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The revolutionary year in North Africa and the Middle East
Within weeks of the overthrow of Tunisian
dictatorship in January 2011, Mubarak’s regime was on its knees in Egypt
– the most populous Arab state, backed to the hilt by western
imperialism. A revolutionary wave swept across North Africa and the
Middle East, inspiring movements throughout the world. But what is the
situation now? PETER TAAFFE writes.
THE REVOLUTIONS IN the Middle East and North Africa
are, with the events in Greece, the most important developments for the
workers’ movement in the past year. Tunisia and particularly Egypt, the
world’s oldest nation state, have exercised a magnetic effect on the
masses throughout the region. They also resonate powerfully in the
neo-colonial world and in the advanced industrial countries as well. For
instance, in the USA they helped inspire the Wisconsin protests, and the
Egyptian flag flew over the occupy movement in Oakland and elsewhere.
However, as in all revolutions, particularly in the
period after the overthrow of a dictatorship, illusions are generated in
the masses that the main job has been done. In reality, because it has
not been completed, the forces of revolution and counter-revolution have
vied for supremacy from the outset. The liberal bourgeoisie and
Islamists have tried to contain the revolution, together with the
remnants of the old regime. They seek to engender a mood of class
conciliation, of ‘national unity’. They instinctively oppose all
attempts at independent action or organisations of the working class.
This mood can also exist among the masses, who seek
the line of least resistance in the first instance. Even where there is
a strong revolutionary party that seeks to warn the working class and
counter this from the outset, as with the Bolsheviks in 1917, this mood
can continue for a period, allowing the establishment of class
collaborationist, coalition governments. It takes time and events,
together with the intervention of revolutionary forces, to change this.
In the case of Egypt, there was no mass force in the underground which
could perform this task.
In the vacuum that existed, as with other cases in
history – Poland under Stalinism, Iran under the Shah – religious
forces, with roots among the masses, can initially provide a pole of
attraction around which the opposition to dictatorial regimes can
mobilise. This role in Egypt has been played by the Muslim Brotherhood
and the mosques. They were persecuted by the regime, along with the
network of charities and enterprises which they built under Hosni
Mubarak and, previous to him, Anwar Sadat. This enhanced their
attractiveness to the exploited workers and peasants. Consequently, they
were well placed to exploit the current elections in which they have
received an estimated 36.6% of the votes counted so far. In addition,
the right-wing political Islam of the Salafists around al-Nour, linked
to the more fundamentalist Wahhabi brand of Islam emanating from Saudi
Arabia and the doctrine of Al Qaeda, seems to have done well with almost
a quarter of the votes in the cities that had voted by 5 December. Al-Nour
probably could register more than this in the countryside.
A severe test
IN MOROCCO, STILL ruled by a monarchy, and Tunisia,
and even before elections in Libya, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere, the
Islamists have become a strong and sometimes the strongest force. In
Tunisia, those gathered around the Ennahda party have emerged as the
largest force in the recent elections and are the main component of the
new government. At the same time, the 52% turnout in Tunisia’s elections
indicates the profound suspicion of the masses of the present ‘political
parties’ and the lack of legitimacy of the government, particularly in
the eyes of those workers and youth who initiated the revolution and set
the whole region alight.
Another expression of this lack of trust in those
who are perceived to have grabbed for themselves the fruits of the
revolution is the strike wave which has erupted from below despite the
trade union bureaucracy, which in Tunisia as elsewhere acts as a brake
on the movements of the masses. There is little trust in the regime by
young people in particular who form a substantial section of the
unemployed. The mood of desperation is reflected in the riots which have
broken out and also in horrific suicides – five men tried to hang
themselves together in one town.
At the same time, the triumphant if not triumphalist
Islamic-based parties are about to undergo a serious test. The economic
situation, which provided an impulse to the revolutions, has if anything
considerably worsened. In Tunisia, unemployment has doubled from 500,000
to 1,000,000 in the space of a year. The same is true in Egypt where an
estimated 40% of the population already live in chronic poverty and
unemployment is rising along with rampant inflation.
