Читать книгу The Long Revolution of the Global South - Samir Amin - Страница 9
Оглавление1
THE ARAB WORLD
Nationalism, Political Islam, and the Predicted Arab Revolutions
I am prefacing this chapter on the Arab world with five introductory documents: 1) the contemporary Arab world’s historical trajectory; 2) the failure of the Nahda; 3) modernity, democracy, secularism, and Islam; 4) the deployment of the United States military project; and 5) the Palestinian question.
These documents should allow the reader to pinpoint my position within the larger context of the Arab debates I am going to summarize. The Arab scene is the site of an ongoing conflict between three groups of political positions that, in turn, leads to three different future possibilities: 1) bourgeois modernism, certainly comprador, but nevertheless motivated by the intention to build “modern” though not necessarily democratic Arab states; 2) reactionary political Islam propagated by the archaic monarchies of the Gulf, the Muslim Brothers, and the Salafists; and 3) a possibly universalist Arab left, which would be part of a movement toward socialism.
We need to examine first what the real reasons are for such fault lines before looking at how they are manifested in current debates. These underlying positions recur with nagging frequency in all Arab debates.
1. THE HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY OF THE CONTEMPORARY ARAB WORLD
The Arab world has gone through three important stages over the past halfcentury. Nasser’s Egypt, Baathist Syria and Iraq, and Boumediene’s Algeria were, from 1955 to 1975, major participants in the nonaligned movement and its expansion into Africa. The first conference of African liberation movements took place in Cairo in 1957; it led to the establishment of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The proposed New International Economic Order—the swan song of the non-aligned movement—was drafted in Algiers in 1974. None of these are chance occurrences.
But while the socially positive effects of the “Arab revolutions,” which I have called “national populist,” were exhausted in the brief time of a decade or two, rising oil profits became dominant after 1973 and encouraged the illusion of an easy modernization. The play on words known by all Arabs, al-fawra mahal al-thawra (the spurt, meaning oil, in place of the revolution), captures this transfer of hopes, which is simultaneously the transfer of the center of gravity of strategic decision making from Cairo to Riyadh. Ironically, this occurred at the time when we began to see that this nonrenewable resource was on the way to exhaustion. Within this context, the United States began the implementation of what would become the project for military control of the world, a means for it to ensure exclusive access to this irreplaceable energy resource for its benefit. From 1990, the armed intervention of the United States, now become a reality, completely transformed the nature of the challenges confronting Arab and other societies.
Mired in the infitah, the “opening” connected to the petroleum illusion, Arab governments lost the legitimacy from which they had benefited until then. Political Islam rushed into the political void, where it has been in the forefront ever since. As Antonio Gramsci once said, “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”
For someone my age, who has lived through these three periods, the involution associated with this sequence necessarily called for in-depth consideration of the reasons for this dramatic failure. Having experienced this from the inside, I put forward written analyses on the issues involved, which the reader will find elsewhere. I attributed the involution to two sets of causes: those related to the limitations and contradictions of the Nahda, the Arab “Renaissance” initiated in the nineteenth century, which were behind the longevity of the political model called the “mameluk regime,”10 and those related to the world geopolitics of the new collective imperialism of the triad (United States, Europe, and Japan) under the leadership of the United States.11
2. THE FAILURE OF THE NAHDA
Modernity and the European Renaissance
Modernity is based on the principle that human beings, individually and collectively, make their own history, and to do that, they have the right to innovate and not respect tradition. The proclamation of this principle was a rupture with the fundamental principle that governed all premodern societies, including those of feudal and Christian Europe. This principle called for renouncing the dominant forms of legitimizing power—in the family, in communities within which ways of living and modes of production are organized, and at the level of the state—that were based up to then on a metaphysics with a generally religious expression. It implies, then, a separation between the state and religion, a radical secularization, which is a condition for the development of modern forms of politics.
Modernity is born with this declaration of principle. This is not a question of a rebirth (renaissance), but a birth as such. The characterization Europeans themselves gave to this moment of history, the Renaissance. is thus misleading. It is the result of an ideological construction in which Greco-Roman antiquity was already supposedly familiar with the principle of modernity, buried during the Middle Ages (between ancient modernity and new modernity) by religious obscurantism. This is a mythical understanding of antiquity, the basis for Eurocentrism, through which Europe claims to inherit its past and “return to the sources,” hence re-naissance, while in fact this renaissance is actually a rupture with its own history.
The concomitant birth of modernity and capitalism is not accidental. The social relations that characterize the new production system implied freedom of enterprise, free access to markets, and proclamation of the inviolable right to private property, which is made “sacred.” Economic life, freed from the type of supervision by political authorities that characterized the premodern systems, developed into an autonomous area of social life, driven by its own laws. In place of the traditional determination in which power is the source of wealth, capitalism substitutes a reverse causality in which wealth is the source of power.
The Arab Islamic Nahda
The European Renaissance was the result of an internal social dynamic. It was, in effect, the solution provided by the invention of capitalism to contradictions specific to Europe in that era. In contrast, what Arabs called, by imitation, their Renaissance—the Nahda of the nineteenth century—was not that at all. It was the reaction to an external shock. Europe, made powerful and victorious by modernity, had an ambiguous effect on the Arab world. It was a cause of both attraction (admiration) and repulsion (through the arrogance of its conquest). The Arab Renaissance took the qualifying term literally. It believed that if, as the Europeans had done (and this is what they themselves said), the Arabs “returned” to their sources, a disparaged time, they would rediscover their greatness. The Nahda did not understand the modernity that made Europe powerful.
The Nahda did not implement the necessary ruptures with tradition that define modernity. It did not grasp the true significance of secularism, a necessary condition for politics to become a domain of free innovation, thus of democracy in the modern sense of the term. The Nahda believed that it could substitute a reinterpretation of religion purged of its obscurantist excesses. Even now, Arab societies are poorly equipped to understand that secularism is not a Western “specificity,” but a necessity of modernity. The Nahda did not understand the meaning of democracy, understood properly as the right to break with tradition. It thus remained a prisoner of concepts of the autocratic state; it hoped and prayed for a “just” despot (al-moust-abid al-adel)—not even an “enlightened” one. The nuance is significant. The Nahda did not understand that modernity also produced women’s aspiration for liberation, thereby exercising their right to innovate, to break with tradition. It reduced modernity to the immediate appearance of what it produces: technological progress. This deliberately simplified presentation does not mean that I am unaware of the contradictions expressed in the Nahda, or that some avant-garde thinkers were aware of the real challenges of modernity, such as Qasim Amin concerning the importance of women’s liberation, Ali Abdel Raziq on the centrality of secularism, or Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi on democracy. But none of these breakthroughs were followed through; on the contrary, Arab society reacted by giving up any pursuit of the indicated paths forward. The Nahda is not, then, the moment of the birth of modernity in the Arab world; it is in fact the moment of its failure.
In his magnificent book, The Arabs and the Holocaust, Gilbert Achcar dissects the writings of Rashid Rida, the last link in the chain of the Nahda in decline.12 Rida wrote in the 1920s and was one of the original inspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islam that he proposed, described as a “return to the sources,” is utterly devoid of thought. It is a ritualistic, conservative Islam of convenience and communitarian affirmation. The adherence of Rida and the Muslim Brotherhood to Wahhabism, an equally heinous expression of a total lack of critical thinking, which scarcely responds to the requirements of an archaic society of nomads, heralds the advent of political Islam.
Limits and Contradictions of Modernity
The modernity that developed under the restrictions of capitalism’s limitations is, consequently, contradictory, promising much that it cannot produce and thus giving rise to unsatisfied aspirations. Contemporary humanity is thus confronted with the contradictions of this modernity—the only one we have experienced up to now—a modernity that began with the capitalist stage of history. Capitalism and its modernity are destructive of the human being, reduced to the status of a commodity embodying labor power. Moreover, polarization on the world scale caused by capitalist accumulation on the same scale nullifies any possibility for the majority of human beings—those in the peripheries—to satisfy their needs as promised by modernity. For the great majority, the modernity in question is quite simply odious. Hence, the rejection of this modernity is violent. But rejection is a negative act. The inadequacies of various alternative projects eliminate the effectiveness of any revolt and ultimately lead it to submit to the requirements of the capitalism and modernity that it supposedly rejects. The main illusion is sustained by nostalgia for the premodern past. In the peripheries, the backward-looking posture proceeds from a violent and justified revolt, of which it is only a neurotic and powerless form, because quite simply it is based on ignorance of the nature of the challenge of modernity.
The backward-looking position is expressed in various ways, generally in terms of a fundamentalist religious interpretation, which in fact masks a conventional conservative choice, or in terms of an ethnicity adorned with specific virtues that transcend other dimensions of social reality—classes, among others. The common denominator to all these forms is their attachment to a culturalist thesis in which religions and ethnic groups are characterized by transhistorical specificities that define inviolable identities. Even though without scientific foundation, these positions are nonetheless able to mobilize the masses who are marginalized and made helpless by destructive capitalist modernity. They are thus effective means for manipulation that are incorporated into strategies designed to reinforce submission to the joint dictatorship of the dominant forces in capitalist globalization and their local and subaltern transmission channels. Political Islam is a good example of this method for managing peripheral capitalism. In Latin America and Africa, the proliferation of quasi-Protestant obscurantist “sects,” supported by North American authorities to hinder liberation theology, manipulates the helplessness of the excluded and their revolt against the conservative official church.
[ABOVE EXTRACTS ARE FROM THE REAWAKENING OF THE ARAB WORLD.]13
3. MODERNITY, DEMOCRACY, SECULARISM, AND ISLAM
The image that the Arab and Islamic region gives of itself today is that of societies in which religion (Islam) is in the forefront of all areas of social and political life—to the point that it seems incongruous to imagine that it could be otherwise. The majority of foreign observers (political leaders and the media) conclude from this that modernity, even democracy, must be adapted to the heavy presence of Islam, thereby de facto precluding secularism.
Modernity is a rupture in universal history that began in sixteenth-century Europe. Modernity proclaims that the human being is responsible for his or her own history, individually and collectively, and consequently breaks with the dominant premodern ideologies. Modernity thus allows democracy, just as it demands secularism, in the sense of separation of the religious and the political.
From this point of view, where do the peoples of the Middle Eastern region stand? The image of crowds of bearded men prostrating themselves, as well as cohorts of veiled women, can and does inspire hasty conclusions about the intensity of the religious commitment being expressed. The social pressures exerted to obtain the result are rarely mentioned. The women have not chosen the veil, it has been imposed on them with prior violence. Absence from prayer almost always costs the person in question work, sometimes even that person’s life. Western “culturalist” friends who call for respect for the diversity of beliefs rarely inquire into the procedures implemented by governments to present an image that suits them. There are certainly religious extremists (fous de Dieu). Are there proportionately more of them than the Spanish Catholics who parade at Easter, or the innumerable fanatics in the United States who listen to televangelists?
In any case, the region has not always presented this image of itself. Beyond differences from one country to another, we can identify a large region extending from Morocco to Afghanistan, including all Arabs (except those from the Arabian peninsula), Turks, Iranians, Afghans, and the peoples of the former Soviet Central Asia, in which the potential for the development of secularism is far from negligible. The situation is different among some neighboring peoples, such as the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula or the Pakistanis.
In this extensive area, the political traditions were strongly affected by the radical currents of modernity. The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the communism of the Third International had an impact on thinking and acting and certainly were more important than Westminster-style parliamentarianism, for example. These dominant currents inspired the major models of political transformation that the ruling classes implemented, which in some ways could be called forms of “enlightened despotism.”
This was certainly the case in the Egypt of Muhammad Ali or the Khedive Ismail Pasha. Kemalism in Turkey and modernization in Iran proceeded with similar methods. The national populism characteristic of the more recent stages of history belongs to the same family of “modernist” political projects. The model’s variants were numerous (the Algerian FLN, Tunisian Bourguibism, Egyptian Nasserism, and Baathism in Syria and Iraq), but moved in a similar direction. The apparently extreme experiences—the so-called communist governments in Afghanistan and South Yemen—were in reality not very different. All these governments accomplished a great deal and, consequently, had very wide popular support. That is why, even when they were not truly democratic, they opened the way to a possible evolution in that direction. In some circumstances—such as those in Egypt between 1920 and 1950—an experiment in electoral democracy was attempted, supported by the moderate anti-imperialists (the Wafd) and fought by the dominant imperialist power (Great Britain) and its local allies (the monarchy). Secularism—admittedly implemented in moderate versions—was not “rejected” by the people. It was, on the contrary, religious figures that were considered obscurantists in public opinion—which most of them were.
Modernist experiments—from enlightened despotism to radical national populism—were not the product of chance. Powerful political movements, dominant in the middle classes, were behind these experiments. In this way, these classes were asserting themselves as full and equal partners in modern globalization, and their “national bourgeois” projects were modernist, secularist, and potentially bearers of democratic developments. But precisely because these projects came into conflict with the interests of the dominant imperialism, the latter fought them relentlessly and systematically mobilized obscurantist forces for this purpose.
The history of the Muslim Brotherhood is well known. The British and the monarchy literally created it in the 1920s in Egypt to counter the democratic and secular Wafd. Also well known is that the CIA and Anwar Sadat organized its mass return from Saudi exile after the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Then there is the history of the Taliban formed by the CIA and Pakistan to fight against the “communists” who had opened schools to everyone, boys and girls. Let us also remember that the Israelis supported Hamas at the beginning to weaken the secular and democratic currents of the Palestinian resistance.
Political Islam would have had much difficulty in expanding beyond the borders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan without the firm, powerful, and ongoing support of the United States. Saudi society had not even begun its transition from tradition when the vast petroleum reservoirs were discovered. The business and political alliance between imperialism and the “traditional” ruling class was immediately sealed, thereby reinvigorating reactionary Wahhabi political Islam. For their part, the British succeeded in breaking Indian unity by convincing the Muslim leaders to create their own state, imprisoned from the very beginning in political Islam. Note that the theory by which this curiosity was legitimized—attributed to Mawdudi—had previously been fully drafted by English Orientalists in Her Majesty’s service.
