The Revolution that Never Was.

Tawakkol Karman, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and advocate of the "Jasmine Revolution" in Yemen has condemned the military coup in Egypt. She is in no doubt that the 'Arab Spring' was, in fact, a true revolution.

'My support for the 30 June movement in opposition to Morsi changed after the military coup, which went against all the gains and values of the 25 January revolution.

The 25 January revolution guaranteed freedom of expression, of assembly and organisation. All these freedoms have been crushed in the aftermath of the coup.'

Yet the July 3 coup in Egypt did not crush all the freedoms gained in the Arab Spring because there were no actual gains. From the time the revolt of 2011 led to Mubarak being allowed to fall, the better to defuse discontent, the Egyptian state structures inherited from the previous era readapted to the new reality.

The January 25 'revolution' was nothing much more than repeat of the 1952 revolution enlivened and facilitated by the illusion of 'People Power' spawned by modern communications technology and social media. No freedoms were guaranteed by the Arab Spring of 2011.

The referendum on changing the constitution 19 March 2011 only approved the demand for reforms that were never ratified by the Egyptian Constituent in Assembly before it was dissolved by SCAF in June 2012 after a Supreme Court ruling declared electoral irregularities in Muslim Brotherhood seats.

The failure to have a new constitution in place before the presidential elections subsequently took place just two weeks after the brief experiment of an elected parliament ended meant that the electoral turnout was very low even for the first run off. For the president's powers had not been defined.

The coup against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, therefore,removed a president who only got a fraction of the vote from the total number of Egyptian citizens and who was voted in through elections that were not fully legitimate because no new constitition, as promised in 2011, had materialised.

It was the attempt by Morsi, among his other botched and incompetent manouevres, to force through a constitution without an elected parliament in December 2012 that created fears of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover and the creation of an Islamist republic that were exploited by the Egyptian army.

So despite Morsi being elected, he lacked legitimacy and was in the weak position set up for the Muslim Brotherhood by the old elites who had little to lose by either having Shafik ( Morsi's rival candidate and Mubarak's last PM) as president or Morsi to take the flak for Egypt's chaos.

'It is unrealistic and unfair to believe Morsi was responsible for the failure to achieve economic prosperity within a year of his presidency. The man inherited a huge legacy of failure and institutional collapse from the previous regime.'

True, but it was unrealistic of Morsi to be determined to go for the presidency and right into a trap that was set for him. Karmen's dubious when she writes 'the success of heads of state or government is measured more by their respect for civil and political rights than by economic prosperity'.

If that ought to be the situation, it is not clear that it is. The 2011 Arab revolts were precipitated by economic mismanagement and corruption and the rocketing price of bread caused by the impact of global heating and grain shortage. The demand for civil and political rights does not guarantee bread on the table.

Karmen then claims,

'Morsi passed this tough test by guaranteeing these rights when, in fact, his opponents enjoyed more freedom than his own supporters. Compare this to what has been happening to his supporters since the coup: hundreds have been detained, killed or wounded'.

Morsi did not guarantee civil and political rights. He attempted to push a constitution through without a sitting parliament to check his authority. Moreover, Egyptian human rights activists complained that the torture and beatings by the police continued as well as threats to political opponents.

The Arab Spring so far has been an utter failure. There was no revolution. Only a revolt, the decapitation of the old regime, a shambolic attempt to institute democracy without there being an agreed constitutional change first and then a grubby power struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and an old regime still in place.

It remains to be seen whether a new constitution can now be drawn up that will allow a transition to a functioning democracy. But with the Muslim Brotherhood desperately maintaining their street sit ins and protests, the security situation gives every reason for the state to retain emergency powers.

As Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi put it "We cannot write a constitution when the country is divided. We have to return to harmony". There is a lot of talk about 'national dialogue'. Yet it is clear that the Muslim Brotherhood look likely not to be able to participate in that without losing face and even more support.

The one thing Karmen does get right, though, is the danger that the coup poses in ramping up 'extremist' threats in Egypt.

'It is dreadful to imagine the long-term consequences of frustration with democracy. Al-Qaida and those sympathetic to it have always mocked the Muslim Brotherhood, telling them that the solution would not come via ballot boxes, but through bullets'.