This prompted a Financial Times special feature on
Egypt to comment: "Any incoming government… will have to cut
unaffordable energy subsidies that cost about $15.5 billion a year".
Moreover, growth needs to be at least 7% annually just to absorb the
700,000 new entrants to the job market every year. In the fiscal year to
the end of June it is expected to have grown by a mere 1.3%. No wonder
the Islamist parties – if they are allowed by the military (which
remains largely intact) to take the reins of power in Egypt, for
instance – in the main seek to avoid ruling alone, looking for refuge
from the economic and social storms which impend in coalition
governments.
Class divisions perhaps of an incipient character
are already evident in the social and electoral base of the different
Islamic-based parties. In Egypt, the Economist comments: "Muslim
Brothers tend to be upwardly mobile professionals, whereas the Salafists
derive their strength from the poor. The Brothers speak of pragmatic
plans and wear suits and ties. The Salafists prefer traditional robes
and clothe their language in scripture".
But the real electoral losers in this first phase of
the revolution appear to be the secular liberal forces and parties as
well as the youth who, together with the working class, were the main
initial driving forces of the revolution. However, time and experience,
particularly through the industrial struggles which will intensify, will
allow new organisations to emerge, both in the trade union field and
politically.
A moderate Islamist model?
IN EGYPT, THE Muslim Brotherhood, if it is allowed
to form a government, will come under serious examination. It is a more
conservative force than in the past. It abandoned the struggle to
overthrow the dictatorship, concentrating on feeding the
poverty-stricken masses. Initially it stood aside from the revolution,
which caused splits particularly among the youth within their ranks.
Unlike the Iranian revolution, when radical Islamic forces developed,
the Brotherhood is politically conservative, accepting the free market,
not favouring independent trade unions, and rejecting ‘extremist’ brands
of Islam in favour of the Turkish model of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, even
borrowing the name of Turkey’s ruling Freedom and Justice party. This
party was described by the New York Times as a "religious
right-of-centre movement but no fanatical band".
This is also the favoured model for the ‘moderate’
Islamist forces throughout the region, including Ennahda in Tunisia.
However, Egypt’s military council, SCAF, has no intention of ceding
power completely to ‘civilian’ forces. Another model is Pakistan, where
the army and generals are the real power behind the throne (the
government and parliament) and have been so since the foundation of the
Pakistani state.
There were big illusions in the military at the time
of the overthrow of Mubarak: ‘the army is with us’. And, at its base and
even among a significant section of the middle layers of officers, that
was the case. However, the top generals were and remain an integral part
of the ancien regime. The military, in effect, carried out a ‘soft coup’
in overthrowing Mubarak in collusion with the CIA and American
imperialism. They were terrified that the revolution was deepening and
would not stop at the removal of Mubarak but would go further towards a
social and economic revolution. The Egyptian revolution was, above all,
a mass event (the country contains a third of all Arabs) in which the
working class played a crucial role, particularly in Suez, Port Said and
elsewhere.
Locomotives of history
ONCE THE MASSES have thrown off the shackles of a
dictatorship, they inevitably come forward with pressing social and
economic demands. There has been a wave of workers’ actions – attempts
to establish independent trade unions, which had been effectively banned
by the military – demanding that those culpable in the killing of the
protesters at the time of the overthrow of Mubarak, as well as those who
perpetrated the massacres in November, be brought to trial.
So great has been the disillusionment since the
events of February that a questioning has arisen as to whether it was a
real revolution in the first place. In fact, in both Tunisia and Egypt
the masses moved independently or semi-independently against the
dictatorships of Ben Ali and Mubarak. They made the revolution but,
because of insufficient consciousness of their own power and a programme
to achieve this, they did not complete the revolution in a social and
economic sense.
