The ME Revolutions SR Pamphlet SCREEN VERSION

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A Scas Rw a The Middle East revolutions 1

An online pamphlet collecting together some of

Socialist Review’s best coverage and analysis of the

uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain and Syria

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RevolutionSthe middle eASt



2 A Scas Rw a The Middle East revolutions

Car

tsa: Arab Sr bs Anne Alexander, Héla Yousfi, Fathis Chamki

and Dominic Kavakeb 2

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e a tsa: rr r

Mark L Thomas, Anne Alexander, Mohamed Tonsiand Simon Assaf 17

Car r

Bara a lba: rss a r

Tim Nelson and Simon Assaf 42

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e: Srs, cs a isass

Phil Marfleet, Sameh Naguib and Anne Alexander 53

Car Sra: r a ras

Simon Assaf and Jamie Allinson 79




Chapter one

tuniSiA

the ARABSpRing BeginS




The Battle o Tunis Anne Alexander

First published in February 2011

The revolt in Tunisia has sent shivers down the spines of

dictators across the region. Anne Alexander looks at the roots

of the revolution and considers its broader implications, while

Tunisian activists Héla Yousfi and Fathi Chamki give their

accounts of the uprising and Dominic Kavakeb examines the

role of the internet

there is no doubt that the uprising in Tunisia has cast a chill over the

dictatorships of the Middle East while millions around the region

have been inspired by the hope that their struggles against unem-

ployment, poverty and corruption can break the machine of state

repression. Street protests and cyber-activism have (albeit belatedly) caught

the imagination of the global media, but the unfolding revolutionary process

in January 2011 shows clearly that something more profound has shifted in

Tunisia.The fall of Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali demonstrates that the stresses imposed

on the states of the region by the combination of neoliberal reforms and

global economic crisis have the potential to fracture regimes by triggering

popular revolts which can neither be managed by co-option nor broken by

repression. More importantly, the way in which social and political demands

have been interwoven throughout the protests, and the emergence of the

trade unions as a key force in the uprising, opens up the possibility of a more

far-reaching process of revolutionary transformation from below.

Unions

The role of the Tunisian trade union federation, the Union Générale des




Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT), was crucial in breaking Ben Ali, a fact recog-

nised by the remaining leaders of the old regime as they scrambled to cling

on to power by appointing a coalition cabinet on 18 January which includ-

ed three UGTT representatives. These appointments were significant on a

number of different levels. Firstly, they recognised that the UGTT's decision

to call local general strikes on 12 January and then a national general strike

on 14 January played a profound role in the collapse of the Ben Ali regime.

But the appointment of UGTT ministers was more than a gesture of co-op-

tion to a powerful opponent; it was a desperate attempt to revive a partner-

ship between the ruling party and the trade union leadership that had helpedto maintain the stability of Ben Ali's regime during much of the 1990s. Cru-

cially, this initial attempt to reconfigure the old alliance between the UGTT

and the regime's RCD party failed. Within hours protesters were mobilising

again in the streets, demanding the dissolution of the RCD. The UGTT cabi-

net members resigned, further emboldening the demonstrators who were

joined by police and members of the National Guard.

FracturesThis withdrawal from the coalition cabinet points to a double fracture, which

runs between the old regime and the UGTT leadership, but more importantly

within the UGTT between rank and file activists and the bureaucrats at the

top.

Olivier Piot, reporting for Le Monde Diplomatique, travelled across Tuni-

sia in the week before the fall of Ben Ali. He found local UGTT activists con-

stantly debating whether and how to force the national leadership to break

with the regime. On 7 January the local secretary of the UGTT in Tozeur toldhim the national leadership was planning to call a national strike by school

teachers in three weeks time. In response to the journalist's stunned silence,

he added, "I know it is a long time to wait, and I'm not sure if it won't be too

late. I've told the union leaders, but they are closely tied to the authorities.

For my part, I feel that from now on we risk seeing poor districts across the

cities of the centre and the south going up in flames."

But within four days the national leadership of the UGTT had authorised

regional general strikes, shutting down key urban centres such as the port

city of Sfax on 12 January. Trade union activists Piot spoke to that morning

in Sfax reckoned that around 90 percent of the local population had sup-




ported the strike call. Only 48 hours later, as street protests spread to the

centre of the capital, Tunis, Ben Ali fled the country.

As US academic Eva Bellin points out, since independence in 1956 the

Tunisian state has oscillated between strategies of repression and co-option

when dealing with the trade unions. The UGTT played a vital role in the

struggle against French colonial rule in the 1950s and, although its member-

ship was entwined with that of the main nationalist party, the Neo-Destour,

it emerged into the post-independence period with an independent base of

its own.

Habib Bourguiba, a key leader of the anti-colonial struggle and Tunisia'sfirst president after liberation, eventually brought the UGTT leadership un-

der the domination of the state after a series of confrontations during the

1950s and 1960s. A period of co-option was followed by an explosion of

workers' protests and strikes in the 1970s and further repression in the final

years of the Bourguiba regime during the 1980s.

Ben Ali's coup against Bourguiba in 1987 marked the beginning of a new

phase in relations between the UGTT and the state. Conscious of the rising

challenge for the Islamist movement, in particular the Ennahda Party, Ben Ali bolstered the UGTT as a counterweight. He was also concerned, in the

early years of his rule, to paint himself as a democrat, in contrast to Bour-

guiba. Ben Ali released trade unionists from prison, restored confiscated as-

sets to the UGTT, gave the trade unions an expanded role in advising the

regime on economic and social policy, and supported regular wage rises for

workers, despite at the same time embarking on a programme of reforms

designed to reduce the role of the state in the economy.

Social revolt

Ben Ali's neoliberal restructuring won praise from the World Bank and West-

ern governments, but failed to deliver on its promises of prosperity for all.

The overall official jobless figure of around 14 percent hid much higher

levels in towns such as Sidi Bouzid, where the uprising began, as well as

extremely high levels of youth and graduate unemployment. The rebellion

which rocked the phosphate mining region of Gafsa in early 2008 showed,

on a localised level, how protests by the unemployed could both explode

contradictions within the UGTT and trigger a broader social revolt. On 5

January 2008 young unemployed protesters occupied the headquarters of




the Gafsa region UGTT.

They were quickly joined by miners' widows and families, triggering a

wave of strikes and protests uniting workers, the unemployed, school stu-

dents and local people. The motor behind the Gafsa protests was not low

wages but high levels of unemployment, leading to growing numbers of

unwaged family members dependent on one working miner. Local UGTT

leaders played a key role in the protest movement, despite the fact that the

union had been historically implicated in corrupt deals with the mining com-

pany to maintain low levels of recruitment to the mines. Several UGTT ac-

tivists, including Adnane Hajji, who became a prominent spokesperson forthe movement, were sentenced to long jail terms, although Hajji and others

were pardoned by Ben Ali in 2009.

The 2008 miners' rebellion was

eventually quelled by massive re-

pression, and did not spread out-

side the Gafsa region. By contrast,

in December 2010 demonstrations

in Sidi Bouzid over the police'streatment of Mohamed Bouazizi, a

26 year old vegetable seller who set

himself on fire after his handcart

was confiscated, triggered a longer-

lasting cycle of protests. Students

played a crucial role in the demon-

strations, prompting the Tunisian

authorities to close schools and colleges in an attempt to halt the protests.Students were joined by lawyers, 95 percent of whom were reported to have

joined a general strike on 6 January in protest at police attacks on their col-

leagues at earlier demonstrations and rallies.

Thus there was, from relatively early on, a dialectic between spontaneity

and organisation in the development of the uprising which made the revolt

increasingly difficult for the authorities to contain. Individual acts of des-

peration, such as Bouazizi's self-immolation, triggered local solidarity pro-

tests and sometimes - thanks to their transmission by the mainstream and

social media - echoes across the country. However, it was the intervention of

organisations capable of mobilising on a national scale, such as the Lawyers'

There was, romrelatively early on,a dialectic between

spontaneity andorganisation in thedevelopment o theuprising.




Bar Association and finally the UGTT, which appears to have finally shifted

the balance of forces between protesters and state.

The question now is whether the workers' movement in Tunisia can not

only continue to drive forward the process of sweeping away the whole old

political order but also whether it can begin to challenge the economic roots

of exploitation. Workers are reported to have driven out corrupt managers

associated with the Ben Ali regime in some places, but if this develops into a

movement for workers' control inside the workplace, combined with the re-

assertion of the social and economic demands which sparked the Sidi Bouzid

intifada, it can begin to challenge capitalism itself.It is the possibility that the process begun in Sidi Bouzid may spread to

Algiers, Cairo and beyond which has alarmed repressive governments across

the region. Even before the fall of Ben Ali rising food prices had triggered

riots in Algeria, while the collapse of his regime opened the door to a wave

of protests mingling social and political demands in Jordan and Yemen. It is

the impact of the Tunisian Revolution on Egypt that will be most closely ob-

served by the US and its allies, however. There are many structural similari-

ties between the regimes of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak - both have presidedover economic reforms which have brought privatisation, foreign investment

and, until recently, glowing praise from the World Bank.

Unemployment

At the same time, Egypt, like Tunisia, suffers from high levels of youth and

graduate unemployment and spiralling food prices. Mubarak's regime has

sought to contain social and political protests using a variety of mechanisms,

including manipulation of food subsidies - although the process of neoliberaleconomic reform has made this increasingly difficult to do. The relationship

between the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) and Mubarak's party,

the NDP, has many historic parallels with that between the UGTT national

leadership and Ben Ali's party. In both cases the regime co-opted the na-

tional union leaders through a combination of financial inducements and

integration into the ruling party.

In contrast though to Tunisia, the most important gains of the recent strike

wave in Egypt so far have been the emergence of fledgeling independent

unions, rather than any serious signs of rupture within the ETUF. Neverthe-

less, it is clear that neoliberal economic reforms, as they have weakened the




ETUF's ability to deliver benefits and jobs for its members, have thus hol-

lowed out a key institution of Mubarak's regime. The Egyptian presidential

elections scheduled for September 2011 will also revive tensions within and

outside the ruling party over the looming succession crisis, prompted by the

need to find a suitable replacement for the ageing Mubarak.

There are differences in the configuration of the opposition forces in

Egypt, which will shape whatever events unfold there. There is no opposi-

tion group in Tunisia which has the social and political weight of the Muslim

Brotherhood, for example, and the Brotherhood's recent retreat from conflict

with the state has made it more difficult for many other opposition groups tomobilise in the streets.

Potential

Despite this, in Egypt, even more than was apparent in Tunisia, the potential

for popular revolts to widen cracks in the regime remains greater than it has

been for many years, after a decade in which a "culture of protest" has flour-

ished. And the greater degree of transformation within Tunisia, the more

opportunities there will be for similar dynamics of protest to take root inEgypt and elsewhere. The longer that pressure from below continues to vis-

ibly shape the decisions of the government in Tunis, and even to discipline

or break it, the greater self-confidence will be gained by those challenging

the state on the streets of Cairo, Amman and perhaps even London.

Anne Alexander




Reused by thestreets Héla Yousfi First published in February 2011

Héla Yousfi is a Tunisian activist based in Paris. She spoke to

Socialist Review about the driving forces behind the revolution

iam from Sidi Bouzid, and a big part of my family live there.

You've had a lot of people in the media saying that this is something

that happened very fast. But in Tunisia you've had a lot of social pro-

tests. For example, in 2008 you had big protests in Gafsa, a mining re-

gion. They were repressed by the Tunisian police.

You had a long period with a lot of social protests over lack of civil liber-

ties and economic problems, but the official media didn't talk about them.

So what happened in Sidi Bouzid and the Tunisian Revolution is the result of

a fight over many years. For me it wasn't a surprise.The economic crisis helped accelerate the regime's collapse. People from

the south used to go to the coastal region or emigrate to find jobs. But now

they don't have jobs in the tourist areas because of the economic crisis, and

the European Union just closed its doors. The corruption of the Ben Ali re-

gime and its clans increased people's frustration.

People are stuck in an open prison, caught between unemployment, cor-

ruption, lack of civil liberties in Tunisia and the "wall" built by Europe to

control immigration. For example, my 24 year old brother couldn't get a visa

to visit me in France because he doesn't have a job. This also explains why

the protests were so huge.




Tunisians are highly critical of the silence from Western governments over

Ben Ali's regime. Western governments supported Ben Ali, saying, "Yes, we

acknowledge that there are some problems, but it's not really a dictatorship

in Tunisia." For a long time Europe supported his regime, justifying this by

saying that "you need to fight Islamism".

The role of the trade unions was very important in this revolution. The

oldest union, the UGTT, used to be very powerful in the period during the

fight against colonialism. However, the central leadership had become to-

tally corrupted by the regime. But the local union organisations were very

effective and dynamic in supporting the revolution.It was a spontaneous revolution but it was highly supported by the local

unions in Sidi Bouzid, Gafsa and elsewhere. These people pushed the cen-

tral leadership who were pro Ben Ali to make a decision to give the order to

go onto the streets.

Some figures from civil society, for example lawyers, also played an im-

portant role. The lawyers' association was the only elected and independent

association in Tunisia. All the others had been corrupted by the regime. The

lawyers were then followed by some doctors, and of course the bloggers. After Ben Ali left, you had a deal between some people who were very

important symbols of the old regime, like Mohammed Ghannouchi, the

prime minister, with some leaders of the opposition. The army supported

this deal.

This deal was refused by the street, by the people who made the revolu-

tion. They pushed the unions' representatives to leave the government.

When Ben Ali left he had the police with him. He had his own militia

within the police, so the police were divided. The people causing trouble inTunisia just after Ben Ali left were his militia, but you have people from the

police who are against them.

The army is not as strong as people outside Tunisia might think. Ben Ali

managed to weaken the army and didn't give it a lot of money. People say

the army is supporting us.

At the beginning of the revolution people were demonstrating against

the corruption of the regime and against Ben Ali. Now it is interesting that

if you go to the streets of Tunisia you have a lot of people starting to say it's

not only Ben Ali that caused the problems, but also the whole system of the

regime's RCD party. They are now asking the government to fire the manag-




ers of big firms (especially the ones that were privatised). They are seen as

symbols of the corrupt Ben Ali regime.

The challenge now is to protect the revolution. Tunisians don't want the

mess of Iraq.

They are talking about the example of the parliamentary system in Brit-

ain. They don't want a presidential system any more.

People are debating the future of the revolution. They talk about Portugal

after the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship and about what happened in

Iran.

Héla Yousfi is a member of Le Collectif de Soutien aux Luttes des Habitants de

Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia




The revolutionaces a trial o

strength Fathi Chamki


tunisia has just lived through an extraordinary month. A revolution-

ary movement has succeeded in sweeping from power a dictator

who seemed only days earlier assured of remaining on his throne

for life.

How can we explain this social explosion, which has rapidly turned into

revolution?

In the first few days the demands focused on the material conditions of

existence, summed up in the slogan "Work is a right". Then the widening of the movement, together with the repression meted out to it by the dictator-

ship, accelerated its radicalisation to the point of challenging the established

order. Political demands became associated with social demands, the con-

centrated expression of which was "Ben Ali, get out!"

It is very difficult to try to analyse a political situation when it is evolving

so rapidly, sometimes even leaping ahead. But the key trends remain clear.

The day after 14 January, the day of the great mobilisation, particularly in

Tunis, was when the regime decided to rid itself of Ben Ali. But even while

we had not yet had time to celebrate this historic victory, the dying regime

made an attempted comeback with a "the government of national unity" in




the hope of containing the groundswell that threatened to overthrow the

established order.

The counterrevolutionary manoeuvre by the authorities had some success

during the first three days, above all thanks to the leaders of the UGTT trade

union rallying in support of the government.

On 18 January the announcement of the composition of the government

of national unity acted like a spur to the revolutionary movement, which

responded with a wave of demonstrations in most towns, above all in Tunis.

At the same time, the rank and file of the UGTT forced the setting up of an

administrative commission to act as a counter to the position taken by theexecutive bureau, which was very close to the authorities. This commission

forced the resignation of the three ministers nominated by the union.

The announcement of the decisions of the administrative commission, on

the afternoon of the same day, destabilised all the political partners in the

government of national unity and pushed one of the three opposition parties

that had joined the government to withdraw.

The revolutionary movement also went into action over the key political

question - the future of the RCD. Just about everywhere the demonstratorshave taken over its local offices, which were completely deserted (the total

number of full-timers was said to be 10,000 - all paid for through public

funds). Several have been wrecked. This movement has now spread to pub-

lic enterprises and to state administrative offices, from which, thanks to ini-

tiatives by employees, the managers of these institutions are being expelled.

