Durante los últimos años muchos gobiernos árabes instalaron la idea de que cualquier movimiento de protesta estaba vinculado de una u otra forma con Al Qaeda. Por un lado les sirvió a nivel interno para evitar el crecimiento de partidos opositores y –en particular- los islamistas. Por el otro, para coincidir con el discurso de Estados Unidos y recibir ayuda monetaria y militar para combatir un enemigo en común, el terrorismo.
Sin embargo, este fenómeno que se denomina Al Qaeda tuvo desde un comienzo como característica su completo aislamiento de partidos y movimientos políticos con una verdadera base social. Al Qaeda creció allí donde casi todas las vías de organización social estaban clausuradas y reclutó jóvenes desesperados capaces de inmolarse contra un blanco norteamericano como forma de expresar su descontento con la política de Estados Unidos en el mundo árabe e islámico.
En el libro "¿Qué es Al Qaeda?”, publicado en 2006, nos preguntábamos de qué les podían servir los métodos de Al Qaeda a los auténticos movimientos islámicos de masas como el Frente Islámico de Salvación en Argelia, el palestino Movimiento de Resistencia Islámico (HAMAS) o el Partido de Dios (Hezbolá) en el Líbano. La respuesta era contundente, de nada.
Estos movimientos, convertidos en partidos políticos de masas que participan de procesos electorales han utilizado la violencia contra sus gobernantes o contra una ocupación extranjera, pero en ningún momento se plantearon un combate global contra Estados
Unidos. Más allá de una retórica antinorteamericana, su principal objetivo es la toma del poder político en sus respectivos países, algo que Al Qaeda no plantea.
Las revueltas en Túnez y Egipto fueron pacíficas, masivas y tuvieron como objetivo central derrocar presidencias vitalicias y conseguir elecciones libres dentro de cada país. Esto no tiene ningún punto de contacto con los enunciados de Al Qaeda, que hace de sus ataques demostraciones exhibicionistas sin efecto político concreto para derrocar a tal o cual régimen.
Al Qaeda ha logrado hacer pie en aquellos lugares donde la participación política abierta es escasa y los jóvenes carecen de cualquier tipo de esperanzas. Si hay algo que caracteriza a estas revueltas árabes es la férrea protesta mezclada con alegría y la toma pacífica de los lugares públicos como las plazas, combinadas con reivindicaciones radicales. Además, el rechazo a todo tipo de violencia y la seguridad de estar construyendo un futuro mejor. Y eso explica también la ausencia de Al Qaeda.
http://www.elcomercial.com.ar/index.php?option=com_telam&view=deauno&idnota=27062&Itemid=116
sábado, 19 de febrero de 2011
martes, 15 de febrero de 2011
Pedro Brieger: El despertar democrático árabe
Algunos analistas sostienen que esta “revolución árabe” sólo es comparable en su profundidad con otros hechos históricos que cambiaron al mundo como la toma de la Bastilla en 1789, las revoluciones burguesas de 1848 en Europa o la caída del muro de Berlín en 1989. La historia nunca se repite, pero las comparaciones sirven como juego dialéctico para analizar la dimensión de un acontecimiento.
Y para comprender mejor la trascendencia de lo que está sucediendo hay que recordar que la inmensa mayoría de los árabes nunca conocieron la democracia. Muchos de ellos durante casi 400 años estuvieron dominados por el Imperio otomano sin libertades democráticas ya que eran súbditos de los turcos. Paralelamente, los británicos y los franceses comenzaron a ocupar territorios de la región para garantizarse puntos estratégicos entre Asia y Africa y tener un mayor control del comercio mundial.
En 1830 Francia ocupó Argelia y a fines del siglo diecinueve se abrió el Canal de Suez en suelo egipcio para beneficiar a las potencias europeas.
Cuando el Imperio otomano se desintegró durante la primera guerra mundial, Francia y el Reino Unido aprovecharon para repartirse sus dominios y crear países mediante un acuerdo secreto conocido como Sykes-Piccot, por el nombre de los funcionarios que lo firmaron. La población local nunca fue consultada.
Tampoco cuando las potencias coloniales decidieron colocar monarquías a dedo en Egipto o Arabia Saudita.
En Irak y Jordania incluso entronaron a dos hermanos, uno de los cuales todavía tiene a su bisnieto gobernando en Amman. En 1952 un golpe de Estado en Egipto provocó un terremoto en la región se derrocó la monarquía y accedió al poder Gamal Abdel Nasser, quien proclamó la República, impulsó el nacionalismo árabe y un proceso de nacionalizaciones que incluyó al Canal de Suez. En medio de la Guerra Fría, su gobierno tampoco se caracterizó por la ampliación de las libertades democráticas.
En los últimos treinta años, con la excepción del Líbano, prácticamente ningún país árabe tuvo elecciones libres, sindicatos independientes o partidos políticos que funcionaran sin el control del Estado. Los medios de comunicación están controlados por los gobiernos y las manifestaciones públicas prohibidas. Los pueblos en Túnez y Egipto quieren cambios profundos y parecen decididos a conseguirlos.
http://www.mdzol.com/mdz/nota/273660/ (15.02.2011)
Y para comprender mejor la trascendencia de lo que está sucediendo hay que recordar que la inmensa mayoría de los árabes nunca conocieron la democracia. Muchos de ellos durante casi 400 años estuvieron dominados por el Imperio otomano sin libertades democráticas ya que eran súbditos de los turcos. Paralelamente, los británicos y los franceses comenzaron a ocupar territorios de la región para garantizarse puntos estratégicos entre Asia y Africa y tener un mayor control del comercio mundial.
En 1830 Francia ocupó Argelia y a fines del siglo diecinueve se abrió el Canal de Suez en suelo egipcio para beneficiar a las potencias europeas.
Cuando el Imperio otomano se desintegró durante la primera guerra mundial, Francia y el Reino Unido aprovecharon para repartirse sus dominios y crear países mediante un acuerdo secreto conocido como Sykes-Piccot, por el nombre de los funcionarios que lo firmaron. La población local nunca fue consultada.
Tampoco cuando las potencias coloniales decidieron colocar monarquías a dedo en Egipto o Arabia Saudita.
En Irak y Jordania incluso entronaron a dos hermanos, uno de los cuales todavía tiene a su bisnieto gobernando en Amman. En 1952 un golpe de Estado en Egipto provocó un terremoto en la región se derrocó la monarquía y accedió al poder Gamal Abdel Nasser, quien proclamó la República, impulsó el nacionalismo árabe y un proceso de nacionalizaciones que incluyó al Canal de Suez. En medio de la Guerra Fría, su gobierno tampoco se caracterizó por la ampliación de las libertades democráticas.
En los últimos treinta años, con la excepción del Líbano, prácticamente ningún país árabe tuvo elecciones libres, sindicatos independientes o partidos políticos que funcionaran sin el control del Estado. Los medios de comunicación están controlados por los gobiernos y las manifestaciones públicas prohibidas. Los pueblos en Túnez y Egipto quieren cambios profundos y parecen decididos a conseguirlos.
http://www.mdzol.com/mdz/nota/273660/ (15.02.2011)
domingo, 13 de febrero de 2011
The false anxiety of influence (Hamid Dabashi)
Comparisons between Egypt's current uprising and Iran's 1979 revolution have become something of a cliché.
The mass demonstrations in Egypt against a US-backed dictator have reminded many observers of similar scenes from the Iranian Revolution of 1979, leading some to believe that another "Islamic Revolution" is in the making.
This is a false reading of the Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979; and an even more flawed reading of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.
This, above all, is a logically flawed assimilation of a unique historical event that was ignited in Tunisia, has now spread to Egypt and perhaps will expand even farther in the Arab and Muslim world, to the point of even casting aside cliché terms, including and the most colonially pernicious of them all: "the Middle East".
Meydan al-Tahrir in Egypt today, like its counterpart Meydan-e Azadi in Tehran two years ago (the two Arabic and Persian terms mean exactly the same: "Freedom Square"), is the epicenter of a planetary reconfiguration of world politics.
Watershed moment
Irreducible to no other event, Egyptians gathering at Tahrir Square have staged a global spectacle of the democratic will of a people. The storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution of 1789 is the closest European event that comes near to what is happening in Egypt and its open-ended consequences for the global south. And, when the Bastille was happening, no one knew exactly what a new watershed had been marked in European history.
Allowing for its own metaphors gradually to emerge, the Egypt of 2011 is neither Iran of 1979 nor France of 1789 nor any other country of any other time. It is what it is: It is Egypt; and it is 2011.
What has happened in Tunisia and now in Egypt and perhaps even beyond is not tantamount to the fall of the Berlin Wall, or by extension what happened in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet Union.
The Tahrir Square of 2011 is not the Tiananmen Square of 1989. Such lazy clichés, phony metaphors, and easy allegories send people after a useless goose chase preventing them from properly seeing the events in Tunisia and Egypt.
The emerging facts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran demand and will exact their own concepts and metaphors, leading to fresh insights, perspectives, and theories.
We are all blessed to be present at the historic moment of a massive epistemic shift, not merely in the geopolitics of the region, or the planetary configuration of power, but even more crucially, in the moral and political imagination that we must muster to come to terms with it.
False constructions
To reach for those fresh insights we must first clear the air of false assimilations and misbegotten metaphors and above all of the whole false anxiety of "influence". The falsifying trend of comparing the Egyptian revolution of 2011 to the Iranian revolution of 1979 is usually predicated on an ulterior ideological motive.
The pro-Isreali neocons in the United States and their Zionist counterparts in Israel compare the Egyptian and Iranian revolutions because they are frightened out of their wits by a massive revolutionary uprising in a major Arab country that may no longer allow the abuse of the democratic will of a people for the cozy continuation of a colonial settlement called "Israel".
Echoing the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Iranian neocon contingencies like Abbas Milani of the Hoover Institute think tank in California fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over the Egyptian revolution and create an Islamic Republic—habitually turning a blind eye to the fact that a fanatical "Jewish Brotherhood" has already created a Jewish Republic for more than sixty years in the same neighborhood.
Soon after Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas Milani, and from precisely the opposite ideological direction, Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic and the vast petrodollar propaganda machinery at his disposal, celebrated what is happening in Egypt as a reflection of Khomeini’s will and legacy and the commencement of an "Islamic awakening". Not so fast, interjected an almost instant announcement from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This was not an Islamic Revolution, they explained, but an Egyptian revolution that belonged to all Egyptians—Muslims, Christians, people from other ideological persuasions.
Fighting theocracy
In between the frightful Zionist propaganda and Islamist wishful thinking myriads of other opinions have been aired over the last two weeks in one way or another measuring the influence of the Islamic Revolution in Iran over the revolutionary uprising in Egypt.
This is a false and falsifying presumption first and foremost because what happened in Iran during the 1977-1979 revolutionary uprising was not an "Islamic Revolution" but a violently and viciously "Islamised revolution".