Revolutions, as Karl Marx pointed out, are the
locomotives of history. Counter-revolutions – dictatorships – are an
enormous brake, throwing back consciousness enormously. In Tunisia and
Egypt what we saw was a political revolution which changed the main
actors on the stage but did not touch the social foundations of
landlordism and capitalism. In Egypt, the generals have an estimated 40%
stake in vital aspects of the economy. Moreover, US imperialism has
donated an estimated $150 million to promote Egypt’s ‘transition to
democracy’, and still gives its armed forces $1.3 billion a year. The
army in all capitalist states is the main guard of private property.
Increasingly aware of the real situation, some of
the participants in the February uprising now say that all that has been
achieved is ‘a change of curtains’. That is true of the state but not of
the consciousness of the mass of the people, particularly the youth and
workers. And the masses have begun to pour onto the industrial, social
and political stages. There is now talk, correctly, of the need for a
second and third revolution. For this to happen, what is required is the
building of powerful and independent workers’ organisations.
Military intervention
IMPERIALISM AND ITS client states in the region were
completely taken aback by the outbreak of revolution. Barack Obama and
the representatives of the strongest power on the planet were powerless
to intervene, reduced to pious, ‘regretful’ phrases about the role of US
imperialism in propping up Mubarak. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron
were equally impotent. In Egypt and Tunisia, where the urban masses
played the key role, military intervention was ruled out. US
imperialism, which still views the region as of key strategic and
economic importance, was completely tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan,
in any case, and could not intervene militarily, particularly by using
ground troops. The same applied to its NATO allies.
Only with events in Libya, and to some extent
Bahrain, was imperialism given the pretext to establish a foothold
against the revolutions. Our analysis of the uprisings in Libya, of
NATO’s intervention and the subsequent outcome of the nine or ten months
struggle has stood the test of events. We supported the uprisings
against Muammar Gaddafi in Benghazi and other towns.
At the outset they represented a genuine movement of
the masses in opposition to the dictatorship. The committees established
to administer Benghazi after the expulsion of Gaddafi and his henchmen,
including his now imprisoned son, Saif, appeared to be in the hands of
genuine representatives of the masses and have a mass popular base. At
that stage, the Benghazi masses were opposed to outside intervention by
imperialism.
The mobilisation of Gaddafi’s troops on the
outskirts of Benghazi and the consequent fear of a massacre allowed
imperialism the excuse to intervene militarily through NATO. The
subsequent course of the war – orchestrated and controlled in the air
and on the ground by NATO – altered completely the character of the
‘revolution’. The CWI has always opposed the Gaddafi regime and has
called for support for genuine mass movements to establish a real
socialist, democratic society in Libya.
However, the war conducted against Gaddafi possessed
all the features of a de facto imperialist military intervention. It is
impossible for Marxists to give support to such an action. Nonetheless,
to their eternal shame, this is what some alleged Marxists did! The
propaganda campaign against Gaddafi included manufactured hysteria and
gross exaggeration of what would happen if Gaddafi’s forces were to
occupy Libyan cities held by the ‘rebels’. It was claimed that massacres
would automatically follow. No such things happened when Gaddafi’s
forces fought the rebels for Misrata and other cities on the way to
Benghazi. Yet, this was used to carry through real massacres on the part
of the ‘rebels’ when they entered cities that were allegedly in support
of Gaddafi and through the air war of NATO. It is impossible to
calculate the exact number of victims arising from this but probably
between 30,000 and 50,000 people were killed. It is not possible to
describe the outcome as a victory for ‘revolution’.
A new fiefdom
WHAT BEGAN AS a genuine revolution of an incipient
character was derailed by a counter-revolution in a ‘democratic’ form.
However, as the scale of bloodletting and reprisals has been revealed –
sometimes against completely innocent people, including black Libyans
and foreign workers, some of whom had lived in Libya for many years –
there is profound questioning as to whether ‘democracy’ or
counter-revolution currently dominates. Post-Gaddafi Libya is clearly a
new fiefdom for imperialism to exploit its rich resources, particularly
its oil reserves.
