By Ann Talbot
As the uprising in Libya spreads throughout the country, the toll of protesters killed and wounded by the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi continues to rise. Jets have opened fire on protesters, including, according to some reports, in the capital Tripoli. Fighter planes reportedly attacked demonstrators and bombed the approach roads to the city, which is home to two million people.
Speaking live over the phone to Al Jazeera, Adel Mohamed Saleh, a Tripoli resident, described what was happening:
“What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. War planes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead.
“Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth. Every 20 minutes they are bombing.
“It is continuing, it is continuing. Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car, they will hit you.”
The uprising spread to Tripoli Sunday night when 4,000 protesters gathered in Green Square calling for the overthrow of the regime. Government thugs attacked them and security forces opened fire with live ammunition. Clashes went on until dawn. Heavily armed mercenaries were said to be driving through the streets shooting on sight and running people down. On-the-spot reports speak of the mercenaries including not only Africans, but also Italians.
Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, went on government television late Sunday night to threaten civil war. He warned “We will fight to the last minute, to the last bullet.” He said there would be “rivers of blood” in Libya if the protests continued.
The massacre of civilians in the capital is the regime’s answer to the escalating protests. The use of the Air Force against civilians is an indication of both the ruthlessness and the desperation of Gaddafi. The ruling clique around him has launched a civil war against the Libyan masses.
At least two pilots refused orders to fire on civilians and flew their planes to Malta, where they asked for asylum. In Stockholm, China, India and other countries, as well as at the United Nations, Libyan ambassadors resigned following the assault in Tripoli.
It is not just the Gaddafi regime that is to blame for these crimes. European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels formally condemned the use of heavy weapons against civilians. But speaking at a press conference after the meeting, the European Union high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Baroness Catherine Ashton, called on “all parties to show restraint,” as though there was a balance of forces between a modern military machine and a civilian population.
Her words express the level of collusion that exists between the European Union (EU) and the Gaddafi regime. All EU states have been have been eager to develop close relations with Libya since international sanctions were lifted in 2004, with Britain under Tony Blair and the former colonial power Italy, under Silvio Berlusconi, leading the way.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague spoke on the phone to Seif al-Islam Gaddafi shortly before he made his threats to the Libyan population. Britain has cancelled eight export licences for arms to Libya since the uprising began. But a vast amount of British-made equipment has already been shipped to Libya and has been used in the crackdown on protests.
The military hardware exported to Libya from Britain last year included tear gas, crowd control ammunition, surveillance equipment, small arms, sniper rifles and sights, command and control vehicles, and radio jamming equipment. Britain is also involved in training the Libyan police force, which has distinguished itself by its brutality.
For Britain and the other EU states the uprising in Libya is a disaster. The UK government has cultivated links with Gaddafi as part of their efforts to win oil contracts for British firms such as BP. Some 79 percent of Libya’s oil goes to the EU, making Europe Libya’s biggest customer.
Libya has just overtaken Saudi Arabia as the third largest supplier of oil to Europe behind Norway and Russia. Italy imports 32 percent of Libya’s oil, Germany 14 percent and France 10 percent. Some 23 percent goes to the rest of Europe.
Some demonstrators have alleged direct collusion by the Italian government with the repression. Berlusconi over the weekend said of Gaddafi, “No, I haven’t been in contact with him. The situation is still in flux and so I will not allow myself to disturb anyone.” It was yesterday before he issued a pro-forma condemnation of violence.
Only days ago the Italian oil company ENI assured investors that it was “business as usual” in Libya. On Monday it began evacuating its staff. Norway’s Statoil, which operates in a consortium with France’s Total and Spain’s Repsol, announced that it would close down its Tripoli offices. OMV of Austria is evacuating all but essential staff.
BP has suspended its plan to begin exploratory drilling in the massive Sirte oilfield. The drilling was due to begin within weeks. Sirte is considered dangerously close to Benghazi, which is now in the hands of anti-regime protesters.
Nor is the relationship between European governments and Libya confined to oil. Libya has extensive investments in Europe, especially Italy. In addition, Gaddafi has amassed foreign exchange reserves estimated at over $70 billion, which he uses to exercise influence. When his youngest son, Hannibal Gaddafi, was arrested in Switzerland for maltreating his domestic staff, Gaddafi cut off oil supplies and threatened a run on the Swiss banking system. He received an immediate apology from the authorities.
The popular uprising in Libya threatens to bring down a tyrant long courted by European governments and seen as a reliable partner who would ensure Europe’s oil supplies and invest the riches that his family had looted from the Libyan people in European banks, companies and universities.
In Brussels, Baroness Ashton insisted that North Africa is within the EU’s sphere of interest.
“This is our neighbourhood,” she declared, adding, “Europe should be judged by its ability to act in its own neighborhood.”
Ashton is due to visit Egypt next week, hard on the heels of UK Prime Minister David Cameron. European leaders are desperate to see friendly regimes established in North Africa that will ensure continuity with the ousted dictatorships.
Cameron presented himself as champion of democracy. The British government’s record of arm sales to the most repressive regimes in the region tells a different story. “Our two countries go back over decades, over centuries,” Cameron said of Egypt as he promised a package of aid to the new military government.
Britain was one of the main colonial powers in the region from 1882, when Britain and France sent warships to bombard Alexandria. France has exercised colonial authority over Tunisia and parts of Morocco. The Algerian masses fought a determined war to assert their independence from France from 1954 to 1962. Spain continues to occupy part of Morocco.
The European states are eager to steal a march on Washington by professing their enthusiasm for democracy and shaping compliant governments. In contrast to its rhetoric, the EU is effectively colluding in the Gaddafi regime’s massacre of civilians.
At the weekend the Financial Times showed a cartoon in which Berlusconi is depicted being crushed by a line of falling dominoes labelled Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya. Even as European foreign ministers gathered in Brussels, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini gave vent to his alarm. “Would you imagine having an Islamic Arab Emirate at the borders of Europe? This would be a very serious threat,” he said.
In fact, Islamists have played only a small part in the Libyan uprising, as elsewhere in North Africa. From its beginning in Tunisia and in Egypt, the revolutionary movement has been predominantly secular in character, reflecting the grievances of unemployed young people, workers and the poor who are unable to afford rising prices.
What Frattini fears is a genuinely popular government. European governments have no difficulty working with Islamic regimes such as that in Saudi Arabia. What they want is a regime that is capable of suppressing its own people. Gaddafi offered them precisely that and now his sons are attempting to demonstrate that they can do the same, even if it means slaughtering men, women and children with jet fighters.
The Libyan masses are undeterred by Gaddafi’s threats. Calls are circulating for a million man march to Green Square in Tripoli. On Monday morning, the People’s Hall and other government buildings in Tripoli were reported to be ablaze. The state television station al-Jamahiriya 2 TV and al-Shababia radio were sacked and at least one police station was set on fire. On Monday night two television stations were reported to be occupied.
The eruption of protests in Tripoli follows a week of demonstrations and clashes in eastern Libya centred in Benghazi, Libya’s second city. In Benghazi, Monday brought celebrations on the streets after more overnight fighting in which 60 people were reported killed. Protesters are now reported to have taken control of the city.
The city of al-Zawiya is said to be under the control of anti-regime forces after police fled from protesters. Fighting is reported at the Ras Lanuf oil refinery and petrochemical complex on the Gulf of Sirte in the east of the country. Workers in the oil industry are reported to have gone on strike.
The entrance of the working class into the situation marks a significant turning point in the uprising, as it did earlier in Egypt.
Hundreds of people have protested in front of the Libyan embassy in Cairo and in Egypt’s northern port city of Alexandria, waving banners saying “down with the killer, down with Gaddafi,” and “Gaddafi has hired African mercenaries to kill Libyans.”
Aid convoys have been sent across the Egypt-Libya border. Ten Egyptians were shot to death in Tobruk, according to Egyptian doctor Seif Abdel Latif.
The working class of North Africa and the Middle East is the only force that can unite the oppressed masses and take the revolutionary movement through to completion, ousting the dictatorial regimes and expelling the international oil companies, banks and corporations that see North Africa as a source of immense profit. Their greatest support will come from other workers around the world, especially in Europe and America.
Already, protesting workers in Wisconsin have drawn parallels between their experiences and those of the North African and Middle Eastern masses. Millions more will do the same. The revolutionary upsurge that began in Tunisia only a few weeks ago marked the beginning of a new revolutionary epoch and no corner of the world will be left untouched by it.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Military aircraft attack Libya crowds: Al Jazeera
LONDON (Reuters) - Military aircraft attacked crowds of anti-government protesters in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Monday, Al Jazeera television said.
A Libyan man, Soula al-Balaazi, who said he was an opposition activist, told the network by telephone that Libyan air force warplanes had bombed "some locations in Tripoli".
He said he was talking from a suburb of Tripoli.
No independent verification of the report was immediately available.
An analyst for London-based consultancy Control Risks said the use of military aircraft on his own people indicated the end was approaching for Muammar Gaddafi.
"These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive, " said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst.
"But I think Gaddafi is going to put up a fight. I think the rumours of him fleeing to Venezuela are going to prove wide of the mark. In Libya more than any other country in the region, there is the prospect of serious violence and outright conflict."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said earlier that Gaddafi might be heading for Venezuela, but a senior government source in Caracas denied that.
A Libyan man, Soula al-Balaazi, who said he was an opposition activist, told the network by telephone that Libyan air force warplanes had bombed "some locations in Tripoli".
He said he was talking from a suburb of Tripoli.
No independent verification of the report was immediately available.
An analyst for London-based consultancy Control Risks said the use of military aircraft on his own people indicated the end was approaching for Muammar Gaddafi.
"These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive, " said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst.
"But I think Gaddafi is going to put up a fight. I think the rumours of him fleeing to Venezuela are going to prove wide of the mark. In Libya more than any other country in the region, there is the prospect of serious violence and outright conflict."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said earlier that Gaddafi might be heading for Venezuela, but a senior government source in Caracas denied that.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Egyptian military repeats demands for end to strike wave
By Patrick O’Connor
Egypt’s ruling military command yesterday again demanded an end to workers’ protests and strikes throughout the country.
“The council is well aware of the economic and social conditions being suffered by the community,” a military source told Egypt’s state news agency MENA. “However, it cannot resolve these issues until the strikes, protests, and the disruption of production ends... The result of that will be disastrous.” He continued that people had “the right to protest and organise strikes, but [such actions] are not suitable under the present circumstances”, adding that “the council does not have a magic wand with which it can instantly eliminate corruption”.
The army has issued such statements nearly every day since assuming power following the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak. They reflect the acute fear with which the generals and the entire Egyptian ruling elite regard the developing movement of the working class.
Yesterday was a scheduled public holiday marking Prophet Muhammad’s birth, yet reports continued to emerge of workers’ protests. Authorities were forced to announce that the country’s banks would remain closed for the rest of the week, due to strikes by bank workers for better pay and conditions. In a statement broadcast on state television yesterday, Egypt’s central bank urged an end to the strikes “to ensure the stability of the national economy”.
Strikes in some factories have reportedly been called off after workers were granted significant wage increases. Many other plants, however, remain affected by industrial action.
According to reports citing the MENA news agency, Suez Canal workers yesterday staged a sit-in protest at the canal authority’s headquarters in Ismailia, demanding higher wages. The action did not affect ships’ navigation through the strategically vital naval passage. “We will continue our sit-in until the Suez Canal Authority chairman responds to our demands,” one of the protestors told MENA.
A textile industry web site reported that in the Nile Delta city of El-Mahalla El-Kubra, up to 24,000 employees of the state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving Company have declared an indefinite strike to demand an increase in the minimum wage. Reuters also reported that Arafa Holding, Egypt’s largest garment exporter, announced a two-day closure of its factories in Tenth of Ramadan City, on Cairo’s outskirts, in response to a strike yesterday involving at least 1,500 workers.
The Associated Press noted some of the other protests and struggles: “Protests by hundreds continued in at least seven provinces outside Cairo, including by government workers and police over pay. Fishermen in the Nile Delta demanded an end to restrictions on where they can fish in a lake north of the capital. Sugar cane growers in the southern city of Luxor demonstrated demanding higher prices for their crops.”
The Egyptian workers’ fight for improved wages and decent working conditions poses a direct threat not only to the military’s substantial commercial operations in the country, but also to the operations of the global financial markets.
In Greece last year, just across the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt, international finance capital seized on a sovereign debt crisis to orchestrate a savage attack on workers’ living standards. Concerns are now being voiced in financial circles over the size of Egypt’s debt, signalling that it may soon become a target. On Monday, the head of Egypt’s Central Auditing Agency, Gawdat El Malt, announced that state debt stood at $184 billion in June 2010, equivalent to 89.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). This, he warned, was “above a safe level”.
Ratings agency Moody’s already downgraded Egypt’s sovereign debt rating on January 31, twelve days before Mubarak was overthrown. “There is a strong possibility that fiscal policy will be loosened as part of the government’s efforts to contain discontent,” Moody’s declared. “A background of rising inflationary pressures further complicates fiscal policy by threatening to increase the high level of budgetary expenditure on wages and subsidies.”
The military government has ordered a 15 percent increase in public sector salaries and pensions, further increasing the budget deficit, which stands at 8.1 percent of GDP. “I doubt that there is sustainability in this situation,” Abdel-Fattah El-Gabali, a monetary policy expert with the Ahram Center for Strategic and International Studies in Cairo, told the Associated Press. “Monetary policy is going to be very complicated in the coming period. After the elation over the revolution (dies down), you will have a sharp blow from reality.”
While drawing rebukes from the financial markets, the military’s limited concessions have not satisfied the working class. The BBC noted that at several workers’ rallies in Cairo this week, banners have featured the figure of 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($US205), which is the minimum monthly wage being demanded by some of the newly developed labour organisations. The sum is about double the average wage of a skilled Egyptian public sector worker.
The military is stepping up efforts to consolidate its rule. In a concession to demands for the prosecution of Mubarak’s brutal security chiefs, the generals have sacked Adly Fayed, the interior ministry’s director of public security, and Ismail El Shaer, Cairo’s security chief. There are also moves to recover the enormous wealth accumulated by the Mubarak family and close cronies, estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.
Egypt’s military government has ordered a new constitution to be drafted in just ten days by an unelected panel of eight jurists. Each panellist was selected by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak’s old right-hand man in the armed forces, who is personally overseeing the drafting of the new constitution. Tantawi reportedly chaired the panel’s first meeting yesterday.
Tareq al-Bishry, a retired judge, is the formal head of the panel, which also includes prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, former parliamentarian Sobeh Saleh. This appointment is another indication of the Islamists’ support for the military government. The Muslim Brotherhood yesterday announced it would form a political party once a new constitution permitted it to do so, but reiterated that it would not stand a presidential candidate when elections were convened.
All the official “opposition” tendencies—including the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Association for Change, the Wafd and Tagammu—are as hostile to the working class as is the military. Having initially stood aside as Egyptian workers and youth courageously challenged Mubarak’s security forces, they now hope to bring the revolutionary movement to a close as soon as possible.
Many of the youth-based organisations that helped coordinate the anti-Mubarak protests are also working to bolster popular illusions in the role being played by the military. Walid Rachid of the “April 6” movement told the New York Times that some members of his organisation were concerned about the retired judge appointed to head the constitutional panel, but “were ultimately satisfied by his reputation for independence”.
According to Al Ahram, other representatives of “April 6” told the military on Monday that they did not want elections to be held before 9 to 12 months.
There are signs of emerging opposition to the military’s agenda. Yesterday, the newly formed “Professionals Coalition”—comprising new organisations of doctors, teachers, university staff, and intellectuals—demanded that the new constitution be determined by an elected constituent assembly.
An article in the British Guardian newspaper, “Egyptian army hijacking revolution, activists fear,” cited the remarks of an unnamed member of a coalition of youth groups: “It’s all very well for them [the military] to be apparently implementing our demands, but why are we being given no say in the process? Many of us are now realising that a very well thought-out plan is unfolding step by step from the military, who of course have done very well out of the political and economic status quo. These guys are expert strategic planners after all, and with the help of some elements of the old regime and some small elements of the co-opted opposition, they’re trying to develop a system that looks vaguely democratic but in reality just entrenches their own privileges.”
The Obama administration is continuing its efforts to support the military regime and oversee the transition to a right-wing government committed to both implementing the diktats of the financial markets and maintaining Egypt’s strategic alliance with the US and Israel. “What we’ve seen so far is positive,” President Obama declared yesterday. “The military council that is in charge has reaffirmed its treaties with countries like Israel and international treaties.”
The New York Times has reported that the White House and State Department are discussing plans for additional funding for programs designed “to bolster the rise of secular political parties”. Democrat Congressman Howard Berman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has called for money to be directed toward the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy—organisations which played in a key role in helping install several pro-US governments through so-called colour revolutions in the Balkans and Central Asia under the former Bush administration.
Egypt’s ruling military command yesterday again demanded an end to workers’ protests and strikes throughout the country.
“The council is well aware of the economic and social conditions being suffered by the community,” a military source told Egypt’s state news agency MENA. “However, it cannot resolve these issues until the strikes, protests, and the disruption of production ends... The result of that will be disastrous.” He continued that people had “the right to protest and organise strikes, but [such actions] are not suitable under the present circumstances”, adding that “the council does not have a magic wand with which it can instantly eliminate corruption”.
The army has issued such statements nearly every day since assuming power following the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak. They reflect the acute fear with which the generals and the entire Egyptian ruling elite regard the developing movement of the working class.
Yesterday was a scheduled public holiday marking Prophet Muhammad’s birth, yet reports continued to emerge of workers’ protests. Authorities were forced to announce that the country’s banks would remain closed for the rest of the week, due to strikes by bank workers for better pay and conditions. In a statement broadcast on state television yesterday, Egypt’s central bank urged an end to the strikes “to ensure the stability of the national economy”.
Strikes in some factories have reportedly been called off after workers were granted significant wage increases. Many other plants, however, remain affected by industrial action.
According to reports citing the MENA news agency, Suez Canal workers yesterday staged a sit-in protest at the canal authority’s headquarters in Ismailia, demanding higher wages. The action did not affect ships’ navigation through the strategically vital naval passage. “We will continue our sit-in until the Suez Canal Authority chairman responds to our demands,” one of the protestors told MENA.
A textile industry web site reported that in the Nile Delta city of El-Mahalla El-Kubra, up to 24,000 employees of the state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving Company have declared an indefinite strike to demand an increase in the minimum wage. Reuters also reported that Arafa Holding, Egypt’s largest garment exporter, announced a two-day closure of its factories in Tenth of Ramadan City, on Cairo’s outskirts, in response to a strike yesterday involving at least 1,500 workers.