There is a trial of strength between the revolutionary movement deter-

mined to dismantle the old order and the counterrevolution that makes end-

less political concessions to try to protect what is fundamental, that is, theeconomic and social capitalist regime.

True, for now this issue is completely missing from the debate and from

the demands, in view of the importance of what to do in respect of the RCD

and its future. But we should expect the social question to bounce back to

the surface very shortly.

Fathi Chamki (RAID-ATTAC, Tunisia)




No substitute Dominic Kavakeb


As the events of the Tunisian uprising unfold there has been anabundance of blogs and articles championing the role of social

media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, with some even call-

ing this "the first Wikileaks revolution". While both Wikileaks and

social media have had an effect on the Tunisian people, to characterise this

revolt as being caused by either of these things is to overstate their impor-

tance and at the same time massively understate the revolutionary strength

of the Tunisian masses.

Undoubtedly for those of us outside of the country it has been fascinat-ing to follow the latest events via Twitter and watch videos of the protests

on YouTube. With the Tunisian authorities imposing a ban on the state-run

media from covering the events, people have been forced to use the gener-

ally much freer internet to release information.

But it has been often overlooked that these protests actually began four

weeks before the world's mainstream media picked up on them. In that time

the level of internet activity from the Tunisians hadn't changed but was

mostly ignored until the fleeing of President Ben Ali. It took nearly a monthfor the coverage on social networks to hit the headlines in any meaningful

way.

Perhaps the area of social media that is most overstated is its ability to or-

ganise. Much was made of how Iranians used Twitter to liaise during their

protests in 2009 and the same has been said of Tunisia. It's wrong to alto-

gether dismiss this notion - every generation uses the tools at their disposal

to organise. Also we can't downplay the need for activists to use online me-

dia to express political thought in countries where it isn't always easy to

do so openly. But the idea that Tunisians took to the streets after seeing a

Facebook status is to dismiss the decades of frustration and anger that has




built up in the country. Technological advancements have the ability to help

mass movements but they do not cause mass movements.

The same is generally true with Wikileaks. We should always support the

brilliant work done by the whistle-blowing website, but its revelations about

Tunisia brought no surprises for the people who had been living in that au-

thoritarian regime. CNN reporter Ben Wedeman said, "No one I spoke to in

Tunis today mentioned Twitter, Facebook or Wikileaks. It's all about unem-

ployment, corruption, oppression."

The mass media does not purposefully set out to deny the ability of people

to bring about change by themselves, but the constant talk of Twitter revoltsand Wikileaks revolutions is the reality of looking at the world in a top-down

way. Tunisians have used social media, not the other way around.

The hope now is that the revolution can spread across the Arab world.

The internet can help to spread the idea and give confidence to the working

classes of other nations, but it has always been and will always be ordinary

people who change the world.

Dominic Kavakeb




Chapter two

egypt And tuniSiA

the RetuRn ofRevolution




The myths thattumble with tyrants Mark L Thomas First published in March 2011

The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have set the entire region

ablaze with revolt. Mark L Thomas opens our coverage by

considering the historic significance of these events

the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt - the Arab world’s most popu-

lous country - are of historic importance. They have set the whole

region on fire as protests have spread from Yemen to Jordan to Iran.

As we go to press the fate of the heroic uprising against Gaddafi’s re-

gime in Libya is unclear. Even the small Persian Gulf state of Bahrain is being

shaken by mass revolts at time of writing. Further upheavals and revolutions

across North Africa and the Middle East cannot be ruled out.

But if the immediate political reverberations of the events of January andFebruary are clearly visible on the streets, the ideological fallout is no less

significant. The fall of the dictator Hosni Mubarak at the hands of a vast mo-

bilisation by the Egyptian masses has struck a powerful blow to many of the

dominant ideological assumptions of our age.

The brutal US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were accompanied by

loud talk of a “clash of civilisations”. The Islamic world in general - and Ar-

abs in particular - were held to be incapable of internally generating democ-

racy. Democracy could only be brought in from the outside - by F16 fighter

planes and the US marine corps.

But this was always a lie. It was not “Islamic culture” that stood in the way




of democracy in the Middle East but the suppression of political freedom by

dictatorial regimes fully backed by the US and the West over decades. It is

the Arab masses themselves who are the force capable of bringing democ-

racy to the Middle East and beyond - as is now being proved in practice.

But as one myth is swept aside another is resurrected. The famous claim

made by Francis Fukuyama in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

that liberal democracy had triumphed historically is being dusted off to

suggest that Tunisians, Egyptians and millions across the region are really

yearning after “American” values.

US support for Ben Ali and Mubarak, as well as the ongoing backing fordictators and sheikhs who (for the

time being at least) remain in their

palaces, is something of an embar-

rassment for this argument, though

it hasn’t stopped the likes of former

leading neocon Paul Wolfowitz and

the Financial Times newspaper from

making it. They all agree that liberaldemocracy represents the outer limit

of possible social change.

In fact, of course, even the battle

for democracy is by no means over in

Tunisia or Egypt. The key to securing

it will be the deepening of the wave of

workers’ struggles that have marked

both revolutions. This development also challenges the widely acceptedclaim that the spread of neoliberal globalisation has destroyed the collec-

tive power of workers as footloose capital and insecure employment suppos-

edly erode their bargaining strength. The opposite is the case. Globalisation

has created powerful new concentrations of workers around the world. The

Egyptian working class in 2011 is far bigger and makes up a far greater per-

centage of the population than the Russian working class that overthrew the

tsar in 1917.

But the role played by workers, especially in Egypt, opens up possibilities

that were largely absent, or at least much weaker, in the revolutions in East-

ern Europe in 1989, Indonesia in 1998, Serbia in 2000 and Argentina over

The potential or ademocratic revolutionto “grow over”, as Leon

Trotsky put it, into afght or a socialistrevolution can beglimpsed in Tunisiaand Egypt.




the winter of 2000-1 (let alone the string of “colour revolutions” in former

Soviet states, which were often little more than manoeuvres inside the rul-

ing class encouraged by the competing imperial powers).

It is this return of the organised working class to the centre of political

revolutions that can throw up struggles that have the potential to go beyond

the framework of liberal democracy and to strike blows at exploitation and

the hierarchy of class. “Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there they

must be broken,” wrote Rosa Luxemburg about the strikes that swept Ger-

many after the overthrow of the monarchy in November 1918.

The first phase of the Egyptian Revolution is over. The popular unity thatseemed to stretch across classes - with even a section of the capitalist class

in some sympathy for the demands for reform, or even for Mubarak to go - is

likely to be replaced by growing class polarisation (Mohamed Tonsi, on page

13, shows this has already started to happen in Tunisia).

Long ago Karl Marx noted this feature of revolutions. Writing about the

way the February 1848 Revolution in France, which enjoyed support across

the classes, gave way to the bloody battles of July, when the bourgeoisie

turned its guns on the workers, he noted:“The February Revolution was the nice revolution, the revolution of uni-

versal sympathies, because the contradictions which erupted in it against

the monarchy were still undeveloped and peacefully dormant, because the

social struggle which formed their background had only achieved an ephem-

eral existence, an existence in phrases, in words.

“The June Revolution is the ugly revolution, the nasty revolution, because

the phrases have given place to the real thing, because the republic has bared

the head of the monster by knocking off the crown which shielded and con-cealed it.”

Workers’ power

The working class in Egypt today is vastly more powerful than in France in

1848. But key tasks lie ahead: deepening the strike wave, of electing work-

ers’ councils that link together workers across factories and industries, which

can become the embryo of organs of workers’ power and of a more decisive

confrontation with the core of the Egyptian state machine. This will involve

the attempt to break the army along class lines.

In this sense the revolution in Egypt has not yet reached the scale of Feb-




ruary 1917 in Russia, where workers’ councils were set up immediately

(drawing on the memory of the first Russian Revolution in 1905) and the

Petrograd garrison mutinied within days.

But the potential for a democratic revolution to “grow over”, as Leon Trot-

sky put it in his theory of permanent revolution, into a fight for a socialist

revolution can already be glimpsed in Tunisia and Egypt.

The hope is that this process can continue and become stronger and in

turn renew the belief that the real alternative to liberal democracy lies not in

authoritarian versions of capitalism, from China to Iran, but the abolition of

capitalist exploitation itself.




The gravedigger odictatorship Anne Alexander First published March 2011

There have been many conflicting interpretations of events in

Egypt. Anne Alexander argues that the working class is the key

force in Egyptian society with the power to drive the revolution

forward

Afew short weeks into the Egyptian Revolution the number of con-

tradictory labels it wears is already growing with dizzying speed. In

the Western media it is painted as a “flower” revolution - a heart-

warming example of a leaderless “people power” movement. A

considerable body of deluded neocon opinion in the US sees the overthrow

of dictator Hosni Mubarak as a confirmation that George W Bush was right

to try to impose “democracy” on the Middle East through the barrel of a gun.Military analysts at Stratfor and a good part of the BBC’s senior journalists

seem to think it is an old-fashioned military coup. Other voices clamour for

the recognition of the Egyptian Revolution as an internet-driven revolt or a

sinister Islamist conspiracy.

This article takes a different perspective. I argue that the Egyptian Revo-

lution demonstrates, with a force not seen in the Arab world for more than

half a century, that the power that can liberate society from below lies with

the organised working class.

The strikes which spread like wildfire across Egypt in the last days before

Mubarak’s fall suddenly made workers’ power visible. Yet it was deeper and




longer-term processes of both global and local economic change which frac-

tured the Egyptian state and created the conditions for the revolt. In particu-

lar, the toxic chemistry between the neoliberal reforms, promoted by Hosni

Mubarak’s son, Gamal, and his cronies, and the backwash from the global

economic crisis played the central role in breaking workers materially and

ideologically from the regime.

Yet the first phase of the revolution - the 18 days of mobilisation on a

scale recalling scenes from the 1848 revolutions or Russia in February 1917

- was also the product of Egypt’s “culture of protest”, nurtured by a decade of

struggles between the state and the people in the streets. Western journalistsand Barack Obama’s advisers may have been surprised by the sudden erup-

tion of popular anger against a “stable” ally, but anyone who had watched

the ebb and flow of protests since 2000 - over Palestine, against the war on

Iraq, for democracy and constitutional reform, for better pay and trade un-

ion rights, and against police torture - should not have been.

However, analysis of the dynamics of the uprising itself shows that the

25 January revolution was more than an aggregator of disparate political

and economic demands. Rather the scale of mobilisation from below and thepressure it exerted on the state transformed and deepened the relationship

between the economic and political struggles. In Mubarak’s final days it was

the deployment of workers’ social power against the state, and in particular

the strike wave which erupted on 8 February, which finally cracked the re-

gime. The fact that the people were still in the streets as Mubarak was forced

out of power opens up possibilities for further extending the revolutionary

process, already glimpsed in the explosion of strikes in the week following

the dictator’s fall.

Fracturing the state

The junior army officers who seized power and overthrew the monarchy in

1952 set Egypt on the path to state capitalist development. Under the leader-

ship of Gamal Abdel Nasser they used the state’s resources to found heavy

industries, took control of the Suez Canal in order to finance the building

of the Aswan High Dam, and built up manufacturing to supply Egyptian

markets.

This economic strategy was connected to the creation of political institu-

tions which sought to bind workers and peasants to the state. Workers were




offered a social contract where in return for renouncing their political inde-

pendence they could expect some gains, such as subsidised housing, educa-

tion, other welfare benefits and relative job security. Nasserist rhetoric, par-

ticularly in its late phase, idealised workers for their contribution to national

development. But the Nasserist state crushed independent workers’ organi-

sations and in their place built an official trade union federation which was

subservient to the government.

Infitah

The conditions which allowed Nasser and his colleagues to pursue this par-ticular strategy for economic development had started to change by the late

1960s as ruling classes on a global scale began to search for alternatives

to state-led development. After Nasser died in 1970, his successor, Anwar

Sadat, broke with the USSR and by the end of the decade had sealed a new

partnership with the US. Sadat pioneered a policy of “economic opening”

(“infitah”) in order to receive loans from international financial institutions.

During Mubarak’s later years the process of infitah continued and deep-

ened, with the imposition of a structural adjustment programme followingthe 1991 Gulf War. The percentage of workers employed in the state sec-

tor shrank from 40 percent in 1981-2 to 32 percent in 2004-5. However,

these figures hide a more dramatic story of increased unemployment, rising

job insecurity and the destruction of large parts of the welfare system. Be-

tween 1998 and 2006 the percentage of workers with an employment con-

tract dropped from 61.7 percent to 42 percent while the percentage covered

by social insurance fell from 54.1 percent to 42.3 percent during the same

period.Nasser constructed a political system which, despite some tinkering by Sa-

dat and Mubarak, survived decades after his death. Although his successors

did allow fake “opposition” parties to exist - so long as they remained weak

and subservient to the ruling party - they did not fundamentally change the

basic political system. Until the 2011 revolution, Egypt had a two-class elec-

toral franchise, with workers and peasants voting for one set of parliamen-

tary representatives and middle class “professionals” voting for another set.

So the state-controlled trade union federation was not merely an instrument

of social control within the workplace, where it sought to manage workers’

discontent in the interest of the state, but also a giant electoral machine de-




livering pro-regime voters to the polling stations and turning out crowds of

workers to cheer Mubarak and his cronies.

At an ideological level too, the legacy of Nasserism outlived its creator by

several decades. Workers’ identification with the goals of state-led national

development could be seen even at the sharpest moments of class struggle.

Workers’ resistance did explode from time to time - for example in Mahalla

al-Kubra in 1984, at the Helwan iron and steel plants in 1989 and in Kafr

al-Dawwar in 1994. But rather than withdrawing their labour and stopping

production, workers generally chose to stage “work-ins” - a gesture meant

to signify that they, unlike their leaders, were still committed to a vision of common sacrifice for the sake of “the nation”.

The reforms of the 1990s and beyond fractured the Nasserist system on

several different levels. Privatisa-

tion removed hundreds of thousands

of workers from state industries and

transferred their bonuses and work-

place-based welfare benefits to the

bank accounts of private sharehold-ers. Deprived of its role in channel-

ling welfare to workers, the state-run

trade union federation rotted from

within. It continued to mobilise voters

for ruling party election rallies and to

harass and intimidate workers who attempted to organise resistance from

below, but in large areas of the country its organisational structure was a

hollow shell of “paper members” and a handful of self-serving bureaucrats.In late 2006 a strike by around 25,000 textile workers at the Misr Spinning

and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra opened the gates to a prolonged

wave of workers’ mobilisation. Strikes spread rapidly from sector to sector,

and among some groups of workers, particularly the Mahalla textile work-

ers and the property tax collectors, took on an explicitly political character,

demanding the right to organise independent trade unions and calling for an

increase in the national minimum wage. The widespread adoption of strikes

as a weapon, rather than work-ins, was a testimony to the shift in workers’

consciousness.

It is important to understand that these developments are not simply the

The reorms o the1990s and beyond

ractured theNasserist system onseveral dierent levels.




result of local factors, but are intimately connected to global processes. The

imposition of neoliberal economic reform programmes on variants of state

capitalist regimes has been played out across the world. Short-term shocks

have also played a central role, particularly the international rise in food

prices which was driving workers’ protests against the spiralling cost of liv-

ing even before the onset of the global economic crisis.

Holes in the wall of dictatorship

The strike wave of 2006 erupted into a context which had already been

changed by popular protest. Although compared with the millions of demon-strators who took part in the 25 January revolution the numbers of protesters

were often relatively small, the ferment in the streets since the second Pales-

tinian Intifada in late 2000 marked a dramatic shift in the Egyptian political

landscape. The first really significant breakthrough came in 2003, when tens

of thousands of demonstrators took control of Cairo’s Tahrir Square in pro-

tests against the US invasion of Iraq, punching “a hole in the wall of dictator-

ship”, as one Egyptian socialist activist put it at the time.

Further holes appeared in the dictatorship over the following few years. In2005 a loose alliance of radical Nasserists, liberals and socialists - supported

by some elements in the Muslim Brotherhood - launched a campaign oppos-

ing Mubarak’s renewed candidacy for presidency and his attempts to hand

power over to his son, Gamal. Street protests crystallised around the slogan

“Kifaya - Enough!” and began to draw in growing numbers of young people.

Today it is hard to remember what an unusually daring step this was for the

small forces of the radical opposition groups. They were publicly crossing

the “red line” preventing criticism of the president.The following year saw a revolt by judges incensed at the regime’s bla-

tant election-rigging and persecution of those who spoke out against it. Hun-

dreds of judges in full official regalia marched through Cairo in protest at

the disciplining of two reform-minded members of the Court of Cassation.

