Massacre in Egypt: Is Revolution Worth The Price?

As I sat down to write this post the news of a tragic massacre of at least 32 Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated protestors, and the injury of 300 more was plastered all over the internet. That much is clear, the rest is yet to be disentangled (if ever) from two completely opposing stories by the Egyptian military and people on the scene. This is now one more massacre in a two year revolutionary process in which hundreds have died, chaos has reigned and nothing has been settled. I'm sure that millions of people in Egypt and even more around the region and around the world are asking: Is this what is necessary to win democracy and freedom? Is the price worth it?

There is obviously the danger of being glib in writing a judgment on the value or danger of  revolution from the safety of my office in Toronto, Canada - a country founded on the solid business principle of avoiding the messiness of revolution; a country that hasn't seen war in any significant way in 200 years. I'll try to avoid that as much as possible.

For certain the revolutionary process in the Middle East more generally, since the launch of what has become known as the Arab Spring, has had its share of chaos and tragedy. Dozens died in Bahrain in the struggle for democracy against a US/Saudi client regime - and suffered greater repression as a reward for their efforts and aspirations. In Yemen hundreds died only to see their aspirations deflected into a shabby compromise  that suited regional power-brokers - Saudi Arabia and the US (their involvement in aborting democratic movements is a theme and not a coincidence). In Libya, the west and their backers in the Middle East, in particular the Qatari emirate, swooped in quickly to ensure that the initial explosion of grassroots opposition to the Gaddafi dictatorship was controlled using western arms and logistics to suit the ends desired by the big oil companies, the US state department and the agenda of the EU. In Syria the repression of a popular movement led to civil war and the sickening sight of various imperialist powers - all of whom have happily repressed democratic movements around the world for generations - jockeying to gain the upper hand through the cynical manipulation of the various players caught in the Syrian tragedy. As always it is at the expense of local civilians, whether man, woman or child. As a former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, once put it when asked about US sanctions against Iraq that had killed perhaps a million children: "We think that the price is worth it."

And yet, it isn't as though the region or Egypt, in particular, is descending into tragedy from a state of pre-revolutionary bliss. The meddling of imperialism - from US financing of the military in Egypt and of the Occupation in Israel/Palestine to Russian arming of the Syrian dictatorship - has ensured a repressive and inhumane set-up in the region. And for the people of Egypt, in particular since the Camp David Peace Accords of the late 1970s, which won the compliance of the Egyptian state to the American agenda in return for billions of dollars in "aid", it has meant decades of, effectively, martial law, police repression, torture and dictatorship in all but name. The compliance of the Egyptian regime also freed Israel's hand to steal more land, kill more Palestinians and launch wars and attacks on their neighbours whenever it suited their colonialist agenda. All this was largely ignored by western media who, when they even bothered to notice, usually put the blame at the feet of "uncivilized Arabs" who needed "strong regimes" to maintain control and protect Israel, the "plucky little democracy" of the region.

What has changed in the present moment is that the masses, the tens of millions of people who have endured the tender mercies of imperialist-backed dictatorships, have attempted to force their way onto the political and historical stage. The "chaos" and "instability" that the media and governments bemoan is really the emergence of democracy in the form of the people waking up to their own power to control their destiny. In the first instance this is, by definition, chaotic as the old institutions, designed to guarantee dictatorship and the rule of both state and market capital, are destabilized and collapse. The ruling class loses many of the levers, primarily fear and quiescence, that it once had to maintain "order" and "stabillty". On the other hand, the newly awakened people haven't yet created their own institutions to replace the old. In this gap between old and new is a ferment of experimentation. Some of it involves the creation of new forms of organization - Egypt saw neighbourhood committees to defend the revolution appear and disappear, only to reappear again during the past two and a half years. There has been an explosion of independent trade unions involving millions of Egyptian workers, after decades of top-down, state controlled "unions". 

But they also attempt to use their old organizations and old institutions in new ways. Thus the Muslim Brotherhood, which has existed for almost a century as an organization that sought to alleviate the conditions in Egypt through charity and moral uplift (basically, obedience to a hierarchical and conservative interpretation of Islam) became the immediate beneficiary of a revolution that they didn't support. Similarly, the military has retained the allegiance of the masses from the reflected prestige of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who led the Free Officer's Movement that overthrew the Egyptian monarch and promoted a form of secular nationalism that challenged imperialism (before being sold off to US imperialism by his heirs) and delivered land reform and social progress. The revolution has become an intense testing ground for these institutions and organizations to see if they fit the needs of the masses.

First the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took over the direct rule of the country after they facilitated the overthrow of the dictator Hosni Mubarak. But their habitual use of repression, torture and corruption, not to mention genetic opposition to the extension of democracy and social justice created growing anger and mobilization that forced them to surrender office to the Muslim Brotherhood. For the SCAF the conservative MB seemed an excellent vehicle to contain the aspirations of the revolution. They would allow the MB to implement their cultural agenda, a certain degree of Islamization of the Egyptian state, and in return the MB wouldn't touch the institutions of the state security apparatus, including the SCAF itself. The bourgeois led MB also happily went to the IMF for loans and imposed austerity on their own supporters at home in order to implement a neo-liberal agenda. The result was an increasingly mobilized opposition that drew up to 20 million demonstrators on June 30.

It was this "dangerous" mobilization, as with the overthrow of Mubarak, and the threat of major strikes that pushed the SCAF to remove Morsi from power and attempt to replace him with another set of faces, a grand coalition, that would be more acceptable to the masses, It was a pre-emptive attempt to prevent a deeper, more radical revolution. In this sense it was a major victory.

There are several dangers unfolding and that will continue to unfold until the revolution can be completed (and spread to other countries in the region at least, especially Saudi Arabia). Because the military facilitated the removal of Morsy it can empower and embolden them to use their renewed popularity to clampdown not only on the MB but also on the revolutionaries and the popular organizations as well. SCAF's intervention "from above" can also stop the rapid disintegration of the MB that was taking place "from below", giving them the mantle of victim of a Mubarak counter-revolution. This can draw even those skeptical of the MB leadership's intentions and abilities to rally round them in the belief that they are defending the revolution - a revolution that the MB leadership never supported and tried to abort as soon as Mubarak was gone, including supporting the SCAF at every turn (except the one that booted them out the door). This polarization of "masses against masses" as opposed to "masses against the state" opens the door to a potential civil war, on the one hand, and provides an excuse for the SCAF to elevate themselves as being above the fray and thus the legitimate vehicle to separate the two sides and impose a neutral order on the Egyptian people. 

It remains to be seen if the massacre of MB supporters outside of the Republican Guard barracks today was the result of a MB attempt to storm the facility and free former president Morsy from his arrest (with the side benefit of portraying themselves as victims of an army assault if they failed) or the army decided to raise the stakes to provide justification for declaring a state of emergency - or if it were all the result of trigger happy soldiers firing on riled up MB supporters who got too close to barricades (there is no shortage of such "accidents" of history). What is clear is that navigating this confusing terrain and clarifying the next steps in the struggle will require a clear leadership with roots amongst the Egyptian people in order to avoid the twin dangers of supporting the army against the MB or falling in behind the MB as the defenders of the revolution - either of which could lead towards a civil war and defeat of the revolution. That leadership isn't about a few brilliant individuals calling the shots, it will have to be a collective leadership of thousands and tens of thousands of revolutionaries whose collective experience will help them to navigate the chaos and work with others inside the revolution to move things forward. In other words, a revolutionary party.

That doesn't exist yet in Egypt but there are thousands attempting to build one. In the meantime, what is clear is that as in all places the people who have power have no interest in giving it up and will stoop to any depth necessary - murder, torture, conspiracies, lies - to defend what they have. The tragedy and chaos of the present moment is not the result of the revolution, it is the result of that unaccountable an unequally divided power. The solution to ending the tragedy of massacres and misery is not to surrender to the power that imposes such tragedy upon the people. It is to decisively defeat that power so that it is unable to prevent the people from living in freedom and true democracy.

Arab Revolutions Put Iran Attack On Back Foot

There can be little doubt that the Arab revolutions have already transformed the Middle East and look set to continue and deepen that transformation. Dictators in Tunisia, Yemen and, most spectacularly thus far, Egypt have gotten the boot. In Tunisia and Egypt the working class played a sizeable role in their ouster and this has led to a labour spring involving the explosive growth in independent unions, rank and file confidence, wild cat strikes and political demands that would have been unthinkable even two years ago.