The Associated Press noted some of the other protests and struggles: “Protests by hundreds continued in at least seven provinces outside Cairo, including by government workers and police over pay. Fishermen in the Nile Delta demanded an end to restrictions on where they can fish in a lake north of the capital. Sugar cane growers in the southern city of Luxor demonstrated demanding higher prices for their crops.”
The Egyptian workers’ fight for improved wages and decent working conditions poses a direct threat not only to the military’s substantial commercial operations in the country, but also to the operations of the global financial markets.
In Greece last year, just across the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt, international finance capital seized on a sovereign debt crisis to orchestrate a savage attack on workers’ living standards. Concerns are now being voiced in financial circles over the size of Egypt’s debt, signalling that it may soon become a target. On Monday, the head of Egypt’s Central Auditing Agency, Gawdat El Malt, announced that state debt stood at $184 billion in June 2010, equivalent to 89.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). This, he warned, was “above a safe level”.
Ratings agency Moody’s already downgraded Egypt’s sovereign debt rating on January 31, twelve days before Mubarak was overthrown. “There is a strong possibility that fiscal policy will be loosened as part of the government’s efforts to contain discontent,” Moody’s declared. “A background of rising inflationary pressures further complicates fiscal policy by threatening to increase the high level of budgetary expenditure on wages and subsidies.”
The military government has ordered a 15 percent increase in public sector salaries and pensions, further increasing the budget deficit, which stands at 8.1 percent of GDP. “I doubt that there is sustainability in this situation,” Abdel-Fattah El-Gabali, a monetary policy expert with the Ahram Center for Strategic and International Studies in Cairo, told the Associated Press. “Monetary policy is going to be very complicated in the coming period. After the elation over the revolution (dies down), you will have a sharp blow from reality.”
While drawing rebukes from the financial markets, the military’s limited concessions have not satisfied the working class. The BBC noted that at several workers’ rallies in Cairo this week, banners have featured the figure of 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($US205), which is the minimum monthly wage being demanded by some of the newly developed labour organisations. The sum is about double the average wage of a skilled Egyptian public sector worker.
The military is stepping up efforts to consolidate its rule. In a concession to demands for the prosecution of Mubarak’s brutal security chiefs, the generals have sacked Adly Fayed, the interior ministry’s director of public security, and Ismail El Shaer, Cairo’s security chief. There are also moves to recover the enormous wealth accumulated by the Mubarak family and close cronies, estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.
Egypt’s military government has ordered a new constitution to be drafted in just ten days by an unelected panel of eight jurists. Each panellist was selected by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak’s old right-hand man in the armed forces, who is personally overseeing the drafting of the new constitution. Tantawi reportedly chaired the panel’s first meeting yesterday.
Tareq al-Bishry, a retired judge, is the formal head of the panel, which also includes prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, former parliamentarian Sobeh Saleh. This appointment is another indication of the Islamists’ support for the military government. The Muslim Brotherhood yesterday announced it would form a political party once a new constitution permitted it to do so, but reiterated that it would not stand a presidential candidate when elections were convened.
All the official “opposition” tendencies—including the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Association for Change, the Wafd and Tagammu—are as hostile to the working class as is the military. Having initially stood aside as Egyptian workers and youth courageously challenged Mubarak’s security forces, they now hope to bring the revolutionary movement to a close as soon as possible.
Many of the youth-based organisations that helped coordinate the anti-Mubarak protests are also working to bolster popular illusions in the role being played by the military. Walid Rachid of the “April 6” movement told the New York Times that some members of his organisation were concerned about the retired judge appointed to head the constitutional panel, but “were ultimately satisfied by his reputation for independence”.
According to Al Ahram, other representatives of “April 6” told the military on Monday that they did not want elections to be held before 9 to 12 months.
There are signs of emerging opposition to the military’s agenda. Yesterday, the newly formed “Professionals Coalition”—comprising new organisations of doctors, teachers, university staff, and intellectuals—demanded that the new constitution be determined by an elected constituent assembly.
An article in the British Guardian newspaper, “Egyptian army hijacking revolution, activists fear,” cited the remarks of an unnamed member of a coalition of youth groups: “It’s all very well for them [the military] to be apparently implementing our demands, but why are we being given no say in the process? Many of us are now realising that a very well thought-out plan is unfolding step by step from the military, who of course have done very well out of the political and economic status quo. These guys are expert strategic planners after all, and with the help of some elements of the old regime and some small elements of the co-opted opposition, they’re trying to develop a system that looks vaguely democratic but in reality just entrenches their own privileges.”
The Obama administration is continuing its efforts to support the military regime and oversee the transition to a right-wing government committed to both implementing the diktats of the financial markets and maintaining Egypt’s strategic alliance with the US and Israel. “What we’ve seen so far is positive,” President Obama declared yesterday. “The military council that is in charge has reaffirmed its treaties with countries like Israel and international treaties.”
The New York Times has reported that the White House and State Department are discussing plans for additional funding for programs designed “to bolster the rise of secular political parties”. Democrat Congressman Howard Berman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has called for money to be directed toward the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy—organisations which played in a key role in helping install several pro-US governments through so-called colour revolutions in the Balkans and Central Asia under the former Bush administration.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Five Arab Countries That the "Jasmine Revolution" May Spread to Next
by: Zaid Jilani | ThinkProgress | News Analysis
Last month, the world was shocked as the Tunisian autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled his country for 23 years, was overthrown in a protest movement that lasted only 29 days. The event was soon dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution,” a symbolic reference to a blooming flower. While many doubted that this revolution would spread, it was only days later that massive protests rocked Cairo, resulting in the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for more than 30 years. While the fate of both countries is still unresolved, one thing is clear: the people are demanding democracy, and they have forced massive changes in their government to get it.
Now, many are wondering if this pro-democracy movement that swept Tunisia and Egypt will spread throughout the rest of the Arab world. ThinkProgress has assembled a short list of other autocratic regimes in the region that are facing protests, particularly today, and which may soon be the next to go in the Middle East’s next “Jasmine Revolution”:
ALGERIA: Algeria has been in the iron grip of a military government since 1991, when the regime cancelled elections after an Islamist party won the first round. This set off a bloody civil war in the country, which peaked in violence between 1993 and 1997. In recent days, Algerians, inspired by their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbors, have organized large protest marches demanding democratic reforms. Saturday, despite officials outlawing the protest, nearly 10,000 people marched in Algiers anyway, facing off with three times as many riot police. Perhaps fearing that they will be the targets of the next revolution, Algerian officials recently announced that they will be lifting the country’s own emergency law — which has been in place for decades — in the “very near future.”
BAHRAIN: Bahrain’s Sunni leader, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has long oppressed his country’s Shi’a-majority population. Last August, his ruling party arrested hundreds of Shi’a activists and shut down the main opposition party’s websites right before the parliamentary election, fearing that it may lose its grip on power. Yet recent events in the Middle East have the king fearing for his rule, too. He has ordered “a hike in food subsidies and reinstated welfare support for low-income families to compensate for inflation,” and plans to deliver a speech today where he will offer further concessions. Additionally, Bahrain’s government announced that it will be giving $2,650 to each Bahraini family yesterday. Yet pro-democracy activists plan to march Monday anyway, demanding real reforms in the country.
JORDAN: Likely also fearing a Tunisian-style revolution, Jordan’s King Abdullah sacked his government and appointed a new Prime Minister at the beginning of this month. Yet some of the largest protests in modern history have rocked the nation in recent weeks, indicating that Jordanians do not see the concessions as enough. In perhaps a sign of the regime’s weakness, President Obama dispatched Adm. Mike Mullen, the head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, to meet with Abdullah this weekend.
SYRIA: Earlier this month, protesters planned a “day of rage” where they would protest their grievances against the unelected president Basher al-Assad. While the protesters ended up being few in number, the regime did deploy its security services in increased numbers across the country, visibly fearful of a protest movement like the ones in Egypt and Tunisia. The government also lifted a five-year ban on Facebook, in a move widely seen as appeasing a nascent protest movement.
YEMEN: The president of Yemen, “one of America’s foremost allies” in the region, promised to step down in 2013, as his people began to demonstrate against the ruling elite. Today, thousands of pro-regime demonstrators attacked anti-government demonstrators with clubs and knives, an eery parallel to an Egyptian tactic that failed to quell protests and destroyed the regime’s public reputation and international support.
An American abroad in Yemen captured the protests there, where Yemenis spontaneously erupted in protest and began marching to the country’s own iconic capital square — which is actually named Tahrir, just like Egypt’s. Watch it:
This list is far from comprehensive, as movements are being organized in a number of other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman. Whether these movements will ultimately be successful is unknown, but they symbolize a growing grassroots call for democracy that has been virtually unseen in the region. Given that the United States is a sponsor of many of the intelligence and military apparatuses of these countries and a close ally to their governments, we have not just an opportunity but a responsibility to work with the people towards a more democratic future.
Last month, the world was shocked as the Tunisian autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled his country for 23 years, was overthrown in a protest movement that lasted only 29 days. The event was soon dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution,” a symbolic reference to a blooming flower. While many doubted that this revolution would spread, it was only days later that massive protests rocked Cairo, resulting in the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for more than 30 years. While the fate of both countries is still unresolved, one thing is clear: the people are demanding democracy, and they have forced massive changes in their government to get it.
Now, many are wondering if this pro-democracy movement that swept Tunisia and Egypt will spread throughout the rest of the Arab world. ThinkProgress has assembled a short list of other autocratic regimes in the region that are facing protests, particularly today, and which may soon be the next to go in the Middle East’s next “Jasmine Revolution”:
ALGERIA: Algeria has been in the iron grip of a military government since 1991, when the regime cancelled elections after an Islamist party won the first round. This set off a bloody civil war in the country, which peaked in violence between 1993 and 1997. In recent days, Algerians, inspired by their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbors, have organized large protest marches demanding democratic reforms. Saturday, despite officials outlawing the protest, nearly 10,000 people marched in Algiers anyway, facing off with three times as many riot police. Perhaps fearing that they will be the targets of the next revolution, Algerian officials recently announced that they will be lifting the country’s own emergency law — which has been in place for decades — in the “very near future.”
BAHRAIN: Bahrain’s Sunni leader, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has long oppressed his country’s Shi’a-majority population. Last August, his ruling party arrested hundreds of Shi’a activists and shut down the main opposition party’s websites right before the parliamentary election, fearing that it may lose its grip on power. Yet recent events in the Middle East have the king fearing for his rule, too. He has ordered “a hike in food subsidies and reinstated welfare support for low-income families to compensate for inflation,” and plans to deliver a speech today where he will offer further concessions. Additionally, Bahrain’s government announced that it will be giving $2,650 to each Bahraini family yesterday. Yet pro-democracy activists plan to march Monday anyway, demanding real reforms in the country.
JORDAN: Likely also fearing a Tunisian-style revolution, Jordan’s King Abdullah sacked his government and appointed a new Prime Minister at the beginning of this month. Yet some of the largest protests in modern history have rocked the nation in recent weeks, indicating that Jordanians do not see the concessions as enough. In perhaps a sign of the regime’s weakness, President Obama dispatched Adm. Mike Mullen, the head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, to meet with Abdullah this weekend.
SYRIA: Earlier this month, protesters planned a “day of rage” where they would protest their grievances against the unelected president Basher al-Assad. While the protesters ended up being few in number, the regime did deploy its security services in increased numbers across the country, visibly fearful of a protest movement like the ones in Egypt and Tunisia. The government also lifted a five-year ban on Facebook, in a move widely seen as appeasing a nascent protest movement.
YEMEN: The president of Yemen, “one of America’s foremost allies” in the region, promised to step down in 2013, as his people began to demonstrate against the ruling elite. Today, thousands of pro-regime demonstrators attacked anti-government demonstrators with clubs and knives, an eery parallel to an Egyptian tactic that failed to quell protests and destroyed the regime’s public reputation and international support.
An American abroad in Yemen captured the protests there, where Yemenis spontaneously erupted in protest and began marching to the country’s own iconic capital square — which is actually named Tahrir, just like Egypt’s. Watch it:
This list is far from comprehensive, as movements are being organized in a number of other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman. Whether these movements will ultimately be successful is unknown, but they symbolize a growing grassroots call for democracy that has been virtually unseen in the region. Given that the United States is a sponsor of many of the intelligence and military apparatuses of these countries and a close ally to their governments, we have not just an opportunity but a responsibility to work with the people towards a more democratic future.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Desperate Bid of the U.S. to Avoid Regime Change in Egypt
The Anglo-Zionist imperialists, with the U.S. at the helm are desperately trying to divert the people's movement in Egypt from accomplishing its just aim of regime change and to block the further spread of this revolutionary fervour across the region. This situation constitutes arguably the greatest threat to the strategic interests of U.S. imperialism in decades, and it is a situation where the imperialists have little room to manoeuvre. As the Anglo-Zionist media today jubilantly declare that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's resignation settles the question, the real play of the U.S. to block the people's movement in Egypt has just begun. The military bid, announced today, to take over the helm of the sinking Egyptian ship is a thinly disguised U.S.-backed coup aimed at establishing facts on the ground that will block the people's striving for empowerment.
No Rest for the Wicked
Their desperate bid entails a constant effort to buy time so as to put the facts on the ground necessary for a transition that suits their interests. Consider the scenario. The U.S. imperialists with the exception of a small coterie of recalcitrant elements, have always recognized that Mubarak must go but the question was always how. If, along with the rest of his regime, he was forced to step down according to the demands of the people, then the situation is grave for the imperialists. This is an equation where genuine regime change takes place, invariably leading to a renewed people's Egypt opposed to imperialism. Instead, the U.S., Israel and other foreign powers have opted to orchestrate a situation where Mubarak goes while another U.S.-client government is established -- the much sought after and acclaimed "orderly transition" of the reactionaries including Canada -- so that the people would continue to be marginalized while the foreign rule takes another form. Hence the announcement that the newly appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman, former head of Mubarak's murderous intelligence agency, is assuming various presidential powers while the military has taken over control of the country.
To date the Egyptian people have refused to be diverted by either the carrot or the stick. In regard to the former, the token negotiations Mubarak claimed to conduct with some opposition forces failed to demobilize the people. There is no reason to believe that they will be demobilized by Mubarak's resignation while the military makes promises about lifting the State of Emergency once this situation ends. In regard to the use of the stick, all efforts to use the police forces, military or hired thugs (dubbed pro-Mubarak supporters) to quell the protests through violence, torture, murder, arrest or sheer chaos have also failed. If anything, the numbers and militancy of the protestors have swelled. Workers have joined the protestors after the unions held another General Strike starting on February 8 and large numbers of expatriates continue to arrive to join the protestors. So, the flip side of the equation is that the Egyptian people have been doing everything possible to block the imperialist and reactionary strategies aimed at wiping out their movement. How will this clash of interests manifest itself in the coming days?
The People's "Last Warning" Communiqué
Events in Egypt are unfolding quickly. Today is the day protestors, in the face of Mubarak's appearances on TV arrogantly running governmental meetings as if all were well, declared a deadline for the entire regime to step down. Entitled "Last Warning," the communiqué of the protestors stated that if this demand were not to be met by the deadline, they would mobilize towards the presidential palace in Cairo to arrest Mubarak for crimes against the people. In doing so, they would directly confront the military guarding the palace and the surrounding rich district where it is located. At the eleventh hour, with tens of thousands surrounding the presidential palace and millions assembled at Tahrir Square and in cities all over Egypt, Mubarak resigned, handing over the reins of power to the military, as if the Egyptian people want to exchange one form of military rule for another.
Today may yet prove to be the most decisive day since the protests erupted on January 25. The protestors' courageous proposal to arrest Mubarak was highly significant. In taking this stand, they cut through all the forked tongue talk of the reactionary regime and imperialists, forcing them to decide: will the army be mobilized against the people? What will the likes of Obama and others do with their proclamations of democracy and non-violence if a bloodbath is unleashed by the military against the people? Managing finally to have Mubarak resign and the military take over may de-escalate the situation temporarily, but everyone knows it is far from over. After 30 years of emergency rule, the Egyptian people are no more likely to accept a military takeover in the guise of democracy than they have the current regime.
Little Room to Manoeuvre
The contradictions are sharp. Even though Mubarak was the head of a U.S. client state, his refusal to follow U.S. dictate to make a clean exit when he saw it as a threat to his power made life especially difficult for the imperialists. Simultaneously, Mubarak knew that without U.S.-backing he had no chance of maintaining power. The army cannot survive without the long-standing funding of the U.S. Yet it is this same military that would be mobilized to break the protests, even as the U.S. recognizes that full-scale military attack against the protestors will likely only further enrage the people against the same U.S. known to back that military.
How will the imperialists put in place the orderly transition in the region -- that neoliberal multiparty system whose aim is to block the people from exercising political power in their own interests? The dictatorships the U.S. imperialists have propped up in the region from Egypt to Saudi Arabia are opposed to this token change which will see them lose their corrupt stranglehold in its present form. The people are refusing to accept any such U.S.-backed solutions whatsoever. A military takeover of the country will settle nothing so far as the people are concerned, even as it increases the potential for all-out military violence against the people.
This is the significance of Saudi Arabia giving refuge to the deposed President of Tunisia Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, former friend of the U.S. who was abandoned by the Americans when it became clear that he could no longer maintain their interests in the face of the popular uprising. This is the significance of the earlier threat to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, that his kingdom will prop up the tottering regime of the Egyptian president if the U.S. withdraws its support, particularly its funding of that regime. Similarly, this is the significance of their claim that they would replace U.S. funding to the military if necessary. The contradictions are sharp between an Obama administration trying to pacify through token, superficial "democratic" change the masses of people who refuse to be diverted or fooled, and the dictatorships/militaries of the U.S. client states which are quickly becoming an obstacle to U.S. imperialist interests by refusing to give up their corrupt power to safeguard U.S. interests.