A brutal and sustained course of repression—perpetrated under the successive smoke screens of the American Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981 and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, and the Salman Rushdi Affair of 1989-1999—is the crucial difference between an "Islamic" and "Islamised" revolution.
A cruel crescendo of university purges, cultural revolutions, mass executions of oppositional forces, and forced exile, took full advantage of domestic and regional crisisis over the last three decades to turn a multifaceted, modern, and cosmopolitan revolution into a banal and vicious theocracy.
The CIA-sponsored coup of 1953, the massive arming of Saddam Hossein to wage war against Iran, and the creation of the Taliban as a bulwark against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, all engineered by the United States, and the continued armed robbery of Palestine by Israel have been the regional contexts in which the Islamic Republic destroyed all its ideological and political alternatives and created a malicious theocracy, consistently and systematically abusing regional crisis to keep itself in power.
That historical fact ought to be remembered today so no false analogy or anxiety of influence is allowed to mar the joyous and magnificent uprising of Tunisians and Egyptians to assert and reclaim their dignity in a free and democratic homeland.
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Tunisians or Egyptians will allow such a treacherous kidnapping of their dreams and aspirations by one fanatical ideological absolutism or another.
Ideological links
What we are witnessing in Tunisia and in Egypt today, as we in fact have been over the last two years in Iran, is a people’s democratic will to retrieve their cosmopolitan political culture, wresting it from colonial (Tunisia), imperial (Egypt), or tyrannical (Iran) distortion, deception, and corruption.
Even if we are to indulge in the false anxiety of influence, it is crucial to remember the historical fact that Egypt has had far more enduring influence on Iran than the other way around.
The entire Islamic ideology that prefigured the Islamist take over of the Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979, was predicated on the ideas of Egyptian thinkers ranging from Muhammad Abduh to Mahmud Shaltut to Sayyid Qutb. That Muhammad Abduh himself was a disciple of Seyyed Jamal al-Din al-Afghani points to the transnational disposition of our political cultures in the region that cannot be colonially fragmented and falsified.
But under no circumstances should we be limited in our understanding of the rich and effervescent political cultures of the region to Islamism of one sort or another, for this particular revolutionary politics has never been the only dimension of interaction among ideas and movements in our region.
Global hopes
Anticolonial nationalism extending from Jawaharlal Nehru's India to Mohammad Mossadegh's Iran to Gamal Abd al-Nasser's Egypt to Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumediène’s Algeria (extending all the way to the Cuban revolution) has had catalytic consequences for and on each other beyond any colonially manufactured national boundary.
The same is true about revolutionary socialist movements where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), for example, has had a far-reaching impact on Marxist movements in the region from Nepal to Morocco, from Afghanistan to Yemen. All these cross-metaphorisation of a defiant politics of hope and struggle point to the regional solidarities that have existed and informed these revolutionary uprisings far beyond the colonially manufactured and racialized nationalism of one sort or another.
All of this is only if we were to remain limited, and we must not, within the banal sphere of "influence". Who influenced whom and under what circumstances, is an exercise in colonial futility that constantly pits one group of Arabs or Muslims or Asians or Africans or Latin Americans against each other.
These divisions can be exacerbated by a mindless nationalism that prevents the clear sight of emerging geopolitics. Until it is realised we as a people will never be liberated from the nasty snare of trying to explain ourselves to “the West”, a figment of an arrested colonial imagination that racialised nationalism keeps perpetuating.
We must, once and for all, change our interlocutor, and begin to talk to ourselves. From Tehran to Tunis to Cairo and beyond, our innate cosmopolitan cultures are being retrieved, our hidden worlds discovered, above and beyond any anxiety of influence.
Egyptians are now achieving our collective future—for all of us. It was not destined for Iranians to do this in 2009--but the victory of Tunisians and the triumphant will of the Egyptians in 2011 will have unequivocal consequences for all other democratic and national liberation movements in the region.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Source: Al Jazeera (12.02.2011)
The mass demonstrations in Egypt against a US-backed dictator have reminded many observers of similar scenes from the Iranian Revolution of 1979, leading some to believe that another "Islamic Revolution" is in the making.
This is a false reading of the Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979; and an even more flawed reading of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.
This, above all, is a logically flawed assimilation of a unique historical event that was ignited in Tunisia, has now spread to Egypt and perhaps will expand even farther in the Arab and Muslim world, to the point of even casting aside cliché terms, including and the most colonially pernicious of them all: "the Middle East".
Meydan al-Tahrir in Egypt today, like its counterpart Meydan-e Azadi in Tehran two years ago (the two Arabic and Persian terms mean exactly the same: "Freedom Square"), is the epicenter of a planetary reconfiguration of world politics.
Watershed moment
Irreducible to no other event, Egyptians gathering at Tahrir Square have staged a global spectacle of the democratic will of a people. The storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution of 1789 is the closest European event that comes near to what is happening in Egypt and its open-ended consequences for the global south. And, when the Bastille was happening, no one knew exactly what a new watershed had been marked in European history.
Allowing for its own metaphors gradually to emerge, the Egypt of 2011 is neither Iran of 1979 nor France of 1789 nor any other country of any other time. It is what it is: It is Egypt; and it is 2011.
What has happened in Tunisia and now in Egypt and perhaps even beyond is not tantamount to the fall of the Berlin Wall, or by extension what happened in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet Union.
The Tahrir Square of 2011 is not the Tiananmen Square of 1989. Such lazy clichés, phony metaphors, and easy allegories send people after a useless goose chase preventing them from properly seeing the events in Tunisia and Egypt.
The emerging facts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran demand and will exact their own concepts and metaphors, leading to fresh insights, perspectives, and theories.
We are all blessed to be present at the historic moment of a massive epistemic shift, not merely in the geopolitics of the region, or the planetary configuration of power, but even more crucially, in the moral and political imagination that we must muster to come to terms with it.
False constructions
To reach for those fresh insights we must first clear the air of false assimilations and misbegotten metaphors and above all of the whole false anxiety of "influence". The falsifying trend of comparing the Egyptian revolution of 2011 to the Iranian revolution of 1979 is usually predicated on an ulterior ideological motive.
The pro-Isreali neocons in the United States and their Zionist counterparts in Israel compare the Egyptian and Iranian revolutions because they are frightened out of their wits by a massive revolutionary uprising in a major Arab country that may no longer allow the abuse of the democratic will of a people for the cozy continuation of a colonial settlement called "Israel".
Echoing the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Iranian neocon contingencies like Abbas Milani of the Hoover Institute think tank in California fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over the Egyptian revolution and create an Islamic Republic—habitually turning a blind eye to the fact that a fanatical "Jewish Brotherhood" has already created a Jewish Republic for more than sixty years in the same neighborhood.
Soon after Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas Milani, and from precisely the opposite ideological direction, Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic and the vast petrodollar propaganda machinery at his disposal, celebrated what is happening in Egypt as a reflection of Khomeini’s will and legacy and the commencement of an "Islamic awakening". Not so fast, interjected an almost instant announcement from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This was not an Islamic Revolution, they explained, but an Egyptian revolution that belonged to all Egyptians—Muslims, Christians, people from other ideological persuasions.
Fighting theocracy
In between the frightful Zionist propaganda and Islamist wishful thinking myriads of other opinions have been aired over the last two weeks in one way or another measuring the influence of the Islamic Revolution in Iran over the revolutionary uprising in Egypt.
This is a false and falsifying presumption first and foremost because what happened in Iran during the 1977-1979 revolutionary uprising was not an "Islamic Revolution" but a violently and viciously "Islamised revolution".
A brutal and sustained course of repression—perpetrated under the successive smoke screens of the American Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981 and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, and the Salman Rushdi Affair of 1989-1999—is the crucial difference between an "Islamic" and "Islamised" revolution.
A cruel crescendo of university purges, cultural revolutions, mass executions of oppositional forces, and forced exile, took full advantage of domestic and regional crisisis over the last three decades to turn a multifaceted, modern, and cosmopolitan revolution into a banal and vicious theocracy.
The CIA-sponsored coup of 1953, the massive arming of Saddam Hossein to wage war against Iran, and the creation of the Taliban as a bulwark against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, all engineered by the United States, and the continued armed robbery of Palestine by Israel have been the regional contexts in which the Islamic Republic destroyed all its ideological and political alternatives and created a malicious theocracy, consistently and systematically abusing regional crisis to keep itself in power.
That historical fact ought to be remembered today so no false analogy or anxiety of influence is allowed to mar the joyous and magnificent uprising of Tunisians and Egyptians to assert and reclaim their dignity in a free and democratic homeland.
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Tunisians or Egyptians will allow such a treacherous kidnapping of their dreams and aspirations by one fanatical ideological absolutism or another.
Ideological links
What we are witnessing in Tunisia and in Egypt today, as we in fact have been over the last two years in Iran, is a people’s democratic will to retrieve their cosmopolitan political culture, wresting it from colonial (Tunisia), imperial (Egypt), or tyrannical (Iran) distortion, deception, and corruption.
Even if we are to indulge in the false anxiety of influence, it is crucial to remember the historical fact that Egypt has had far more enduring influence on Iran than the other way around.
The entire Islamic ideology that prefigured the Islamist take over of the Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979, was predicated on the ideas of Egyptian thinkers ranging from Muhammad Abduh to Mahmud Shaltut to Sayyid Qutb. That Muhammad Abduh himself was a disciple of Seyyed Jamal al-Din al-Afghani points to the transnational disposition of our political cultures in the region that cannot be colonially fragmented and falsified.
But under no circumstances should we be limited in our understanding of the rich and effervescent political cultures of the region to Islamism of one sort or another, for this particular revolutionary politics has never been the only dimension of interaction among ideas and movements in our region.
Global hopes
Anticolonial nationalism extending from Jawaharlal Nehru's India to Mohammad Mossadegh's Iran to Gamal Abd al-Nasser's Egypt to Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumediène’s Algeria (extending all the way to the Cuban revolution) has had catalytic consequences for and on each other beyond any colonially manufactured national boundary.
The same is true about revolutionary socialist movements where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), for example, has had a far-reaching impact on Marxist movements in the region from Nepal to Morocco, from Afghanistan to Yemen. All these cross-metaphorisation of a defiant politics of hope and struggle point to the regional solidarities that have existed and informed these revolutionary uprisings far beyond the colonially manufactured and racialized nationalism of one sort or another.
All of this is only if we were to remain limited, and we must not, within the banal sphere of "influence". Who influenced whom and under what circumstances, is an exercise in colonial futility that constantly pits one group of Arabs or Muslims or Asians or Africans or Latin Americans against each other.
These divisions can be exacerbated by a mindless nationalism that prevents the clear sight of emerging geopolitics. Until it is realised we as a people will never be liberated from the nasty snare of trying to explain ourselves to “the West”, a figment of an arrested colonial imagination that racialised nationalism keeps perpetuating.
We must, once and for all, change our interlocutor, and begin to talk to ourselves. From Tehran to Tunis to Cairo and beyond, our innate cosmopolitan cultures are being retrieved, our hidden worlds discovered, above and beyond any anxiety of influence.