In the same vein, the U.S. initiative to break the united front of Asian and African states established in Bandung in 1955 led to the creation of an “Islamic Conference” immediately promoted (beginning in 1957) by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Political Islam penetrated into the region by this means.
The least of the conclusions that should be drawn from these observations is that political Islam is not the spontaneous product of an authentic assertion of religious conviction by the peoples in question. Political Islam was systematically constructed by imperialism and supported, of course, by obscurantist reactionary forces and subservient comprador classes. It is undeniable that the various left forces neither saw nor knew how to confront the challenge, and that is their failure.
4. THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE UNITED STATES’ MILITARY PROJECT
The United States’ project, supported to varying degrees by its subaltern European and Japanese allies, is to establish its military control over the entire world—what I have called the “extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the planet.” With that in mind, the “Middle East” was chosen as the region for the “first strike” for at least four reasons: (i) it harbors the world’s most abundant petroleum resources, and its direct control by the armed forces of the United States would give Washington a privileged position, placing their allies—Europe and Japan—and its potential rivals (China) in the uncomfortable position of dependence on the United States for their energy supplies; (ii) it is located at the center of the old world and facilitates the exercise of a permanent military threat against China, India, and Russia; (iii) the region is going through a period of weakness and confusion that allows the aggressor to achieve an easy victory, at least in the short term; (iv) imperialism has an unconditional ally in the region with nuclear weapons: Israel.
The developing attack has placed certain countries on the front line: Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Iran. The first three have been destroyed, and Iran is threatened with being so.
The armed diplomacy of the United States had the objective of literally destroying Iraq well before the pretext given to it on two different occasions: the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and then after the events of September 11, cynically exploited by the Bush administration with lies worthy of Joseph Goebbels: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” The reason for that is quite simple and has nothing to do with any appeals for the “liberation” of the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s bloody dictatorship (which was real enough). Iraq possesses a large portion of the best petroleum resources in the world. What is more, Iraq had succeeded in forming a scientific and technical force that, due to its critical mass, is capable of sustaining a consistent national project. This “danger” had to be eliminated by a “preventive war” that the United States gave itself the right to wage when and where it decided, without the least respect for international law.
Beyond this blatantly obvious observation, several serious questions need to be examined: (i) Why has Washington’s plan so easily appeared to be a dazzling success? (ii) What new situation has been created that now confronts the Iraqi nation? (iii) What responses have the different components of the Iraqi people given to this challenge? (iv) And what solutions can Iraqi, Arab, and international democratic and progressive forces promote?
Saddam Hussein’s defeat was predictable. Faced with an enemy whose main advantage lies in its capacity to carry out genocide by aerial bombardment with impunity (pending the use of nuclear weapons), the people have only one possibly effective response: resist the invader on the ground. The Saddam regime had worked to eliminate all means of defense available to the people through the systematic destruction of all organizations, all political parties (beginning with the Communist Party) that had made the history of modern Iraq, including the Baath Party itself, which had been one of the major participants in this history. What should be surprising in these conditions is not that the Iraqi people allowed its country to be invaded without a fight or even that certain behaviors (such as its apparent participation in elections organized by the invaders or the explosion of fratricidal conflicts between Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs) seemed to indicate that the defeat was possibly accepted (which is what Washington had hoped would happen), but that the resistance on the ground has strengthened every day (despite all the serious weaknesses that have been evident), that this resistance has already made it impossible to establish a regime of lackeys capable of maintaining the appearance of order, such that the failure of Washington’s project has already been demonstrated.
Nevertheless, a new situation has been created by the foreign military occupation. The Iraqi nation is truly threatened because Washington, incapable of maintaining its control over the country (and pillaging its petroleum resources, which is its number one objective) through a government that is “national” in appearance only, can pursue its project only by breaking up the country. The breakup of the country into at least three states (Kurd, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab) was, perhaps, Washington’s original objective, in line with Israel (the archives will reveal the truth of this in the future). It is still the case today that the “civil war” is the card Washington plays to legitimize the continuation of its occupation. A permanent occupation was—and remains—the objective. That is the only way for Washington to guarantee its control of the oil. Certainly, no one should believe Washington’s declarations of intent, of the type “we will leave the country as soon as order has been restored.” Remember that the British never said that their occupation of Egypt, beginning in 1882, was ever anything other than “provisional” (it lasted until 1956!). In the meantime, of course, every day, the United States destroys by all means, including the most criminal, a little more of the country, its schools, factories, and scientific capacities.
The response of the Iraqi people to the challenge does not seem to be—at least in the short term—equal to the seriousness of the situation. That is the least one can say. What are the reasons for this? The dominant Western media keeps repeating ad nauseam that Iraq is an “artificial” country and that the oppressive domination of Saddam’s Sunni regime over the Shias and Kurds is at the origin of the inevitable civil war (which only the continuation of the foreign occupation might be able to avert). The “resistance,” in this view, is thus limited to a few pro-Saddam Islamist currents of the Sunni “triangle.” It is difficult to believe that so many falsehoods can be assembled at one time.
After the First World War, the British colonialists had great difficulty in overcoming the Iraqi people’s resistance. Consistent with their imperial tradition, the British fabricated an imported monarchy and a landowning class to support their power just as they gave a privileged position to Sunni Islam. But despite their constant efforts, the British failed. The Communist Party and the Baath Party made up the main organized political forces that defeated the power of the Sunni monarchy detested by everyone: Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. The violent competition between these two forces, which took center stage between 1958 and 1963, ended in a victory by the Baath Party, hailed at the time as a relief by the Western powers. Yet the Communist project could potentially have led in a democratic direction. That was not true of the Baath. A nationalist party, pan-Arab and favorable to Arab unity in principle, it admired the Prussian model for constructing German unity. It recruited in the modernist, secular petite bourgeoisie and was hostile to obscurantist expressions of religion. As could be predicted, in power it evolved into a dictatorship. Its statism was only partly anti-imperialist because, depending on the conjuncture and circumstances, a compromise could be accepted with the dominant imperialism in the region, that of the United States. This “deal” encouraged the megalomaniacal excesses of the leader, who imagined that Washington would agree to make him its main ally in the region. Washington’s support of Baghdad (including the delivery of chemical weapons) in the absurd and criminal war against Iran from 1980 to 1989 seemed to lend credibility to this calculation. Saddam did not imagine that Washington would cheat, that the modernization of Iraq was unacceptable for imperialism, and that the decision to destroy the country had already been made. Saddam fell into the trap (the green light had been given to him to annex Kuwait, which was, in fact, an Iraqi province that the British imperialists had detached to make one of their oil colonies), and Iraq was subjected to ten years of sanctions aimed at battering the country to facilitate the glorious conquest by the U.S. armed forces over what remained.
One can accuse the successive Baath governments, including the last one during its period of decline under Saddam’s leadership, of everything except for having stirred up confessional conflict between Sunni and Shia. Who, then, is responsible for the bloody clashes between the two communities today? Certainly, we will someday learn how the CIA (and undoubtedly the Mossad as well) organized many of these massacres. But beyond that, it is true that the political desert created by Saddam’s regime, and the example he gave of using unprincipled opportunist methods to achieve his aims, encouraged candidates for government of all kinds to follow this example, often protected by the occupier. Sometimes, perhaps, these people were naive to the point of believing that they could make use of the occupier. The candidates in question, whether religious leaders (Shia or Sunni), supposed “notables” (quasi-tribal), or notoriously corrupt businessmen exported by the United States, never had any real political foothold in the country. Even the religious leaders respected by believers had no acceptable political sway over the Iraqi people. Without the void created by Saddam, their names would not even be known. Faced with this new political world made by the imperialism of liberal globalization, will other authentically popular and national, potentially democratic, political forces have the means to reconstruct themselves?
There was a time when the Iraqi Communist Party encapsulated and embodied the best of what Iraqi society could produce. It was established in all areas of the country and dominated the world of intellectuals, often of Shia origin (I note that Shiism above all produces revolutionaries and religious leaders, rarely bureaucrats or compradors!). The Communist Party was genuinely popular and anti-imperialist, not really inclined to demagogy, and potentially democratic. Is it now called to disappear from history once and for all, after the massacre of thousands of its best militants by the Baathist dictatorship, the collapse of the Soviet Union (for which it was not prepared), and the behavior of some of its intellectuals who believed that it was acceptable to return from exile as appendages of the U.S. armed forces? Unfortunately, this is not impossible, but not “inevitable,” far from it.
The Kurdish question is a real one, in Iraq as well as Iran and Turkey. But on this subject also, it should be remembered that the Western powers have always cynically acted with double standards. Repression of Kurdish demands in Iraq and Iran has never reached the level of continual police and military violence as in Turkey. Neither Iran nor Iraq has ever gone as far as denying the very existence of the Kurds. Yet, as a NATO member, Turkey should always be pardoned. NATO, you will recall, is an organization of democratic nations, or so the media constantly reminds us. The eminent democrat Salazar was one of the founding members, and the Greek colonels and Turkish generals were unconditional supporters of democracy!
Iraqi popular fronts were formed around the Communist and the Baath parties in the best moments of its stormy history. Whenever such fronts exercised power, they always found common ground with the main Kurdish parties, which were always, moreover, their allies.
The “anti-Shia” and “anti-Kurd” excesses of Saddam’s regime were certainly real: bombardments of the Basra region by Saddam’s army after its 1990 defeat in Kuwait and use of gas against the Kurds. Such abuses came as a response to Washington’s armed diplomatic maneuvers, which had mobilized sorcerer’s apprentices pressured to seize the occasion. Nevertheless, Saddam’s reactions were criminal and stupid, since the success of Washington’s appeals was quite limited. But should we expect anything else from dictators like Saddam?
The power of the resistance to the foreign occupation, unexpected in these conditions, would seem to be a miracle. This is not really the case because the basic reality is that the Iraqi people as a whole (Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shia) detest the occupiers and are quite well aware of its daily crimes (assassinations, bombings, massacres, torture). We should then be able to envisage a “United National Resistance Front” (call it whatever you like) proclaiming itself as such, publicizing the list of organizations and parties that constitute it and their common program. Up until now, this has not been the case, mostly because of the destruction of the social and political fabric caused by the successive dictatorships of Saddam and the occupiers. But whatever the reasons, this weakness is a serious impediment that facilitates divide-and-rule policies, encourages the opportunists to become collaborators, and generates confusion about the objectives of the liberation.
Who will succeed in overcoming these barriers? The Communists should be well placed to do so. Already militants—on the ground—are differentiating themselves from the “leaders” (that is, the only ones known to the dominant media) who, not knowing which way the wind is blowing, attempt to give a semblance of legitimacy to their support for the collaborationist government by pretending to complement it with armed resistance! But many other political forces could, in the circumstances, take decisive action toward forming such a united front.
It remains the case that, despite its “weaknesses,” the Iraqi people’s resistance has already defeated (politically if not yet militarily) Washington’s project. This is precisely what worries the Atlanticists in the European Union, faithful allies of the United States. The subaltern associates of the United States today fear the latter’s defeat because that would strengthen the capacity of peoples in the South to force globalized transnational capital from the imperialist triad to respect the interests of the nations and peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The Iraqi resistance has made proposals that would make it possible to get out of the impasse and assist the United States to withdraw from the trap. It proposes: (i) formation of a transitional administration with the support of the UN Security Council; (ii) immediate cessation of resistance activities, as well as military and police operations by occupation forces; (iii) the withdrawal of all foreign military and civilian authorities within six months. The details of these proposals were published in the January 2006 issue of the prestigious Arab journal Al Mustaqbal Al Arabi, published in Beirut. The European media treated this message with absolute silence. Such a response is clear proof of the solidarity of the imperialist partners. Democratic and progressive forces in Europe have the duty to dissociate themselves from this imperialist policy and support the proposals of the Iraqi resistance. Leaving the Iraqi people to confront its enemy alone is not an acceptable option. It reinforces the dangerous idea that there is nothing to expect from the West and its peoples and consequently encourages unacceptable—even criminal—excesses in the activities of certain resistance movements.
The sooner the foreign occupation troops leave the country, and the stronger the support from democratic forces in Europe and throughout the world to the Iraqi people, the greater will be the possibilities for a better future for this martyred people. The longer the occupation lasts, the more dismal the future that follows its inevitable end.
5. THE PALESTINIAN QUESTION
The Palestinian people have, since the Balfour Declaration during the First World War, been the victim of a colonization project by a foreign people that has treated it like white settler colonialists in the United States treated “redskins.” This is true whether one cares to acknowledge it or pretends to be ignorant of it. This project has always been supported unconditionally by the dominant imperialist power in the region (yesterday Great Britain, today the United States), because the alien state established with that support can only ever be the ally, also unconditional, of the interventions required for the continual submission of the Arab Middle East to imperialist capitalism.
This is completely obvious for all peoples of Africa and Asia. Consequently, the affirmation and defense of Palestinian rights spontaneously unite the peoples on these two continents. However, in Europe, the “Palestinian question” causes division, resulting from the confusions fostered by Zionist ideology, which is often met with favorable support.
Today, more than ever, in conjunction with the deployment of the American “Greater Middle East” project, the rights of the Palestinian people have been abolished. Yet the PLO had accepted the Oslo and Madrid plans and the road map designed by Washington. It is Israel that has openly disowned its signature and continues to implement an even more ambitious expansion plan. The PLO has consequently been weakened: public opinion can rightly reproach it for having naively believed in the sincerity of its opponents. The support by the occupation authorities for its Islamist adversary (Hamas), initially, at least, and the spread of the Palestinian administration’s corrupt practices on which the “donors”—the World Bank, Europe, NGOs—are silent, if they are not participants, had to lead to the electoral victory of Hamas, an additional pretext immediately cited to justify unconditional alignment with Israel’s policies, “whatever they are”!
