Iraq violence overshadows Syria

Violence in Iraq ahead of an Arab League summit scheduled for the end of March has managed to surpass events in Syria in some Arab dailies Wednesday.

Liberal daily Al-Hayat reports that over 300 Iraqis were killed and injured Tuesday as the government tried to assert its security control over the country. A series of car bombs exploded in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, killing mostly civilians, the daily reports.

Iraqi security forces tell Al-Hayat that preparations for the summit on March 29 are continuing as usual, and that Arab leaders will not cancel their participation. The enormous sum of 1 billion dollars was earmarked to prepare Baghdad for the summit, which is intended to bring Iraq back into the Arab fold after 20 years of practical absence.

“A bloody day in Iraq casts its shadows on the summit,” reads the headline of Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat. A photo of shattered cars near the foreign ministry in Baghdad, targeted in Tuesday’s bombing, accompanies the report. The daily reports over 200 dead and injured, showing the level of inaccuracy in estimating the carnage.

Meanwhile, Masoud Barazani, president of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, accuses Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki of dragging the country towards dictatorship, Dubai-based news channel Al-Arabiya reports. Barazani is especially troubled by the fact that Maliki fills various security positions, including general commander of the armed forces, minister of defense, and interior minister.

Barazani tacitly threatened Kurdish secession by saying that if the situation is not remedied soon, Kurds will soon “make their final decision.”

Editorials condemn Toulouse massacre

A day after Arab news widely reported the massacre of four Jews in a Toulouse school, come the editorials.

In an editorial titled “the Toulouse massacre,” Randa Taqi A-Din writes in Al-Hayat that “this despicable criminal act… cannot be explained in any way but through the murderer’s wish to sow violence and terror.”

She adds that whether the perpetrator comes from the extreme right of Jihadist circles, the crime is not anti-Semitic but rather “a crime against humanity,” seeing as Muslim soldiers were likely killed by the same man.

“Whoever perpetrates such crimes in the name of Islam is a murderer and heathen. Many French of Arab origin hope that the murderer does not belong to any Islamic organization, for this would ruin the image of Islam and Arabs in France.”

In A-Sharq Al-Awsat, columnist Imad A-Din Adib ties violence against Jews in France to violence against Arabs, dating such hate crimes back to the 1960s.

“We pray to God that the perpetrator is not Arab or Muslim with connections to the strong North African community in France,” writes Adib. He explains that France is going through a phase of hostility towards Arab immigrants as part of the presidential election campaign. Immigrants are being accused of crime and unemployment, and violence against them could be incited if the murderer was found to be Arab or Muslim.

“The Jewish community in France comprises 550,000 people, as opposed to 4 million North Africans. But the Jewish influence in the fields of money, commerce, arts and the media is powerful, and exceeds tenfold the quantitative influence of the North African voice,” writes Adib.

Russia begins to turn on Syria

A statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accusing Assad of making many mistakes is being widely reported in Arab media as proof that Russia is starting to change its attitude toward Syria.

Al-Hayat stresses Russia’s insistence that a new UN Security Council resolution not include a warning toward Assad’s government or a call on him to step down. Images in A-Sharq Al-Awsat and Al-Hayat display Syrian opposition fighters fighting house to house in Damascus.

A-Sharq Al-Awsat columnist Adel Tarifi compares the Assad email leak to letters sent by Joseph Stalin to his foreign minister Molotov during the 1920s and 1930s, published posthumously in 1995.

He writes that the Assad leaks are unusual in that “for the first time, the world can witness the thinking of a president facing a popular uprising using excessive force.”

Tarifi comments that Assad’s security correspondence reveals a president dealing coolly with the uprising, unworried that his regime may fall.

Muhammad Krishan writes in an editorial titled “Annan’s impossible mission” in the hard-line daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi that Annan is doomed to fail in bringing calm to Syria not because he is an untalented diplomat, but because the violence has already gone too far.

“Everyone awaits the outcome of the mission, but no one expects miracles,” writes Krishan Wednesday. “The problem now is that the Syrian regime is not prepared to learn any lesson and the opposition will not yield after all the blood that was shed and the atrocities committed. Everyone is talking about a political solution, but the time may have passed for that.”