Re: Imperialism's "war for democracy" in the Middle East

[Fred Feldman <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The growing striving for popular democracy in the Middle East    Fred
Feldman  
  Mar 15, 2005 05:01 PST   

This is a useful summary article in my opinion. The range and variety
of aspirations for democracy in the Middle East are part of the
breakdown of the old status quo, which the US rulers are trying to take
hold of, contain, control, and direct.

This partly predates, but is being heightened by, the imperialist
challenge to the region. It would be a mistake to see the hundreds of
thousands who demonstrated in opposition to the Syrian troops in
Lebanon, and the hundreds of thousands who have twice mobilized to
support Hezbollah against Syria against US-French-UN Security Council
intervention as simply opposite sides of the class struggle. This is an
example of the growing social tensions, and the growing tendency of the
masses mobilize, that Washington is seeking to contain, control, and
direct -- including by  force of arms.

For instance, the term "Cedar revolution," now universally adopted by
the US media for the largely Christian-Druse Muslim-middle class
mobilizations against the presence of Syrian troops and the Syrian
predominance over the Lebanon government, did not originate with the
protesters but with President Bush.  It has specifically Christian
sectarian implications, indicating Washington's desire to strengthen the
position of the Christian bourgeoisie, traditionally allied with US and
French imperialism -- and at times with Israel.  Some of the latter have
picked up the US-approved designation.

But the popular term for the first anti-Syrian mobilizations was
"intifada" or "shaking off" and anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian
sentiment is common even among the Christian masses.
The successive governments backed by Syria have certainly not solved any
of the problems of the Lebanese masses, and the wearing out of the mass
toleration for these regimes can certainly have progressive as well as
reactionary consequences, depending on the evolution of the class
struggle.

It is a fact that the Hezbollah forces tend to have more support and to
mobilize more of the poor, especially from among the Shia who tend to
make up, along with the Palestinians, the poorest and least represented
section of the population.  But it is wrong to see these demonstrations
as simply representing counterposed pro- vs. anti-imperialist forces.

The striving for a democratic opening against the mostly burned-out a
unpopular bourgeois nationalist regimes in the region is also an opening
for the oppressed and exploited to put their stamp on the process, and
not simply participate as followers. Elements of these aspirations for
real mass democracy AGAINST what
imperialism is bringing to the region appear in both the
anti-occupations struggle of the Sunni population in Iraq, and just as
much in the mobilization of the Shia around the elections.

The people of the region are feeling the need for a new order. US
imperialism is trying to take hold of the region to impose its
"democracy" which is counterposed to both national independence and the
interests of the most oppressed and exploited. They want regimes that
will be reliable guarantors of growing imperialist superprofits,
reliable allies against challenges to intensifying imperial ist
domination, and reliable barriers to mass organization, protests, and
challenges for power.

Perhaps the example of Venezuela will begin to be more widely known and
discussed in the Middle East in the next period. The struggles and
successes in Venezuela are more immediately relevant to the practical
situation in Lebanon and Iraq than I
tended to assume. The demand for democracy has to be recaptured in the
Middle East as a anti-imperialist, popular demand for for the interests
of the masses as
opposed to the worn-out dictatorships (which so far are showing little
power of resistance to the mounting imperialist attack) and to the
controlled, exclusive, and really anti-democratic "consensus demcracy"
being proposed from Washington. The slogan of democracy must not be
handed to the imperialists in defense of the shabby and increasingly
inadequate status quo.

As should be clear, this does not change our stance of
unconditional opposition to all imperialist intervention, political and
military, in the region, or our call for immediate, unconditional
withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. 

The demand for democracy is not a softening or limitation to the fight
against imperialism.  The fight for self-determination and recognition
of imperialism as the main enemy of all the peoples of the region is
central to  a victorious fight to win democracy for the oppressed
masses.
Fred Feldman


News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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[The web version of this excellent, informative article 
includes many links.--DC]

Reason
http://www.reason.com/links/links030805.shtml
March 8, 2005
Behind the Cedars
Nonviolent protest in the Middle East
by Jesse Walker
mailto:jwal-@xxxxxxxxxx

First the invasion, then the agitation. A month ago, it was 
a scenario embraced by only a handful of neoconservatives 
and liberal hawks. In the wake of the Lebanese rebellion, 
it's becoming the new conventional wisdom: The U.S. sweeps 
into Iraq, topples Saddam, hangs on tenaciously when the 
occupation gets ugly; the payoff will be ten of thousands of 
Arabs in the streets demanding democracy.

In fact, several countries have seen nonviolent Arab 
movements for liberty and self-government recently, but 
there's only one where there's no doubt the protests are a 
consequence of the American invasion of Iraq. That revolt 
happened under circumstances that should give pause to hawks 
and doves alike: It's the movement in Iraq, led by the Grand 
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, that culminated in January's elections.

