Samir Amin: An Imperialist Springtime, Libya, Syria and Beyond

 What follows is a transcript of an interview made by Aijaz Ahmad.  Video and transcript can be found here.

Samir Amin: You see, the US establishment -- and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO -- derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, the movements.  They have tested their experience in Libya, and they have tested it in Libya with success, in the sense that, in Libya, at the start we had no [broad popular] movement . . . against Gaddafi.  We had small armed groups, and one has to question immediately . . . where those arms were coming from.  They were -- we know it -- from the beginning, from the Gulf, with the support of Western powers, and the US.  And attacking the army, police, and so on.  And the same day, not even the next day, those very people who qualified themselves as "liberation forces," "democratic liberation forces," called upon NATO -- the French and then NATO -- to come to the rescue, and that allowed for the intervention.  That intervention has succeeded in the sense that it destroyed the regime of Gaddafi.  But what is the result of the success?  Is it democratic Libya?  Well, one should laugh at that when one knows that the president of the new regime is nobody else than the very judge who condemned to death the Bulgarian nurses.  What a curious democracy it is!  But it has also led to the dislocation of the country on a Somalian pattern: that is, local powers -- all of them in the name of so-called "Islam," but local warlords -- with the destruction of the country.  One can raise the question: was this the target of the intervention -- that is, the destruction of the country?
I'll come back to this main question, because they tried to implement the same strategy immediately afterward on Syria -- that is, introducing armed groups from the very beginning.  From the north through Turkey, Hatay particularly.  The so-called "refugee camps" in Hatay are not refugee camps -- there are very few refugees -- they are camps for training mercenaries to intervene in Syria.  This is well documented by our Turkish friends.  And Turkey as a NATO power is part of the conspiracy in that case.  And similarly with Jordan, introducing from the south, with the support -- not only neutrality but, I think, active support -- of Israel, through Daraa, armed groups in the south.
Facing that in Syria we have objectively a situation similar to the one of Egypt: that is, a regime which a long, long time ago had legitimacy, for the same reasons, when it was a national-popular regime but lost it in the time of Hafez Assad already -- it moved to align itself with neoliberalism, privatization, etc., leading to the same social disaster.  So, there is an objective ground for a wide, popular, social-oriented uprising.  But by preempting this movement, through the military intervention of armed groups, the Western imperialist powers have created a situation where the popular democratic movement is . . . hesitating.  They don't want to join the so-called "resistance" against Bashar Assad; but they don't want to support the regime of Bashar Assad either.  That has allowed Bashar Assad to successfully put an end, or limits, to external intervention, in Homs and on the boundary of Turkey in the north.  But opposing state terror to the real terrorism of armed groups supported by foreign powers is not the answer to the question.  The answer to the question is really changing the system to the benefit of, through negotiations with, the real popular democratic movement.  This is the challenge.  And this is the question which is raised.  We don't know, I don't know, I think nobody knows how things will move on: whether the regime, or people within the regime, will understand that and move towards real reform by opening, more than negotiations, a re-distribution of the power system with the popular democratic movement, or will stick to the way of meeting explosions just brutally as they have done until today.  If they continue in that direction, finally they will be defeated, but they will be defeated to the benefit of imperialist powers.
Now, what is the real target of imperialism, in Syria and in the region?  It is not at all bringing democracy.  It is destroying societies just as they have destroyed the society of Libya.  If you take the example of Iraq, what have they done?  They have replaced the real dictatorship of Saddam Hussein by three uglier dictatorships: two in the name of religion, Shia and Sunni, one in the name of so-called "ethnicity," Kurds, which are uglier even than Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.  They have destroyed the country by systematic assassination -- I have no other word for that.  In addition to hundreds of thousands of people who were bombed in humanitarian bombings and so on, the systematic assassination of the cadres of the regime: scientists, doctors, engineers, professors of universities, even poets, and so on -- all the real elite of the nation.  That is destroying the country.  This is the target of imperialism in Syria.  What does the so-called Liberation Army of Syria claim to have as its program?  That we should eradicate the Alawis, the Druzes, the Christians, the Shia.  When you add those four "minorities," you come to 45% of the population of Syria.  What does it mean?  It means democracy?  It means the ugliest possible dictatorship and the destruction of the country.
Now, who has interest in that?  This is the common interest of three intimate allies: the US, Israel, and the Gulf countries.  The US.  Why?  Because the destruction of the societies of the region is the best way to prepare the next stage, which is the destruction of Iran, with a view of the containment and possibly rolling back of major "emerging" countries, the dangerous ones, China and Russia (and potentially, if India is naughty, India -- but India is not naughty, for the time being).  That is the target.  It implies the destruction of the societies of the Middle East, including that of Iran, as a major target.  This project of destruction of societies, accompanied with the continuation of lumpen-development, is also the target of Israel.  Because, if Syria is split into four or five insignificant, confessional, small states, it allows for further easy expansion of the process of Israel's colonization.  It is also the target of the Gulf.  Well, it is almost a farce to see today the Emir of Qatar and the King of Saudi Arabia, standing with the Westerners Obama, Sarkozy, and Cameron, as the leaders of the struggle for democracy.  One can only laugh.  But their hegemony in the region in the name of Islam -- in the "name," because there are different possible understandings of Islam of course -- implies the destruction of countries like Egypt basically, because, if Egypt is standing on her feet, then the hegemony of the Gulf is, you know, what was the Gulf in the time of Nasser, in the days of Nasser?  So they have this in common.
And they are supported, within the societies, by the Muslim Brotherhood.  Therefore, I would conclude by that.  We should look at the Muslim Brotherhood not as an "Islamic" party.  The criterion for qualifying and judging organizations, parties, is not whether they are "Islamic" or whether they are "secular," but whether they are reactionary or progressive.  And when we look at the Muslim Brotherhood, on all real issues, they are against the strikes of the working class, they are against the resistance of poor peasants, they are for privatization, they are in favor of the dismantling of public service, which means that they are fully aligned with the most reactionary forces.  This is a reactionary party using Islam as a front.  This is the real criterion.
This is the global picture of what are the strategic targets of imperialists and their internal allies, reactionary forces, within the societies of the Middle East.