The Zionist colonial project has always been a threat, beyond Palestine, for neighboring Arab peoples. Its ambitions to annex the Egyptian Sinai and its effective annexation of the Syrian Golan bear witness to this. A particular place is given to Israel in the project for a “Greater Middle East,” to its regional nuclear weapons monopoly and its role as a “required partner” (under the fallacious pretext that Israel has “technological competence” of which no Arab people is capable! Here we have the obligatory racism!).
It is not my intention here to analyze the complex interactions between the resistance struggles against Zionist colonial expansion and the political conflicts and choices in Lebanon and Syria. The Baathist governments of Syria have, in their own way, resisted the demands of the imperialist powers and Israel. That this resistance has also served to legitimize more questionable ambitions (control of Lebanon) is certainly not debatable. Moreover, Syria has carefully chosen its allies from among the “least dangerous” in Lebanon. The Lebanese Communist Party had originally organized resistance to Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon (including water diversion). The Syrian, Lebanese, and Iranian governments cooperated closely to destroy this “dangerous base” and substitute Hezbollah for it. The assassination of Rafic Hariri obviously gave an opportunity for the imperialist powers (led by the United States, with France following behind) to intervene with a double objective: to force Damascus to align with the group of vassalized Arab states (Egypt, Saudi Arabia)—or, failing that, liquidate the vestiges of the degenerated Baathist government—and dismantle what remains of the ability to resist Israeli incursions by demanding Hezbollah’s “disarmament.” Rhetoric about “democracy” can usefully be called on in this context.
THIS SUMMARY, QUITE UNREMARKABLE for the Arab reader, supplements what I wrote in the first volume of my memoirs concerning the positions taken in May 1948 and subsequently by the Arab states and the main political forces at that time (the nationalists, Islamists, and communists). It is up to the reader to take all this into account.
These Memoirs
I experienced the Bandung Conference as an Egyptian, first as a student in Paris and then as a functionary in Cairo.
My analyses never led me to underestimate the responsibilities of the established governments, particularly that of Nasser. Quite the contrary, I attributed decisive responsibility for the failures to the inadequacies of these governments. Without false modesty, I will say that the book that I wrote in 1960, published under an assumed name, Hassan Riad, was prescient.14 I envisaged that the regime would pass away with a return to peripheral capitalism. The infitah gave concrete form to my prediction ten years later.
My return to the Egyptian political scene through my participation in the Egyptian Social Forums beginning in 2002 led me to formulate critical positions with regard to the false alternative of political Islam or “democracy.” Needless to say, my positions are not always shared. Today, political conflicts in Egypt and in the region as a whole involve three sets of forces: those that claim to adhere to the nationalist past (but are in reality only the degraded and corrupt inheritors of the bureaucracies from the national-populist era); those that follow political Islam; and those that are attempting to form around “democratic” demands compatible with liberal economic management. None of these forces is acceptable to a left concerned about the interests of the working classes and the nation. In fact, the interests of the comprador classes associated with the imperialist system are expressed through these three tendencies. U.S. diplomacy works to keep these three irons in the fire, hoping to benefit from their conflicts. Attempting to become “involved” in these conflicts by allying with one or another of these forces (choosing the established governments to avoid the worst—political Islam—or seeking to ally with the latter to get rid of the governments) is destined to fail. The left must assert itself by becoming involved in struggles to defend: (i) the economic and social interests of the working classes, (ii) democracy, and (iii) the assertion of national sovereignty. What is more, all these struggles should be viewed as inseparable.
The “Greater Middle East” region is now central in the conflict between the imperialist hegemon and the peoples of the entire world. To defeat the project of Washington’s establishment is the condition for the possibility of successful advances in any region of the world. Otherwise, all these advances will remain extremely vulnerable. This does not mean that the importance of struggles conducted in other areas of the world—Europe, Latin America, elsewhere—can be underestimated. It only means that they should be placed within a global perspective that contributes to Washington’s defeat in the region it has chosen for its criminal first strike.
Consequently, the insistence that I place on continuing debates within the Arab left, in particular its Marxist wing, goes without saying.
In Egypt, in the 1950s, I was in favor of Arab unity—like all my communist comrades—without being a “nationalist” (in the Arabic sense of qawmi), without accepting its stupidity (“Arabness flows through the blood of Arabs …”), without sharing the superficial but common opinion that the division of the Arab world into distinct states was mainly, if not exclusively, the result of “imperialist plots,” etc. Rather, we simply thought that liberation and social progress required in our time the construction of large entities, and that the unity of language and culture offered to Arabs a historical opportunity that should be seized.15
ONCE AGAIN, I REFER the reader to the first volume of these memoirs for a narrative of my participation in Egyptian political life during the Nasser era. Later, I shall give an account of my activities in post-Nasser Egypt up to the current revolution, which erupted in 2011.
MY ACTIVITIES IN THE MAGHREB AND MASHREQ
I began my discoveries of the Arab world beyond Egypt with the countries of the Maghreb, which very few Arabs from the Mashreq knew at that time. Within the context of my teaching at the IDEP, I gave myself the objective of closely studying the three experiences of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, still in the initial stages of their development in the middle of the 1960s.
Tunisia and Morocco
It was, I believe, in 1963 that the first opportunity arose to visit the Maghreb. The Plan administration in Tunisia wanted to establish a new framework for its national accounts. It confided this task to two experts: a Syrian statistician, Nazhat Chalaq, and me (recommended by SEEF). We fulfilled our mission, properly I believe, in stays of fifteen days that, for me, were spread over several months. Hussein Zhall and other colleagues at the Plan assisted us with great effectiveness, friendship, and Arab hospitality. Chalaq was a very talented statistician who was able to uncover the contradictions and absurdities in the figures submitted by various people. Having a good sense of humor, he said to me one day: “They cheat everyone, but not to the same extent; the President will have to decide by decree the proportion of compulsory cheating for all services.” We pushed the fun to the point of including this proposal in our final report! That report was very well received, and its reception reassured us about the Tunisian administrators’ sense of humor.
My stays in Tunis allowed me to meet many intellectuals, professors, and political leaders of the Tunisian left. (These same intellectuals, with well-established reputations, later led teams in the TWF.) Students also asked me from time to time to give them a lecture, a request I never refused. But I did not meet the “big leaders” of the Destourian system, those of the Bourguibist camp or those of the Ben Salahist and Ben Youssefist camps. I met Ben Salah much later, after his release from prison. I only knew of the system’s internal contradictions through their interpretation by the left opposition.
Obviously, I visited Tunisia subsequently on numerous occasions and I followed its change of direction—the failure of its attempted insertion into the international system via a strategy of welcoming outsourcing operations in free trade zones—and the rise of fundamentalist Islam. Tunisian society remains, despite everything, one of the least backward in the Arab and Muslim world in an important area: the status of women. In the long term, I believe this advantage is decisive. Habib Ben Ali Bourguiba should be credited with this advance, whatever one thinks of his—quite limited—political views, his illusions concerning the West, particularly the United States, his penchant to autocracy, and perhaps his unbearable vanity. That certainly does not suffice to excuse Ben Ali’s odious regime of its everyday villainy.
I began to have a small reputation as a good technician at creating a framework for national accounts tailored to planning needs. This reputation is probably what lay behind the invitation, circa 1964, from the Moroccan Minister of the Economy (or Planning?) Driss Slaoui. I had known the young Slaoui, a communist student in Paris. He had put a lot of water in his wine, but remained, in his own way, faithful to his youthful ideals. The Moroccan comrades with whom I have spent time since this first opportunity, followed by repeated visits, are friends I respect. But despite my respect for the activities of these militants, their party (the PPS) does not appear to me to have succeeded in going beyond the limitations of a narrow elite circle lacking solid grassroots support.
Militants of the left-wing of the USFP—during the heyday of this party—certainly benefited from a much wider popular audience. But all those whom I met left me with the feeling that they would only move beyond the limitations of Nasserist/Boumediennist/Baathist populism with great difficulty. This turned out to be the case, while they gradually and inevitably slid to the right, participating in the great game of the monarchy anxious to expand the system’s legitimacy by integrating—beyond the traditional classes that have formed its historical base (the Fassi and Soussi merchants, landed and tribal aristocracies, more recently the new comprador bourgeoisie)—the middle strata of the technocracy and bureaucracy and the urban and rural petite bourgeoisies. From that, there followed the anger and revolt of the new generation in the 1970s, the March 22 movement, and what emerged from various organizations. Their leftism was certainly commensurate with their exceptional courage.
The case of the Western Sahara shuffled the cards even more. The PPS and USFP rallied to the “Green March” bloc, as is well known. Concerning the Western Sahara, my personal viewpoint is not widely shared. Invited by leftist Mauritanians to explain my view of the problem, they suggested that I go say these things “at a higher level,” using their connections with the government. The Mauritanian president thus invited me to meet with him. My thesis was simple. We all, I said, are in favor of Arab unity. Then why create an additional Arab state, the Sahrawi Republic? Would this not be tantamount to allowing a small local ruling class to monopolize the earnings from phosphate exports? And if this region has to become part of an existing Arab country, is not Mauritania the best choice? The tribes of Western Sahara are the same ones found in Mauritania. Should not an attempt be made to convince Polisario and the Mauritanian government to make a joint declaration to this effect? And at the same time, why not go further and propose a confederation of Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania, and begin serious negotiations to provide substance to that proposition? I am sure that the peoples of the three countries would be more than favorable, even enthusiastic. The Mauritanian president seemed to be convinced by these views, although they came too late since the Madrid accords had already been signed, in which Morocco and Mauritania agreed to share the Western Sahara. Some time later, the president perished in an airplane accident. To others, I said: Why don’t parties, organizations, and important persons on the left in the three countries adopt this common position? They would be understood and would gain the support of their peoples. None of them would do it. Why?
The Algerian government at the time harbored extravagant expansionist ambitions. It treated its recent Mauritanian ally like a semi-colony. I heard Algerian leaders with my own ears refer to the Mauritanian president as the “wali [custodian/helper] of Nouakchott.” I laid into them. “Pardon me? Is that how you believe you will achieve Arab unity? Moreover, the Algerian model of which you are so proud is beginning to run out of steam. Is the question of the Western Sahara the major problem for the Algerian people today? Is it not the main priority of the Algerian left [because to cap it all, the statements mentioned above were made by important figures in the Algerian left] to have a closer look at this model and step up efforts to resolve the impasses in which it resulted?”
I never made any public declarations or wrote anything about this affair because I thought that would only throw oil on the fire as long as the leftist forces in the three countries refused to assume their responsibility. But this example illustrates two realities, in my opinion. The first is that the Algerian left had decided to align itself unreservedly with Boumediennism, of which it was no more than one wing. It subsequently had to pay dearly when the regime’s legitimacy eroded and then collapsed, to the immediate advantage of the Islamists. In the eyes of the working classes, the Algerian Communist Party did not appear to have a project different from that of the FLN. The second is that the division among Arabs is not only or even mainly the result of manipulation by outside forces. It is the product of the established ruling classes and the opposing forces, of their egotistical ambitions and narrow-minded views. I subsequently visited Morocco and Algeria on multiple occasions. I must say that I have unfortunately not seen any palpable progress made in any of these areas. There has been no self-critique.
Here is another interesting story. I was invited to Rabat around 1974 to “assist” the Secretaries-General of the Arab League and the OAU in negotiating some difficult issues poisoning Arab-African relations. The OAU had thought of me as a gesture of trust, recognizing that I was no chauvinist and that I placed a united front of Third World countries confronting imperialism above their internal conflicts. I therefore accepted. I listened to each Secretary-General make his case on Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, and Saharan Niger. I presented my personal analyses of these questions in the most neutral language possible, emphasizing the common interests of the peoples concerned and principles for solutions that could strengthen their united front. What I proposed, in short, was: formal respect for borders, democratization of all the countries concerned, complete respect for the rights of minorities, and rejection of any call for outside help in settling these problems. I would like to point out that neither one of the two Secretaries-General had thought of the question of democratization. I stressed the point by saying that, in my humble opinion, none of these conflicts would find a solution without democracy. I am not sure whether I was convincing or that I had any influence, even in the smallest amount, on their future behavior.
Algeria
I visited Algeria several times during the 1960s at the invitation either of the Ministry of Planning (notably by Minister Abdallah Khoja and his assistant Remili, later by Minister Hidouci) or universities (by the rector Ahmad Mahiou). Always the same topic: they wanted my opinion on the Plan. I must say that I saw nothing there that went beyond nationalist populism. That was not always easy to explain. The Algerian leadership—many friends among them—was justifiably proud of the glorious struggle led by the FLN. But this pride diminished their critical sense, above all when—this was the case for many—they had only participated in this struggle from afar.
Three major problems worried me. First problem: the attraction of the poorly studied Soviet model of industrialization—with few connections to agricultural development, the primary priority—financed by petroleum revenues, designed by pure technocrats indifferent to the political and social dimensions of choices, poorly justified, among other things, by the theory of “industrializing industries” (a rationalization of the Soviet model that Mao’s work “On the Ten Major Relationships” had, in my opinion, destroyed from top to bottom). Second problem: the rapid erosion of vague democratic impulses and the growing rhetoric against the “utopia of self-management,” etc. The 1965 Charter appeared to everyone—including the left of the old Communist Party—to be perfect. For me it only reproduced, often to the letter, the Nasserism of 1961. But to say too much would be mistaken for “Egyptian arrogance.” Third problem: the fragility of the Algerian nation. For me, that was obvious. Compared to Morocco and Tunisia, which were states before colonization, the Algerian nation was produced by the war of liberation. There is no shame in that. But its legitimacy was consequently fragile and linked to the legitimacy of the FLN government, the populist limitations of which I could clearly see. Subsequent events, with the war unleashed by the Islamists, have unfortunately proved me right. With the collapse of the FLN, basic national solidarity is now called into question. But there again, to say too much might be taken as a reminder of French colonialist rhetoric in which the Algerian nation did not exist. The language question, often cited, is only the tip of the iceberg. In this area, the Algerian government’s choice was disastrous: French for the elites, open to modernity and technology, and Arabic for the people, with education handed to the masters of old Koranic schools and supervised by no-less-backward graduates of al-Azhar. (It is a myth that the French wanted to extirpate Islam and thus fought against the Koranic schools. The French maintained the sharia for the native inhabitants; the FLN had attempted to attenuate its scope. By demanding complete respect for the sharia, the Islamists quite simply want everyone to return to the colonial-era practice!) The result is well known. It happened that I was able to assess the extent of the disaster when, invited to make a lecture at a university, I noted that the “Arabic speakers” did not know how to express anything that even remotely made any sense. Words followed one another without any concern for the meaning they carried.
