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.

Gaza & The Not So Slow Decline Of Israel

Not alone any more: Egyptian protestors in Tahrir last year

In some ways what just went down in Gaza was business as usual. Israel provoked a mini-war with Gaza killing a leading Hamas politician (who was, in fact, the chief negotiator for a long term ceasefire with Israel) after engaging in its "normal" policies of drone flights, missile strikes and, of course, economy-crippling embargoes. In the process they killed some Palestinians, primarily civilians, many of them children. The USA publicly backed every act of brutality and every lie of the Israeli government and military. Hamas, and other factions of the Palestinian resistance were hopelessly outgunned, while Abbas and the PLO were craven, irrelevant and despised by many Palestinians for being so. Most of the Israeli public cheered on the IDF and hoped for more Palestinian death and destruction.

And yet, things couldn't have been much different from one, let alone three decades ago. In the face of changes in the Middle East, not least the Arab Spring that kicked off last year, Israel is a European settler-colony in decline.

The changes are in many ways rooted in the economic developments of the Arab world that have pulled literally tens of millions of people into the cities - creating more workers, more literate people, more connected people. Turkey alone is industrializing with China-like speed, transforming the country and increasing its weight in the region. Alongside this has been a growing political awakening that received significant boosts from the two Iraq wars, the second Palestinian intifada and the indefatigability of Hizbullah in Lebanon. And the post-war, post-colonial set-ups, which often saw significant concessions to the masses by nationalist anti-colonial regimes – the Ba'ath party in Syria and Iraq, Nasser in Egypt, etc. – has been replaced by rapacious, go it alone neo-liberalism, creating resentment and class polarization.

Of course, this hasn't only affected Israel's standing as a few Arab dictators could woefully tell you - soon to be joined by Assad in Syria (I give him three months, tops). The accumulation of all those changes I indicated above were, at some point, bound to come together in an explosion. And what an explosion it has turned out to be. The Middle East is going through the kind of historic transformation that happens once in a century.

But neither has Israel been spared from this process. In many ways it had been spared from the more dramatic impacts of what was going on around it for the simple reason that it is the recipient of billions of economy boosting dollars in "foreign aid" from the USA (et al). It also receives the most advanced weaponry on the planet - often for free - from the USA. In fundamentals, Israel is a Sparta, an armed camp or, if you will, the USA's largest military base. Still, sooner or later, it was bound to catch up.

The first signs of how things were changing came from the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 (though I'm certain people could trace it back even further). Here was the IDF - an undefeated and feared military. It had launched wars before - pretty much every war, other than 1973 - and it had always won. In 2006, while it destroyed villages and neighbourhoods, and killed over 1000 people, it was forced to flee back to Israel. Hizbullah showed the whole of the Middle East (and the world) that Israel could be defeated and humiliated.

One year later Israel and the USA tried to depose Hamas in Gaza, though it had been chosen democratically in an election that was imposed upon Gaza - again, by the USA and Israel. And just as their forced election blew up in their faces, so did the attempt to foment a Fatah-led coup d'etat. Fatah was too corrupt and weak and Hamas simply drove them out of Gaza. In anger at their own stupidity and foreign policy failure, Israel imposed a near-total blockade of Gaza's economy. The idea was to put the Palestinians "on a diet" to cripple their ability to resist.

One year after that, in 2008, Israel invaded Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, wreaking wide destruction and killing over 1,000 Palestinians - again, mostly civilians. Israel's goal was to destroy Hamas - not stop rocket fire, which Hamas had effectively policed after agreeing a truce with Israel, which Israel repeatedly broke. Not only did Israel fail to dislodge Hamas, they generated an enormous amount of global criticism, which helped to create the movement to break the Gaza blockade. That movement spurred Turkey to break all ties with Israel, once its only Muslim ally in the region.

Now, here we are in 2012, still in the throes of the Arab Spring, which has deposed Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, once the region's greatest protector of the Israel/US hegemony in the Middle East. Israel is more isolated than it has perhaps ever been, with no regional friends whatsoever (though Morsi in Egypt is more moderate than his supporters and also more open to accepting the Camp David peace settlement as well - popularly hated in Egypt). This time Israel couldn't even invade Gaza. And, in proportion, as the popular voices in Israel became more shrill, with calls to wipe Gaza off the map and impose a Holocaust on the Palestinians, etc. Israel was more constrained from doing so.