In 2003, after the American occupiers cancelled local votes 
and announced that there'd be no national balloting until a 
constitution was drafted, Sistani demanded elections in a 
fatwa. He stepped up his protests after the U.S. proposed an 
indirect vote that would be easier for the Americans to 
control. As many as 100,000 of his Shi'ite followers marched 
in the streets of Baghdad in early 2004, and 30,000 held a 
similar demonstration in Basra. Among their chants: "Yes, 
yes to elections! No, no to occupation!" The U.S. eventually 
gave in to most of Sistani's demands, and the cleric then 
urged his followers to go to the polls.

Since that vote, American pundits have debated how 
democratic the process was, how liberal Sistani's long-term 
intentions are, how stable the new government will be in the 
face of the insurgency. But most have passed over the extent 
to which the vote itself was a product of ferment from the 
bottom up rather than orders from the top down. When they 
have raised the issue, it's usually been in the context of 
debating how much "credit" Bush deserves for the elections, 
an issue of interest to no one but partisan obsessives. Few 
have paused to ponder the paradox that the most successful 
recent grassroots campaign in the Middle East was both a 
product of the American occupation and aimed at the American 
occupiers.

The region's other people power movements are a heady mix, 
and a judgment about one won't always apply to the others. 
Here's an incomplete rundown:

* Most famous, of course, are the festive protests that 
followed the assassination of Lebanon's former prime 
minister Rafik Hariri, which soon became a strikingly 
successful drive to end Syria's two-decade occupation. 
(Syria's responsibility for Hariri's death has not been 
proven, but it was widely blamed for the murder.) The 
movement had a substantial victory when Lebanon's pro-Syrian 
prime minister resigned, and another when Syrian President 
Bashar Assad agreed to a gradual pullout?though the 
protesters are calling for something much faster.

Supporters of the Iraq war are calling this uprising a 
consequence of the U.S. invasion, frequently citing the 
Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's comment to The 
Washington Post: "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw 
the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, 
it was the start of a new Arab world. . . . The Berlin Wall 
has fallen." I have no window into Jumblatt's soul, and I 
have no idea how sincere the notoriously opportunistic 
politician is being. But in practice, America's current 
face-off with Assad is more important to Jumblatt than its 
earlier face-off with Hussein, and it gives him a strong 
incentive to do an about-face on the Iraq war.

On the streets, there's anecdotal evidence that the 
elections in Iraq have been on the marchers' minds. But 
there are two bigger influences, represented by the two 
labels the Lebanese revolt has attracted. Sometimes it calls 
itself the Independence Intifada, indicating an eye trained 
on Israel's partial withdrawal from its occupied 
territories. And sometimes it's called the Cedar Revolution, 
suggesting that the other eye is pointed at two recent 
recent events in Central Asia: the Orange Revolution in 
Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia.

The Lebanese protesters have borrowed many tactics directly 
from the Ukrainians and Georgians, from tent cities to 
street theater. "Interestingly, one of the Lebanese and 
Egyptian slogans is 'enough,' which was also used by the 
Ukrainians, and was the name of the Georgian student 
resistance movement," notes Shaazka Beyerle, the 
Greece-based vice president of the International Center on 
Nonviolent Conflict, who has closely followed events in 
Lebanon. "Protesters handed out roses to soldiers?another 
echo of Georgia's tactics which earned its Rose Revolution 
name."
[As to the slogan "enough", one might also recall the 
Zapatista's "Ya basta!" and Zimbabwe's Zvakwana/Sokwanele.--DC]

* Just south of Lebanon, another nonviolent campaign has 
been underway since 2002. Mustafa Barghouti's Palestinian 
National Initiative has been in the forefront of protesting 
the wall Israel is erecting in the West Bank. The barrier is 
supposed to keep suicide bombers out of Israel, but it's had 
dire effects for many ordinary Palestinians who now find 
their property confiscated and their movements curtailed. As 
Amnesty International put it in 2003, "more and more 
Palestinians find themselves trapped into enclaves and 
cantons, unable to have any semblance of a normal life."

The movement against the fence is notable not just for its 
aims, but for its methods: Barghouti, who comes from a 
secular leftist background, is making a conscious attempt to 
move Palestinian dissent away from terrorism and toward 
nonviolent resistance. He's also a longstanding critic of 
the corruption within the Palestinian National Authority, 
and he finished second in the recent election to succeed 
Yasser Arafat, gathering 19.8% of the vote.

