would meet within a month and would have an additional three months to work out the details before presenting their proposal to a meeting of the Arab League’s Joint Defence Council. It is fortunate that the executive triumvirate of the Arab League’s former, present and next chairs (Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco) are all Sunni powers committed to the ideals of the new force.
The new Arab force is being hailed as a great example of the Arab world finally taking action to defend itself and its ideals. But it will have to work hard to avoid the fate of the previous Arab force that got sucked into its local conflict with miserable results. It is easily forgotten that the Lebanese civil war had led the Arab League to form the Arab Deterrent Force in 1976 at the Arab Summit in Riyadh from a ‘token’ force into the Arab Deterrent Force of 30,000 troops of which 25,000 were Syrian.
But the Arab Deterrent Force had an unhappy legacy as by 1979, the Sudanese, Saudi, Libyan and UAE troops departed, leaving only the Syrians in place, who remained in Lebanon after their mandate expired and became the Syrian occupation that continued till 2005.
The new force is likely to be focused on restoring governments in countries that are wracked by civil war. It is both an expression of a new Arab determination to sort out the region’s issues themselves matched by a new sense that relying in particular on the Americans to come to the rescue will not work.
The post-Iraq faltering American military commitment to the region has led to Washington’s refusal to act over the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its own people, America’s minimal commitment in Iraq and the Obama administration’s refusal to support action in Libya, which have all helped build a welcome determination that the Arabs have to be able to act on their own.
In addition to restoring order, the immediate context of the new Joint force is to resist Iranian expansionism and some of the possible actions may be designed to reinforce an Arab solution for Arab countries. But one glaring case where the new force will not be used is the Arab world’s longest struggle in Palestine. It is certain that the new force will not be directed to march into occupied Jerusalem, regardless of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory. There are limits to the new Arab activism.