Middle East

Arab revolution means jihad is over

“Socialism is what it is everywhere — weak and still trying to get its political bearings. The idea that in the Middle East the ‘masses’ can quickly become socialist, unleash a ‘process of permanent revolution’, and offer a socialist alternative can not but function in socialist observers to dissolve political standards, critical faculties and sober political judgment — and replace them with open-mouthed credulity and naivety towards political Islam." ( Solidarity 3/199) Socialism is never the same thing anywhere. The Arab people want to be unafraid to speak and organise. They might well want...

The battle for democracy in the Arab revolution (2011)

Sean Matgamna examines the prospects of the Arab Revolution, and compares it to certain events in recent history. The Arab revolution, the inspiring mass popular movement for freedom and democracy, sweeping across the Middle East might be compared to the “Springtime of the Peoples”, in 1848, when mass popular revolution spread from France to Germany, then to other countries, such as Hungary and Italy. Most of them were quickly defeated. Today the nearest modern equivalent — so far — is the collapse of East European and Russian Stalinism, in 1989-91. A tremendous mass movement demanding and...

Clashes in Bahrain

The protest movement in Bahrain has revived recently, with thousands of activists blockading the King Faisal Highway which leads to Bahrain’s main financial district. Security forces attempted to disperse them using tear gas. At least three people are reported to have been killed in the clashes, with the regime claiming that three policemen have also died. Following King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa’s declaration of a three-month state of emergency, Saudi troops were invited into the country to help quell what the regime is denouncing as an “external plot”. Over 60 people are reported to have gone...

Yemen opposition gunned down

In an effort to maintain himself in power Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, resorted to extreme violence on Friday when over 50 anti-government protesters were killed by snipers in the capital, Sanaa. Denying he was responsible for the murders, Saleh then stated, “The great majority of the Yemeni people are with security, stability and constitutional law [bizarrely, meaning himself].” The protest movement in the capital has been organised by a coalition of nationalist, Islamist and self-styled leftist parties. Much of the movement’s membership is made up of young people who – as in...

How Twitter is like a horse

Later this month I’ve been invited to debate some of the leading online campaigners in Britain on the role of new media in the revolutions taking place in Middle East. The organisers are calling it “Activism vs Slacktivism” and no, I don’t understand what that means either. But I do know the organisations that will be up on the podium with me — including Amnesty International and Oxfam. I was invited because I’d written something in the Guardian recently challenging the idea that what happened in Egypt could be called “the Twitter revolution”. What I actually wrote was this: “While the media...

Continuing turmoil in Yemen

Last weekend, in Yemen’s capital Sana’a, police attacked opposition demonstrators with gas and live rounds, killing several and bringing the total number of deaths during the recent round of protests to more than 30. Islamists seem to be increasingly visible in the previously non-party and mainly secular opposition movement in the capital. A radical cleric — once an ally of the president — Abdul Majid al-Zindani, has joined the protests. He is calling for an Islamic caliphate. Elsewhere in Yemen various currents, with differing programmes, contend with the weak central government. In the south...

Will the revolutions in North Africa also bring down the "Socialist International"?

Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), the leading party in the "Socialist International" for many decades, is talking about leaving the "International". Both Mubarak's NDP in Egypt, and Ben Ali's RCD in Tunisia, were until their downfall members of the "Socialist International". An article by SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel in the liberal Frankfurter Rundschau points out the obvious, that the Socialist International is irrelevant, that it is no longer a "voice for freedom", that many member parties should be expelled from it, that it is embarrassing that parties such as Mubarak's or Ben Ali's...

New revolutions need clarity not confusionism

Hardt and Negri’s musings on the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East ( Guardian , 25 February 2011) are a studied exercise in rapacity. Having mapped the road to nowhere for the anti-capitalist movement a decade ago, these confusionists now seem intent on misdirecting the great revolutionaries who’ve topped dictators. Read the rest of the article here .

Industrial focus in Oman; deadlock in Bahrain

As we go to press on 1 March, street demonstrations in the oil-rich Gulf state of Oman are in their fourth day. The protests have been centred in the state’s main industrial city, Sohar. Al Jazeera reports: “Hundreds of protesters blocked access to an industrial area that includes the port, a refinery and aluminium factory... “’We want to see the benefit of our oil wealth distributed evenly to the population’, one protester yelled over a loudhailer near the port”. Like other despots, the Sultan of Oman has responded by handing out cash but so far refusing to move on democracy. The state is an...

Monarchy in retreat

Bahrain On Saturday 19 February security forces withdrew from the Pearl Square area in the capital, Manama, allowing pro-democracy demonstrators to return to a place which had become the centre of the protest movement. The state forces, many of whom are Sunni Muslims recruited outside Bahrain, had killed seven protesters over the previous week. The overwhelming majority of the demonstrators and 70% of the population are Shia. Shia people are discriminated against in Bahrain. All real power is in the hands of the Sunni monarchy and its hand-picked politicians. On the marches one popular chant...

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