Egypt Is Not Honduras
The imperialist bid to pacify popular uprisings by imposing token democracy, with controlled elections and civil institutions run by the U.S., is a strategy the U.S. imperialists and countries of the European Union and Canada have been attempting to enact in the Middle East for a number of years. This started with the Charter of Paris signed in 1991 which declared that every country had to have a free market economy, multiparty system and abide by so-called human rights. The U.S. in particular has been funding regime changes in the name of democracy to deal with the ever-rising discontent of the peoples over the havoc wreaked by the so-called free market economy and U.S. imperialism and American client states on their societies. The British have provided the so-called Civitas Project to corrupt the Palestinian Authority and sabotage the liberation movement of the Palestinian people. Canada is a partner in this project and is mandated to provide the so-called electoral and judicial arms for these so-called democracy building initiatives. In Egypt the reactionaries are hoping to use the strategy used to smash the people's 2009 uprising in Honduras, orchestrating a coup against the popular government of Manuel Zelaya and then using ambiguity to gain time so as to declare it legal and institute the coup regime. Yet Egypt, with a population of 81,527,172, compared to 7,318,789 in Honduras, and with 1,001,449 square km compared to Honduras' 112,090 square km is a completely different kettle of fish. Pulling off in Egypt what
they did in Honduras will be much more difficult.
TML again salutes the revolutionary movement of the Egyptian people and the fearless unity of their ranks representing all sectors of the society. TML calls on the Canadian working class and its allies to go all out in support of the Egyptian people as events continue to unfold. A victory for the Egyptian people will transform the situation across the region, affirming the right to sovereignty for all, including the long suffering Palestinian people. A victory for the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people is a victory for the peoples of the world in their striving to hold governments responsible for providing the human rights of all with a guarantee.
No Rest for the Wicked
Their desperate bid entails a constant effort to buy time so as to put the facts on the ground necessary for a transition that suits their interests. Consider the scenario. The U.S. imperialists with the exception of a small coterie of recalcitrant elements, have always recognized that Mubarak must go but the question was always how. If, along with the rest of his regime, he was forced to step down according to the demands of the people, then the situation is grave for the imperialists. This is an equation where genuine regime change takes place, invariably leading to a renewed people's Egypt opposed to imperialism. Instead, the U.S., Israel and other foreign powers have opted to orchestrate a situation where Mubarak goes while another U.S.-client government is established -- the much sought after and acclaimed "orderly transition" of the reactionaries including Canada -- so that the people would continue to be marginalized while the foreign rule takes another form. Hence the announcement that the newly appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman, former head of Mubarak's murderous intelligence agency, is assuming various presidential powers while the military has taken over control of the country.
To date the Egyptian people have refused to be diverted by either the carrot or the stick. In regard to the former, the token negotiations Mubarak claimed to conduct with some opposition forces failed to demobilize the people. There is no reason to believe that they will be demobilized by Mubarak's resignation while the military makes promises about lifting the State of Emergency once this situation ends. In regard to the use of the stick, all efforts to use the police forces, military or hired thugs (dubbed pro-Mubarak supporters) to quell the protests through violence, torture, murder, arrest or sheer chaos have also failed. If anything, the numbers and militancy of the protestors have swelled. Workers have joined the protestors after the unions held another General Strike starting on February 8 and large numbers of expatriates continue to arrive to join the protestors. So, the flip side of the equation is that the Egyptian people have been doing everything possible to block the imperialist and reactionary strategies aimed at wiping out their movement. How will this clash of interests manifest itself in the coming days?
The People's "Last Warning" Communiqué
Events in Egypt are unfolding quickly. Today is the day protestors, in the face of Mubarak's appearances on TV arrogantly running governmental meetings as if all were well, declared a deadline for the entire regime to step down. Entitled "Last Warning," the communiqué of the protestors stated that if this demand were not to be met by the deadline, they would mobilize towards the presidential palace in Cairo to arrest Mubarak for crimes against the people. In doing so, they would directly confront the military guarding the palace and the surrounding rich district where it is located. At the eleventh hour, with tens of thousands surrounding the presidential palace and millions assembled at Tahrir Square and in cities all over Egypt, Mubarak resigned, handing over the reins of power to the military, as if the Egyptian people want to exchange one form of military rule for another.
Today may yet prove to be the most decisive day since the protests erupted on January 25. The protestors' courageous proposal to arrest Mubarak was highly significant. In taking this stand, they cut through all the forked tongue talk of the reactionary regime and imperialists, forcing them to decide: will the army be mobilized against the people? What will the likes of Obama and others do with their proclamations of democracy and non-violence if a bloodbath is unleashed by the military against the people? Managing finally to have Mubarak resign and the military take over may de-escalate the situation temporarily, but everyone knows it is far from over. After 30 years of emergency rule, the Egyptian people are no more likely to accept a military takeover in the guise of democracy than they have the current regime.
Little Room to Manoeuvre
The contradictions are sharp. Even though Mubarak was the head of a U.S. client state, his refusal to follow U.S. dictate to make a clean exit when he saw it as a threat to his power made life especially difficult for the imperialists. Simultaneously, Mubarak knew that without U.S.-backing he had no chance of maintaining power. The army cannot survive without the long-standing funding of the U.S. Yet it is this same military that would be mobilized to break the protests, even as the U.S. recognizes that full-scale military attack against the protestors will likely only further enrage the people against the same U.S. known to back that military.
How will the imperialists put in place the orderly transition in the region -- that neoliberal multiparty system whose aim is to block the people from exercising political power in their own interests? The dictatorships the U.S. imperialists have propped up in the region from Egypt to Saudi Arabia are opposed to this token change which will see them lose their corrupt stranglehold in its present form. The people are refusing to accept any such U.S.-backed solutions whatsoever. A military takeover of the country will settle nothing so far as the people are concerned, even as it increases the potential for all-out military violence against the people.
This is the significance of Saudi Arabia giving refuge to the deposed President of Tunisia Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, former friend of the U.S. who was abandoned by the Americans when it became clear that he could no longer maintain their interests in the face of the popular uprising. This is the significance of the earlier threat to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, that his kingdom will prop up the tottering regime of the Egyptian president if the U.S. withdraws its support, particularly its funding of that regime. Similarly, this is the significance of their claim that they would replace U.S. funding to the military if necessary. The contradictions are sharp between an Obama administration trying to pacify through token, superficial "democratic" change the masses of people who refuse to be diverted or fooled, and the dictatorships/militaries of the U.S. client states which are quickly becoming an obstacle to U.S. imperialist interests by refusing to give up their corrupt power to safeguard U.S. interests.
Egypt Is Not Honduras
The imperialist bid to pacify popular uprisings by imposing token democracy, with controlled elections and civil institutions run by the U.S., is a strategy the U.S. imperialists and countries of the European Union and Canada have been attempting to enact in the Middle East for a number of years. This started with the Charter of Paris signed in 1991 which declared that every country had to have a free market economy, multiparty system and abide by so-called human rights. The U.S. in particular has been funding regime changes in the name of democracy to deal with the ever-rising discontent of the peoples over the havoc wreaked by the so-called free market economy and U.S. imperialism and American client states on their societies. The British have provided the so-called Civitas Project to corrupt the Palestinian Authority and sabotage the liberation movement of the Palestinian people. Canada is a partner in this project and is mandated to provide the so-called electoral and judicial arms for these so-called democracy building initiatives. In Egypt the reactionaries are hoping to use the strategy used to smash the people's 2009 uprising in Honduras, orchestrating a coup against the popular government of Manuel Zelaya and then using ambiguity to gain time so as to declare it legal and institute the coup regime. Yet Egypt, with a population of 81,527,172, compared to 7,318,789 in Honduras, and with 1,001,449 square km compared to Honduras' 112,090 square km is a completely different kettle of fish. Pulling off in Egypt what
they did in Honduras will be much more difficult.
TML again salutes the revolutionary movement of the Egyptian people and the fearless unity of their ranks representing all sectors of the society. TML calls on the Canadian working class and its allies to go all out in support of the Egyptian people as events continue to unfold. A victory for the Egyptian people will transform the situation across the region, affirming the right to sovereignty for all, including the long suffering Palestinian people. A victory for the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people is a victory for the peoples of the world in their striving to hold governments responsible for providing the human rights of all with a guarantee.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Cables: FBI trained Egypt’s state security ‘torturers’
By Daniel Tencer
Egypt's secret police, long accused of torturing suspects and intimidating political opponents of President Hosni Mubarak, received training at the FBI's facility in Quantico, Virginia, even as US diplomats compiled allegations of brutality against them, according to US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.
One cable, dated November 2007 and published by the Telegraph, describes a meeting between the head of the SSIS, Egypt's secret police, and FBI deputy director John Pistole, in which the secret police chief praises Pistole for the "excellent and strong" cooperation between the two agencies. (Pistole has since been appointed head of the TSA.)
SSIS chief Abdul Rahman said the FBI's training sessions at Quantico were of "great benefit" to his agency. The cables did not address what sort of training Egyptian secret police received at Quantico, or how many officers were trained there.
In another cable, dated October 2009, a US diplomat reported on allegations from "credible human rights lawyers" that the SSIS was behind the torture of terrorism suspects held in Egyptian jails.
TAKE ACTIONSorry, but your Flash player is outdated.
Click here to install the latest version.Petitions by Change.org|Get Widget|Start a Petition »Members of a Hezbollah cell arrested in 2008 were tortured "with electric shocks and sleep deprivation to reduce them to a 'zombie state'," the cable stated. The lawyers "asserted that 'this kind of torture' is different from what [name redacted] normally sees, and speculated that a special branch of Interior Ministry State Security (SSIS) could be directing the torture."
The history of torture allegations against the SSIS reaches back decades, but allegations have grown since the war on terror was launched after 9/11. In a 2007 report, Amnesty International accused the Egyptian government of turning the country into a "torture center" for war on terror suspects.
"We are now uncovering evidence of Egypt being a destination of choice for third-party or contracted-out torture in the 'war on terror'," Amnesty's Kate Allen said at the time.
The Egyptian government acknowledged in 2005 that the US had transferred 60 to 70 detainees to Egypt since 2001.
'THOUSANDS' MAY HAVE BEEN TORTURED AMID PROTESTS: REPORT
The latest accusations of torture coming out of Egypt focus not on the SSIS, but on the Egyptian army, which in the early days of the Egyptian protests was lauded for taking a hands-off approach and not attempting to suppress the demonstrations.
According to the Guardian, witnesses reported "extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation."
Egyptian human rights groups say families are desperately searching for missing relatives who have disappeared into army custody. Some of the detainees have been held inside the renowned Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square. Those released have given graphic accounts of physical abuse by soldiers who accused them of acting for foreign powers, including Hamas and Israel.
Among those detained have been human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, but most have been released. However, Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ordinary people had "disappeared" into military custody across the country for no more than carrying a political flyer, attending the demonstrations or even the way they look. Many were still missing.
Egypt's secret police, long accused of torturing suspects and intimidating political opponents of President Hosni Mubarak, received training at the FBI's facility in Quantico, Virginia, even as US diplomats compiled allegations of brutality against them, according to US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.
One cable, dated November 2007 and published by the Telegraph, describes a meeting between the head of the SSIS, Egypt's secret police, and FBI deputy director John Pistole, in which the secret police chief praises Pistole for the "excellent and strong" cooperation between the two agencies. (Pistole has since been appointed head of the TSA.)
SSIS chief Abdul Rahman said the FBI's training sessions at Quantico were of "great benefit" to his agency. The cables did not address what sort of training Egyptian secret police received at Quantico, or how many officers were trained there.
In another cable, dated October 2009, a US diplomat reported on allegations from "credible human rights lawyers" that the SSIS was behind the torture of terrorism suspects held in Egyptian jails.
TAKE ACTIONSorry, but your Flash player is outdated.
Click here to install the latest version.Petitions by Change.org|Get Widget|Start a Petition »Members of a Hezbollah cell arrested in 2008 were tortured "with electric shocks and sleep deprivation to reduce them to a 'zombie state'," the cable stated. The lawyers "asserted that 'this kind of torture' is different from what [name redacted] normally sees, and speculated that a special branch of Interior Ministry State Security (SSIS) could be directing the torture."
The history of torture allegations against the SSIS reaches back decades, but allegations have grown since the war on terror was launched after 9/11. In a 2007 report, Amnesty International accused the Egyptian government of turning the country into a "torture center" for war on terror suspects.
"We are now uncovering evidence of Egypt being a destination of choice for third-party or contracted-out torture in the 'war on terror'," Amnesty's Kate Allen said at the time.
The Egyptian government acknowledged in 2005 that the US had transferred 60 to 70 detainees to Egypt since 2001.
'THOUSANDS' MAY HAVE BEEN TORTURED AMID PROTESTS: REPORT
The latest accusations of torture coming out of Egypt focus not on the SSIS, but on the Egyptian army, which in the early days of the Egyptian protests was lauded for taking a hands-off approach and not attempting to suppress the demonstrations.
According to the Guardian, witnesses reported "extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation."
Egyptian human rights groups say families are desperately searching for missing relatives who have disappeared into army custody. Some of the detainees have been held inside the renowned Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square. Those released have given graphic accounts of physical abuse by soldiers who accused them of acting for foreign powers, including Hamas and Israel.
Among those detained have been human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, but most have been released. However, Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ordinary people had "disappeared" into military custody across the country for no more than carrying a political flyer, attending the demonstrations or even the way they look. Many were still missing.
Protest in Egypt Takes a Turn as Workers Go on Strike
Wednesday 09 February 2011
by: David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times News Service | Report
Protesters in Al Tahrir Square carry a banner that reads, "Strike till departure," on February 1, 2011. Egyptian protesters on Wednesday demonstrated a new ability to mobilize thousands to take over Cairo’s streets beyond Tahrir Square and to spark labor unrest. (Photo: Kodak Agfa)
Cairo - Protesters demanding the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak appeared on Wednesday to have recaptured the initiative in their battle with his government, demonstrating a new ability to mobilize thousands to take over Cairo’s streets beyond Tahrir Square and to spark labor unrest.
As reports filtered in of strikes and unrest spreading to other parts of the city and the country, the government seemed to dig in deeper. Mr. Mubarak’s handpicked successor, Vice President Omar Suleiman, warned Tuesday that the only alternative to constitutional talks was a “coup” and added: “We don’t want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools.”
But the pressure on Mr. Mubarak’s government was intensifying, a day after the largest crowd of protesters in two weeks flooded Cairo’s streets and the United States delivered its most specific demands yet, urging swift steps toward democracy. Some of the protesters drew new inspiration from the emotional interview on Egypt’s most popular talk show with Wael Ghonim, the online political organizer who was detained for two weeks.
At dawn on Wednesday, the 16th day of the uprising, hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators remained camped out at Parliament, where they had marched for the first time on Tuesday. There were reports of thousands demonstrating in several other cities around the country while protesters began to gather again in Tahrir Square, a few blocks from Parliament.
By midday, hundreds of workers from the Health Ministry, adjacent to Parliament and a few hundred yards from Tahrir Square, also took to the streets in a protest whose exact focus was not immediately clear, Interior Ministry officials said.
Violent clashes between opponents and supporters of Mr. Mubarak led to more than 70 injuries in recent days, according to a report by Al Ahram — the flagship government newspaper and a cornerstone of the Egyptian establishment — while government officials said the protests had spread to the previously quiet southern region of Upper Egypt.
In Port Said, a city of 600,000 at the mouth of the Suez Canal, protesters set fire to a government building and occupied the city’s central square. There were unconfirmed reports that police fired live rounds on protesters on Tuesday in El Kharga, 375 miles south of Cairo, resulting in several deaths. Protesters responded by burning police stations and other government buildings on Wednesday, according to wire reports.
On Tuesday, the officials said, thousands protested in the province of Wadi El Jedid. One person died and 61 were injured, including seven from gunfire by the authorities, the officials said. Television images also showed crowds gathering in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city.
Before the reports of those clashes, Human Rights Watch reported that more than 300 people have been killed since Jan. 25.
Increasingly, the political clamor for Mr. Mubarak’s ouster seemed to be complemented by strikes in Cairo and elsewhere.
In the most potentially significant action, about 6,000 workers at five service companies owned by the Suez Canal Authority — a major component of the Egyptian economy — began a sit-in on Tuesday night. There was no immediate suggestion of disruptions to shipping in the canal, a vital international waterway leading from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. But Egyptian officials said that total traffic declined by 1.6 percent in January, though it was up significantly from last year.
More than 2,000 textile workers and others in Suez demonstrated as well, Al Ahram reported, while in Luxor thousands hurt by the collapse of the tourist industry marched to demand government benefits. There was no immediate independent corroboration of the reports.
At one factory in the textile town of Mahalla, more than striking 1,500 workers blocked roads, continuing a long-running dispute with the owner. And more than 2,000 workers from the Sigma pharmaceutical company in the city of Quesna went on strike while some 5,000 unemployed youth stormed a government building in Aswan, demanding the dismissal of the governor.
For many foreign visitors to Egypt, Aswan is known as a starting point or destination for luxury cruises to and from Luxor on the Nile River. The government’s Ministry of Civil Aviation reported on Wednesday that flights to Egypt had dropped by 70 percent since the protests began.
In Cairo, sanitation workers demonstrated around their headquarters in Dokki.
While state television has focused its coverage on episodes of violence that could spread fear among the wider Egyptian public and prompt calls for the restoration, Al Ahram’s coverage was a departure from its usual practice of avoiding reporting that might embarrass the government.
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In the lobby of the newspaper, journalists on Wednesday were in open revolt against the newspaper’s management and editorial policies.
Some called their protest a microcosm of the Egyptian uprising, with young journalists leading demands for better working conditions and less biased coverage. “We want a voice,” said Sara Ramadan, 23, a sports reporter.
The turmoil at the newspaper has already changed editorial content, with the English-language online edition openly criticizing what it called “the warped and falsified coverage by state media” of the protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere.
The paper described how “more than 500 media figures” issued a statement declaring “their rejection of official media coverage of the January 25 uprising and demanded that Minister of Information Anas El-Fikki step down.”
Members of the Journalists Syndicate moved toward a no-confidence vote against their leader, Makram Mohamed Ahmed, a former Mubarak speech writer, the daily Al Masry Al Youm reported on its English-language Web site.
Several of the dozens of protesters occupying the lobby on Wednesday said the editor of the English-language division heads to the square to join the protests every night, joined by many of the staff.
The scattered protests and labor unrest seemed symptomatic of an emerging trend for some Egyptians to air an array of grievances, some related to the protests and some of an older origin.
The government’s bid to project its willingness to make concessions has had limited success. On Tuesday, Vice President Suleiman announced the creation of a committee of judges and legal scholars to propose constitutional amendments.
But all the members are considered Mubarak loyalists.
The Obama administration was continuing its efforts to influence a transition. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Mr. Suleiman on Tuesday to ask him to lift the 30-year emergency law that the government has used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders, to stop imprisoning protesters and journalists, and to invite demonstrators to help develop a specific timetable for opening up the political process. He also asked Mr. Suleiman to open talks on Egypt’s political future to a wider range of opposition members.