The sense of the state at war with itself was palpable, as riot police beat

judges on the steps of their club building and tear-gassed lay supporters of

the judges’ campaign.

Rising levels of workers’ struggles intersected with a revival of youth ac-

tivism in 2008, which saw the regime face its biggest challenge before the

2011 revolution. A call for a strike by textile workers at Misr Spinning in




Mahalla was taken up by networks of youth activists. A Facebook group sup-

porting the Mahalla workers and calling for a general strike in solidarity

gained around 70,000 members. On 6 April 2008 the actual strike in Ma-

halla was aborted by the police, but their attack on demonstrators touched

off a near-insurrection in the town. Meanwhile, the “Facebook strike” found

an echo in large demonstrations on most university campuses and shuttered

shops across the capital. The final surge of protest before 25 January came

in the summer of 2010, when the murder of a young internet activist, Khaled

Said, by the police provoked demonstrations of thousands in his home city

of Alexandria.It would be easy with hindsight to plot a smooth upward curve of struggle

from 2000 to 2011. In reality, these waves of protest were mostly discon-

tinuous, with one set of demonstrations petering out, or being beaten off

the streets, a few months before the eruption of the next. The gap between

the economic demands raised by workers and the highly political claims of

largely middle class professionals calling for constitutional reform was, some

argued, a sign that attempts to unite opponents of Mubarak were doomed to

failure.

The spell of fear

Despite this, Mubarak’s last decade played a crucial role in his downfall.

It was on these disparate protests that a generation of activists from dif-

ferent political traditions - Islamist, Nasserist, liberal and socialist - learnt

techniques of political organisation. In the space of these ten years the radi-

cal opposition groups acquired sustained experience of organising protests,

maintaining activist networks and building tactical alliances across differentpolitical traditions. Above all, they collectively broke the spell of fear around

street politics which the regime had enforced for more than a generation.

Of all the protests, it was the strike wave which established a dynamic

of what Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg called “reciprocal action”

between the economic and political struggles against the regime. As Lux-

emburg observed during the 1905 Revolution in Russia, the interaction be-

tween economic and political struggles could not simply be understood as a

linear progression from bread and butter economic demands to the politi-

cal question of state power. The process of reciprocal action could be seen

at work in a pendulum motion between political and economic struggles,




she argued, where “after every foaming wave of political action a fructifying

deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle

shoot forth”. However, in the case of workers’ struggles, their social power

and collective organisation invested even their everyday battles in the work-

place with a political dimension which opened up new horizons for further

political action.

Egyptian workers took by storm the same rights which other “political”

campaigns for democracy had been forced to abandon under pressure from

the state: the right to assembly, the right to protest, the right to free speech.

The strike wave carved out spaces for discussion and organisation in thou-sands of workplaces across the country, driving the struggle deep into the

fabric of Egyptian society.

After 25 January 2011 processes which developed over a decade - wresting

control of the streets from the police, protest demands directly challenging

Mubarak, the increasing interaction between economic and political strug-

gles - were suddenly compressed into the space of days. The opening moves

came from opposition activists who seized the opportunity created by the

overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia to call for nationwide protests. A Facebook group calling for the demonstrations, “We are all Khaled Said”, named after

the activist murdered by the police in Alexandria in summer 2010, gathered

hundreds of thousands of members.

An alignment of the radical opposition groups took shape, bringing to-

gether revolutionary socialists, liberals, democracy activists, Nasserists, in-

dependent trade unionists and eventually the Muslim Brotherhood. Protest

organisers agreed a new tactic to beat police blockades: a range of different

assembly points, rather than one central march or rally.Early on 25 January it was clear that the scale of the demonstrations was

greater than anything Egypt had witnessed for years - possibly decades. First

a dozen, then a hundred, then thousands of holes were punched in the wall

of dictatorship. Tens of thousands of people poured through them: in Nasr

City, Giza and Shubra; in Alexandria, in Mansoura, in Suez, in Assyut.

Over the following days the demonstrations gathered pace. Friday 28 Jan-

uary was the movement’s first major test. The police locked down the city

centres, and the regime shut down the mobile phone networks and the in-

ternet. Protesters used mosques as rallying points and marched to retake the

streets. Estimates of the numbers on the streets ran into hundreds of thou-




sands, as huge crowds of demonstrators battled with the police. Mubarak

sacked his cabinet, withdrew the police from the burnt-out shells of their

police stations and deployed the army. Local popular committees sprang

up across the country to protect homes and neighbourhoods from attack by

thugs, many believed to be policemen in plain clothes. Further demonstra-

tions over the weekend culminated in a “march of millions” on Tuesday 1

February, which finally wrung grudging concessions from Mubarak. In a tel-

evised speech he said he would not stand again for election and promised to

rewrite part of the constitution.

The regime struck back on Wednesday 2 February, mobilising its plain-clothes thugs to attack demonstrators in Alexandria and Cairo. Demonstra-

tors in Tahrir Square faced a surprise assault by columns of attackers armed

with stones, knives and Molotov cocktails, riding the horses and camels which

normally give tourist rides near the Pyramids. For two days the battle for the

square raged back and forth, but eventually the demonstrators gained the

advantage. Hundreds of thousands again marched the following Friday, this

time labelled “Departure Day”. Meanwhile the regime hunted desperately

for potential partners in a “dialogue”. Some of the opposition groups, includ-ing the Muslim Brotherhood, sent representatives to meet Omar Suleiman,

Mubarak’s newly appointed vice-president and former spymaster in chief.

Sections of the ruling class, including figures such as businessmen Ahmed

Bahgat and Naguib Sawiris, began to openly back some of the demonstra-

tors’ demands, while attempting to position themselves to play a political

role in the expected “transitional period”.

Still tens of thousands held their ground in the streets and, despite the

violent rhetoric coming from the regime’s spokesmen and hired reporters,new people began to come. Families with young children mingled with the

crowds in Tahrir Square and a young couple were married there on the Sun-

day afternoon.

Strikes

It was on Tuesday 8 February that the balance of forces shifted again - this

time decisively against Mubarak. A ripple of strikes spread from a few work-

places - the Suez Canal service workers, telecom workers in Cairo and the

Helwan steel workers were among the first - gathering force as it washed

across Egypt. By 9 February the Egyptian Centre for Social and Economic




Rights estimated that up to 300,000 workers were on strike across 15 gov-

ernorates. From hospital technicians and cement workers to postal workers

and textile workers, they occupied and struck, raising a potent mixture of

economic demands and support for the revolution.

Delegations of striking workers now joined the crowds in Tahrir Square,

and outside the presidential palace and the radio and television building by

the Nile. Amid swirling rumours that he would resign, Mubarak made a final

televised statement on Thursday 10 February but still refused to step down.

Small numbers of army officers could be seen addressing the crowds in Tahr-

ir Square. One officer telephoned Al Jazeera to resign live on air and an-nounced that he had joined the “people’s revolution”. While the army com-

manders met for hours behind closed

doors, the crowds swelled again.

Cairo seemed poised on the brink of a

final insurrection.

The edifice of the state finally

cracked on 11 February. The senior

army commanders took power andremoved Mubarak from office.

Three key things stand out from the

story of the 25 January revolution.

Firstly, the 18 days of confrontation

were shaped by many of the same dy-

namics of protest as the previous decade, but operating at a deeper level and

across a much shorter timescale. Protesters seized key areas of the major cit-

ies, particularly Tahrir Square, and turned them into strategic assets for therevolutionary movement. Tahrir Square, with its self-organised security com-

mittees, scavenged barricades, volunteer medics and street sweepers, sound

systems, tents and banners, became - like the hundreds of occupied factories

over the previous five years - liberated territory. It was a place to debate, but

also an organising centre from which activists went out to win arguments for

bringing factories, offices and neighbourhoods into the revolution.

Defence of this space rested not only on the sheer weight of numbers,

but also on political organisation. The Muslim Brotherhood youth activists,

for example, played a central role in protecting the square from attack by

the government thugs and at the checkpoints around the perimeter. Yet the

Tahrir Square, like thehundreds o occupiedactories over the

previous fve years,became liberatedterritory.




Brotherhood did not dominate the space inside but rather remained caught

within its own contradictions - held in balance between its young members’

identification with the broader revolutionary movement and the aspira-

tion of its leadership to strike a deal with the state. That equilibrium not

only helped to keep the streets open for protest but also created a space

in which, despite their smaller numbers, voices from the revolutionary left

have reached new audiences and won new recruits.

Secondly, however, if the revolution had only remained in the streets,

even in the numbers which came out after 25 January, it is uncertain wheth-

er this would have been enough to cause the state to crack from above. Justas during the previous decade’s struggles for democracy and reform, the al-

liance of different social and political groups mobilised for change did not

make a breakthrough until the revolution crossed from the political to the

social domain, going from the streets into the workplaces and rousing work-

ers to take collective action, fusing their own demands with the wider goals

of the movement. Moreover, the cracks in the regime’s machinery of political

and social control which allowed this process to take place did not simply

appear on 25 January, but rather have their origin in the long-term impact of neoliberal reforms on the structure of the Nasserist state.

The role of the military

Finally, there is the question of the role of the military. In essence, what the

mass movement from below achieved was to force one part of the state - the

Armed Forces High Command - to cut out the cancer that Mubarak had be-

come in order to save the state as a whole. This is clearly not the same as the

mass movement seizing power on its own behalf. Nor have the armed forc-es disintegrated either vertically, with splits appearing between rival com-

manders, or horizontally, along class lines as the Russian army did in 1917.

Yet it would be a mistake to see the removal of Mubarak as simply a coup

d’ état, or to underestimate the difficulties military rulers face if they try to

demobilise the revolutionary movement by force. The situation is fundamen-

tally different from that of 1952, when a small circle of junior army officers

acted after the mass protest movement had temporarily exhausted itself. The

streets were empty when Nasser led his forces to seize the palace, radio sta-

tion and barracks. Here the turn towards the social struggle again becomes

crucial. In February 2011 the revolution had already entered the workplaces




before the military acted. In 1952 one strike by textile workers at Kafr al-

Dawwar threatened the new military regime and it was crushed by the army.

A week after Mubarak’s fall hundreds of workplaces were on strike, includ-

ing the giant Mahalla textile plant with its workforce of 24,000.

If there is to be real change for the millions in Egypt, and not just the mil-

lionaires like Naguib Sawiris and Ahmed Bahgat, the revolution needs to

deepen further. Organised workers are becoming a social force within the

developing revolutionary movement, and they have consciously deployed

their collective social power to achieve the movement’s first political goal:

the removal of Mubarak. In only 18 days Egyptian workers have travelledfurther down the road to human liberation than their parents and grandpar-

ents managed in a lifetime. But there is much still to do: kicking the ruling

party’s henchmen out of every workplace and neighbourhood, building inde-

pendent unions and, above all, creating new institutions of workers’ democ-

racy which can start to act, at least in embryo, as alternative centres of state

power.




The revolution hasonly just begun Mohamed Tonsi First published March 2011

With dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali long gone, media attention

on Tunisia has waned. But there is now an ongoing battle to

cleanse the country of Ben Ali's cronies, reports Mohamed

Tonsi

the flight of dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali was only the first chap-

ter of the Tunisian Revolution. The mobilisation of the people,

organised in neighbourhood militias, foiled the first attempt at

counterrevolution by the remnants of the president's loyalists. The

liberation caravan which came from regions where the revolution started

and blockaded the prime minister's office for more than a week led to the

reshuffle of a government - formed less than two weeks previously - whichhad kept ruling party figures in key positions.

This success encouraged the masses to demand the full removal of the rul-

ing party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD). Finally, the minister

of the interior had to bow to popular pressure and froze the activities of the

RCD, banning any meetings of its members pending its dissolution. In cities,

towns and villages across the country, governors, mayors and municipal as-

semblies close to the old regime were forced out of office. When I phoned

my cousin, who lives in the coastal village of Korba, to ask how the family is

doing, he told me, "We are doing fine. Today the people gathered together

and we managed to expel the mayor and the municipal assembly. They are a




bunch of RCD cronies!"

The new foreign minister, Ahmed Ounais, faced the same fate after a press

conference in Luxembourg. Here he refused to describe the events in Tuni-

sia as a revolution, and praised the French foreign minister Michèle Alliot-

Marie, who had offered to help Ben Ali's police before his fall, calling her a

visionary and a friend of the Tunisian nation. Finally, he refused to comment

on the events unfolding in Egypt. Two hundred outraged employees of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs walked out and besieged the minister's office be-

fore issuing a communiqué in support of the Egyptian people.

Mutual inspiration

There is a reverberation between the revolutions in the two countries. The

main slogan used in Egypt - "The people want to bring down the regime" -

originated in Tunisia, and the 50,000-strong demonstration in Sfax, the sec-

ond biggest Tunisian city, was called as a "day of rage" just one day after the

first day of Egyptian rage. The recent success of the Egyptian Revolution has

inspired the Tunisian people to match the Egyptian achievements and call

for the dissolution of parliament and the upper house, and for the formationof a constitutional assembly.

Following the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, inspired by the swift suc-

cesses in the two countries, and intoxicated by the infinite realm of new pos-

sibilities, crowds started chanting an even more daring slogan: "The people

want to liberate Palestine!"

Although the momentum of the revolution has not faltered, the danger of

counterrevolution is still present. Counterrevolutionary forces will always

try to diminish, if not reverse, the achievements of revolutions. The latestattempt has been the formation of a government of ultra-liberal technocrats

who, while having no links with the old regime, have been hand-picked by

the bourgeoisie to defend their interests.

To add insult to injury, prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi has hired

as an adviser an ex-banker, and expert in "political marketing", who advised

Ben Ali during his final days in office. This can only fuel the social discontent

and the industrial action already taking place in many areas, not simply over

pay but mainly to win permanent contracts for the large contingents of tem-

porary workers.

It is very interesting to notice the spontaneous and organised reactions of




the bourgeoisie to these demands. Groups with tens of thousands of mem-

bers have been formed on Facebook with slogans like, "This is a revolution of

free men not of beggars" and a sarcastic, "The unemployed have started the

revolution and the employed want a pay rise".

The class struggle is becoming increasingly obvious and is starting to po-

larise those who were united in calling for Ben Ali to "get the hell out". The

revolution has achieved all the demands of the bourgeoisie by ousting the

dictator and his party. According to them, the nation, meaning the workers,

should go back to hard work. Leading these efforts to tame the revolution

is the wealthy Mabrouk family - a member of which is Ben Ali's son in law- who are still free to continue their business as usual. They are trying to

transform the revolution of the people into a "palace coup" and are happy to

throw other families to popular vengeance. The adviser to the prime minis-

ter and at least three other new ministers have historical links to this family

and their business empire.

The revolution gathered momentum through the formation of local coun-

cils for protection of the revolution in several cities and towns. These pushed

the opposition political parties, the UGTT union federation, the union of stu-dents and many other civil society associations to declare the formation of a

nationwide council for the protection of the revolution. In total, 28 groups

signed this declaration, including communists, social democrats, national-

ists, Islamists and even the association of veterans of the anti-colonial strug-

gle. This offers accountability over the actions of the transitional govern-

ment and an overview of the task of changing legislation over electoral law,

media and justice in order to pave the way for democratic elections.

The UGTT presented this declaration to the transitional government whodeclined it on 16 February. As I write, calls are being made for countrywide

demonstrations demanding the resignation of the transitional government.




Mubarak: ally oimperialismSimon Assaf First published March 2011

For 30 years Egypt has been the linchpin of US and Israeli

domination across the Middle East. Simon Assaf charts the

history of Western support for Mubarak and the consequences

of his downfall

When the mass demonstrations that swept Egypt turned into an

insurrection, US president Barack Obama demanded to know

why Middle East experts in Washington failed to predict that a

revolution was about to sweep away its most important ally in

the Arab world.

That the Middle East is a huge pressure cooker of anger and frustration

was known to all. But some Israelis, neocons and many Arab leaders hadconvinced themselves that if the Arab masses had not risen in rebellion al-

ready, they never would. The Egyptian Revolution has dispelled those illu-

sions and thrown into doubt decades of US military, political and economic

thinking designed to break an alliance of Arab states that emerged out of the

anti-colonial revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s.

The cornerstone of this strategy was to keep Egypt "neutral" and isolate

any country that challenged imperialism and Israel. Egypt's peace treaties

with Israel, signed by Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak's predecessor, at Camp

David in 1978-9, shifted the balance of power dramatically in the region.

Stabilising Egypt meant stabilising Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen and a host




of other countries. It was key to isolating Syria and Iran, nations that refused

to bow to US diktats in the "new Middle East".

