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Arab League Overview
Nice summary of the state of the Arab League on Atlantic Blog today. Edited for brevity.
They [the Arab League] appear to be shocked, utterly shocked, that the [Iraqi] council is not elected, and they are upset because they think it is a puppet government. So letâs do a quick review of the Arab League.
Membership:- Algeria: run by the military
- Bahrain: just had its first elections in 30 years, but political parties are illegal
- Comoros: this one actually seems to have elections, although they are dubious and it has also had some recent military coups
- Djibouti: Fake elections
- Egypt: fake elections
- Iraq
- Jordan: ruled by an unelected monarch
- Kuwait: a monarchy maybe becoming democratic
- Lebanon: this one is actually a democracy, but that doesnât really matter since it is a puppet state of Syria
- Libya: ooh, tough one here
- Mauritania: fake elections
- Morocco: ruled by unelected monarch
- Oman: unelected absolute monarch
- Palestine: enough said
- Qatar: absolute monarch
- Saudi Arabia: ruled by unelected monarch
- Somalia: governed by, roughly, no one at all
- Sudan: even the CIA is dismissive of their elections
- Syria: ruled by unelected dictator
- Tunisia: fake elections
- United Arab Emirates: absolute monarch
- Yemen: the last time around, the president suffered the ignomy of only getting 96.3% of the vote
So, generously, really generously, out of the other 21 states in the Arab League, you might call Bahrain, Comoros, Kuwait, and Lebanon democracies, if you want to use the word loosely. The rest are absolute monarchies and dictatorships. Lebanon is a puppet state of Syria. This is the outfit that wants to complain that the Iraqi Governing Council is an unelected puppet regime that does not represent the will of the people.
Posted by: Dar 2003-08-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=17391 |
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