Egyptians are now achieving our collective future—for all of us. It was not destined for Iranians to do this in 2009--but the victory of Tunisians and the triumphant will of the Egyptians in 2011 will have unequivocal consequences for all other democratic and national liberation movements in the region.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Source: Al Jazeera (12.02.2011)
sábado, 12 de febrero de 2011
El día después (Por Ramiro Rodriguez, El Cairo)
Sé que iré en contra de lo que disponen los cánones del periodismo ortodoxo. No es que me hayan importado mucho alguna vez, pero no será hoy cuando me ajuste a ellos. No me pidan que no adjetive, no me pidan objetividad y distancia respecto de los acontecimientos. Cómo tenerlas cuando uno se siente conmovido hasta lo más profundo, cuando la felicidad de un pueblo lo rodea de abrazos, de sonrisas, de “welcomes” y hasta algún “bienvenido”, de gente que se desboca en un discurso lleno de gesticulaciones en el que uno apenas alcanza a entender “ana masri” (soy egipcio) o “¡horreya, horreya!” (libertad, libertad) o “howa emshi” (él se fue). Hoy es el día después; el día más impresionante que me ha tocado vivir en Egipto; el día, al fin de cuentas, en que un pueblo se puso al hombro su historia y empezó a reconstruir su tierra.
Ayer fue el día más importante de la historia reciente de Egipto. Una movilización sin precedentes logró lo que nadie imaginaba hace apenas tres semanas: la renuncia de quien había gobernado el país por casi 30 años. Sin embargo, no se trata simplemente de una vuelta de página en la línea política que conducirá el destino de los casi 85 millones de egipcios que pueblan este suelo. Es mucho más que eso, que tampoco fue poco.
En una ciudad habitualmente teñida del ocre que le impone el implacable desierto, desde hace 19 días los colores son más vivos, los rostros, a pesar del dramatismo de los momentos vividos, están colmados de vida, de fuerza. Abuelas de 80, pordioseros de 70, investigadores de 60, albañiles de 50, mujeres desempleadas de 40, jóvenes, millares de jóvenes, todos tienen hoy 19 años. La revolución, como la llaman, ha llegado mucho más hondo de lo imaginado: ha transformado la sociedad en muchos aspectos, ha transformado su cultura.
Los tiempos dan vértigo. Hace apenas tres semanas, caminar por algunas calles del centro de la ciudad era los más parecido a una rayuela en la que uno debía saltar entre la basura sin que el “cielo” tampoco estuviera demasiado limpio. Los barrenderos no daban abasto, la gente tiraba lo que tenía en la mano sin pensar demasiado el destino de su desecho ni cuánto podía afectar eso al que venía atrás. Hoy, en cambio, un ejército de muchachas y muchachos, de jóvenes y no tanto, los mismos que hasta anoche aguardaban que se les cumpliera un sueño, poblaron nuevamente la plaza Tahrir pero esta vez para reconstruir un espacio en semiruinas después de que fuera escenario de resistencia, de festivales, de recitados y discursos inflamados, pero también de combates aguerridos en los que muchos incluso dejaron sus vidas.
Con la urgencia de quien se siente responsable del cambio, este ejército trocó los palos y las piedras por escobas, palas y pinceles. Desde temprano a la mañana -seguramente sin siquiera haber dormido tras el anuncio de la dimisión del viejo líder, su victoria más notable-, de a decenas de miles empezaron a limpiar las calles de estropicios, a juntar las piedras que fueron hasta ayer la reserva preventiva ante posibles ataques, a descolgar carteles y a limpiar las pintadas que, en cada monumento, reivindicaban su lucha.
Pasándose bolsas de residuos, con tapabocas y guantes de látex, peleándose por las escobas que llegaban en camiones de vaya a saber dónde, intercalando el trabajo con los festejos, de hora en hora iban despejando la plaza emblemática de esta fenomenal movilización popular. Postales de una convicción y una solidaridad que ya se había manifestado cuando, una semana atrás, en el más irresponsable acto del gobierno de Mubarak, tras una brutal represión, la policía desapareció de las calles, dejándolas a merced de cuanto vivo o crápula anduviera por allí, cuadra por cuadra los vecinos se organizaron para custodiar sus calles, turnándose en las horas de sueño, compartiendo la comida y la oración.
Esta mañana hasta los cordones, eternamente gastados, volvieron a relucir: una cadena de muchachitas alrededor de las veredas, evitaban el paso mientras varios muchacho, a toda prisa, iban alternando de pintura blanca y negra el hormigón opaco de polvo y humo. A pocos metros, un padre con sus dos hijitos, acomodaba todo lo prolijo que podía, los adoquines que hace unas noches habían volado, en el sentido más literal de la expresión. Atrás de ellos, otros muchachos preparaban una mezcla de dudosas proporciones y la acomodaban con las manos sobre los adoquines recién colocados.
Esta mañana, la del día después, empezó la reconstrucción. Esta mañana, cansados de tanto festejo, grito y baile, todavía tenía energía para barrer, palear, cargar bolsas y abrazarse. Esta mañana un pueblo feliz se puso al hombro su historia y comenzó a andar.
Ayer fue el día más importante de la historia reciente de Egipto. Una movilización sin precedentes logró lo que nadie imaginaba hace apenas tres semanas: la renuncia de quien había gobernado el país por casi 30 años. Sin embargo, no se trata simplemente de una vuelta de página en la línea política que conducirá el destino de los casi 85 millones de egipcios que pueblan este suelo. Es mucho más que eso, que tampoco fue poco.
En una ciudad habitualmente teñida del ocre que le impone el implacable desierto, desde hace 19 días los colores son más vivos, los rostros, a pesar del dramatismo de los momentos vividos, están colmados de vida, de fuerza. Abuelas de 80, pordioseros de 70, investigadores de 60, albañiles de 50, mujeres desempleadas de 40, jóvenes, millares de jóvenes, todos tienen hoy 19 años. La revolución, como la llaman, ha llegado mucho más hondo de lo imaginado: ha transformado la sociedad en muchos aspectos, ha transformado su cultura.
Los tiempos dan vértigo. Hace apenas tres semanas, caminar por algunas calles del centro de la ciudad era los más parecido a una rayuela en la que uno debía saltar entre la basura sin que el “cielo” tampoco estuviera demasiado limpio. Los barrenderos no daban abasto, la gente tiraba lo que tenía en la mano sin pensar demasiado el destino de su desecho ni cuánto podía afectar eso al que venía atrás. Hoy, en cambio, un ejército de muchachas y muchachos, de jóvenes y no tanto, los mismos que hasta anoche aguardaban que se les cumpliera un sueño, poblaron nuevamente la plaza Tahrir pero esta vez para reconstruir un espacio en semiruinas después de que fuera escenario de resistencia, de festivales, de recitados y discursos inflamados, pero también de combates aguerridos en los que muchos incluso dejaron sus vidas.
Con la urgencia de quien se siente responsable del cambio, este ejército trocó los palos y las piedras por escobas, palas y pinceles. Desde temprano a la mañana -seguramente sin siquiera haber dormido tras el anuncio de la dimisión del viejo líder, su victoria más notable-, de a decenas de miles empezaron a limpiar las calles de estropicios, a juntar las piedras que fueron hasta ayer la reserva preventiva ante posibles ataques, a descolgar carteles y a limpiar las pintadas que, en cada monumento, reivindicaban su lucha.
Pasándose bolsas de residuos, con tapabocas y guantes de látex, peleándose por las escobas que llegaban en camiones de vaya a saber dónde, intercalando el trabajo con los festejos, de hora en hora iban despejando la plaza emblemática de esta fenomenal movilización popular. Postales de una convicción y una solidaridad que ya se había manifestado cuando, una semana atrás, en el más irresponsable acto del gobierno de Mubarak, tras una brutal represión, la policía desapareció de las calles, dejándolas a merced de cuanto vivo o crápula anduviera por allí, cuadra por cuadra los vecinos se organizaron para custodiar sus calles, turnándose en las horas de sueño, compartiendo la comida y la oración.
Esta mañana hasta los cordones, eternamente gastados, volvieron a relucir: una cadena de muchachitas alrededor de las veredas, evitaban el paso mientras varios muchacho, a toda prisa, iban alternando de pintura blanca y negra el hormigón opaco de polvo y humo. A pocos metros, un padre con sus dos hijitos, acomodaba todo lo prolijo que podía, los adoquines que hace unas noches habían volado, en el sentido más literal de la expresión. Atrás de ellos, otros muchachos preparaban una mezcla de dudosas proporciones y la acomodaban con las manos sobre los adoquines recién colocados.
Esta mañana, la del día después, empezó la reconstrucción. Esta mañana, cansados de tanto festejo, grito y baile, todavía tenía energía para barrer, palear, cargar bolsas y abrazarse. Esta mañana un pueblo feliz se puso al hombro su historia y comenzó a andar.
jueves, 10 de febrero de 2011
Tarik Ramadan: La Turquía democrática es el modelo
El País, 10/02/2011
Los sectores jóvenes de los Hermanos Musulmanes están fascinados con la experiencia turca. Conectan así con el fundador de la cofradía, Al Bana, que rechazaba la violencia y admiraba el parlamentarismo británico
Cuando las manifestaciones masivas se iniciaron en Túnez, ¿quién iba a pensar que el régimen de Ben Ali se vendría abajo tan rápido? ¿Quién podía prever que Egipto no tardaría en asistir a una protesta popular tan inaudita? Se ha derribado una barrera y nada volverá a ser lo mismo. Es bastante probable que, dada la centralidad de Egipto y su importancia simbólica, otros países sigan la senda. ¿Pero cuál será el papel de los islamistas después del derrumbe de las dictaduras?
Los islamistas ni lideran la revolución egipcia ni representan a la mayoría. Hoy siguen a El Baradei
Durante décadas, la presencia de los islamistas ha justificado la aceptación por Occidente de las peores dictaduras en el mundo árabe. Y fueron estos mismos regímenes los que demonizaron a sus oponentes islamistas, sobre todo a los Hermanos Musulmanes egipcios, que históricamente representan el primer movimiento de masas bien organizado y con influencia política del país. Durante más de 60 años, los Hermanos, ilegales pero tolerados, han demostrado una gran capacidad de movilización popular en las elecciones relativamente democráticas en las que ha participado, aquellas que han elegido, entre otros, a representantes sindicales o profesionales, concejales o parlamentarios. ¿Son los Hermanos Musulmanes el poder emergente en Egipto y, de ser así, qué podemos prever de una organización como la suya?
De Occidente hemos acabado por esperar análisis superficiales del islam político y, en concreto, de los Hermanos Musulmanes. Sin embargo, no solo el islamismo es un mosaico de tendencias y facciones divergentes, sino que sus múltiples y diversas facetas han ido surgiendo a lo largo del tiempo para responder a cambios históricos. Los Hermanos Musulmanes, que comenzaron su andadura en la década de 1930 en forma de movimiento no violento, legalista y anticolonialista, proclamaron la legitimidad de la resistencia armada contra el expansionismo sionista que se estaba produciendo en Palestina durante el periodo anterior a la II Guerra Mundial.