Israel started this latest war by murdering Hamas' military leader and chief negotiator. And they have ended it by allowing Hamas to demonstrate that it is growing more powerful, more able to strike inside Israel. They have also agreed a ceasefire - that Israel will break, like all others - that includes an end to the blockade and the policy of targeted killings inside Gaza. Moreover, Egypt gave no commitment to stop the flow of arms into Gaza. It's no wonder that Netanyahu is being assailed from all sides. He presided over another humiliation that has left their comprador ally, Abbas, even more despised and discredited.

With this secular decline of Israel's role and power in the region, one wonders how long the Americans will continue to sponsor their favourite regional gendarme. What will be the next crisis for Israel and will it lead to its further isolation?

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.

The Syrian Endgame: Bye Bye Bashar?

Who won't celebrate the (probably nasty) end of Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria? This is a regime that has suppressed pretty much all forms of internal dissent and democratic participation and ruled with an iron fist for the better part of the last 40 years. There are no independent trade unions, no independent media. There are secret police, pro-regime militias ready to kill all opponents and torture chambers aplenty. When last there was a revolt against this stifling regime, in Hama in 1981, it ended with the regime bombarding the civilian population, killing somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 people.

This is a vile regime that deserves to be sent to the ashcan of history. And the sooner the better. Luckily, it looks like that day is growing closer with the present offensive by rebel forces in Damascus and elsewhere, following the spectacularly successful operation against the Syrian cabinet that left the Defense Minister, Deputy Defense Minister (and Assad's brother-in-law), Assistant Vice President and Minister of the Interior dead (and celebrations in the streets). But it has been (and will continue to be for some time) a hard and blood struggle. Back in February I compared the Egyptian and Syrian revolution and wrote the following:

In Syria, [as opposed to Egypt, the] process of "gestation" only really began a year ago with the first protests against Assad's regime. Of course there have been struggles and uprisings in the past - most notoriously the uprising in Hama in 1982 that led to a massacre of somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 people. There are opposition movements and parties as well. But the brutal suppression in Hama led to decades of quiet relative to Egypt where there was no comparable massacre (though there was certainly repression, torture and even extra-judicial killings). There is also an important component that is a side effect of the pressure of imperialism and Zionism on Syria. Syria is a "pariah state", which doesn't tell us anything about its character - democratic, liberal, or authoritarian - only that it doesn't bend its knee with suitable rapidity to American whims and Israeli bullying. That pressure - just as in Cuba, Iran or other countries that have historically resisted US imperialism - creates pressure for a "union of necessity" amongst progressive and nationalist forces. The present movement has to therefore achieve the first condition of Lenin's formula - the undermining of the unity of the ruling class - as well as uniting the broadest section of the population against the dictatorship of Assad, undermining the idea of there being any union of necessity with the Assad regime in order to resist imperialism. It seems that this is beginning to take place and even to gather steam as the incredibly brave Syrian people continue to broaden and deepen their revolution in the face of regime brutality. It is likely, then, that when Assad finally goes out the revolution will begin in an entirely different place, with much deeper networks of revolutionary mobilization than in Egypt (though the exact character of those networks, their connection to the workplaces, their political program for the democratic development of the nation, etc. remains to be seen).

In the seven months since I wrote those words the process of regime decomposition - measured by a loss of cohesion, growing defections from the lowest to the highest levels of the state machine - has proceeded apace. As well, the revolutionary leadership and movement also seems to have matured, both in terms of organization and politics. For several months the Syrian National Council, darlings of the west, were able to use the prestige of their international supporters to make ideological inroads into the movement. But the growing confidence of the revolution inside Syria (where the SNC has little presence), combined with the craven careerism of the SNC's leading figures and willingness to go cap in hand to the USA and Europe in return for foreign intervention, undermined their base inside the country. The recent conference in Doha of SNC types was marred by literal brawling and was boycotted by the Free Syrian Army and the Local Coordination Committees, which provide the political and military leadership on the ground. There are no longer any calls for foreign military intervention - the revolution feels its own strength and doesn't feel the need for it any longer.