In 1972, IDEP organized one of its large seminars in Algiers. The authorities, both state and university, welcomed us with great pomp by allowing us to use the National Assembly building, whereupon I commented that, for once, it would act as a forum for real debates!
Following this seminar, President Houari Boumedienne received me. It was a long meeting; two hours, I believe. He wanted to talk above all about international and Arab politics, criticizing the Rogers Plan for the Middle East, outlining his view of a “new international economic order” (to which the Non-Aligned Movement gave concrete expression in the declaration of 1974). I was convinced on these areas and attempted to move the discussion toward Algeria’s internal problems and my three reasons for worry. This visibly bothered the president, despite my diplomacy—I accused no one, cited no name, took the precaution of first speaking of the “positive aspects” and the “objective difficulties” before broaching the sensitive points. There was nothing in what he told me that was not already known from public speeches. I left convinced that the Algerian government would not find a way out of the foreseeable impasses and would end up falling to the right.
I followed with much sorrow the deterioration of the Algerian system after Boumedienne’s death, which had maintained the appearances of a solid construction, but was in fact rotten to the core. Chadli Bendjedid and his senseless opportunist opening to compradors and vulgar excesses prepared the worst: the illusory riposte of the FIS’s electoral victory and the criminal excesses of the 1990s. This is a suspect confrontation between two partners who are only competing for comprador government and to be alone in benefiting from it: the old FLN without legitimacy and its generals on one side, and the FIS on the other. The latter was initially able to capitalize on the anger of the working classes and mobilize its minions recruited from among the young hittistes (the name given in Algeria to unemployed youth without any prospects). Favored by depoliticization—the usual crime of populist regimes—and supervised by the “Afghans” (the criminals trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan in CIA camps financed by Saudi Arabia), the “Islamists” wreaked the havoc with which we are all familiar. Yasmina Khadra’s crime novels are, from this point of view, the best analysis of Algeria’s tragedy. Are the Islamists now worn down by the resistance to the former FLN system and the successive maneuvers of Liamine Zéroual (after the elimination of Mohamed Boudiaf—we are still not sure who assassinated him, undoubtedly with the complicity of unknown local and foreign intelligence services) and, today, Abdelaziz Bouteflika? Undoubtedly, putting an end to the killings has become the first priority. But what should be done after that? Here again the historical Algerian left and its intellectuals have a large responsibility. An objective terrain existed, and still exists, to form a “third force” that rejects the Mafia-style management of the former FLN apparatus and the identical one of the Islamists. But this third force has never succeeded in forming. Leadership infighting has probably played a role in this miserable failure. I nevertheless believe that, behind this, there are more fundamental weaknesses, among others the absence of an approach that is able to incorporate the need for democratization of society into the requirements of a socialist renewal. Here again the ideological confusion of nationalist-populist circles, impressed with the Soviet model and their later absurd support for “liberal” solutions, are behind this powerlessness.
I met President Ahmed Ben Bella and his spouse only after his release from prison, rejuvenated by his active participation in the movement to revive worldwide struggle for “another world” freed from globalized imperialist capitalism.
Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco are quite different in all kinds of ways. And yet, the three systems do converge in a certain way. At least, that was the conclusion of the book I wrote based on my Maghrebi experiences.16
Mauritania
I particularly like the Sahara—its expanses are more varied than those who do not know it imagine it to be; the aridity of its climate; and the elegance, pride, and hospitality of its peoples. I am lucky that my wife, Isabelle, shares these tastes. We thus never passed up the opportunity to travel through these spaces in Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, and Egypt.
Our first travels through the great desert led us from Saint Louis in Senegal to Atar and Chinguetti in the north of Mauritania. There we became acquainted with this “chimerical people”—as one of their finest sons, Abdel Wedoud Ould Cheikh, sociologist and friend, describes them. Invited on several occasions by teachers and students in this country, I came to appreciate their lively intelligence and generous hospitality. I carefully preserve the beautiful chests and bubus that were given to me on these occasions.
I verified the accuracy of what Caillé had written on these astonishing tribes. Having arrived at Boutilimit at sunset, ready to sleep, one of the local marabouts welcomed us to his large tent and ordered that a sheep be made ready for our meal. Obviously, that meant that the barbecued sheep would not be ready until two o’clock in the morning! But of course it was impossible to refuse the gesture of hospitality. While waiting, stretched out on the carpets, we attempted to sleep a little. A Maure woman, who saw to our needs, woke me up by pinching my big toe to ask me this astonishing question, in good Hassaniya Arabic: “You know the world, can you tell me how it is?” I no longer know what I tried to splutter in an attempt to satisfy her curiosity—unsuccessfully. In the Maure tribes, there is strict monogamy (the Koran is not interpreted as authorizing polygamy since the condition of equal affection is impossible) and it is the women who are literate—and who transmit knowledge and poetry—while the illiterate men (except for the marabouts) are only there to wield the sword.
At Mederdra, we stopped to drink tea at an administrative camp. The man who prepared it did not have the demeanor of a servant. He was dignified and elegant. Isabelle asked him straight out if he were a servant. No, he said, I am not the servant for this camp. He was an army officer who had participated in a minor attempted coup d’état at Néma (in eastern Mauritania) in 1961. We had heard echoes of this event in Mali. Some officers, who considered the government to be neocolonial, had attempted to seize the fort at Néma to trigger a general revolt in the country. They resorted to limited means and a naive approach that condemned them to failure. This officer was condemned to death—a sentence commuted, after several years of solitary confinement, to exile in this camp, lost in the sands. We offered to help him escape. “We can take you along in our jeep. We cross the Senegal River in a canoe to a village and then you are free.” He was tempted, but upon reflection said, “No, I shall remain in my country.” On leaving, we drove very slowly, exchanging repeated gestures of farewell with him, if, by any chance, he was tempted, until he closed the gate to the camp.
Mauritania is not the paradise of the desert. It is, like Sudan, the link and frontier of confrontation between the Arab and black African peoples. The Maure society is slaveholding. This must be said and it must not be accepted. Half of the population is made up of Haratins, descendants of slaves captured in the raids to the south. Brutalized, condemned to perform the hardest labor, despised, and insulted, their fate in no way reflects the soothing rhetoric on “domestic slavery” by which the leaders of the modern state and the intellectuals at their service attempt to justify the supposed “vestiges.”
Life in the border region is not as idyllic as the calm countryside of the Senegal River and its Toucouleur and Soninke villages suggest. The river here, as is often the case, is not the border between peoples, but a means of communication. The region is populated on both banks by non-Arab peoples, although highly Islamized for almost ten centuries (unlike Sudan). The Toucouleurs, who in the seventeenth century created their “Islamic republic” (and who themselves practiced slavery within their society, but refused to participate in the slave trade outside it), had centuries earlier produced the glorious Moroccan dynasty of the Almoravids. The ruling classes of the old Moorish country and those of the Senegal River country frequently warred with one another, but they mutually respected each other in their own way. The new “Arab-Berber” (in fact, almost completely Arabic-speaking) ruling classes of modern Mauritania are quite simply racist. This sad reality can be verified over and over. At Boutilimit, the Divisional Commander was Toucouleur (the Mauritanian administration offers a few gestures of concession of this kind for external use). “You are not going to pay a visit to this Negro!” the Maures said to us. “Yes, we are going to do this.” And it was at his house that we slept, like it should be. There are principles with which we do not compromise. The Maures accompanied us to the bottom of the sand hill, on top of which the administrative center had been built. But they refused to go any further. We took our luggage and carried it ourselves. Disillusioned, the Commandant said upon receiving us: “How can I carry out my duties in this country?”
The coexistence of the two peoples has been seriously called into question since the serious events of 1988, which led to ethnic massacres in Mauritania and Senegal, and the flight of tens of thousands of peasants from the north bank of the river. Who was behind these massacres? As almost always, they were not “spontaneous,” and different peoples forced to live side by side do not generally hate each other to the point of killing each other, even when they harbor serious prejudices that sustain strong barriers in their everyday relationships. The shops of the Maure artisans and merchants, found everywhere in Senegal, were pillaged; their owners were often massacred, not by the “crowd,” but by well-organized groups, transported by trucks from elsewhere to the places where the violent incidents took place. A lot of the Senegalese I know protected these unfortunate victims. In Mauritania, well-organized groups massacred the Senegalese and blacks of the river region. Who was behind these organizations? If it were not the established authorities, it could very well have been the segments of the ruling classes, hoping in this way to destabilize the governments and force them to share the advantages of rule, or maybe even replace them. As the African proverb says: “The fish rots from the head down.” Fratricidal conflicts are rarely the spontaneous result of unrest among the people. It is almost always the ruling classes, or their segments, that organize such conflicts. That they are exploiting objective realities, more or less poorly managed by established authorities, should never lead us to overlook the strategies of those who are directly responsible for these conflicts. It is true in this case, just as elsewhere in Africa, Asia, or, of course, Europe. In any case, the flight of peasants from the river served well the interests of a new class benefiting from irrigated land, which they seized and wanted to empty of its population to develop agribusiness supported by foreign lenders and the World Bank. These beneficiaries, of course, are all from the Maure (all Arabs) and Senegalese (not necessarily originally from the region) bureaucracies. In some respects, they are as thick as thieves.
The Sudan
A similar tragedy, but on an altogether different scale, has bathed Sudan in blood for thirty years.
I did not visit Sudan, unfortunately, but was only in Khartoum three or four times after 1973, when the situation permitted during one of the short interludes between two dictators. This was always at the invitation of the Sudanese left, the Communist Party and the Popular Front—all were very active at the University, and also in trade unions and other working-class organizations. But they were always victims of the electoral democracy advocated by the popular uprisings they had led. Control of the electoral majorities by the traditional leadership of the Ansar Mahdists inevitably led to the same people in government and then the same chaos led to a coup d’état, be it military, Islamist, or a combination of the two. But what can be done? How can these traditional authorities be abolished and, at the same time, the norms of democracy, even a revolutionary one, still be respected? This was always the unending topic of my very long discussion sessions—the Sudanese can spend the entire night talking—with a large number of the country’s militants. I must confess that Sudan exerts an irresistible attraction over me because of its completely successful mixture of Arab (particularly Egyptian) and African cultures.
The question of the civil war was also always at the center of our discussions. And when the circumstances—that is, in moments when a democratic government was in power at Khartoum—allowed the opening of negotiations with the rebels from the south (which often took place in Addis Ababa), I did not hesitate to respond to the confidence the two parties placed in me, not to participate (in what capacity?), but to monitor their progress. The peoples of the south obviously not only have the right, but also have reason to revolt. Democrats in the north share their views. Consequently, the two parties, when they met, really got on well and agreement was sincere. But no agreement could ever be implemented because, each time, the military and the Islamists violently overthrew the democratic government and restarted their war. The Islamists carry total responsibility for the disaster.
This is first of all a disaster for Sudan, which, thanks to the Islamists, no longer exists. Their war exhausted the country’s economy, despite the immense financial support received from Saudi Arabia. Consequently, it is no longer only the south that has rebelled; it is the entire country, from Darfur in the west to Kassala in the east. But what is important to these idiotic fanatics is that they can prohibit beer in Khartoum, cut off the hands of small thieves (but not the biggest ones), impose the veil on young girls, etc. Their leader, Hassan al-Turabi, which the Western media are pleased to present as an “intellectual,” belongs rather to the group of government criminals. It is amusing to note that his name in Arabic—if a short “a” is substituted for the pronunciation of the long “a”—means “gravedigger.” That is what he is called in Sudan.
Sudan’s destruction suits the dominant powers in the world and regional systems quite well. For the United States, Sudan is “too large.” In fact, for Washington, all countries in the world are too large, except for the United States. As is well known, the war stopped work on the Jonglei Canal, on which the future of Egypt and northern Sudan depends, however. I am perfectly aware that some environmental movements condemn in principle all major infrastructure projects. In the first volume of my memoirs, I said what I thought of these simplifications concerning the Aswan High Dam.
The Gulf Countries
I also know quite well the countries of the Arab Mashreq. I do not have much to say about the Gulf, which I visited in 1971 and 1974. Kuwait and the Emirates are not nations or even countries. I see them rather as supermarkets. In Kuwait, I met only Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. The native inhabitants pay, but do not work. One day in Dubai, I got the crazy idea to stroll through the city before the meeting I was to attend. Upon entering a telephone store, I saw perhaps three thousand models (a figure provided by the Indian owner, proud of his den) displayed on five rows of shelving in the 100 square meters of the shop. I had neither the need nor desire to buy anything. Later I was told: “No, no, you don’t go into a store in that manner. You go with a precise list of everything you want to buy, model X, type Y, color, etc. Obviously, you will find it.” The cities of the Gulf are, of course, places where you die of boredom.