Measured in hard cash, the Israeli-Egyptian peace dividend, known as the

"cold peace", remained at a modest $500 million a year in trade. Israeli tour-

ists could take Nile cruises or smoke hashish in Sharm el-Sheikh holiday

resorts, and Israeli businessmen could set up free enterprise zones - mainly

to guarantee the US market for Egyptian cotton. But the rewards for Israel

were far greater. Before 1978 Israel dedicated some 23 percent of its GDP to

military spending; after Camp David this dropped to 9 percent.

Cold peace

The treaty had more dramatic consequences. It allowed Israel, virtually un-

hindered, to turn its full might on the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria. The

1978 Camp David Accords were signed as Israel staged its first invasion of

Lebanon. Israeli troops completed the final handover of the Sinai in 1982,

before launching the second, and more devastating, invasion of Lebanon. An

Egypt friendly to the US guaranteed the safety of the Red Sea and key sup-

ply lines for the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Egypt was a greatstrategic asset. Camp David was hailed as a master stroke.

The cold peace became the cornerstone of imperial strategy in the region,

but Egypt also began to matter economically. Some 8 percent of global sea-

borne trade passes through the Suez Canal, which links the Red Sea to the

Mediterranean. The strategically vital Sumed pipeline than runs along its

banks is part of a network of global oil distribution. Egypt has recently dis-

covered vast reserves of natural gas, oil and coal, and has big industry, with

steel foundries, textile mills and car plants.So Egypt is an economic as well as strategic prize, and China has been

hovering for a while in its attempt to displace US and Western capital in

the region. Egypt straddles Africa and the Middle East, and in Africa, China

matters. Chinese investment in the continent has mushroomed over the past

decade, and Egypt is part of this expansion. In 2002 Sino-Egyptian trade was

worth $500 million; by 2006 it had reached $3 billion and in 2008 a stagger-

ing $6.24 billion. Chinese money is funding a huge expansion of the contain-

er terminal in Port Said that will serve as a key hub for its goods bound for

European markets. It is modernising the car industry and building high-end

electronics factories and other manufacturing plants along the "enterprise




zones" near the canal. It has much at stake in Egypt.

China was cautious of drawing too close to an Egypt allied to the US, but

now it sees an opportunity and it brings little ideological baggage with it.

The US might have a deep political connection with Israel, but China doesn't.

Arab protesters do not burn the Chinese flag. So China can present itself as

an honest broker in the same way the US did during the dying days of Brit-

ish and French colonial rule. The more aggressive and narrow US and Israeli

strategy is, the more it stonewalls even the most moderate peace plan, the

greater the risk that Egypt will slip further into the arms of China.

Israel has a second pressing problem - its disastrous relationship with Tur-key, a key Middle East nation once considered, like Egypt, to be friendly.

The Israelis have been slowly burning

their bridges with Ankara, and rela-

tions soured further following Israel's

bloody attack on the Mavi Marmara,

the Turkish aid ship which attempted

to break the siege of Gaza. Turkey,

once a dependable ally, had already resisted US demands to use its terri-

tory as a launch-pad for its invasion

of Iraq. Now the Turkish regime has

started its "turn to the east", reheat-

ing its once frosty relations with its

neighbours - it recently sealed its rap-

prochement with Syria and has warm relations with Iran.

With the Egyptian state now under massive pressure from below, Israelmay find it has few friends left. Even before the Egyptian Revolution, Is-

rael was learning that its military power had limits. The failed occupation of

southern Lebanon, which ended in a humiliating retreat in May 2000, was

followed by a disastrous war in 2006, when it was outfought and outthought

by Hezbollah and the Lebanese resistance. Even its grip on the Palestinians

was not assured, with stubborn resistance in the West Bank and an untamed

armed opposition in the Gaza Strip.

A combination of the US's disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well

as Israel's clumsy attempts to suppress Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Pales-

tinian Hamas movement, already set nerves jangling. In the weeks before

The US is bankingon skilully talkingdown the Egyptian

Revolution and it isattempting to sellitsel as a riend o thepeople.




the Egyptian Revolution the parliamentary alliance headed by Hezbollah

forced out of office the US-backed prime minister of Lebanon. Israel already

had a delicate situation on the "northern front"; now it has a disastrous one

in the south.

The region has seen some fundamental social changes in the era of the

cold peace. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s Israel confronted societies that

were overwhelmingly rural and economically stagnant, by the turn of this

century the Arab world had become urban, sophisticated and relatively ad-

vanced. Even countries such as Lebanon, vastly poorer that its oil-rich neigh-

bours, have been transformed. In the 1960s three out of four Lebanese livedoff the land; now some eight out of ten live in cities. This is true of most

other Arab nations, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states becoming

fully integrated into global capitalism.

But these historic social changes are not reflected in the Arab regimes,

whose leaders owe their position to events that took place in a world that has

long gone. The dysfunctional relationship between the rulers and the "street"

had long been seen as a problem by Western governments, but they were

too timid to press for meaningful reforms. This problem was compoundedby Israel itself.

Israel was already finding the Lebanese and Palestinians difficult to tame.

But it could reassure itself that neither resistance movement, even with the

help of Syria and Iran, could field an army of millions and march on Tel

Aviv. Egypt can, and it brings some hard facts to the table. Its 82 million

population dwarfs all others. More people live in the city of Alexandria than

in Lebanon, and the population of Greater Cairo is bigger than that of Syria.

The Israelis can ill afford a repeat of the war of attrition that culminated inEgypt's devastating 1973 offensive. Israel survived that war, but it was very

close.

Having relied on Israel to break the alliance of Arab nationalist regimes,

the US found itself unable to rein in its ally's territorial ambitions. The US

fell into a strategic trap of its own making. It dangled the prospect of a two-

state solution and normalisation to the friendly Arab states, but could not

get Israel to make the necessary concessions. And, as was revealed in the

recently leaked Palestine Papers - which exposed negotiations between the

US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority - it never intended to.

Israeli governments engineered the collapse of the Oslo Accords that set out




a two-state solution with the Palestinians, and rejected a key Saudi peace

plan that offered "Arab normalisation" in return for all the lands seized after

the 1967 war. By rejecting these plans, Israel slapped in the face Arab lead-

ers who banked on an "honourable deal" they could sell back home. The

Saudi plan and Oslo Accords were rotten for the Palestinians, but still insuf-

ficient to satisfy Israel's appetite.

Arab leaders began to demand that the US put more pressure on Israel.

Obama initiated desperate and unsuccessful attempts to reign in Israeli am-

bitions - even offering advanced warplanes in return for a temporary freeze

on its settlements in the West Bank. Israeli stonewalling destroyed the Pal-estinian Authority's credibility and with it any real prospect for peace on its

terms. Now Israel and imperialism face a nightmare scenario. Should Israeli

troops rush to seize the Gaza Strip (as some Israeli generals are demand-

ing) and risk dragging Egypt into war, or tread warily so as not to provoke a

country in the grip of revolutionary fervour? The advice coming from the US

is unequivocal.

Stratfor, the renowned US think-tank, used some blunt words to sum up

Israel's "strategic distress": "The worst-case scenario for Israel would be areturn to the pre-1978 relationship with Egypt without a settlement with the

Palestinians. That would open the door for a potential two-front war with an

intifada in the middle. To avoid that, the ideological pressure on Egypt must

be eased, and that means a settlement with the Palestinians on less than

optimal terms.

"The alternative is to stay the current course and let Israel take its chanc-

es. The question is where the greater safety lies. Israel has assumed that it

lies with confrontation with the Palestinians. That's true only if Egypt staysneutral. If the pressure on the Palestinians destabilises Egypt, it is not the

most prudent course."

The US is banking on skilfully talking down the Egyptian Revolution and

it is attempting to sell itself as a friend of the people. Yet there is an immedi-

ate and pressing question: what happens when Gaza asks for the siege to be

lifted? What will be the response of an Egyptian government, whether mili-

tary or civilian, that has set up shop in Mubarak's presidential palace?

Either way the US is attempting, under Obama, to tread delicately. Israel

could decide to gamble on a repeat of its 1967 victory, but the risks are sud-

denly very high. For imperialism the Egyptian effect is posing wider strategic




concerns. The waves generated by the revolution are already lapping at the

shores of other Middle East countries. The uprising has emboldened already

existing movements for change, with almost daily protests and demonstra-

tions in Bahrain (home to the US Fifth Fleet), Yemen (a key US ally in the

"war on terror") and Jordan (the second Arab country to make peace with

Israel), as well as Algeria and Morocco.

Similarly it is worth repeating that Israel is a mighty power, and the more

the US loses its footing in the region, the more dependent it is on maintain-

ing this power. Crucially for the US, the Israeli regime has vastly greater in-

ternal stability than the Arab dictatorships, as it is based on a racially exclu-sive settler state that owes its survival to imperialism. The US understands

that, whatever the outcome of the revolution, Israel still has the ability to

mete out some harsh military punishment. The US is not about to abandon

Israel; it just wants it to behave, for now.

The biggest fear is not only that the Egyptian Revolution reproduces itself

in the rest of the region - although this seems increasingly possible - but that

in the process of revolution the Arab masses have rediscovered their power

and proved what is possible. The question of the direction for the EgyptianRevolution remains open-ended. But it already casts a shadow over Israel,

imperialism and its allies in the region.

Over the past 30 years Israel and the US were forced to look over their

shoulders at a resistance armed with stones and crude rockets. Now they

have come face to face with a giant.




Chapter threeBAhRAin And liByA

RepReSSion &inteRvention




Bahrain: uprisingand interventionTim Nelson First published April 2011

The arrival of Saudi Arabian troops has raised the stakes for

Bahrain's fledgling revolution. Tim Nelson reports on the

uprising in the Middle East's smallest state

on 14 March Saudi troops crossed the causeway between Saudi Ara-

bia and Bahrain. The United Arab Emirates has also sent about 500

police into the country. They were invited by the Bahraini govern-

ment after it was becoming increasingly clear the security forces

were unable to contain the mass protests against the authoritarianism of the

ruling Al Khalifa family. Since 14 February there have been mass protests

against the regime, demanding democratic reforms and, increasingly, the

removal of the ruling family. On 13 March protesters successfully resisted arenewed onslaught by the regime's security forces.

Bahrain's largest trade union federation, the General Federation of Bah-

rain Trade Unions, which represents 25,000 employees from 70 unions,

started strike action on 13 March in support of the movement. The strike in-

cludes workers at Bahrain's two largest companies, Aluminium Bahrain and

the Bahrain Petroleum Company. Trade union leaders have also announced

their intention to join the opposition committee, which is leading the resist-

ance. This sort of action is essential to victory. In Egypt and Tunisia the key

to toppling the dictatorships was the working class organising and taking

strike action.




A small island, with a population of little over one million, Bahrain is the

smallest of the oil-rich Gulf states. However, in February the people of Bah-

rain, following those of Tunisia, Egypt and across the region, came out onto

the streets. From

4 February there were small demonstrations in solidarity with the Egyp-

tian and Tunisian revolutions, and a large day of protest was called for 14

February. Thousands marched. The Bahraini government responded with a

level of repression which has become all too familiar in the Arab revolutions,

with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition used against peaceful pro-

testers. The Bahraini people have responded to this violence with furtherprotests and the occupation of the landmark Pearl Roundabout. They also

targeted state buildings and the financial district.

Like many countries in the Middle East, Bahrain is marked by both the

brutal nature of its authoritarian regime and deep divisions among its peo-

ple, which the ruling class encourages and intensifies. The Al Khalifa family

has ruled Bahrain since it was installed by the British Empire in the 19th

century and ever since has relied on the support of either British or US im-

perialism to maintain its power. Bahrain's security forces are equipped withUS weapons, tanks and aircraft, and the US Navy's Fifth Fleet is harboured

there. Since the 1930s Bahrain's economy has overwhelmingly centred on

oil. Since the 1970s Bahrain has also become a financial hub for the Mid-

dle East, making the state central to Western imperialism's economic and

military regional dominance. The House of Saud, the ruling family of Saudi

Arabia, has long supported the Al Khalifa family. Despite the vast wealth of

the country, few people see its benefit.

Oppression

Large-scale youth unemployment has been an ongoing problem in Bahrain,

as have low wages for the majority of people. Although the majority of Bah-

rain's population are Shia Muslims, the Al Khalifa family, as well as most of

the ruling elite and the hated security services, are Sunni. Shia people are

often discriminated against for jobs. The elite uses discrimination and op-

pression of the Shia majority in order maintain support among Sunnis.

Despite the overwhelming majority of protesters being Shia, and the in-

volvement of Shia Islamist organisations in the opposition, the people of

Bahrain have continued to stress that this is not an exclusively Shia move-




ment, nor is its aim to replace the oppression of Shia with that of Sunnis. The

significance of the movement in Bahrain, and its implications for the region,

should not be underestimated. It is the first of the Arabian absolute monar-

chies to face mass protests on this scale. If the movement wins in Bahrain it

can prove to the people of the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, that the

monarchies can be beaten. Also, in order to defeat the Al Khalifa family, the

Bahraini people will have to overcome the deep sectarian divisions which

have been exploited by the Bahraini ruling class, and that of the Middle East

as a whole, for so long.

A revolution of the kind we have seen in Tunisia and Egypt would sendshockwaves throughout the region and beyond. That is why the Saudi inter-

vention in Bahrain must be actively opposed by all those who stand in soli-

darity with the Arab people. The absolute monarchy of the House of Saud is

one of the most reactionary regimes in the region. In Saudi Arabia any criti-

cism of the regime, and its widespread human rights abuses, is punishable

by imprisonment, torture or death. Women are treated as second class citi-

zens. This brutal regime is supported by Western imperialism. After Israel,

and the military dictatorship in Egypt, Saudi Arabia is the most importantUS ally in the region.

The House of Saud fears the spread of the movement beyond Bahrain into

the other Gulf states and Saudi Arabia itself. The movement that began in

Tunisia, and deepened in Cairo, has spread across the Arab world and North

Africa. The Saudi monarchy and its supporters in Washington and London

are well aware that if the revolutions succeed they will threaten all the pup-

pet rulers in the Arab world and Western imperialism as a whole.




Libya at thecrossroadsSimon Assaf

First published in April 2011

Libya's revolution faces stark choices. Simon Assaf looks at the

roots of Gaddafi's regime and the danger posed by Western

intervention

As we go to press, Libya's revolution is at a crossroads. The upris-ing that erupted on 17 February faces two dangers - the possibility

that an offensive by the regime of Muammar Gaddafi could crush

the revolt, and that the West could intervene and undermine the

revolution. This crisis is not of the revolution's making, but is nonetheless

one that throws into sharp relief two possible options - to make an alliance

of dependency with Western powers, or to draw on the forces that have been

pushing for change across the region.

The revolution in Libya rose under difficult circumstances. Unlike Tuni-sia, where trade unions could operate within the bounds of the regime and

become a focus for discontent, or Egypt, where opposition could coalesce

around the political movements and a powerful working class, Libya had

no organised domestic opposition, such was the brutality and control of the

regime. This meant that Libya's revolution had to start with the most rudi-

mentary basis of organisation. Similarly the lack of any organised opposi-

tion diminished the regime's capacity to make compromise with offers of

dialogue and reform.

The revolution has been forced to make a series of compromises to guar-

antee its survival. These compromises are in danger of allowing Western




imperialism to hijack and derail the revolution. The demand for a "no-fly

zone", and calls for deeper Western military intervention such as airstrikes,

are genuine calls for help from those confronting Gaddafi's battalions. Yet

what is expected from and what will be delivered by Western powers are

very different. Imperialism's interest in Libya is oil. It is prepared, ultimately,

to do what it takes to guarantee this supply, including the partition of the

country.

The call for Western intervention opens up a second danger - allowing

Gaddafi's regime to present itself as an opponent of imperialism. This could

isolate the revolution from the wider movement for change across the regionand harden those elements inside the regime that are still wavering. The his-

tory of resistance inside the Middle East draws its legitimacy from the strug-

gle against colonialism and imperialism - to make an alliance with imperial-

ism will result in a loss of credibility and independence.

Gaddafi's regime

The army officers who seized power in Libya in 1969 were part of a wave

of anti-colonial revolts in the 1950s and 1960s that were inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser's revolution in Egypt. Libya had been subject to brutal colonial

rule under Italy from 1911 onwards and then came under British influence,

which continued despite the declaration of formal independence in 1951.

The young officers around Gaddafi aspired to create an independent

nation-state that could tap its resources, above all its oil wealth, in order

to build a modern society. Libya was then an overwhelmingly tribal society

made up of nomadic or agricultural communities. However, Gaddafi's revo-

lution did not involve the mass of people; rather it was centred on a smallgroup of officers drawn from the middle class.

