SPEAKING
FREELY How the Arab Spring was sapped
dry By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
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contributing.
Within the first few
months of 2011, the United States and its allies
lost three loyal "friends": Hosni Mubarak in
Egypt, Zine el-Abbidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and
Saad Hariri in Lebanon. While Mubarak and Ali were
driven out of power by widespread popular
uprisings, Hariri was ousted by the parliament.
Inspired by these liberating developments,
pro-democracy rebellions against autocratic rulers
(and their Western backers) soon spread to other
countries such as Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Saudi
Arabia.
As these revolutionary
developments tended to politically benefit
the "axis of resistance"
(consisting of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas)
in the Middle East, the US-Israeli "axis of
aggression" and their client states in the region
mounted an all-out counterrevolutionary offensive.
Caught off-guard by the initial wave of
the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, the US and
its allies struck back with a vengeance. They
employed a number of simultaneous tactics to
sabotage the Arab Spring. These included: (1)
instigating fake instances of the Arab Spring in
countries that were/are headed by insubordinate
regimes such as those ruling Iran, Syria and
Libya; (2) co-opting revolutionary movements in
countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen; (3)
crushing pro-democracy movements against
"friendly" regimes ruling countries such as
Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia "before they get
out of hand," as they did in Egypt and Tunisia;
and (4) using the age-old divide and rule trick by
playing the sectarian trump card of Sunnis vs.
Shi'ites, or Iranians vs. Arabs.
1.
Fake springs, post-modern coup d'etats Soon after being caught by surprise by the
glorious uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the
counterrevolutionary forces headed by the United
States embarked on damage control. A major
strategy in pursuit of this objective has been to
foment civil war and regime change in "unfriendly"
places, and then portray them as part of the Arab
Spring.
The scheme works like this: arm
and train opposition groups within the
"unfriendly" country, instigate violent rebellion
with the help of covert mercenary forces under the
guise of fighting for democracy; and when
government forces attempt to quell the
thus-nurtured armed insurrection, accuse them of
human rights violations, and begin to embark
openly and self-righteously on the path of regime
change in the name of "responsibility to protect"
the human rights.
As the "weakest link" in
the chain of governments thus slated to be
changed, Gaddafi's regime became the first target.
It is now altogether common knowledge that
contrary to the spontaneous, unarmed and peaceful
protest demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia and
Bahrain, the rebellion in Libya was nurtured,
armed and orchestrated largely from abroad.
Indeed, evidence shows that plans of regime change
in Libya were drawn long before the overt onset of
the actual civil war. [1]
It is likewise
common knowledge that, like the rebellion in
Libya, the insurgency in Syria has been neither
spontaneous nor peaceful. From the outset it has
been armed, trained and organized by the US and
its allies. Similar to the attack on Libya, the
Arab League and Turkey have been at the forefront
of the onslaught on Syria. Also like the Libyan
case, there is evidence that preparations for war
on Syria had been actively planned long before the
actual start of the armed rebellion, which is
branded as a case of the Arab Spring. [2]
Dr Christof Lehmann, a keen observer of
geopolitical developments in the Middle East, has
coined the term "post-modern coup d'etats" to
describe the recent North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO)-Zionist agenda of regime
change in the region. The term refers to an
elaborate combination of covert operations, overt
military interventions, and "soft-power" tactics a
la Gene Sharp:
"A network of think tanks,
endowments, funds and foundations, which are
behind the overt destabilization of targeted
sovereign nations. Their narratives in public
policy and for public consumption are deceptive
and persuasive. Often they specifically target
and co-opt progressive thinkers, media and
activists. The product is almost invariably a
post-modern coup d' tat. Depending on the chosen
hybridization and the resilience of government,
social structures and populations perceived need
for reform, the product can be more or less
overtly violent. The tactics can be so subtle,
involving human rights organizations and the
United Nations that they are difficult to
comprehend. However subtle they are, the message
to the targeted government is invariably 'go or
be gone'". [3]
It is no secret that
the ultimate goal of the policy of regime change
in the Middle East is to replace the Iranian
government with a "client regime" similar to most
other regime in the region. Whether the policy
will succeed in overthrowing the Syrian government
and embarking on a military strike against Iran
remains to be seen. One thing is clear, however:
the ominous consequences of a military adventure
against Iran would be incalculable. It is bound to
create a regional (and even very likely global)
war.
2. Revolts co-opted When
the Arab Spring broke out in Egypt, Tunisia and
Yemen, the US and its allies initially tried to
keep their proxy rulers Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali and
Abdullah Saleh in power as long as possible. Once
the massive and persistent uprisings made the
continued rule of these loyal autocrats untenable,
however, the US and its allies changed tactics:
reluctantly letting go of Mubarak, Ali and Saleh
while trying to preserve the socioeconomic
structures and the military regimes they had
fostered during the long periods of their
dictatorial rule.
Thus, while losing three
client dictators, the US and its allies have
succeeded (so far) in preserving the three
respective client states. With the exception of a
number of formalistic elections that are designed
to co-opt opposition groups (like the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt) and give legitimacy to
military rulers, not much else has changed in
these countries. In Egypt, for example, the
NATO/Israel-backed military junta of the Mubarak
era, which now rules Egypt in collaboration with
Muslim Brotherhood, has become increasingly as
repressive toward the reform movement that gave
birth to the Arab Spring as it was under Mubarak.