Despite the complete stupidity of these U.S. protectorates of the Gulf, there are, all the same, Bedouins capable of making a critical assessment of the situation. What is the future? The few intellectuals from the region deserve admiration for their courage. It is said that things are changing and praise for Dubai’s “success” is making headlines. Looking a little closer, I was not convinced. Certainly, there are lively business activities, choice of the city as headquarters for multinational corporations (freed, consequently, from any control), tourism for the rich (for me the place is too boring to be worth the trouble!), skyscrapers, and luxury villas. But there is nothing to indicate any inventive capacity. Dubai remains an opulent relay for a globalization shaped by others.
Bahrain is certainly more interesting. This Arab-Persian bazaar has an ancient history, and while the vestiges of the Qarmatian Revolution—a Muslim millenarian communism—have disappeared, perhaps it has left mental traces that can explain the active political life that characterizes the country, which is quite exceptional in the region.
I was never curious to visit Saudi Arabia, which is the height of horror for me. I know that this country, which presumes to give moral lessons to the entire world, imports half (yes, half—50 percent) of the world’s production of pornography. The French sociologist Jean-Louis Boutillier, a friend of great humor, told me about how evenings are spent there: in groups of men (and separately women) seated before five porn movies playing at the same time. I’ll pass over the rest.
The south of the Arabian Peninsula is quite different. True societies are found there.
En route to Karachi in 1975, we made a stop for three days in Muscat. It was a difficult but amusing entry into the country. The Dhofar war was in full swing and the Sultanate’s English police had undoubtedly made up long lists of undesirable Arabs. The police officer seized my passport, called his supervisor, and told me to wait. While waiting for them to make their decision—after many calls to the Interior Ministry, no doubt—I explained to Isabelle that if they wanted to turn us back, they had a good pretext. Isabelle had no visa on her French passport (as an Egyptian, I did not need one, in principle). I explained to her that she should keep silent about her feminism, remain seated, keep her head covered with a scarf for the occasion, look at her toes, not utter a sound, and refrain from answering anyone who came to speak to her. The cop returned and said: “Go, everything is fine.” I thought for a moment, “Do I take out Isabelle’s passport?” Then I had a brilliant idea. I took out my identity card and, in the part called “Observations,” I wrote in Arabic in this order: chantatan wa zawja (two suitcases and one wife!). I got Isabelle’s attention with a “psst” and summoned her with my finger. She rose, picked up the two suitcases, and without lifting her head, followed me with small steps, staying behind me as I walked with my head held high. We left the airport, got into a taxi, and then burst out laughing. We fooled them!
Yemen
I am not familiar with the former South Yemen, although I have met many political figures of the exceptional left in which we had invested much hope and that I discussed in Re-Reading the Postwar Period.17 Nevertheless, I know North Yemen quite well, having been invited on two occasions (1988 and 1994), after the end of the war and the Egyptian intervention, by the rector of Sana’a University, Abdel Aziz Al-Maqaleh. Everyone knows the superb architecture of Yemeni cities, its mountainous countryside (similar to that of Ethiopia), and even the custom of chewing qat. I was invited every day to participate in interesting and intelligent afternoon gatherings. A meeting sometimes brought together men only, or sometimes exclusively women, or even a mixed group (and I was assured that there was nothing exceptional or modern in that). One of the invitees would make a—sometimes lengthy—presentation on a subject that was then freely discussed by the others while chewing qat for three or four hours. I was invited to begin the discussions with a presentation on important topics, such as what is socialism; imperialism today; the Arab nation and its problems. I must say that the quite lively discussions revealed unexpected levels of knowledge and thought. Fahima Charaffeddine, who had been invited at the same time as I was, and some other leftist Arab intellectuals, such as the Syrian Issam al-Zaim who worked at that time in Sana’a, confirmed my conclusions: this poor country is not as “backward” as is often believed. In that way, it is just like Ethiopia. Of course, neither I nor the other non-Yemenis could chew with the diligence of the natives, who finished by consuming a bunch big enough to serve a horse. Regular consumption of qat ends up deforming the jaws and mouth, changing the cheeks into veritable balls. We were content then to taste the qat.
Yemeni hospitality made it possible for me to visit the entire country. I even insisted on going to see the ruins of the ancient port of Moka, which had had its glory days in history. “What a strange idea,” said both Fahima, whom I had involved in this adventure, and our Yemeni guide, a professor. We descended from the superb mountains with a delightful climate to low-lying lands, humid and hot. We ultimately discovered that there was nothing left of the vestiges of Moka, just a small square surrounded by wires where archaeologists worked on an ungrateful soil in which they had discovered nothing. Fahima, an elegant Lebanese, had not at all appreciated this little excursion. I, being stubborn, did not regret it since I had seen the site of Moka all the same!
My visit to Yemen helped me to understand the country’s importance in Arab history. There were two questions that I always asked and to which I never found answers. Why do the Saudis fear the Yemenis so much? The former are rich whereas the latter are poor. Why do so many Arabs from Morocco to Egypt to Iraq claim that their ancestors came from Yemen? The answer, which several historians offered, but not completely convincingly, in my opinion, is simple. In the entire Arabian peninsula, Yemen is the only area organized as an actual society. Its healthy climate allows for better demographic growth, and every five hundred years or so in ancient times, Yemenis were forced to leave en masse, to emigrate as conquerors. They formed Ethiopia, which shares its language with the ancient Semitic languages of southern Arabia. They provided the largest Arab armies of Islam. The Saudis fear them. They fear their resolution, courage, and capacity for organization.
Upon returning to Sana’a, I was given the opportunity to discuss at length the country’s political prospects. Yemeni leaders were strongly critical of the Egyptian intervention, with good arguments. Unfortunately, the problem was not only the well-known arrogance of petite-bourgeois officers—contemptuous toward this “illiterate” people and busy making money by any means to furnish their Cairo apartment—but also, beyond that, the incoherence of Nasser’s strategy, not knowing which way to go in relations with the Saudis, the product of a mixture of authentic progressive intentions, useless and absurd expansionist aims, and poor-quality execution. Yemenis—at least those I met—certainly did not come to “anti-Egyptian” conclusions; on the contrary, they remained admirers of Egypt and Nasser, and supporters of Arab unity. But they thought they would not have done any worse acting alone. I believe they were right, knowing that what they did could only be a beginning of modernization, and hardly more. But were they aware of these limitations? It is difficult to say. The imitation of Muammar Gaddafi’s populist model through the General People’s Congress worried me. There were words, many words, quickly described as “socialist.” The progressives among these leaders and militants from the north counted a lot on the support that unity with the south would provide. Subsequent developments proved that the weaknesses of the south’s progressive political forces largely quashed these hopes.
Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan
I was only in Iraq once—in Baghdad, which I did not leave, to participate in a pan-Arab meeting. That was at the beginning of the Saddam dictatorship in 1980. We spoke freely about the problems on the meeting’s agenda, with some prudence as to the vocabulary used. At the back of the hall, four Iraqi participants, with bushy moustaches (I never, or almost never, saw Iraqi men without a moustache; the exceptions stood out) sweated and labored to take complete notes of everything that was said. “Quite figurative” characters, as my friend the Brazilian painter Tiberio would say. I asked to speak. “I see that our brothers, the Iraqi participants, are extremely serious and anxious to derive the maximum benefit from our discussions. Why not facilitate their task by installing a recording device and then we can offer them the tapes? They will then have the possibility of calmly reflecting on exactly everything that we have said.” Loud laughter. The proposal was adopted.
Beyond this good joke, the atmosphere was terrible and each day the newspapers reported arrests, sentences, etc. The country was being terrorized. I invented a rather grim nokta: every morning, the radio announces the hanging of twenty-five people: five communists, five errant Baathists, five bourgeois liberals, five Islamists, and five with no opinion whatsoever. This way no one will feel secure! My cousin, Mansour Fahmy, who had been a consul in Baghdad, and who had a good Egyptian sense of humor and knew how to imitate the local accent to perfection, told me (he made this up, of course) how a Baathist “culture festival” unfolded. There was a long table with fifteen identical mustachioed men. The first stands up and reads his cultural address. Very brief, one sentence in fact: In May, we killed 50,000. The second stood in turn: In July, we killed 100,000, etc. The last stood: in August, we killed everyone. That’s the end, no one can do better. The festival ended.
However, Iraq is full of intellectuals of the highest value and tens of thousands of militants with uncommon courage. Those whom I was able to see dared to speak, in a low voice, only away from their homes, outside and away from any building. What I heard from them testified quite simply to the sheer horror of the Iraqi Baathist political system. Is it then any wonder that most of these admirable intellectuals ended up choosing exile? Unfortunately, most unfortunately, a large number of these intellectuals subsequently believed that it is possible to return to the country in the train of the invader. The tragic sequel to the story is well known.
Lebanon is certainly a small country, but it is captivating and rich in the quantity and variety of its intellectual output. This is certainly a result of both its confessional diversity, which requires of everyone a sense of perspective, and its democratic life—as limited as it is—unequaled in any of the other Arab countries.
I visited Lebanon on several occasions during the civil war, which bathed the country in blood for ten years beginning in 1975, at the invitation of the bloc of democratic and national forces. Everyone knows today that this war was not the spontaneous result of a “visceral” hostility between communities, but rather a complex game played out, on the one hand, between militias—that assumed a monopoly of speech and action in the name of these communities they claimed to defend whereas, in fact, they placed them under their thumb—and, on the other hand, external forces, that is, Zionists, Western powers (the United States foremost, and behind them their Saudi vassal), Syria, Islamist Iran, Palestinians of the PLO) that played this or that card (and sometimes cynically changed partners). The cruelest moment of this period was certainly the Israeli invasion (1982) and the accompanying massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila, organized by Israel and its acolytes among some Maronite groups. The objective was clearly to break Lebanon apart, fashion a micro-Maronite client state of Israel and the West, and open the south of the country to Israeli conquest and expansion. This plan was defeated, first, it must be said, by the Lebanese people themselves. Giving a big lesson to the Arab world and the Palestinians, the Lebanese civilians did not flee before the Israeli army and fought them by resisting in the occupied territories—a resistance called “terrorist,” unfortunately, by the dominant media infused with Israeli views. The later intifada of Palestine learned from this earlier experience of popular resistance. Syrian diplomacy also played, with keen intelligence, a decisive role in defeating these plans. This is so whether or not one is favorable to the government in Damascus. In the course of frequent visits to the south of the country, I could see with my own eyes the incredible arrogance of the Israeli occupation forces. They committed daily provocations, such as flights over Beirut and random bombings here and there. But the Western public was, and still is, never informed. The media are not allowed to criticize the Zionist state in any way.
Beirut and Lebanon during the war provided convincing evidence of the exceptional qualities of the Lebanese people, and particularly of its democratic and more or less socialist political segments—in other words, the left. Beirut was a city cut in half, subjected to bombardments by the militias of the two camps and from the Israeli air force; yet it still lived, and did so intensely. Neither water nor electricity was distributed by public services, but there was water and electricity everywhere, supplied through the self-organization of city districts: installation of small generators, the mobilization of water trucks, etc. In Beirut, political and intellectual life continued as if nothing were going on. I gave lectures and held workshops in places where the noise of heavy gunfire could be clearly heard. When the noise from the gunfire got worse, but only then, we decided to go further away, and continue the discussion. Militants from the other side of the front line did not hesitate to attend these discussions. In the mountains—the superb countryside that dominates Beirut—Jumblat’s Socialist Party also organized meetings and debates, with my assistance and that of others, some directly about Lebanese or Arab problems, others of a more general nature: the development of world capitalism, the crisis of national and socialist systems, Marxist theory, and the like. I have fond memories of these splendid places and the Ottoman Palace of Deir el-Ahmar. In Beirut and elsewhere, one could only admire the Lebanese passion to live. Damaged homes were immediately reconstructed, without waiting. A comparison clearly comes to mind: a manuscript given to a publisher in Beirut was published at the promised time, whereas in Cairo this was not the case! And it was better printed in Beirut, without mistakes and misprints! When peace returned, it was possible for me to visit in calm all regions of this small country: the Cedars of God Forest, the Bekaa Valley, Tripoli, and Saïda. As always, there were lively conferences.
Of course, the political and social system that forms the basis on which peace was reestablished in Lebanon is far from meeting the expectations of the democratic and progressive forces that form the only solid foundation for this peace. The flourishing real estate speculation, which profits from the capital’s reconstruction, will lead to the disappearance of its magnificent historical center—the Place des Canons and the Ottoman buildings close by, of which I, like all those who are familiar with them, have a fond memory. But the city, as ordinary as its so-called modern urbanization might become, remains fascinating. The cafe life, which I have always loved, is certainly one of the most pleasant manifestations of Lebanese sociability.
Greater Syria, from the Gulf of Aqaba and Petra to Aleppo, including the Roman circus in ancient Philippopolis, city of the Roman Emperor, Philip of Arabia—undoubtedly the best preserved of this type of edifice—Palmyra, the historical quarters of Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, and Lattakia, the Alawite mountains, the fortresses of Salah ad-Din and the Crusaders, overlooking the silk roads, is a beautiful country, both because of the richness and variety of its historical vestiges and because of its scenery.
This wealth recalls the decisive contribution of ancient and Byzantine civilizations to the grand Arab centuries that followed. It is not only that the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is actually an ancient Byzantine cathedral (like Saint Sophia in Istanbul). Ruins of enormous cathedrals, abandoned in a now desert countryside, bear witness to the fact that the region was more densely populated with farmers (replaced today by shepherds) until the tenth century than it was subsequently. The ruins of Palmyra testify to the importance of trade along the Silk Road dating back to Antiquity. Consequently, it is easy to see influences from the East, from Iran and India, in the work of Syrian artisans.
Invited to a cultural week in Damascus, I was struck, but not surprised, by the uncompromising democratic and secular speeches of a large number of high-quality intellectuals. What is more, public speeches were given before audiences of young—students and workers—and not so young militants of diverse tendencies. These speeches would be unthinkable elsewhere in the Arab world, which would get your head cut off by Islamists and a conviction by state courts for an “offense against religion.” These are very good signs for the future.