The end of colonialism did not mean the end of capitalism, whatever

Gaddafi's rhetoric. His state had every bit as much interest in continuing the

exploitation of the mass of the population, however much of a step forward

it was from colonial rule, formal or informal.

In the 1970s Gaddafi undertook a massive reorganisation of the state.

The regime, dominated by a small circle around him, created "revolutionary

committees" in an attempt to supplant the tribal structures. These commit-

tees did not reflect the needs of the population, but served as a new source

of patronage by the state.




Fearful of discontent and potential rivals, Gaddafi used the new state

structures to guarantee his rule. He relocated most of the key state institu-

tions to his hometown of Sirte, distributed jobs and services in order to ce-

ment his rule over the country, and imprisoned or murdered his opponents

- even for the most modest criticism.

The regime's military power was concentrated in a few well-armed and

trained forces stationed away from major population centres. These forces

were supplemented by hired guns and the state security network. Elements

of the tribal relations remained in the national army, but this army was rel-

egated to border patrols or protecting the oil infrastructure.Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Gaddafi used the rhetoric of Arab na-

tionalism while he tightened his grip over all aspects of Libyan society. His

opposition to Western imperialism earned Libya a reputation as a bastion of

anti-Western resistance. In truth, Libya's meddling inside genuine resistance

movements in the region was unwelcome. His agents earned a reputation as

assassins and car bombers. Gaddafi's regime dealt harshly with those who

criticised his meddling, even kidnapping and murdering Musa Sadr, an in-

fluential and popular reformer in Lebanon.For many in the Middle East, Libya remained a place enveloped in dark-

ness, whose people lived under a tyrannical and unhinged ruler. For West-

ern powers, Gaddafi's regime was one that was prepared to make a bargain.

In return for oil deals Gaddafi's past was forgotten - including attacks on

Western targets.

Over the past decade Libya has changed in another fundamental way. Ur-

banisation has weakened old tribal allegiances, with the majority of the pop-

ulation now employed in the state bureaucracy, offices or factories. Triballoyalties still maintain some standing and respected elders are able to wield

some moral authority, but they have become much weaker.

Crisis

These social changes created a crisis for the regime. Gaddafi's national ideol-

ogy - an incoherent fusion of "Arab nationalist" rhetoric, "pan-Africanism",

"Islamic thought" and "socialism" as expressed in his Green Book - could not

maintain a real bond between the regime and the people. Gaddafi turned

instead to offer the promise of future reform under the patronage of his son,

Saif al-Islam. Saif's "vision" of gradual democratisation offered hope for the




younger generation.

The idea of "reform" raised the prospect that as Libya opened up to the

West it could use some of the vast oil revenues to put in place real changes.

The regime relaxed some of its repression, engaging many of its historical

opponents in open-ended, but insubstantial, talks on change. Real power

remained the preserve of a tight circle around Gaddafi. As with the Green

Book ideology before it, Saif's reforms proved to be hollow.

Inspired by the events in Egypt and Tunisia, a loose network of young ac-

tivists joined by notables, among them judges and respected lawyers, called

for peaceful protests on17 February. These protests, despite the modest demands, turned into the

first public displays of opposition to the regime.

The response of the regime, spooked by the revolutions engulfing Libya's

neighbours, was to open fire on the protests. The cycle of killings, funerals

and more killings exploded into a national uprising. The process that had de-

livered victories in Tunisia and Egypt seemed at work again - small protests

that turned into mass demonstrations, security forces driven off the streets,

crisis inside the army, a decisive wave of mass strikes, the regimes ditchingthe dictators.

Crowds destroyed state security buildings, burned down police stations

and torched one of Gaddafi's palaces. Demonstrations of millions were clos-

ing in on the regime, and sections of the national army dissolved or joined

the revolt. Amid rumours that Gaddafi had fled, a march closed in on Green

Square in Tripoli. Then the regime unleashed its supporters, regime thugs

and loyal troops in an attempt to crush the movement. The scale and brutal-

ity of the crackdown accelerated the collapse of sections of the regime. Lib- yan diplomats joined the revolt, groups of army officers released statements

commanding troops to disobey orders, and towns and villages declared for

the revolution.

Terror

Significant parts of the state, however, remained intact. Those loyal to Gadd-

afi consolidated themselves and tore through the civil and military institu-

tions, executing those who spoke out against the terror or refused orders

to open fire. The nature and extent of the cleansing of the regime are still

unknown. But many hundreds are believed to have been executed, among




them close Gaddafi family members and former regime stalwarts.

This was a mass popular uprising involving millions of people. Areas liber-

ated from the regime put under popular control all the functions of the state,

including prisons, the police and courts. Councils organised the distribution

of food according to need, opened TV and radio stations, and issued revolu-

tionary newspapers. Popular committees took over key installations such as

electricity stations, the ports and other utilities. All the major liberated cit-

ies and towns are run by these revolutionary councils. Observers, including

Western journalists, speak of the efficiency and energy of the councils and

the relaxed air of "freedom" in rebel areas.The popular councils formed a na-

tional organisation, the Transitional

National Council (TNC), to act as the

leadership of the revolution. There

are, however, two forces inside the

TNC. There is the popular revolu-

tionary leadership - drawn from the

key leaders of the uprising, and theformer high-ranking defectors of the

old regime who want to set up an in-

terim government with the backing of

the West. The formation of the TNC

represented a compromise between

these two wings - but it had to offer

a guarantee to the West that it would

abide by the oil contracts signed by the Gaddafi regime.The speed of the regime's counter-offensive condensed the time needed

to accomplish even the most rudimentary reorganisation by the revolution.

Some 15 days into the uprising the TNC was fighting for survival. The first

priority was an attempt to link up liberated areas in the east with rebellious

towns and cities in the west that were under siege. Time was crucial.

Revolution in danger

The youth from the east, now armed and fired up by belief born out of the

near impossible victory over regime forces in the early days of the uprising,

stormed westwards in a doomed attempt to link up rebel areas. The revolu-

The speed o theregime's counter-oensive condensed

the time needed toaccomplish even themost rudimentaryreorganisation by therevolution.




tion was now in danger, not only in the west of the country, but in the liber-

ated east.

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt now lagged behind Libya in one

crucial sense. Those revolutions still face state machines that remain sig-

nificantly intact, and as yet have little capability of delivering real mate-

rial aid to Libya. This imbalance opened the door to Western interference.

Convinced that the revolution would succeed, Western leaders manoeuvred

to back the TNC. Beleaguered, the TNC now felt it had little option but to

throw itself on Western mercy.

The TNC's position is that there should be no foreign troops on Libyansoil, yet it was forced to call for a no-fly zone and airstrikes in an attempt to

halt the regime's counter-offensive. These military setbacks forced the TNC

into deeper compromises. Despite the possibility of short-term support, it

was in danger of mortgaging the independence of the revolution to Western

interests.

The demand for Western intervention is at first sight simple to under-

stand: The regime is launching air raids on rebel forces. The US with all its

military power has the resources capable of destroying Gaddafi's warplanesand tipping the military balance in favour of the rebels. This is, however,

a mistaken and dangerous simplification of the role of imperialism, whose

interests are not those of the revolution. Western governments have been

prepared to make deals with the regime before, and are willing to do so

again, including the de facto partition of the country - leaving the revolution

abandoned in the west and the east reduced to a Western pawn.

There are many who agree that Western interference is not ideal, but make

the case that even a revolution heavily indebted to the West is preferable toa regime victory. But this is not the first time resistance movements in the

Middle East have faced overwhelming odds. Both the Palestinian movement

and the resistance in Lebanon are confronted by a military power far more

powerful than Gaddafi's. Their ability to survive and, significantly, Lebanon's

victory over Israel in the 2006 war, were based on popular support and lead-

ership that sought above all else to represent the interests of the resistance,

not an external power.

The Libyan revolution has deep support among people in the region who

are engaged in historic struggles for change. Their interests are those of the

ordinary Libyans. By seeking an alliance with the West, the Libyan revo-




lution is in danger of cutting itself adrift from these forces. The uprisings

sweeping across the Middle East are confronting established regimes that

are prepared to unleash unbelievable cruelty. For the revolutions to be suc-

cessful they have to look to the forces that have, against all odds, already

shaken the region.




Chapter four

egypt

StRikeS,eleCtionS And

the iSlAmiStS




Act II o theEgyptian Revolution Phil Marfleet First published in June 2011

Act I of the Egyptian Revolution culminated with the fall of the

dictator. Act II is a far more complex process in which Egyptians

address the problem of the dictatorship. How to consolidate and

expand their new freedoms? How to continue the momentum of

change? How to alleviate the problems of everyday life? How tochallenge military rule?

in three key areas collective action continues apace. The workers’ move-

ment has advanced since the strikes of early February which played a key

role in convincing military leaders to remove Mubarak. Every area of in-

dustry has been affected, with numerous actions organised by workplace

and union groups on pressing issues: wages, contracts, pensions, conditions,union rights, welfare provision, and bullying and corrupt managements.

The official Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) was a tool of the

Mubarak regime. The workers’ movement has established an Egyptian Fed-

eration of Independent Trade Unions (EITUF), initially composed of 14 un-

ions. May Day celebrations in Tahrir Square, with EITUF a key participant,

marked the first occasion in over 60 years on which workers have organised

a national public demonstration without police intervention, an index of

how far Egypt has come since the revolution began on 25 January.

The pace of industrial struggle is nonetheless uneven. According to activ-

ists in Cairo, during February there were 500 separate industrial actions,




while in March the level dropped to 200. But in April the level rose again and

in May there were new developments including the first nationwide doctors’

strike. This demanded radical reform of the health service in the name of

social justice. The doctors’ syndicate, formerly a mainly conservative pro-

fessional association, has been deeply affected by the mood of the mass of

the population. It organised for indefinite strike action to secure improved

wages and an increase in government spending on health from 3.5 percent

to 15 percent of the national budget.

Muhammad Shafiq, a member of the national strike committee, said,

“Healthcare is not a luxury; it is a basic human right. We are undertaking thisstrike action specifically for the sake of poor and underprivileged patients.”

Within hours the prime minister and finance minister met a doctors’ delega-

tion and conceded its main demands. This is a huge boost for every Egyptian.

The Mubarak regime was dedicated to the reduction of public spending in all

areas. The strike shows how workers can combine for the general good, win-

ning tangible gains which increase confidence in the revolutionary process.

In the countryside there have been over 100,000 “encroachments” on pri-

vate property since the revolution began. These are mainly actions by peas-ants attempting to retrieve land seized by landowning families of the colo-

nial era who have benefited from a law imposed in 1997 allowing former

landowners rights to land distributed to fallaheen (cultivators) under re-

forms of the 1950s and 1960s. Backed by police who violently enforced evic-

tion orders, they succeeded in removing a million farmers and their families.

According to the Land Centre for Human Rights, over the past decade some

five million people have been forced into penury, while each year on average

100 people have been killed in disputes, 1,000 have been injured and 3,000arrested, the vast majority being peasants fighting for access to plots their

families had cultivated for 50 years.

A new development is the establishment of independent peasant unions

which support collective action including retrieval of land. In May a confer-

ence held in the village of Kamshish, a historic centre of peasant struggles,

founded a new Union of Egyptian Farmers. Among its aims is the building of

a national co-operative movement run by farmers at grassroots level.

In cities and villages across the country neighbourhood action groups have

proliferated. As Popular Committees to Defend the Revolution they were

formed initially to protect local communities from gangs of plainclothes po-




lice like those which battled activists in Tahrir Square in February. The com-

mittees have since led campaigns to purge corrupt officials, to reform pub-

lic services including education, health, water supply and sewerage, and to

tackle local issues such as control of traffic. Their national coordinating body

met for the first time in Tahrir Square in April. Its newspaper, Revolutionary

Egypt, argues for unification of diverse struggles from below:

“The inspiring thing in the Egyptian Revolution and at the heart of the Tu-

nisian Revolution was the unity and coalescence of the people over days and

weeks… united by the clear and specific demand for the fall of the regime.

Every difference and distinction that separated people before the revolutiondisappeared off to the side, and nothing remained except one difference:

the distinction between the conquer-

ors and the conquered, between the

oppressors and the oppressed, and

between the governors and the gov-

erned. Differences disappeared in the

struggle and in the process and prepa-

rations for sacrifice for the sake of freedom, justice, and respect between

men and women, between Copts and

Muslims, and even between the young

and the old… Our revolution is still at

the beginning, and many of the de-

mands of the revolution are still wait-

ing to be achieved. Their achievement

requires the unity that gathered us in the [Tahrir] square.”These developments give testimony to the advance of the revolutionary

process, which combines economic and political issues, presses forward

democratic demands and challenges those in authority. The vigour of the

mass movement has ensured that, despite the initial resistance of military

men who formally control Egypt through the Supreme Council of the Armed

Forces, key figures of the Mubarak regime have been held to account —im-

prisoned and investigated for crimes including assault on revolutionary ac-

tivists and the illicit accumulation of wealth.

Among the Mubarak family—which only months ago seemed ready to cre-

ate a 21st century Pharaonic dynasty—the former president is under house

Despite the initialresistance o militarymen who ormally

control Egypt, keyfgures o the Mubarakregime have been heldto account.




arrest, his wife Suzanne has been detained periodically and forced to give

up millions of dollars, and sons Gamal and Ala’a are in Tura Prison, where

the regime once incarcerated thousands of political prisoners. Some of their

closest collaborators—including former ministers, property developers and

bosses of industrial and agribusiness corporations—have been charged

with involvement in crooked deals which involved the sale of vast areas of

state land at knock-down prices. But most of those who profited from Mu-

barak’s networks of privilege are still free and the apparatus of state repres-

sion is largely intact, raising testing questions about how the revolution is to

proceed.

Mubarak’s men

Prime minister Sharaf (put in place by the generals) and the ruling Supreme

Council are committed to much of the Mubarak agenda. They have said that

economic policy will not change—despite powerful evidence that 30 years

of aggressive neo-liberal strategy have brought huge increases in inequality

and conflicts like those on the land. They have also endorsed existing for-

eign policies, including close collaboration with the United States and withIsrael—arrangements under which the Egyptian army has policed the people

of Gaza.

Each and every member of the Supreme Council is a Mubarak appointee.

Most do not enjoy the vast wealth accumulated by venal businessmen like

those who clustered around the Mubarak sons; they have nonetheless been

provided with huge salaries, homes, holidays, special schools, foreign travel

and all the other perks required to assure loyalty to the dictatorship. With-

out exception they have progressed through officer corps trained and armedby the US. They have been part of American intelligence operations and of

projects of “extraordinary rendition” through which prisoners seized by the

US worldwide have been transported to Egypt for torture.

In February, under immense pressure from below (and in fear that they

could not guarantee the loyalty of a conscript army), the generals removed

Mubarak and conceded partial freedoms including the right to protest and

to form independent political parties and trade unions. Even these chang-

es were hedged around with many restrictions, however, and the council

rushed through a referendum on constitutional reform which ensured that

changes to the electoral system would be limited and closely controlled.




Their strategy is now one of containment and co-option. The council has

retained the notorious Emergency Laws imposed by Mubarak in 1981—even

though ending the Emergency has been a key demand of the mass move-

ment. In March, Sharaf issued a decree that criminalised demonstrations

and occupations seen to “interrupt” businesses or affect the economy in any

way, prescribing severe punishment for those “inciting” such actions. Shortly

afterwards troops assaulted a demonstration in Tahrir Square, killing at least

two protesters. In May police and troops fired at demonstrators who had

marched to the Israeli Embassy in Cairo in solidarity with Palestinians mark-

ing Nakba Day. Two more people were killed and many seriously injured.For the left these interventions mark a new and dangerous phase in the

containment strategy. The Revolutionary Socialists organisation has de-

clared that by assaulting demonstrators at the embassy, ministers and the

generals publicly placed themselves at the service of Israel — the state with

which Mubarak had made so many compromising agreements. It was clear,

they said, that “Sharaf and the military are the successors of Mubarak”.

There will be more angry demonstrations over the government’s shame-

ful stance on Palestine (at the time of writing its promise to open the Rafahcrossing at Gaza has still not been fulfilled). At the same time Egyptians face

pressing problems in their daily lives. Unemployment has increased sharply

as tourism has declined, and hundreds of thousands of Egyptian workers

have fled Libya. The cost of basic foods has risen by 30 percent over the past

six months. Will the army intervene against those demanding jobs, adequate

wages, and access to bread and clean water? If so, they will intensify the

process by which economic and social issues become inextricably linked to

wider political questions. Who now rules Egypt? What gives them the rightto power? How can they be called to account?