Michael Young in Ottawa: Mixing narratives on Lebanon and the 'Arab Spring'

Summary from video:

Lebanon in 2005 wasn’t probably spark for the Arab spring but there are ingredients that are the same from what we are seeing in other Arab countries now and before 2011.

What happened in 2005?  Iraqi elections, Lebanon’s Beirut Spring.  No one mentions now these two events when speaking about Arab Spring.  But many of the features of these two events are present in the Arab Spring.

In 2005, ten and hundred thousands occupy Martyr Square demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the resignation of the government and the security apparatus. Syria was a key actor in the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

Syrians pulled out of Lebanon after 29 years of continuous presence.  Lebanon earned this.  It wasn’t a revolution, it was an emancipatory movement.

Those who went to Martyr Square represented all walks of Lebanese society except the Shias.

In investigating this moment Young finds in it 4 major salient issues:

1.     Use of public space

2.     Demand for overhaul of instruments of repression

3.     Role of foreign intervention

4.     Aftermath

These 4 salient issues can be found in current Arab revolutions.

1.     Use of public space: The need to secure a public space with symbolic and geographic relevance, under the eyes of media.  In the case of Lebanon, Martyr Square was an easy location, green line, place of reconciliation and the place where Hariri was buried.  It is next to the old city that Hariri built and to An-Nahar newspaper building.  The public will come to visit the tomb of Hariri.  The security cannot prevent them from doing so.  They assemble after the visit and the place becomes difficult to clear, under the watch of the media.  There was a replication of this in Arab revolutions: Tahrir, Pearl roundabout, different and rival squares in Yemen, a whole city in Libya, Benghazi, where a rival government was established.  In Syria revolts proliferated in many cities but took hold in Hama, Homs and Kurdish area.  Public space occupation becomes a tent city and who occupies a tent city?  Young people.  Idealistic, convinced of their position.  It is in this context that frustration is high.