On a different note, the lamentable spectacle, on offer several times, of Khalid Bakdash’s almost half-witted son—who apparently inherited the post of General Secretary of the Syrian Communist Party (or shares the responsibility with his mother, the widow)—should only, happily, be found amusing. No one in Syria today is disposed to take him seriously.
THE PREDICTED ARAB REVOLUTIONS
I owe much to the friends who worked with me in the activities that I am going to report on here.
In Egypt, as president of the Arab and African Research Centre, I led debates organized with a broad spectrum of social and political forces involved in the struggles underway. I shall mention here only the names of Helmy Shaarawi, First Vice President of the Centre, Shahida el Baz, Mostafa Gamal, and Mamdouh Habashi. Ahmad el Naggar’s contribution is mentioned in the section “Egypt: Immediate Responses.” I can do no more than mention the names of several political men and women with whom I held conversations that are reflected in these memoirs: Hamdin Sabahi, Samir Morqos, Mona Anis, Amal Ramsis, Saad el Tawil (my frequent translator), and Magda Refaa. I am a member of the Egyptian Socialist Party. Some of my comrades are members of the other radical socialist left party and I do not view them as enemies or competitors, but as comrades equal in rights with the others. I have already expressed my opinion on this question of unity and diversity in the movement toward socialism and will not return to that here. I must also thank Madame Fatma El Boudi, editorial director of Dar el Ain in Cairo, who unhesistatingly supervised publication over the last three years of four works that I produced very quickly in the midst of the “revolution” then underway.
The decade of 2000–2010 seemed to all of us to be an endless time of darkness. One evening, some of us had imagined a sketch of Egyptian-style black humor, a television program from the year 2500. The announcer presented the latest news about the Islamic Republic of Great Britain and the United Socialist States of North America before coming to Egypt. She then mentioned President Mubarak VI’s opening of the 800th construction stage of bridges over the Nile. We were wrong. The same year, Amal Ramsis produced her documentary, which ended with the sentence: “The revolution is tomorrow.” She was right. I should add that I sensed the change to come. There were long evening discussions at the “center,” the Markaz, of which I am the president. While in the 1990s, attendance was made up mostly of older people, beginning in the 2000s, we began to see many young people (25 to 35 years old) in attendance—for whom the Nasser era belonged to Pharaonic antiquity—eager to know and understand, to come and question us. I recognized some of them as leaders in the youth movements that “made the revolution,” as they say. Whether or not it is a revolution is not the question. An inscription found on walls in Cairo—“The revolution has not changed the system, but it has changed the people”—perfectly captures the transformation of the country, conducive to possible progress in the end.
In Algeria, we—the Third World Forum networks—benefited from exemplary political and financial support without which I do not know how we would have been able to organize the roundtables we arranged for the World Social Forums in Dakar (2011) and Tunis (2013), and to prepare for Tunis 2015. Most observers considered these round tables to be of great interest. Here I would like to thank the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Algerian ambassador at Dakar, Mr. Abderrahmane Benguerrah, and Madame Khalida Toumi, Minister of Culture. The list of our collaborators in Algiers is too long to recall here. It begins with our major correspondents, Samia Zennadi and Karim Chikh (Éditions Apic), with whom I acknowledge my warm personal friendship here.
The Arab world entered into a period of turbulence beginning in 2011, which was a bit too quickly called the “Arab Spring.” I refer the reader to my book on these “revolutions.”18 The strategic objective of the imperialist powers is to destroy the very existence of the state in the countries of the region because they could, with the possible radicalization of popular movements, threaten the established regional and world order. The support given by these powers (the United States, followed by Europe) to reactionary political Islam is the means to obtain this result. The programmed destruction of the Iraqi state begun in 2003, and the decomposition of “post-Gaddafi” Libya are tragic examples. In Sudan, the bloody dictatorships of Gaafar Nimeiry, who became “crazy over God,” and his successor, Omar al-Bashir, as well as the systematization of crime “in the name of religion” (!) by Turabi, produced what should have been predicted and feared: the breakup of the country, the independence of the south, and separatism in Darfur and the east.
Egypt: Aborted Emergence
Egypt was the first country in the periphery of globalized capitalism that attempted to “emerge.” At the beginning of the nineteenth century, well before Japan and China, Muhammad Ali had designed and implemented a renovation project for Egypt and its immediate neighbors in the Arab Mashreq. This wide-ranging experiment took place over the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century and only ran out of steam during the second half of the reign of Khedive Ismail in the 1870s. An analysis of its failure must include an examination of the violence of the external aggression perpetrated by Great Britain, the major power of central industrial capitalism at that time. Twice—in 1840, then in the 1870s, with seizure of control over the finances of khedival Egypt, which ended with the military occupation in 1882—England relentlessly pursued its objective: prevent the emergence of a modern Egypt. Undoubtedly, this Egyptian project had limitations, ones that were characteristic of the era since it was obviously a project of emergence in and through capitalism, unlike the second Egyptian attempt (1919–67). It is also true that the social contradictions inherent in this project, just like the political, ideological, and cultural concepts that underlie it, played a part in this failure. It remains the case that, absent imperialist aggression, these contradictions could probably have been overcome, as the Japanese example suggests.
Defeated, for nearly forty years (1880–1920) Egypt was forced to be a dominated periphery. Its economic, political, and social structures were reshaped to serve the model of capitalist/imperialist accumulation dominant in that era. The regression imposed on the country affected not only its productive system, but also its political and social structures. There was a systematic attempt to reinforce backward-looking and reactionary ideological and cultural conceptions useful for maintaining the country’s subordinate status.
Egypt—its people, its elites, the nation it represents—never accepted this status. This obstinate refusal lies behind the second wave of movements that developed over the following half-century (1919–67). In fact, I interpret this period as a moment of unceasing struggles and important advances. There was a threefold objective: democracy, national independence, and social progress. These three objectives—despite their sometimes limited and confused formulation—are inseparable. In this interpretation, the Nasserist period (1955–67) was only the last chapter of the lengthy moment of struggles begun with the revolution of 1919–20.
The first part of this half-century of rising freedom struggles in Egypt emphasized, with the formation of the Wafd in 1919, political modernization through adoption of a bourgeois form of constitutional democracy and the reconquest of independence. The democratic form that was devised made possible some moves toward secularization—though not necessarily secular in the radical sense of the term—the symbol of which was its flag (combining the crescent and the cross), which reappeared in the 2011 demonstrations. “Normal” elections not only allowed Copts to be elected by Muslim majorities, but even more, it allowed these same Copts to occupy very high posts in the state without that causing the least problem. The British, with the active support of the reactionary bloc, made up of the monarchy, large landowners, and rich peasants, worked to push back the democratic advances of Wafdist Egypt. The dictatorship of Ismail Sedky Pasha in the 1930s (with the abolition of the democratic 1923 constitution) came up against the student movement, which was the spearhead of the anti-imperialist struggles in that era. It is not by accident if, to reduce the danger, the British Embassy and the Royal Palace actively worked together to create the Muslim Brotherhood (1927), inspired by “Islamist” thought in its (backward-looking) Wahhabi “salafist” version formulated by Rashid Rida, the most reactionary (anti-democratic and anti-social progress) version of the new “political Islam.” The Second World War, by necessity, was a sort of parenthesis. But the struggles resumed on February 21, 1946, with the formation of the student-worker bloc, and its radicalization was strengthened by the entrance of the communists and the workers’ movement. Again, the reactionary Egyptian forces supported by London reacted violently and, for this purpose, mobilized the Muslim Brotherhood, which supported a second dictatorship of Sedky Pasha, but without successfully silencing the movement. The Wafd returned to the government, and its abrogation of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and the beginning of guerilla action in the still occupied Suez Canal Zone were only defeated by the 1951 Cairo fire, an operation in which the Muslim Brotherhood was deeply involved.
The first coup d’état of the Free Officers (1952), but above all the second one that started Nasser’s control (1954), crowned this period of continual struggles, according to some, or put an end to it, according to others. Nasserism replaced the interpretation that I offer of the Egyptian awakening with an ideological discourse that essentially eliminates the entire history of the years 1919–52. In the Nasserist version, the “Egyptian revolution” begins in July 1952. At the time, many communists denounced this version and analyzed the coups d’état of 1952 and 1954 as aimed at putting an end to the radicalization of the democratic movement. They were not wrong because Nasserism did not stabilize as an anti-imperialist project until after the Bandung Conference (April 1955). Nasserism then achieved what it could: a resolutely anti-imperialist international posture (in conjunction with pan-Arab and pan-African movements) and progressive social reforms (though not “socialist”). The whole thing was organized from above, not only “without democracy,” by prohibiting the working classes from organizing by themselves and for themselves, but also by abolishing any form of political life. Political Islam filled the void created. The project exhausted its potential in a brief time—the ten years from 1955 to 1965. The stagnation offered to imperialism, now led by the United States, the occasion to break the movement, which for this purpose mobilized its regional military instrument: Israel. The 1967 defeat marks the end of this half-century of fluctuating struggles. The retreat was led by Nasser himself, opting for concessions to the right (the infitah, or the opening to capitalist globalization) rather than radicalization, for which students, among others, fought (the student movement commanded center stage in 1970, a little before Nasser’s death, then continued after). Sadat, followed by Hosni Mubarak, pushed this move to the right even more and integrated the Muslim Brotherhood into their new autocratic system.
Nasser’s Egypt had established an economic and social system that can certainly be criticized, but it was coherent. Nasser had bet on industrialization as a way of getting out of the colonial international specialization that restricted the country to exporting cotton. This system provided for a redistribution of income favorable to the expanding middle classes, without impoverishing the working classes. Sadat and Mubarak worked to dismantle the Egyptian productive system, for which they substituted a totally incoherent system based exclusively on creating conditions for the profitability of companies that are, for the most part, only subcontractors of imperialist monopolies. This policy resulted in an incredible increase in inequality and unemployment that affected a majority of youth. This situation was explosive; it exploded.
During the Bandung and Non-Alignment period (1955 to 1970–75), some Arab countries were at the forefront of struggles for national liberation and social progress. These governments (Nasser, the FLN, the Baathists) were not democratic in the Western sense of the term, they were one-party states, or in the sense that I give to the term, which implies power exercised by the working classes themselves. But they were nonetheless perfectly legitimate because of their important achievements: gigantic progress in education, which allowed upward mobility (children of the working classes moving into the expanding middle classes), and in health; agrarian reforms; and guaranteed employment, at least for all graduates at all levels. Combined with anti-imperialist policies of independence, these achievements strengthened the governments in question, despite the continual hostility of the imperialist powers and military aggression perpetrated through Israel.
But after having achieved what they could in two decades through the means they gave themselves (reforms implemented from above, without ever making it possible for the working classes to organize themselves by themselves), these governments reached a dead end. The hour of imperialism’s counteroffensive had arrived. To preserve their power, the ruling classes then accepted being subject to the new demands of so-called neoliberalism: uncontrolled opening to the outside, privatizations, etc. Consequently, everything they had accomplished was lost in a few years. The rapid erosion of their legitimacy led these governments to resort to increased police repression, supported by Washington. The period of decline (1967–2011) also covered a period of almost a half century. Egypt, subject to the requirements of globalized liberalism and the strategies of the United States, no longer existed as an active regional and international participant. In the region, the major allies of the United States—Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey—were in the forefront. Israel could then move forward with its plan of expanding colonization of occupied Palestine, with the tacit complicity of Egypt and the Gulf countries.
Depoliticization was decisive in the rise of political Islam. This depoliticization is certainly not confined to Nasserist and post-Nasserist Egypt. It was the dominant practice in all the national popular experiments of the first awakening of the South, and even in the historical socialisms after the initial phase of revolutionary ferment had quieted down. It is responsible for the later disaster. The question of democratic politicization is, then, the core challenge, in the Arab world as elsewhere. Our era is not one of democratic advances, but, on the contrary, of setbacks and decline. The extreme centralization of capital in the generalized monopolies allows and demands unconditional as well as total submission of political authority to its orders. Instead of affirming the presence of active citizens capable of formulating projects for an alternative society, so-called postmodernist ideology privileges a depoliticized individual, a passive spectator of the political scene who merely participates in elections (if that) that have no significance and lead to no real change, “political alternation,” a consumer modeled by the system, who (wrongly) thinks of him or herself as a free individual.
The apparent stability of the regime, praised by Washington, was based on a monstrous police machine that committed criminal abuses daily. The imperialist powers claimed that this regime protected Egypt from the Islamist alternative. That is actually a huge lie. In fact, the regime had completely integrated reactionary political Islam into its power system, by conceding to it management of education, justice, and major media (particularly television). The only authorized speech was that which the mosques gave to the Salafists, thereby making it seem that they formed the opposition. The cynical duplicity of the rhetoric emanating from the U.S. establishment (and on this plane, Obama was no different than Bush) serves its objectives perfectly. In fact, support for political Islam eliminates the capacities of a society to face the challenges of the modern world (it lies behind the catastrophic decline in education and research), while the occasional denunciation of “abuses” for which it is responsible (murders of Copts, for example) serves to justify Washington’s military interventions in pursuit of its so-called war against terrorism. The regime could appear “tolerable” so long as the safety valve of mass migration of the poor and middle classes to the petroleum-exporting countries continued. The end of this system (Asian immigrants replacing those from the Arab countries) led to a rebirth of resistance. Worker strikes in 2007—the largest in Africa for fifty years—the stubborn resistance of small peasants threatened with expropriation by agrarian capitalism, and the organization of middle-class protest groups in favor of democracy (the Kefaya and April 6 movements), all heralded the inevitable explosion anticipated in Egypt, even if it surprised foreign observers. We have now entered into a new phase of rising struggles for emancipation. We must analyze their direction and chances for development.