Special relationship

These questions have until now been clouded by a belief among many Egyp-

tians that the army has a special relationship with the wider society. Dur-

ing the Tahrir events of January and February activists declared that “the

army and the people are one hand”. This was not only a call for troops to

refrain from attacking the protests but reflected widely held views about the

progressive nature of the military as an institution—ideas associated with

key episodes in Egypt’s modern history. In 1952 the Free Officers movement




led by Gamal Abdel Nasser mounted a coup which removed the pro-British

monarchy; two years later they expelled British troops, and in 1956 enjoyed

a stunning success during the Suez Crisis, when Egypt saw off a combined

invasion force launched by Britain, France and Israel.

During the 1950s and 1960s radical nationalist governments led by Nasser

and senior military men delivered land reform, full employment and Egypt’s

first state welfare system. They championed the Palestinian and Arab causes,

making Egypt a focal point for anti-imperialist struggles across the Middle

East. The Nasser era has often been seen nostalgically as a period of econom-

ic and social advance in which the army expressed popular interests.Nasser was in fact a highly elitist political leader who had no time for

mass involvement in politics. He suppressed the left, jailed thousands of

worker and peasant activists and co-

opted trade union leaders into the

tame ETUF. He concentrated power

within an increasingly small group of

loyalists in the armed forces who con-

trolled a state capitalism developedon the Russian model. In the late

1960s, as conditions of most Egyp-

tians worsened dramatically, workers

and students demanded change: in a

famous attack on the Free Officers, former communist Anouar Abdel-Malik

argued that they had betrayed the people. Egypt had fallen into the hands of

“a devouring bureaucracy”, he said, for which the people existed merely “to

supply the manpower”.This was the regime inherited by President Sadat in 1970. He used the

highly centralised system created by Nasser to introduce new economic poli-

cies, embracing the market and turning Egypt towards the US. Mubarak,

who followed Sadat in 1981, took this much further. Retaining the army at

the core of his machinery of repression, he built a suffocating police state

dedicated to the enrichment of his supporters at home and abroad. There

was a continuity between the Nasser and Mubarak regimes—but the dif-

ferences were enough to stimulate in many Egyptians a yearning for times

when the army was still associated with radical change, national independ-

ence and social reform.

Nasser was in act ahighly elitist political

leader who hadno time or massinvolvement in politics.




Members of today’s Supreme Council are part of imperialist networks which

sustain kings, princes and presidents across the Middle East—and which pro-

tect Israel against the Palestinians and the anger of the Arab masses. They

have nothing in common with Egyptians who made the Tahrir Revolution.

As Sameh Naguib observes elsewhere in this issue, the Supreme Council “re-

mains part of the old regime”. The generals’ attempts to contain the mass

movement are likely to reveal this reality more and more clearly. Less obvi-

ous is a strategy initiated by Nasser and since used by both Sadat and Mubar-

ak. Co-option was a highly effective technique by which Nasser bound to the

state many trade union leaders and prominent communists. Offering themhigh office in ETUF, he created a bureaucracy which mediated between the

army and the workforce, suffocating a workers’ movement which had been

the most dynamic force in Egyptian politics before the Free Officers came to

power.

Unions

Only days after the fall of Mubarak, representatives of the International

Labour Organisation and of international trade union federations appearedin Cairo to meet leaders of Egypt’s new independent unions; there have since

been many further approaches to the new unions to engage with these inter-

national trade union bureaucracies and their conservative agendas. Egypt’s

current rulers hope for a tame union leadership which can dissipate the ener-

gies of the workers—increasingly the most dynamic part of the revolution-

ary movement. Activists in the independent unions will need to be on guard

against efforts to provide finance, global travel and celebrity status to their

leaders. Genuine solidarity activity undertaken from below is, of course, adifferent matter.

If the Egyptian Revolution cannot be reduced by force perhaps its energies

can be dissipated both by co-option and by limiting the democratic space

already won by the mass movement. The generals and their advisors hope

that a short period of electoral activity before polls in the autumn will fa-

vour established political parties. For decades the Muslim Brotherhood has

operated in a shadowy area between legality and illegality, maintaining its

status as the only national opposition organisation. Now free to campaign

openly, it seems likely that the Brotherhood has struck a deal with the gener-




als whereby it will back the army as a guarantor of national “order”, in effect

supporting the same neoliberal agenda which brought Egypt Mubarak and

his cronies.

The generals wish to halt the present process of change. Together with busi-

ness interests, the landowners and Mubarak’s old allies in the US, they intend

that minor political reforms will be enough to satisfy the mass movement

and restore business as usual. There are certain to be further confrontations

with workers, peasants and street activists who wish to expand the new

freedoms, not least as means of dealing with the pressing problems of daily

life. The task for the left is to work with and for the workplace groups, inde-pendent unions and popular committees to ensure that the old order is not

able to take the initiative and to develop an agenda for counter-revolution.

It is above all of critical importance to organise the most militant workers

together in an independent party which can maximise the strengths of local

workplace organisation (see box on the Democratic Workers Party).

The mass movement still has the initiative—but as the revolution contin-

ues to unfold it is vital to press home this advantage.




The Islamistsand the Egyptian

RevolutionSameh Naguib

First published in June 2011

Egyptian socialist Sameh Naguib looks at the role of Islamists in

the Egyptian Revolution

there is something of a state of hysteria in the discussions on the left

and among the liberals about the Islamist movement in Egypt at

present, fuelled by the fact that while we are in the first stages of the

biggest popular revolution in Egypt's history, the forces of the left

are small and divided, but the Muslim Brotherhood is the biggest organisa-

tion on the Egyptian political scene. This state of hysteria has increased with

the entry of the Salafists and the extremist Islamist groups into the politicalarena.

Confusion

Most of the left put the Islamists of various tendencies together in one bas-

ket, which is to say as reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries. But this ap-

proach is a superficial generalisation, which does not help us to understand

the contradictions in the Islamist movement. Moreover it leads to a state of

confusion and a lot of frustration, because if the Islamists are really as pow-

erfully organised as some on the left fear, then how can we confront them,

and seek to win the masses around them?




It is important neither to overestimate the impact of the Islamist move-

ment based on the experience of the million-strong protests of the revolu-

tion, nor to underestimate its dangers, especially during the coming period,

but rather to understand that there are wide sections of the masses who do

not support the Islamists and have a desire to know about alternatives, and

that this gives the left a golden opportunity to recover its mass base, or build

one where it did not already exist.

The Brotherhood in the first phase

The Brotherhood did not officially participate in the demonstrations of 25January, and in fact advised their youth activists not to protest that day.

Large numbers of Brotherhood youth activists were unable to resist the revo-

lutionary tide, however, and took part despite the urging of their leaders.

The leadership was quickly put under pressure to change its policy once it

realised that the demonstrations were becoming a popular revolution, and

the organisation descended into the streets in full force. However, this shift

did not remove the contradictions and differences inside the organisation.

When [Vice-President] Omar Suleiman invited them to talks, this provoked asharp disagreement in the Guidance Office [leadership body], which ended

with the Brotherhood accepting the invitation, and we saw their leaders sit-

ting with Suleiman and Rifa'at al-Sa'id [a leader of the Tagammu party] un-

der a huge picture of Hosni Mubarak. This scene did not win the leadership

support among the young activists of the Brotherhood, who had fought the

thugs and the state security in the streets and now forced their leaders to

stop the talks while claiming that this scandalous meeting had been simply

aimed at gathering information and that it had quickly been aborted.The Brotherhood during the first phase of the revolution did not consti-

tute a counter-revolutionary force, but neither were they able to participate

in the revolution without vacillations and splits. What moved the Guidance

Office was pressure from various trends within the organisation rather than

participation in the revolution on the basis of principle. In particular it was

the result of the incredible pressure from the Brotherhood's youth base which

had merged with the masses in the streets during the revolution.

This vacillation and contradiction are not new to the Brotherhood. The

organisation's entire history is witness to this tendency from the time of the

Brotherhood's founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna, until today. At the end of




the 1940s the monarchy was able to destroy the heart of the organisation,

despite its power and half a million members, by exploiting the sharp disa-

greements within the organisation and the vacillations of its leadership in

confronting the regime. The group saw a similar crisis during the first years

after the revolution of July 1952, when internal divisions and vacillating

leadership allowed the Nasserist regime to destroy it.

This permanent vacillation between opposition and compromise, between

escalation and calm, is a result of the nature of the Brotherhood as a popular

religious group which comprises sections of the urban bourgeoisie side by

side with sections of the traditional and modern petty bourgeoisie (studentsand university graduates), the unemployed and large sections of the poor.

This structure remains stable at times

of political and social calm, but turns

into a time bomb at moments of great

transformation, when it becomes

almost impossible to reconcile the

various contradictory social interests

under a broad and vague religiousmessage.

These contradictions are also re-

flected in the attitudes of the group

towards colonialism and Zionism. On

the one hand we find differences be-

tween those who want to cancel the Camp David agreement with Israel, and

on the other, those who announce the Brotherhood's commitment to respect-

ing all international treaties. We find speeches sharply against US colonial-ism, while others in the Brotherhood meet and negotiate with US officials

on a regular basis (one of the Wikileaks documents talks about repeated

meetings and negotiations between US officials and a member of the Guid-

ance Office, Muhammad Katatani). It is important to emphasise that this not

just political opportunism, but the inevitable result of the composition of the

group and its contradictions.

The Brotherhood in the second phase

Popular revolutions move quickly from one phase to another, but these phas-

es overlap in complex ways. What began as a democratic revolution to over-

Sooner or later therewill be a clash with theruling military junta,

and the exposure o itsreal ace as an integralpart o the old regime.




throw dictatorship and corruption is rapidly transformed with the achieve-

ment of its initial goals, and an explosion of social and economic demands

raises issues which are more fundamental to democracy. Here we find the

rapid shifts in the positions of political forces. Whoever was revolutionary

yesterday may become hostile overnight to the continuation and deepening

of the revolution.

This is exactly what we saw in the case of the leadership of the Muslim

Brotherhood. In the referendum on the anti-democratic amendments to the

constitution, which were proposed by the Supreme Council of the Armed

Forces, the Brotherhood led a campaign for a "yes" vote which was blatantin using religion as a weapon. What matters here is not the use of religion

(which is not a new tactic) but rather the alliance between the Brotherhood

leadership and the army to secure approval for these amendments, which

are an insult to the Egyptian Revolution.

The deepening of the revolution means that sooner or later there will be

a clash with the ruling military junta, and the exposure of its real face as an

integral part of the defunct regime with all its violence and corruption. This

ugly face is already being revealed in arrests, torture and the crushing of demonstrations and strikes, in particular the deadly violence inflicted on the

protest camp in Tahrir Square on 8 April.

The Brotherhood and the army

What was the Brotherhood's position in relation to this? During the huge

demonstrations that morning the Brotherhood had been out in force, push-

ing strongly for the Supreme Council to speed up prosecution of the sym-

bols of the old regime, in particular Mubarak. However, once a part of thecrowd, including a group of junior army officers, decided to continue a sit-

in overnight, the Brotherhood mounted a desperate defence of the Military

Council's position, even to the extent of repeating the same lies that troops

and security forces who stormed the camp in the early hours did not open

fire with live ammunition. Day and night the Brotherhood has parroted the

same lines about the army's patriotism and its leadership, about how there is

a "red line" around the army, about its work "protecting" the revolution and

that any movement against the army is a betrayal of the revolution.

In a statement on the Brotherhood's website we find the following section:

"The army is trying to preserve a degree of discipline among its ranks, and it




is right to do so, for if it cannot maintain its own discipline it cannot protect

the people.

"At present the army is the only organised force in Egypt, and it is not in

our interests to weaken it, nor will we let anyone else weaken it. We know

who is working in this way, and what their goals and intentions are. The

Muslim Brotherhood wants to see the success of the revolution, and we are

fully aware that the position of our great army in relation to the revolution is

one of the principal factors in its success. For the army has said to the people

since the first moment 'you can express your views freely and demonstrate

during the day, but not during the night-time curfews, which have been re-duced more than once to only 3 hours'."

In relation to the social deepening of the revolution with the great wave

of strikes which were triggered by the uprising, the Brotherhood took the

same position as the government and the Military Council, demanding "a

return to work to save the Egyptian economy. The Muslim Brotherhood calls

on all sections of the Egyptian people to keep the wheels of production and

development turning. Demonstrations for sectional demands, albeit a fun-

damental right, are detrimental to production and damage the economy,particularly as the revolution is linked to keeping the motor of the economy

turning. Citizens must feel that their sacrifices in the search for a dignified

life were not just empty talk, so that the Egyptian people can prove that they

are capable of a further achievement beyond the revolution, in other words,

to lift Egypt out of its economic crisis."

These positions are, of course, not restricted to the Brotherhood. Liberal

forces are also participating with great enthusiasm in the same double cam-

paign - absolute support for the military council and a hysterical campaignagainst workers' strikes under the banner of "Keep the wheel of production

turning". Amr Hamzawy, one of the stars of liberalism, even called for the

formation of groups of young people and public personalities in order to

spread propaganda against strikes among the workers. A wide range of in-

tellectuals and revolutionaries of yesterday are inciting for smashing strikes

with the cooperation of the army, as part of these campaigns against the

second phase of the revolution.

Many leftists consider the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists as two

sides of the coin, but this is not true. Yes, there is a Salafi section within the

Brotherhood, and yes, there are ideological similarities between them, but




this should not make us ignore the specificity of the phenomenon of Salafism

and its current role in the attempts to sabotage the revolution. Salafists are

currently the Islamic wing of the "baltagiyya"(the counter-revolutionary

thugs who attacked protesters in Tahrir Square) and their relationship to the

security apparatus of the former regime is much more important than their

relations with the Muslim Brotherhood. Since 2006 the Mubarak regime al-

lowed the creation of Salafist satellite channels, which have been airing their

poisonous views since that time, broadcasting a permanent stream of reac-

tionary anti-Christian, anti-woman propaganda, as well as agitating against

Muslims who do not share their views, in an attempt to drag the masses back to the Middle Ages.

Channels such as Al-Rahma and Al-Nas have become practically propa-

ganda tools for so-called Salafist preachers such as Muhammad Hassan, Abu

Ishaq al-Huwaini and Muhammad

Yaqub, allowing them to spread their

views among wider layers of young

people. They have succeeded in cre-

ating a wide popularity for these re-actionary and dangerous views (there

are currently 91 Facebook groups fol-

lowing Muhammad Hassan alone).

These channels have become the most

watched in Egypt.

All this is taking place with the

encouragement and cooperation of

the army which is encouraging theSalafists not only to compete with the

Muslim Brotherhood but also to or-

ganise the religious face of the counter-revolution. No wonder then, that

there were escalating attacks on the Copts and their churches even before

the revolution, nor is it strange that there are currently campaigns by the

Salafists and the security forces to create a climate of counter-revolution.

Some on the left today see the political forces as being divided into secular

and Islamist camps. Some of these leftists have also been lured into debates

over Article 2 of the constitution, which enshrines Islam as "the religion of

the state...and Islamic law as the principal source of legislation". This was a

The army isencouraging the

Salafsts not only tocompete with theMuslim Brotherhoodbut also to organisethe religious ace o the

counter-revolution.




precious gift to the Islamists who used these discussions to create a state of

panic as if Islam itself was in danger because a discussion had been opened

about Article 2.

Of course, the left must defend its principles with regard to the separation

of religion from the state, and in defence of a secular state, but we also have

to know when and how to enter the battle, and with whom. Secularism it-

self, as an abstract principle with no connection to the interests of the work-

ing class and poor, is meaningless, and in fact defence of secularism on such

a basis only serves the Islamists.

The current phase of the revolution requires work to expose the SupremeCouncil of the Armed Forces to the public as a prelude to its overthrow, as it

remains part of the old regime. This work requires deepening the social side

of the revolution, by helping to create forms of organisation at the base of

society which can play a role in the struggle to achieve the demands of work-

ers and peasants. This is also a phase in the revolution which will see the

Brotherhood and the liberals move from the ranks of the revolution to the

counter-revolution, but it will be a phase full of twists and divisions which

the left must be able to make use of, in order to confront the counter-revolu-tion. And at the same time as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Liberals take

these positions, the remnants of the security organs of the old system will be

using their thugs and the Salafists to create a climate of chaos in collusion

with the military junta.

Clarity

The current phase will be very difficult and its success requires a clarity of

vision about the different political forces, especially the Muslim Brotherhoodand the liberals, as well as contradictions and divisions and crises that await

them when the true face of the leaders of the army is revealed.