Will the Syrian revolution win? Will the present offensive lead to the collapse of the regime? Who's to say but there can be no doubt that the uprising has matured and is making every effort to storm the heavens. Even if they don't bring down the regime this time or with this push into Damascus, Syrian Ba'athism will be forever changed, its prestige damaged, its state weakened.

There are those on the left who are blinded by the Assad regime's putative anti-imperialism and "progressive" character. Others who can't see past the fact that the Americans (contra the Russians) are saying things in support of the opposition - or, rather, saying things against Assad w/o supporting the opposition within Syria. Or the fact that the sectarian Gulf monarchies want to see the overthrow of a Shiite dominated regime that has been a thorn in their side. These leftists draw the conclusion that to support the revolution in Syria (or to be making a revolution in Syria) is to be "objectively" in league with imperialism. Of course, the old "objectively" tag was always used by Stalinists to smear opponents of their crappy politics and there is no shortage of that type of politic floating around the left, sadly. But it is worth answering the claim here in brief.

First off, there has never been a modern revolt in which imperialism has not tried to turn it to its advantage. The German Kaiser tried to aid the Irish rebellion against British rule. Did that make the Irish rebellion not worth supporting? Germany sent Lenin and other leading Russian revolutionaries back to Russia through its territories in the hopes of weakening their World War One enemy. The classic film Lawrence of Arabia is precisely about the British using the just discontent amongst the Arab population to help defeat the Ottoman Empire in World War One and replace it with their own, which was then overthrown by the anti-colonial revolts that were supported by the Soviet empire as it tried to weaken their American/British competitors in the region. Imperialism is always maneuvering to its advantage.

Does anyone really think that the Russians give a damn about Syrian self-determination - rather than their strategically important Mediterranean naval base in Syria (the only presence that Moscow has in the Middle East)? Or that the Americans care about democracy - as they back the Saudi suppression of the movement in Bahrain?

Whoever thinks that revolutions should wait until the moment in time when imperialism won't try to take advantage of their revolt is telling the oppressed to wait till the Kingdom of Heaven arrives on earth. It will never happen this side of the worldwide destruction of imperialism.

To be frankly honest, I think that half of the problem - besides the nostalgia for a "progressive state" like the former Soviet Union (cough, cough, Gulags, cough cough) - is that the left is infected with xenophobia and Islamophobia. The Syrian revolutionaries say Allahu Akbar and don't sing The Internationale. They want to see revolutions that are steeped in the European Enlightenment tradition and discourse, which sound and look European. Get over it. Marxism has a place in the Arab revolts - and the growing importance of a labour revolt in Egypt's continuing revolutionary process speaks to this - but it won't sound and look like Bastille Day or May Day necessarily. If it is to be a living revolutionary process, it will have to be rooted in the day to day experience and culture of the indigenous populations in the Middle East. As a Marxist, I celebrate that. Ideologies that isolate themselves from the influx of fresh experience and change become dogma - perhaps comforting to repeat to yourself like a rosary in tough times but not much use for changing the world.

Long Live The Syrian Revolution!

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'

Every Revolution Has Its Road

I was reading about the terrible, terrible tragedy in Egypt last night and today - 74 dead at a soccer match - and the ensuing mass protests and national explosion of anger. And I was struck by how the battle is unfolding in Egypt, the way that the military dictatorship maneuvers and shifts as it tries to undermine the revolution. Even more, I was impressed at how spectacularly and immediately this brutal ruse, this strategy of tension meant to make the people wish for the return of the recently lifted emergency laws, failed completely. There can be hardly anyone in Egypt who doesn't believe that this was a deliberate policy meant to punish the Ultras, who are widely seen as key element of the fighting forces of the revolution.

