Arab Spring revolution at the Arab League
\nBy Jon Leyne – BBC News – 13 Novemeber, 2011<\/p>\n
For years the Arab League has been seen as a cosy club of Arab autocrats and dictators.<\/p>\n
Ministerial meeting followed summit followed emergency summit, all having no apparent impact on the lives of ordinary Arabs in this troubled region.<\/p>\n
But the Arab League headquarters are barely a couple of hundred metres from Tahrir Square, in central Cairo.<\/p>\n
And the effect of the protests there, which unseated former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, are still echoing round the marbled halls of the League.<\/p>\n
In March the League voted in support of a no-fly zone over Libya. The move led directly to a UN resolution and subsequent Nato intervention. Without the Arab League vote, that would not have been possible.<\/p>\n
Now in an almost equally dramatic step, the League has voted to suspend Syria from its work in response to the continuing violence in the country.<\/p>\n
That means one of the standard-bearers of Arab nationalism, the Syrian Arab Republic, is now excluded from the body committed to Arab unity.<\/p>\n
Members of the Syrian opposition – just the sort of activists whom the Arab League members happily ignored or repressed for years – are being invited to Arab League headquarters, for the League to help them co-ordinate their efforts.<\/p>\n
All of this is being pushed forward not by the traditional Arab leader, Egypt, but by tiny Qatar, whose prime minister is chairman of the ministerial committee dealing with Syria.<\/p>\n
The hard line towards Syria emanating from the Qatari capital, Doha, is almost equalled by the tough stand from neighbouring Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
The diplomatic map of the Middle East is being redrawn almost as quickly as governments and regimes are falling. …more<\/a><\/p>\n