As long as the masses remain revolutionary, and hopeful for a better to-

morrow and a decent life, and as long as the left works in building mass or-

ganisations from the independent trade unions to the popular revolutionary

committees and radical political organisations, the enemies of the revolution

will not be able to deceive the masses and the political forces at present al-

lied with the military (at the head of whom stands the Muslim Brotherhood)

will fracture.




Can the Islamistslimit Egypt's

revolution? Phil Marfleet

First published in September 2011

The Islamist mass rally in Cairo on 29 July showed the deepening alliance between some Islamists and the ruling army council.

But, argues Phil Marfleet, the Islamists are an unstable coalition

whose ability to contain the revolution is far from established.

the first appearance of Islamists in a mass rally in Tahrir Square in

late July brought predictable reactions in European and American

media: Islamic activists were “hijacking” the revolution; they wouldsoon overwhelm its secular activists; they would demonstrate that

radical change was impossible in a predominantly Muslim society. There was

a gleeful tone, as we told you so pundits talked up the Islamist initiative and

its impact on secular activists: for Time magazine, it was “a frightening spec-

tacle”; according to the Washington Post, the Tahrir rally was “a stunning

show of force that left the liberal pioneers of Egypt’s revolution reeling”.

For the Hudson Institute, a conservative US think-tank, it was all inevita-

ble: “The Facebook folks who triggered the anti-Mubarak revolution have

been replaced by Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood supporters... It is only a

matter of time before Egypt turns into an Islamic Republic that is aligned




with Iran, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” On this view, the revolution is coming

to an end: Egyptians face a bleak future, “an Islamic regime...where democ-

racy, moderation and pragmatism are non-existent”.

These assessments of the 29 July Tahrir rally recycle theories of Arab/

Muslim “exceptionalism” - the idea that cultures of the Middle East are not

amenable to progressive change and that the region is best left under the con-

trol of kings, emirs and other despots who will continue to strike deals with

the West. Egypt’s revolution, with its mass protests, strikes and demands for

democratic reform upset this reactionary creed - so the appearance of Islam-

ists in Tahrir has been greeted with satisfaction by Western policy institutesand much of the media.

Diverse groups

What is the real significance of the events? Who were the Islamists involved,

what is their relationship to the revolutionary movement, and how will their

presence affect the radical activists who removed Mubarak?

The scale of the 29 July demonstration was significant. Tahrir Square was

filled with supporters of Islamist groups bussed in from across the Nile Delta.Their slogans were not those of the revolutionaries of 25 January: rather

than demanding social justice, purging of the old regime, jobs and a mini-

mum wage, they chanted “There is no God but God” and “Egypt is Islamic”,

and called for implementation of shari’a (Islamic law). Speakers praised the

generals of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), call-

ing for national unity and speedy elections. Islamist groups expect to win

a majority in parliament when a general election takes place, probably in

November.Some secular activists were startled by these developments. Others were

not, however, pointing out that Islamist organisations have a long history

and a well-established presence in Egypt and that the real surprise was how

slow they had been to effect a national mobilisation: following the fall of

Mubarak it was six months before they made their mark in public. It was also

clear that the 29 July demonstration represented diverse groups with com-

peting agendas: less a monolithic bloc ready to turn Egypt into an “Islamic

Republic”, the Islamists are an unstable alliance of groups among which

some are deeply affected by the wider revolutionary movement.

Many of those who filled Tahrir in July came from villages and small pro-




vincial towns which have been marginal to the revolution; and on a day

of national mobilisation by Islamist currents demonstrations outside Cairo

were on a modest scale. In industrial cities which have been focal points for

action since January - Suez, Mahalla al-Kubra, Shibbin el-Kom, Ismailiyya -

Islamist meetings were insignificant. In Alexandria, often seen as an Islamist

stronghold, the demonstration of 29 July reached 10,000 - a fraction of the

numbers which have repeatedly mobilised in the city since the start of the

revolution.

Three Islamist currents participated in the July rally: Salafis, Jihadis and

the Muslim Brotherhood. They are linked ideologically and by personal andorganisational relationships. At the same time, they have distinct political

agendas and often compete to win support among Islamic activists.

The demonstration was originally

called by Salafi networks, groups of re-

ligiously observant Muslims who have

until recently focused upon matters of

piety and personal conduct. They were

joined by the Jihadis, tightly knit andhighly political organisations banned

under the Mubarak regime which

have re-emerged in recent months.

The Muslim Brotherhood joined the

rally only at the last minute. Although

it is a mass organisation with a long

history of political engagement, the

Brotherhood’s leadership vacillatedover the demonstration for weeks, deciding to participate only days before

the event. Their hesitation reveals much about the instability of the Islamic

movement and the effect of the revolution upon its activists.

Islamists did not play a leading role in the waves of struggles that pre-

ceded the outbreak of the revolution in January this year. Starting in 2000

a series of increasingly effective campaigns challenged the regime: move-

ments in solidarity with the Palestinians, against the invasion of Iraq, for

democratic change, and for workers’ rights and improved conditions. They

were led overwhelmingly by secular activists.

Despite the success of these movements in opening new space for protests,

Islamists did not playa leading role in the

waves o strugglesthat preceded theoutbreak o therevolution in Januarythis year.




Islamists rarely appeared in public. The Jihadis had been suppressed and

their imprisoned leaders induced to recant, telling followers that they had

abandoned efforts to contest the regime. The Muslim Brotherhood engaged

fitfully with the anti-war and democracy movements, and participated in

election campaigns (as an illegal organisation they stood “independent” can-

didates). But as public protests grew the Brothers retreated and in 2010,

after bitter internal disputes, the leadership declared that it would adopt an

even lower profile. One assessment in the Egyptian press concluded “The

Muslim Brotherhood’s entire political enterprise is in crisis.”

It was in these circumstances that a new Salafism began to grow. PiousMuslims concerned primarily with study of the Qur’an, with ritual and with

personal emulation of the Prophet, had long congregated around particular

imams, mosques and Islamic foundations. They were boosted by Saudi sup-

port and encouraged by the Mubarak regime, which gave them free rein. In

2006 state authorities began to issue licences for television stations which

broadcast prayers, readings from the Qur’an and sermons by salafi preach-

ers. The common themes were conservative (“puritanical”) interpretations

of key Islamic texts and an absence of political agendas - tacit support forthe state. By 2009 there were 12 such TV stations. Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-

Aswany comments that they were “a kind of Christmas present for the dicta-

tors [who could] rule with both the army and the religion”.

Egypt’s revolution has drawn its power from mass action in the streets and

workplaces. Leadership has been provided mainly by secular activists some

of whom played key roles in the protests of the last decade. Coalitions of

revolutionary youth have celebrated Muslim-Christian unity and explicitly

rejected religious interventions. Islamists have not been present as a distinctcurrent.

When the movement began in January, the Muslim Brotherhood refused

to back protests. Only when the scale of events and the involvement of

Brotherhood members became clear did its leaders adopt a position of equiv-

ocal support. As the revolution has progressed, hundreds of thousands of its

members and supporters have engaged in demonstrations and workplace

actions, causing increasing tension within the organisation. A large group

of youth activists recently split to form the Egyptian Current Party - cre-

ated, they say, “to express the spirit of the revolution”. Several key figures in

the Brotherhood have been expelled after establishing new groups. Moneim




Abou El-Fotouh, a historic leader of the Brotherhood, has been expelled for

declaring his candidacy in the forthcoming presidential elections.

The Brotherhood’s difficulties surfaced again in the run-up to the 29 July

Tahrir rally. This was initiated by the Salafis, who have established a number

of new parties, most importantly Al-Nour, marking a sharp turn from “quiet-

ism” to active political engagement - in effect the Salafis are moving into the

Brotherhood’s traditional political space. So too with the Jihadis: in March,

SCAF ordered the release of cousins Aboud and Tarek El-Zomor, both jailed

in 1984 for involvement in the assassination of President Sadat. Another key

Jihadi group, the Gama’at Islamiyya, has also reappeared, mounting severalsmall demonstrations in central Cairo.

SCAF under pressure

The Tahrir rally brought these competing currents together: evidence of the

Islamist presence but also of its problems and contradictions. The Islamists

have been slow to engage with the revolution. In general mass movements

are not congenial to their visions of change and the Muslim Brotherhood in

particular has struggled to understand the movement. The street activistsand worker militants who have led the uprising are not being replaced by

“fundamentalists” bent on an Islamic Republic; indeed, the pace of indus-

trial struggle has again increased and the public trial of Mubarak has given a

huge boost to those who initiated the revolution in January.

The Islamist rally will have been a comfort to the generals. They are un-

der enormous pressure and will be relieved to hear friendly slogans in the

streets. As the election approaches, SCAF is likely to offer the Islamists more

space, hoping that they can act as a counterweight to radical forces and se-cure a large presence in parliament. But the Islamists are not a reliable ally,

especially for generals who have spent a lifetime assaulting the Brotherhood

and the Jihadis. Their problems are still acute: the revolution of the streets

and the workplaces continues.




The workers'movement in Egypt Anne Alexander First published in March 2012

A call for a general strike in Egypt on 11 February didn't produce

the desired effect. Yet the current strike wave shows no signs of

abating. Anne Alexander looks at the strengths and weaknesses

of Egypt's new workers' movement and the different forces

attempting to shape it

Just over a year after the fall of Mubarak, the landscape of the Egyp-

tian workers' movement has changed dramatically. The strike wave

shows little sign of running out of energy: the numbers ebb and flow

but each month brings new explosions of action. The old state-run

union federation has been wounded and weakened but not destroyed.

The new independent unions have grown rapidly, drawing hundreds of

thousands of workers into their orbit, many in sectors with little tradition of organisation. However, this growth has also been uneven, and building or-

ganisation beyond the workplace which retains authority within it has been

difficult.

The growth of workers' organisations is interlaced with the development

of a revolutionary movement. Out of the waves of massive street protests

and sit-ins a new generation of radical activists has emerged. The main

target for their anger has been the ruling generals of the Supreme Council

of the Armed Forces, and more recently the reformist Islamist parties who

dominate the newly elected parliament. Despite the image presented in the

Western media of a liberal elite in revolt, in reality the mass movement in




the streets is largely made up of young people from working class and poor

backgrounds.

On 11 February, in response to a call for a general strike to bring down

the military council, it was the sons and daughters of factory workers and

civil servants who marched in their thousands at provincial universities like

Helwan and Mansoura. But there remains a gap between the revolutionary

mood in the workplaces and the streets, with only a very small response to

the strike call from workers, despite the large student mobilisation.

The hope that this gap can be overcome lies in the fact that it is likely that

the main battles are still to come. Workers' expectations of social change are written into their strike demands: they want job security, to be paid enough

to live in dignity, and an end to corrupt, bullying management. Politicians

from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the various

Salafist parties repeatedly make vague promises that these hopes will be ful-

filled by the new parliament.

Little room for manoeure

On the other hand they are also promising Egypt's business elite, the globalfinancial institutions and the Mubarak regime's old backers in Washington

that they will stop strikes. Moreover, the context of global economic crisis

gives the new government precious little room to manoeuvre: Egypt may not

have reached a Greek-style financial meltdown yet, but its debt is already

nearly 70 percent of GDP and credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's has

downgraded the country's rating three times in the last four months.

To understand how the workers' movement is developing it is vital to look

at it from two perspectives. The first is the view from below, where strikeaction is pushing workers' self-confidence and organisation to new levels

within the workplace. In some sectors coordination between workplaces is

beginning to develop into powerful organisation which can mobilise action

across entire sectors of industry. However, we also need to look at the move-

ment "from above", taking into account how the actions of the state and the

parliamentary parties change the landscape in which workers' organisations

are developing. It is particularly important to see the newly formed inde-

pendent unions from these two perspectives, in order to understand that

there are gaps within them, particularly between the newly developing na-

tional and federation leaderships and workplace organisation.




The motor of strike action is still working very hard. The numbers of

workers involved in strike action stand at extremely high levels compared

to before the revolution. In September alone between 500,000 and 750,000

joined strikes. This included large coordinated strikes for the first time, for

example a national strike by teachers, but also coordinated action by bus

workers, postal workers and sugar refinery workers. Airport workers struck

at the end of December demanding civilian rather than military managers.

At the end of February another wave of big strikes paralysed bus services

across the Delta, and tens of thousands of workers employed by the Ministry

of Justice in the courts organised a national strike.The old Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) played a central role for

decades in propping up the Mubarak regime. It both policed and contained

workers' discontent in the workplace. It acted as a conduit for the distribu-

tion of welfare benefits. It was a gigantic electoral machine for the ruling

party in the 50 percent of parliamentary seats reserved for "workers and

peasants". For a long time the ETUF provided the semblance of "mass popu-

lar support" for the regime by bussing members to rallies and demonstra-

tions during elections or for particular campaigns.The Egyptian government's privatisation policies before the revolution un-

dermined the ETUF from two directions - it lost hundreds of thousands of

members to the private sector and those who remained saw that the federa-

tion had done little to protect their interests.

Even more importantly, the strike wave, which the ETUF actively opposed,

gave workers experience of organising themselves and further broke down

the ETUF's ability to mobilise workers. In the uprising against Mubarak, the

ETUF leadership was the last line of defence for the regime. It played a key role in organising thugs to attack Tahrir Square during the "battle of the

camel" and in calls for "mass protests" in support of Mubarak. Both of these

attempts failed, and instead hundreds of thousands of workers went on

strike, sealing the dictator's fate.

Reining in the strikes

However, the ETUF did not completely disintegrate. The federation appears

now to be playing an increasingly important role in the Muslim Brother-

hood's attempts to rein in the strike wave. Senior Brotherhood members

were appointed to a caretaker executive for the ETUF in August 2011, along




with pro-Mubarak officials and a small number of leftists and worker repre-

sentatives. By late February 2012 the first two groups were working together

on draft legislation on trade union freedoms and had proposed an initiative

to parliament to "solve workers' problems" by creating a special committee

to negotiate with management on their behalf.

Some unions affiliated to the ETUF are still strong in the workplaces, such

as the Land Transport Union (LTU), which has been involved in fierce com-

petition with the new independent union in the Public Transport Authority

in Cairo. The LTU played a key role in aborting attempts to win support for

strike action on the buses in solidarity with the call for a general strike on 11February.

The other significant development "from above" has been the partial rec-

ognition by the state of the independent unions. There has been a process

created for the legal registration of independent unions, although this es-

sentially contradicts existing Egyptian

law which only recognises ETUF-affil-

iated unions. Two federations of inde-

pendent unions have come into exist-ence since the fall of Mubarak. The

Egyptian Federation of Independent

Trade Unions (EFITU) claims an affil-

iated membership of around 1.4 mil-

lion workers. Its president is Kamal

Abu Aita, the leader of the Tax Col-

lectors' Union, the first independent union to emerge before the revolution.

The smaller Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress claims the affiliation of 246 unions. Leading figures in the EDLC are affiliated to an NGO established

by former steel-worker Kamal Abbas, which withdrew from the EFITU last

summer after a bitter controversy over the role over NGO employees in the

democratic decision-making bodies of the new federation.

The strongest independent unions have generally been built directly out

of strike action. The independent union of the Public Transport Authority

Workers in Cairo led four strikes between May and September 2011, for

example. The independent teachers' unions played a crucial role in organis-

ing and providing a degree of national leadership for the teachers' strike,

Two ederations o

independent unionshave come intoexistence since the allo Mubarak.




although the number of teachers participating in the strike was much bigger

than the new unions' combined membership.

However, the legal registration process for establishing independent un-

ions has also made it possible to build unions "on paper" or with a handful

of members. In addition, a narrow space has opened up for the emergence

of a layer of officials who can escape from the immediate pressures of the

workplace. The bureaucracy of the independent unions is very small and

has far fewer material resources and full-time officials than a single region

of a medium-sized British trade union like UCU, but it is still under pressure

to act as a mediator between striking workers and employers. The mecha-nisms at the disposal of these officials to sell out strikes are still very weak,

but manoeuvres and attempts to do deals may increase union members'

passivity and frustration rather than building their self-confidence and self-

organisation.

Building roots in the workplaces

When it comes to connecting the independent unions to the wider politi-

cal questions raised by the confrontations over military rule, the disconnec-tion between the independent union leadership and the workplaces shows

itself in a different way. Leading activists in the independent unions have

been strongly supportive of revolutionary activists' calls for strike action

against the military council, but have not been able to deliver anything on

the ground.