The massacre of the Al Ahly Ultras took place on the anniversary of the Battle of the Camel, which was an example of this same strategy in play but during the days prior to the overthrow of Mubarak. As the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt noted in a leaflet released immediately following this week's massacre, this was a warning and a reminder from the military that they can still mobilize killers, just as they did during that battle. Of course, the military lost the Battle of the Camela and their thugs were routed. This time the Ultras were trapped inside a stadium, separated from the mass of revolutionaries amongst whom they have played such a prominent role. The Ultras could be punished for their high profile defence of the revolution and uncompromising opposition to the military junta.

Of course, it is already clear that this attack on the revolution has blown up in the faces of the military as tens of thousands have mobilized and attacked the hated Ministry of the Interior in Cairo and more symbols of the military throughout Egypt. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, held in such high esteem in the days following the fall of Mubarak, has by now almost completely used up its prestige amongst the Egyptian people. Their tactics, tested and tried over years and years of dictatorship are outdated and transparent now that the Egyptian people are mobilized and thinking critically about who and how their nation will be governed. The old ways no longer work. And that's a good thing.

But this event also made me think about how every revolution is an interaction of the general and the specific. The Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote that a revolution occurs when the ruling class is split and can no longer rule in the old way and the oppressed and exploited will no longer accept being ruled in the old way. That is a general rule that has a certain obvious - but worth stating - truth to it. However, the way that it unfolds is specific to every revolution, rooted in the particular historical experience of each nation, region and so on.

So, we see with Egypt there was a long period of gestation for the revolution, ten years or more, in which the forces and ideological groundwork was laid for the revolution by the movement in solidarity with the Second Palestinian Intifada and the movement against the war in Iraq in 2003. This anti-imperialist ferment found its counterpart in the growing resistance to capitalist austerity inside of the workplaces, with growing strike waves and the first hint of unions independent of those controlled by the state. And, finally, the meeting point of these two oppositional movements occurred in the democracy movement, typified by the Kefaya (Enough) movement in the first decade of this century. This long gestation meant that the ground work was laid at both ends of the class spectrum - at the top there was a sense that the dictatorship was stifling capitalist development and creating instability. At the bottom there was a growing sense of confidence that the regime could be taken on and even that concessions could be won.

In Syria, on the other hand, that process of "gestation" only really began a year ago with the first protests against Assad's regime. Of course there have been struggles and uprisings in the past - most notoriously the uprising in Hama in 1982 that led to a massacre of somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 people. There are opposition movements and parties as well. But the brutal suppression in Hama led to decades of quiet relative to Egypt where there was no comparable massacre (though there was certainly repression, torture and even extra-judicial killings). There is also an important component that is a side effect of the pressure of imperialism and Zionism on Syria. Syria is a "pariah state", which doesn't tell us anything about its character - democratic, liberal, or authoritarian - only that it doesn't bend its knee with suitable rapidity to American whims and Israeli bullying. That pressure - just as in Cuba, Iran or other countries that have historically resisted US imperialism - creates pressure for a "union of necessity" amongst progressive and nationalist forces. The present movement has to therefore achieve the first condition of Lenin's formula - the undermining of the unity of the ruling class - as well as uniting the broadest section of the population against the dictatorship of Assad, undermining the idea of there being any union of necessity with the Assad regime in order to resist imperialism. It seems that this is beginning to take place and even to gather steam as the incredibly brave Syrian people continue to broaden and deepen their revolution in the face of regime brutality. It is likely, then, that when Assad finally goes out the revolution will begin in an entirely different place, with much deeper networks of revolutionary mobilization than in Egypt (though the exact character of those networks, their connection to the workplaces, their political program for the democratic development of the nation, etc. remains to be seen).

There is a further sense in which the revolution in each country - following certain general principles, such as the important role of the working class in order for the revolution to achieve its goals - has a specificity. Every revolution has key turning points, key battles. These are moments of contingency and even historical accident. A religious or cultural celebration can become for reasons that are hard to fathom - certainly from the outside - focal points for advances and retreats of the revolution. In Egypt the anniversary of the revolution marked a huge re-awakening of the revolutionary forces as people took stock of where they were after a year of the revolutionary process and decided that they weren't far enough. And the elections, which in other revolutions without the depth of the Egyptian, have been the moment of the eclipsing of popular mobilization and its shift to the realm of "professional" politics, in Egypt became instead a test of the depth of the revolution's transformation of the country. Rather than accepting the parliamentary terms of debate, the opening of parliament became an opportunity to raise the demands of the revolution and insist that the elected representative implement it. It also increased the pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood to pick sides in the revolutionary struggle, leading to further fragmentation as the leadership tries to dampen expectations without being seen as total sell-outs (which is the growing perception).