Combining completely antagonistic forces, from
Islamists to defectors from Gaddafi’s regime and assorted ‘democrats’ of
recent vintage, it is very unlikely that the National Transitional
Council (NTC) will hold together. Following the armed conflict between
rival militias in the centre of the capital, Tripoli, a headline in the
British newspaper, the Independent, summed up the situation: ‘Libya’s
Leader Warns of Civil War after Tripoli Gun Battles’. (5 January 2012)
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, NTC chairman, commented on the continuous
‘lawlessness’ of private armies while the draft regulations for the
first parliamentary elections were being published.
These regulations themselves have become a source of
conflict. The NTC is proposing to prevent all of those with any
connection with the Gaddafi regime from standing as candidates. This
will mean that even those who were compelled to study Gaddafi’s
‘writings’ to get a civil service post would be automatically ruled out.
At the same time, there are clashes between the different militias for
control of territory, the latest being in Misrata involving the forced
release of militia members by a rival band. This resulted in the killing
of seven fighters with a dozen wounded in two separate fire-fights.
Despite pious pleas for the cessation of the conflict, this kind of
strife continues.
Libya threatens to fall apart, as we warned before
the war, and resemble in the future not so much a democratic Arcadia
(which had been promised), but the nightmare of ethnic and tribal
divisions along the lines of Somalia, but with oil. We advocated an
independent movement of the working class in Benghazi with a class
appeal to the Libyan masses as a whole. A similar class approach is
necessary in all the states in the region.
Syrian tinderbox
THE MOVEMENT IN Syria is at a crossroads. The number
of victims arising from the regime’s repression is well over 4,000.
Daily mass demonstrations take place and sanctions have been imposed by
the UN and the Arab League. The latter is a severe blow to the elite
gathered around the regime of Bashar al-Assad because of its historic
association with the Arab struggle. Only Iran – where Shias are in the
majority, unlike in Syria – supports the Assad regime. But Iran is also
facing sanctions because of its nuclear programme. It is possible that
military action could follow this, and could trigger a regional
conflict, including war.
Indeed, with the near civil war in Syria all kinds
of possibilities involving conflict could break out. Turkey, which is
already involved on its borders with the flight of refugees into its
territory, has warned the Syrian regime that it might be compelled to
intervene. On the other hand, Israel – which actually prefers that the
Assad regime remains in power because of the fear of what would happen
if it was overthrown – could also be drawn in. This could take the form
of military action against Iran, Syria or both.
The region is like a tinderbox where anything could
happen. The Palestinian question, for example, could explode at any
time. Moreover, all of this is taking place against the background of
radicalisation in Israel – reflected in strikes and occupations. A new
period of generalised struggle is likely, arising from the deepening of
the world economic crisis and its severe impact in the Middle East and
North Africa.
The opposition in Syria appears to have gained
ground in the past period. However, it is not clear that it has reached
the critical mass that could lead to a speedy overthrow of the regime.
Syria is very divided on ethnic and religious lines. This is why
imperialism and neighbouring Turkey fear the breakup of the country. The
bitter sectarian, ethnic and religious conflicts that would result from
this would have incalculable consequences on neighbouring states.
The opposition is divided, with most of it coming
from the majority Sunni population. At the same time, the army – always
crucial in maintaining the Alawite elite around Assad in power – has not
yet disintegrated, although sections of it have defected to the rebels.
Therefore, it is most likely that the struggle in Syria will be drawn
out. The regime does not yet appear to be at its tipping point, but in
this highly unstable situation it could arrive at this position very
quickly.
Flashpoint Iran
MEANWHILE, IN ONE of the most volatile areas of the
world, the drums of war beat constantly. For some time, Iran’s
developing capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons has been a
flashpoint. Tensions have been ratcheted up in the recent period with
the threat of military action to ‘take out’ Iran’s nuclear capacity,
and/or to strengthen economic sanctions against the regime in Tehran by
the west.
