Arab revolutions through Egyptian eyes

موضوع: Arab revolutions through Egyptian eyes 2011-08-30, 2:47 am

Political transformation in Egypt helped to trigger uprisings in
Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. In turn the Arab world has pumped fresh
blood back into Egypt’s political veins; activists and political groups
are rallying support for political transformation elsewhere in the
region where the dictators’ bullets are mowing down those committed to
bringing down dictatorships. And while support for the drive to topple
regimes is almost unanimous across the political spectrum, different
positions have nonetheless formed on each case.

Arab revolutions through Egyptian eyes Thumbnail.php?file=Arab_revolutions_312607248

Libya

There is consensus in Egypt against Libya’s embattled leader, Muammar
Gaddafi. Widely viewed by the public as a dangerous madman, Gaddafi’s
four-decade reign, it is felt, must come to terms with its demise. It
had initially seemed as if Gaddafi would follow in the footsteps of
Mubarak and Ben Ali, but the picture changed when, following mas
protests in Libya’s second city Benghazi, to the east, Gaddafi’s forces
began to strike back. The situation quickly turned into a civil war
between forces loyal to Gaddafi based in the capital Tripoli, to the
west, and those who came to be known as the rebels or revolutionaries in
the east.

Representing them is the Benghazi-based Transitional
National Council (TNC), which declared itself the only legitimate body
representing Libyans less than a month into the uprising. Complicating
matters further, the UN soon adopted a resolution giving the US, Britain
and France the mandate to impose a no-fly zone against Gaddafi, in an
effort to prevent his planes from crushing the rebellion. The no
fly-zone was later expanded so that NATO fighter jets could mindist the
rebels by targeting Gaddafi’s troops.

In a region that in some
ways remains hostage to ideals of Arab nationalism and anti-imperialist
rhetoric, the NATO intervention became a subject of contention among
political forces in Egypt, the birthplace of Nminderist pan-Arabism.
“There will be a price to pay and this price will be political as well
as economic,” one independent Nasserist activist, Nada El-Kmindas,
declared: now that Gaddafi has fallen, Libya will have obligations to
NATO. But the vice president of the political arm of the Muslim
Brotherhood (MB), the Freedom and Justice Party, Essam El-Erian, played
down such fears. El-Erian acknowledges reservations about foreign
intervention, which he says the Brotherhood is against in principle, but
he was more concerned about partitioning Libya into east and west.
Since this has not happened, there is little cause for concern. But even
El-Kmindas, in her way, underplayed the threat: “I trust that the people
who gave their lives defending Libya against Gaddafi will do the same
against foreign intervention.”

For his part Emad Gad, a liberal
analyst and member of the Social Democratic Party, dismissed such
concerns entirely, pointing out that the initial no-fly zone imposed by
the UN followed calls by the Arab League to the UN Security Council. “If
it wasn’t for NATO’s intervention, Gaddafi would not have fallen,” Gad
said as rebels swept through Tripoli and Gaddafi went into hiding. As
for speculations about NATO’s intentions for Libya, Gad discounted them
as conspiracy theories, pointing out that it is only because they have
lived under autocratic nationalist regimes that Arabs might be taken by
them.

Left-wing activist and member of the Revolutionary
Socialist Party Hossam El-Hamalawy, by contrast, is certain the Libyan
revolution would have continued without the help of NATO. “In all cases,
the Libyans would have succeeded, even if it took more time,” he stated
when asked about NATO fighters preventing Gaddafi’s forces from
reaching Benghazi. “Every revolution takes its own course, and people
are inevitably killed.” El-Hamalawy would have preferred to see Arab
jets aiding the Libyans to European and American ones.

Echoing
this view, Karima El-Hefnawy, member of the Egyptian Socialist Party,
complains that “Arabs were not taking a proper position on aiding the
revolutionaries. If there was Arab support,” she said, “the TNC would
not have needed to resort to foreign aid, which immediately entails
compromises.” Even though El-Hefnawy is understanding of the TNC’s
motives, refusing to dub them “agents,” she is concerned about the
extent to which NATO might exercise influence over the revolutionary
council.