Mr. Suleiman has said only that Egypt will remove the emergency law when the situation justifies its repeal, and the harassment and arrest of journalists and human rights activists has continued even in the last few days.
And while he raised the prospect of a coup, he also said, “we want to avoid that — meaning uncalculated and hasty steps that produce more irrationality.”
“There will be no ending of the regime, nor a coup, because that means chaos,” Mr. Suleiman said. And he warned the protesters not to attempt more civil disobedience, calling it “extremely dangerous.” He added, “We absolutely do not tolerate it.”
On Tuesday , young organizers guiding the movement from a tent city inside Tahrir Square, or Liberation Square, showed the discipline and stamina that they say will help them outlast Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Suleiman, even if their revolt devolves into a war of attrition.
Many in the crowd, for example, said they had turned out because organizers had spread the word over loudspeakers and online media for demonstrators to concentrate their efforts on just Tuesdays and Fridays, enabling their supporters to rest in between. And while Mr. Mubarak remains in office, they say, there is no turning back.
Many in the crowd said discussed the inspiration they drew from the interview with the freed organizer, Mr. Ghonim. A Google executive, he had been the anonymous administrator of a Facebook group that enlisted tens of thousands to oppose the Mubarak government by publicizing a young Egyptian’s beating death at the hands of its reviled police force.
In the tearful conversation on Egypt’s Dream TV, Mr. Ghonim told the story of his “kidnapping,” secret imprisonment in blindfolded isolation for 12 days and determination to overturn Egypt’s authoritarian government. Both Mr. Ghonim and his interviewer, Mona el-Shazly, appeared in Tahrir Square Tuesday to cheer on the revolt.
Some protesters said they saw the broadcast as a potential turning point in a propaganda war that has so far gone badly against them, with the state-run television network and newspapers portraying the crowds in Tahrir Square as a dwindling band of obstructionists doing the bidding of foreign interests.
Organizers had hinted in recent days that they intended to expand out of the square to keep the pressure on the government. Then, around 3 p.m., a bearded man with a bullhorn led a procession around the tanks guarding the square and down several blocks to the Parliament. Many of the protesters still wore bandages on their heads from a 12-hour war of rocks and stones against Mubarak loyalists a few days before.
“Parliament is a great pressure point,” said Ahmed el-Droubi, a biologist. “What we need to do is unite this protest and Tahrir, and that is just the first step. Then we will expand further until Mr. Mubarak gets the point.”
Back in Tahrir Square, more members of the Egyptian elite continued to turn up in support of the protestors, including the pop star Shireen Abdel Wahab and the soccer goalkeeper Nader al-Sayed. Brigades of university employees and telephone company employees joined the protests, as did a column of legal scholars in formal black robes.
Many at the protests buttonholed Americans to express deep disappointment with President Obama, shaking their heads at his ambiguous messages about an orderly transition. They warned that the country risked incurring a resentment from the Egyptian people that could last long after Mr. Mubarak is gone.
Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Anthony Shadid, Mona El-Naggar, Thanassis Cambanis and Liam Stack.
This article "Protest in Egypt Takes a Turn as Workers Go on Strike" originally appeared at The New York Times.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
by: David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times News Service | Report
Protesters in Al Tahrir Square carry a banner that reads, "Strike till departure," on February 1, 2011. Egyptian protesters on Wednesday demonstrated a new ability to mobilize thousands to take over Cairo’s streets beyond Tahrir Square and to spark labor unrest. (Photo: Kodak Agfa)
Cairo - Protesters demanding the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak appeared on Wednesday to have recaptured the initiative in their battle with his government, demonstrating a new ability to mobilize thousands to take over Cairo’s streets beyond Tahrir Square and to spark labor unrest.
As reports filtered in of strikes and unrest spreading to other parts of the city and the country, the government seemed to dig in deeper. Mr. Mubarak’s handpicked successor, Vice President Omar Suleiman, warned Tuesday that the only alternative to constitutional talks was a “coup” and added: “We don’t want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools.”
But the pressure on Mr. Mubarak’s government was intensifying, a day after the largest crowd of protesters in two weeks flooded Cairo’s streets and the United States delivered its most specific demands yet, urging swift steps toward democracy. Some of the protesters drew new inspiration from the emotional interview on Egypt’s most popular talk show with Wael Ghonim, the online political organizer who was detained for two weeks.
At dawn on Wednesday, the 16th day of the uprising, hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators remained camped out at Parliament, where they had marched for the first time on Tuesday. There were reports of thousands demonstrating in several other cities around the country while protesters began to gather again in Tahrir Square, a few blocks from Parliament.
By midday, hundreds of workers from the Health Ministry, adjacent to Parliament and a few hundred yards from Tahrir Square, also took to the streets in a protest whose exact focus was not immediately clear, Interior Ministry officials said.
Violent clashes between opponents and supporters of Mr. Mubarak led to more than 70 injuries in recent days, according to a report by Al Ahram — the flagship government newspaper and a cornerstone of the Egyptian establishment — while government officials said the protests had spread to the previously quiet southern region of Upper Egypt.
In Port Said, a city of 600,000 at the mouth of the Suez Canal, protesters set fire to a government building and occupied the city’s central square. There were unconfirmed reports that police fired live rounds on protesters on Tuesday in El Kharga, 375 miles south of Cairo, resulting in several deaths. Protesters responded by burning police stations and other government buildings on Wednesday, according to wire reports.
On Tuesday, the officials said, thousands protested in the province of Wadi El Jedid. One person died and 61 were injured, including seven from gunfire by the authorities, the officials said. Television images also showed crowds gathering in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city.
Before the reports of those clashes, Human Rights Watch reported that more than 300 people have been killed since Jan. 25.
Increasingly, the political clamor for Mr. Mubarak’s ouster seemed to be complemented by strikes in Cairo and elsewhere.
In the most potentially significant action, about 6,000 workers at five service companies owned by the Suez Canal Authority — a major component of the Egyptian economy — began a sit-in on Tuesday night. There was no immediate suggestion of disruptions to shipping in the canal, a vital international waterway leading from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. But Egyptian officials said that total traffic declined by 1.6 percent in January, though it was up significantly from last year.
More than 2,000 textile workers and others in Suez demonstrated as well, Al Ahram reported, while in Luxor thousands hurt by the collapse of the tourist industry marched to demand government benefits. There was no immediate independent corroboration of the reports.
At one factory in the textile town of Mahalla, more than striking 1,500 workers blocked roads, continuing a long-running dispute with the owner. And more than 2,000 workers from the Sigma pharmaceutical company in the city of Quesna went on strike while some 5,000 unemployed youth stormed a government building in Aswan, demanding the dismissal of the governor.
For many foreign visitors to Egypt, Aswan is known as a starting point or destination for luxury cruises to and from Luxor on the Nile River. The government’s Ministry of Civil Aviation reported on Wednesday that flights to Egypt had dropped by 70 percent since the protests began.
In Cairo, sanitation workers demonstrated around their headquarters in Dokki.
While state television has focused its coverage on episodes of violence that could spread fear among the wider Egyptian public and prompt calls for the restoration, Al Ahram’s coverage was a departure from its usual practice of avoiding reporting that might embarrass the government.
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In the lobby of the newspaper, journalists on Wednesday were in open revolt against the newspaper’s management and editorial policies.
Some called their protest a microcosm of the Egyptian uprising, with young journalists leading demands for better working conditions and less biased coverage. “We want a voice,” said Sara Ramadan, 23, a sports reporter.
The turmoil at the newspaper has already changed editorial content, with the English-language online edition openly criticizing what it called “the warped and falsified coverage by state media” of the protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere.
The paper described how “more than 500 media figures” issued a statement declaring “their rejection of official media coverage of the January 25 uprising and demanded that Minister of Information Anas El-Fikki step down.”
Members of the Journalists Syndicate moved toward a no-confidence vote against their leader, Makram Mohamed Ahmed, a former Mubarak speech writer, the daily Al Masry Al Youm reported on its English-language Web site.
Several of the dozens of protesters occupying the lobby on Wednesday said the editor of the English-language division heads to the square to join the protests every night, joined by many of the staff.
The scattered protests and labor unrest seemed symptomatic of an emerging trend for some Egyptians to air an array of grievances, some related to the protests and some of an older origin.
The government’s bid to project its willingness to make concessions has had limited success. On Tuesday, Vice President Suleiman announced the creation of a committee of judges and legal scholars to propose constitutional amendments.
But all the members are considered Mubarak loyalists.
The Obama administration was continuing its efforts to influence a transition. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Mr. Suleiman on Tuesday to ask him to lift the 30-year emergency law that the government has used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders, to stop imprisoning protesters and journalists, and to invite demonstrators to help develop a specific timetable for opening up the political process. He also asked Mr. Suleiman to open talks on Egypt’s political future to a wider range of opposition members.
Mr. Suleiman has said only that Egypt will remove the emergency law when the situation justifies its repeal, and the harassment and arrest of journalists and human rights activists has continued even in the last few days.
And while he raised the prospect of a coup, he also said, “we want to avoid that — meaning uncalculated and hasty steps that produce more irrationality.”
“There will be no ending of the regime, nor a coup, because that means chaos,” Mr. Suleiman said. And he warned the protesters not to attempt more civil disobedience, calling it “extremely dangerous.” He added, “We absolutely do not tolerate it.”
On Tuesday , young organizers guiding the movement from a tent city inside Tahrir Square, or Liberation Square, showed the discipline and stamina that they say will help them outlast Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Suleiman, even if their revolt devolves into a war of attrition.
Many in the crowd, for example, said they had turned out because organizers had spread the word over loudspeakers and online media for demonstrators to concentrate their efforts on just Tuesdays and Fridays, enabling their supporters to rest in between. And while Mr. Mubarak remains in office, they say, there is no turning back.
Many in the crowd said discussed the inspiration they drew from the interview with the freed organizer, Mr. Ghonim. A Google executive, he had been the anonymous administrator of a Facebook group that enlisted tens of thousands to oppose the Mubarak government by publicizing a young Egyptian’s beating death at the hands of its reviled police force.
In the tearful conversation on Egypt’s Dream TV, Mr. Ghonim told the story of his “kidnapping,” secret imprisonment in blindfolded isolation for 12 days and determination to overturn Egypt’s authoritarian government. Both Mr. Ghonim and his interviewer, Mona el-Shazly, appeared in Tahrir Square Tuesday to cheer on the revolt.
Some protesters said they saw the broadcast as a potential turning point in a propaganda war that has so far gone badly against them, with the state-run television network and newspapers portraying the crowds in Tahrir Square as a dwindling band of obstructionists doing the bidding of foreign interests.
Organizers had hinted in recent days that they intended to expand out of the square to keep the pressure on the government. Then, around 3 p.m., a bearded man with a bullhorn led a procession around the tanks guarding the square and down several blocks to the Parliament. Many of the protesters still wore bandages on their heads from a 12-hour war of rocks and stones against Mubarak loyalists a few days before.
“Parliament is a great pressure point,” said Ahmed el-Droubi, a biologist. “What we need to do is unite this protest and Tahrir, and that is just the first step. Then we will expand further until Mr. Mubarak gets the point.”
Back in Tahrir Square, more members of the Egyptian elite continued to turn up in support of the protestors, including the pop star Shireen Abdel Wahab and the soccer goalkeeper Nader al-Sayed. Brigades of university employees and telephone company employees joined the protests, as did a column of legal scholars in formal black robes.
Many at the protests buttonholed Americans to express deep disappointment with President Obama, shaking their heads at his ambiguous messages about an orderly transition. They warned that the country risked incurring a resentment from the Egyptian people that could last long after Mr. Mubarak is gone.
Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Anthony Shadid, Mona El-Naggar, Thanassis Cambanis and Liam Stack.
This article "Protest in Egypt Takes a Turn as Workers Go on Strike" originally appeared at The New York Times.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
International organizations call on Washington to stop aid to Cairo
By Basant Zain-eddine
Fifty international organizations called on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to stop sending aid to Egypt. They called it an “illegal” act, as the United States has local and international commitments not to provide aid to those who violate basic human rights. They cited violence used by the Egyptian security forces against peaceful demonstrators and journalists in the 25 January revolution.
The New York based National Lawyers Guild on Tuesday wrote to the US State Department requesting that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak step down immediately for the sake of democracy and social justice in Egypt.
The letter also stated that “the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits assistance to any country engaged in a pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
The organizations noted that President Mubarak's regime also targeted defenders of human rights, such as the Hisham Mubarak Center, and cut off communications in the country.
They expressed opposition to the appointment of Omar Suleiman as vice-president, given his role in perpetuating the regime’s practice of torture and repression.
The letter called on the United States to issue an “unequivocal” statement that supports the right of the Egyptian people to determine their future and the fate of their country. It demanded an end to all overt and covert assistance to Egypt, an end to interference in Egypt’s internal affairs, and the beginning of an independent investigation of US officials supporting Mubarak’s regime.
The letter was signed by the National Association for Change, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the United National Anti-War Committee, the Peace and Freedom Party in California and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Fifty international organizations called on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to stop sending aid to Egypt. They called it an “illegal” act, as the United States has local and international commitments not to provide aid to those who violate basic human rights. They cited violence used by the Egyptian security forces against peaceful demonstrators and journalists in the 25 January revolution.
The New York based National Lawyers Guild on Tuesday wrote to the US State Department requesting that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak step down immediately for the sake of democracy and social justice in Egypt.
The letter also stated that “the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits assistance to any country engaged in a pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
The organizations noted that President Mubarak's regime also targeted defenders of human rights, such as the Hisham Mubarak Center, and cut off communications in the country.
They expressed opposition to the appointment of Omar Suleiman as vice-president, given his role in perpetuating the regime’s practice of torture and repression.
The letter called on the United States to issue an “unequivocal” statement that supports the right of the Egyptian people to determine their future and the fate of their country. It demanded an end to all overt and covert assistance to Egypt, an end to interference in Egypt’s internal affairs, and the beginning of an independent investigation of US officials supporting Mubarak’s regime.
The letter was signed by the National Association for Change, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the United National Anti-War Committee, the Peace and Freedom Party in California and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
28 hours in the dark heart of Egypt's torture machine
A blindfolded Robert Tait could only listen as fellow captives were electrocuted and beaten by Mubarak's security services
By Robert Tait
The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.
A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: "In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don't behave – electrocution and rape."
Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure.
I had "disappeared", along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak's vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an "orderly transition" to democratic rule.
Judging by what I witnessed, that seems a forlorn hope.
I had often wondered, reading accounts of political prisoners detained and tortured in places such as junta-run Argentina of the 1970s, what it would be like to be totally at the mercy of, and dependent on, your jailer for everything – food, water, the toilet. I never dreamed I would find out. Yet here I was, cooped up in a tiny room with a group of Egyptian detainees who were being mercilessly brutalised.
I had been handed over to the security services after being stopped at a police checkpoint near central Cairo last Friday. I had flown there, along with an Iraqi-born British colleague, Abdelilah Nuaimi, to cover Egypt's unfolding crisis for RFE/RL, an American radio station based in Prague.
We knew beforehand that foreign journalists had been targeted by security services as they scrambled to contain a revolt against Mubarak's regime, so our incarceration was not unique.
Yet it was different. My experience, while highly personal, wasn't really about me or the foreign media. It was about gaining an insight – if that is possible behind a blindfold – into the inner workings of the Mubarak regime. It told me all I needed to know about why it had become hated, feared and loathed by the mass of ordinary Egyptians.
We had been stopped en route to Tahrir Square, scene of the ongoing mass demonstrations, little more than half an hour after leaving Cairo airport.
Uniformed and plainclothes police swarmed around our car and demanded our passports and to see inside my bag. A satellite phone was found and one of the men got in our car and ordered our driver to follow a vehicle in front, which led us to a nearby police station.
There, an officer subjected our fixer, Ahmed, to intense questioning: did he know any Palestinians? Were they members of Hamas? Then we were ordered to move again, and eventually drove to a vast, unmarked complex next to a telecommunications building.
That's when Ahmed sensed real danger. "I hope I don't get beaten up," he said. He had good reason to worry.
We were ordered out and blindfolded before being herded into another vehicle and driven a few hundred yards. Then we were pushed into what seemed like an open-air courtyard and handcuffed. I heard the rapid-fire clicking of the electric rattlesnake – I knew instantly what it was – and then Ahmed screaming in pain. A cold sweat washed over me and I thought I might faint or vomit. "I'm going to be tortured," I thought.
But I wasn't. "Mr Robert, what is wrong," I was asked, before being told, with incongruous kindness, to sit down. I sensed then that I would avoid the worst. But I didn't expect to gain such intimate knowledge of what that meant.
After being interrogated and held in one room for hours, I was frogmarched after nightfall to another room, upstairs, along with other prisoners. We believe our captors were members of the internal security service.
That's when the violence – and the terror – really began.
At first, I attached no meaning to the dull slapping sounds. But comprehension dawned as, amid loud shouting, I heard the electrocuting rods being ratcheted up. My colleague, Abdelilah – kept in a neighbouring room – later told me what the torturers said next.
"Get the electric shocks ready. This lot are to be made to really suffer," a guard said as a new batch of prisoners were brought in.
"Why did you do this to your country?" a jailer screamed as he tormented his victim. "You are not to speak in here, do you understand?" one prisoner was told. He did not reply. Thump. "Do you understand?" Still no answer. More thumps. "Do you understand?" Prisoner: "Yes, I understand." Torturer: "I told you not to speak in here," followed by a cascade of thumps, kicks, and electric shocks.
Exhausted, the prisoners fell asleep and snored loudly, provoking another round of furious assaults. "You're committing a sin," a stricken detainee said in a weak, pitiful voice.
Craving to see my fellow inmates, I discreetly adjusted my blindfold. I briefly saw three young men – two of them looked like Islamists, with bushy beards – with their hands cuffed behind their backs (mine were cuffed to the front), before my captors spotted what I had done and tightened my blindfold.
The brutality continued until, suddenly, I was ordered to stand and pushed towards a room, where I was told I was being taken to the airport. I received my possessions and looked at my watch. It was 5pm. I had been in captivity for 28 hours.
The ordeal was almost over – save for another 16 hours waiting at an airport deportation facility. It had been nightmarish but it was nothing to what my Egyptian fellow-captives had endured.
