Amr Moussa strives to rescue the second Baathist regime

BAGHDAD - Sami Orfali

January/February 2006

While Lebanese figures were falling one after another, the Secretary-General of the Arab League came forward with an initiative that he described should rectify the situation: Control the freedom of the Lebanese press and its criticism of the Syrian regime.

Amr Moussa, who shuttled between Beirut and Damascus to sell his idea, said that should the Lebanese newspapers stop their offensive against the Syrian Baathist rule, tension between the two countries should recede.

Moussa failed to notice that his visit implicitly incriminated the Syrian regime. First, his initiative came right after the assassination of Gebran Tueni. The timing suggests that Tueni was the victim of the tense Syrian-Lebanese relations. Second, by taking his initiative to Syria, he implicitly suggested that Syria stood behind the killings.

But Moussa was far from implicating the Syrian regime. On the contrary, he was striving to thwart some international pressure on Syria’s Baath. In his capacity as the leader of one of the most failing Arab organizations ever, Moussa’s history is full of attempts at defending dictatorships.

During the standoff between the US and the Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Baathist regime, Moussa shuttled extensively in an attempt to find a way out for the doomed Iraqi dictator, just like his initiatives between Lebanon and Syria.

Moussa was not only a shuttling during the countdown to war on Iraq. He is known among Iraqis for being a permanent guest in Baghdad prior to the downfall of the regime in 2003.

Inside information has it that Moussa, like many other Arab figures including the son of Lebanon’s president Emile Emile Lahoud and former Beirut MP Najah Wakim, was on Saddam’s payroll. The difference between Moussa and other Arab leaders was that Moussa was treated with further kindness. The Saddam regime paid Moussa in cash in order to save him the hassle of having to find customers for oil barrels with which Saddam used to buy his Arab cronies.

To accusations of his pro-Saddam bias, Moussa said that in his capacity as the Arab league leader, it was his duty to try to save “the people of Iraq.” Yet the people of Iraq was important to Moussa only when the regime was threatened.

After the downfall of the Saddam Hussein regime in April 2003 and the consequent chaos, Moussa never found it necessary “to try to save the people of Iraq.” His first visit to post-Saddam Iraq came in late 2005, more than two years after the downfall of the regime and the start of chaos.

Mr. Moussa might believe that people have short-term memories only. But that is not true. In the exclusive picture that Alternatives publishes in this issue, Moussa is shown sitting between former Saddam’s Foreign Minister Naji Sabri (to the left) and Saddam’s confident and personal assistant Abd Hmoud. While being served, Moussa holds his cigar and shares a laugh with the Iraqi Baathist oppressors.

Perhaps in the same manner that he strived to “save “ the Iraqi Baathist regime in Iraq, Moussa today tried hard to “save” what is left of the most fascist party the Arab world has ever witnessed, the Syrian Baath.

All of this, we might assume, falls under the banner of Arabism and the joint destiny of the Arab peoples. From Baghdad to the people of Lebanon we say: May you be saved from the oppression of the Syrian Baath and hypocrisy of Amr Moussa.