Unified Arab force: A triple oxymoron

When Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi called March 9 for the creation of a "unified Arab force" to battle the spread of extremist groups, he actually used a rare figure of speech: A triple oxymoron.

Unified?

The current relationship system between Arab countries was institutionalized in the 1970s, with later reforms, to become "more consistent with state sovereignty and better able to accommodate the Arab states' separate identities" compared to the past.

It was thought in the aftermath of the Arab Spring that the revolutions could lead to a more super-national Arabism, bringing individual states together.

The Arab world, however, has rarely been as fragmented as today, not only in the relationships between states in the region, but also within each country itself.

Currently, Arab states cannot agree with each other even on the simplest of policy issues, like whether the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization or not.

A deeper democratization drive that was hoped to follow the revolutions of the Arab Spring has largely failed, except perhaps in Tunisia, as tribalism sentiments still last in each country, undermining a potential for democratic super-nationalism.

Libya, Yemen and Somalia have collapsed into failed states, the Maghreb has become an Al-Qaeda breeding ground, a foreign-fuelled civil war has almost destroyed Syria and destabilized Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, while Egypt has turned back to authoritarianism, the divided Sudan is being destroyed on both sides now, the Gulf states keep drowning any hope of democracy by pumping in petrodollars and Palestine remains as the neverland broken up by its own factions, as well as Israel.

Neither democratic movements nor authoritarian...