The first edition of the conference, entitled “Regional Support for Iraq,” was held in the Iraqi capital on August 28 last year. Jordan is scheduled to host the second one at King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Center on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea, with “Partnership, Cooperation, How to Continue Cooperation to Support Iraq and its Continuity” adopted as its chief motto.
Representatives from a number of regional countries and organizations, including Iraq, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Turkey, as well delegates from France, the European Union, the Arab League, the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the G20, and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council will be in attendance.
Everyone knows that such broad participation logically attests to the great significance of the event, yet a series of questions about the summit in Jordan remain unanswered.
If the conference’s title and main mission is “regional support” for Iraq, as was the case in the Baghdad I Summit, why has France turned out to be one of its main organizers then? If one views it as a cooperation conference of “neighboring countries” in support of Iraq, as was the rationale behind its formation, what are the main tasks of outsiders in the meeting in that case? If it is looking for regional support and security for Iraq and the Middle East region at large, why is Syria excluded then? If this cooperation is supposed to be endogenous in the region and based on an understanding among regional parties, why should Paris and Washington play a role in it but Damascus should be absent from the meeting, despite the fact that is located in the most sensitive part of the region, neighbors Iraq, and shares common threats such as the presence of Daesh terrorists, criminal activities of Takfiri groups, presence of drug-trafficking gangs and numerous border and territorial issues? How could the Baghdad II Summit in Amman be justified in light of Jordan’s unrest?
Some Iraqi analysts and pundits, like the director of Iraq’s al-Ittihad Strategic Research Center, Mahmoud Al-Hashemi, have raised similar questions as well.
“The Baghdad I Summit was held nearly 15 months ago, and no tangible results of it have been observed so far. What accounts for such a failure?” he asked.
Why should the event be named simply as the Baghdad Summit, whilst the participating countries, namely Jordan and Egypt, are suffering from serious problems and crises? Jordan and Egypt are currently gripped with financial woes, and the ongoing protests in Jordan clearly demonstrate this fact. Similar demonstrations will break out in Egypt sooner or later. This comes while countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are choking off both Jordanian and Egyptian nations by means of cutting off financial aid and buying their factories at rock-bottom prices.
While Egypt and Jordan are struggling to pay off the World Bank’s massive loans, why don’t Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other countries look at Cairo and Amman from the perspective of Baghdad?
Why has the number of participants in the Baghdad II Summit in Jordan increased considerably despite the fact that the agendas of the first edition were so vague and unclear? Do ambiguities point to unannounced agendas for the event in Amman?
Why has France been present in both the first and second editions of the Baghdad summit? How significant is the level of bilateral relations between Baghdad and Paris that France assumes such a position?
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