In 55 years of writing on Arab political affairs and the fortunes of the Arab world – which tend decline rather than rise – I count myself lucky to have known three secretaries general of the Arab League. All three had also served as Egypt’s foreign ministers, which was perhaps a key to their appointment to the post. The first was Amr Moussa, who served as foreign minister for ten years and then another ten years as secretary general. The second was Ahmed Abul-Gheit, who likewise spent ten years as foreign minister before serving an equivalent period as secretary general. The third, Nabil Fahmy, followed a long diplomatic career that took him from attaché to ambassador and then foreign minister. He served in this capacity for just six months before returning to academia and subsequently being chosen secretary general.
The three men are contemporary heirs of the nearly two-century-old Egyptian diplomatic tradition, embodied by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for over a century. Successive generations of Egyptian diplomats have been infused with the cumulative knowledge and experience of this institution. Those with sufficient dedication may one day find themselves serving as secretary general of the Arab League, like Moussa, Abul-Gheit, and Fahmy.
My discussions with them on Egyptian, Arab and international affairs have given me immense pleasure. No less great was the sympathy I felt for them when I saw them confronted by the formidable challenges facing the Arab League. All three managed to preserve the League as the institution that represents the Arab world at international forums. More importantly, they managed to steer it through periods of Arab disputes and divisions – which fortunately were generally contained within the political realm – and through even more difficult trials. At the same time, under their stewardship, the Arab League achieved a reasonable measure of success.
Ambassador Amr Moussa embarked on the path leading from the head of the Foreign Ministry to the head of the Arab League Secretariat following one of the greatest inter-Arab political ruptures: Egypt’s isolation within the Arab world after it concluded a peace treaty with Israel. Egypt was welcomed back into the Arab fold on the eve of the war to liberate Kuwait. This was followed by the Madrid Conference, which eventually led to the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty and the Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Yet such developments were not the only concerns preoccupying Moussa during his tenure as foreign minister (1991-2001) and later as Arab League secretary general (2001-2011). The world itself was undergoing a profound transformation as it transitioned from the Cold War to the era of globalisation and the dominance of the US as the sole superpower.
Ambassador Ahmed Abul-Gheit followed the same institutional path, but by then the world had entered another historical phase. This was marked by the failure of US military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, leading to the declared intention to withdraw from the Middle East. This period also brought about the Arab Spring with its earth-shattering effects across the Arab world. Not only did the upheaval topple regimes, it also rendered the region vulnerable to the predations of neighbouring states. Iran, by its own admission, came to assert its influence over four Arab capitals. Turkey staged repeated incursions into northern Syria and Iraq on various pretexts. Israel engaged in successive waves of settlement expansion and warfare against Gaza and Lebanon. Ethiopia took advantage of the outbreak of the Arab Spring to begin construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Meanwhile, the world was changing again with the waning of globalisation. At the same time, if Amr Moussa witnessed the birth of the Third Technological Revolution, Abul-Gheit witnessed the emergence of the fourth.
Today Nabil Fahmy is about to assume the Arab League helm. As someone closer to my generation both in age and in terms of its trials and tribulations, Fahmy will be taking office amid one of the gravest crises the Arab world has ever faced – a crisis in which the ongoing repercussions of the post-Arab Spring era combine with the impact of Iranian, Israeli and American military interventions.
Fahmy became foreign minister during the turmoil that followed the 30 June 2013 Revolution. Although his career led him into the corridors of the UN and the halls of academia at the American University in Cairo, where he was educated, he has remained deeply involved in politics and diplomacy, to which he has added his considerable political science expertise.
A long and demanding agenda awaits him. With this in mind, the Deputy Chair of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee Samaa Suleiman published an article in Al-Shorouk newspaper on 25 June urging the new secretary general to initiate “an urgent intellectual dialogue” addressing the fundamental issues that will shape the Arab League’s future.
Fortunately, the new Arab League secretary general himself recently made an important contribution in this regard. In an article entitled “What the US and Russian Summits with China Reveal about a World in Transition,” appearing in Future Report, a publication issued by the Future Centre for Advanced Research and Studies, he examines the potential trajectories of the international order. His analysis, in turn, could serve as a framework for thinking about the future direction of the Arab order as it enters a new phase – one no less critical than its predecessor and no less weighty a burden for him to bear.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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