The problem now for those who promoted the Arab Spring is whether they are going to accept the coup as irreversible fact because there are no chances that President Morsi will be reinstated (which risks being seen to give tacit support for the suppression of 'democracy' ) or call for another revolt from below.

The Second Coming of Revolution or a Third Coup ?

The question of the whether the Second Egyptian Uprising is part of an unfinished democratic revolution or a coup that destroyed a democratically elected government has to take into consideration if there ever was a revolution in the first place or a popular overthrow of a dictator coopted by the Egyptian military.

Many were not very satisfied with having the choice in the presidential elections of 2012 between an ex-military figure, Ahmed Shafik , a leftover from the Mubarak regime who hot 48.27% of the vote compared to Morsi's 51.73% from a turnout of 43.4%.

As for any new elections,as promised by the transitional government, it is quite possible the Muslim Brotherhood would boycott them if it gets held as promised next year. They became very unpopular with Egyptians. If they did participate they may well lose.

The elections set by the interim president for February 2014 are parliamentary ones as there has not been an election since late 2011 and parliament was dissolved by the Supreme Constitutional Court on 12 June 2012 just two days before the presidential elections that Morsi went on to win began.

One reason Morsi is deeply unpopular is that he tried to use presidential decree to challenge the constitution and push it in a direction more suitable for the Islamists and proceeded to rule without there being a parliament at a time of growing economic chaos and collapse.

It could be that the army and the judiciary, consisting of Mubarak era appointees, were content for Morsi to step into power in order to let him make a mess of his rule set against the fact parliament was dissolved on the basis that there had been electoral irregularities in MB seats.

From the perspective of the anti-Morsi street demonstrators and groups wanting to push the revolution forward from 2011, the need is for a new constitution and new parliamentary elections. The scale of trust being placed in the army looks as though it could have been misplaced.

The Egyptian military leaders most likely know that if elections are held in February 2014 the Muslim Brotherhood will not win a majority of seats. Maybe this was part of the plan. SCAF has overseen the entire 'transition' process from the fall of Mubarak to the present so there was no real 'revolution' in the first place.

The Muslim Brotherhood called the dissolution of parliament a coup but it also stalled the progress of the democratic revolution rival parties had called for. So the second coup of  2013 is a part of second revolution to those who wanted a new constitution. But the second coup might really have been the third one.

After all, the revolt against Mubarak in 2011 was essentially  coopted and presided over by the military. It was a way of getting rid of a discredited dictator the better to coalition a new regime that would represent better the 'will of the people' while serving to prop up the machinery of government inherited from Mubarak.

Responses to the Second Egyptian Uprising on the Radical Left

An odd fact about the response in Britain to events in Egypt is that radical anti-imperialists do not know how to react to this military takeover or else have come down in support of it despite the fact the Muslim Brotherhood was elected with 51% of the vote.

Neither John Pilger nor Tariq Ali, always cocksure in their opinions, have 'taken a stance' because they probably cannot yet portray the US as responsible and because the revolt against the Muslim Brotherhood is popular in Egypt. In fact, they rarely have an opinion on these sort of events unless the US is somehow involved.

Shamus Cooke in Counterpunch has no such doubts. In   How Egypt Killed Political Islam July 8 2013 he extols the military takeover as part of an ongoing process in glowingly optimistic terms.

"The rebirth of the Egyptian revolution ushered in the death of the first Muslim Brotherhood government. But some near-sighted analysts limit the events of Egypt to a military coup. Yes, the military is desperately trying to stay relevant — given the enormous initiative of the Egyptian masses — but the generals realize their own limitations in this context better than anybody. This wasn’t a mere re-shuffling at the top of society, but a flood from the bottom".

It seems Western radicals are set to get themselves into all sorts of contortions trying to frame events in Egypt. Ali and Pilger cannot yet pin the blame exclusively on the US nor can they merely portray the protesters as tools of imperial control without annoying their radical fan base.

Cooke is a radical anti-imperialist and revolutionary socialist who is against the old system under Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood. As such he is quite content to justify the overthrow of Morsi's regime in accordance with the dictates of permanent revolution.