Later, I learned that Ahmed, the fixer, had been released at the same time as Abdelilah and me. He told friends we had been "treated very well" but that he had bruises "from sleeping on the floor". I had flown to Cairo to find out what was ailing so many Egyptians. I did not expect to learn the answer so graphically.
Robert Tait is a senior correspondent with RFE/RL. He was formerly the Guardian's correspondent in Tehran and Istanbul
By Robert Tait
The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.
A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: "In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don't behave – electrocution and rape."
Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure.
I had "disappeared", along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak's vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an "orderly transition" to democratic rule.
Judging by what I witnessed, that seems a forlorn hope.
I had often wondered, reading accounts of political prisoners detained and tortured in places such as junta-run Argentina of the 1970s, what it would be like to be totally at the mercy of, and dependent on, your jailer for everything – food, water, the toilet. I never dreamed I would find out. Yet here I was, cooped up in a tiny room with a group of Egyptian detainees who were being mercilessly brutalised.
I had been handed over to the security services after being stopped at a police checkpoint near central Cairo last Friday. I had flown there, along with an Iraqi-born British colleague, Abdelilah Nuaimi, to cover Egypt's unfolding crisis for RFE/RL, an American radio station based in Prague.
We knew beforehand that foreign journalists had been targeted by security services as they scrambled to contain a revolt against Mubarak's regime, so our incarceration was not unique.
Yet it was different. My experience, while highly personal, wasn't really about me or the foreign media. It was about gaining an insight – if that is possible behind a blindfold – into the inner workings of the Mubarak regime. It told me all I needed to know about why it had become hated, feared and loathed by the mass of ordinary Egyptians.
We had been stopped en route to Tahrir Square, scene of the ongoing mass demonstrations, little more than half an hour after leaving Cairo airport.
Uniformed and plainclothes police swarmed around our car and demanded our passports and to see inside my bag. A satellite phone was found and one of the men got in our car and ordered our driver to follow a vehicle in front, which led us to a nearby police station.
There, an officer subjected our fixer, Ahmed, to intense questioning: did he know any Palestinians? Were they members of Hamas? Then we were ordered to move again, and eventually drove to a vast, unmarked complex next to a telecommunications building.
That's when Ahmed sensed real danger. "I hope I don't get beaten up," he said. He had good reason to worry.
We were ordered out and blindfolded before being herded into another vehicle and driven a few hundred yards. Then we were pushed into what seemed like an open-air courtyard and handcuffed. I heard the rapid-fire clicking of the electric rattlesnake – I knew instantly what it was – and then Ahmed screaming in pain. A cold sweat washed over me and I thought I might faint or vomit. "I'm going to be tortured," I thought.
But I wasn't. "Mr Robert, what is wrong," I was asked, before being told, with incongruous kindness, to sit down. I sensed then that I would avoid the worst. But I didn't expect to gain such intimate knowledge of what that meant.
After being interrogated and held in one room for hours, I was frogmarched after nightfall to another room, upstairs, along with other prisoners. We believe our captors were members of the internal security service.
That's when the violence – and the terror – really began.
At first, I attached no meaning to the dull slapping sounds. But comprehension dawned as, amid loud shouting, I heard the electrocuting rods being ratcheted up. My colleague, Abdelilah – kept in a neighbouring room – later told me what the torturers said next.
"Get the electric shocks ready. This lot are to be made to really suffer," a guard said as a new batch of prisoners were brought in.
"Why did you do this to your country?" a jailer screamed as he tormented his victim. "You are not to speak in here, do you understand?" one prisoner was told. He did not reply. Thump. "Do you understand?" Still no answer. More thumps. "Do you understand?" Prisoner: "Yes, I understand." Torturer: "I told you not to speak in here," followed by a cascade of thumps, kicks, and electric shocks.
Exhausted, the prisoners fell asleep and snored loudly, provoking another round of furious assaults. "You're committing a sin," a stricken detainee said in a weak, pitiful voice.
Craving to see my fellow inmates, I discreetly adjusted my blindfold. I briefly saw three young men – two of them looked like Islamists, with bushy beards – with their hands cuffed behind their backs (mine were cuffed to the front), before my captors spotted what I had done and tightened my blindfold.
The brutality continued until, suddenly, I was ordered to stand and pushed towards a room, where I was told I was being taken to the airport. I received my possessions and looked at my watch. It was 5pm. I had been in captivity for 28 hours.
The ordeal was almost over – save for another 16 hours waiting at an airport deportation facility. It had been nightmarish but it was nothing to what my Egyptian fellow-captives had endured.
Later, I learned that Ahmed, the fixer, had been released at the same time as Abdelilah and me. He told friends we had been "treated very well" but that he had bruises "from sleeping on the floor". I had flown to Cairo to find out what was ailing so many Egyptians. I did not expect to learn the answer so graphically.
Robert Tait is a senior correspondent with RFE/RL. He was formerly the Guardian's correspondent in Tehran and Istanbul
Monday, February 7, 2011
The danger to Egypt's revolution comes from Washington
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 6 February 2011
The greatest danger to the Egyptian revolution and the prospects for a free and independent Egypt emanates not from the "baltagiyya" -- the mercenaries and thugs the regime sent to beat, stone, stab, shoot and kill protestors in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities last week -- but from Washington.
Ever since the Egyptian uprising began on 25 January, the United States government and the Washington establishment that rationalizes its policies have been scared to death of "losing Egypt." What they fear losing is a regime that has consistently ignored the rights and well-being of its people in order to plunder the country and enrich the few who control it, and that has done America's bidding, especially supporting Israel in its oppression and wars against the Palestinians and other Arabs.
The Obama Administration quickly dissociated itself from its envoy to Egypt, Frank Wisner, after the latter candidly told the BBC on 5 February that he thought President Hosni Mubarak "must stay in office in order to steer" any transition to a post-Mubarak order ("US special envoy: 'Mubarak must stay for now'," 5 February 2011).
But one suspects that Wisner was inadvertently speaking in his master's voice. US President Barack Obama and his national security establishment may be willing to give up Mubarak the person, but they are not willing to give up Mubarak's regime. It is notable that the US has never supported the Egyptian protestors demand that Mubarak must go now. Nor has the United States suspended its $1.5 billion annual aid package to Egypt, much of which goes to the state security forces that are oppressing protestors and beating up and arresting journalists.
As The New York Times -- always a reliable barometer of official thinking -- reported, "The United States and leading European nations on Saturday threw their weight behind Egypt's vice president, Omar Suleiman, backing his attempt to defuse a popular uprising without immediately removing President Hosni Mubarak from power." Obama administration officials, the newspaper added, "said Mr. Suleiman had promised them an 'orderly transition' that would include constitutional reform and outreach to opposition groups" ("West Backs Gradual Egyptian Transition," 5 February 2011).
Moreoever, the Times reported, the United States has already managed to persuade two of its major European clients -- the United Kingdom and Germany -- to back continuing the existing regime with only a change of figurehead.
Suleiman, long the powerful chief of Egypt's intelligence services, has served -- perhaps even more so than Mubarak -- as the guarantor of Egypt's regional role in maintaining the American- and Israeli-dominated order. As author Jane Mayer has documented, Suleiman played a key role in the US "rendition" program, working closely with the CIA which kidnapped "terror suspects" from around the world and delivered them into Suleiman's hands for interrogation, and almost certainly torture ("Who is Omar Suleiman?," The New Yorker, 29 January 2011).
High praise for Suleiman's work has also come from top Israeli military brass. "I always believed in the abilities of the Egyptian Intelligence service [GIS]," Israeli General Amos Gilad told American, Palestinian Authority and Egyptian officials during a secret April 2007 meeting whose leaked minutes were recently released by Al Jazeera as part of the Palestine Papers. "It keeps order and security among 70 millions -- 20 millions in one city [a reference to the population of Egypt, actually closer to 83 million, and to Cairo] -- this is a great achievement, for which you deserve a medal. It is the best asset for the Middle East," Gilad said.
The notion that anyone, let alone US officials, could believe that Suleiman would lead an "orderly transition" to democracy would be laughable if it were not so sinister. Much more likely, the strategy is to try to ride out the protests and wear out and split the opposition, consolidate the regime under Suleiman's ruthless grip with the backing of the Egyptian army, and then enact cosmetic "reforms" to keep the Egyptian people politically divided and busy while business carries on as usual. Under any Suleiman "transition" political activists, journalists and anyone suspected of being part of the current uprising would be in grave danger.
From the American perspective, the strategy can be likened to what happened in the summer of 2008 when the house-of-cards international financial system started to collapse. Think of the Tunisian regime of deposed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as the investment bank Lehman Brothers. When a run on the bank began, the United States government refused to provide it with financial guarantees to bail it out, and it quickly went bankrupt.
But when the panic spread and even larger "too big to fail" financial firms including massive insurance company AIG began to see their positions suddenly deteriorate, the United States government stepped in to bail them out with hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Egyptian regime is the AIG of the region and what we are seeing now is an American attempt to bail it out. If Egypt goes under, the United States fears that the contagion would spread as Arab publics realize that the US-backed despots who rule them can be replaced, and that the toppling of these regimes whose only promise to their people has been "security" is not the end of the world but the start of renewal.
Of course, no analogy is exact. Whereas, allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse was a calculated decision, the United States did not see the revolution in Tunisia, or the uprising in Egypt coming. "Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton infamously declared on 25 January, the day the anti-regime protests broke out ("US urges restraint in Egypt, says government stable," Reuters, 25 January 2011).
Clinton's cluelessness is reminiscent of her predecessor Condoleezza Rice's famous words ("didn't see it coming") in relation to Hamas' victory in Palestinian legislative council elections in 2006.
According to The New York Times, Obama himself is unhappy with US intelligence failures in the Arab world ("Obama Faults Spy Agencies' Performance in Gauging Mideast Unrest, Officials Say," 4 February 2011). For close watchers of the United States, this obliviousness is no mystery.
As Helena Cobban has observed, the Israel Lobby, "AIPAC and its attack dogs," have conducted such a thorough "witch-hunt" over the past quarter century "against anyone with real Middle East expertise that the US government now contains no-one at the higher (or even mid-career) levels of policymaking who has any in-depth understanding of the region or of the aspirations of its people" ("Obama's know-nothings discuss Egypt," 28 January 2011).
But it is even worse than that. The US "policy" establishment seems only capable of viewing the region through Israeli eyes. This is why for so many officials and commentators the concerns of Israel to maintain a brutal hegemony trump the aspirations of 83 million Egyptians to determine their own future free from the shackles of the regime that has oppressed them for so long.
And different futures are possible. On the minds of many observers is the "Turkish model" of constitutional democracy, economic resurgence and foreign policy independence, all under the rule of a "moderate" Islamist party. Turkey, once closely in the orbit of the United States, started to break out with its refusal to allow the US to use the country's bases for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In recent years, Turkey has developed a deliberate "360 degree" foreign policy doctrine which includes maintaining relations with Europe and the United States, while restoring close ties with all its neighbors among them Iran and Arab countries, and assuming a greater regional mediating role. Since 2009, Turkey's once close alliance with Israel has deteriorated sharply, even though ties have not been cut. These shifts, along with its ubiquitous consumer and cultural products have given Turkey enormous regional influence and appeal.
Turkey has its own specific history and is no more perfect than any other country. But the bigger point is that subservience to the United States and Israel is not Egypt's only option. The worst case scenario from the American viewpoint is to have three major regional powers, Iran, Turkey and Egypt, that are not under Washington's control.
Of course Turkey is carving out its own path and Egyptians are struggling to go their own way which may be very different. There's no reason either to believe that Egypt would become "another Iran" as ceaseless Israeli propaganda suggests. But given a free choice, Egypt is not likely serve the "interests" of the United States and Israel the way the Mubarak regime has.
One example is that Egypt might dispense with US aid and still come out ahead by simply selling its natural gas on international markets rather than to Israel at what is reported to be a deep discount. Another is that a truly independent Egypt would eschew serving as Israel's proxy in enforcing the criminal siege of Gaza and stoking intra-Palestinian divisions.
By coming to the streets in their millions, by sacrifing the lives of some of their very finest, the Egyptian people have said that they and they alone want to decide their nation's future. Mubarak as a person is already irrelevant. The confrontation is now between the Egyptian people's desire for democracy and self-determination on the one hand, and, on the other, US insistence (along with its clients in Egypt and the region) on continuing the old regime. Let us offer whatever solidarity we can from wherever we are to help the Egyptian people to win.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books).
The greatest danger to the Egyptian revolution and the prospects for a free and independent Egypt emanates not from the "baltagiyya" -- the mercenaries and thugs the regime sent to beat, stone, stab, shoot and kill protestors in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities last week -- but from Washington.
Ever since the Egyptian uprising began on 25 January, the United States government and the Washington establishment that rationalizes its policies have been scared to death of "losing Egypt." What they fear losing is a regime that has consistently ignored the rights and well-being of its people in order to plunder the country and enrich the few who control it, and that has done America's bidding, especially supporting Israel in its oppression and wars against the Palestinians and other Arabs.
The Obama Administration quickly dissociated itself from its envoy to Egypt, Frank Wisner, after the latter candidly told the BBC on 5 February that he thought President Hosni Mubarak "must stay in office in order to steer" any transition to a post-Mubarak order ("US special envoy: 'Mubarak must stay for now'," 5 February 2011).
But one suspects that Wisner was inadvertently speaking in his master's voice. US President Barack Obama and his national security establishment may be willing to give up Mubarak the person, but they are not willing to give up Mubarak's regime. It is notable that the US has never supported the Egyptian protestors demand that Mubarak must go now. Nor has the United States suspended its $1.5 billion annual aid package to Egypt, much of which goes to the state security forces that are oppressing protestors and beating up and arresting journalists.
As The New York Times -- always a reliable barometer of official thinking -- reported, "The United States and leading European nations on Saturday threw their weight behind Egypt's vice president, Omar Suleiman, backing his attempt to defuse a popular uprising without immediately removing President Hosni Mubarak from power." Obama administration officials, the newspaper added, "said Mr. Suleiman had promised them an 'orderly transition' that would include constitutional reform and outreach to opposition groups" ("West Backs Gradual Egyptian Transition," 5 February 2011).
Moreoever, the Times reported, the United States has already managed to persuade two of its major European clients -- the United Kingdom and Germany -- to back continuing the existing regime with only a change of figurehead.
Suleiman, long the powerful chief of Egypt's intelligence services, has served -- perhaps even more so than Mubarak -- as the guarantor of Egypt's regional role in maintaining the American- and Israeli-dominated order. As author Jane Mayer has documented, Suleiman played a key role in the US "rendition" program, working closely with the CIA which kidnapped "terror suspects" from around the world and delivered them into Suleiman's hands for interrogation, and almost certainly torture ("Who is Omar Suleiman?," The New Yorker, 29 January 2011).
High praise for Suleiman's work has also come from top Israeli military brass. "I always believed in the abilities of the Egyptian Intelligence service [GIS]," Israeli General Amos Gilad told American, Palestinian Authority and Egyptian officials during a secret April 2007 meeting whose leaked minutes were recently released by Al Jazeera as part of the Palestine Papers. "It keeps order and security among 70 millions -- 20 millions in one city [a reference to the population of Egypt, actually closer to 83 million, and to Cairo] -- this is a great achievement, for which you deserve a medal. It is the best asset for the Middle East," Gilad said.
The notion that anyone, let alone US officials, could believe that Suleiman would lead an "orderly transition" to democracy would be laughable if it were not so sinister. Much more likely, the strategy is to try to ride out the protests and wear out and split the opposition, consolidate the regime under Suleiman's ruthless grip with the backing of the Egyptian army, and then enact cosmetic "reforms" to keep the Egyptian people politically divided and busy while business carries on as usual. Under any Suleiman "transition" political activists, journalists and anyone suspected of being part of the current uprising would be in grave danger.
From the American perspective, the strategy can be likened to what happened in the summer of 2008 when the house-of-cards international financial system started to collapse. Think of the Tunisian regime of deposed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as the investment bank Lehman Brothers. When a run on the bank began, the United States government refused to provide it with financial guarantees to bail it out, and it quickly went bankrupt.
But when the panic spread and even larger "too big to fail" financial firms including massive insurance company AIG began to see their positions suddenly deteriorate, the United States government stepped in to bail them out with hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Egyptian regime is the AIG of the region and what we are seeing now is an American attempt to bail it out. If Egypt goes under, the United States fears that the contagion would spread as Arab publics realize that the US-backed despots who rule them can be replaced, and that the toppling of these regimes whose only promise to their people has been "security" is not the end of the world but the start of renewal.
Of course, no analogy is exact. Whereas, allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse was a calculated decision, the United States did not see the revolution in Tunisia, or the uprising in Egypt coming. "Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton infamously declared on 25 January, the day the anti-regime protests broke out ("US urges restraint in Egypt, says government stable," Reuters, 25 January 2011).
Clinton's cluelessness is reminiscent of her predecessor Condoleezza Rice's famous words ("didn't see it coming") in relation to Hamas' victory in Palestinian legislative council elections in 2006.
According to The New York Times, Obama himself is unhappy with US intelligence failures in the Arab world ("Obama Faults Spy Agencies' Performance in Gauging Mideast Unrest, Officials Say," 4 February 2011). For close watchers of the United States, this obliviousness is no mystery.
As Helena Cobban has observed, the Israel Lobby, "AIPAC and its attack dogs," have conducted such a thorough "witch-hunt" over the past quarter century "against anyone with real Middle East expertise that the US government now contains no-one at the higher (or even mid-career) levels of policymaking who has any in-depth understanding of the region or of the aspirations of its people" ("Obama's know-nothings discuss Egypt," 28 January 2011).
But it is even worse than that. The US "policy" establishment seems only capable of viewing the region through Israeli eyes. This is why for so many officials and commentators the concerns of Israel to maintain a brutal hegemony trump the aspirations of 83 million Egyptians to determine their own future free from the shackles of the regime that has oppressed them for so long.
And different futures are possible. On the minds of many observers is the "Turkish model" of constitutional democracy, economic resurgence and foreign policy independence, all under the rule of a "moderate" Islamist party. Turkey, once closely in the orbit of the United States, started to break out with its refusal to allow the US to use the country's bases for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In recent years, Turkey has developed a deliberate "360 degree" foreign policy doctrine which includes maintaining relations with Europe and the United States, while restoring close ties with all its neighbors among them Iran and Arab countries, and assuming a greater regional mediating role. Since 2009, Turkey's once close alliance with Israel has deteriorated sharply, even though ties have not been cut. These shifts, along with its ubiquitous consumer and cultural products have given Turkey enormous regional influence and appeal.