Entre 1930 y 1945, los textos de Hasan al Bana, fundador de la hermandad, demuestran que se oponía al colonialismo y que criticaba enérgicamente a los gobiernos fascistas de Alemania e Italia. Al Bana, que rechazaba el uso de la violencia en Egipto, aunque la consideraba legítima en Palestina como modo resistencia frente a las actividades terroristas de los grupos Stern e Irgún, creía que el parlamentarismo británico representaba el modelo más cercano a los principios islámicos. Su objetivo era la creación de un "Estado islámico" basado en una reforma gradual que se iniciaría con un plan de educación popular y con programas sociales de amplio alcance. Fue asesinado en 1949 por el Gobierno egipcio, por orden del ocupante británico.
Tras la revolución de Gamal Abdel Nasser de 1952, el movimiento sufrió una violenta represión y varias tendencias distintas surgieron en su seno. Radicalizados por la experiencia de la cárcel y la tortura, algunos de sus miembros (que acabarían por abandonar la organización) llegaron a la conclusión de que había que derribar el Estado a toda costa, aunque fuera violentamente. Otros siguieron ateniéndose al reformismo gradual de los inicios.
Muchos de los integrantes de la hermandad se vieron obligados a exiliarse: algunos en Arabia Saudí, donde recibieron la influencia de la ideología literalista saudí; otros, en lugares como Turquía e Indonesia, países mayoritariamente musulmanes en los que coexistían comunidades muy distintas. Por otra parte, otros se asentaron en Occidente, donde entraron directamente en contacto con la tradición europea de las libertades democráticas.
Hoy en día los Hermanos Musulmanes beben de todas esas visiones. Pero los líderes del movimiento ya no representan las aspiraciones de los más jóvenes que, mucho más abiertos al mundo y deseosos de promover reformas internas, están fascinados con el ejemplo turco. Detrás de la fachada de unidad y jerarquía, operan influencias contradictorias. Nadie puede decir en qué dirección irá el movimiento.
Los Hermanos Musulmanes no lideran la efusión que está derribando a Hosni Mubarak. Los Hermanos Musulmanes y el conjunto de los islamistas no representan a la mayoría. No cabe duda de que esperan participar en la transición democrática cuando Mubarak haya partido, pero nadie puede decir qué facción acabará imponiéndose. Entre los literalistas y los partidarios de la vía turca todo es posible, ya que la hermandad ha evolucionado de forma considerable durante los últimos 20 años.
Ni Estados Unidos ni Europa, por no hablar de Israel, permitirán fácilmente que el pueblo egipcio haga realidad su sueño de alcanzar la democracia y la libertad. Las consideraciones estratégicas y geopolíticas tienen tal peso que el movimiento reformista será objeto, y ya lo está siendo, de un minucioso seguimiento por parte de organismos estadounidenses, en colaboración con el Ejército egipcio, que, sirviéndose de prácticas dilatorias, ha asumido el crucial papel de mediador.
Al optar por colocarse detrás de Mohamed el Baradei, cabeza visible de quienes se manifiestan contra Mubarak, los líderes de los Hermanos Musulmanes han hecho ver que no es momento de destacarse y plantear exigencias políticas que pudieran asustar a Occidente, e incluso al propio pueblo egipcio. El lema es: prudencia. El respeto a los principios democráticos exige que todas las fuerzas que rechacen la violencia y acaten el Estado de derecho participen en igualdad de condiciones en el proceso político. Los Hermanos Musulmanes deben integrarse en el proceso de cambio, y así lo harán si llegara a establecerse un Estado mínimamente democrático.
Ni la represión ni la tortura han logrado eliminar a la hermandad, más bien al contrario. El debate democrático y el intercambio de ideas han sido los únicos factores que han influido en la evolución de gran parte de las tesis islamistas más problemáticas, que van desde la interpretación de la sharía hasta el respeto a la libertad y la defensa de la igualdad. Solo mediante el intercambio de ideas, no mediante la tortura y la dictadura, podremos encontrar soluciones que respeten la voluntad popular. El ejemplo de Turquía debería ser motivo de inspiración.
Occidente continúa utilizando la "amenaza islamista" para justificar su pasividad y el apoyo descarado a las dictaduras. Cuando la resistencia contra Mubarak subió de tono, el Gobierno israelí pidió repetidamente a Washington que respaldara a la junta militar egipcia. Mientras, Europa optó por sentarse a esperar.
Ambas actitudes son reveladoras: al fin y al cabo, frente a la defensa de los intereses políticos y económicos, poco peso tiene apoyar de boquilla los principios democráticos. Estados Unidos prefiere dictaduras que garanticen acceso al petróleo y dejen a los israelíes continuar su lenta colonización, antes que representantes populares creíbles que quizá no permitan el mantenimiento de esas situaciones.
Citar las voces de peligrosos islamistas para justificar que no se preste atención a las voces del pueblo es una actitud tan corta de miras como ilógica. Durante las Administraciones de Bush y de Obama, EE UU ha sufrido una gran pérdida de credibilidad en Oriente Próximo, y lo mismo puede decirse de Europa. Si los estadounidenses y los europeos no reevalúan sus políticas, puede que otras potencias de Asia y Sudamérica se inmiscuyan en su compleja estructura de alianzas estratégicas. En cuanto a Israel, que ahora se ha situado como amigo y protector de las dictaduras árabes, su Gobierno podría llegar a darse cuenta de que éstas solo están comprometidas con su política de ciega colonización.
El impacto regional de la retirada de Mubarak será enorme, pero es imposible predecir cuáles serán sus consecuencias. Después de las revoluciones tunecina y egipcia, el mensaje político está claro: con protestas masivas no violentas, cualquier cosa es posible y ya ningún Gobierno autocrático está del todo seguro.
Presidentes y reyes sienten la presión de este histórico punto de inflexión. El malestar ha llegado a Argelia, Yemen y Mauritania. También deberíamos fijarnos en Jordania, Siria e incluso Arabia Saudí. Esta preocupante situación de inestabilidad es al mismo tiempo muy prometedora. El mundo árabe está despertando con dignidad y esperanza. Los cambios auguran tiempos de esperanza para los auténticos demócratas y problemas para quienes sacrificarían los principios democráticos por mor de sus cálculos económicos y geoestratégicos. La liberación de Egipto parece solo el principio. ¿Quién será el siguiente?
Entre los musulmanes hay una masa crítica que apoyaría esa necesaria revolución surgida en el centro. Al final, únicamente las democracias que incorporen a todas las fuerzas políticas no violentas podrán llevar la paz a Oriente Próximo; una paz que también deberá respetar la dignidad de los palestinos.
Tariq Ramadan es profesor de Estudios Islámicos Contemporáneos en Oxford. Ramadan es nieto de Hasan al Bana, que en 1928 fundó los Hermanos Musulmanes.
Los sectores jóvenes de los Hermanos Musulmanes están fascinados con la experiencia turca. Conectan así con el fundador de la cofradía, Al Bana, que rechazaba la violencia y admiraba el parlamentarismo británico
Cuando las manifestaciones masivas se iniciaron en Túnez, ¿quién iba a pensar que el régimen de Ben Ali se vendría abajo tan rápido? ¿Quién podía prever que Egipto no tardaría en asistir a una protesta popular tan inaudita? Se ha derribado una barrera y nada volverá a ser lo mismo. Es bastante probable que, dada la centralidad de Egipto y su importancia simbólica, otros países sigan la senda. ¿Pero cuál será el papel de los islamistas después del derrumbe de las dictaduras?
Los islamistas ni lideran la revolución egipcia ni representan a la mayoría. Hoy siguen a El Baradei
Durante décadas, la presencia de los islamistas ha justificado la aceptación por Occidente de las peores dictaduras en el mundo árabe. Y fueron estos mismos regímenes los que demonizaron a sus oponentes islamistas, sobre todo a los Hermanos Musulmanes egipcios, que históricamente representan el primer movimiento de masas bien organizado y con influencia política del país. Durante más de 60 años, los Hermanos, ilegales pero tolerados, han demostrado una gran capacidad de movilización popular en las elecciones relativamente democráticas en las que ha participado, aquellas que han elegido, entre otros, a representantes sindicales o profesionales, concejales o parlamentarios. ¿Son los Hermanos Musulmanes el poder emergente en Egipto y, de ser así, qué podemos prever de una organización como la suya?
De Occidente hemos acabado por esperar análisis superficiales del islam político y, en concreto, de los Hermanos Musulmanes. Sin embargo, no solo el islamismo es un mosaico de tendencias y facciones divergentes, sino que sus múltiples y diversas facetas han ido surgiendo a lo largo del tiempo para responder a cambios históricos. Los Hermanos Musulmanes, que comenzaron su andadura en la década de 1930 en forma de movimiento no violento, legalista y anticolonialista, proclamaron la legitimidad de la resistencia armada contra el expansionismo sionista que se estaba produciendo en Palestina durante el periodo anterior a la II Guerra Mundial.
Entre 1930 y 1945, los textos de Hasan al Bana, fundador de la hermandad, demuestran que se oponía al colonialismo y que criticaba enérgicamente a los gobiernos fascistas de Alemania e Italia. Al Bana, que rechazaba el uso de la violencia en Egipto, aunque la consideraba legítima en Palestina como modo resistencia frente a las actividades terroristas de los grupos Stern e Irgún, creía que el parlamentarismo británico representaba el modelo más cercano a los principios islámicos. Su objetivo era la creación de un "Estado islámico" basado en una reforma gradual que se iniciaría con un plan de educación popular y con programas sociales de amplio alcance. Fue asesinado en 1949 por el Gobierno egipcio, por orden del ocupante británico.
Tras la revolución de Gamal Abdel Nasser de 1952, el movimiento sufrió una violenta represión y varias tendencias distintas surgieron en su seno. Radicalizados por la experiencia de la cárcel y la tortura, algunos de sus miembros (que acabarían por abandonar la organización) llegaron a la conclusión de que había que derribar el Estado a toda costa, aunque fuera violentamente. Otros siguieron ateniéndose al reformismo gradual de los inicios.
Muchos de los integrantes de la hermandad se vieron obligados a exiliarse: algunos en Arabia Saudí, donde recibieron la influencia de la ideología literalista saudí; otros, en lugares como Turquía e Indonesia, países mayoritariamente musulmanes en los que coexistían comunidades muy distintas. Por otra parte, otros se asentaron en Occidente, donde entraron directamente en contacto con la tradición europea de las libertades democráticas.
Hoy en día los Hermanos Musulmanes beben de todas esas visiones. Pero los líderes del movimiento ya no representan las aspiraciones de los más jóvenes que, mucho más abiertos al mundo y deseosos de promover reformas internas, están fascinados con el ejemplo turco. Detrás de la fachada de unidad y jerarquía, operan influencias contradictorias. Nadie puede decir en qué dirección irá el movimiento.