But while most of the left have applauded the revolts in those three above countries, they have been much more circumspect - and in some cases downright hostile - to the revolts in Syria and Libya (or the earlier and less successful Green Movement in Iran). The reason is honourable enough - they see the hand of imperialism stirring the pot in countries that, if not openly anti-imperialist now, were in the past and, in the case of Syria, still support anti-imperialist movements like Hizbollah and Hamas. The USA and its allies, the logic runs, want to see Assad overthrown in order to weaken the "axis of resistance" (as Iran's president branded Iran, Syria and Hizbollah in Lebanon, in a clever twist of the Bush mantra that labelled Iran and North Korea as part of an axis of evil). Many have even argued that the revolts in Libya and Syria aren't even really revolts but merely fabricated coups by pro-imperialist elements.

This is to miss the point on a number of levels. First the mass and sustained character of the revolts in both Libya and Syria (in particular Syria) bely the notion that these are mere quislings risking their necks to sell out their country. It also starts from a profoundly naive belief that true and pure revolts have no truck with imperialism. Sadly, no such revolt has ever existed. By definition a revolt is both the underdog - lacking the weapons and infrastructure of their oppressor state(s) - and heterogenous politically.

Since humans aren't the Borg and don't think the same things simultaneously, they can reach myriad conclusions, arising from their social location and personal experiences. Some sectors of a revolt will draw the conclusion that the quickest road to victory is by aligning with the big countries of Europe or America to get access to guns and even the playing field militarily - not thinking about the price to be paid (or even accepting that price). Others will resist the conditional aid of outside states and prefer to build an indigenous mass movement.

And, lastly, imperialist countries never just sit on the sideline. Their multitude of intelligence agencies, secret services, state-funded aid organizations, etc. exist for a reason: to promote the hegemony of their country abroad. They will seek to influence opposition organizations and individuals and to bend them - and through them opposition movements - to supporting the strategic interests of their state. The proxy wars of the Cold War era were precisely the result of maneuverings between the USSR and the USA. Sometimes it involved supporting opposition movements (particularly in the case of the USSR, which was always considerably weaker than the USA) and sometimes it involved supporting the regimes already in power to crush opposition movements. Imperialism is, by definition, opportunistic.

It is a mistake to base our support for opposition movements on whether or not imperialism is trying to influence them - and even where they are succeeding to a degree. Revolts, even ones compromised by imperialism, have a way of getting out of the control of those who would use them to their advantage. One need only look at the challenges that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is facing in trying to rein in the tumultuous movement in Egypt that brought them to power.

There is a final reason for supporting the Arab Spring with great enthusiasm and not viewing it through the narrow lens of state-to-state relations. Western imperialism's hope that the weakening of the Syrian regime would permit greater pressure on Iran isn't happening quite that way. The belief that the Arab Spring would allow Iran to be isolated and make it more susceptible to military assault has turned out to be quite the opposite as this article in the Guardian makes clear:

US naval, air and ground forces are dependent for bases, refuelling and supplies on Gulf Arab rulers who are deeply concerned about the progress Iran has made in its nuclear programme, but also about the rising challenge to their regimes posed by the Arab spring and the galvanising impact on popular unrest of an Israeli attack on Iran...

US naval commanders have watched with unease as the newly elected Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has made overtures towards Iran. US ships make 200 transits a year through the Suez canal. Manama, the Fifth Fleet headquarters, is the capital of a country that is 70% Shia and currently in turmoil.

Ami Ayalon, a former chief of the Israeli navy and the country's internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, argues Israel too cannot ignore the new Arab realities.

"We live in a new Middle East where the street has become stronger and the leaders are weaker," Ayalon told the Guardian. "In order for Israel to face Iran we will have to form a coalition of relatively pragmatic regimes in the region, and the only way to create that coalition is to show progress on the Israel-Palestinian track."

The conclusion seems pretty clear: the greatest threat to the goals of western imperialism in the Middle East is the Arab Spring. The deeper grows that revolt, particularly in the Gulf states and especially in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the more imperialism will be constrained in its actions and agenda.

Arab Dictatorships Want To Kill Syrian Revolution

The first thing that has to be said is that the Syrian people are bravely resisting and suffering under - first and foremost - the brutal Syrian regime. But the second thing that must be added is that they are suffering a second misery, which is to be the pawns of a cynical maneuvering by rival empires and Arab dictatorships.

On the looming anniversary of the Bahraini democratic uprising, which was crushed by Saudi tanks, it is more than a little rich for the Saudi foreign minister at the United Nations to be bemoaning the lack of support for the Syrian people to resist the government.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal conveyed the 22-nation league's deep frustration with Syria, telling delegates that it was no longer appropriate to stand by and watch the bloodshed.
"Until when will we remain spectators?" he said. The bloodshed in Syria "is a disgrace for us as Muslims and Arabs to accept."

In fact, as these miserable dictators are shedding crocodile tears for the Syrians they are cheering on the repression that continues apace in Bahrain with life sentences for activists, blacklists and purges of people from their jobs. And today as Bahrainis attempt to mark the anniversary of the start of the pro-democracy movement are they faced with Saudi flowers? Not likely:

Monday's march by thousands of opposition supporters to Manama's Pearl Square is the largest attempt in months to retake the central roundabout that served as the epicenter of weeks of protests last year by Bahrain's Shiite majority against the ruling Sunni dynasty.
The government has deployed thousands of security forces to prevent the opposition from staging a mass rally to mark Tuesday's one-year of the revolt.
Bahrain imposed martial law in March to quell the protests. Emergency rule was lifted in June, but clashes still occur on an almost daily basis.

No, this proposal for a UN-backed, Arab League peacekeeping force is nothing more than the most cynical maneuverings to remove a regime that has not only been a thorn in the side of the Saudis and the lunatic sectarian dictatorships that dominate the Gulf. It is also about the rabid sectarianism of the Saudi (and Bahraini) regimes, who are Sunni Muslim and not only oppress their indigenous Shi'ite populations (in Bahrain's case, they are the majority of the population in a Sunni kingdom), but see Shi'ite Iran as the enemy. Allowing the troops of Gulf dictatorships to intervene in the Syrian revolution would be a disaster and a death blow for the revolution as surely as inviting Russia to send peacekeeping troops.

Of course the United States says nothing about the repression in Bahrain for the exact same reason that Russia continues to back the Syrian regime. In neither case does it have anything to do with fears of civil war, human rights, sovereignty or any of the other flowery language they employ to dress up their evil intentions. It is quite simple. The United States fifth fleet is stationed in Bahrain and Russia's only Mediterranean naval base is located in Syria. It is entirely about imperial jockeying for position in a strategically important region.

In the end, this jockeying is hurting the Syrian people (and the Bahraini people). Russia continues to back a bloody Syrian dictatorship as it bombs its own people. America, Europe and the Saudis look for the most retrograde sections of the movement, preferably Sunni regime defectors, the Muslim Brotherhood - who are proving reliably moderate in Egypt - or even Salafists, to back or to intervene directly to shape any new regime. This is the Libyan model mark 2: intervene in a popular revolt to steer it in the direction of benefiting American imperialism. The result, if they are successful is a lost revolution and dashed aspirations for true democracy and social justice, just as in Libya. In that country it has led to growing anger and protests against the west's favourite neo-liberal revolutionaries, including the storming and destruction of NTC offices last month.

Behind these protests, and mounting discontent, is growing disillusion with the NTC and its attempts to limit and stunt expectations that emerged during last year's uprising. The NTC is seen as corrupt and riddled with nepotism, and is widely perceived as trying to create a new patronage system based on regional and tribal interests.

The only hope that exists for the Syrian revolt is the continued disintegration of the Syrian regime under pressure of the movement, the army defections, etc. That process seems to be continuing apace - though it is difficult to tell outside of the country with the clampdown on media and the conditions of near civil war. In this sense the division and lack of consensus between the imperial powers - divided as they are between mutually conflicting strategic interests - may serve not only to give the Syrian regime time to crush the revolt (something that Russia would like to see and may yet offer peacekeepers to aid) but also to buy time for the movement to deepen and degrade the ability of the state to implement its murderous policies.

