THE ARAB WORLD
Arab Nations Brace for an Upheaval From a War in Iraq
By SUSAN SACHS
[C] AIRO, March 15 ? With varying degrees of fear and resignation, Arabs and their leaders are waiting for the earthquake that they believe a war on Iraq will create in their region.
Shock waves from the Persian Gulf war in 1991 produced the Madrid peace conference and a breakthrough in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Small but persistent reform movements sprang up to push for more open governance. Iraq became less of a threat to its neighbors and less of a force in inter-Arab politics.
That war raised hopes. But many in the region have since soured on the idea that shaking up the region's established order may bring positive changes.
The American military bases that were established in Saudi Arabia as a result of the war gave Muslim militants like Osama bin Laden a pretext for attacking the Saudi rulers. Hopes for an Arab-Israeli peace have evaporated, fueling more Islamic militancy. Anger at the United States, both for its support of Israel and its defense of autocratic Arab rulers, has become widespread.
The official Arab stance ? the only common position that the fractious leaders could agree upon ? opposes a war on Iraq, but calls on it to comply with United Nations resolutions.
Most Arab leaders have made it clear that they would prefer to see Saddam Hussein relinquish power. But they are all apprehensive about the Bush administration's proclaimed mission to bring democracy to the Arab world, starting with Iraq.
Arab public opinion appears overwhelmingly opposed to a war on Iraq. Although Mr. Hussein was once lionized as the potential liberator of Palestinians, there has been almost no support expressed this time for him or his government.
But the Palestinian uprising, followed closely in the region, remains the benchmark for Arab views about the United States. Anti-American feelings have replaced pan-Arab nationalism as an ideology that binds Arabs of different political views. No other ideology has truly replaced it, although hostility to the United States and its support for Israel now runs deep enough in the region to be seen as a new dogma that binds disparate Arab groups.
For most Arab leaders, an American-led war, with or without United Nations backing, carries great political risks.
They fear that images of civilian casualties in Iraq could inflame public opinion and create a strong reaction against their own governments. They also fear a resurgence of terrorism in their own countries, especially if the United States is seen to be an occupier of Iraq after a war.
Here are the positions of the major Arab nations in the Middle East.
SAUDI ARABIA The Saudi leadership has worried openly about the possibility that Iraq might shatter along ethnic and religious lines as a result of a war, with a push for power by the Iraqi Shiite Muslim majority.
Such an outcome could directly aggravate Saudi Arabia's own brittle relations with its Shiite minority.
"Iraq is one of these states whose independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity should be maintained," Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said last week.
The presence of American troops and an air base in Saudi Arabia also remains extremely troublesome for the Saudi leaders.
KUWAIT Liberated from Iraqi invasion forces 12 years ago by an American-led coalition, Kuwait has turned over one-third of its territory to the American forces preparing for an attack on Iraq.
While many Kuwaitis say they would rather not experience another war, they also hold no illusions about Mr. Hussein. The Kuwaiti leadership has prepared for hostilities. The state oil company said it had raised production to compensate for any interruption in world oil supplies and had prepared contingency plans to shut some vulnerable oil fields near the Iraqi border.
EGYPT President Hosni Mubarak has warned that another war on Iraq will devastate the region, incite unrest and severely damage the Arab nations' faltering economies. He has, however, pointedly blamed Iraq for the crisis and said a deadline should be set for its compliance with the United Nations. State-controlled newspapers have been publishing articles and sharply worded editorials criticizing Mr. Hussein.
Officials in Cairo have told the United States that they want compensation for the economic losses they expect to suffer from a war ? as much as $6 billion, by some estimates.
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