Los Hermanos Musulmanes no lideran la efusión que está derribando a Hosni Mubarak. Los Hermanos Musulmanes y el conjunto de los islamistas no representan a la mayoría. No cabe duda de que esperan participar en la transición democrática cuando Mubarak haya partido, pero nadie puede decir qué facción acabará imponiéndose. Entre los literalistas y los partidarios de la vía turca todo es posible, ya que la hermandad ha evolucionado de forma considerable durante los últimos 20 años.
Ni Estados Unidos ni Europa, por no hablar de Israel, permitirán fácilmente que el pueblo egipcio haga realidad su sueño de alcanzar la democracia y la libertad. Las consideraciones estratégicas y geopolíticas tienen tal peso que el movimiento reformista será objeto, y ya lo está siendo, de un minucioso seguimiento por parte de organismos estadounidenses, en colaboración con el Ejército egipcio, que, sirviéndose de prácticas dilatorias, ha asumido el crucial papel de mediador.
Al optar por colocarse detrás de Mohamed el Baradei, cabeza visible de quienes se manifiestan contra Mubarak, los líderes de los Hermanos Musulmanes han hecho ver que no es momento de destacarse y plantear exigencias políticas que pudieran asustar a Occidente, e incluso al propio pueblo egipcio. El lema es: prudencia. El respeto a los principios democráticos exige que todas las fuerzas que rechacen la violencia y acaten el Estado de derecho participen en igualdad de condiciones en el proceso político. Los Hermanos Musulmanes deben integrarse en el proceso de cambio, y así lo harán si llegara a establecerse un Estado mínimamente democrático.
Ni la represión ni la tortura han logrado eliminar a la hermandad, más bien al contrario. El debate democrático y el intercambio de ideas han sido los únicos factores que han influido en la evolución de gran parte de las tesis islamistas más problemáticas, que van desde la interpretación de la sharía hasta el respeto a la libertad y la defensa de la igualdad. Solo mediante el intercambio de ideas, no mediante la tortura y la dictadura, podremos encontrar soluciones que respeten la voluntad popular. El ejemplo de Turquía debería ser motivo de inspiración.
Occidente continúa utilizando la "amenaza islamista" para justificar su pasividad y el apoyo descarado a las dictaduras. Cuando la resistencia contra Mubarak subió de tono, el Gobierno israelí pidió repetidamente a Washington que respaldara a la junta militar egipcia. Mientras, Europa optó por sentarse a esperar.
Ambas actitudes son reveladoras: al fin y al cabo, frente a la defensa de los intereses políticos y económicos, poco peso tiene apoyar de boquilla los principios democráticos. Estados Unidos prefiere dictaduras que garanticen acceso al petróleo y dejen a los israelíes continuar su lenta colonización, antes que representantes populares creíbles que quizá no permitan el mantenimiento de esas situaciones.
Citar las voces de peligrosos islamistas para justificar que no se preste atención a las voces del pueblo es una actitud tan corta de miras como ilógica. Durante las Administraciones de Bush y de Obama, EE UU ha sufrido una gran pérdida de credibilidad en Oriente Próximo, y lo mismo puede decirse de Europa. Si los estadounidenses y los europeos no reevalúan sus políticas, puede que otras potencias de Asia y Sudamérica se inmiscuyan en su compleja estructura de alianzas estratégicas. En cuanto a Israel, que ahora se ha situado como amigo y protector de las dictaduras árabes, su Gobierno podría llegar a darse cuenta de que éstas solo están comprometidas con su política de ciega colonización.
El impacto regional de la retirada de Mubarak será enorme, pero es imposible predecir cuáles serán sus consecuencias. Después de las revoluciones tunecina y egipcia, el mensaje político está claro: con protestas masivas no violentas, cualquier cosa es posible y ya ningún Gobierno autocrático está del todo seguro.
Presidentes y reyes sienten la presión de este histórico punto de inflexión. El malestar ha llegado a Argelia, Yemen y Mauritania. También deberíamos fijarnos en Jordania, Siria e incluso Arabia Saudí. Esta preocupante situación de inestabilidad es al mismo tiempo muy prometedora. El mundo árabe está despertando con dignidad y esperanza. Los cambios auguran tiempos de esperanza para los auténticos demócratas y problemas para quienes sacrificarían los principios democráticos por mor de sus cálculos económicos y geoestratégicos. La liberación de Egipto parece solo el principio. ¿Quién será el siguiente?
Entre los musulmanes hay una masa crítica que apoyaría esa necesaria revolución surgida en el centro. Al final, únicamente las democracias que incorporen a todas las fuerzas políticas no violentas podrán llevar la paz a Oriente Próximo; una paz que también deberá respetar la dignidad de los palestinos.
Tariq Ramadan es profesor de Estudios Islámicos Contemporáneos en Oxford. Ramadan es nieto de Hasan al Bana, que en 1928 fundó los Hermanos Musulmanes.
miércoles, 9 de febrero de 2011
La situación en Egipto, Mubarak, el mapa del mundo árabe,
Videos de Visión 7 Internacional (sábado 5 de enero, 2011)
1)Rap contra el gobierno de Mubarak http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Os6DGhpftg
2)Mubarak www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgDW9zgC9
3)El mapa del mundo árabe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-aRBOKHhaQ
1)Rap contra el gobierno de Mubarak http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Os6DGhpftg
2)Mubarak www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgDW9zgC9
3)El mapa del mundo árabe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-aRBOKHhaQ
La revolución árabe
A mediados de los setenta un pequeño grupo de marxistas de varios países del Medio Oriente publicó un folleto titulado “La revolución árabe”. En ese entonces pensaban que los pueblos se levantarían contra los regímenes reaccionarios árabes que estaban impulsando una Pax Americana con Egipto a la cabeza, y que los obreros y campesinos llevarían adelante una revolución socialista. En 1970 había fallecido Gamal Abdel Nasser el gran líder del nacionalismo árabe, y su sucesor Anwar Sadat expulsaba a los soviéticos para tejer una alianza con Estados Unidos. Sadat pensó que podría reemplazar al Estado de Israel como aliado estratégico de Washington en la región y afianzar la hegemonía norteameri¬cana a través de una alianza tripartita con Arabia Sau¬dita y el "Sha" de Irán. El acuerdo de “Camp David” firmado con los israelíes tuvo como objetivo central afianzar la relación con la Casa Blanca y anular la creciente influencia del mayor factor revolucionario en la región, la Organización para la Liberación de Palestina liderada por Iasser Arafat.
Sin embargo, se consolidaron gobiernos autoritarios y corruptos en Irak, Egipto, Siria, Túnez o Argelia. Por el otro, monarquías hereditarias y represivas como la saudí, la jordana y la marroquí, o familias reales bañadas en petróleo con sus extravagantes golpes palaciegos donde los hijos deponen a sus padres para quedarse con el poder como en Omán o Catar. Durante unas décadas en la mayoría de los países se impuso una “estabilidad” autoritaria y el sueño de la “revolución” se esfumó.
Hasta que una chispa encendió la pradera como dice el antiguo proverbio chino. La revuelta popular en Túnez cambió todo el panorama. En tres semanas los tunecinos en las calles lograron la renuncia y posterior fuga del presidente Ben Ali. La mayoría de los gobernantes árabes y sus acólitos no creyeron que los afectaría, convencidos ilusoriamente que lo de Túnez era una “excepción”. Apenas diez días después millones se lanzaron a las calles en Egipto pidiendo la cabeza del presidente vitalicio Husni Mubarak.
Estamos asistiendo a unas movilizaciones sin precedentes en el mundo árabe que tienen como primer objetivo el desplazamiento de gobernantes atornillados a sus sillones. Pero está claro que el reclamo es mucho más profundo y ataca los cimientos de casi todos los regímenes árabes. Como si hubiera un brusco movimiento de las placas tectónicas se exige democracia, libertad de prensa, un cambio en las políticas económicas que dictan los organismos internacionales, distribución de la riqueza, mayor acceso a la educación, eliminación de la pobreza y un distanciamiento de la política instrumentada desde Washington o algunas capitales europeas. La revuelta en Túnez dejó en claro lo que en el mundo árabe todos saben respecto de los intereses de los países capitalistas desarrollados, muchos de los cuales ocuparon durante décadas el Medio Oriente y se lo repartieron en su beneficio. A los norteamericanos y europeos poco les importa el bienestar de las grandes mayorías árabes. Sí les interesa que les garanticen inversiones y fabulosas ganancias con la complicidad del Fondo Monetario Internacional que no se cansó de elogiar al gobierno de Túnez sabiendo que el Estado estaba manejado por una mafia familiar. Además, quieren que les aseguren el acceso al petróleo barato y que ningún país árabe ose cuestionar al Estado de Israel en su política represiva hacia los palestinos.
El mundo árabe estuvo siglos bajo el dominio del Imperio Otomano. Luego fue dividido y ocupado durante décadas por las potencias coloniales europeas. En el siglo veinte conoció monarquías dictatoriales y corruptas (muchas de las cuales todavía están allí), el fracaso del nacionalismo socializante de Nasser y movimientos islámicos a los cuales se les impidió gobernar.
El movimiento tectónico actual fue comparado por un diario saudí a las revoluciones burguesas de 1848 en Europa y la caída del muro de Berlín en 1989 que llevó a la disolución del bloque soviético. Esto es, una verdadera revolución que todavía cuesta saber cuál será su dimensión.
Nadie imaginaba que esto sucedería, que las grandes masas árabes aplastadas por décadas y lideradas ahora por una nueva generación de jóvenes levantaran cabeza. Y vaya que lo están haciendo. Debajo de las arenas del desierto los topos trágicos de Shakespeare que estuvieron excavando durante décadas sin poder salir a la superficie están muy cerca de encontrar una salida. Y si lo hacen, seguramente encontrarán a Marx diciendo “bien has cavado viejo topo!”
Sin embargo, se consolidaron gobiernos autoritarios y corruptos en Irak, Egipto, Siria, Túnez o Argelia. Por el otro, monarquías hereditarias y represivas como la saudí, la jordana y la marroquí, o familias reales bañadas en petróleo con sus extravagantes golpes palaciegos donde los hijos deponen a sus padres para quedarse con el poder como en Omán o Catar. Durante unas décadas en la mayoría de los países se impuso una “estabilidad” autoritaria y el sueño de la “revolución” se esfumó.
Hasta que una chispa encendió la pradera como dice el antiguo proverbio chino. La revuelta popular en Túnez cambió todo el panorama. En tres semanas los tunecinos en las calles lograron la renuncia y posterior fuga del presidente Ben Ali. La mayoría de los gobernantes árabes y sus acólitos no creyeron que los afectaría, convencidos ilusoriamente que lo de Túnez era una “excepción”. Apenas diez días después millones se lanzaron a las calles en Egipto pidiendo la cabeza del presidente vitalicio Husni Mubarak.