Turkey has its own specific history and is no more perfect than any other country. But the bigger point is that subservience to the United States and Israel is not Egypt's only option. The worst case scenario from the American viewpoint is to have three major regional powers, Iran, Turkey and Egypt, that are not under Washington's control.
Of course Turkey is carving out its own path and Egyptians are struggling to go their own way which may be very different. There's no reason either to believe that Egypt would become "another Iran" as ceaseless Israeli propaganda suggests. But given a free choice, Egypt is not likely serve the "interests" of the United States and Israel the way the Mubarak regime has.
One example is that Egypt might dispense with US aid and still come out ahead by simply selling its natural gas on international markets rather than to Israel at what is reported to be a deep discount. Another is that a truly independent Egypt would eschew serving as Israel's proxy in enforcing the criminal siege of Gaza and stoking intra-Palestinian divisions.
By coming to the streets in their millions, by sacrifing the lives of some of their very finest, the Egyptian people have said that they and they alone want to decide their nation's future. Mubarak as a person is already irrelevant. The confrontation is now between the Egyptian people's desire for democracy and self-determination on the one hand, and, on the other, US insistence (along with its clients in Egypt and the region) on continuing the old regime. Let us offer whatever solidarity we can from wherever we are to help the Egyptian people to win.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books).
Sunday, February 6, 2011
For the US in Egypt, Blowback Is a Bitch
by: Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
Almost seven years have passed since I spent some time in the Middle East. The closest I get to the opinions of "the Arab street" these days is the fellow who runs the delicatessen a block away from me. Mohamed is Egyptian, with family living in Cairo and outside the city. All of them are safe - as far as he knows.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak must go, Mohamed says, but he fears that, regardless of the promises, Mubarak will figure out a way to keep his henchmen in power and the brutal legacy of cruelty and torture will continue.
So much is confusing or unknowable; so much took everyone by surprise or remains to be seen. American intelligence already is being criticized for not being on top of the situation. Stephanie O'Sullivan, the White House nominee for principal deputy director of national intelligence told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that, late last year, the CIA warned President Obama "of instability [in Egypt] but not exactly where it would come from ... we didn't know what the triggering mechanism would be."
But how much could they have known, really? This is the Butterfly Effect writ large and in cosmic collision with realpolitik; small changes quietly accruing to create immense, unpredictable consequences for the global power dynamic.
Who can calculate where that first flutter of the lepidopteran wings took place? Long ago and faraway perhaps, but eventually there were two significant deaths: in December, the self-immolation of a fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, harassed to suicide by Tunisian police, and last June's murder of young Egyptian businessman Khaled Said, beaten by security men in Alexandria. Demonstrations in the wake of Bouazizi's death led to the overthrow of Tunisia's President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali; their success further inspired those who had marched in Egypt to protest the fatal attack on Khaled Said and led to millions making common cause in Cairo's Tahrir Square, across the country and beyond.
"I swear by Almighty God that I cried with joy to see Egypt reborn in Tahrir Square on Tuesday night," Emad El Din Hussein wrote in the independent Egyptian newspaper Al Shorouk. " ... Members of Muslim Brotherhood, Nasserists and Marxists were all present; you could recognize them from their physical appearance and the way they spoke or dressed. But they were few and far between ... The majority of those present were ordinary citizens ... thousands of people mingled together shouting different slogans and singing together ... other demonstrators sat talking about poverty, unemployment and violation of human dignity."
This week, in the shadow of the Egyptian Museum, filled with antiquities reflecting glories past, they battled Mubarak's thugs and goons, the warring sides using equally ancient weapons of stone and fire, even men with whips riding horses and camels. Then the guns came out. So far, the Egyptian Third Army stands in between, firing warning shots and using water cannons to put out the flames of Molotov cocktails, but not shooting into the crowds. As this is written, no one knows for sure where it's all headed. Clearly, as pressure mounts from within and without, there are deep internal rifts within the Egyptian government.
But as far as the United States and Egypt are concerned, one thing is certain: blowback - the unforeseen consequence of our policies abroad - is a bitch. "For too long," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry wrote in The New York Times this week, "financing Egypt's military has dominated our alliance. The proof ... tear gas canisters marked 'Made in America' fired at protesters, United States-supplied F-16 fighters streaking over central Cairo." All because, Kerry said, there was "a pragmatic understanding that our relationship benefited American foreign policy and promoted peace in the region."
Or, in the words of a 2009 American embassy cable, part of the WikiLeaks document dump, "The tangible benefits to our ... relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the US military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace."
In exchange, we willfully paid little or no heed to the Egyptian dictatorship's abuse of human rights, despite its role in radicalizing such terrorists as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's operational and strategic commander. In fact, our strategy of rendition in the wake of 9/11 - sending terror suspects to other countries for interrogation - took advantage of Egypt's torture cells. As Jane Mayer writes in her book, The Dark Side, and on The New Yorker magazine's "News Desk" blog, Omar Suleiman, Egypt's new vice president and the former head of the country's general intelligence service, was "the CIA's point man in Egypt for renditions." Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward S. Walker, Jr., described Suleiman as "very bright, very realistic" and "not squeamish."
One of those whose rendition Suleiman helped oversee was al-Qaeda suspect Ibn Sheik al-Libi, who told the CIA, according to a bipartisan report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that he was locked in a tiny cage for more than three days, then beaten because, at the behest of the United States, the Egyptians wanted him to say that Saddam Hussein was going to give al-Qaeda chemical and biological weapons. "They were killing me," he told journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn. "I had to tell them something," and so his coerced confession wound up in Colin Powell's now notorious address before the United Nations in February 2003, justifying war against Iraq.
Ironically, blowback from the propaganda offense claiming the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction now enhances the credibility among Egyptian protesters of a man that same campaign tried to discredit - Mohamed ElBaradei, former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and, according to the BBC, a big fan of Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld (I am not making this up).
During the buildup to the invasion of Iraq and since, he has needed a sense of humor. Insisting that his agency's investigations proved that WMD's did not exist - followed by his moderate stance on the Iranian nuclear program - led to angry attacks by the Bush administration, especially from Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, and even the tapping of ElBaradei's telephone. They attack him still, yet in this current crisis he is, as one journalist wrote, "about as much of a liberal secularist as the US could realistically hope for."
A new "pragmatic understanding" is necessary by which, in the words of Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami, we dispose of our forked tongue, one moment lecturing on democracy, the next offering support to dictators.
If blowback shows us anything, as she writes in The Nation magazine, "A pro-American dictator is not a guarantee of protection from extremism; more often than not, his tyranny creates the very radicalism he was supposed to stop.
"The future of Egypt looks uncertain," Lalami continues, but if fears of Islamic extremism cause us to falter in our support of the pro-democracy movement, "What is certain is that siding with a repressive regime against the Egyptian people, especially against young Egyptians, will turn these fears of extremism into a reality."
Almost seven years have passed since I spent some time in the Middle East. The closest I get to the opinions of "the Arab street" these days is the fellow who runs the delicatessen a block away from me. Mohamed is Egyptian, with family living in Cairo and outside the city. All of them are safe - as far as he knows.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak must go, Mohamed says, but he fears that, regardless of the promises, Mubarak will figure out a way to keep his henchmen in power and the brutal legacy of cruelty and torture will continue.
So much is confusing or unknowable; so much took everyone by surprise or remains to be seen. American intelligence already is being criticized for not being on top of the situation. Stephanie O'Sullivan, the White House nominee for principal deputy director of national intelligence told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that, late last year, the CIA warned President Obama "of instability [in Egypt] but not exactly where it would come from ... we didn't know what the triggering mechanism would be."
But how much could they have known, really? This is the Butterfly Effect writ large and in cosmic collision with realpolitik; small changes quietly accruing to create immense, unpredictable consequences for the global power dynamic.
Who can calculate where that first flutter of the lepidopteran wings took place? Long ago and faraway perhaps, but eventually there were two significant deaths: in December, the self-immolation of a fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, harassed to suicide by Tunisian police, and last June's murder of young Egyptian businessman Khaled Said, beaten by security men in Alexandria. Demonstrations in the wake of Bouazizi's death led to the overthrow of Tunisia's President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali; their success further inspired those who had marched in Egypt to protest the fatal attack on Khaled Said and led to millions making common cause in Cairo's Tahrir Square, across the country and beyond.
"I swear by Almighty God that I cried with joy to see Egypt reborn in Tahrir Square on Tuesday night," Emad El Din Hussein wrote in the independent Egyptian newspaper Al Shorouk. " ... Members of Muslim Brotherhood, Nasserists and Marxists were all present; you could recognize them from their physical appearance and the way they spoke or dressed. But they were few and far between ... The majority of those present were ordinary citizens ... thousands of people mingled together shouting different slogans and singing together ... other demonstrators sat talking about poverty, unemployment and violation of human dignity."
This week, in the shadow of the Egyptian Museum, filled with antiquities reflecting glories past, they battled Mubarak's thugs and goons, the warring sides using equally ancient weapons of stone and fire, even men with whips riding horses and camels. Then the guns came out. So far, the Egyptian Third Army stands in between, firing warning shots and using water cannons to put out the flames of Molotov cocktails, but not shooting into the crowds. As this is written, no one knows for sure where it's all headed. Clearly, as pressure mounts from within and without, there are deep internal rifts within the Egyptian government.
But as far as the United States and Egypt are concerned, one thing is certain: blowback - the unforeseen consequence of our policies abroad - is a bitch. "For too long," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry wrote in The New York Times this week, "financing Egypt's military has dominated our alliance. The proof ... tear gas canisters marked 'Made in America' fired at protesters, United States-supplied F-16 fighters streaking over central Cairo." All because, Kerry said, there was "a pragmatic understanding that our relationship benefited American foreign policy and promoted peace in the region."
Or, in the words of a 2009 American embassy cable, part of the WikiLeaks document dump, "The tangible benefits to our ... relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the US military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace."
In exchange, we willfully paid little or no heed to the Egyptian dictatorship's abuse of human rights, despite its role in radicalizing such terrorists as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's operational and strategic commander. In fact, our strategy of rendition in the wake of 9/11 - sending terror suspects to other countries for interrogation - took advantage of Egypt's torture cells. As Jane Mayer writes in her book, The Dark Side, and on The New Yorker magazine's "News Desk" blog, Omar Suleiman, Egypt's new vice president and the former head of the country's general intelligence service, was "the CIA's point man in Egypt for renditions." Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward S. Walker, Jr., described Suleiman as "very bright, very realistic" and "not squeamish."
One of those whose rendition Suleiman helped oversee was al-Qaeda suspect Ibn Sheik al-Libi, who told the CIA, according to a bipartisan report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that he was locked in a tiny cage for more than three days, then beaten because, at the behest of the United States, the Egyptians wanted him to say that Saddam Hussein was going to give al-Qaeda chemical and biological weapons. "They were killing me," he told journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn. "I had to tell them something," and so his coerced confession wound up in Colin Powell's now notorious address before the United Nations in February 2003, justifying war against Iraq.
Ironically, blowback from the propaganda offense claiming the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction now enhances the credibility among Egyptian protesters of a man that same campaign tried to discredit - Mohamed ElBaradei, former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and, according to the BBC, a big fan of Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld (I am not making this up).
During the buildup to the invasion of Iraq and since, he has needed a sense of humor. Insisting that his agency's investigations proved that WMD's did not exist - followed by his moderate stance on the Iranian nuclear program - led to angry attacks by the Bush administration, especially from Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, and even the tapping of ElBaradei's telephone. They attack him still, yet in this current crisis he is, as one journalist wrote, "about as much of a liberal secularist as the US could realistically hope for."
A new "pragmatic understanding" is necessary by which, in the words of Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami, we dispose of our forked tongue, one moment lecturing on democracy, the next offering support to dictators.
If blowback shows us anything, as she writes in The Nation magazine, "A pro-American dictator is not a guarantee of protection from extremism; more often than not, his tyranny creates the very radicalism he was supposed to stop.
"The future of Egypt looks uncertain," Lalami continues, but if fears of Islamic extremism cause us to falter in our support of the pro-democracy movement, "What is certain is that siding with a repressive regime against the Egyptian people, especially against young Egyptians, will turn these fears of extremism into a reality."
Thursday, February 3, 2011
U.S. Chickens Come Home to Roost in Egypt
by Marjorie Cohn
Barack Obama, like his predecessors, has supported Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to the tune of $1.3 billion annually, mostly in military aid. In return, Egypt minds U.S. interests in the Middle East, notably providing a buffer between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. Egypt collaborates with Israel to isolate Gaza with a punishing blockade, to the consternation of Arabs throughout the Middle East. The United States could not have fought its wars in Iraq without Egypt’s logistical support.
Now with a revolution against Mubarak by two million Egyptians, all bets are off about who will replace him and whether the successor government will be friendly to the United States.
Mubarak’s “whole system is corrupt,” said Hesham Korayem, an Egyptian who taught at City University of New York and provides frequent commentary on Egyptian and Saudi television. He told me there is virtually no middle class in Egypt, only the extremely rich (about 20 to 25 percent of the population) and the extremely poor (75 percent). The parliament has no input into what Mubarak does with the money the United States gives him, $300 million of which comes to the dictator in cash each year.
Torture is commonplace in Egypt, according to Korayem. Indeed, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief whom Mubarak just named Vice-President, was the lynchpin for Egyptian torture when the CIA sent prisoners to Egypt in its extraordinary rendition program. Stephen Grey noted in Ghost Plane, “[I]n secret, men like Omar Suleiman, the country’s most powerful spy and secret politician, did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do ourselves.”
In her chapter in the newly published book, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” Jane Mayer cites Egypt as the most common destination for suspects rendered by the United States. “The largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel,” Mayer writes, “Egypt was a key strategic ally, and its secret police force, the Mukhabarat, had a reputation for brutality.” She describes the rendering of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi to Egypt, where he was tortured and made a false confession that Colin Powell cited as he importuned the Security Council to approve the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Al-Libi later recanted his confession.
The State Department’s 2002 report on Egypt noted that detainees were “stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, metal rods, or other objects; doused with hot or cold water; flogged on the back; burned with cigarettes; and subjected to electrical shocks. Some victims . . . [were] forced to strip and threatened with rape.”
In 2005, the United Nations Committee Against Torture found that “Egypt resorted to consistent and widespread use of torture against detainees” and “the risk of such treatment was particularly high in the case of detainees held for political and security reasons.”
About a year ago, an Italian judge convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of arranging the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003, then flying him to Egypt where he was tortured. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr told Human Rights Watch he was “hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks” in Egypt. “I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too,” he added.
A former CIA agent observed, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”
So what will happen next in Egypt?
Suleiman, who is intensely loyal to Mubarak, will not be an acceptable successor to the Egyptian people. Some fear the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports Hamas, will take power once Mubarak is forced out. But “[t]hough it is the largest opposition group, it by no means enjoys overwhelming support, and its leaders are for the most part moderate and responsible,” Scott MacLeod, Time magazine’s Middle East correspondent from 1995 to 2010, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Korayem concurs. He says the Brotherhood, which has formally renounced terrorism and violence, is more educated and peaceful now. The Brotherhood provides social and economic programs that augment public services in Egypt.
Indeed, the Brotherhood supports Mohamed ElBaradei to negotiate with the Egyptian government. ElBaradei, the former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency chief and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, recently returned to Egypt to stand with the protesters. He told Fareed Zakaria that the Brotherhood favors a secular state, and “has nothing to do with the Iranian movement, has nothing to do with extremism as we have seen it in Afghanistan and other places.”
The Obama administration has been slow to acknowledge that Mubarak is on his way out. Vice President Joe Biden, still in denial, said on the PBS News Hour, “I would not refer to him as a dictator.” ElBaradei criticized Obama for supporting Mubarak in the face of the popular revolt in Egypt. “You are losing credibility by the day,” he told CBS News. “On one hand you’re talking about democracy, rule of law and human rights, and on the other hand you are lending support to a dictator that continues to oppress his people.”
Korayem sees the United States’ uncritical support for Israel as key to the problems in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. If the United States acted as an honest broker, even “slightly fair to the Palestinians,” that would go a long way to solving the difficulties, he said. But, according to Gareth Porter, “The main function of the U.S. client state relationship with Egypt was to allow Israel to avoid coming to terms with Palestinian demands.” Chris Hedges adds, “The failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil . . . has consequences.”
We are seeing those consequences in the streets of Egypt and the likelihood of similar developments in Jordan, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries. Until the U.S. government stops uncritically supporting tyrants, torturers, and oppressors, we can expect the people to rise up and overthrow them.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and Deputy Secretary General of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her anthology, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” was just published by NYU Press.
Barack Obama, like his predecessors, has supported Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to the tune of $1.3 billion annually, mostly in military aid. In return, Egypt minds U.S. interests in the Middle East, notably providing a buffer between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. Egypt collaborates with Israel to isolate Gaza with a punishing blockade, to the consternation of Arabs throughout the Middle East. The United States could not have fought its wars in Iraq without Egypt’s logistical support.
Now with a revolution against Mubarak by two million Egyptians, all bets are off about who will replace him and whether the successor government will be friendly to the United States.
Mubarak’s “whole system is corrupt,” said Hesham Korayem, an Egyptian who taught at City University of New York and provides frequent commentary on Egyptian and Saudi television. He told me there is virtually no middle class in Egypt, only the extremely rich (about 20 to 25 percent of the population) and the extremely poor (75 percent). The parliament has no input into what Mubarak does with the money the United States gives him, $300 million of which comes to the dictator in cash each year.
Torture is commonplace in Egypt, according to Korayem. Indeed, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief whom Mubarak just named Vice-President, was the lynchpin for Egyptian torture when the CIA sent prisoners to Egypt in its extraordinary rendition program. Stephen Grey noted in Ghost Plane, “[I]n secret, men like Omar Suleiman, the country’s most powerful spy and secret politician, did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do ourselves.”
In her chapter in the newly published book, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” Jane Mayer cites Egypt as the most common destination for suspects rendered by the United States. “The largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel,” Mayer writes, “Egypt was a key strategic ally, and its secret police force, the Mukhabarat, had a reputation for brutality.” She describes the rendering of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi to Egypt, where he was tortured and made a false confession that Colin Powell cited as he importuned the Security Council to approve the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Al-Libi later recanted his confession.
The State Department’s 2002 report on Egypt noted that detainees were “stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, metal rods, or other objects; doused with hot or cold water; flogged on the back; burned with cigarettes; and subjected to electrical shocks. Some victims . . . [were] forced to strip and threatened with rape.”
