A new low

WHAT if they held a summit and no one came? That, almost, is what has just happened in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania—which most Arabs probably did not know was part of the Arab League at all. On July 25th only seven of its 22 heads of state bothered to attend their summit and one of them, Ould Abdul Aziz of Mauritania, was there anyway. Another, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi of Yemen, was booted out of his capital by rebels in 2015, and doesn’t have much else to do. A third, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, meaning that his travel options are severely limited. Not that Nouakchott is a very flash destination. For want of a suitable venue, the meeting was held in a tent.