Arab League Votes to Suspend Syria Over Crackdown:
Throughout the meeting, the Syrian ambassador, Youssef Ahmed, kept shouting that the move was illegal because such a decision had to be unanimous, participants said. He later repeated the claim on state television and accused the league of being “subordinate to American and Western agendas.” Nabil el-Araby, the Arab League’s secretary general, pushed the initiative to a vote, with 18 of the league’s 22 members supporting the action, Yemen and Lebanon opposing, Iraq abstaining and Syria not voting at all.
Yemen and Lebanon have large influential Shia populations. Iraq is Shia majority. Where was Arab League condemnation of the events in Bahrain, where a Sunni minority appealed to their co-religionists in the Gulf to suppress the democratic impulses of the Shia majority? In contrast, in Syria you have a Sunni majority dominated politically by a religious minority in the Alawites. I think this is a double-standard. Not too surprising, they’re nipping off part of the Shia Crescent. But people should have their eyes wide open about what’s going on here. Because Shia are a minority Iranian interest in their co-religionists in Bahrain or Iraq or Syria is perceived to be malevolent. But the natural sympathies of Sunnis in Turkey and the Arab world with Syrian Sunnis is viewed as more benign and humanitarian.