"Political legitimacy — especially in times of revolution — must be earned, not assumed. Revolutionary legitimacy comes from taking bold actions to satisfy the political demands of the people: jobs, housing, public services, etc. A “democracy” that represents only Egypt’s upper crust as the Muslim Brotherhood government did, cannot emerge from a revolution and maintain itself; it was destroyed by a higher form of revolutionary democracy".

Given that revolutionary socialists are backing the 'second revolution' against political Islam it will be very interesting to see how Pilger and Ali are going to try and spin these events. They are always itching to pontificate on most uprisings. They remain curiously silent on this one.

Mt Cooke has no doubts about this revolution, however, and goes on to opine gleefully,

"What did the Brotherhood do with the corrupt state they inherited? They tried to adapt; they flirted with the Egyptian military, coddled up to the security services, and seduced the dictatorship’s primary backer, the United States. They shielded all the Mubarak criminals from facing justice.

The Brotherhood’s foreign policy was also the same as Mubarak’s, favoring Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, and favoring the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels against the Syrian government, while increasingly adopting an anti-Iran agenda. A primary financial backer of the Muslim Brotherhood government was the oil-rich monarchy of Qatar (a U.S. puppet government), who helped steer the foreign policy of the Egyptian government".

There will be lots of frantic polemicising, framing and reframing of the 'correct line' to take on the 'second revolution' depending on changing circumstances. But it seems that a number of radical anti-imperialists see Morsi's removal as a signpost on the way to true revolution. Or, as Cooke puts it,

"The Egyptian people have now had the experience of political Islam and have discarded it, in the same way a tank deals with a speed bump".

The Conflict Between Secular and Islamist Forces in the Arab Revolutions.

Unfortunately, Seumas Milne, a crude anti-Western apologist for the Soviet Union, seems terminally incapable of understanding that there was always going to be a polarisation between secular Arab democrats and the Islamists of Ghannoushi, who anti-Western position was championed because it was based on the undoubted Western backing for secular despots

Milne writes in The Guardian,

."...politics has become increasingly polarised around a dysfunctional standoff over religion and secularism: between the centrist Islamist Ennahda party – which was the main target for violent repression under Ben Ali's dictatorship and won the 2011 elections – and opposition parties, both right and left, which accuse Ennahda of seeking to introduce a theocratic state by the back door"

The question that Milne needs to ask, rather that going on with his usual monomania about the Western Powers ability to "control" and "hi-jack" Arab Spring Revolutions, is whether there is any real basis in the introduction of repressive Islamist measures as certain secularists are suggesting in Tunisia. This is known as proper journalism.

For too long Milne has a one dimensional explanation for Middle Eastern politics, one where any anti-Western Islamist force is justified in using terror and intimidation, bullets or the ballot box to get rid of secular Arab national tyrants of the sort actually lauded by ex-Soviet apologists as Galloway ( who he absurdly aligns himself with in "anti-war" groups as the Stop the War Coalition )

The "inverted orientalism" of far left secular groups in Britain, that any violent Islamist organisation no matter its views, is justified in using violence to fight off "Western Imperialism", is utterly confused by the events of the Arab Spring as have been Western government prizing "investments" and "stability".

It seems Milne has been thrown off course by the response of secular Arab democrats to Islamists, as if they were somehow bound to be united by their hatred of the West. Yet events there have a dynamic of their own that do not conform to Milne's rehashed 1960s style "anti-colonial discourse". The Islamised version of Franz Fanon's 'The Wretched of the Earth'.

It is necessary to be wary of attempts by Western governments to try and co-opt either Islamists or secular Arab democrats who are willing to do the bidding only of the West and to forget the needs of the people who rose up against tyranny.

The important fact is to go beyond the fanatical rhetoric of deranged British extreme Islamists and secular nihilists ( Islamo-Leninists ) and to hope that the efforts of a pluralistic democracy in Arab lands can develop. Western Powers could help only by non-military means, through fair trade and aid.

Tunisia has a chance of this. Libya has descended into chaos, though not on the scale of Syria. The level of Western military intervention in backing jihadist militias was cynical, though certain restraints on Gaddafi via no-fly zones were about the most that could have been done. Minimal attempts to prevent massacre without getting involved were the most that should have been done.