Russia 'to consider' Syria peacekeeping plan - Middle East - Al Jazeera English:

'via Blog this'

Syrian Revolution: Caught Between Repression & Imperialism

The first and foremost thing that must be said is that the people of Syria, who have resisted an utterly vicious military repression of their aspirations for nearly a year, are some of the bravest people on the planet. Day after day the government of the Assad dynasty find new levels of depravity in their attempt to brutalize and torture the democratic aspirations of their population into submission. We are witnessing both the heights and the depths to which human nature can sink.

For that reason I have absolutely no sympathy with those who attempt to excuse the actions of the regime on the grounds of supposed anti-imperialism. This is a vicious and bloody police state that is fighting for its life, not some progressive bastion - any more than was Libya - it deserves to have no tears shed for it.

That doesn't imply, however, that it isn't a complex situation. Sadly, the Syrian regime is not the only vicious and anti-democratic regime in the world. The United States comes to mind. After all, they arm the thoroughly backward, religiously justified police state of the Saudi  monarchy. They benefit from the sectarian and repressive Bahraini monarchy next door. They have financed the Egyptian military's repressive apparatus since the 1970s. And that doesn't even include the millions of people whose deaths can be directly and indirectly laid at the feet of the US government (that's right, I wrote millions - Iraq, Indonesia in 1965, El Salvador, Chile, the Philippines, et al). And a number of equally (or more) vicious, anti-democratic regimes have their fingers in the Syrian pie in a way that is no so very different from Libya.

As I've noted more than once, the Arab revolutions in the first instance threw the USA and its allies in Europe and the Middle East, on the back foot. Their core clients were thrown onto the backfoot and for a moment it looked like the USA would even lose Bahrain, home to the extremely strategic 5th Fleet. But counter-revolution, like rust, never sleeps and, as Mao said, in crisis there is opportunity. With the uprising in Libya, the Americans, Europeans and the Gulf Cooperation Council - which composes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait and was fresh from crushing the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain - moved to intervene in the Arab revolution. The idea was clearly two or threefold. 1) Steer the revolution in a "moderate", pro-capitalist and pro-western (cough, cough, Israel) direction. 2) Eliminate regimes that were not fully in the pocket of the Americans and the Saudis/GCC. And 3) do some damage to the ambitions and strategic interests of other imperialist powers, in particular China and Russia.

Libya may have been the first stop on this traveling road show but it most certainly isn't the last. And now Syria is becoming the next target and battleground for inter-imperialist rivalry. This is, of course, very dangerous for the region and the Syrian people. None of the big players give a damn about democracy or self-determination. The Russians spent more than a decade slaughtering Chechens who were foolish enough to think that they deserved independence because it's a democratic right - not to mention the Russian government's penchant for internal repression and fixing elections. The Chinese? Tiananmen Square, anyone? Actually, China makes no pretence about having any support for democratic rights - the Chinese people "aren't ready" for democracy. Turkey has, of course, also made noises of support for the anti-Assad movement in Syria but their concerns for democracy can't be taken seriously either, with their continued denial of the rights of their Kurdish population, including a recent deadly bombing raid on Kurd civilians - and a counter-insurgency in the 90s that destroyed something like 40,000 villages.

The involvement of these opposing players with their regional ambitions - I haven't even discussed Iran, which remains in the crosshairs of the west - is making the struggle for democracy more difficult. It is making it more, not less, likely that Syria will descend into civil war. For those of us who live in the Europe and North America, our first responsibility is to oppose all attempts by our governments to intervene in the Syrian conflict. They are not here or anywhere interested in the human and democratic rights of the population.

Within Syria itself the scene on the ground is very complicated. There is much talk in the press about divisions within the opposition but how much that is reflected on the ground inside Syria is unclear and how much of it is a cynical attempt to get the more radical and grassroots Local Coordination Committees to line-up with the pro-imperialist, emigre-based Syrian National Council (SNC) is unclear. The existence of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) also further complicates matters. On the one hand its existence is a positive sign of the disintegration of the Syrian state's repressive apparatus. On the other it risks becoming a substitute for a mass movement and causing a descent into civil war, which will be much more convenient for the imperialists of each side to back. It doesn't help that the FSA leadership has itself lined up with the SNC. Like in Libya, the FSA could easily end up acting as the foot soldiers for a NATO military operation.

At present the movement seems to have, against tremendous odds, retained its mass, popular character with strikes, sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience and popular mobilization. It is, in many ways, now a game of wills - who can withstand the pressure exerted by the other longer. The Syrian state is a "deep state", which, like many other dictatorships in the region, has utilized clientelism, sectarianism, tribal and ethnic rivalries to sustain its power base. Undermining those deeply embedded relations of clientelism and fear was never going to happen overnight and was unlikely to ever happen without bloodshed, given the vicious nature of the regime. But the momentum seems to be in the direction of the disintegration of the Syrian regime, as the movement has now firmly taken hold in the capital, Damascus. What the movement needs most at the moment, it seems, is time to finish the job free of the meddling of outside interlocutors whose interests are anything but democracy and justice.

Did NATO's Libyan "Liberation" Blow-Up In Their Faces

During NATO's bombing campaign to dominate and destroy the Libyan revolution liberate Libya last year, I wrote that their real interests lie with intervening into the Arab Spring in such a way as to bend it towards European and American ends. The other driving motivation behind the intervention was to counter China's growing hegemony on the African continent.

For a number of years China has quietly been increasing its capital investments and trade relationships with a number of African countries. From the point of view of the African governments - more or less democratic or repressive - China's involvement has been more heartily welcome than that of Europe and North America for the simple reason that China's money, etc. comes with no (apparent) strings. No doubt this is a product of two factors. The first is that European and North American governmental policies with regards to Africa are based upon a set of vile racist and colonialist assumptions about Africa. And going along with that is a never-ending jogging for influence via proxy armies and direct interventions.

Secondly, China is the new kid on the block, or the new store on the block. And they have learned from lengthy experience that the way to break into new markets is by offering better deals than the old stores. This is the oldest trick in the export market book. Think way back to Japan's Honda cars, which were basically disposable, cheap cars way back in the 1970s. Now they are semi-luxury sedans. Ditto Hyundai from the South Koreans. And, of course, with China you can say that about everything they make. From dollar store trinkets and laughably constructed toys for kids they are now the manufacturer of choice for every high tech company in the west from Apple to HP to IBM (who sold off their PC division to China, which renamed it Lenovo and made it massively successful - oops!).

Now, transpose that method into one that is geared towards the developing world and building the influence of China as a nation that needs major raw material inputs. You begin to see their method and its success. It also makes clear the real reason why China (along with Russia) is so opposed to Syria becoming another Libya. It has nothing whatsoever to do with national self-determination and opposition to imperialism - any more than western hand-wringing and sanctions has anything to do with concern for human rights or democracy. If you don't believe me about the latter, I will only point out that the US gives $1.3 billion to the Egyptian army every year specifically to finance the security services - never mind the money and weapons that are sold or given to every dictatorship in the region. As for China's interest in self-determination - Tibet and Xinjiang provide clear and bloody refutation of any delusions in that direction.

All of that is background to the fact that NATO's intentions in Libya seem to be blowing up in their faces - a reminder that besides death and misery, the thing that war produces most of is irony. Within Libya itself, the prospective client regime is having its own difficulties living up to the hopes of NATO. Not only are elements of Gaddafi's former supporters giving it military troubles - witness the recent recapture of Bani Walid by a pro-Gaddafi militia - but even in the TNC stronghold of Benghazi there have been violent protests against the new bosses.

In the rest of Africa the knock-on effect of NATO's forceful intervention in the Libyan conflict has not been to make Africa more compliant and open to western demands. Rather, it has pushed African governments deeper into China's embrace, as evidenced by the keynote delivered at this past week's African Union summit delivered by a senior Chinese diplomat in the new AU HQ that was built with Chinese money and with the announcement that China would step into the financing void left by Gaddafi's overthrow. While this irony has a certain deliciousness to it, it also has serious and potentially bloody dangers. Europe - with its old world sense of aristocratic entitlement - and the USA - with its belligerent, cowboyish sense of entitlement - are unlikely to let the matter lie. What is more likely is that the immediate future of Africa will see an intensifications of covert and over interventions to try to regain hegemony. That, of course, is a recipe for further instability and war in Africa and greater inter-imperialist rivalry more generally.