Estamos asistiendo a unas movilizaciones sin precedentes en el mundo árabe que tienen como primer objetivo el desplazamiento de gobernantes atornillados a sus sillones. Pero está claro que el reclamo es mucho más profundo y ataca los cimientos de casi todos los regímenes árabes. Como si hubiera un brusco movimiento de las placas tectónicas se exige democracia, libertad de prensa, un cambio en las políticas económicas que dictan los organismos internacionales, distribución de la riqueza, mayor acceso a la educación, eliminación de la pobreza y un distanciamiento de la política instrumentada desde Washington o algunas capitales europeas. La revuelta en Túnez dejó en claro lo que en el mundo árabe todos saben respecto de los intereses de los países capitalistas desarrollados, muchos de los cuales ocuparon durante décadas el Medio Oriente y se lo repartieron en su beneficio. A los norteamericanos y europeos poco les importa el bienestar de las grandes mayorías árabes. Sí les interesa que les garanticen inversiones y fabulosas ganancias con la complicidad del Fondo Monetario Internacional que no se cansó de elogiar al gobierno de Túnez sabiendo que el Estado estaba manejado por una mafia familiar. Además, quieren que les aseguren el acceso al petróleo barato y que ningún país árabe ose cuestionar al Estado de Israel en su política represiva hacia los palestinos.
El mundo árabe estuvo siglos bajo el dominio del Imperio Otomano. Luego fue dividido y ocupado durante décadas por las potencias coloniales europeas. En el siglo veinte conoció monarquías dictatoriales y corruptas (muchas de las cuales todavía están allí), el fracaso del nacionalismo socializante de Nasser y movimientos islámicos a los cuales se les impidió gobernar.
El movimiento tectónico actual fue comparado por un diario saudí a las revoluciones burguesas de 1848 en Europa y la caída del muro de Berlín en 1989 que llevó a la disolución del bloque soviético. Esto es, una verdadera revolución que todavía cuesta saber cuál será su dimensión.
Nadie imaginaba que esto sucedería, que las grandes masas árabes aplastadas por décadas y lideradas ahora por una nueva generación de jóvenes levantaran cabeza. Y vaya que lo están haciendo. Debajo de las arenas del desierto los topos trágicos de Shakespeare que estuvieron excavando durante décadas sin poder salir a la superficie están muy cerca de encontrar una salida. Y si lo hacen, seguramente encontrarán a Marx diciendo “bien has cavado viejo topo!”
Tunez: Que se vayan todos (enero 2011)
En menos de un mes de protestas se gestó una revuelta popular que destronó en Túnez a uno de los tantos regímenes autoritarios del mundo árabe. El hecho es muy significativo y todavía cuesta dimensionar el alcance de su impacto en el Medio Oriente. Esta revuelta es la primera en décadas que logra derrocar un gobierno árabe desde las revoluciones y golpes de Estado que destituyeron las monarquías en la década del cincuenta o la lucha por la independencia en Argelia que logró expulsar en 1962 a los franceses después de más de 130 años de ocupación colonial.
En una región donde no abundan los regímenes democráticos, ni partidos opositores, elecciones libres, sindicatos autónomos o libertad de prensa, no es fácil rebelarse contra poderes que se mantienen a través de eficaces aparatos represivos. Los tunecinos lo lograron. Y el Medio Oriente tiembla.
En Egipto Husni Mubarak desde 1981 y quiso dejar a su hijo como sucesor. Ya no lo puede hacer. Tampoco lo podrá hacer el presidente de Yemen porque las protestas lo obligaron a dejar de lado esa idea. ¿Qué pasará con el rey Mohammed VI en Marruecos o Kadafi en Libia que tomó el poder en 1969? En Argelia el Frente de Liberación Nacional gobierna desde la expulsión de los franceses, y cuando hubo elecciones libres y los islamistas ganaron les hicieron un golpe de Estado para impedirles gobernar.
Tunez no es una excepción. En 1957 logró la independencia de Francia y Habib Bourguiba fundó una república hasta que su primer ministro Zain al abidin Bin Ali lo destituyó en 1987 mediante un golpe palaciego. En los veintitrés años que gobernó Ben Alí no permitió oposición y construyó un emporio económico-familiar mafioso que lo hizo dueño de casi todo el país con su mujer Leila Trabelsi a la cabeza. Pero en el país supuestamente “más próspero” del norte de Africa el pueblo dijo basta.
Producto de un sistema represivo y perverso la oposición en Túnez está disgregada sin estructuras para ofrecer una alternativa real en lo inmediato. Los que estuvieron durante décadas con Ben Ali lo saben y quieren presentarse ellos como la única garantía de estabilidad ofreciendo una cierta liberalización política que les permita manejar las riendas del poder real. “Alí Baba se ha ido, ahora deben marcharse los cuarenta ladrones” dicen en Túnez. En otras palabras, “Qué se vayan todos!”.
En una región donde no abundan los regímenes democráticos, ni partidos opositores, elecciones libres, sindicatos autónomos o libertad de prensa, no es fácil rebelarse contra poderes que se mantienen a través de eficaces aparatos represivos. Los tunecinos lo lograron. Y el Medio Oriente tiembla.
En Egipto Husni Mubarak desde 1981 y quiso dejar a su hijo como sucesor. Ya no lo puede hacer. Tampoco lo podrá hacer el presidente de Yemen porque las protestas lo obligaron a dejar de lado esa idea. ¿Qué pasará con el rey Mohammed VI en Marruecos o Kadafi en Libia que tomó el poder en 1969? En Argelia el Frente de Liberación Nacional gobierna desde la expulsión de los franceses, y cuando hubo elecciones libres y los islamistas ganaron les hicieron un golpe de Estado para impedirles gobernar.
Tunez no es una excepción. En 1957 logró la independencia de Francia y Habib Bourguiba fundó una república hasta que su primer ministro Zain al abidin Bin Ali lo destituyó en 1987 mediante un golpe palaciego. En los veintitrés años que gobernó Ben Alí no permitió oposición y construyó un emporio económico-familiar mafioso que lo hizo dueño de casi todo el país con su mujer Leila Trabelsi a la cabeza. Pero en el país supuestamente “más próspero” del norte de Africa el pueblo dijo basta.
Producto de un sistema represivo y perverso la oposición en Túnez está disgregada sin estructuras para ofrecer una alternativa real en lo inmediato. Los que estuvieron durante décadas con Ben Ali lo saben y quieren presentarse ellos como la única garantía de estabilidad ofreciendo una cierta liberalización política que les permita manejar las riendas del poder real. “Alí Baba se ha ido, ahora deben marcharse los cuarenta ladrones” dicen en Túnez. En otras palabras, “Qué se vayan todos!”.
domingo, 6 de febrero de 2011
Entrevista con Gilbert Achcar
Whither Egypt?
February 05, 2011
To help explain the thrilling developments in Egypt, Farooq Sulehria interviewed leading Arab scholar-activist Gilbert Achcar on February 4.
Do you think that Mubarak's pledge on February 1st not to contest the next election represented a victory for the movement, or was it just a trick to calm down the masses as on the very next day demonstrators in Al-Tahrir Square were brutally attacked by pro-Mubarak forces?
The Egyptian popular anti-regime uprising reached a first peak on February 1st, prodding Mubarak to announce concessions in the evening. It was an acknowledgement of the force of the popular protest and a clear retreat on the autocrat's part, coming on top of the announcement of the government's willingness to negotiate with the opposition. These were significant concessions indeed coming from such an authoritarian regime, and a testimony to the importance of the popular mobilisation. Mubarak even pledged to speed up ongoing judicial actions against fraud perpetrated during the previous parliamentary elections.
He made it clear, however, that he was not willing to go beyond that. With the army firmly on his side, he was trying to appease the mass movement, as well as the Western powers that were urging him to reform the political system. Short of resignation, he granted some of the key demands that the Egyptian protest movement had formulated initially, when it launched its campaign on January 25. However, the movement has radicalized since that day to a point where anything short of Mubarak's resignation won't be enough to satisfy it, with many in the movement even demanding that he gets tried in court.
Moreover, all the regime's key institutions are now denounced by the movement as illegitimate––the executive as well as the legislative, i.e. the parliament. As a result, part of the opposition is demanding that the head of the constitutional court be appointed as interim president, to preside over the election of a constituent assembly. Others even want a national committee of opposition forces to supervise the transition. Of course, these demands constitute a radical democratic perspective. In order to impose such a thorough change, the mass movement would need to break or destabilise the regime's backbone, that is the Egyptian army.
Do you mean that the Egyptian army is backing Mubarak?
Egypt––even more than comparable countries such as Pakistan or Turkey––is in essence a military dictatorship with a civilian façade that is itself stuffed with men originating in the military. The problem is that most of the Egyptian opposition, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood, have been sowing illusions about the army and its purported "neutrality," if not "benevolence." They have been depicting the army as an honest broker, while the truth is that the army as an institution is not "neutral" at all. If it has not been used yet to repress the movement, it is only because Mubarak and the general staff did not see it appropriate to resort to such a move, probably because they fear that the soldiers would be reluctant to carry out a repression. That is why the regime resorted instead to orchestrating counter-demonstrations and attacks by thugs on the protest movement. The regime tried to set up a semblance of civil strife, showing Egypt as torn apart between two camps, thus creating a justification for the army's intervention as the "arbiter" of the situation.
If the regime managed to mobilise a significant counter-movement and provoke clashes on a larger scale, the army could step in, saying: "Game over, everybody must go home now," while promising that the pledges made by Mubarak would be implemented. Like many observers, I feared these last two days that this stratagem might succeed in weakening the protest movement, but the huge mobilization of today's "day of departure" is reassuring. The army will need to make further and more significant concessions to the popular uprising.
When you talk of the opposition, what forces does it include? Of course, we hear about the Muslim Brotherhood and El Baradei. Are there are other players too like left wing forces, trade unions, etc?
The Egyptian opposition includes a vast array of forces. There are parties like the Wafd, which are legal parties and constitute what may be called the liberal opposition. Then there is a grey zone occupied by the Muslim Brotherhood. It does not have a legal status but is tolerated by the regime. Its whole structure is visible; it is not an underground force. The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly, and by far, the largest force in the opposition. When Mubarak's regime, under US pressure, granted some space to the opposition in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood––running as "independents"––managed to get 88 MPs, i.e. 20 percent of the parliamentary seats, despite all obstacles. In the last elections held last November and December, after the Mubarak regime had decided to close down the limited space that it had opened in 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood almost vanished from parliament, losing all its seats but one.
Among the forces on the left, the largest is the Tagammu party, which enjoys a legal status and has 5 MPs. It refers to the Nasserite legacy. Communists have been prominent within its ranks. It is basically a reformist left party, which is not considered a threat to the regime. On the contrary, it has been quite compliant with it on several occasions. There are also leftwing Nasserite and radical left groups in Egypt––small but vibrant, and very much involved in the mass movement.