This present massacre and battle is another example of a contingent specificity. It requires the particular popularity of football that exists in Egypt, along with the existence of a politicized fan base, in the form of the Ultras, et al. The choice by the military leadership to pursue a big defeat against the Ultras and the response of the broader masses to that massacre is specific. I am no fan of sports and, in general, I think that most spectator sports plays a reactionary role, instilling notions of thuggish competition with opposing teams and cultivating notions of imaginary unity between classes over trivial commonalities, such as place of residence. But that role is frequently challenged and undermined by the masses themselves, such as with the Ultras, or even in Canada, with the Richard Riot of 1955 by Montreal Canadiens fans, which was an expression of the growing demand by francophone Quebecoises for their national and linguistic rights. It was, in many ways, a prelude to the Quiet Revolution of the early 60s and, later, the rise of the PQ and the explosion of strikes and radicalization in Quebec.

These sorts of contingencies and "accidents" are one of the reasons why revolutions and rising class conflict are hard for rulers to manage. Once the pandora's box of struggle has been opened, it often takes many years to put it back, requiring a series of battles, none of which will be decisive but each of which could reverse all of the gains of the ruling class. They never know when they will make a fateful misstep and launch the struggle to a higher level - as opposed to creating more passivity and acceptance. It creates a growing sense of "walking on eggshells" that also increase the tension and uncertainty inside the ruling class. When anything can blow up in your face there is inevitably bickering about what to do. And such bickering can increase the confidence of those at the bottom to impose their own solution.

To bring it back to Egypt, the failure of the football massacre to generate a pro-policing response or to cow the Ultras and their allies could easily lead to a further fracturing of the state machinery. Already the state governor in Port Said (where the game and massacre took place) has been forced to resign, along with the head of security and the entire board of the football association. Everyone, even the Muslim Brotherhood see this event as an intentional act of vengeance against the Ultras. If SCAF were intending to test the resolve of the revolutionaries, they have gotten their answer. My guess is that it wasn't the one they were hoping for.

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.

Year One Of The Egyptian Revolution

There will be gobs and gobs of text filling the pages, websites and on air coverage today about the 1 year anniversary of the start of the Egyptian revolution. A lot of it, particularly in North America, will be stupid, low level stuff - fears of the Islamists taking power, etc etc. Very little of it will have a deeper sense of the continuing dynamic heart of the revolutionary process that is unfolding in Egypt and which will likely continue to unfold over the next several years. I'd hate to be one to join in the stupidity and there is also lots and lots of excellent coverage out there, including eyewitness coverage on the ground in Tahrir. So, I will just summarize what I think are the three or four main points that are most important and often forgotten or avoided.

1) The Egyptian revolution is the most important political event since the fall of the former USSR. Because Egypt is an ally, in particular its military leadership who receive $1.3 billion, there is considerably less enthusiasm for bigging up the Egyptian revolution than there was the collapse of the rival Soviet empire in 89-91. But let there be no mistake, the revolution in Egypt - and throughout the region, lest we forget that there are active revolutionary processes still taking place in Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, etc - will profoundly reshape the world and the political alignments in a way no less profound than 1989. If it reaches its full potential - hell, if it reaches half its potential - this will be the biggest blow to US imperialism since Vietnam (in a different way of course) and perhaps larger since the Middle East is much more strategic to US interests.

