Articles with the Tag Tunesia

Egyptian revolution continues

Activism, Real Life Revolutions, US Foreign Policy
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protester in Egypt kisses riot police

It’s been another eventful day in Egypt and more and more this feels like what watching the revolutions taking place in Eastern Europe in 1989 felt like — but hopefully Egypt won’t be another China. The best place to watch it all go down is still Al Jazeera,as the official Wikileaks twitter also acknowledges: Yes, we may have helped Tunisia, Egypt. But let us not forget the elephant in the room: Al Jazeera + sat dishes.

For us watching from the outside in it’s hard to understand what is going on now in Egypt, but one thing is clear: this is a spontaneous uprising, fueled by the despair and anger of the average Egyptian, not something organised by either the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist organisations, or by what’s left of the secular leftwing opposition to Mubarak. This doesn’t stop the western defence analysis community from invoking the old Islamist terror bugbears of course. And as discussed at Blood and Treasure, Mubarak’s new vicepresident and prime minister are both hardliners not adverse to using violence to solve their problems. Which may mean that either Mubarak is preparing to unleashthe army (if it let’s itself be unleashed at this point) or that the security services are mounting their own coup first against Mubarak, then against the protestors. But can they stop this spirit?



(Ignore the horrid music)

Aussie net magazine Crikey reports on one of the more interesting cyberspace aspects of the Tunesian and Egyptian revolutions, the involvement of the 4chan hackers’s movement Anonymous in helping the protestors communicate with the rest of the world as well as attacking government communication channels. However:

It is also profoundly at odds in its ethos and methods with traditional NGOs and activist groups. This is not your traditional protest movement and elements of it would be deeply hostile to more traditional political activism. Anonymous is something that, because it grew organically in cyberspace rather than reflecting the cyber version of existing real world phenomena, looks and works differently to real-world organisations or movements we’re familiar with. Something important and new is happening here.

See also Barret Brown: Anonymous: a net gain for liberty.

teargas grenade used in Egypt: made in the US

In the end, Anonymous has so far done more than the US government to encourage the movement for democracy in Egypt, since, as Simon Tisdall said in The Guardian on Friday:

That’s because, in the final analysis, the US needs a friendly government in Cairo more than it needs a democratic one. Whether the issue is Israel-Palestine, Hamas and Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, security for Gulf oil supplies, Sudan, or the spread of Islamist fundamentalist ideas, Washington wants Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous and influential country, in its corner. That’s the political and geostrategic bottom line. In this sense, Egypt’s demonstrators are not just fighting the regime. They are fighting Washington, too.

Much nearer to the truth than the insultingly bad propaganda coming from some circles that these protests have been supported by the US, as supposedly proven by certain leaked embassy files.

Will the Arab revolutions spread?

Real Life Revolutions
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The headquarters of the National Democratic Party is burning in cairo

With Tunesia having overthrown one decades long strong man and Egypt doing its best to oust another one, will these revolutions spread is the question Marc Lynch asks, as he acknowledges that there are reasons to be skeptical about this possibility, and yet…

Tunisia has manifestly inspired people across the region and galvanized their willingness to take risks to push for change, even without any clear leadership from political parties, Islamist movements, or even civil society. The Tunisian example has offered the possibility of success, and models for sustained action by a decentralized network, after a long and dispiriting period of authoritarian retrenchment. Al-Jazeera and the new media have played their role in reshaping political opportunities and narratives, but it is people who have seized those opportunities. And the core weaknesses of these Arab states — fierce but feeble, as Nazih Ayubi might have said — have been exposed. They have massively failed to meet the needs of their people, with awesome problems of unemployment, inflation, youth frustration and inequality combined with the near-complete absence of viable formal political institutions.

Tunesia 2: Mubarak’s family flees Egypt

Real Life Revolutions
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According to the Times of India, Mubarak’s family has fled Egypt:

CAIRO: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s son, who is considered as his successor, has fled to Britain along with his family, a US-based Arabic website reported.

The plane with Gamal Mubarak, his wife and daughter on board left for London Tuesday from an airport in western Cairo, the website Akhbar al-Arab said.