Egypt entered a new phase of its history in 2011. The analysis that I have proposed of the various elements involved in the active democratic, popular, and national movement, as well as the strategies of the local reactionary opponent and its external allies, should allow us to examine diverse possible paths to social transformation and determine whether they are promising or dead ends. In conclusion, I note that at this point in time, nothing allows us to say that Egypt is embarked on the path of emergence. But the fight will continue and will, perhaps, allow for an exit from the impasse and the reinvention of an appropriate path of emergence.
Crony Capitalism, Comprador State, and Lumpen-Development: The Case of Egypt (1970–2012)
The Nasserist project of constructing a national development state had produced a model of state capitalism that Sadat was committed to dismantle. State-owned assets were thus sold. To whom? To crony businessmen and those close to the government: senior officers, high government officials, and rich merchants, who returned from exile in the Gulf countries equipped with handsome fortunes (in addition to political and financial support from the Muslim Brotherhood). But these assets were also sold to Gulf “Arabs” and foreign companies in the United States and Europe. At what prices? At ridiculous prices, disproportionate to the real value of the assets in question. In this way, the new Egyptian and foreign “owning class” was formed, which fully deserves the label crony capitalist (rasmalia al mahassib, the Egyptian term, is understood by everyone). Property granted to the army transformed the nature of the responsibilities that it carried out in some segments of the productive system (the army factories), which it managed as a state institution. These management powers became the powers of private owners. What is more, during the course of the privatizations, the most powerful officers also “acquired” ownership of many other state assets: commercial chains, urban and suburban land, and housing estates, in particular. The fortunes in question were made by acquiring already existing assets, with no more than negligible additions to productive capacity. Foreign capital investment (Arab and others), which, as a matter of fact, is quite modest, should be viewed within this context. The whole operation culminated in the establishment of the private monopolistic groups that now dominate the Egyptian economy.
The monopoly of the new crony capitalists has been systematically reinforced by the almost exclusive access enjoyed by these billionaires to bank credit (notably for the purchase of the assets in question) to the detriment of granting credit to small and medium producers. These monopolies were also strengthened by colossal state subsidies, granted for the consumption of oil, natural gas, and electricity by the factories taken over from the state (cement, iron and aluminum metallurgy, textiles, and others). The “free markets” allowed these companies to raise their prices to match those of competing imports. The logic that underlies the public subsidies that compensated for the lower prices charged by the state sector was broken, and super profits were accrued to the private monopolies.
Real wages for the large majority of unskilled and medium-skilled workers deteriorated through the operation of the laws of the market for free labor and the ferocious repression of union and other forms of collective action. Wages are now far below what they are in other countries of the South with a comparable rate of per capita GDP. The super profits of the private monopolies and pauperization go hand in hand and result in a continual increase in the unequal distribution of income. The taxation system, which rejected the very principle of progressive taxation, systematically reinforced inequality. Light taxation for the rich and corporations, praised by the World Bank because it supposedly supports investment, quite simply ended up as an increase in super profits. These policies also made it impossible to reduce both the public deficit and the foreign trade deficit. They entailed a continuous deterioration in the value of the Egyptian pound, and led to growing internal indebtedness of extreme proportions. This, in turn, provided an excuse for the IMF to demand still more respect for the principles of liberalism.
Immediate Responses
Activists responsible for formulating a joint program responding to the immediate requirements undertook a considerable amount of high-quality work for more than a year. The following text owes much to the work of Ahmad el Naggar, to whom I had the pleasure of awarding the Samir Amin Prize in 2011. The Arab and African Research Centre established this prize in my name as a way to encourage radical critical thought. Ahmad did half or more of the investigative work with the various currents and organizations that formed the backbone of the popular protests in Egypt. Here are the salient points:
The disposal of public assets must be subject to systematic investigation. Detailed studies—the equivalent of good audits—are in fact available for many of these transactions and for the prices corresponding to the value of specified assets. Given that the “purchasers” of these assets did not pay these prices, ownership of these acquired assets must be legally transferred, following a court-ordered audit, to public limited companies, with the state as a shareholder equal to the difference between the actual value of the assets and the prices paid by the buyers. The principle should be applicable to everyone, whether these buyers are Egyptian, Arab, or foreigners.
The law must set the minimum wage (this was in 2012) at the level of 1,200 LE per month (or 155 euros at the current exchange rate, the equivalent purchasing power of 400 euros). This rate is lower than in many countries with a GDP per capita comparable to that of Egypt. The minimum wage must be linked to a sliding scale and the trade unions made responsible for monitoring its implementation. It will be applied to all activities of the public and private sectors.
Given that the beneficiaries of freedom of pricing, that is, the private sector that dominates the Egyptian economy, have already decided to set their prices closer to those of competing imports, the measure can be implemented and will only have the effect of reducing the margins of monopoly rents. This readjustment does not threaten the balance of public accounts, bearing in mind the savings and the new tax legislation proposed below. Adopting a maximum wage, set at 15 times the minimum wage, will reinforce the proposals made by the movements involved.
Workers’ rights—conditions of employment and loss of employment, working conditions, insurance plans for health/unemployment/pensions—must involve major three-way consultations between trade unions, employers, and the state. Independent trade unions established through the struggles of the last ten years should be given legal recognition, including the right to strike (still “illegal” in current legislation). A “survival benefit” should be set up for the unemployed, for which the amount, the conditions of access, and the funding should be subject to negotiations between the unions and the state.
The enormous subsidies granted to private monopolies by the budget must be abolished. Here again, detailed studies undertaken in these areas demonstrate that the abolition of these advantages would not threaten the profitability of the activities in question, but only reduce their monopoly profits.
New tax legislation must be adopted, based on progressive taxation for individuals and a 25 percent increase in the taxation rate for profits of businesses employing more than 20 workers. The extremely generous tax exemptions granted to Arab and foreign monopolies must be abolished. Taxation of small and medium businesses, currently often much heavier (!), should be lowered. The proposed rates for the upper personal income brackets, 35 percent, remains small in comparison with other nations.
A precise calculation was carried out, demonstrating that all of the measures proposed above would not only make it possible to eliminate the current deficit (for 2009–2010), but even generate a surplus. The surplus would be used to increase public spending on education, health, and public housing subsidies. The reconstruction of a public social sector in these areas does not imply discriminatory measures against private activities of the same kind.
Credit must be placed under the control of the Central Bank. The extravagant credit terms granted to the monopolies must be eliminated, and credit expanded for active small businesses or ones that could be created as a result. Detailed studies have been conducted in all these artisanal, industrial, transport, and service activities. It has been demonstrated that candidates (particularly among unemployed graduates) who are willing and interested in taking the initiative in creating businesses and employment do exist.
Concerning the agrarian question, the current demand of the movement is simply the adoption of laws that make it more difficult to evict farmers who are unable to pay the rents demanded of them, as well as to expropriate indebted small-scale property owners. In particular, the movement advocates the return to legislation setting the maximum farm rents (deregulated through successive agrarian reform laws). Organizations of progressive agronomists have produced detailed and well-argued projects for stimulating the development of small-scale farmers. These include improved irrigation methods (drip systems, for example), choice of rich and intensive crops (legumes and fruits), upstream freedom from state control for input and credit suppliers, and downstream freedom for the creation of marketing cooperatives combined with consumer cooperatives. But increased communication between these agronomist organizations and small-scale farmers needs to be established. The legalization of actual farmers’ organizations and their federation at provincial and national levels should help move them in this direction.
The plan of immediate action summarized in the preceding paragraphs would certainly begin to stimulate healthy and viable economic growth. The argument advanced by its liberal detractors—that it would ruin any hope of obtaining new capital investment from foreign sources—does not make sense. The experiences of Egypt and other countries, particularly in Africa, who have agreed to comply fully with the strictures of liberalism and have abandoned their own autonomous development plans, show that this does not “attract” foreign capital despite their uncontrolled opening (actually, precisely because of it). Foreign capitalists are simply content to raid the resources of the countries concerned, supported by the comprador state and crony capitalists. By contrast, emergent countries that actively implement national development projects offer real possibilities to foreign investors who are willing to become part of these national projects, where they accept the restrictions imposed by the national state and the consequent adjustment of their profits to reasonable rates.
Mohamed Morsi’s government, composed exclusively of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, immediately proclaimed its unconditional support for all the principles of liberalism, took steps to hasten implementation of those principles, and, to this end, deployed all the means of repression inherited from the fallen regime. Public awareness that there was no change ultimately led to the gigantic movement of June 30, 2013, which lies behind the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood. The leading aspects of the program of immediate demands that I have presented here focus only on the economic and social parts of the challenge. The movement also discusses its political aspects: the proposed constitution, democratic and social rights, and the essential affirmation of a “citizens’ state” (dawla al muwatana) as opposed to the theocratic state (dawla al gamaa al islamiya) of the Muslim Brotherhood.
(THIS TEXT WAS DRAFTED BY ME IN OCTOBER 2012 AND DISTRIBUTED WIDELY, IN THE WIDELY READ DAILY SHOROUK, AMONG OTHERS.)
Algeria: The Impact of the April 17, 2014 Elections
The two experiences of Algeria and Egypt have many characteristics in common. The ruling class in the two countries, built on the cadres of Boumediennism and Nasserism, respectively, was fundamentally similar. Their projects were identical and, consequently, should be described in the same way. They were genuinely national and popular projects (and not demagogic populist), although not very democratic. It is not important that each described itself as “socialist,” which they were not and could not be. In the two cases, the achievements were significant, to the point that they truly transformed the society from top to bottom for better and not for worse. But also, in both countries, these achievements rapidly reached the limitations of what they could deliver and, sinking into their (identical) internal contradictions, could not prepare the radicalization and democratization required to extend those achievements. Yet, beyond these similarities, the differences should be pointed out.
Algerian society had been subjected to major destructive attacks because of colonization. The state and power of the pre-colonial aristocracy had been eradicated. The new Algerian society that was born from the reconquest of independence had nothing in common with that of the pre-colonial era. It had become a plebeian society, characterized by a very strong aspiration to equality. The Algerian war of liberation had produced, naturally, a social and ideological radicalization. This aspiration to equality is not found, with the same force, anywhere else in the Arab world—not in the Maghreb (just think about the strength of the age-old tradition of respect for the monarchy in Morocco!) or the Mashreq. By contrast, modern Egypt was built from the beginning (starting with Muhammad Ali) by its aristocracy, which gradually became an “aristocratic bourgeoisie” (or capitalist aristocracy), even though this new ruling class had, in the end, to accept submission to imperialist domination, first by the British, then by the United States. The ambiguous 1952 coup d’état came as a response to the impasse of the movement. From these differences comes another, of obvious importance, concerning the future of political Islam. The army and the state, with the support of the nation, defeated Algerian political Islam (the FIS), which had revealed its ugly face. That certainly does not mean that the question has been finally settled.
Bendjedid, Boumedienne’s successor, pursued an extreme neoliberal path, similar to Sadat and Mubarak’s infitah: widespread privatizations throughout the national economy, participation of senior officers in pillaging state assets, dismantling national control of the petroleum sector, uncontrolled opening to multinational corporations, and corruption. But after the defeat of the FIS attempt to impose its project for a reactionary theocracy, also subordinate to the demands of neoliberalism, President Bouteflika initiated a corrective economic policy, going as far as re-nationalizing some large companies. Bouteflika also defeated the Western project to create a “Sahelistan,” which would have been formed to the detriment of Algeria, Mali, and Niger. This para-Islamic state, in the image of the Gulf States, would have confiscated the rent extracted from exploitation of petroleum, uranium, and other minerals for the exclusive benefit of its emirs. The project was completely in line with the objectives of the U.S. strategy of domination. Simultaneously, the government made concessions to democratic and social demands, such as those of the Amazighs, unequaled elsewhere in the Arab world. But still, these were timid corrections, and the Algerian people, even when they showed full confidence in Bouteflika’s promises, probably expected more.
For these reasons, in the April 2014 elections, the majority supported Bouteflika, despite the handicaps of age and health. These elections also showed the categorical rejection of political Islam’s attempt to make a return to the political scene, appearing in the new garb of “national reconciliation.” But electors did not make this choice enthusiastically, as can be seen from the rate of participation—only 51 percent, against the 67 percent from the preceding presidential election.
The Algerian model, then, gave obvious signs of stronger consistency than that of Egypt, which explains why it had shown more resistance to its later degradation. Consequently, the Algerian ruling class remains mixed and divided, split between those still holding national aspirations and those submissively giving in to compradorization (sometimes these two conflicting orientations are combined in the same person!). Bouteflika’s reelection bought some time and made it possible to avoid the chaos that conflicts within the ruling class would produce. In Egypt, by contrast, with Sadat and Mubarak, this dominant class became completely a comprador bourgeoisie, harboring no national aspirations. Economic, political, and social reforms controlled domestically seem to have a chance in Algeria. The question of democratic politicization is, in any case, the core challenge, in Algeria and Egypt as elsewhere in the world. The Western powers fear a change toward national and popular democracy in Algeria. Also, they have not given up their project of destroying the state and society by means of an alleged “Islamist” government. The support they gave to the Islamist candidate defeated in the April 17 presidential election is clear evidence of that. They have not given up on their objective of breaking up Algeria by supporting a possible secession of the Algerian Sahara and Kabylie. Their rhetoric of “promoting democracy” and “respect for cultural differences” is aimed at hiding the real objectives of their strategy.
The recent history of Algeria and Egypt illustrates the powerlessness of these societies, even now, to face the challenge. Algeria and Egypt are the two countries in the Arab world that are possible candidates for “emergence.” The ruling classes and established governments bear major responsibility for the failure of these two countries to reach “emergence.” But the societies themselves, the intellectuals, and the militants from the various social and political movements, must also bear some responsibility. Will both parties succeed in rising to the challenge, together and through their conflict?
