WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Vice President Dick Cheney is touring the Middle East in an effort to drum up support for an Arab/Muslim military force to deploy in Iraq. If successful, that force would allow Washington to gradually begin redeploying U.S. troops out of the country.
Cheney's first stop was Egypt where he met with President Hosni Mubarak, a staunch U.S. ally in the region and a major recipient of U.S. aid.
Egypt's participation in turning the idea of a Muslim/Arab peace force in Iraq into a reality is paramount given the political clout Cairo still carries in the Arab world though Mubarak is generally considered a political lightweight when compared to his two predecessors, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat.
Also not to be ignored is Cairo's influence on the Islamic world. Al-Azhar, the oldest and most prestigious center of Islamic learning in the Muslim world, is in Cairo, and the rector of the esteemed institution carries the title of Sheikh al-Azhar. It is the closest one comes to a centralized religious authority in Sunni Islam.
Egypt has a population of 77.5 million people, of which 94 percent are Muslim; of these, the vast majority is Sunni. Additionally, Egypt maintains an army of some 440,000 troops, from which it can easily detach several thousand troops to assign to the Iraq expedition, if an agreement were to be reached.
Cheney's next stop will be Saudi Arabia where he will confer with King Abdullah. This will most likely be the crucial point of the trip seeing that Abdullah, as the leader of Saudi Arabia, will have to make two important decisions. First, to finance the expeditionary force, or at least a good part of it, something that should not be too difficult for the king, especially in view of the overflow in revenues due to the sharp rise in oil prices.
Second, the king, whose title includes "the protector of the two holy mosques (Mecca and Medina), has been making moves, since he replaced his half-brother King Fahd, of his intention to play a wider role in Middle East politics. Abdullah, who believes the Middle East has not been so leaderless in several decades, could get his chance to prove his influence by helping create an Arab-Muslim force with enough clout to help bring about stability in Iraq. This could well be his golden moment.
An intervention force in Iraq partially composed of troops from Saudi Arabia, which is also predominantly Sunni, and of Egyptian soldiers, would go a long way in appeasing Iraqi Sunni insurgents who felt marginalized by the Shiite-majority government.
But before any of this can happen, Iraq will need to form its new government: That will come next week. Then the Iraqi government will have to approve the Arab/Muslim force.
This will give the Bush administration time needed to poll other Muslim countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. The administration, which has been facing growing pressure from both Congress and the American public to set some sort of timeframe for a withdrawal, is eager to see Arab and Muslim participation in Iraq.
Washington believes a gradual pullout from Iraq will signal other forces in the region that the United States does not intend to remain in Iraq any longer than it absolutely has to. And by not leaving a security void upon its departure, the United States saves face and ensures a force remains to fight the insurgency and the terrorists.
The creation of an Arab/Muslim force, assuming one could be put together and accepted by all parties in Iraq, will primarily encourage Iraqi Sunnis, who since the ousting of Saddam Hussein, have been sidelined politically.
In the past, despite being outnumbered by Kurds and the Shiites, Iraq's Sunnis managed to retain power. But since the tables were turned after the U.S. invasion and the Shiites found themselves in a dominant position, the Sunnis have tended to shy away from the political scene.
The eventual deployment in Iraq of several tens of thousands of troops from countries where Sunnis make up the majority could revive their interest to participate in government in a more peaceful manner. And it would offer Cheney a Sunni safeguard. Of course the wild card in this game is Iran and how the Islamic republic will react to the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of armed Sunnis to compete with its influence over Iraq's Shiites.
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