The report came as violent unrest broke out in Cairo and other Egyptian cities and hundreds of thousands of people reportedly took to the streets in a Tunisia-inspired day of revolt.

If this report is true, things are moving much faster in Egypt than I thought possible even yesterday. No guarantees the protests will unseat Mubarak even so, but it’s a good sign.

The spectre of Tunesia

Real Life Revolutions
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Mubarak poster torn in Cairo

It seems the other strong men and dictators in North Africa had good reason to fear the revolution in Tunesia, as it does seem to have inspired and reinvigorated the opposition in other countries, especially in Egypt, where Mubarak has been a loyal American ally and dictator since 1981. Economically and politically Mubarak has been a disaster for ordinary Egyptian workers, but he has been good as gold to the US and Europe, supporting Israel, taking part in the War of Terror and being a good customer of the large western weapon manufactorers. Any opposition to Mubarak has been repressed, often with violence. The police and security services have long managed to keep a lid on public anger, but as seen below and at 3arabawy it is still there and the example of Tunesia has brought it back to the surface again:



Today’s protests won’t bring Mubarak down, but his position looks much less stable than it was before the Tunesian revolution and if Mubarak’s position is getting less safe, if there’s some danger of him being brought down, how much less save will the dictators of Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Algeria and Lybia feel? There’s a spectre haunting the Middle East, the spectre of Tunesia….

Tunesia – the revolution continues

Africa, Life under Capitalism, Real Life Revolutions
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protesters facing riot police in the streets of Tunis

Clashes continue in the streets of the Tunisian capital, denouncing the new “unity” government that includes many figures from the ousted Ben Ali regime.

The revolution in Tunesia is not over yet, as the above picture shows. In the west we only tuned in when it hit the climax and we’re already starting to tune out again now that the situation has been declared to be resolved. Ben Ali has been made into a scapegoat, with his erstwhile supporters and collaborators attempting to keep their own power and skins through this government of national unity, while placating the protesters with gestures like the release of political prisoners. These are steps in the right direction, but the fundamental problems of the country are not resolved by them. The same people who oppressed it are still largely in power, still think that they can calm down the protests with small concessions, that once things have calmed down they can go back to dividing the country’s wealth amongst themselves. The protestors know this and hence stay out on the streets, unwilling for now to be placated this way.

Meanwhile French capital sees the fall of Ben Ali as an opportunity to penetrate Tunesia further, as also reported in Ahram Online. But for that to be the case, the revolution and protests need to end soon. some sort of compromise, like this national government between the old regime and its opposition needs to be reached. In situations like this, when the common enemy, Ben Ali, has been vanquished, but the structures of the old regime are still in place and able to act to defend themselves, is when revolutions get derailed, as inherent class differences come to the fore.

The protests didn’t just call for greater political freedoms after all, but also more basic economic freedoms. What’s on offer now from the old regime is greater political freedom, a somewhat more representative government and a place at the table for the old elite and middle class opposition to Ben Ali and his party, the the Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique (RCD). And with the chief kleptocrat gone, there are also economic spoils to be had for those opposition leaders willing to help shore up the old elite. And at the same time there’s foreign pressure, from France as Tunesia’s largest trading partner, but also from other “western democraties” to get the unrest dealt with quickly and get things back to normal.

Which leaves the ordinary men and women of Tunesia out in the cold, their economic and political grievances so far unheard. How they will respond to these attempts to freeze the revolt is uncertain. It’s likely that their answer will be largely determined by class: the petit bourgeoisie, small shop owners, traders and the like, will likely want the unrest to end sooner rather than later, even if this largely means a return to the status quo, just sans Ben Ali. For the working classes and working poor, this return will be more difficult and much less desirable. The protests got started when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. He had been unable to find meaningful employment, resorted to selling fruits and vegetables on the street in Sidi Bouzid to support himself and his family and then the police took his fruit cart from him, denying him his last means of existence. That was enough for him to set himself alight and that was the spark (no pun intented) that started the revolution. For people like Bouazizi anything that allows the RCP to remain in government, that doesn’t stop the cronyism and the plundering of the nation’s economy by the political elites, is a defeat. That’s why the protests continue: they need to win to survive or face the same slow death again, only with a slightly nicer government in power.