2) This ain't over by a long shot. The fall of Mubarak was really just a beginning. It reconfigured the balance of class and political forces inside of Egypt in a profound way but the old regime is still in control. And the revolution, though it ebbs and flows, is nowhere near to exhausting itself. There are challenges for sure - for both sides - but there will be an extended period of jockeying and realignment that takes place over the next few years. Watch, in this next phase, for the Muslim Brotherhood, now in control of Parliament to face increasing challenges as their very moderate leadership fail to deliver on the aspirations unleashed by the revolution and they increasingly try to put an end to the revolutionary process. If the left is smart and works with the most militant and active sections of the Brotherhood, particularly the youth, I expect to see some splits (rather than just individuals as has been the case up to now, even if there have been large numbers of individuals) of significant size that move towards a position that Egypt needs a second revolution.

3) The class struggle is key. All eyes are on Tahrir, which has incredible symbolic power in the revolution. That is why the generals have tried to so hard to discredit the Tahrir sit-ins. But Tahrir is just the symbol. The real power of the revolution has always been with the very large working class in Egypt. It was when the working class moved into open struggle with an explosive strike wave that the generals gave Mubarak the shove. And it has been the ebbing and flowing of the strike waves over the past year that have won de facto trade union rights, built an independent union movement of hundreds of thousands practically overnight (no small thing - it makes them the first and largest mass democratic organizations in the country) and forced issues onto the agenda like a maximum and minimum wage, the right to strike and protest, etc. As the revolutionary process continues and matures, watch for the growing importance of the labour movement in Egypt and its spokespeople to become the high profile leaders of the revolution.

4) What happens in Egypt will determine the fate of the struggle elsewhere. We know that the revolution that began in Tunisia lit a fuse that spread to Egypt and then throughout the region. In Yemen there are now strikes in the military against the defense minister, a relative of the recently resigned president. In Syria all signs indicate that the state is beginning to disintegrate with shelling of rebel neighbourhoods in the capital city of Damascus taking place, as well as strikes and sit-ins around the country. But Greece is right next door to all this. And Italy and Spain are right across the water. If the revolution deepens and becomes clearly a class revolution against austerity and neoliberalism that starts to win important and visible victories this can't but inspire a spread of enthusiasm and tactics to Europe. Already, the Occupy movement and the indignados movement in Spain have to be seen as directly inspired by Egypt's Tahrir movement. If the working class takes centre stage in Egypt multiply the Tahrir effect by ten.

With all that in mind, I think it's an understatement to say that we live in exciting times. Happy Egyptian Revolution Day!

Taking Sides In Syria

The article below is a reprint of a longer article by Simon Assaf, a British-Lebanese socialist, that will appear in the upcoming issue of the British magazine Socialist Review. It's an excellent overview of the history of Syria from its founding following World War One, up to the present round of resistance. It's also an excellent response to some anti-imperialists who fear that the revolt in Syria could play into the hands of the US, Saudia Arabia and Israel.


The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were hailed as a defining moment in the Arab world. Both revolutions, as well as the ongoing struggles in Yemen and Bahrain, are widely seen as major setbacks for regimes allied to western imperialism, and their downfall marked a massive reversal for the US and Israel.

The uprising in Libya, and Nato intervention in what was a genuine and popular rebellion, raised the possibility that imperialism could not only survive these revolutions, but in some cases emerge stronger, or as strong as before. Although the lines between popular rebellion and western intervention were blurred in Libya, in Syria the consensus over the Arab Spring has broken down. Those who found themselves on the same side over Egypt and Tunisia, have suddenly found sharp disagreement over the movement for change in Syria.

At the heart of this disagreement is Syria's opposition to imperialism and the dangers of the country becoming another failed revolution at the mercy of the western powers. What attitude should revolutionaries take towards the Syrian movement, and how should we assess a regime that, although the victim of imperialism, has unleashed harsh repression on those who have from the onset demanded modest reforms?

Imperialism's long history in Syria
The modern Syrian state was born out of the first sustained Arab rebellion against the carve-up of the Middle East by Britain and France following the First World War. The “Bilad al-Sham”, literally the lands of the north, is a geographical area of Syria that once included Palestine in the south, and Alexandretta in the north (now in Turkey).

The original Anglo-French plan was to divide geographical Syria into a patchwork of states that would be too weak to resist colonial rule. The southern regions, now Palestine and Jordan, were handed over to Britain, while the northern regions were to be divided into Christian, Alawi, Sunni and Druze states (part of the many religious communities in geographic Syria).

