Who Will Reshape the Arab World: Its People, or the US?

Who Will Reshape the Arab World: Its People, or the US?

 

    Phase one of the Arab spring is over. Phase two

    - the attempt to crush or contain genuine

    popular movements - has begun

 

By Tariq Ali

The Guardian (UK)

April 29, 2011

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/29/arab-politics-democracy-intervention

 

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world -

the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist

dictatorships and the imperial petrol stations known as

the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive

experience of Anglo-French colonialism. This was

followed after the second world war by a complex

process of imperial transition to the United States.

The result was a radical anticolonial Arab nationalism

and Zionist expansionism within the wider framework of

the cold war.

 

When the cold war ended Washington took charge of the

region, initially through local potentates then through

military bases and direct occupation. Democracy never

entered the frame, enabling the Israelis to boast that

they alone were an oasis of light in the heart of Arab

darkness. How has all this been affected by the Arab

intifada that began four months ago?

 

In January, Arab streets resounded to the slogan that

united the masses regardless of class or creed: "Al-

Sha'b yurid isquat al-nizam!" - "The people want the

downfall of the regime!" The images streaming out from

Tunis to Cairo, Saana to Bahrain, are of Arab peoples

on their feet once again. On 14 January, as chanting

crowds converged on the ministry of interior, Tunisia's

President Ben Ali and his family fled to Saudi Arabia.

On 11 February the national uprising in Egypt toppled

the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak as mass rebellion

erupted in Libya and the Yemen.

 

In occupied Iraq, demonstrators protested against the

corruption of the Maliki regime and, more recently,

against the presence of US troops and bases. Jordan was

shaken by nationwide strikes and tribal rebellion.

Protests in Bahrain spiralled into calls for the

overthrow of the monarchy, an event that scared the

neighbouring Saudi kleptocrats and their western

patrons, who can't conceive of an Arabia without

sultans. Even as I write, the corrupt and brutal

Ba'athist outfit in Syria, under siege by its own

people, is struggling for its life.

 

The dual determinants of the uprisings were both

economic - with mass unemployment, rising prices,

scarcity of essential commodities - and political:

cronyism, corruption, repression, torture. Egypt and

Saudi Arabia were the crucial pillars of US strategy in

the region, as confirmed recently by US vice-president

Jo Biden, who stated that he was more concerned about

Egypt than Libya. The worry here is Israel; the fear

that an out-of-control democratic government might

renege on the peace treaty. And Washington has, for the

time being, succeeded in rerouting the political

process into a carefully orchestrated change, led by

Mubarak's defence minister and chief of staff, the

latter being particularly close to the Americans.

 

Most of the regime is still in place. Its key messages

are the need for stability and a return to work,

putting a stop to the strike wave. Fevered behind-the

scenes negotiations between Washington and the Muslim

Brotherhood are continuing. A slightly amended old

constitution remains in force and the South American

model of huge social movements producing new political

organisations that triumph at the polls and institute

social reforms is far from being replicated in the Arab

world, thus not posing any serious challenge, until

now, to the economic status quo.

 

The mass movement remains alert in both Tunisia and

Egypt but is short of political instruments that

reflect the general will. The first phase is over. The

second, that of rolling back the movements, has begun.

 

The Nato bombing of Libya was an attempt by the west to

regain the "democratic" initiative after its dictators

were toppled elsewhere. It has made the situation

worse. The so-called pre-empting of a massacre has led

to the killing of hundreds of soldiers, many of whom

were fighting under duress, and permitted the ghastly

Muammar Gaddafi to masquerade as an anti-imperialist.

 

Here one has to say that whatever the final outcome,

the Libyan people have lost. The country will either be

partitioned into a Gaddafi state and a squalid pro-west

protectorate led by selected businessmen, or the west

will take out Gaddafi and control the whole of Libya

and its huge oil reserves. This display of affection

for "democracy" does not extend elsewhere in the region.

 

In Bahrain, the US green-lighted a Saudi intervention

to crush local democrats, enhance religious

sectarianism, organise secret trials and sentence

protesters to death. Bahrain today is a prison camp, a

poisonous mixture of Guantánamo and Saudi Arabia.

 

In Syria the security apparatus led by the Assad family

is killing at will, but without being able to crush the

democratic movement. The opposition is not under the

control of Islamists: it is a broad coalition that

includes every social layer apart from the capitalist

class that remains loyal to the regime.

 

Unlike in other Arab countries, many Syrian

intellectuals stayed at home, suffering prison and

torture, and secular socialists like Riad Turk and many

others are part of the underground leadership in

Damascus and Aleppo. Nobody wants western military

intervention. They don't want a repeat of Iraq or

Libya. The Israelis and the US would prefer Assad to

stay as they once did Mubarak, but the dice are still in the air.

 

In Yemen, the despot has killed hundreds of citizens

but the army has split, and Americans and Saudis are

trying desperately to stitch together a new coalition

(as in Egypt) - but the mass movement is resisting any

deals with the incumbent.

 

The US has to contend with an altered political

environment in the Arab world. It is too soon to

predict the final outcome, except to say it is not over yet.

 

______________

 

Tariq Ali is an editor of the New Left Review and a

political commentator. His latest book is The Obama

Syndrome (Verso)