African Union embraces generous Chinese financing - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Libya's Rebels: Yesterday We Tortured Them, Today We Arm Them

There's no doubt that NATO, primarily the UK, France and the US, inserted themselves into the Libyan uprising as a means of gaining control over the course of the Arab Spring. In the case of France, it's clear that expanding the control of Libya's oil - most notably at the expense of Italy - was also part of the reason for Sarkozy's newfound enthusiasm for democracy when only a few weeks earlier he was rather more enthusiastic for keeping the Tunisian dictator in power. Reasserting hegemony in Africa also played no small part in the Libyan adventure.

Nonetheless it is always important to keep in mind that when imperialist powers insert themselves into an insurgency - particularly against a recent ally like Gaddafi - they are at risk of not only unleashing forces that they cannot control but of being exposed for what they really are: double-dealing hypocrites.

To be honest, it doesn't appear to me likely that there will be open resistance to the overall imperial agenda as it is expressed through the new government that is coming into being, led by the NTC. The oil contracts have been signed, the backroom deals have been struck - and NATO's deeply penetrating role in the war against Gaddafi has ensured that the rebel soldiers are dependent upon them for military success of any sort. Over the coming weeks the most likely scenario is that the rebel volunteers will be demobilized or incorporated into the national military. That military and most of the governmental apparatus will remain essentially unchanged from the Gaddafi regime - the police who kept order in Tripoli under Gaddafi will be the same police who keep order under the NTC. The generals who ran the Gaddafi military will run the NTC military. And economic and social policy will be guided by people like Mahmoud Jibril, who was the head of the Gaddafi agency charged with the responsibility of selling off state assets, probably to mostly foreign buyers or other former-Gaddafi officials.

That said, I would be glad to be mistaken. There is a reason why one of the NTC's first acts is to demobilize the rebel soldiers and to clear them out of the capital. People fought for freedom and will be less likely to accept Gaddafi-ism without Gaddafi if they have guns and are organized into fighting units. And with the armed phase of Gaddafi's overthrow all but passed, it is still possible that the remnants of the revolutionary councils that dominated the early phase of the insurgency will re-emerge to challenge the NTC's policy of business-as-usual minus the Brother Leader and some of the more odious aspects of a police state.

But in the initial days it's good to see that, at the very least, some of the duplicity of the United States and Britain are being revealed. The discovery of documents in the Interior Ministry building that show the level of cooperation between the CIA and the Gaddafi regime are something of an embarrassment. As is the fact that the new commander of Tripoli was a victim of CIA torture and the extraordinary rendition program that sent him back to Libya for several years of brutal incarceration. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has been undergoing something of a renovation, with a fluff piece in the New York Times, which I covered the other day. He may be claiming that he is now grateful for the support of NATO and the USA - but he hasn't forgotten what was done to him and some reporters have cottoned on to this.

The result is that the British spy agency MI6 is now exposed as having cooperated - perhaps illegally - with the American rendition program and facilitated torture. In some ways nobody ought to be surprised by this but the fact that it is coming out in public at a moment when the UK is jockeying for fat reconstruction and oil contracts is sweet. These revelations are undermining one of the domestic goals of the intervention in Libya - to rehabilitate the idea of humanitarian intervention by demonstrating that the UK, USA and NATO really do have good intentions, even if sometimes they get the details wrong. Let's hope that the revelations keep on coming. There is a sweet irony in the possibility that the countries of NATO will be more fully exposed as having aided Gaddafi in crushing the revolt that they ended up opportunistically supporting.

MI6 knew I was tortured, says Libyan rebel | World news | The Guardian

Libya: France Gets Oil Contracts, Arab Dictatorships Get To Back Slap

Yesterday saw the "Friends of Libya" carve-up conference in Paris where everyone sought to get in on the reconstruction and oil contract action. Besides the announcement that $15 billion in frozen Gaddafi funds would be released to the National Transition Council, there was also the spectacle of speeches by all and sundry congratulating themselves on a job well done. This sort of grandstanding is, of course, de rigeur, at such international conferences but it takes on a particular irony here. For instance, the Kuwaiti foreign minister, Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, that is, a member of the al-Sabah family monarchy that rules Kuwait with an iron fist, announced without a hint of irony:

"Libya will see a new era featuring security, stability, and respect for rights, freedoms and equality," the Kuwaiti official told participants at the meeting. "I would like to seize this opportunity to pay tribute to the sons of Libya who sacrificed themselves in defense of the liberty and dignity of their homeland," he added.

No doubt Kuwait will now introduce democracy, equality for women and the large immigrant workforce that have no civil rights. And since world leaders had shown up to pile the lies on the conference floor like horseshit outside a barn, French President Nikolas Sarkozy couldn't bear to miss the opportunity to throw his own excrement on the heap:

"We have aligned with the Arab people in their aspiration for freedom."

Aligned with the Arab people? Really? Sarkozy and the French government were loyal to the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali right up until the end. And, like the Americans, they denied that the Egyptians wanted to overthrow their own dictator - or, in the case of the US vice president, denied that Mubarak was even a dictator.

Then there is the great Arabian memory hole known as Bahrain and Yemen. It is as though the democracy movements in those countries don't exist - even as the Bahraini monarchy continues persecuting the Shia majority, arresting activists, and  killing children. In fact, there were major demonstrations and street battles with the Bahrain police force going on at the same time as the conference, which was attended by representatives of the Bahraini monarchy. The king even paid tribute "to the Libyan people":

"Our stance stems from Bahrain's commitment to Libya's independence, territorial integrity, regional security in addition to ensuring the security of its people so that it could assume its role as an active member of the international community and its Arab and regional environment," he said.

At least he didn't have the audacity to use words like freedom and liberty, unlike the Kuwaiti foreign minister. However, not a single world leader, including the leaders of the Libyan provisional government, the NTC, drew a connection between Libya and Bahrain. Perhaps that has something to do with the agreements and meetings that have already taken place between the NTC and the Gulf monarchies.

And Yemen only makes it on the radar of the US media these days when the US military celebrates another unmanned drone attack on "al Qaeda" rebels in the desert. In case you had any doubts about the reason for this blood-soaked hypocrisy, you just have to follow the money.

Hours before the Paris bash, French daily Liberation published on its website a letter written only 17 days after UN Resolution 1973. In the letter, the TNC ratifies an agreement ceding no less than 35% of Libya's total crude oil production to France in exchange of Sarko's "humanitarian" support.
The letter is addressed to the office of the emir of Qatar (the go-between for the TNC and France from the beginning) - with a copy to then-Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa. The letterhead is supplied by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya.

On one level this isn't too surprising. The NTC has used bribery pretty much from the start to win military backing for the rebellion, stating that countries which supported them would win contracts. Those that didn't - not so much. Sorry, China, Russia and Africa.

Of course one hopes that the true aspirations of the Libyan people to overthrow an extremely repressive dictator are realized. But there is a difference between hope and delusion and attempts to paint political differences between the NTC and, for instance, the rebel commanders in Tripoli have proven to be empty. Evidence for this couldn't be clearer from the fluff piece in today's New York Times about the military commander of Tripoli, Abdulhekim Belhaj. Belhaj is a longstanding Islamist who led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and spent time in Gaddafi's jail - after being sent back to Libya under the USA's extraordinary rendition program. Here he suffered torture for years before finally signing a recantation. Belhaj is quoted as claiming that he never had any association with al Qaeda.

“We focused on Libya and Libya only,” he said. “Our goal was to help our people. We didn’t participate in or support any action outside of Libya. We never had any link with Al Qaeda, and that could never be. We had a different agenda; global fighting was not our goal.”

Except that his statements don't appear to square with the history of LIFG and his own role within it:

After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis. After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ...
Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir. In 2007, LIFG was calling for a jihad against Gaddafi but also against the US and assorted Western "infidels".

What's interesting about this isn't so much that Belhaj was an Islamist - a lot of government opponents in the Middle East and North Africa, fighting against secular nationalist regimes, were Islamist guerillas. What is interesting is the attempt to cover up his history, assert his fidelity to western-approved goals - "Now this man... is a grateful ally of the United States and NATO." - and to downplay his importance in the storming of Tripoli - "“He was nothing, nothing. He arrived at the last moment..." - even though he was elected by the rebel fighters themselves as the commander of Tripoli. Not likely if he just wandered into town the day before last.