In 1925 a popular rebellion that began in the Druze regions of Syria quickly encompassed the whole of the country. The rebellion gave birth to Arab nationalist movement that partially succeeded in stopping French plans. Although France succeeded in creating "Christian Lebanon" — a sectarian state that included areas with large Muslim populations — it failed in the rest of Syria.

The Syrian national movement succeeded in ending French rule, but this movement also reflected the contradictions inside Syrian society. The leadership of the national movement was an alliance of feudal lords who had recently gained ownership of communal village lands, and a merchant class that found its markets destroyed by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire — the former rulers of geographic Syria. At its base were peasants, craftsmen, workers and the urban poor who saw independence as a chance to transform the country.

In the period following formal independence in 1944 the old classes became locked in a struggle with the movement from below that coalesced around Communist, socialist and radical Arab nationalist parties. The Baath party emerged as the dominant force after forging an alliance with a socialist movement among the peasantry, and winning some support among industrial workers.

The new rulers ended the stalemate by breaking the hold of the feudal lords and merchant classes, then muzzling the popular movement. The new regime realigned Syria with Soviet Union and the country was put on the path of "socialist development" — in effect a form of state capitalism. This period came to an abrupt end in 1967 when Israel seized the Golan Heights in its lightening Six Day War. The Israel army was now in command of the strategic heights some 50 miles from the Syrian capital.

The shock of 1967 destroyed the credibility of the regime and eventually triggered a coup by Baathists inside the army, headed by Hafez al-Assad, and drawn mainly from among the marginalised Alawi community. Now on a permanent war footing, Syria, along with other Arab countries, was alight with the rise of a popular resistance to imperialism, epitomised by the emergence of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). This wave of popular resistance reached its peak in 1973 when Syria and Egypt launched an offensive that almost succeeded in recapturing territory lost to Israel in 1967.

The failure of this war would have profound consequences on both countries. The strategic union between Syrian and Egypt came to an end in 1978 when Anwar Sadat, then Egyptian president, signed a separate peace with Israel. With Egypt now neutralised, Syria faced Israel alone. Isolated, the regime sought to use the popular resistance as a lever in negotiations for the return of the Golan Heights. Inside Syria this resulted in a gradual smothering of the popular resistance.

Egypt was not alone in seeking a separate deal with Israel. In 1976, prompted by the US, Assad sent troops into Lebanon to crush the popular rebellion sweeping the country at the time. The occupation of Lebanon, packaged as a peace keeping mission, destroyed the Lebanese national movement. The reward for “saving Lebanon” was to be a new initiative over the Golan. But Assad's hopes for an “honourable deal” came to nought.

Assad reacted with the rhetoric of "liberation and revolution" while his forces continued to strengthen its grip over Syria and Lebanon — reaching its height with the crushing of an uprising in the Syrian city of Hama in 1982, and a protracted siege of Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut in 1984.

Despite this, Assad never abandoned his strategy of a separate peace. But with Egypt out of the picture, Israel saw no reason to cut a deal over the Golan Heights. Assad again attempted to realign Syria with imperialism by sending troops to fight alongside the US and its allies in the 1990-91 Gulf War. But once again US promises to look at the Golan question proved an illusion.

When Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000 he was succeeded by his son Bashar Assad. Bashar never abandoned the strategy of compromise with imperialism, or the “red line” of the Golan Heights. His first act was an attempt to initiate a program of reforms — the so-called Syrian Spring — that he hoped could revive the economy and release some of the discontent that built up during his father's reign.

Central to these reforms where neo-liberal policies designed to “open up” the economy. Hardliners within the regime put an end to the political reforms, but the economic reforms moved apace. These reforms ended economic guarantees — such as the subsidy on bread — that had secured some degree of social peace.

These reforms, far from safeguarding the stability of the regime, plunged many already poor Syrians into destitution. As with Egypt and Tunisia, neo-liberal policies undermined what little hold the regimes had over their population. Meanwhile a small layer of businessmen close to the ruling circle amassed vast fortunes.