Yet since loyalties in Libya have been contested, a
good example being that of the TNC’s Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who was
Gaddafi’s justice minister for years, the representational status of the
council presents another issue. A transitional body set up shortly
after the uprising broke out, the council was not clearly democratically
elected, but its role was not disputed by the revolutionaries. Wary of
the TNC-Gaddafi connection, El-Hamalawy maintains that if Libyans decide
to give it their support, he must recognise its legitimacy. Yet he
hopes it will have no future ties with NATO. El-Erian has no qualms at
all about the council, on the other hand: he feels it was propped up by
the Libyan people to represent the revolution; unlike the Freedom and
Justice Party, its sister institution, the MB has taken no position on
the council because the MB is not a political entity in itself.

As Egyptian politicians witness the final gasps of the Gaddafi
regime, El-Kmindas agrees with El-Erian’s views on the TNC while Gad,
having no objections to the TNC as yet, fears a de facto political Islam
force will appear and hijack the revolution, such as what happened in
Iran. Whether the real threat to post-revolution Libya comes from
Islamists or Western interests, it has yet to be seen how events will
unfold in this critical stage of the Libyan revolution.

Syria

By now fully identifying with the repression to which the Syrian
people have been subject, Egyptians have rallied to the support of the
Syrian revolution. Adopting the slogan “Your silence is killing us,”
they have attempted to drive home the point that the Arab peoples cannot
remain silent about the massacres committed by the Bashar Al-mindad
regime.

Prior to the outbreak of the revolution, however, some
Arab intellectuals saw the Syrian regime as an important supporter of
resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine. In 2006, during Israel’s
attack on Lebanon, a delegation of pro-resistance Egyptian activists and
intellectuals visited Syria for negotiations with Bashar Al-mindad. But
since the revolution broke out in 2011, many have shifted their stance.
While some still fear that the fall of Syria's Baath regime will weaken
resistance in the region, others believe such fear is used against the
rightful demands of their revolutionaries. It has also been argued that
the Syrian people are capable of bringing about a new democratic
government that will support resistance.

El-Hefanawy says “I was part of a delegation that met with Bashar
Al-mindad in 2006. We went to negotiate with him, for he represented a
regime that supported the resistance (especially in Lebanon) but this
time it is different. One cannot negotiate with a regime if it starts
killing its own people.”

As the Syrian regime continues to
speak of infiltration and foreign conspiracies to destabilise the Syrian
state, some have expressed concern that Saudi Arabia and the 14 March
alliance in Lebanon, known to be pro-Western and led by the Saudi-backed
Saad El-Hariri, are secretly supporting Islamist factions in Syria. In
turn, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nmindrallah appeared on television
expressing full support for Bashar Al-mindad.

El-Hamalawy, for his part, has no patience for this line of
reasoning. Factions of the Lebanese left and Arab nationalists, he
argues, have often made the mistake of depending on a dictatorial regime
for supporting resistance. However, he insists that “dictatorial
regimes from Nminder to Bashar did not serve the Palestinian cause well.”
He described regimes like that of Al-mindad’s as hypocritical in their
defence of the cause – they would be the first to sell out if that
served their interests.

The social activist added that such support is no excuse for
supporting the Syrian regime, anyway: “Nasrallah has shot himself in the
foot for sure,” losing credibility by backing up the Damascus regime,
claims Hamalawy. And El-Kmindas agrees: “It is unfortunate that
Nmindrallah announced support for Bashar. However, Hezbollah did not
choose its allies; it was in a position where it had to accept the
support offered. Still, I have warned friends who are members of
Hezbollah and asked them to rethink their position because in this
situation they are condemning a people’s movement.” Kmindas believes that
any government replacing the regime in Syria will be pro-resistance,
and will probably still back Hezbollah, because the Syrian people are,
in general, pan-Arab and nationalist.