2.     Instruments of repression:  In 2005, senior security chiefs were removed by the government under popular pressure. It doesn’t happen often that security personnel leave office under pressure from street.  When Jamil el Sayyed  was removed, Young called Qasir to congratulate him because of his editorials against the security apparatus but Qassir was assassinated 15 days later and Young is convinced that the two events are connected, the removal of El-Sayyed and the death of Qassir.

Security apparatuses are difficult to change or remove.   Lebanese protesters in 2005 played the differences and the competition between different tools of repression, security apparatus and army, playing on the nationalism of the Lebanese army who avoided attacking protesters.  The army also was playing it both ways, implementing order but not firing on crowd.   The value of any revolution in the aftermath is by the severity order is imposed.

In Egypt and Tunisia the army didn’t fire on the crowd. 

In Libya, it is the balance of power between two armies that was responsible for order.  No accountable security force in Libya, same in Syria, it is the balance of power.

3.     Foreign intervention (outside intervention).  Lebanon didn’t get its due in 2005.  Chirac was for foreign intervention but Bush came late to it.  The trend in the Arab world was against foreign intervention, not against Hezbollah and Syria.  Lebanon's revolution was seen as Bourgeois revolt (Prada revolution).  Those who could protest were relatively rich and educated.  Liberals in the west were more pro-March 8 because they felt the movement was more popular.  In the Arab world today, foreign intervention is being accepted in Libya, in Syria.  Now it’s OK.  It is not what it used to be for Iraq and Lebanon back in 2005, there is no more opposition in the Arab world to foreign intervention.    We shouldn’t underestimate the role narratives play in the acceptance of foreign intervention.  In the narrative, you have to make people (natives) part of the foreign intervention, mix narratives, and inside one meant for the outside, hence the importance of placards in English, and an outside one meant for the  inside.  Make people on both sides want to be part of it.  In Lebanon narratives played an important role.  Here Young mentions the ad agency role in Lebanon's revolution.  Symbolism and colours created a narrative that was both mobilising on the inside and easy for western audience to understand what was going on.  

Lebanese understood how the west wanted them to be!

There is symbolism in Tahrir, in Benghazi.

One thing that became important in Lebanon is the STL functioning under a Canadian prosecutor.  It is the first time the UN investigates in other countries and it will be replicated.  Young said he was disappointed with the STL, accused Brammertz who he called the second prosecutor of derailing the investigation, but says that there might still be possibilities for other indictments, Syria.

4.     Aftermath.  In Lebanon: parliamentary elections, political acrimony, 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, domestic conflict leading to almost armed conflict.

The aftermath tend to shape the perception of the revolution.  It is a mistake to interpret things with such an absolutism and only from the point of view of the aftermath.  The outcome shouldn’t delegitimize the initial impulse if it fails.   Such delegitimisations go like this: ‘if Islamists win, then revolution is undemocratic’  This is currently the problem at the center of Arab revolts. It is a shame to adopt these interpretations because they fall into Arab dictators argument ‘either them or us’.  ‘I am not religious, but Islamists are legitimate, they’re 60% in Tunisia’.  We shouldn’t assume that if Islamists do well then the initial revolt failed.  Instruments of repression are important in the aftermath.  The aftermath won’t be like the Canadian system but at least could have some accountability.  The accountability of the instruments of repression is a question that the west has to ask (and answer?)

Conclusion of the talk:  there is a recurring pattern between 2005 and 2011.  2011 is the second impulse.  We can find some authenticity in this recurring pattern.  Lebanon in 2005 is as authentic as Iraq in 2005 as Tahrir in 2011.

Authenticity bestowed from outside, the tag of inauthenticity for Lebanon in 2005 was made by Arab world.

There are 20' questions at the end of the video.  Questions and answers are interesting.