The deteriorating economy, rampant corruption, nepotism and harsh repression left the country tinder dry. Then came the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. For many Arabs these revolutions were clear-cut and uncomplicated. Both Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt were strong allies of imperialism. These revolutions could be seen as a continuation of the struggle for national liberation.

The Syrian opposition now found it had the space to push forward a series of reforms, that at the onset, were modest. The main demands were for the relaunching of the stalled political reforms and an end the state of emergency. Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, where the calls for “the end of the regime” were heard on the first day of protests, in Syria this slogan emerged only after the bloody suppression of demonstrations in the southern city of Deraa.

Imperialism and the Arab revolts
Both the Syrian and Libyan uprisings have brought into sharp relief the relationship of the Arab Spring to imperialism. Western intervention in Libya has become a clear reminder that the Middle East cannot escape the reality of imperialism.

Mubarak could conjure up phantoms of “western agents” behind the revolution that toppled him. But with Syria the boundary between these phantoms and real western plots are blurred. Bashar Assad is not wrong to point to the fact that “external forces” are attempting to destabilise the country — it has been the stated policy of Saudi Arabia and the west for years.

The Syrian uprising is now seen through the prism of the Nato campaign in Libya. Nato's intervention has raised the real possibility of an incremental ratcheting up of military threats against Syria — not because the west is sympathetic to the demands of the popular movement, but as part of a strategy of isolating the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance.

In the months preceding the outbreak of the revolutions, Israel had been signalling a new war on Lebanon. The ever-present danger of this war has created doubts that the only winner in the Syrian revolution will be imperialism. This can be seen by the call from Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, on Syrians to support Bashar's regime.

Nasrallah's backing for Bashar Assad was widely interpreted as a sectarian Shia Muslim alignment with the Alawi dominated government in Syria. But Hezbollah's position has to be seen more as an expression of its assessment of the balance of forces with regard to imperialism, then some expression of sectarianism (the Alawis are an offshoot of Shia Islam).

Nasrallah's speech caused deep distress and confusion inside the Syrian opposition, some of whom reacted by burning Hezbollah flags (along with the Russian and Chinese flags). The images of flag burning created suspicion among Lebanese who, after 30 years of direct experience of the “Syrian security regime”, were sympathetic to the movement.

The west would like a managed transition to a compliant Syrian government — one prepared to abandon the resistance and its claim on the Golan Heights in return for “normalisation”. It fears above all a destabilised state that could open the way for the emergence of an armed anti-Israeli resistance reigniting a border that has been quiet for 30 years. The recent mass protests along the 1967 frontier by Palestinians refugees is a potent reminder of this. Israel, although hostile to Syria, could depend on the Baathist regime to keep the frontier quiet. Thus the criticisms of Bashar are more muted in Tel Aviv.

But what Nasrallah, and others, have failed to appreciate is that it is not certain that the Syrian opposition movement would simply become a plaything of the west. The unity of the opposition, and its constant appeals against sectarian and ethnic divisions, points to the real potential for there to develop a popular movement for change independent of west — and the re-emergence of the popular resistance that was crushed in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Up until now this movement has, despite its bravery, been unable to achieve a breakthrough. In Tunisia and Egypt the organised working class played a decisive role at key stages of their revolutions. There have been few, if any, strikes in Syria beyond the city-wide protest strikes by merchants and shopkeepers. The movement has still to reach the scale, or intensity, of Egypt or Tunisia.

This weakness, and the continuing menace of imperialism, can turn this movement from one that represents genuine desires for change, into one that could become aligned with Saudi Arabia and the west. But this uprising began in Deraa, the frontier city along the 1967 border with Israel. Deraa is home to many of the Syrians who were expelled from their lands by the Israeli occupation. The slogans that they chanted at Syrian security forces were, “Cowards of Golan, heroes of repression”.

The future direction of this movement depends on it spreading to the key cities of Damascus and Aleppo, and keeping in check the sectarian gangs and western-backed “opposition groups”. This is a popular movement with real demands, and over the next period it has to struggle to maintain this independence. The alternative is the kind of disaster that the west has inflicted on Libya, and the end of any genuine movement for change.

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