Dyer: Arab League gets tough with Syria

Gwynne Dyer, a journalist based in London, is the author of "Future Tense: The Coming World Order."

For most of its 66-year history, the Arab League was a powerless organization, dominated by autocratic regimes that made sure it never criticized their lies and crimes. But suddenly, this year, it woke up and changed sides.

In March, the Arab League suspended Libya's membership because of dictator Moammar Gadhafi's brutal attempts to suppress revolution, and voted to back a no-fly zone in Libya.

This weekend, the Arab League acted again, suspending Syria's membership because President Bashar Assad has not carried out promises to end violence against Syrian civilians (an estimated 3,500 killed so far), pull his army off the streets, release thousands of recently imprisoned protesters or open a dialogue with the opposition. The suspension is supposed to take effect today, as the league meets in Morocco.

On Monday, King Abdullah of Jordan finally said aloud what almost every other Arab leader must be thinking: "If Bashar [Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down."

This is particularly striking coming from Abdullah, because the two men are not just neighbors. They both came to power in 1999-2000, replacing fathers who had ruled over their countries for decades, and they were both originally painted as reformers. While Assad is not technically a king, he is equally the product of a dynasty -- and here is his closest counterpart in the Arab world publicly giving up on him.

Abdullah added that on his way out, Assad should "create an ability to reach out and start a new phase of Syrian political life." Decoded, that means Syria's problems cannot be ended just by changing horses. The whole Baathist regime -- and the near monopoly of power by the Alawite minority that underpins it -- has to go, too.

A year ago, nobody would have believed that 18 of the 22 members of the Arab League would vote, in effect, for the peaceful removal of the oppressive Syrian regime, or that the Jordanian king would dare to be so frank about his neighbor's problems and options. What has wrought this miracle?

It would be nice to say that the rapid and largely nonviolent spread of democracy in the Arab world has brought enlightenment even to the most deeply entrenched authoritarian regimes, but it wouldn't be true. Only three of the 22 Arab League members (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya) have actually had democratic revolutions, and their example hasn't transformed the attitudes of all the other members.

No, what drives this response is mostly fear.

The Arab League said nothing when Assad's father slaughtered up to 40,000 Syrians while putting down a revolt in the city of Hama in 1982, but his son's brutality is unacceptable today. Arab leaders can no longer ignore mass killings. Some of them would like to, but Arabic-language mass media have made it impossible. Everybody knows what's going on.

Moreover, none of the other big countries of the Arab east -- Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon -- are very far from Syria. The longer the struggle there goes on, the likelier it is to topple over into sectarian war and ethnic cleansing. The neighbors are rightly terrified that the sectarian violence might then spill over into their own countries. So the sooner Assad leaves office, the better.

Finally, there is the remarkable role being played by Qatar, the mouse that roared. It is one of the smallest Arab states, but its ruler, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has been both brave and farsighted. It was he who gave Al-Jazeera television a home -- and substantial subsidies. It was Qatar that took the lead in persuading the Arab League to suspend Gadhafi's regime in March, and then sent planes and military advisers to assist the pro-democracy revolt in Libya. And it is Qatar again, in the form of Prime Minister Hamad Bin Jasim Bin Jaber al-Thani, that pushed the league into suspending Syria this weekend.

Whether that will actually produce the desired result in Syria remains to be seen. But at least the Arab leaders are trying.