Amir Taheri reports a somewhat unexpected lobby in the formation of Iraq's government:

As Iraq's political parties and groups continue their wrangling over a new constitution, consensus seems to be taking shape on at least one issue: The future Iraqi state should not be described as "Arab." Some participants also want Iraq to withdraw from the Arab League to contemplate broader alliances in the region and beyond. The idea of dropping Iraq's Arabism is backed by most Shiite parties that want the nation's Islamic identity to be emphasized.

[...]

The Kurds also want Arabism to go because the see Iraq as a multi-ethnic nation in which no community should try to impose its specific identity and culture on others.

[...]

The Iraqi left is also favorable of abandoning what the poet Fadil Sultani calls "the illusion of Arabism." The reason is that Iraqi Socialists and Communists have been frequently persecuted and, at times, massacred, as enemies of "pan-Arab nationalism."

Iraq's democrats and liberals see pan-Arabism as a barrier to democratization.

I've always wondered which nations, in the beginning world order, will retain their ethnic identity and which will - like America and Britain, for example - gladly welcome all people to their shores, calling them their own. But the article grows even more interesting:

Most Iraqis wish to develop the alternative concept of Uruqua (Iraqi-ness) as a substitute for Uruba (Arab-ness).

Much like I, an Italian-Sicilian with speculative bits of Alpine and Berber, am as American as the next naturally born citizen. Universality is a wonderful thing.

Keep reading the article. Pan-Arabism, an unfortunate mixture of indigenous, tribalist tendencies and Western eugenics, may be dying out - from Libya to Bahrain, the steady progressivity of Qatar to the sullen depotism of the Sudan.

We must recognize a desperate, listless people as being at dangerous risk to radicalism - renewed from the past or reforged in a combination of new and old, like Pan-Arabism. The key, so says Taheri, is to be vigilant and hopeful:

These are early days. But the liberation of Iraq has triggered an unprecedented identity crisis in the Arab countries. If properly understood and put to good effect, that crisis could help the Arabs break out of their tribalism and join the democratic mainstream of contemporary politics.

Emancipation of the Near East - their entrance into living full, productive, free lives. And to think the Left considered challenging the region to be a Pandora's Box.