On the other hand, as an article in the London
Review of Books put it, hardliners in Iran "have learned an important
lesson from recent history. They have just seen Gaddafi overthrown after
giving up his nuclear programme in 2003, the same year that Iraq, which
never had a nuclear weapons programme, was invaded. And they remember
that in 2001 the US invaded Afghanistan on the grounds that it harboured
and funded the Taliban, while making Pakistan, which also harboured and
funded the Taliban, but had nuclear weapons, a major ally in the war on
terror. The message is simple: nuclear weapons mean security". It is
not, however, in the interests of the peoples of the Middle East, nor of
the world working class, to see an extension of the already catastrophic
proliferation of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are part of the
ultimately futile doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
At the same time, any oppressed class or nation has
the right of self-defence, including armed resistance. But the real
defence of a people, of the exploited masses, or of a regime, rests in
winning the sympathy of the masses worldwide, above all from within
those countries which are threatening others. This has been demonstrated
many times, particularly in the defeat of imperialist intervention
against the Russian revolution and also in the Vietnam war. The
Vietnamese peasants heroically resisted but it was the revolt of the
American people which defeated US imperialism, in the main.
The nauseating hypocrisy, the double bookkeeping, of
western imperialism is no more glaringly exposed than in this region,
particularly in the approach towards the present conflict with Iran.
According to this view, it is okay for the US’s ally Israel to possess
an estimated 30 to 100 nuclear weapons – with which it constantly
threatens its regional opponents – but another thing entirely when those
opponents seek to defend themselves. It was not even the present Iranian
regime which initiated the nuclear programme in Iran. It was none other
than the former stooge of imperialism, the deposed Shah of Iran, who was
desperate to acquire nuclear power!
Moreover, after the 1979 revolution, the new
Islamist regime halted this nuclear programme which was seen as a ‘royal
excess’. At one stage, the regime declared publicly that it was against
acquiring nuclear weapons and even urged disarmament in the region. This
changed after the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) which was initiated by
imperialism spurring on Saddam Hussein to attack Iran.
Dangerous sabre-rattling
MOST ACCOUNTS SAY that Iran’s current nuclear
programme was initiated in the 1990s when the production of enriched
uranium was stepped up. The Iranian government aimed to build by 2004
five nuclear reactors which would provide 20% of the country’s energy
but, at the same time, the capacity to produce a bomb was also
initiated. According to the International Atomic Energy Authority, Iran
has now installed 8,000 centrifuges and will have enough capacity over
the next few years to produce four nuclear weapons.
In recent months, it has also sought to illustrate
its capacity to deliver these weapons through a series of missile tests
– although military commentators claim they only have a range of 125
miles. At the same time, the Iranian regime, which has been engaged in
naval war games in the Straits of Hormuz, threatens to block this vital
oil supply route for the west in the event of a military attack. Some
commentators believe, however, that this is more like sabre-rattling
rather than serious preparation for war.
Nonetheless, the Israeli government and ruling
class, together with significant sections of US imperialism, are urging
the Obama administration to take early military action before Iran
finally develops nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them. In
effect, the Israeli government is proposing pre-emptive military action
to consolidate its nuclear monopoly in the region. Therefore, the
prospect of a conventional attack cannot be ruled out. Israeli military
strategists estimate that this could delay Iran’s nuclear programme by
two years. Obviously, this is predicated on the idea that the current
regime can be overthrown and that the government that replaces it will
fall into line with the wishes of imperialism.
This is not at all certain as there is overwhelming
support – at least on this issue – for lining up behind the government
in opposition to the demands of Israel and imperialism. At the very
least, sanctions could be increased, which is still perceived as the
main way of exerting pressure on the Tehran government and bringing
forward the day of its downfall. As in all countries in the Middle East,
the real solution to the problems of Iran lies in the development of the
independent political movement of the working class and poor masses.
This article is based on a statement prepared for
the annual meeting of the international executive committee of the
Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). See
socialistworld.net for the full statement.
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