Then there are "civil society" movements, like Kefaya, a coalition of activists from various opposition forces initiated in solidarity with the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. It opposed the invasion of Iraq later on, and became famous afterwards as a democratic campaign movement against Mubarak's regime. From 2006 to 2009, Egypt saw the unfolding of a wave of industrial actions, including a few impressively massive workers strikes. There are no independent workers unions in Egypt, with one or two very recent exceptions born as a result of the social radicalisation. The bulk of the working class does not have the benefit of autonomous representation and organization. An attempt at convening a general strike on April 6, 2008 in solidarity with the workers led to the creation of the April 6 Youth Movement. Associations like this one and Kefaya are campaign-focused groups, not political parties, and they include people of different political affiliations along with unaffiliated activists.
When Mohamed El Baradei returned to Egypt in 2009 after his third term at the head of the IAEA, his personal prestige enhanced by the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, a liberal and left coalition gathered around him, with the Muslim Brotherhood adopting a lukewarm reserved position. Many in the opposition saw El Baradei as a powerful candidate enjoying international reputation and connections, and constituting therefore a credible presidential candidate against Mubarak or his son. El Baradei thus became a rallying figure for a large section of the opposition, regrouping political forces as well as personalities. They formed the National Association for Change.
This whole array of forces is very much involved in the present uprising. However, the overwhelming majority of the people on the streets are without any sort of political affiliation. It is a huge mass outpouring of resentment at living under a despotic regime, fed by worsening economic conditions, as prices of basic necessities, like food, fuel, and electricity, have been sharply on the rise amid staggering joblessness. This is the case not only in Egypt but in most of the region as well, and that is why the fire of revolt that started in Tunisia spread so quickly to many Arab countries.
Is El Baradei genuinely popular, or is he in some way the Mir-Hossein Mousavi of the Egyptian movement, trying to change some faces while preserving the regime?
I would disagree with this characterisation of Mousavi in the first place. To be sure, Mir-Hossein Mousavi did not want to "change the regime" if one mean by that a social revolution. But there was definitely a clash between authoritarian social forces, spearheaded by the Pasdaran and represented by Ahmedinejad, and others coalesced around a liberal reformist perspective represented by Mousavi. It was indeed a clash about the kind of "regime" in the sense of the pattern of political rule.
Mohamed El Baradei is a genuine liberal who wishes his country to move from the present dictatorship to a liberal democratic regime, with free elections and political freedoms. If such a vast array of political forces is willing to cooperate with him, it is because they see in him the most credible liberal alternative to the existing regime, a man who does not command an organised constituency of his own, and is therefore an appropriate figurehead for a democratic change.
Going back to your analogy, you can't compare him with Mousavi who was a member of the Iranian regime, one of the men who led the 1979 Islamic revolution. Mousavi had his own followers in Iran, before he emerged as the leader of the 2009 mass protest movement. In Egypt, El Baradei cannot play, and does not pretend to play a similar role. He is supported by a vast array of forces, but none of them see him as its leader.
The Muslim Brotherhood's initial reserved attitude towards El Baradei is partly related to the fact that he does not have a religious bent and is too secular for their taste. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood had cultivated an ambiguous relationship with the regime over the years. Had they fully backed El Baradei, they would have narrowed their margin of negotiation with the Mubarak regime, with which they have been bargaining for quite a long time. The regime conceded a lot to them in the socio-cultural sphere, increasing Islamic censorship in the cultural field being but one example. That was the easiest thing the regime could do to appease the Brotherhood. As a result, Egypt made huge steps backward from the secularisation that was consolidated under Gamal Abdul-Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Muslim Brotherhood's goal is to secure a democratic change that would grant them the possibility to take part in free elections, both parliamentary and presidential. The model they aspire to reproduce in Egypt is that of Turkey, where the democratisation process was controlled by the military with the army remaining a key pillar of the political system. This process nonetheless created a space which allowed the AKP, an Islamic conservative party, to win elections. They are not bent on overthrowing the state, hence their courting of the military and their care to avoid any gesture that could antagonize the army. They adhere to a strategy of gradual conquest of power: they are gradualists, not radicals.
The Western media are hinting at the fact that democracy in the Middle East would lead to an Islamic fundamentalist takeover. We have seen the triumphal return of Rached Ghannouchi to Tunisia after long years in exile. The Muslim Brotherhood is likely to win fair elections in Egypt. What is your comment on that?
I would turn the whole question around. I would say that it is the lack of democracy that led religious fundamentalist forces to occupy such a space. Repression and the lack of political freedoms reduced considerably the possibility for left-wing, working-class and feminist movements to develop in an environment of worsening social injustice and economic degradation. In such conditions, the easiest venue for the expression of mass protest turns out to be the one that uses the most readily and openly available channels. That's how the opposition got dominated by forces adhering to religious ideologies and programmes.
We aspire to a society where such forces are free to defend their views, but in an open and democratic ideological competition between all political currents. In order for Middle Eastern societies to get back on the track of political secularisation, back to the popular critical distrust of the political exploitation of religion that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s, they need to acquire the kind of political education that can be achieved only through a long-term practise of democracy.
Having said this, the role of religious parties is different in different countries. True, Rached Ghannouchi has been welcomed by a few thousand people on his arrival at Tunis airport. But his Nahda movement has much less influence in Tunisia than the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Of course, this is in part because Al-Nahda suffered from harsh repression since the 1990s. But it is also because the Tunisian society is less prone than the Egyptian to religious fundamentalist ideas, due to its higher degree of Westernisation and education, and the country's history.
But there is no doubt that Islamic parties have become the major forces in the opposition to existing regimes over the whole region. It will take a protracted democratic experience to change the direction of winds from that which has been prevailing for more than three decades. The alternative is the Algerian scenario where an electoral process was blocked by the army by way of a military coup in 1992, leading to a devastating civil war for which Algeria is still paying the price.
The amazing surge of democratic aspirations among Arab peoples of these last few weeks is very encouraging indeed. Neither in Tunisia, nor in Egypt or anywhere else, were popular protests waged for religious programs, or even led principally by religious forces. These are democratic movements, displaying a strong longing for democracy. Polls have been showing for many years that democracy as a value is rated very highly in Middle Eastern countries, contrary to common "Orientalist" prejudices about the cultural "incompatibility" of Muslim countries with democracy. The ongoing events prove one more time that any population deprived of freedom will eventually stand up for democracy, whatever "cultural sphere" it belongs to.
Whoever runs and wins future free elections in the Middle East will have to face a society where the demand for democracy has become very strong indeed. It will be quite difficult for any party––whatever its programme––to hijack these aspirations. I am not saying that it will be impossible. But one major outcome of the ongoing events is that popular aspirations to democracy have been hugely boosted. They create ideal conditions for the left to rebuild itself as an alternative.
Gilbert Achcar, who grew up in Lebanon, is professor of development studies and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2010.
February 05, 2011
To help explain the thrilling developments in Egypt, Farooq Sulehria interviewed leading Arab scholar-activist Gilbert Achcar on February 4.
Do you think that Mubarak's pledge on February 1st not to contest the next election represented a victory for the movement, or was it just a trick to calm down the masses as on the very next day demonstrators in Al-Tahrir Square were brutally attacked by pro-Mubarak forces?
The Egyptian popular anti-regime uprising reached a first peak on February 1st, prodding Mubarak to announce concessions in the evening. It was an acknowledgement of the force of the popular protest and a clear retreat on the autocrat's part, coming on top of the announcement of the government's willingness to negotiate with the opposition. These were significant concessions indeed coming from such an authoritarian regime, and a testimony to the importance of the popular mobilisation. Mubarak even pledged to speed up ongoing judicial actions against fraud perpetrated during the previous parliamentary elections.
He made it clear, however, that he was not willing to go beyond that. With the army firmly on his side, he was trying to appease the mass movement, as well as the Western powers that were urging him to reform the political system. Short of resignation, he granted some of the key demands that the Egyptian protest movement had formulated initially, when it launched its campaign on January 25. However, the movement has radicalized since that day to a point where anything short of Mubarak's resignation won't be enough to satisfy it, with many in the movement even demanding that he gets tried in court.
Moreover, all the regime's key institutions are now denounced by the movement as illegitimate––the executive as well as the legislative, i.e. the parliament. As a result, part of the opposition is demanding that the head of the constitutional court be appointed as interim president, to preside over the election of a constituent assembly. Others even want a national committee of opposition forces to supervise the transition. Of course, these demands constitute a radical democratic perspective. In order to impose such a thorough change, the mass movement would need to break or destabilise the regime's backbone, that is the Egyptian army.
Do you mean that the Egyptian army is backing Mubarak?
Egypt––even more than comparable countries such as Pakistan or Turkey––is in essence a military dictatorship with a civilian façade that is itself stuffed with men originating in the military. The problem is that most of the Egyptian opposition, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood, have been sowing illusions about the army and its purported "neutrality," if not "benevolence." They have been depicting the army as an honest broker, while the truth is that the army as an institution is not "neutral" at all. If it has not been used yet to repress the movement, it is only because Mubarak and the general staff did not see it appropriate to resort to such a move, probably because they fear that the soldiers would be reluctant to carry out a repression. That is why the regime resorted instead to orchestrating counter-demonstrations and attacks by thugs on the protest movement. The regime tried to set up a semblance of civil strife, showing Egypt as torn apart between two camps, thus creating a justification for the army's intervention as the "arbiter" of the situation.
If the regime managed to mobilise a significant counter-movement and provoke clashes on a larger scale, the army could step in, saying: "Game over, everybody must go home now," while promising that the pledges made by Mubarak would be implemented. Like many observers, I feared these last two days that this stratagem might succeed in weakening the protest movement, but the huge mobilization of today's "day of departure" is reassuring. The army will need to make further and more significant concessions to the popular uprising.
When you talk of the opposition, what forces does it include? Of course, we hear about the Muslim Brotherhood and El Baradei. Are there are other players too like left wing forces, trade unions, etc?
The Egyptian opposition includes a vast array of forces. There are parties like the Wafd, which are legal parties and constitute what may be called the liberal opposition. Then there is a grey zone occupied by the Muslim Brotherhood. It does not have a legal status but is tolerated by the regime. Its whole structure is visible; it is not an underground force. The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly, and by far, the largest force in the opposition. When Mubarak's regime, under US pressure, granted some space to the opposition in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood––running as "independents"––managed to get 88 MPs, i.e. 20 percent of the parliamentary seats, despite all obstacles. In the last elections held last November and December, after the Mubarak regime had decided to close down the limited space that it had opened in 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood almost vanished from parliament, losing all its seats but one.
Among the forces on the left, the largest is the Tagammu party, which enjoys a legal status and has 5 MPs. It refers to the Nasserite legacy. Communists have been prominent within its ranks. It is basically a reformist left party, which is not considered a threat to the regime. On the contrary, it has been quite compliant with it on several occasions. There are also leftwing Nasserite and radical left groups in Egypt––small but vibrant, and very much involved in the mass movement.
