News Analysis: Arab joint force to end Western military intervention in Middle East

The formation of a combined Arab force will gradually degrade the U.S. and West military intervention in the Middle East, experts said on Monday.

"This force will take care of resolving the conflicts in Arab countries in addition to countering terrorism," retired Egyptian army general Adel Qalla told Xinhua.

"There is an Arab resilience not to let any foreign country intervene in the Arab internal affairs... This was clear in the speeches of Arab leaders during the Arab Summit who voiced out rejection of outside intervention," he noted.

The expert also said that the Arabs had been submissive to the United States and the West policies for decades due to their economic and military weakness, affirming the long-sought Arab force has changed the rules of the political game and turned the Western plans to spread their influence in the region upside down.

Arab leaders, who met in Egypt on March 28-29, agreed to form the joint Arab military force to counter growing security threats.

The goal of the force is to militarily counter challenges that threaten safety and security of the member states, based on request of the concerned country.

Prior to the proposal, Saudi Arabia formed an Arab military coalition last week without getting the permission of the Arab League (AL) or the United Nations Security Council.

The coalition carried airstrikes against the Shiite Houthi group which seized parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, and is closing in on the southern port city of Aden, the last stronghold of the fleeing Yemeni President Hadi.

The idea of forming the multinational force was initiated by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi to face common challenges that threaten Arab national security.

His initiative came after 21 Egyptian Copts were killed in Libya by Islamic State (IS) militants in February.

Back in 1950, AL member states signed a Joint Arab Defense and Economic Cooperation Treaty to counter the expansion of Israel.

However, the Joint Arab Agreement has been frozen since it was signed.

PAST OF U.S.-WESTERN INTERVENTION

It has never been a secret that the Western powers always wanted to control Arab oil and maintain the security of Israel, Cairo-based political analyst Saeed Lawendy told Xinhua.

The United States wanted to replace the West, mainly France and Britain which occupied most of Arab countries for decades in last century, as the leading force in the Middle East, he said.

Since the end of the Cold War, said Lawendy, use of force was U.S. main way to become a dominant power in the region.

"The United States and the West have been intervening politically and militarily in many Arab countries in the recent couple of decades to spread their influence in the region," he said.

The first major American intervention in the Middle East was in 2003 when the U.S. army, supported by troops from Britain, Australia and Poland, invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The United States said the occupation of the Arab country was meant to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people from dictatorship.

The 2011 upheavals in the Arab world, further opened the gates for external Western military involvement in the region.

Since the beginning of regional unrest, there has been a trend of direct and indirect U.S. and Western intervention in Libya against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and the IS group in Syria and Iraq.

"Even before their involvement in direct military actions in Libya, Iraq and Syria, the United States and the West provided military training and equipment to particular opposition groups in those countries to keep the war against the ruling regimes going on," Lawendy added.

U.S. INTERVENTION TO CONTINUE

Lawendy believed that the U.S. military role in the region will not fade away rapidly for many reasons.

"The joint Arab force is opposed by many Arab countries including Iraq that has been militarily assisted by an Arab-Western coalition in the fight against the IS group," he said.

Even if the Arab force is going to strike IS in Iraq, the leading role will be given to the United States who initiated the war against the IS, he added.

The West will also continue its anti-IS military campaign in the war-stricken Syria as the Arabs appear reluctant to play a military role in the Arab country that is strongly backed by Russia and Iran, the expert expected.

But after all, he said, these wars will end and the role the West and United States are playing now will vanish step by step because they will not get a chance to have any military role in any future conflicts until the Arabs ask for their assistance. Endit