Besides demonstrating the levels of dishonesty in the NTC, in the service of the propaganda needs of their NATO backers, it also suggests that even rank and file leaders like Belhaj accept the general program of the NTC. That doesn't necessarily mean there won't be resistance to the neo-liberal program of the NTC that is emerging - or to the fact that no elections for the presidency are planned for 20 months, with elections to a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution in eight months. But when pre-eminent rebel leaders like Belhaj are saying that their intention is to dissolve their rebel militas as soon as possible and submit to the command of the NTC, this begs the question of what mechanisms will exist to organize and mobilize any opposition.

Did NATO Kill The Libyan Revolution?

What do you say when a dictator is overthrown and the news shows pictures of people celebrating? That's easy, right? You feel good that the world is a slightly better place. But, then, what do you say if the dictator wasn't fundamentally defeated by those people - at least not alone - for all of their courage they needed the help of outsiders? You'd still probably feel like the defeat of a dictator was a good thing. However, what if those outsiders had a long and odious history of propping up dictators, invading countries and setting up repressive regimes, exploiting weaker nations and even crushing calls for democracy in their own backyard? You'd probably start to raise questions about why such people would help the struggle for democracy since they haven't demonstrated much interest in it themselves. It might lead you to ask what their real intentions were. If you thought about it a little more, it might also lead you to ask the question of who asked such dubious characters to enter the fray in the first place. These would all be legitimate questions and the answers wouldn't always be easy or uncomplicated but they have to be asked.

 All of which brings us back to Libya. There is a wide array of opinions that exists on the left - from the NDP, which supported the NATO intervention to those, like the Centre for Research on Globalization, which view Gaddafi in a positive light, as a liberator and the insurgency as a NATO plot top to bottom. Then there are those who acknowledge that having NATO involved is not ideal but argue that the overthrow of Gaddafi still constitutes a progressive revolution and contend that the role of NATO was not as important as some would suggest. Lastly, there are those, like myself, who argue that indeed the insurgency that shook Libya beginning February 17 was a very real, very grassroots revolt against a dictatorship; that it was part of the broader Arab Spring, which had seen dictators fall on Libya's eastern and western borders, Egypt and Tunisia, respectively. That uprising spread rapidly:

This was a mass popular uprising involving millions of people. Areas liberated from the regime put under popular control all the functions of the state, including prisons, the police and courts. Councils organised the distribution of food according to need, opened TV and radio stations, and issued revolutionary newspapers. Popular committees took over key installations such as electricity stations, the ports and other utilities. All the major liberated cities and towns are run by these revolutionary councils

However, Gaddafi's regime was able to move quickly to push back against the revolt, purging dissident elements from the army and the state with brutal swiftness. What's more, the sheer brutality of the Gaddafi regime in suppressing dissent and preventing the formation of any independent civil society, unions, etc. meant that there were no pre-existing networks of resistance that existed. Everything had to be made up from scratch. Except those networks of former regime officials who had come over to the revolution along with some military commander with their troops.

In the face of the forward rush of the revolution, the grassroots revolutionaries could have the upper hand in energy and sheer numbers. But when the dash westwards by Benghazi's young and disorganized revolutionaries was halted and then pushed back, it was the organization of former regime officials and military officers who had the experience to hold things together. They gained the upper hand in the National Transitional Council (NTC), which brought together representatives from across the country. And while the initial political inclinations of the revolution were decidedly anti-imperialist - with a giant banner in liberated Benghazi demanding no foreign intervention - when the revolution was put on the back foot, the former regime officials, people like Mahmoud Jibril and Mustafa Jalil, looked not to spreading and deepening the revolution to accelerate the continuing disintegration of the Libyan state but to a no-fly zone and air strikes as well as international recognition. In one sense, one can hardly blame them, the revolution was truly under siege but calling in NATO and the Gulf monarchies would have it's own price, which became clear right away.

On March 10 France recognized the NTC. On the same day, the NTC announced that it would respect all of the oil contracts. The next day Cameron & Sarkozy released a joint statement calling for a no-fly zone. The day after that the Arab League - under pressure from Saudi Arabia, which had reached a deal with the US to back a no-fly zone in Libya in return for the US turning a blind eye to its counter-revolutionary invasion of Bahrain - made the same call. On March 17 a UN resolution passed, paving the way for intervention.  It's also worth noting that the Qatari monarchy - which bans political parties, unions, etc - recognized the NTC on March 27, the day after the NTC signed an oil contract with them.

Qatar's recognition of the rebel council comes just a day after a senior rebel official said that Qatar Petroleum had agreed to market crude oil produced from east Libyan oil fields no longer under the control of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader... Manouchehr Takin, from the Centre of Global Energy Studies, told Al Jazeera that the deal, if confirmed, would be "a landmine, legally speaking". "Is this council representing the Libyan people? Only two countries have accepted that. Whether we like it or not, the Tripoli government, by the United Nations, is [still] the legitimate and sovereign government," he said.

There was also infighting going on within NATO as countries fought over the potentially significant spoils of Libya's oil fields. Italy in particular was outraged when France tried to circumvent NATO entirely and itself lead the air war against Gaddafi. The reason was clear enough - ENI is a major Italian company and is the largest foreign presence in the Libyan oil fields. Italy thus accused France of wanting to get in on the action:

Meanwhile the head of the Italian Senate's defence affairs committee, Gianpiero Cantoni, said the original French anti-NATO stance was motivated by a desire to secure oil contracts with a future Libyan government.

Eventually, by mid-April NATO seemed to have gotten its act together and was stepping up air attacks, in particular around Misurata to break Gaddafi's siege and then to provide air support for the rebel advance out of the city. Meanwhile, in the Nafusa mountains, the French were air dropping weapons and the rebels were receiving intensive training.

The Tripoli Brigade, as they called themselves, had trained for four months in Libya’s western mountains with French, American and Qatari special forces for this moment.

The article continues with a detailed description of events leading up to Operation Mermaid Dawn, NATO's name for the assault on Tripoli.

With Nato drones overhead, beaming real-time images of the ground in front of them, rebels advanced in the wake of more bombing raids. Jets were called in by special forces, acting as forward air controllers, to attack Gadaffi’s tanks and command centres. Rebels fed back information using satellite phones supplied by Britain and France, bringing more bombs down on ammunition stores and communications facilities.
Members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, experts in covert intelligence gathering, were part of the 30-strong British special forces team. They linked with their French counterparts at Zuwaytinah, the command headquarters for the eastern front, 90 miles southwest of Benghazi.
The French troops are believed to be members of the Commandement des Opérations Spéciales (COS), which draws from the elite parachute regiments of the French army.
In the air Nato sharpened its information gathering by deploying RAF Sentinel aircraft which can use radar imagery to track the smallest vehicle from 100 miles away. They overflew the battle zones, mapping the positions of Gadaffi forces.

The article goes on to describe how rebels inside of Tripoli aided the assault by studiously targeting snipers on the tops of buildings and, on the day of the assault, sneaking up on them with butcher knives and meat cleavers. The overall picture that emerges is not one that fits neatly into a narrative that paints the rebels as NATO pawns - as those who support Gaddafi have suggested. But it is also clear that it was NATO that was setting the terms of the progress of the war and of the final assault on Tripoli. This hierarchy continues in the soon to be launched assault on Sirte - NATO planes are bombing Gaddafi installations, tanks and artillery pieces to "soften up" the enemy while rebel troops assemble ready to attack when the enemy is too weak to resist much. But NATO and the rebels are fighting for different things.

One of the interesting things about the rebel fighters on the ground and the NTC is the role of Islamists in the fighting forces. At present the military commander of Tripoli is a long standing jihadi named Abdelhakim Belhaj who was a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and who fought against the Soviets as a mujahideen in the 1980s. He was associated with al Qaeda though eventually broke with them. He was arrested by the Americans at one point and sent back to Libya under the extraordinary rendition program, jailed and tortured - reportedly under the supervision of the CIA. In 2010 Belhaj and his comrades signed a book length recantation of their beliefs in order to be released from prison by Saif al-Islam in a public relations exercise to demonstrate Libya's ability to rehabilitate Islamist terrorists. It is men like Belhaj with extensive experience and training in guerilla warfare who are now leading rebel fighters.