Tunisia: The Revolution in an Impasse
Tunisia initiated the wave of Arab revolutions in December 2010. I heard some of the participants, who arrived with some excitement to share their accounts at the World Social Forum in Dakar (February 2011), in which the World Forum for Alternatives, the Third World Forum, and I, participated. During the organization of the Tunis World Social Forum in 2013, I had the possibility of hearing more and holding discussions with representatives of a wide spectrum of Tunisian political and social forces (except for the Islamist party Ennahada): the Front Populaire (whose president received me in his office at the Assembly), Mounir Kachoukh, the Parti des Patriotes (whose leader, Choukri Belaid, had just been assassinated by henchmen of Ennahada), Abdeljalil Bedoui, the UGTT, etc. Our sister and friend Hassania had expertly organized many of these meetings.
The impression I got from these meetings is hardly enthusiastic. All or almost all were exclusively concerned with questions of governmental organization and the strengthening of political democracy as well as questions about secularism and women’s rights. On these questions, Tunisian opinion appears to be in advance of that of Egyptians. We should not be surprised. Bourguiba had opened up spaces for this, despite his autocratic behavior. Nevertheless, no one or almost no one in Tunisia appears to understand that the insertion of the country into liberal capitalist globalization is the origin of the disaster. All share the same fatal illusions about Europe, from which they expect support! On this level, Tunisia lags behind Egypt and Algeria.
During the World Social Forum in Tunis, Ennahda, like all other movements, had been invited to attend, present its program, and respond to questions. Ennahda abstained and confided to the famous Tariq Ramadan and his supporters (unfortunately from Le Monde diplomatique) the task of propagandizing on its behalf. Ennahada, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, pursues only a single objective: exercise power, all the power. The certificate of conversion to democracy that Europeans have awarded is meant to obscure this reality. Europeans know that the most effective means to guarantee the continuation of their pillage of the countries south of the Mediterranean is to entrust management of these countries to their Islamist friends.
All the conditions necessary to see any Arab country break out of the current impasse are far from coming together, at least in the near future.
The Constituent Assembly resulting from the October 2011 elections in Tunisia was dominated by a rightist bloc that combined the Islamist party Ennahada and numerous reactionary cadres, formerly associated with the Ben Ali regime, still in place, and infiltrated into the “new parties” under the name of “Bourguibists.” Both unconditionally support the “market economy” such as it is, a system of dependent and subaltern capitalism. France and the United States do not ask for more: “Everything changes so that nothing will change.”
Two changes are, nevertheless, on the agenda. Positive: a political, but non-social democracy, that is, “low-intensity democracy,” that will tolerate a diversity of opinions, respect human rights more, and end the police repression perpetrated by the preceding regime. Negative: a probable decline in women’s rights. This is, in other words, a return to a multiparty “Bourguibism” with an Islamic coloration. The Western powers’ plan, based on the power of the comprador reactionary bloc, will put an end to this transition. They favor a short transition (which the movement has accepted without assessing the consequences), leaving no time to organize social struggles, and will allow the establishment of this bloc’s exclusive “legitimacy” through “correct” elections. The Tunisian movement was largely uninterested in the economic policy of the former regime, concentrating its critiques on the corruption of the president and his family. Most of the opposition, even on the “left,” did not question the basic direction of the mode of development implemented by Bourguiba and Ben Ali. The outcome was, thus, predictable.
President Moncef Marzouki had been a human rights campaigner and thus a victim of repression. But he seemed unable to make the connection between the poverty of his people and the choice of a liberal economic policy by the state, which he did not question. Curiously, he took the initiative to organize in Tunis in February 2012 an international conference on Syria that provided grist to the mills of the Western interventionists!
It remains the case that sometimes the same causes produce the same results. What will the working classes think and do when they see the continual deterioration in their social conditions, with the accompanying unemployment and job instability, not to mention the probable additional deterioration caused by the general crisis of capitalist globalization? It is too soon to say. But one should not persist in ignoring that only the rapid formation of a radical left that goes beyond the demand for proper elections can make possible a resumption of struggles for a change worthy of the name. This radical left has the responsibility to formulate a strategy for the democratization of society that would go beyond the simple holding of proper elections, combine this democratization with social progress, which implies giving up the current development model, and strengthen its initiatives by adopting a clearly antiimperialist and independent international position. It is not the imperialist monopolies and their international servants (the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the European Union) that will help the countries of the South get out of the impasses they face.
None of these fundamental questions seems to be of concern to the major political participants. Everything happened as if the ultimate objective of the “revolution” had been to obtain elections rapidly. This is to think that power finds its sole source of legitimacy in the voting booth. But there is another, higher legitimacy: undertaking struggles for social progress and the real democratization of society! These two types of legitimacy are likely to have serious confrontations in the future.
Libya: A Country Erased from the World Map
Libya never truly existed as a nation. It is a geographical region that separates the Maghreb and the Mashreq. The boundary between these two Arab regions runs exactly through the middle of Libya. Cyrenaica was historically Greek and Hellenistic, and then it became part of the Mashreq. Tripolitania was Latin and became part of the Maghreb. Consequently, there has always been a basis for regionalism in the country. I saved the British atlas used at school by my father in 1913. The region from Kufra to Tibesti was under the rule of the Khedive of Egypt. In 1911, Italy seized Ottoman Libya, which in actuality was only the coastal band. In 1915, to reward Rome for joining the Entente, the British ceded the Saharan regions of Cyrenaica to Italy.
Gaddafi was never anything more than a buffoon whose empty thinking is reflected in his famous “Green Book.” Acting in a still archaic society, Gaddafi could allow himself to adopt various positions, without any real significance—“nationalist and socialist” one day, then “liberal” the next. He made the latter choice “to please the West”(!), as if choosing liberalism would have no effects on society.
Gaddafi had insistently invited me, on several occasions, to visit his country. In my twofold role as president of the Arab and African Research Centre in Cairo, and director of the Third World Forum, I had posed one condition: the prior payment of 200,000 dollars to these two organizations, without any conditions on use of these funds. I would then visit the country and present lectures on general subjects, without broaching the discussion of Libyan problems. There was no follow-up, of course.
I also remember that when, following NATO’s military intervention, the scandal of the donation made by Libya to the London School of Economics broke—the LSE had awarded, in exchange, an honorary diploma to Gaddafi’s son, which all U.S. universities do with their generous donors—I was interviewed in London on the subject and said: “How shameful! This is at least as scandalous as accepting a gift from the Ford Foundation.” Obviously, the interview was not published.
Gaddafi’s going over to economic liberalism simply worsened the social difficulties for the majority of people. The very large redistribution of the oil revenues gave way to its confiscation by the regime’s supporters and Gaddafi’s family. The conditions were thus created that led to the explosion we all know, immediately taken advantage of by political Islam and regionalist forces in the country.
It is in this context that the National Transitional Council (NTC) was formed in Benghazi. The president of this Council was none other than Mustafa Muhammad Abdul Jalil, the president of the Libyan Appeals Court who confirmed the death sentence of the five Bulgarian nurses. He was rewarded and named Minister of Justice in 2007, a post he held until February 2011. For this reason, Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borisov refused to recognize the NTC. The United States and European countries did not accede to this view. There were, perhaps, some more or less confused “democrats” on this Council, but above all there were Islamists—the worst among them, in fact—and regionalists. From the very beginning, the “movement” in Libya was an armed revolt that immediately took over civilian demonstrations. This armed revolt straightaway called for NATO support. France and Great Britain immediately responded to this appeal, subsequently supported by the United States.
The imperialist powers’ military intervention certainly did not aim at the “protection of civilians” or “securing democracy,” but at the control of oil and groundwater resources, as well as acquiring a major military base in the country. Certainly, the Western oil companies already controlled Libyan oil since Gaddafi’s move to support “liberalism.” But with Gaddafi, nothing was ever certain. What if he changed sides and brought the Chinese or the Indians into his game tomorrow? But more important than the oil were the Libyan groundwater resources. Initially, it was a question of exploiting them to the benefit of the countries of the African Sahel. This page is now turned. Well-known French multinationals seek to reserve access to these resources and make their exploitation “the most financially profitable” for themselves, probably for the production of biofuels.
Gaddafi had, in 1969, already demanded that the British and Americans evacuate their military bases set up after the Second World War. Today, the United States needs to transfer Africom (the U.S. military command for Africa, an important part of the system for military control of the world, still located in Stuttgart!) to Africa. The African Union refuses to accept it and, to this day, no African state has dared to agree to host it. A lackey placed in power in Tripoli (or Benghazi) would obviously support all of the demands coming from Washington and its subaltern NATO allies. The base would be a permanent threat as it could be a source for interventions against Egypt and Algeria.
The “new regime” has demonstrated its inability to govern the country. Libya’s disintegration following the Somali model has begun. Libya no longer exists.
The Syrian Tragedy
The Syrian Baathist government derived its legitimacy from implementing its non-democratic national popular project. When I visited Damascus, Aleppo, and other Syrian cities in the past, I clearly observed this legitimacy, despite the autocratic practices of the government. I also observed that its policy of secularization had made possible advances in women’s rights and allowed freedom in the social behavior of youth, which certainly deserved support.
Then, when the system ran out of steam, opening the way for globalized neoliberalism to go on the offensive and advance its “solutions,” the same hard-pressed Baathist ruling class accepted the infitah (the uncontrolled opening to globalized capital), just like the other Arab countries, so as to preserve its political control. The resulting social disaster led to the same consequences as elsewhere: the rise of perfectly legitimate democratic and social protests and increased repression by the government in response. It is almost amusing to note that one leader of the “rebellion”—Abdul Halim Khaddam—was the main architect of the “economic liberalization.” The legitimacy of the Syrian people’s revolt thus cannot be questioned.
The United States learned from the surprise in Tunisia and Egypt. It thus decided to take the initiative and get ahead of the movement by introducing armed groups that attacked the authorities, proclaimed themselves to be an “army of liberation,” and immediately called on NATO to help them. With local collusion and support from the Gulf countries, it was possible to infiltrate armed groups from Jordan (under Tel Aviv’s orders), Tripoli (base of “radical” Islam in Lebanon), and Turkey (the Colombia of the Middle East). An important NATO power, Turkey has participated in the conspiracy. The so-called refugee camps in Hatay are actually training camps for mercenaries recruited from terrorist groups (Talibans and others), financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. I refer here to Bahar Kimyongur’s book.19
One would have to be completely naive to be surprised at the silence emanating from the Western governments: silence on the recruitment of “terrorists,” silence on the rhetoric of these “liberators”—“Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave”—silence about the Saudi and Qatari governments, promoted to the rank of “defenders of democracy,” silence on the massacre of demonstrators in Bahrain carried out by Saudi troops, silence on the introduction of al-Qaida into Yemen for the purpose of confronting a possible rebirth of the South Yemeni left! “Terrorism” has a good side: unpardonable when the United States is attacked, welcome when it can be used. This strategy of organized chaos is, moreover, devised with the greatest cynicism by the authorities in Washington.
The possible victory of the Islamists—with or without foreign military intervention—would result in the breakup of the country and the massacre of Alawites, Druze, and Christians. But that is unimportant. The objective of Washington and its allies is not to liberate Syria from its dictator, but to destroy the country, just as the aim was not to liberate Iraq from Hussein and Libya from Gaddafi, but to destroy these countries.
Russia and China’s veto in the UN Security Council has fortunately made Libyan-style “humanitarian bombing” more difficult. The Syrian government has, moreover, succeeded in eliminating, it seems, hotbeds of major intervention supported from the outside. It remains the case that the introduction of groups in the pay of foreign powers put the democratic and social movement in an awkward position. The “movement”—diffuse and unorganized—refused to support the so-called liberation committees, obviously manipulated by the imperialist powers, while also refusing to support the government’s repression. To respond to the terrorism of imperialism’s agents by state terror is not an effective response to the challenge. The solution calls for substantial reforms benefiting popular and democratic forces that exist, and refuse to serve the Muslim Brotherhood. If the government turns out to be incapable of understanding what is required, nothing will stop the tragedy from continuing to its inevitable end.
I have listened to many representatives of the Syrian popular movement, which is extremely divided. Here I should cite Ayssar Midani, Salameh Kailé, Joseph Yacoub, Aziz el Azmeh, Zakaria Khoder, Ahmad Barkaoui, and Michel Kilo. I do not necessarily share their analyses and opinions.
Sudan: Criminal Abuses
On a visit to Khartoum in 2010, at the time the south’s secession was being prepared, I heard analyses and commentaries (particularly from my very dear friend Haydar Ibrahim Ali and from Adlan Hardallu) that led me to believe that awareness of the disaster perpetrated by Turabi’s supposedly Islamic regime was well advanced and, beyond that, that the country’s democratic and progressive forces were preparing a counteroffensive.
It was too late. The people in the south chose independence by an overwhelming majority in the referendum. But the imperialist powers, probably working through the Mossad, had taken the precaution of assassinating John Garang, the only leader capable, not only of uniting the peoples of the south, but also of working with the democrats from the north to change the state of relations between the two states. The outcome was fatal. The south has become another Central African Republic given over to conflicts among mediocre local potentates for control of the country and has descended into civil war. This is the only way for the politicians in question to attract supporters in their pay.
Yemen: Ally of the United States?
The United States supported the Ali Abdallah Saleh regime. The reason is their fear of the Yemeni people, above all in the south of the country. The latter had had a progressive Marxist government, which derived its legitimacy from its large popular support. Today, those forces are active in the social protest movement. Washington and its allies thus fear a breakup of the country and the reestablishment of the progressive government in South Yemen. Consequently, in allowing al-Qaida—largely controlled by the United States—to occupy the cities of the south, with U.S. support, the Yemeni regime wants to create fear among the progressive forces so that they can be pressured to accept the continuation of Saleh in power. The friendships that I have maintained with a large number of leaders from the former South Yemen have provided me with some insights into the nature of the issues facing this country.