In 2005, the United Nations Committee Against Torture found that “Egypt resorted to consistent and widespread use of torture against detainees” and “the risk of such treatment was particularly high in the case of detainees held for political and security reasons.”
About a year ago, an Italian judge convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of arranging the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003, then flying him to Egypt where he was tortured. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr told Human Rights Watch he was “hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks” in Egypt. “I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too,” he added.
A former CIA agent observed, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”
So what will happen next in Egypt?
Suleiman, who is intensely loyal to Mubarak, will not be an acceptable successor to the Egyptian people. Some fear the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports Hamas, will take power once Mubarak is forced out. But “[t]hough it is the largest opposition group, it by no means enjoys overwhelming support, and its leaders are for the most part moderate and responsible,” Scott MacLeod, Time magazine’s Middle East correspondent from 1995 to 2010, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Korayem concurs. He says the Brotherhood, which has formally renounced terrorism and violence, is more educated and peaceful now. The Brotherhood provides social and economic programs that augment public services in Egypt.
Indeed, the Brotherhood supports Mohamed ElBaradei to negotiate with the Egyptian government. ElBaradei, the former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency chief and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, recently returned to Egypt to stand with the protesters. He told Fareed Zakaria that the Brotherhood favors a secular state, and “has nothing to do with the Iranian movement, has nothing to do with extremism as we have seen it in Afghanistan and other places.”
The Obama administration has been slow to acknowledge that Mubarak is on his way out. Vice President Joe Biden, still in denial, said on the PBS News Hour, “I would not refer to him as a dictator.” ElBaradei criticized Obama for supporting Mubarak in the face of the popular revolt in Egypt. “You are losing credibility by the day,” he told CBS News. “On one hand you’re talking about democracy, rule of law and human rights, and on the other hand you are lending support to a dictator that continues to oppress his people.”
Korayem sees the United States’ uncritical support for Israel as key to the problems in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. If the United States acted as an honest broker, even “slightly fair to the Palestinians,” that would go a long way to solving the difficulties, he said. But, according to Gareth Porter, “The main function of the U.S. client state relationship with Egypt was to allow Israel to avoid coming to terms with Palestinian demands.” Chris Hedges adds, “The failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil . . . has consequences.”
We are seeing those consequences in the streets of Egypt and the likelihood of similar developments in Jordan, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries. Until the U.S. government stops uncritically supporting tyrants, torturers, and oppressors, we can expect the people to rise up and overthrow them.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and Deputy Secretary General of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her anthology, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” was just published by NYU Press.
Testifying against genocide
By Joanne Wiedman and François Laforge
February 3, 2011
SOME 250 people turned out to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., on January 29 to hear the testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust as well survivors of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, who are touring the country together as part of the "Never Again for Anyone" (NAFA) speaking tour.
The tour brings together Jewish and Muslim panelists to attest to the inhumanity of genocide and to put a focus on the dehumanizing treatment of the Palestinians.
Unfortunately, about 100 Zionists, organized by Hillel at Rutgers and a local synagogue, protested and disrupted the event.
The "Never Again for Anyone" tour is sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the Middle East Children's Alliance. The event at Rutgers was endorsed by BAKA: Students United for Middle Eastern Justice, which is an affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine, and a number of other campus groups.
BAKA spokesperson and Rutgers student Hoda Mitwally introduced the event's message of solidarity: "Whenever we see injustice, we must speak out no matter how small or large it may be. All human suffering is equally unjust and unacceptable, and that is the purpose of tonight to say, never again to all forms of oppression."
Featured at the meeting were Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer; Osamah Abu-Irshaid, editor-in-chief of Al-Meezan newspaper; Hedy Epstein, an anti-Zionist Jew whose family died in Auschwitz; and Dawud Assad, a survivor of the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine. It was an honor to hear the stories of Holocaust survivors and survivors of the Nakba together.
One of the most chilling moments was when Hedy Epstein described her elementary school experience in 1939 Nazi Germany. Epstein, the only Jewish child in her class, was regularly harassed by her SS teacher. One day, he asked her a question while holding a gun to her head to humiliate her in front of the class. She was 8 years old.
Decades later, she experienced a similar trauma in an Israeli airport when she returned from a solidarity trip to Gaza. She was detained, strip-searched and called a terrorist by an armed Israeli soldier.
The event was an eye-opener, challenging Zionist narratives of the Holocaust and the formation of the state of Israel, and bore witness to the plight of Palestinians and Jews. NAFA speakers countered the specification of the term "Never Again" to refer only to Jews killed in the Holocaust. Speakers condemned the racist ideology of Zionism and the dispossession of the Palestinians in the name of the Holocaust victims. They attested to the shared humanity of all people and the necessity of opposing oppression in all its manifestations.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN AN attempt to portray the NAFA meeting as "excluding" Jews, the Jerusalem Post reported, "The student-sponsored event was announced as an open invitation event, however the sponsoring organizations of 'Never Again for Anyone,' according to the reports, asked campus police to bar students wearing kippas from the event. The organizers eventually limited the attendance to supporters only."
These accusations are absolutely false. Anyone who paid the minimum entrance fee or who was a volunteer was allowed into the event regardless of their religious beliefs, political affiliation or views on the event. Several Zionists paid to enter the event and were allowed to bring their signs, one of which falsely accused the speakers of "Holocaust Denial."
The admission charge of $5, which was announced at the event, has become a source of controversy at Rutgers. BAKA in particular has been targeted with accusations that they changed the entrance fee from "suggested," as posted on the Facebook page, to "required" in order to prevent protesters from entering the event. This is not the case.
The event was not sponsored by Rutgers University or its student groups, such as BAKA. Because this was an outside event, it was within Rutgers' policy for the sponsors of the "Never Again for Anyone" tour to charge an entrance fee. Rutgers University has issued a press release on the issue.
The protesters called the event "anti-Semitic" because it allegedly trivialized the Holocaust by comparing it to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. But in Mitwally's introduction to the event and the other participants' testimonies, it was clearly stated that the goal of the event was not to formally compare the Holocaust to the Nakba or the current Palestinian situation, but to look at the similarities of these oppressions--a perfectly legitimate task.
The protesters' claims of anti-Semitism rest on their equating being Jewish with Zionism and the state of Israel--thus, any discussion of the atrocities of the Israeli state becomes an attack on all Jews. The speakers disproved this rhetoric by speaking about the history of Zionism in Europe, its lack of support before Second World War and the racist nature of the established Israeli state.
The racist nature of the Zionist ideology was on display when the pro-Israel protesters used Islamophobic slurs against some of the organizers and attendees, calling them "terrorists" and even calling a veiled woman a "suicide bomber." The YouTube video "Another Lie from BAKA" gives a sense of the attempt by protesters to disrupt the event.
The message of solidarity of "Never Again for Anyone" stood in stark contrast to the Zionist protesters. The tour is a much-needed testament of shared humanity and solidarity with the Palestinians and all the oppressed.
February 3, 2011
SOME 250 people turned out to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., on January 29 to hear the testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust as well survivors of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, who are touring the country together as part of the "Never Again for Anyone" (NAFA) speaking tour.
The tour brings together Jewish and Muslim panelists to attest to the inhumanity of genocide and to put a focus on the dehumanizing treatment of the Palestinians.
Unfortunately, about 100 Zionists, organized by Hillel at Rutgers and a local synagogue, protested and disrupted the event.
The "Never Again for Anyone" tour is sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the Middle East Children's Alliance. The event at Rutgers was endorsed by BAKA: Students United for Middle Eastern Justice, which is an affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine, and a number of other campus groups.
BAKA spokesperson and Rutgers student Hoda Mitwally introduced the event's message of solidarity: "Whenever we see injustice, we must speak out no matter how small or large it may be. All human suffering is equally unjust and unacceptable, and that is the purpose of tonight to say, never again to all forms of oppression."
Featured at the meeting were Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer; Osamah Abu-Irshaid, editor-in-chief of Al-Meezan newspaper; Hedy Epstein, an anti-Zionist Jew whose family died in Auschwitz; and Dawud Assad, a survivor of the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine. It was an honor to hear the stories of Holocaust survivors and survivors of the Nakba together.
One of the most chilling moments was when Hedy Epstein described her elementary school experience in 1939 Nazi Germany. Epstein, the only Jewish child in her class, was regularly harassed by her SS teacher. One day, he asked her a question while holding a gun to her head to humiliate her in front of the class. She was 8 years old.
Decades later, she experienced a similar trauma in an Israeli airport when she returned from a solidarity trip to Gaza. She was detained, strip-searched and called a terrorist by an armed Israeli soldier.
The event was an eye-opener, challenging Zionist narratives of the Holocaust and the formation of the state of Israel, and bore witness to the plight of Palestinians and Jews. NAFA speakers countered the specification of the term "Never Again" to refer only to Jews killed in the Holocaust. Speakers condemned the racist ideology of Zionism and the dispossession of the Palestinians in the name of the Holocaust victims. They attested to the shared humanity of all people and the necessity of opposing oppression in all its manifestations.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN AN attempt to portray the NAFA meeting as "excluding" Jews, the Jerusalem Post reported, "The student-sponsored event was announced as an open invitation event, however the sponsoring organizations of 'Never Again for Anyone,' according to the reports, asked campus police to bar students wearing kippas from the event. The organizers eventually limited the attendance to supporters only."
These accusations are absolutely false. Anyone who paid the minimum entrance fee or who was a volunteer was allowed into the event regardless of their religious beliefs, political affiliation or views on the event. Several Zionists paid to enter the event and were allowed to bring their signs, one of which falsely accused the speakers of "Holocaust Denial."
The admission charge of $5, which was announced at the event, has become a source of controversy at Rutgers. BAKA in particular has been targeted with accusations that they changed the entrance fee from "suggested," as posted on the Facebook page, to "required" in order to prevent protesters from entering the event. This is not the case.
The event was not sponsored by Rutgers University or its student groups, such as BAKA. Because this was an outside event, it was within Rutgers' policy for the sponsors of the "Never Again for Anyone" tour to charge an entrance fee. Rutgers University has issued a press release on the issue.
The protesters called the event "anti-Semitic" because it allegedly trivialized the Holocaust by comparing it to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. But in Mitwally's introduction to the event and the other participants' testimonies, it was clearly stated that the goal of the event was not to formally compare the Holocaust to the Nakba or the current Palestinian situation, but to look at the similarities of these oppressions--a perfectly legitimate task.
The protesters' claims of anti-Semitism rest on their equating being Jewish with Zionism and the state of Israel--thus, any discussion of the atrocities of the Israeli state becomes an attack on all Jews. The speakers disproved this rhetoric by speaking about the history of Zionism in Europe, its lack of support before Second World War and the racist nature of the established Israeli state.
The racist nature of the Zionist ideology was on display when the pro-Israel protesters used Islamophobic slurs against some of the organizers and attendees, calling them "terrorists" and even calling a veiled woman a "suicide bomber." The YouTube video "Another Lie from BAKA" gives a sense of the attempt by protesters to disrupt the event.
The message of solidarity of "Never Again for Anyone" stood in stark contrast to the Zionist protesters. The tour is a much-needed testament of shared humanity and solidarity with the Palestinians and all the oppressed.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Egypt on the brink of civil war
Written by Alan Woods
Wednesday, 02 February 2011
The revolution in Egypt is reaching a critical point. The old state power is collapsing under the hammer blows of the masses. But revolution is a struggle of living forces. The old regime does not intend to surrender without a fight. The counterrevolutionary forces are going onto the offensive. There is ferocious fighting on the streets of Cairo between pro- and anti-Mubarak elements.
Yesterday’s "protest of the millions" surpassed all expectations. More than a million people thronged Cairo’s Tahrir Square. There were 300,000 on the streets of Suez, 250,000 in Mahalla, 250,000 in Mansoura, and an impressive 500,000 in Alexandria. This mighty movement has no precedent in Egyptian history.
Protesters took to the streets out in every single city and town. According to some estimates four million demonstrated all over Egypt. By contrast, the numbers who took to the streets to voice their support for the President yesterday were small and undoubtedly made up of members of the security forces, bureaucrats and their families, all those who have something to lose if Mubarak is overthrown.
The Revolution has enormous reserves of support. However, there are weaknesses in the revolutionary camp. As we pointed out from the beginning, the spontaneous character of the movement was both its main strength and its principal weakness. The forces of the counterrevolution are numerically weaker (this was shown yesterday). But numbers are not everything in revolution as in war. Many times in history a large army composed of valiant soldiers has been defeated by a smaller professional army with good officers.
The revolutionaries have determination, courage and morale. But the counterrevolutionaries have a lot to lose: their jobs, positions, power and privilege. Desperation will give them the courage to resist. And they are organized and well trained. There is not the slightest doubt that the shock troops of the mob that attacked the demonstrators in Tahrir Square today were policemen out of uniform. This was not a spontaneous demonstration of loyalty to the President but a carefully prepared action that corresponds to a worked out plan.
Mubarak’s strategy
In Tunisia President Ben Ali decided relatively quickly that the game was up and took a plane to exile together with his wife and a large amount of loot. President Mubarak of Egypt is tougher and more stubborn. He has decided to ignore the millions of demonstrators shouting for his downfall in the streets. He does not care what happens to Egypt. Still less is he concerned with the preoccupations of his former friends and allies in Washington. His only programme is survival. His only perspective is the age-old slogan of despots: “Après moi le deluge” – “After me, the flood!”
Everyone must now realise that the only way of calming the country is for the president to go. The self-appointed “leaders of the opposition” have made it clear that they will not even talk unless Mubarak disappears. They have no choice, since the masses on the streets are vigilant and will not tolerate any compromise.
The immediate removal of Mubarak was therefore the only hope to secure the "orderly transition of power" that the US so fervently desires. But John Simpson – the editor of BBC News World Affairs, an intelligent bourgeois commentator – correctly points out: “The only trouble is no-one has told the crowds in Tahrir Square about this. Their slogan is ‘Mubarak out now’ not ‘Mubarak out with honour in a few months and the continuation of his system slightly improved’.”
In last night's speech, Mr Mubarak promised to leave at the next polls, and promised constitutional reform, but he announced that he would like to stay on until September to oversee the change. In his address on Tuesday, Mr Mubarak said he would devote his remaining time in power to ensuring a peaceful transition of power to his successor (he did not mention his son Gamal). He criticised the protests and said his priority was to "restore peace and stability". "This is my country. This is where I lived, I fought and defended its land, sovereignty and interests, and I will die on its soil," he said.
The speech was seen by the protestors as a provocation. Far from calming things down it again poured petrol on the flames. The reaction of the protesters to Mubarak’s statement was first disbelief, and then indignation. "The speech is useless and only inflames our anger," one protester, Shadi Morkos, told Reuters. "We will continue to protest." This was a universal reaction.
Last night the protesters remained camped out on Tahrir Square saying Mr Mubarak's promise was not enough, and chanting: "We will not leave! He will leave!" The masses do not want to give Mubarak time to manoeuvre. They want him overthrown and put on trial. On the demonstrations yesterday they hanged him in effigy. That shows the real frame of mind on the streets.
Everyone knows it was he who gave the order to shoot down the demonstrators last Friday. The television showed the father of a young man killed on a demonstration weeping as he cried: “They are killing our children”. Now the regime is attacking unarmed people with murderous intent. Unarmed people are being beaten, stoned and gassed in Tahrir Square. With this regime there can be no truce, no peace and no forgiveness.
An historical precedent
Egypt is in the grip of a titanic battle between revolution and counterrevolution. Until this moment the demonstrations had been completely peaceful. This had lulled the masses into a false sense of security. Now all the illusions have been dissolved. The masses are receiving their baptism of fire. Mubarak’s plan is to regain control of Tahrir Square and thus to seize the initiative, which has hitherto been in the hands of the revolutionaries. The struggle for power has begun in earnestness.
February 1, a dummy Mubarak is dangling from a lamp post. Photo: monasosh.
The whole thing has been carefully prepared in advance. The anti-government protestors are unarmed and were unprepared for the conflict. The pro-government forces are armed and have used tear gas, thrown into crowds including children. They have entered the Square mounted on horseback and camels. With the advantage of surprise and superior weapons and tactics, as I write these lines, the counterrevolutionaries are slowly forcing the revolutionaries back. They have arrested protestors who are then handed over to the army. Their fate is unknown.
In the context of these actions it is clear that Mubarak’s speech last night was an integral part of a plan to push the Revolution back step by step. By promising concessions and offering to stand down in September, he was hoping to win the support of the wavering elements: the middle classes who fear instability and long for “order”; the bourgeoisie who fear a revolution like the plague and would like business to return to normal; the backward, politically inert layers who understand nothing and gravitate to the big names, the strong men and whoever is in power; the depraved criminal classes and lumpenproletariat who sell their political allegiance to the highest bidder. These are the social reserves of the counterrevolution that are now being mobilized against the Revolution.
There is a clear historic precedent. On 17 October 1905 (30 October in the new calendar) in response to the Russian Revolution of 1905, Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto. The regime was in what seemed to be an impossible position. It was confronted with a colossal revolutionary movement and a general strike. In many areas the revolutionary committees of workers were taking control of society.
The Manifesto pledged to grant civil liberties to the people: including personal immunity, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association; and the convening of an elected parliament – the Duma under universal male suffrage. On paper this was a major victory, but in practice the democratisation was insignificant. The Tsar remained in power and exercised a veto over the Duma, which he repeatedly dissolved.
The Manifesto was a gigantic fraud, just as the promised reforms of Mubarak, but it was sufficient to buy off a layer that had previously supported the Revolution. The bourgeois Liberals immediately supported it, broke with the Revolution and made their peace with the Tsar. They desired “stability”, as did a large part of the middle classes. Their defection prepared the way for a counterrevolutionary backlash.
At the same time as the Tsar announced his reforms, he unleashed the “dark forces” on the masses: the lumpenproletariat, the scum of the slums, the anti-Semitic pogroms, to drown the Revolution in blood. Mubarak is attempting to do the same. In Russia the pogroms were organized by the tsarist police. In Cairo the counterrevolutionary attacks are organized by plainclothes police posing as “pro-Mubarak demonstrators”.
At the same time as his henchmen crack skulls in Tahrir Square, Mubarak has announced that the banks and shops will reopen on Sunday, the first working day after the Islamic weekend. The intention is to create an impression of a return to normality. But normality will not return to Egypt for a long time.