However, the dominant forces inside the rebel political leadership are the former regime elements. The president and prime minister of the provisional government are formerly high-ranking officials in the Gaddafi regime. Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister, was responsible for privatizing Libyan state assets as the head of the National Economic Development Board. Mustafa Jalil was the Minister of Justice.

Some of those who believe that the overthrow of Gaddafi constitutes a revolution against the Gaddafi regime and a continuation of the Arab Spring point to these sorts of disjunctures between the NTC and other factions within the rebels, whether between the military and political leadership, or between the Misurata leadership council and the NTC, to point out that the spirit of the revolution is still alive. That is undoubtedly true. People didn't fight and die because they wanted to help NATO countries strengthen their hold over Libyan oil, or to gain control of the Arab Spring or to strengthen their strategic position in Africa. But to say this is entirely to miss the bigger point that the forces at work and their agendas are more powerful than the relatively dispersed, guerilla type networks of rebels. What's more these are not large forces. The Tripoli Brigade that stormed the capital only has 1,300 soldiers. The actual fighting force of the rebels is unclear with different numbers on different Wikileaks pages but the fact that the storming of Tripoli involved perhaps as few as 4,000 rebel soldiers gives an indication of its size.

 To think that such a tiny force - even if we add untrained volunteers to boost the numbers - could stand against NATO, which had just decimated the trained and well armed military force of the Libyan government is sheer foolishness. But it wouldn't even have to come to this extreme solution. The tiny military force lacks the national political capabilities that are controlled by the NTC as a result of their alliance with NATO and, now the growing financial power of the provisional government. Already, the UN, UK, France, Spain, the US and some Gulf monarchies are releasing billions of dollars in previously frozen Gaddafi funds to the NTC. And in a powerful symbol of the nature of the relationship, the first tranche of money was flown to Libya in a British fighter jet. The Canadian government, which froze aid to Palestine after Hamas was democratically elected in the Gaza Strip, is also looking to release money to the NTC as soon as possible. Meanwhile, eager to help the NTC spend all their newfound money, a conference for "Friends of Libya" will be held today in Paris. What is the purpose of the conference?

While officials are adamant Thursday is about securing political stability in Libya and doing things differently than in Iraq, French companies are planning a trade mission to get a head start on reconstruction contracts.
As well as big prospects for developing oil drilling, the end of the six-month conflict will open up big opportunities for infrastructure, construction, electric power, telecoms, water and tourism companies who are keen to challenge the privileged position enjoyed by Italian firms under Gaddafi's long rule.
The NTC has said those who took a lead role in backing their revolt will be rewarded.

I have discussed previously how China might react to being shut out of Libya. China has been pushing very aggressively into Africa and its competitive investment model has sidelined older big powers like the USA. There is no doubt that NATO's intervention into Libya is about pushing back against China - and China has made clear that it too will push back to defend its interests. This holds the danger of militarizing the new scramble for Africa, leading to more wars and more dictators, not less.

What's more, perhaps one of the most important political impacts of NATO's involvement was the conservatizing influence it has had on the politics of the struggle. In the early days there were reports of rebels undermining the state by radicalizing it - reaching out to conscript soldiers to join the uprising, setting up revolutionary councils, engaging in mass action, etc. But with the retreat of the revolution and the growing power of conservative elements in the NTC, this changed opening the door to reactionary politics, like the anti-black African racist killings by rebels that have emerged.

The dominance of relatively conservative elites and the absence of countervailing pressures skewed the politics of the rebellion. We hear of "the masses", and "solidarity". But masses can be addressed on many grounds – some reactionary. There are also many bases for solidarity – some exclusionary. The scapegoating of black workers makes sense from the perspective of elites. For them, Libya was not a society divided on class lines from which many of them had profited. It was united against a usurper inhabiting an alien compound and surviving through foreign power. Instead, the more success Gaddafi had in stabilising his regime, the more the explanation for this relied on the claim that "Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans ".
A further, unavoidable twist is the alliance with Nato. The February revolt involved hundreds of thousands of people across Libya. By early March the movement was in retreat, overseas special forces were entering Libya, and senior figures in the rebellion called for external intervention. Initially isolated, they gained credibility as Gaddafi gained ground. As a result, the initiative passed from a very large popular base to a relatively small number of armed fighters under the direction of the NTC and Nato. It was the rebel army that subsequently took the lead in persecuting black workers.

There is about to be a big scramble for contracts and Jibril, a professional neo-liberal, is likely to continue the process of privatizing state assets. If there is a rapid move to a shock doctrine model of "reconstruction" workers in Libya could see a precipitous drop in their living standards - up till now one of the highest on the continent. The exact nature of the political settlement is unclear as different factions jostle for power and influence. It's still early days. The influence of the Islamist militias has already been recognized in the draft constitution, which defines sharia as the principle source of legislation. Of course, that can mean almost anything depending on interpretation. What will be key is the balance of forces.

In Egypt, where the Mubarak military structure maintained its control, they have resisted all moves towards democratization beyond the most superficial. However, the revolution in Egypt was never derailed by the intervention of imperialism and was led from the bottom up, drawing upon a decade or more of growing activism in labour and civil society. In Libya, the more revolutionary elements were sidelined once NATO became involved. They now face not only their own version of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces - in the form of the NTC and NATO - they do so with a much weaker alternative source of leadership, a lack of civil society organizations, labour unions, etc. If the NTC feels confident to put a recent Gaddafi lackey in charge of Tripoli within hours of setting up shop and with the militias still armed, what will it do once they are disarmed and demobilized or integrated into a national army?

There is a reason why the touchstone for politicians about what not to repeat is Iraq. What bothers them is not the invasion and killing of hundreds of thousands. No, they realized what a mistake it was to dismantle the Ba'athist state. As much as possible the Gaddafi state structure will be preserved. NATO intervened in part precisely to prevent the Libyan revolution from radicalizing and establishing an organizational basis for that radicalization. They don't want any more Tunisias or Egypts were the labour insurgencies continuing to push forward the revolution after the dictator's face has been removed from billboards and airports. NATO - and the Gulf Cooperation Council - wants regimes it can do business with, regimes that are loyal and, if necessary, regimes that will put their own populations in place. In the coming days, the NTC will move as quickly as possible to achieve the goal of a stable, business friendly nation. And don't be surprised if that includes a western military presence.

Goodbye Gaddafi, Hello NATO

There will be much celebrating across Libya over the next several days even as the mop-up operations get under way. Of course, there's no guarantee that this will be over for a while. It's hard to know what kind of resistance to the rebel victory will remain - amongst regime elements and Libyan tribes that weren't allied with the rebels. But for the moment there seems to be euphoria and you can't really begrudge Libyans that excitement - their dictator has just been overthrown.

But who will replace him? That is the question that now burns in Libya. All indications are that the National Transition Council led by Mahmoud Jabril - a CIA man - will have the support of NATO in consolidating a new Libya regime. As a pre-condition to winning the military support of NATO and political recognition by NATO countries and their allies, the TNC has already agreed to maintain the central policies that had previously endeared Gaddafi to the US and Europe. Oil contracts will all be respected (though I wonder about those of China and, to a lesser extent Russia), as will treaties that make Libya the immigration gendarme of northern Africa, keeping Africans from fleeing poverty and war.

Some will want to turn the enthusiasm for the deposing of Gaddafi into a picture of revolution and liberation - a further deepening of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. But this is to miss some fundamentally different dynamics. Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt were supported by imperialism until the end. Now, of course, the US is in favour of democracy in Egypt - or rather, supports the Egyptian military council that runs the country in the name of future democracy (while jailing pro-democracy activists, trade unionists, and others). In Libya, a section of the ruling class - ironically, the one most aligned with Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam - broke from the regime early. No doubt this was rooted in the more fractious and regionalized Libyan context, whereas in Egypt tribalism plays almost no part in politics. But it mean that before the revolution could establish independent organizations the initiative was seized by opportunists, Gaddafi insiders and, ultimately, CIA/NATO bagmen.