As for the catastrophe in Syria, this is a result of a continuity in the Western Powers being cravenly dependent upon Saudi Arabia, this oil protectorate that is vying with Iran for hegemony in the Middle East with Iran ( whose regime is far less repressive and positively enlightened compared with Saudi Arabia ).

The necessity for the Western Powers is to reduce over dependence upon Saudi oil and start to advocate "regime change " there. The reason it will not is that the minority Sunni rulers are beset, as they are in the far more liberal monarchist Bahrain, by rising Shia discontent, protests crushed with the direct aid of British military equipment.

That allows the West, hostile to Iran, as it acts as a bulwark to control over Central Asian oil and gas, to ally with Saudi Arabia and make a mockery of the cant phrase "Democratic Geopolitics" and tacitly allow it to pour billions of oil dollars into Syria to back unsavoury Islamist jihadists and "rebels".

Should Syria descend into further chaos a widespread conflagration between sectarian forces could erupt in Arab lands between Shia and Sunni: Syria is becoming more like Iraq after 2003 on a daily basis, with sectarian attacks on Mosques and the gruesome beheadings of Allwawite shia soldiers by sunni militias.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/02/tunisia-egypt-need-arab-revolutions-to-spread
In conclusion what events across the Arab land prove is not only the outbreak of anger created by the foolish Western policy of backing dictatorships in the name of "stability" for almost half a century.Not to mention the the criminal idiocy of the Iraq invasion. Yet they also reflect that these tensions pre-date Western involvement.

Despite what unintelligent nihilist ideologues as Seumas Milne are craving to believe, the West did not "cause" these sectarian tensions. It has done much to exacerbate them but the conflict between Sunni and Shia goes back centuries as does Arab rivalry with Iran ( Persia ). Objectivity is vital in these tense times.

A Rationalisation of Bin Laden's Terrorism.

Let that be it. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is a fork in the road of world politics.

One way lies a fundamental rethink of US and British policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, a chance to drain the swamp that bred 9/11.

That way is the end of the "war on terror" launched in the aftermath of Bin Laden's atrocious crimes of September 2011. His act of violence became first the cause and rapidly the pretext for many more such acts, vastly more costly in terms of lives lost.

Andrew Murray, ( Bin Laden's death is a fork in the road The Guardian, 2 May 2011 )

Murray, chairman of the "Stop the War Coalition" in Britain has used the killing of Bin Laden to trot out the usual line that Al Qaeda terrorism is merely a reflex action to US and British foreign policy. Despite the fact Al Qaeda fighters have been active in places outside the Arab and Muslim World such as Indonesia and Chechnya.

There is no need to take the propaganda claims of the Bush administration and the "war on terror" at face value, for if 9/11 was a pretext to go in to Afghanistan and, partly, into Iraq, Al Qaeda's commitment to terrorism and the USA/UK's quest for energy security pre dates both what are essentially resource wars.

The same is true of Russia's role in the war against Chechen insurgents with connections to Al Qaeda. In fact, the assassination of 'Moganned', Al Qaeda's main Saudi born militant in Chechnya occurred recently on April 22nd 2011 and who had entered the Northern Caucasus since 1999 and by 2005 emerged as the handler of foreign funds for the jihad.

Hence Andrew Murray's crude "either-or" interpretation of the relationship between "the West" and "the Muslim World" is an inversion of the clash of civilisations idea: that Al Qaeda is simply the most extreme and violent form of reaction against Western Imperialism in Arab and Muslim lands.

This crude Leninist propaganda line denies the agency of Arab peoples themselves unless they fit into the notion that they are anti-Western as opposed to against the autocrats that dominate them e.g decayed secular dictatorship of Egypt was created by military power under those such as Colonel Nasser.

The absurdity is that one of the greatest admirers of Nasser is none other than George Galloway, an erstwhile ally of Murray in the myriad of groupuscules that try to hi-jack anti-war sentiment amongst British people into support for fanatical ideological agendas-including that of Respect.