Washington worried
In Washington they are getting increasingly nervous. The longer Mubarak clings to power, the greater the risk of what they call “chaos”. The latest developments have confirmed their worst fears. Egypt may be sliding towards civil war. The Americans would not be too worried about that, but the problem is that it would destroy all their plans for a “managed transition”.
In a statement after Mr Mubarak's address, Obama said the US would be happy to offer assistance to Egypt during the transition process. He modestly declared that it was not his country's right to dictate the path for Egypt, but that any transition must include opposition voices and lead to free and fair elections: "It is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful and it must begin now."
Despite Mr. Obama’s soothing words about having no right to choose the leaders of other nations, we seem to recall that Washington had something to do with the removal (and trial) of Slobodan Milosevic, and was somehow instrumental in the removal (and execution) of Saddam Hussein. We also recall the eagerness with which the USA proclaimed the policy of “regime change” as the best way to get rid of dictators and usher in “democracy” (under American control).
Here the cynical reality of bourgeois democracy stands out in all its uncouthness. US imperialism always considers it to be their country’s right to remove leaders that are disobedient and replace them with more pliant leaders. To this end, “democracy” is as good an excuse as any other. But when it comes to those regimes that are friendly to US interests, all scruples about democracy and human rights instantly vanish. The world’s policeman is suddenly afflicted by an attack of scrupulous legality: “it is not our country's right to dictate the path for Egypt” – or, of course, for Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, or any of the numerous unsavoury regimes that are America’s good friends in the world.
Obama said he had told Mr Mubarak all this during a 30-minute phone call. It would be interesting to know the precise content of this telephone conversation, but we imagine it would not have been very cordial. When the present occupant of the White House says that an orderly transition "must begin now", this is as near as the Americans dare to come to saying to Mubarak: “For God’s sake, go!”
There is very good reason why Obama cannot tell Mubarak to go, at least in public. The Americans have to choose their words very carefully because they are being carefully followed by the rulers of Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia who feel the ground trembling underneath their feet. Simpson, again, explains:
“President Mubarak's offer to stand down will cause shock waves right across the Middle East. Until recently the regime in Egypt seemed pretty much rock solid.
“Now autocratic governments in North Africa right through to Yemen, Syria and maybe even Saudi Arabia will be looking for ways to buy off discontent at home.”
The shock waves from Egypt continue to shake all the neighbouring countries. Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan is the latest to proffer friendly advice to the embattled Mubarak. In the kind of obscure utterance we associate with Ottoman diplomacy he advised his friend in Cairo to take a "different step". He omitted to add the small detail that it was a step over a very steep cliff.
What now?
John Simpson adds the following:
“In every revolution, popular or otherwise, there comes a critical moment – a tipping point – at which the future is decided. [...] The fact is we are still not at the tipping point quite yet. But we will know it when we see it.”
Suddenly there is an answer to the basic question: Are the protesters too strong for the power structure or can the country's leaders face them down?
He continues:
“All popular revolutions share certain basic similarities. The vast crowds, often gathering for the first time, believe that they are bound to win because there are so many of them and their determination is so great. But if the political structure refuses to take the hint and keeps the support of the army and the secret police then it can survive. It all depends on how strong and resilient the structure of government is.”
Simpson compares the situation in Egypt with the overthrow of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe two decades ago. I made the same comparison in an article last week. The parallels are instructive. On paper these regimes seemed solid and unchallengeable. They possessed powerful armies, police and secret police. But in the moment of truth, they were shown to be brittle and wafer-thin.
The case of Russia in 1991 is even more striking. The demonstrators who brought down the old regime were few in number and nervous of the government reaction, but the government was even more feeble and collapsed without a fight. Now we see a similar phenomenon. In Eastern Europe the crowds kept on demonstrating until the old regime simply caved in. That is what we are seeing before our very eyes in Egypt. But there is a difference. Mubarak refuses to go.
The masses are on the streets in large numbers, but Mubarak has unleashed the forces of the counterrevolution against them and the army looks on. What is to be done? The people have correctly concluded that if a week of demonstrations has pushed the president this far then there's every incentive to keep up the pressure on him. The next flashpoint will be on Friday, when another mass demonstration will take place after Friday prayers. The word is going round that the next step will be a march on the President’s palace.
The people demand justice and revenge. Those who are guilty of crimes against the people must be handed over to popular tribunals to answer for their crimes. That is applicable not only to the police who fire upon unarmed demonstrators but also to the man who issued the orders. Insurrection is in the only way out. In order for it to succeed, the workers' movement must play a key role.
It was the long wave of workers’ strikes and protests that played a key role in weakening the regime and creating this movement. Workers are now setting up independent unions. They have the power to paralyse the country and also to organise the economy. There has been talk of railway workers refusing to transport troops and security forces to be used in repression.
The calling of a nationwide general strike is the only fitting answer to the use of thug tactics against unarmed demonstrators. In order to prepare for this and keep order, action committees should be set up everywhere (workplaces, neighbourhoods and barracks) and linked up at local, regional and national level. This way the revolutionary people can take power and elect their own representatives, not those who are self-appointed “leaders” or people put in place by the US ambassador.
What we are seeing is a desperate rearguard action of the old regime. The old order is like a wounded animal that refuses to die and is thrashing about. The new order is struggling to be born. The outcome of this life-and-death conflict will determine the immediate fate of the revolution. The Revolution must defend itself. It must arm itself to resist the attacks of the counterrevolutionaries. But the best form of defence is attack. It is time for the movement to go beyond mass rallies.
The only way to kill a snake is to knock it on the head. Passivity is the death of the Revolution. Power will not fall into your hands like a rotten apple. Instead of remaining in Tahrir Square, the masses should go onto the offensive, march on the presidential palace and take power. The revolutionary masses should trust only their own forces. That is the only way to save the Revolution and win a decisive victory.
Wednesday, 02 February 2011
The revolution in Egypt is reaching a critical point. The old state power is collapsing under the hammer blows of the masses. But revolution is a struggle of living forces. The old regime does not intend to surrender without a fight. The counterrevolutionary forces are going onto the offensive. There is ferocious fighting on the streets of Cairo between pro- and anti-Mubarak elements.
Yesterday’s "protest of the millions" surpassed all expectations. More than a million people thronged Cairo’s Tahrir Square. There were 300,000 on the streets of Suez, 250,000 in Mahalla, 250,000 in Mansoura, and an impressive 500,000 in Alexandria. This mighty movement has no precedent in Egyptian history.
Protesters took to the streets out in every single city and town. According to some estimates four million demonstrated all over Egypt. By contrast, the numbers who took to the streets to voice their support for the President yesterday were small and undoubtedly made up of members of the security forces, bureaucrats and their families, all those who have something to lose if Mubarak is overthrown.
The Revolution has enormous reserves of support. However, there are weaknesses in the revolutionary camp. As we pointed out from the beginning, the spontaneous character of the movement was both its main strength and its principal weakness. The forces of the counterrevolution are numerically weaker (this was shown yesterday). But numbers are not everything in revolution as in war. Many times in history a large army composed of valiant soldiers has been defeated by a smaller professional army with good officers.
The revolutionaries have determination, courage and morale. But the counterrevolutionaries have a lot to lose: their jobs, positions, power and privilege. Desperation will give them the courage to resist. And they are organized and well trained. There is not the slightest doubt that the shock troops of the mob that attacked the demonstrators in Tahrir Square today were policemen out of uniform. This was not a spontaneous demonstration of loyalty to the President but a carefully prepared action that corresponds to a worked out plan.
Mubarak’s strategy
In Tunisia President Ben Ali decided relatively quickly that the game was up and took a plane to exile together with his wife and a large amount of loot. President Mubarak of Egypt is tougher and more stubborn. He has decided to ignore the millions of demonstrators shouting for his downfall in the streets. He does not care what happens to Egypt. Still less is he concerned with the preoccupations of his former friends and allies in Washington. His only programme is survival. His only perspective is the age-old slogan of despots: “Après moi le deluge” – “After me, the flood!”
Everyone must now realise that the only way of calming the country is for the president to go. The self-appointed “leaders of the opposition” have made it clear that they will not even talk unless Mubarak disappears. They have no choice, since the masses on the streets are vigilant and will not tolerate any compromise.
The immediate removal of Mubarak was therefore the only hope to secure the "orderly transition of power" that the US so fervently desires. But John Simpson – the editor of BBC News World Affairs, an intelligent bourgeois commentator – correctly points out: “The only trouble is no-one has told the crowds in Tahrir Square about this. Their slogan is ‘Mubarak out now’ not ‘Mubarak out with honour in a few months and the continuation of his system slightly improved’.”
In last night's speech, Mr Mubarak promised to leave at the next polls, and promised constitutional reform, but he announced that he would like to stay on until September to oversee the change. In his address on Tuesday, Mr Mubarak said he would devote his remaining time in power to ensuring a peaceful transition of power to his successor (he did not mention his son Gamal). He criticised the protests and said his priority was to "restore peace and stability". "This is my country. This is where I lived, I fought and defended its land, sovereignty and interests, and I will die on its soil," he said.
The speech was seen by the protestors as a provocation. Far from calming things down it again poured petrol on the flames. The reaction of the protesters to Mubarak’s statement was first disbelief, and then indignation. "The speech is useless and only inflames our anger," one protester, Shadi Morkos, told Reuters. "We will continue to protest." This was a universal reaction.
Last night the protesters remained camped out on Tahrir Square saying Mr Mubarak's promise was not enough, and chanting: "We will not leave! He will leave!" The masses do not want to give Mubarak time to manoeuvre. They want him overthrown and put on trial. On the demonstrations yesterday they hanged him in effigy. That shows the real frame of mind on the streets.
Everyone knows it was he who gave the order to shoot down the demonstrators last Friday. The television showed the father of a young man killed on a demonstration weeping as he cried: “They are killing our children”. Now the regime is attacking unarmed people with murderous intent. Unarmed people are being beaten, stoned and gassed in Tahrir Square. With this regime there can be no truce, no peace and no forgiveness.
An historical precedent
Egypt is in the grip of a titanic battle between revolution and counterrevolution. Until this moment the demonstrations had been completely peaceful. This had lulled the masses into a false sense of security. Now all the illusions have been dissolved. The masses are receiving their baptism of fire. Mubarak’s plan is to regain control of Tahrir Square and thus to seize the initiative, which has hitherto been in the hands of the revolutionaries. The struggle for power has begun in earnestness.
February 1, a dummy Mubarak is dangling from a lamp post. Photo: monasosh.
The whole thing has been carefully prepared in advance. The anti-government protestors are unarmed and were unprepared for the conflict. The pro-government forces are armed and have used tear gas, thrown into crowds including children. They have entered the Square mounted on horseback and camels. With the advantage of surprise and superior weapons and tactics, as I write these lines, the counterrevolutionaries are slowly forcing the revolutionaries back. They have arrested protestors who are then handed over to the army. Their fate is unknown.
In the context of these actions it is clear that Mubarak’s speech last night was an integral part of a plan to push the Revolution back step by step. By promising concessions and offering to stand down in September, he was hoping to win the support of the wavering elements: the middle classes who fear instability and long for “order”; the bourgeoisie who fear a revolution like the plague and would like business to return to normal; the backward, politically inert layers who understand nothing and gravitate to the big names, the strong men and whoever is in power; the depraved criminal classes and lumpenproletariat who sell their political allegiance to the highest bidder. These are the social reserves of the counterrevolution that are now being mobilized against the Revolution.
There is a clear historic precedent. On 17 October 1905 (30 October in the new calendar) in response to the Russian Revolution of 1905, Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto. The regime was in what seemed to be an impossible position. It was confronted with a colossal revolutionary movement and a general strike. In many areas the revolutionary committees of workers were taking control of society.
The Manifesto pledged to grant civil liberties to the people: including personal immunity, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association; and the convening of an elected parliament – the Duma under universal male suffrage. On paper this was a major victory, but in practice the democratisation was insignificant. The Tsar remained in power and exercised a veto over the Duma, which he repeatedly dissolved.
The Manifesto was a gigantic fraud, just as the promised reforms of Mubarak, but it was sufficient to buy off a layer that had previously supported the Revolution. The bourgeois Liberals immediately supported it, broke with the Revolution and made their peace with the Tsar. They desired “stability”, as did a large part of the middle classes. Their defection prepared the way for a counterrevolutionary backlash.
At the same time as the Tsar announced his reforms, he unleashed the “dark forces” on the masses: the lumpenproletariat, the scum of the slums, the anti-Semitic pogroms, to drown the Revolution in blood. Mubarak is attempting to do the same. In Russia the pogroms were organized by the tsarist police. In Cairo the counterrevolutionary attacks are organized by plainclothes police posing as “pro-Mubarak demonstrators”.
At the same time as his henchmen crack skulls in Tahrir Square, Mubarak has announced that the banks and shops will reopen on Sunday, the first working day after the Islamic weekend. The intention is to create an impression of a return to normality. But normality will not return to Egypt for a long time.
Washington worried
In Washington they are getting increasingly nervous. The longer Mubarak clings to power, the greater the risk of what they call “chaos”. The latest developments have confirmed their worst fears. Egypt may be sliding towards civil war. The Americans would not be too worried about that, but the problem is that it would destroy all their plans for a “managed transition”.
In a statement after Mr Mubarak's address, Obama said the US would be happy to offer assistance to Egypt during the transition process. He modestly declared that it was not his country's right to dictate the path for Egypt, but that any transition must include opposition voices and lead to free and fair elections: "It is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful and it must begin now."
Despite Mr. Obama’s soothing words about having no right to choose the leaders of other nations, we seem to recall that Washington had something to do with the removal (and trial) of Slobodan Milosevic, and was somehow instrumental in the removal (and execution) of Saddam Hussein. We also recall the eagerness with which the USA proclaimed the policy of “regime change” as the best way to get rid of dictators and usher in “democracy” (under American control).
Here the cynical reality of bourgeois democracy stands out in all its uncouthness. US imperialism always considers it to be their country’s right to remove leaders that are disobedient and replace them with more pliant leaders. To this end, “democracy” is as good an excuse as any other. But when it comes to those regimes that are friendly to US interests, all scruples about democracy and human rights instantly vanish. The world’s policeman is suddenly afflicted by an attack of scrupulous legality: “it is not our country's right to dictate the path for Egypt” – or, of course, for Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, or any of the numerous unsavoury regimes that are America’s good friends in the world.
Obama said he had told Mr Mubarak all this during a 30-minute phone call. It would be interesting to know the precise content of this telephone conversation, but we imagine it would not have been very cordial. When the present occupant of the White House says that an orderly transition "must begin now", this is as near as the Americans dare to come to saying to Mubarak: “For God’s sake, go!”
There is very good reason why Obama cannot tell Mubarak to go, at least in public. The Americans have to choose their words very carefully because they are being carefully followed by the rulers of Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia who feel the ground trembling underneath their feet. Simpson, again, explains:
“President Mubarak's offer to stand down will cause shock waves right across the Middle East. Until recently the regime in Egypt seemed pretty much rock solid.
“Now autocratic governments in North Africa right through to Yemen, Syria and maybe even Saudi Arabia will be looking for ways to buy off discontent at home.”
The shock waves from Egypt continue to shake all the neighbouring countries. Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan is the latest to proffer friendly advice to the embattled Mubarak. In the kind of obscure utterance we associate with Ottoman diplomacy he advised his friend in Cairo to take a "different step". He omitted to add the small detail that it was a step over a very steep cliff.
What now?
John Simpson adds the following:
“In every revolution, popular or otherwise, there comes a critical moment – a tipping point – at which the future is decided. [...] The fact is we are still not at the tipping point quite yet. But we will know it when we see it.”
Suddenly there is an answer to the basic question: Are the protesters too strong for the power structure or can the country's leaders face them down?
He continues:
“All popular revolutions share certain basic similarities. The vast crowds, often gathering for the first time, believe that they are bound to win because there are so many of them and their determination is so great. But if the political structure refuses to take the hint and keeps the support of the army and the secret police then it can survive. It all depends on how strong and resilient the structure of government is.”
Simpson compares the situation in Egypt with the overthrow of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe two decades ago. I made the same comparison in an article last week. The parallels are instructive. On paper these regimes seemed solid and unchallengeable. They possessed powerful armies, police and secret police. But in the moment of truth, they were shown to be brittle and wafer-thin.
The case of Russia in 1991 is even more striking. The demonstrators who brought down the old regime were few in number and nervous of the government reaction, but the government was even more feeble and collapsed without a fight. Now we see a similar phenomenon. In Eastern Europe the crowds kept on demonstrating until the old regime simply caved in. That is what we are seeing before our very eyes in Egypt. But there is a difference. Mubarak refuses to go.
The masses are on the streets in large numbers, but Mubarak has unleashed the forces of the counterrevolution against them and the army looks on. What is to be done? The people have correctly concluded that if a week of demonstrations has pushed the president this far then there's every incentive to keep up the pressure on him. The next flashpoint will be on Friday, when another mass demonstration will take place after Friday prayers. The word is going round that the next step will be a march on the President’s palace.
The people demand justice and revenge. Those who are guilty of crimes against the people must be handed over to popular tribunals to answer for their crimes. That is applicable not only to the police who fire upon unarmed demonstrators but also to the man who issued the orders. Insurrection is in the only way out. In order for it to succeed, the workers' movement must play a key role.
It was the long wave of workers’ strikes and protests that played a key role in weakening the regime and creating this movement. Workers are now setting up independent unions. They have the power to paralyse the country and also to organise the economy. There has been talk of railway workers refusing to transport troops and security forces to be used in repression.
The calling of a nationwide general strike is the only fitting answer to the use of thug tactics against unarmed demonstrators. In order to prepare for this and keep order, action committees should be set up everywhere (workplaces, neighbourhoods and barracks) and linked up at local, regional and national level. This way the revolutionary people can take power and elect their own representatives, not those who are self-appointed “leaders” or people put in place by the US ambassador.
What we are seeing is a desperate rearguard action of the old regime. The old order is like a wounded animal that refuses to die and is thrashing about. The new order is struggling to be born. The outcome of this life-and-death conflict will determine the immediate fate of the revolution. The Revolution must defend itself. It must arm itself to resist the attacks of the counterrevolutionaries. But the best form of defence is attack. It is time for the movement to go beyond mass rallies.
The only way to kill a snake is to knock it on the head. Passivity is the death of the Revolution. Power will not fall into your hands like a rotten apple. Instead of remaining in Tahrir Square, the masses should go onto the offensive, march on the presidential palace and take power. The revolutionary masses should trust only their own forces. That is the only way to save the Revolution and win a decisive victory.
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