Economic, military and geopolitical
policies of the new regimes in these countries are
crafted as much in consultation with the United
States and its allies as they were under the three
autocratic rulers that were forced to leave the
political scene. The new regimes are also
collaborating with the US and its allies in
bringing about "regime change" in Syria and Iran,
just as they helped overthrow the regime of
Gaddafi in Libya.
3. Nipping the
buds A third tactic to contain the Arab
Spring has been the withering repression of
peaceful pro-democracy movements in countries
headed by US proxy regimes in Bahrain, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, and other kingdoms in the Persian
Gulf area before those movements grow "out of
hand," as they did in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.
Thus, in collaboration with its Western patrons,
Saudi Arabia has over the past year cracked down
viciously against peaceful protesters not only
within its own borders but also in the neighboring
country of Bahrain. Leading the invasion
militaries of the Persian Gulf kingdoms into
Bahrain last spring, the armed forces of Saudi
Arabia continue with the support of Western powers
to brutalize peaceful pro-democracy protesters
there.
While the Saudi, Qatari and other
Persian Gulf regimes have been playing the
vanguard role in the US-Israeli axis of aggression
against "unfriendly" regimes, NATO forces headed
by the Pentagon have been busy behind the scene to
train their "security" forces, to broker weapons
sale to their repressive regimes, and to build
ever more military basses in their territories.
"As state security forces across the
region cracked down on democratic dissent, the
Pentagon also repeatedly dispatched American
troops on training missions to allied militaries
there. During more than 40 such operations with
names like Eager Lion and Friendship Two that
sometimes lasted for weeks or months at a time,
they taught Middle Eastern security forces the
finer points of counterinsurgency, small unit
tactics, intelligence gathering, and information
operations - skills crucial to defeating popular
uprisings. ... These recurrent
joint-training exercises, seldom reported in the
media and rarely mentioned outside the military,
constitute the core of an elaborate,
longstanding system that binds the Pentagon to
the militaries of repressive regimes across the
Middle East". [4]
These truly
imperialistic policies and practices show, once
again, that the claims of the United States and
its allies that their self-righteous adventures of
"regime change" in the Greater Middle East are
designed to defend human rights and foster
democracy are simply laughable.
4.
Divide and conquer: Sunni versus
Shi'ite One of the tactics to crush the
peaceful pro-democracy movements in the
Arab-Muslim countries ruled by the US client
regimes is to portray these movements as
"sectarian" Shi'ite insurgencies. This age-old
divide-and-rule tactic is most vigorously pursued
in Bahrain, where the destruction of the Shi'ite
mosques is rightly viewed as part of the regime's
cynical policy of "humiliating the Shi'ite" in
order "to make them take revenge on Sunnis,"
thereby hoping to prove that the uprising is a
sectarian one.[5]
Quoting Nabeel Rajab,
who describes himself as secular with both Sunni
and Shi'ite family relatives, reporter Finian
Cunningham writes: "The government is attempting
to incite divisive sectarian tensions, to
intimidate Sunni people into not supporting the
pro-democracy movement because it is being
presented as a Shia [Shi'ite] movement."
Cunningham further writes: "The targeting
of the Shia is a tactic by the regime to distort
the pro-democracy movement from a nationalist one
into a sectarian one. It is also a way of
undermining international support for the
pro-democracy movement by trying to present it as
an internal problem of the state dealing with
'troublesome Shia'. In this way, the Bahraini
uprising is being made to appear as something
different from the uprisings for democracy that
have swept the region" [5].
In brief, the
magnificent Arab Spring that started in Egypt and
Tunisia in the early 2011 has been brutally
derailed, distorted and contained by an all-out
counter-offensive orchestrated by Western powers
and their allies in the Greater Middle East,
especially Israel, Turkey and the Arab League. How
long this containment of democratic and national
liberation aspirations of the Arab/Muslim masses
will continue, no one can tell. One thing is
clear, however: the success of the Arab (or any
other) Spring in the less-developed, semi-colonial
world is integrally intertwined with the success
of the so-called 99% in the more-developed,
imperialist world in achieving the goal of
defeating the austerity policies of the 1%,
reallocating significant portions of the colossal
military spending to social spending, and enjoying
a standard of living worthy of human dignity.
In subtle and roundabout ways, imperialist
wars of choice and military adventures abroad are
reflections, or proxies, of domestic fights over
allocation of national resources: only by
inventing new (and never ending) enemies and
engaging in permanent wars abroad can the powerful
beneficiaries of war and militarism fend off the
"peace dividends" and enjoy the substantial "war
dividends" at home.
In the fight for peace
and economic justice, perhaps the global 99% can
take a cue from the global 1%: just as the ruling
1% coordinate their policies of military
aggression and economic austerity on an
international level, so can (and should) the
worldwide 99% coordinate their response to those
brutal policies internationally. Only through a
coordinated cross-border struggle for peace and
economic justice can the workers and other popular
masses bring the worldwide production of goods and
provision of services to a standstill, and
restructure the status quo for a better world - a
world in which the products of human labor and the
bounties of Nature could benefit all.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
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