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Destination Baghdad

While leaders who will be attending have been reassured of their safety and security measures will clearly be tightened up, one does have to ask if the sheer presence of so many VVIPs does not make for a provocative target. For any elements looking to create trouble, this would be a tempting audience for them to show their power.

The very fact that these blasts had a certain sense of coordination about them and were systematically detonated suggests that there is enough organisational potential functioning in the insurgent factions and they do have access to explosives and communications technology, which enables them to conduct such attacks. In this circumstance while it is laudable that members of the Arab League have displayed determination and conviction to keep on track and congregate next week in Baghdad for the first time in 22 years, a word of caution would not be out of line seeing as how even the citizenry accepts that these attacks were intended to show the Arab world particularly and the international community at large, that Iraq was not a safe place to visit nor was the government invulnerable to assault.

Summits of such importance are usually conducted in a high-security zone with beefed-up protocols and under a protective umbrella. This does make penetration difficult by any nefarious group and one can appreciate the need to show not just solidarity with Iraq by being there and thereby not give the insurgents a sense of victory by considering a postponement of the meet. But the next 72 hours will be crucial in that the Iraqi government’s reassurances and the steps it takes to sanitise the summit area and create security rings has to be tangible and convincing. One can only hope that with such an important agenda the Arab League does feel that its presence in Baghdad is not a pressure the Iraqi forces cannot bear. Certainly, even as one enters the ‘wait and watch’ phase the need to bring the perpetrators to book and ensure that no other attacks occur in the interim is paramount. Members of the League will most certainly be sympathetic and supportive but they also have to be pragmatic.