A Change to Believe In: US Support for the Nonviolent Arab Spring

Published on Friday, June 3, 2011 by The Progressive

A Change to Believe In: US Support for the Nonviolent Arab Spring

Arab Nonviolent Uprisings Need Full U.S. Support

by Amitabh Pal

The democratic uprisings in the Middle East are at a crossroads, and a couple of U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf region are huge obstacles.

In Yemen, the initially nonviolent approach seems to be degenerating into armed insurrection along tribal lines, further complicated by attacks from Islamic fundamentalists. And the Bahraini regime is continuing its crackdown on dissenters in the aftermath of an invasion by U.S. buddy Saudi Arabia.

In a piece for The Nation a couple of months ago, Jeremy Scahill detailed the relationship that the United States has had with the regime of strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh. Washington has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in mostly military aid to Yemen. This pact has been cemented by a U.S. obsession with the country’s branch of Al Qaeda, a fixation that will quite likely backfire for the United States in the long run.

“The feckless U.S. response is highlighting how shortsighted our policy is there,” Joshua Foust, a former Yemen analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Scahill. “We meekly consent to Saleh’s brutality out of a misguided fear that our counterterror programs will be cut off, apparently not realizing that, in doing so, we are practically guaranteeing the next government will threaten those very programs.”

To its credit, the Obama Administration has become more vocal over the past month in its calls for Saleh to step down. But it still hasn’t imposed sanctions on the regime or brought it before the United Nations, its preferred modus operandi for nations less friendly to the United States. Instead, it is dispatching envoy John Brennan to chat about Yemen with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—two absolute monarchies that are a major part of the problem on the Arabian peninsula.

And nothing illustrates this better than Bahrain. The Saudis (plus the UAE and other Persian Gulf monarchies) invaded the country at the invitation of the Bahraini government the day after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates supped with the Bahraini ruling family in a show of support.

Things have degenerated since then. Dozens have been killed since the protests started, and hundreds have been arrested. And in a bizarre twist, the Sunni royalty has demolished dozens of Shiite mosques, since it sees the protests as an Iran-backed Shia conspiracy.

“In Shiite villages across this island kingdom of 1.2 million, the Sunni Muslim government has bulldozed dozens of mosques as part of a crackdown on Shiite dissidents, an assault on human rights that is breathtaking in its expansiveness,” Roy Gutman recently reported for McClatchy.

Yet, compelled by Iranophobia and Saudiophilia, the Obama Administration has let the Bahrainis continue. The regime has recently lifted a state of emergency, but only to present a façade of normality.

Here is an oddity: The Bahraini regime is eager to host an international car-racing event next year. “The authorities are especially keen to get back the Formula One race next March, correspondents say, after the unrest prompted this year's race to be postponed,” reports the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13616798

But the repression in Bahrain has been so widespread that it has engulfed the racing car arena, too.

“Bahrain has even sacked and abused a quarter of the workers at its F1 race track,” reports Avaaz, an activist group that is urging the sports drink manufacturer Red Bull to pull its racing team out of the race and for the race itself to be cancelled. “One badly bruised track worker says that a policeman ‘put my head between his legs, flipped me on to the floor—and then the beatings really began.’ ”

All this repression in Bahrain and Yemen has dampened the spirits of those who have stood up nonviolently to their governments for months.

“For me and many others like me here in the square, we are convinced that peaceful means would not work since they did not work over the last four months,” Ahmed Obadi, a young protester and teacher in Yemen, told the New York Times.

The Obama Administration needs to make sure that those who choose the path of nonviolence have its fullest support.

© 2011 The Progressive

Amitabh Pal is managing editor of The Progressive.

5 Comments so far

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Posted by Obedient Servant

Jun 3 2011 - 5:46pm

I got news for ya, Pal-- Team Obama is second to none when it comes to shameless opportunism and time-serving.

They'll avoid or deny any concerns about "humanitarian crises" occuring in nations ruled by their cronies, or their cronies' cronies.

None of the strident, purple prose about Amerika's high-minded resolve to Never Turn a Blind Eye, but instead forcefully-- or forcibly-- intervene when cruel and despotic regimes oppress their hapless citizens will flow when the cruel and despotic regimes happen to be favored governments that play ball with the U.S.

Only if circumstances deteriorate so badly that the cruel and despotic regimes begin to disintegrate will Amerika rush to the head of the procession in support of the uprising and claim it was there all along the way.

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Posted by readytotransform

Jun 3 2011 - 6:22pm

"A change to believe in"? What in the world is this guy talking about????

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Posted by dreamjoehill

Jun 3 2011 - 11:05pm

How about a different slogan.

Nobama
Nope you can believe in.

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Posted by jimmyjazz

Jun 3 2011 - 7:46pm

"The Obama Administration needs to make sure that those who choose the path of nonviolence have its fullest support."

You've got to be pretty politically naive to think that a U.S. administration cares about democracy or about whether protesters use peaceful methods. The U.S. government only cares about the strategic interest that the U.S. has in a given country, and about how pro-U.S. a new government promises to be as compared to how pro-U.S. the current government is.

Obama will continue to support the violent rebels in Libya while opposing (but publicly, giving lukewarm support to) the peaceful Shiite protesters in Bahrain, whom the U.S. associates with expanded Iranian influence. Nothing will change about that.

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Posted by dreamjoehill

Jun 3 2011 - 11:13pm

Great article. Very informative.

My only issue is with the last sentence. Any appeal to Obama's better nature is, of course, pointless.

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Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/03-12

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs