Just as Nasser's movement could not survive the political realities of his era, today's renewed pan-Arabism faces the same challenge it did in the 1960s: ethnic identity. If Arabs are to come together,-- this time not in a super-state but a union of regional economies -- they will first have to agree on who does and does not count as an Arab. That's a more complicated -- and potentially controversial -- question than outsiders might realize, but it is one that could challenge the Arab world, with or without a renewed pan-Arabism.

As problematic as Nasser's pan-Arabism was, its memory is still one of sentimentality and regret. Israel's bloody 1967 defeat of a unified Arab army and Egypt's virtual take-over of Syria under the banner of Nasserist pan-Arabism soured Arab opinions of a movement that could have elevated the region economically and politically.

The Arab world encompasses a vast array of ethnic, cultural, and religious cleavages and countless skin color gradations. In Nasser's time, pan-Arabists had trouble deciding how to either include or exclude Christian Arabs, Jewish Arabs, Amazighs (more often referred to by the pejorative term Berber), Kurds, and others into the movement for Arab advancement.

"A pan-Arabist would see diversity as fitna [sedition]," said Karim Mezran, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "An intelligent person wouldn't see diversity that way."

For Arab academics like Mezran, pan-Arabism has become more of a four-letter word than a legitimate aspiration of the Arab people.

"There were a lot of promises in [Nasser's] pan-Arabism that failed miserably," said Osama Abi-Mershed, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. "The term is pejorative these days. ... Entry into Nasser's United Arab Republic thrust Yemen into a civil war, for example."

Still, there's some hope for regionalism. Earlier this month, Tunisia's newly elected President Moncef Marzouki announced a plan to reunify the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), an economic union that went defunct in 1994 over a dispute between members Algeria and Morocco over control of Western Sahara. Founded in 1956, the UMA included Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

Marzouki told the AFP that a new UMA would politically and economically integrate North Africa to better attract foreign investment and combat terrorism.

But can it work? Georgetown's Abi-Mershed expressed skepticism for the feasibility of a UMA renaissance, saying that non-democratic countries like Algeria would be wary of integration..

"Regimes in power since colonialism, nationalist regimes see regionalism as a threat to autocratic powers," he said. "These regional forces can dilute national authority. They aren't interested in gaining legitimacy by enlarging enfranchisement."