Galloway's hero in Nasser executed Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual progenitor of modern militant Islamism in 1966, one reason the alliance between the hard left and the MAB, influenced very much by Qutb, is based only on hatred of the West as opposed to a principled criticism of Western foreign policy.

Al Qaeda has its own history and agenda: it's original raison d'etre under Bin Laden was less to do with Western foreign policy as such but with antagonism to the corruption of the Saudi regime and not being permitted to fight in the First Gulf War of 1991 against Saddam Hussein and which was blamed later on the US and it's 'occupation' of the Holy Land.

Murray is active in campaigning against the governments cuts: but the British economy and hence living standards would collapse without a steady and secure supply of oil from Saudi Arabia, one reason why the British government simply cannot give decisive public backing to democracy activists in Bahrain.

Obviously, as Malise Ruthven wrote in A Fury for God on 9/11 the long term interests of the Western powers are in having stable democratic regimes across the Middle East. The Arab Uprisings at least provide an opportunity that this could be brought about.

Ruthven also sensibly argued that Islamist solidarity always works negatively: the interests of Arab nations and the political groups within them from Bahrain to Libya and Saudi Arabia to Palestine and Lebanon are diverse and to yoke them all as "anti-Western" is to accept precisely the narrative of Al Qaeda.

This narrative accepts the concept of an Islamic hyper identity in which "the Muslim World" and the ummah is largely united in opposing Western "crusades", a term used repeatedly by neurotic and self promoting radical journalists such as John Pilger who want to motivate Muslim youths as new force for militant challenge to Western power from within.

The rationalisation of terrorism that has continually been offered since 9/11, whether by Pilger, Milne or Galloway, has acted as a ruse to ramp up militancy against the system in Britain as a substitute for the decline of the forward march of the labour movement which has petered out and fragmented.

It is true that it is both vital and justified to criticise the foreign policy and the dangerous over dependence upon the oil that fuels Western high octane car and supermarket societies and that leads to contradictory and botched entanglement and meddling in the Middle East.

But equally so, it is necessary to understand that Al Qaeda was not caused wholly by "the West" but as a spin off from the dysfunctional Saudi regime's investment in the Arab Afghan campaigns against the Soviet Union and an ideology that has an existence in its own right, one rejected in the recent Arab Uprisings.

The Arab Uprisings: 'Interesting Times' Ahead.

Compared to the impact of the 1973 oil crisis, the potential for one in 2011 or 2012 grows more ominous. Marks Almond has written ( Middle East uprising will put oil giant Saudi Arabia in peril The Daily Mail 20th February 2011 )

The oil-rich autocracies on which we depend are now facing full-throated revolution....it is the rising tide of violence around Saudi Arabia which could ignite a political blow-out of terrifying proportions in the world’s biggest oil producing country.

Even people who hope to see the end of the Saudis’ hand-chopping, wife-beating Wahhabi fundamentalist regime must realise that its downfall will create a global economic earthquake.

The situation in neighbouring Bahrain is a microcosm of what might happen in Saudi Arabia.

Don’t let Bahrain’s tiny size mislead you.This island kingdom sits on the fault-line separating the tectonic plates of the Muslim world and is the fulcrum of American power in the Middle East.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet is based on the island –which is attached to Saudi by a causeway – and pro-Iranian Shi’ites who make up 70 per cent of the population are seething with rage against the pro-Western king.

The remaining 30 per cent of Bahrain’s population are Sunni Muslims, and the bitter Sunni-Shi’ite infighting there could spark a religious civil war which could quickly spread to Saudi Arabia.Outsiders would pour in. Not just jihadi fanatics. Iran would support the ‘oppressed’ Shi’ites of Bahrain and Saudi.

What would America do? Could Obama abandon the pro-Western rulers of Bahrain and Saudi if Iran got involved?And how then would people in other Arab states such as Egypt react if the West put stopping Iran ahead of People Power? And how might Israel react?

In the long term, democratising the Middle East must be a good thing – that is, if we can get to the long term. In the short term, the world is in for its bumpiest ride for decades.

Set against the background of the global crash of 2008 and the recession, the consequences could be global instability and within Europe the potential for social conflict as the faltering economy crumbles further and consumer comforts that have been taken for granted give way to an era of privation and hardship.