* Syria now faces both nonviolent and violent upheaval from 
its Kurdish minority. (This received some western attention 
a year ago, after a soccer riot in Qamishli set off protests 
and crackdowns in several Syrian cities.) The country has 
also seen occasional displays of displeasure from its Arab 
citizens, and there are hopes that the crisis in Lebanon 
will fell the regime in Damascus as well. For the moment, 
though, few expect a full-fledged people-power revolt. "The 
City's air is rife with all sorts of untoward rumors," the 
Damascus-based blogger Ammar Abdulhamid wrote last week; 
"everything is now possible: there is talk of arrests, 
purges, coup d'états, assassinations, sanctions, invasions, 
anything and everything, except, of course, freedom. 
Everything is possible except freedom."

* Saudi Arabia's municipal elections, which began in 
February and went through their second phase last week, are 
hardly models of modern democracy?among other problems, only 
men could vote?but there's some hope that they'll be a first 
step towards more serious change. Though some have rushed to 
attribute the Saudi shift to Iraq's example, there are some 
closer models, including Bahrain's parliamentary elections 
in 2002 and Jordan's vote in 2003.

Even closer to home is the small but brave domestic movement 
for democracy, which received a little press attention last 
year when three of its leaders went on trial for their 
anti-authoritarian activism, attracting a crowd of 200 
spectators. It's hard to say how big a role it played in the 
kingdom's cautious reforms, but The Washington Post's Steve 
Coll has some bad news: "In the same week that the Saudi 
government posted and celebrated the results of the Riyadh 
area's municipal voting," he writes, "it barred lawyers and 
supporters from the accused activists' courtroom and 
threatened to convict them without a formal trial because 
the men refused to present a defense."

* And then there's Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak announced 
what he called a "new era of reform" late last month with 
the news that his country would hold its first multiparty 
elections in over 50 years. Hardly anyone thinks he has a 
genuinely competitive contest in mind, let alone the sort of 
liberalization that would entail releasing all his political 
prisoners and embracing open political debate. But opponents 
of his rule are now agitating for more substantial changes. 
A week after Mubarak's announcement, demonstrators in Cairo 
were declaring the elections a "masquerade" and demanding 
more substantial reforms.

* Just as this story was going to press, Reuters reported 
that about 500 Kuwaitis, most of them women, marched on 
Parliament to demand women's suffrage. My colleague Charles 
Paul Freund notes that Kuwait has seen bills to enfranchise 
women in the past, but that this was the first time such a 
measure has been boosted by street protests.

Simon Jenkins wrote yesterday that "tossing a miasma of 
events into a journalistic cocktail seldom yields clarity," 
and I realize I'm in danger of mixing a hallucinatory potion 
myself. The above list mixes strong movements and weak ones, 
movements aligned with the U.S. and distant from it, 
movements for free elections and movements for deeper 
liberal reforms. It's useless to argue about whether the war 
"caused" these revolts. Syria's Kurds wouldn't be so 
rambunctious without the Iraqi Kurds to inspire them, but 
otherwise it's hard to claim that any particular uprising 
couldn't have occurred without Iraq looming in the 
background. Iraq does loom in the background, though, and if 
nothing else it's created a general quickening effect. 
Within Iraq, it sparked Sistani's peaceful protests?and it 
also sparked a violent insurgency. Outside Iraq, preexisting 
patterns of all kinds are intensified. There's a wave of 
nonviolent movements against injustice; there's also a wave 
of terrorism. (The State Department's most recent report on 
global terror shows the number of attacks increasing from 
198 in 2002 to 208 in 2003.) The circuits of communication, 
from Bahraini bloggers to Al Jazeera, pulsate with 
unexpected ideas and insurrections. Most of this is 
invisible to Americans until suddenly it flares into view. 
All of a sudden, mutually suspicious Lebanese factions unite 
to throw out their Syrian overlords. All of a sudden, a car 
bomb kills 125 in Baghdad.

And then the event is ripped from its context and reduced to 
fit one of the competing narratives of America's domestic 
disputes. I can't stop that, and I'm not sure I'd want to, 
but let me make a plea. If you're a hawk, try to read the 
voices of caution without reflexively declaring that the 
pessimists just don't want to give Bush credit for anything. 
And if you're a dove, try to read the voices of elation 
without worrying that a happy event in the Middle East might 
somehow justify the war. (Last I checked, the 
national-security case for the invasion was still in 
tatters, and that's the only one that mattered to me. 
Besides, if nonviolent conflict can be a consequence of war, 
it can also be an alternative to it.)

Breathe deeply. For a moment, forget our stateside 
struggles, and try to take the Middle East on its own terms.

Managing Editor Jesse Walker is author of Rebels on the Air: 
An Alternative History of Radio in America (NYU Press).

-- 
Dan Clore

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