This was underlined by the call for a general strike on 11 February, the

anniversary of Mubarak's fall from power. The call, which came from revo-

lutionary activists who have been radicalised by the experience of the hugeprotests and street clashes over the past year, shows that wide layers of

people beyond the revolutionary left see strikes as an extremely powerful

weapon. However, the revolutionary movement does not as yet have strong

enough roots in the workplaces to be able to win the argument for political

strikes, particularly in the face of a concerted anti-strike campaign by the

military council and the Muslim Brotherhood. Winning those arguments will

require a much bigger network of revolutionary activists who can begin to

build connections between the wider revolutionary movement and workers'

ongoing struggles.




Chapter five

SyRiA

Revolution &impeRiAliSm




Taking sides in SyriaSimon Assaf

First published in July August 2011

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were major reversalsfor the US and Israel. But Nato intervention in Libya's popular

rebellion has raised the possibility that imperialism could hijack

the revolutions. Simon Assaf asks, can Syria's uprising avoid

falling into the hands of the West?

S yria has long been a thorn in imperialism's side. The Baathist regime

has given crucial support to the Lebanese and Palestinian resistancemovements who depend on Syria for their survival. So those who

found themselves on the same side over the revolutions in Egypt

and Tunisia have suddenly found sharp disagreement over the movement

for change in Syria.

At the heart of this disagreement is Syria's opposition to imperialism and

the dangers of a revolution finding itself at the mercy of the Western powers.

What attitude should revolutionaries take towards the Syrian movement,

and how should we assess a regime that, although the victim of imperialism,has unleashed harsh repression on those who have from the onset demanded

modest reforms?

The modern Syrian state was born out of the first sustained Arab rebellion

against the carve-up of the Middle East by Britain and France following the

First World War. The original Anglo-French plan was to divide Syria into a

patchwork of states too weak to resist colonial rule. The southern regions,

now Israel/Palestine and Jordan, were handed over to Britain, while the

northern regions were to be divided into Christian, Alawi and Druze states

(part of the many religious communities in geographic Syria).

In 1925 a popular rebellion that began in the Druze regions of Syria quick-




ly encompassed the whole of the country, giving birth to an Arab nationalist

movement that checked French plans. Although France succeeded in creat-

ing "Christian Lebanon" - a sectarian state that included areas with large

Muslim populations - it failed in the rest of Syria.

Contradictions

The Syrian national movement succeeded in ending French rule, but this

movement also reflected the contradictions inside Syrian society. The lead-

ership of the national movement was an alliance of feudal lords who had

recently gained ownership of communal village lands, and a merchant class

that found its markets destroyed by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire -the former rulers of geographic Syria. At its base were peasants, craftsmen,

workers and the urban poor who saw independence as a chance to transform

the country.

Following formal independence in 1944 a class struggle erupted and the

movement from below coalesced around Communist, socialist and radical

Arab nationalist parties. The Baath party emerged as the dominant force

after forging an alliance with the socialist movement among the peasantry,

with some support among the industrial workers. The ongoing crisis openedup a space for small groups of military officers - drawn mainly from the mar-

ginalised Alawi community - to take power.

The new rulers broke the hold of the feudal lords and merchant classes,

then muzzled and eventually crushed the popular movement. The new re-

gime aligned with the Soviet Union and the country was put on the path of

"socialist development" - in effect a version of state capitalism. This period

came to an abrupt end in 1967 when Israel seized the Golan Heights, just 50

miles from Damascus, in its lightening Six Day War.The shock of 1967 destroyed the credibility of the regime and eventu-

ally triggered a coup inside the army, headed by Hafez al-Assad and drawn

mainly from among the Alawi community. Now on a permanent war footing,

Syria, along with other Arab countries, was alight with the rise of a popular

resistance to imperialism, epitomised by the emergence of the Palestinian

Liberation Organisation. This wave of popular resistance reached its peak in

1973 when Syria and Egypt launched an offensive that almost succeeded in

recapturing territory lost to Israel in 1967.

The failure of this war would have profound consequences on both coun-

tries. The strategic union between Syria and Egypt came to an end in 1978




when Anwar Sadat, then Egyptian president, signed a separate peace with

Israel. With Egypt now neutralised, Syria faced Israel alone. Isolated, the

regime sought to use the popular resistance as a lever in negotiations for the

return of the Golan Heights. Inside Syria this resulted in a gradual smother-

ing of the popular resistance.

Prompted by the US, Assad sent troops into Lebanon in 1976 to crush the

popular rebellion sweeping the country at the time. The occupation of Leba-

non, packaged as a peace- keeping mission, destroyed the Lebanese national

movement. The reward for "saving Lebanon" was supposed to be a new ini-

tiative over the Golan. But Assad's hopes for an "honourable deal" came tonothing.

Assad reacted with wild rhetoric about "liberation and revolution" while

his forces continued to strengthen their grip over Syria and Lebanon - reach-

ing its height with the crushing of an uprising in the Syrian city of Hama

in 1982, and a protracted siege of Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee

camps in Beirut in 1984. Despite this, Assad never abandoned his strategy

of a separate peace. But with Egypt out of the picture, Israel saw no reason

to cut a deal over the Golan Heights. Assad again attempted to realign Syria with imperialism by sending troops to fight alongside US and its allies in the

1990-91 Gulf War. But once again US promises to look again at the Golan

question proved an illusion.

Red line

When Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000 he was succeeded by his son Bashar

Assad. Bashar never abandoned the strategy of compromise, or the "red

line" of the Golan Heights. Bashar's first act was an attempt to initiate aprogramme of economic and political reforms - the so-called Syrian Spring -

that he hoped could revive the economy and release some of the discontent

that built up during his father's reign.

Central to these reforms were neoliberal policies designed to "open up"

the economy. Hardliners within the regime put an end to the political re-

forms, but the economic reforms moved apace. These reforms ended eco-

nomic guarantees - such as the subsidy on bread - that had secured some

degree of social peace.

These reforms, far from safeguarding the stability of the regime, plunged

many already poor Syrians into destitution. As with Egypt and Tunisia, neo-




liberal policies undermined what little hold the regimes had over their popu-

lation. Meanwhile a small layer of businessmen close to the ruling circle

amassed vast fortunes.

The deteriorating economy, rampant corruption, nepotism and harsh re-

pression left the country tinder dry. Then came the Tunisian and Egyptian

revolutions. For many Arabs these revolutions were clear-cut and uncompli-

cated. Both Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt were strong allies of

imperialism. These revolutions could be seen as a continuation of the strug-

gle for national liberation.

The Syrian opposition now found it had the space to push forward a seriesof initially modest demands. The main demands were to relaunch the stalled

political reforms and the end of the state of emergency. Unlike in Tunisia

and Egypt, where the demands for "the end of the regime" were heard on the

first day of protests, in Syria this slogan emerged only after the bloody sup-

pression of demonstrations in the southern city of Deraa.

Both the Syrian and Libyan uprisings have brought into sharp relief the

relationship between the Arab Spring and imperialism. Western intervention

in Libya has become a clear reminder that the Middle East cannot avoid thequestion of imperialism.

Mubarak conjured up phantoms about "Western agents" behind the revo-

lution that toppled him. But with Syria the boundary between these phan-

toms and real Western plots are blurred. Bashar Assad is not wrong to point

to the fact that "external forces" are attempting to destabilise the country - it

has been the stated policy of Saudi Arabia and the West for years.

The Syrian uprising is now seen through the prism of the Nato campaign

in Libya. Nato's intervention has raised the real possibility of an incrementalratcheting up of military threats against Syria - not because the West is sym-

pathetic to the demands of the popular movement, but as part of a strategy

of isolating the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance.

In the months preceding the outbreak of the revolutions, Israel had been

signalling a new war on Lebanon. This ever-present danger has created fears

that the only winner in the Syrian revolution will be imperialism. This can be

seen by the call from Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah for Syrians to sup-

port Bashar's regime.

Nasrallah's backing for Bashar Assad was widely interpreted as a sectar-

ian Shia Muslim alignment with the Alawi-dominated government in Syria.




But Hizbollah's position has to be seen more as a reflection of its assessment

of the balance of forces with regard to imperialism than some expression of

sectarianism (the Alawis are an offshoot of Shia Islam).

Nasrallah's speech caused deep distress and confusion inside the Syrian

opposition, some of whom reacted by burning Hizbollah flags (along with

Russian and Chinese flags). The images of flag burning created suspicion

among Lebanese who, after 30 years of direct experience of the "Syrian secu-

rity regime", had been sympathetic to the movement.

The West would like a managed transition to a compliant Syrian govern-

ment. It fears above all a destabilised state that could open the way for theemergence of an armed anti-Israeli resistance reigniting a border conflict

that has been quiet for 30 years. The recent mass protest along the 1967

frontier by Palestinian refugees was a potent reminder of this potential. Is-

rael, although hostile to Syria, could depend on the Baathist regime to keep

the frontier quiet. Thus criticism of Bashar is more muted in Tel Aviv.

But what Nasrallah, and others, have failed to appreciate is that it is far

from inevitable that the Syrian opposition movement will simply become a

plaything of the West. The unity of the opposition, and its constant appealsagainst sectarian and ethnic divisions, points to the real potential for there

to develop a popular movement for change independent of the West.

Working class

Up until now this movement has, despite its bravery, been unable to achieve

a breakthrough. In Tunisia and Egypt the working class played a decisive

role at key stages of their revolutions. There have been few, if any, strikes

in Syria beyond the city-wide protest strikes by merchants and shopkeepers.The movement has still to reach the scale, or intensity, of Egypt or Tunisia.

This weakness, and the continuing menace of imperialism, can turn this

movement from one that represents genuine desires for change, into one

that could become aligned with Saudi Arabia and the West. But this uprising

began in Deraa, the frontier city along the 1967 border with Israel. Deraa is

home to many of the Syrians who were expelled from their lands by the Is-

raeli occupation. The slogan that they chanted at Syrian security forces was,

"Cowards of Golan, heroes of repression".

The future direction of this movement depends on it spreading to the key

cities of Damascus and Aleppo, and keeping in check the sectarian gangs and




Western-backed "opposition groups". This is a popular movement with real

demands, and over the next period it has to struggle to maintain this inde-

pendence. The alternative is the kind of disaster that the West has inflicted

on Libya, and the end of any genuine movement for change in Syria.




Syria: betweenrevolution and

imperialism Feature by Jamie Allinson, March 2012

Both those who call for intervention and those who condemn

the revolution in Syria are wrong. Jamie Allinson argues that

Syrians can liberate themselves

o

n 23 February the self-appointed "Friends of Syria" met in Tunis to

demand, in the words of Barack Obama, that "the international com-

munity...send a clear message to President Assad that it is time for a

transition". Given that this group includes the US, UK and France, who

have never rallied anyone to demand Israel's withdrawal from occu-

pied Syrian territory, and Saudi Arabia, whose troops have enforced

a bloody terror against the Bahraini revolution, Syrian activists might think that withfriends like these they don't need enemies. But where is the Syrian uprising to go,

apparently trapped between a regime determined to bring the country down around

it and imperialist projects to deflect the revolution?

The question of foreign intervention divides both the Syrian opposition

and the left in the region and beyond. In the face of the regime's brutal re-

sponse to the uprising, which has seen 6,000 people killed and tens of thou-

sands injured or imprisoned, some in the Syrian opposition and in besieged

cities such as Homs have come to see foreign intervention as a shortcut to the

ousting of Assad. The opposition is not homogeneous, however. There are

three main organised elements to it: the Syrian National Council (SNC), the




Local Coordinating Committees (LCC) and the "Free Syrian Army" (FSA).

Divided

The SNC has called most widely for foreign intervention and, like the

Libyan Transitional National Council, has worked closely with the UK and

France. It is internally divided, however, and is dominated by exiles such

as Burhan Ghalioun, who has declared that a post-Assad Syria should cut

ties with Iran and stop funding resistance movements such as Hamas and

Hezbollah. The SNC has dedicated its main energies to winning support for

intervention, not to protests on the ground.The LCC's comprise the actual networks of the uprising within Syria. It

combines an older generation of activists with those who have sprung up

since February 2011. The LCC reject any programme of foreign influence,

but support the idea of an arms embargo, assets freeze and establishment of

humanitarian aid corridors. These calls may grow as the situation in cities

such as Homs becomes more desperate. However, the LCC's have also been

at the forefront of calls for a "dignity strike", or general strikes against the

regime.The FSA is the newest component of the revolution, but it should not be

seen as one entity. Defecting officers, such as Riad Asa'ad, have tried to claim

leadership of these "brigades", but there is no evidence of a centralised com-

mand. Rather the FSA refers to lightly armed guerrillas, based around army

defectors or locally respected leaders, which initially functioned to protect

demonstrations. Reports suggest these groups obtain money from expatriate

Syrians and occasionally local businessmen, and buy their weapons locally.

However, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have seen the potential for grooming theFSA groups and have called arming them an "excellent idea".

The regime maintains that the revolutionaries are armed Islamist gangs,

serving a Zionist-US-Salafi-Qatari-Saudi-French conspiracy to dismember

Syria. Hezbollah's general secretary Hassan Nasrallah has shamefully re-

peated these claims. Anyone who believes this argument should name the

last time Assad attacked Israeli forces with the ferocity with which his forces

are pounding the workers, peasants and poor of Homs. Nonetheless, it is

true that Western powers, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey see the revolution

as an opportunity to extend their influence and get rid of an irritant regime.

The meeting of the so-called "Friends of Syria" was an attempt to bypass




the UN security council, where two weeks previously Russia and China had

vetoed a resolution calling for a "transition plan" in Syria backed by the Arab

League. Following that rejection, a number of moves, including the "Friends

of Syria Conference", the British recognition of the SNC as the "legitimate

representative" of the Syrian people, and the freezing of Syrian assets by the

European Central Bank, suggested the possibility of a Libyan-style campaign

to finish Assad off.

Russia and China are also pursuing their own interests in backing Assad.

Clinton's description of their veto as "despicable" rings rather hollow when

one remembers the innumerable US vetoes wielded to protect Israel, includ-ing one calling for an end to the 2009 assault on Gaza. Indeed, the Russian

counter-draft adopted a longstanding

Western tactic in relation to the Pales-

tinians: spuriously blaming both the

victims and the perpetrators of mas-

sacres. Russia will not give up on Syr-

ia, at least not until the regime's de-

mise is unstoppable. Assad representsthe last redoubt of Russian influence

in the region, and the port of Tartus

holds Russia's only naval base in the

Mediterranean. Putin dispatched an aircraft carrier and task force to this

base at the end of 2011 in an apparent show of support for the regime.

This geopolitical struggle has given rise to confusion on the left in the

Middle East and beyond. Unlike in Libya, few prominent leftists have spoken

in favour of Assad. More common, especially in the neighbouring countriesof Syria and Jordan, has been the position that even if Assad's is a tyrannical

regime, it remains the only Arab friend of anti-imperialist resistance, and the

only barrier to a collapse into sectarian civil war fomented by Saudi Arabia.

There are sectarian elements in the opposition, but these have so far largely

been restrained by the LCC's vision of cross-sectarian unity. But the longer

the regime persists, the more its divide and rule tactics, for example shelling

Sunni districts of Homs while sparing Alawite ones, exacerbate the risk of

sectarian implosion. Foreign intervention would increase rather than dimin-

ish the risk of such a disaster, as in Iraq.

Syria has a largerworking class andlonger tradition o

organisation than, orexample, Libya.




Third alternative

Calls for intervention, and the responses to them that oppose imperialism by

slandering the revolution are both wrong. What is the alternative, however?

First it should be noted that, despite Assad's savagery and the Russian-Chi-

nese veto, the revolution seems to be spreading to areas (such as inner Da-

mascus and Aleppo) and communities (such as the Druze) that have hitherto

remained agnostic. In both Egypt and Tunisia the final blow to the dictator

was dealt by the working class in the form of strike waves that coalesced into

a general strike. In Syria such a strategy would have the advantage of both

deflecting sectarianism and hitting at the power of the capitalists of Damas-cus and Aleppo who have, with some exceptions, remained wedded to the

regime.

Is there any prospect of such an outcome? Syria has a larger working class

and longer tradition of organisation than, for example, Libya, but the net-

works of resistance forged in the Egyptian strike wave of 2006-8 have no

counterpart. However, the "dignity strike" called by the LCC's in December

2011 seems to have had some success in spreading through Damascus, and

was widely observed in Dera'a and Homs.The strikes have not yet reached the level that can finally bring down the

regime. To do so, they would probably have to unite political opposition

to the regime with demands to alleviate increasing economic hardship of

workers. The Syrian Revolution remains in the balance. Only the massive

intervention of the country's workers, not foreign invasion, can tip it the

right way.

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