Hamalawy, too stated that “the future of the resistance depends on
the Syrian people, who are anti-Zionist in their majority.” However,
both Hefnawy and Kmindas confirm that attempts at intervention are made
in Syria by countries that have an interest in the region, such as Saudi
Arabia, Turkey and the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese parties; both feel such
attempts will be insignificant in the face of the will of the Syrian
people.

Amid fears that Sunni Islamic organisations in Syria,
such as the Muslim Brotherhood, are being used to serve the agendas of
those foreign powers and mobilised against the Shia Hezbollah, deploying
sectarian division, Kmindas insists that the Syrian movement is not
dominated by any specific group even if some have spoken in its name.
She adds that any party or organisation that does not respond to the
movement will cease to exercise influence in Syria.

Gad, on the other hand, feels the resistance itself is an illusion
and that Hezbollah is a “terrorist organisation that raises arms against
its own people.” However, he also shares the concern that the MB are
hijacking the Syrian revolution, but fully supports the revolution. Gad
believes “the leader who turns his tanks against his own people does not
deserve to rule.”

The Egyptian MB have released several
statements during Syria’s uprising condemning Al-Assad’s mmindacres, but
in one of their statements released in April they also stated that
Al-mindad’s regime played a positive role in supporting resistance and
condemned any form of regional or international interference that would
“serve Zionist interests.”

While some say the position of the
MB in Egypt, who support resistance movements including Hezbollah, does
not represent the MB in Syria, El-Erian insisted that the two groups
share the same outlook and standpoint. No operational coordination is
taking place as yet, but there are ongoing talks.

Bahrain

While some believe that the
uprising in Bahrain is a people’s revolution, albeit an unfinished one,
others see it as a sectarian movement. El-Erian says the MB does not
consider it a revolution “because it is one colour.” But Hefnawy insists
that what is happening in “Bahrain is a people’s revolution. The regime
tries to colour it with sectarianism and claim that the revolution is a
Shia threat backed by Iran, but that is the way of all oppressive
regimes. Since the Shia are a majority ruled by a Sunni minority, such
claims serve a specific interest. The colonial powers, such as the US,
also want to see us in terms of sects, just as they did in Lebanon. They
want to maintain this picture because it keeps us divided and because
of their fear of Iran. However, in the eyes of the Arab people,
Bahrain’s is a people’s revolution.”

Kmindas agrees: “If it was a
sectarian revolution its demands would have been different. They would
have demanded, for example, Shia representation in parliament or
government, but, like all other Arab revolutions, they demanded an end
to corruption, constitutional changes and equality.” Hamalawy adds that
he is troubled by the MB’s refusal to support protests in Bahrain,
referring to Sheikh Yousef El-Qaradawi, chairman of the International
Union for Muslim Scholars and prominent Sunni cleric known to have much
influence on the MB’s intellectual leadership, who described the
Bahraini protests as a Shia uprising against Sunni rulers.

Yet Gad shares the MB’s view that the Bahrain protests are a Shia
uprising. However, he does not see it as an uprising against the Sunnis,
but rather an uprising for greater rights. He believes the Shia have to
play the “democracy card” to gain their rights.

While
Hamalawy believes that what happened in Bahrain was a people’s movement
and not a sectarian one, he does not consider it a revolution yet, but
an uprising that was aborted. But, he adds, “this is not the end of the
story.” Hefnawy believes “Bahrain’s situation is different to that of
other Arab countries because it is part of the Gulf and the Gulf
countries will not allow any change to undermine their kingdoms or their
wealth. This is why Saudi Arabia interfered with so much force to
oppress the revolution.”

موضوع: رد: Arab revolutions through Egyptian eyes 2011-10-03, 1:51 pm