The independent initiative of the early days was snuffed out as the revolution was subordinated to the command structures of the TNC and, in the west, those of Misurata. Even here some on the left have tried to suggest that the rivalry between Tripolitania-based Misurata and Cyrenaica-based Benghazi has some political basis, that perhaps the Misurata leadership have asserted their independence from the TNC based upon some principled opposition to imperialism or cronyism. But this is without any evidence. It is more likely part of the emerging dynamic of regional and tribal power-brokering. Certainly, the leadership in Misurata were happy to accept NATO advisors and air support. There were no complaints about the conditions imposed by NATO.

All of this means that the likely course of action now will be that a NATO-brokered agreement, using the carrot of frozen Gaddafi funds and market access along with the stick of being excluded, will establish a unified state under the control of a national unity government of various groups. If they don't fall out - as has already been happening to a certain extent, evidenced by the assassination of rebel military commander Younis - they will turn their attention to disarming the irregular militias or incorporating them into the military command structure. The norms of daily life will be resumed as quickly as possible and the state structure - minus some of the authoritarian police apparatus, which is not an insignificant thing - will remain largely intact. The TNC will continue the program of privatizations that Gaddafi had already started and will probably move to implement a more even distribution of resources across the country (Cyrenaica suffered discrimination in this regard under Gaddafi). I expect that the US military will quietly move their African Command (Africom) from West Germany to Libya now that they have a regime that is in their debt. That is an advance for imperialism. It will also increase tensions with China on the continent where it was making gains at the expense of the USA and NATO countries. I imagine that this will impact the ways in which China engages with African governments, encouraging them to strengthen the military component to counter any temptation by the west to displace China through proxies.

Will there be deeper changes - a truly free press, trade union rights, freedom of assembly and the right to form political parties? Some concessions will be expected by the population, for certain. But all of the political training and experience of the TNC & Misurata council has been in the authoritarian practices of the old Libyan regime (or of the CIA). The only guarantee will be if the Libyan people's enthusiasm for the overthrow of Gaddafi finds expression in independent organizations and mobilizations - little evidence of which presently exists. In Iraq the overthrow of Hussein has not won many of the democratic rights noted above - protesters are shot and killed, independent trade unions are outlawed, there are secret police and political prisoners aplenty. It would be naive to think that the Libyan ruling class is any nicer or that NATO has changed its stripes.

Of course, one hopes that the revolutionary councils and initiative of the early days re-emerges. But NATO and the TNC will be doing everything in their power to ensure that this doesn't happen - and they now have the initiative.

Pockets of resistance as rebels claim Tripoli - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Libyan Rebels Are NATO Patsies For A New Great Game In Africa

Today: UK PM Cameron with Mustafa Abdul Jalil,
head of rebel TNC & former Gaddafi Justice Minister

In the first days following the pro-democracy demonstrations and then uprising in Libya, it would have taken a hard heart indeed to not support the revolt. While Muammar Gaddafi might once, in distant memory, have been able to claim some sort of fidelity to anti-imperialism and to the social development of Libya, those days were long gone. His regime was now taking money from Europe to act as its southern gendarme against illegal African immigration to Europe and was an enthusiastic partner in the War on Terror. It's no accident that arch-war monger, former British PM Tony Blair, was announced by Gaddafi's son to be a $1 million+ per year consultant to the regime. The domestic economic policies of the regime were increasingly neo-liberal and his son - and likely heir to the leadership of Libya - Saif al-Islam was the Libyan version of Gamal Mubarak - a designer suit wearing playboy and enthusiastic privatizer. The Libya regime was now just one more western supported petro-dictatorship in the Arab world.

What's more, that revolt was obviously part of the wave of revolts sweeping the Arab world and that had already toppled Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. In Bahrain it looked like the pro-democracy movement was on the verge of victory. In Yemen it was well on its way. There were even stirrings in Syria and large protests in Iraq.

But things have changed a lot in the last four months.

The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia continue to deepen, with strike waves and the explosive growth of independent unions in Egypt. In Syria, the revolt against Assad continues unabated and, impossibly, grows even in the face of terrible repression. In Yemen, President Salah clings to power - though for what reason is unclear since all but his family have abandoned him - driving the country to the brink of civil war. In Bahrain, with US blessing, the Saudi military helped to crush the pro-democracy movement in a wave of repression and purges that continues.

And in Libya we've passed the 100 day mark since NATO started it's "humanitarian bombing" mission to "protect civilians." What has become clear is that while the revolt was rooted in the real and legitimate discontent of the Libyan people, that movement was quickly corralled and contained by forces with another agenda. Opportunists from the Libyan regime, senior figures who had happily gone along with the torture and repression of dissidents, suddenly "joined" the movement, forming the Transitional National Council. The popular elements, including the local committees that sprang up in the heat of the revolt were pushed aside. The struggle against the Gaddafi regime was transformed from a social struggle against a repressive neo-liberal dictatorship, to a military struggle between two factions of the regime.

Yesterday: Former UK PM Tony Blair with Gaddafi

No longer was it about an uprising and about winning rank and file soldiers to support the revolt and break with Gaddafi - a pattern that marked the early stages of the revolt. It now became about defeating Gaddafi-controlled troops in a military contest in order to elevate the former regime figures to the leadership - with policies that differed little from Saif the "reformer". But Gaddafi and his allies still controlled two-thirds of the country geographically, a significant amount of popular support and two-thirds of the state infrastructure, meaning that the former regime figures were outgunned and outmanned. With no apparent political strategy to deepen the revolt, they ended up in the arms of NATO, begging for the alliance's military support.

But the support of NATO, Europe and the USA comes at a heavy price. That price is clear - the first thing that was demanded of the TNC was that they agree to respect the oil contracts signed by the Gaddafi regime, including its terms. It is also likely that it will mean accepting a US base on Libyan soil - the US African Command (Africom) has been refused by every African country and so is stationed in Germany. This is a strategically important beach-head for the Americans, who feel increasingly squeezed by the Chinese, who are making substantial inroads into Africa - ironically, by spending money on infrastructure that was accumulated by selling Chinese goods to America and Europe (paid for with debt that is held by the Chinese). Prior to the revolt against Gaddafi, there were more than 30,000 Chinese workers and specialists in Libya attached to the sizeable Chinese oil investments. An article in The Globe & Mail last November gives a flavour of China's push into Africa:

On Monday, Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping finished a two-day visit to Botswana in which he signed financing deals worth millions in infrastructure and energy development. Two days earlier, he’d made major deals in oil-rich Angola. On Wednesday in Ethiopia, Chinese private and state investors opened a $27-million leather-goods factory that will employ 500 Ethiopians; the same investment fund is also building cement plants and an airport hotel nearby. On Thursday, Sudan, which imports 80 per cent of its food, announced plans to quintuple its current wheat cultivation with backing from Chinese and Persian Gulf investors, increasing its acres under cultivation by 25 per cent a year for a decade.

And this is not an atypical week. The Chinese claim to have more than $1.5-billion invested in Africa now, up from $210-million; they employ at least 300,000 Africans in their own countries (and, increasingly, import African workers to the cities of the Pearl River Delta) and have built 60,000 kilometres of roads and 3.5 million kilowatts worth of power stations there – far more than any other country. Last year, China replaced the United States as the largest trading partner of South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, and annual China-Africa trade topped $100-billion for the first time this year.

Russian interests are also under threat in the region as the US, UK and the EU jockey to make the maximum gains from the upheaval of the Arab Spring. It's no surprise that Russia has opposed intervention, not from any principled anti-imperialism - as the Chechnyans and Georgians could attest - but rather out of the fear of losing their toehold in the region, mediated through America's enemies (i.e. those countries whose policies aren't subordinate to America's interests) like Syria and Iran.

What is going on in Libya now must be seen in this light - as a hijacked revolution that now plays its part in a new Great Game between imperial powers jockeying for position in Africa and the Middle East, primarily China and Russia vs NATO & the USA. Not only is this game a dangerous one that could exacerbate tensions between the imperial powers, none of whom is likely to look kindly on the loss of infrastructure and capital investments, strategic relationships, etc. It is also a threat to the whole process of democratic revolution throughout the Arab world.

On the other hand, if NATO loses in Libya, it will be a massive blow to the ability of the alliance to project power beyond Europe's borders. The recent criticisms by outgoing US Defence Chief Gates makes clear that there are already tensions and frustrations within the alliance as a result of the unwinnable NATO war in Afghanistan. Defeat in Libya will be another nail in the coffin of one of the pre-eminent tools of the United States to spread its empire, alongside its junior European partner. It will also be a defeat for the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by the repressive Saudi regime, who have thrown in their lot with the emerging project to use the upheaval to reconfigure relations in the region - defeating thorns in the side like Syria's Assad (who is a Shi'ite and who supports Hezbollah, a Shi'ite movement) and the bombastic Gaddafi, who has offended the Gulf emirs more than once with his anti-colonial rhetoric.

Chances are there will be no "good" solution forthcoming in the short-term. Probably NATO will attempt to save face by declaring a limited victory via establishing the partition of Libya between Cyrenaica in the east and Tripolitania in the west. Cyrenaica will, of course, be a NATO client regime "protected" by the permanent presence of NATO/US troops and military forces. A victory by Gaddafi is also unlikely to bring democracy to the Libyan people. The real hope lies with the further deepening of the Tunisian revolution on Libya's western border and the Egyptian revolution on the eastern border.

In the meantime, the best bad outcome is for a defeat for NATO, which is a much bigger threat to world peace and democracy than Gaddafi has ever been. NATO is waging war in Afghanistan, to guarantee a strategic advantage against China on its western border and to encircle Iran to the west of Afghanistan. NATO countries led the war against Iraq - predominantly the US and UK, of course. The UK was the first country to rush into the Middle East after the Egyptian revolution to hawk more weapons to frightened dictatorships. The US, of course, is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world. The Libyans, at present, are not deployed anywhere outside of Libya and under Gaddafi were involved in or initiated three wars since 1977 - two of those were ostensibly anti-colonial: against a French neo-colonial regime in Chad and the other a protest against the Egyptian dictatorship's peace treaty with Israel. This is not at all to justify Libyan military interventions - let alone its corrupt and oppressive social and economic policies - but to make clear that Gaddafi's regime are not even in the same league as the US/NATO and, with a population of 6 million, can't even be described as a regional imperialist country.

France confirms arming Libyan rebels - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Is It The End Of NATO?

I suggested the other day that NATO was basically a zombie and that they had already lost - at least in terms of intended political consequences - the war in Libya. It hadn't occurred to me that within a few days there would be infighting, including between core European members of the alliance. Yet that's exactly what we're seeing. Amr Moussa, former head of the Arab League and a big proponent of the original operation is quoted in today's Guardian newspaper as calling for an immediate ceasefire. Moussa is angling for a kick at the Egyptian presidency this year or next and the optics just don't look very good of European fighter jets dropping bombs on an Arab country.

More seriously, Italy is now calling for an immediate ceasefire, while France is calling for an intensification. Italy - along with Germany - has the biggest European economic presence inside Libya. With it looking very unlikely that NATO will be able to oust Gaddafi, those two countries stand the most to lose if Libya retaliates by seizing the property of companies from belligerent countries. Italy has major oil investments in Libya.

If Italy's call for a ceasefire is picked up again by Germany, this could easily create an unstoppable momentum towards a solution that leaves the country looking exactly like it did before NATO came in and blew the hell out of the place - except that Gaddafi's hand has likely been strengthened by his ability to pose as an anti-imperialist. And if NATO leaves Libya with its tail between its legs, this will be the second in a row failure on the battlefield, after Afghanistan. The latter war is looking increasingly like it is starting to wind-down and that a settlement of some sort will be reached with the Taliban, allowing them into government or giving them control of part of the south of the country (according to commentary on Asia Times Online, this was the American proposal, which the Taliban rejected).

NATO has no pretensions of being like the UN, some kind of world parliament (where the big powers get a veto). It is solely a military alliance. But if the military alliance couldn't whup the widely despised dictator of a developing country with a population of six million; and if it can't subdue a ragtag insurgency led by a poorly armed and mostly illiterate guerilla army - then what the hell kind of military alliance is it? Not one that is of any use to America, I'm guessing. Already, departing Defence Secretary Gates has questioned the value of NATO. Look for some tedious soul-searching in the coming months. With the likely default in Greece - potentially a fatal blow to the euro - the discrediting of another venerable European institution is the last thing the ruling classes of Europe need.

Libya deaths trigger rift over NATO campaign - Africa - Al Jazeera English

NATO Has Already Lost In Libya

I'm certainly not one to believe that imperialist agendas, hideous in life, won't rise zombie-like from the grave. The present air war by NATO to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is proof enough of that. The failure of NATO in Afghanistan, after ten years, to defeat the ragtag guerilla forces of the Taliban was surely more than enough proof that the cold war alliance was both American sock-puppet and a paper tiger. Heck, even the outgoing US Defence Secretary thinks so, saying that NATO has a "dim, if not dismal" future in his final policy speech.

And, yet, NATO managed to rouse its sickly self to attack Libya. First of all, if anyone has any illusions that NATO has any interest in Arab democracy, I would point to the fact that the west has supported every dictator in the region, no matter how brutal. They continue to support the Saudi monarchy that is so repressive it can't even bring itself to let women drive cars. The US gave Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak close to $3 billion every single year - not for economic aid or food or to help build schools - but directly to the security apparatus that beat and tortured any democratic movements that dared to show their face in public.

No, the only reason that NATO is in Libya is the attempt to get ahead of the wave of revolutions, the redirect and control them with an eye to turning to the advantage of the US and its allies. They saw the upheavals in unreliable allies like Libya and ostensible enemies like Syria as an opportunity to replace those regimes with ones that would be more pliant to western wishes and corporate control - as well as to opening space for Israel, widely despised as a colonial usurper, oppressor and racist state. Meantime, they have bent their efforts to sparing as much of the dictatorships that are America's consistent allies, like Bahrain and, up to the last minute, Yemen.

Libya's embattled uprising seemed a perfect opportunity, with memories of the demonization of Gaddafi still strong in the western mind from the 80s and early 90s. And the uprising's "official" organs very quickly came to be dominated by regime defectors who, only the day before, were happily repressing the Libya people as part of the Gaddafi regime. This domination was ensured with air support from the west and money from the Gulf dictatorships, including the enlightened despotism in Qatar.

And yet, this attempt to subvert the revolutions through military intervention is already a dismal failure. Even if, some months from now, Gaddafi is defeated and the Transitional National Council takes power with NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council's blessing, what movement in the middle east is going to want the kind of "help" that has been visited upon Libya. It will take years of rebuilding to repair the infrastructure destroyed by NATO bombs. And people will look to Tunisia and Egypt and see revolutions that proceeded without having to disintegrate into civil war. Even in Yemen, where Saleh has held on most tenaciously, the destruction and death has been at a much more modest level than in Libya.

The proof of this wariness is clear from Syria where the opposition movement has been clear that it has no interest in NATO "help" in overthrowing Assad. In fact, while Assad is no less entrenched than Gaddafi and civil society no less truncated by the dictatorship, the tenacity and bravery of the movement is clearly eroding the regime and its military apparatus bit by bit. And the movement isn't under the control of opportunist former regime figures but, rather, local coordinating committees that have real popular support and participation.

It's likely true, as commentators like Pepe Escobar have argued, that the Saudi regime is funnelling money to friendly Sunni groups in Syria to strengthen the hand of sectarian opposition to the Allawite (Shia) Assad's control of Syria. But this is not the driving nor dominant force in the Syrian movement that is marked by slogans calling for inter-faith, regional and ethnic solidarity.

The result is that NATO faces a lose-lose situation in Libya. The possibility of appearing as an attractive alternative for the restive populations of North Africa and the Middle East has been dissipated by the failure to win a clear and quick victory in Libya. NATO's political credibility has also been undermined by the murderous and repressive actions of Israel against the Palestinian Arab population over which it rules with carte blanche by the Americans. And, yet, if NATO pulls out of Libya it will face an even bigger defeat than the one ever looming in Afghanistan: Libya is closer to Italy than Toronto is to Buffalo, New York. If NATO can't win a war in its own backyard what good is it? This will be compounded if the Syrians overthrow their regime without "help" from NATO.

With the Egyptian revolt spreading to Greece and Spain, it's quite possible that the debacle in Libya will turn what western leaders thought was an opportunity into further crisis. And that is good news for the Arab people of the Middle East and the cause of democracy.

Defiant Gaddafi vows to defeat NATO - Africa - Al Jazeera English