Then there are "civil society" movements, like Kefaya, a coalition of activists from various opposition forces initiated in solidarity with the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. It opposed the invasion of Iraq later on, and became famous afterwards as a democratic campaign movement against Mubarak's regime. From 2006 to 2009, Egypt saw the unfolding of a wave of industrial actions, including a few impressively massive workers strikes. There are no independent workers unions in Egypt, with one or two very recent exceptions born as a result of the social radicalisation. The bulk of the working class does not have the benefit of autonomous representation and organization. An attempt at convening a general strike on April 6, 2008 in solidarity with the workers led to the creation of the April 6 Youth Movement. Associations like this one and Kefaya are campaign-focused groups, not political parties, and they include people of different political affiliations along with unaffiliated activists.
When Mohamed El Baradei returned to Egypt in 2009 after his third term at the head of the IAEA, his personal prestige enhanced by the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, a liberal and left coalition gathered around him, with the Muslim Brotherhood adopting a lukewarm reserved position. Many in the opposition saw El Baradei as a powerful candidate enjoying international reputation and connections, and constituting therefore a credible presidential candidate against Mubarak or his son. El Baradei thus became a rallying figure for a large section of the opposition, regrouping political forces as well as personalities. They formed the National Association for Change.
This whole array of forces is very much involved in the present uprising. However, the overwhelming majority of the people on the streets are without any sort of political affiliation. It is a huge mass outpouring of resentment at living under a despotic regime, fed by worsening economic conditions, as prices of basic necessities, like food, fuel, and electricity, have been sharply on the rise amid staggering joblessness. This is the case not only in Egypt but in most of the region as well, and that is why the fire of revolt that started in Tunisia spread so quickly to many Arab countries.
Is El Baradei genuinely popular, or is he in some way the Mir-Hossein Mousavi of the Egyptian movement, trying to change some faces while preserving the regime?
I would disagree with this characterisation of Mousavi in the first place. To be sure, Mir-Hossein Mousavi did not want to "change the regime" if one mean by that a social revolution. But there was definitely a clash between authoritarian social forces, spearheaded by the Pasdaran and represented by Ahmedinejad, and others coalesced around a liberal reformist perspective represented by Mousavi. It was indeed a clash about the kind of "regime" in the sense of the pattern of political rule.
Mohamed El Baradei is a genuine liberal who wishes his country to move from the present dictatorship to a liberal democratic regime, with free elections and political freedoms. If such a vast array of political forces is willing to cooperate with him, it is because they see in him the most credible liberal alternative to the existing regime, a man who does not command an organised constituency of his own, and is therefore an appropriate figurehead for a democratic change.
Going back to your analogy, you can't compare him with Mousavi who was a member of the Iranian regime, one of the men who led the 1979 Islamic revolution. Mousavi had his own followers in Iran, before he emerged as the leader of the 2009 mass protest movement. In Egypt, El Baradei cannot play, and does not pretend to play a similar role. He is supported by a vast array of forces, but none of them see him as its leader.
The Muslim Brotherhood's initial reserved attitude towards El Baradei is partly related to the fact that he does not have a religious bent and is too secular for their taste. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood had cultivated an ambiguous relationship with the regime over the years. Had they fully backed El Baradei, they would have narrowed their margin of negotiation with the Mubarak regime, with which they have been bargaining for quite a long time. The regime conceded a lot to them in the socio-cultural sphere, increasing Islamic censorship in the cultural field being but one example. That was the easiest thing the regime could do to appease the Brotherhood. As a result, Egypt made huge steps backward from the secularisation that was consolidated under Gamal Abdul-Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Muslim Brotherhood's goal is to secure a democratic change that would grant them the possibility to take part in free elections, both parliamentary and presidential. The model they aspire to reproduce in Egypt is that of Turkey, where the democratisation process was controlled by the military with the army remaining a key pillar of the political system. This process nonetheless created a space which allowed the AKP, an Islamic conservative party, to win elections. They are not bent on overthrowing the state, hence their courting of the military and their care to avoid any gesture that could antagonize the army. They adhere to a strategy of gradual conquest of power: they are gradualists, not radicals.
The Western media are hinting at the fact that democracy in the Middle East would lead to an Islamic fundamentalist takeover. We have seen the triumphal return of Rached Ghannouchi to Tunisia after long years in exile. The Muslim Brotherhood is likely to win fair elections in Egypt. What is your comment on that?
I would turn the whole question around. I would say that it is the lack of democracy that led religious fundamentalist forces to occupy such a space. Repression and the lack of political freedoms reduced considerably the possibility for left-wing, working-class and feminist movements to develop in an environment of worsening social injustice and economic degradation. In such conditions, the easiest venue for the expression of mass protest turns out to be the one that uses the most readily and openly available channels. That's how the opposition got dominated by forces adhering to religious ideologies and programmes.
We aspire to a society where such forces are free to defend their views, but in an open and democratic ideological competition between all political currents. In order for Middle Eastern societies to get back on the track of political secularisation, back to the popular critical distrust of the political exploitation of religion that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s, they need to acquire the kind of political education that can be achieved only through a long-term practise of democracy.
Having said this, the role of religious parties is different in different countries. True, Rached Ghannouchi has been welcomed by a few thousand people on his arrival at Tunis airport. But his Nahda movement has much less influence in Tunisia than the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Of course, this is in part because Al-Nahda suffered from harsh repression since the 1990s. But it is also because the Tunisian society is less prone than the Egyptian to religious fundamentalist ideas, due to its higher degree of Westernisation and education, and the country's history.
But there is no doubt that Islamic parties have become the major forces in the opposition to existing regimes over the whole region. It will take a protracted democratic experience to change the direction of winds from that which has been prevailing for more than three decades. The alternative is the Algerian scenario where an electoral process was blocked by the army by way of a military coup in 1992, leading to a devastating civil war for which Algeria is still paying the price.
The amazing surge of democratic aspirations among Arab peoples of these last few weeks is very encouraging indeed. Neither in Tunisia, nor in Egypt or anywhere else, were popular protests waged for religious programs, or even led principally by religious forces. These are democratic movements, displaying a strong longing for democracy. Polls have been showing for many years that democracy as a value is rated very highly in Middle Eastern countries, contrary to common "Orientalist" prejudices about the cultural "incompatibility" of Muslim countries with democracy. The ongoing events prove one more time that any population deprived of freedom will eventually stand up for democracy, whatever "cultural sphere" it belongs to.
Whoever runs and wins future free elections in the Middle East will have to face a society where the demand for democracy has become very strong indeed. It will be quite difficult for any party––whatever its programme––to hijack these aspirations. I am not saying that it will be impossible. But one major outcome of the ongoing events is that popular aspirations to democracy have been hugely boosted. They create ideal conditions for the left to rebuild itself as an alternative.
Gilbert Achcar, who grew up in Lebanon, is professor of development studies and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2010.
Winds of change
Editorial/ arabnews.com (Arabia Saudí) 01/02/2011
Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution has powerful resonances elsewhere in the Arab world
We wait to see if 2011 turns out to be for the Arab world what 1848 was for Europe, the Year of Revolutions that brought governments tumbling like dominoes across that continent. Or like 1989 and 1990 when communist regimes collapsed one after another.
What is clear, though, is that winds of change are blowing across the Arab world that no one would have imagined possible just a couple of months ago.
The notion that a whirlwind would be set off by events in Tunisia, of all places, would have been greeted with derision had it been suggested. It was seen as probably the least Arab of Arab countries, a place so Europeanized that it is almost part of a southern Europe. That the flames of protest started there have resonated so powerfully elsewhere, that they have spread so rapidly, speaks not only of common issues too long ignored — corruption, injustice, cronyism and more — but of a new political consciousness in the Arab world — a consciousness driven by new technologies such as the Internet, social network sites and instantly available TV news but based on a very old political idea. That idea is Pan-Arabism.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, the driving political ideology in many Arab minds was Nasserite socialism. It claimed to have the answers to the Arabs’ predicaments. When it was seen to have failed, it was replaced by political Islamism. Are we now seeing an end to its appeal? The demonstrations in Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and Egypt have not been led by existing political organizations, secular or Islamic.
The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia has been wholly a people’s movement. Islamists had no part in it. In Egypt, the main opposition Islamic Brotherhood was completely sidelined by the speed of public protests. It did not know how to respond. Moreover, the protests are not being replicated in Pakistan or Iran or elsewhere in the wider Muslim world despite known pubic discontent with the state of affairs in such places or despite predictions to that effect from numerous international observers. This is purely an Arab affair. Pan-Arabism is alive and kicking in the Arab street.
All eyes are on Egypt. The situation there is unpredictable but it cannot remain unresolved for long. If President Hosni Mubarak decides to quit before his term of office ends, which so far he appears determined not to do, it will be seen across the Arab world as a victory for the protesters. The protests will spread.
But not everywhere. The Arab world is highly diverse. Libya is not Lebanon. Syria is not Sudan. In particular, it says a great deal about the nature of the Gulf states that they have been wholly immune to the protests. It is not just because they are more prosperous or more conservative societies. It is also because, despite the views of those, particularly in the West, who see representative democracy as the only possible means of involving people in politics, they are much more open, cohesive and united societies. With the majlis system, citizens can have their concerns addressed directly by decision makers. Political legitimacy is not an issue in any of the GCC states. These are crucial differences.
There is, then, no question that winds of change are blowing across the Arab world. They blow unevenly — but where they are seen to blow, they blow powerfully.
Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution has powerful resonances elsewhere in the Arab world
We wait to see if 2011 turns out to be for the Arab world what 1848 was for Europe, the Year of Revolutions that brought governments tumbling like dominoes across that continent. Or like 1989 and 1990 when communist regimes collapsed one after another.
What is clear, though, is that winds of change are blowing across the Arab world that no one would have imagined possible just a couple of months ago.
The notion that a whirlwind would be set off by events in Tunisia, of all places, would have been greeted with derision had it been suggested. It was seen as probably the least Arab of Arab countries, a place so Europeanized that it is almost part of a southern Europe. That the flames of protest started there have resonated so powerfully elsewhere, that they have spread so rapidly, speaks not only of common issues too long ignored — corruption, injustice, cronyism and more — but of a new political consciousness in the Arab world — a consciousness driven by new technologies such as the Internet, social network sites and instantly available TV news but based on a very old political idea. That idea is Pan-Arabism.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, the driving political ideology in many Arab minds was Nasserite socialism. It claimed to have the answers to the Arabs’ predicaments. When it was seen to have failed, it was replaced by political Islamism. Are we now seeing an end to its appeal? The demonstrations in Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and Egypt have not been led by existing political organizations, secular or Islamic.
The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia has been wholly a people’s movement. Islamists had no part in it. In Egypt, the main opposition Islamic Brotherhood was completely sidelined by the speed of public protests. It did not know how to respond. Moreover, the protests are not being replicated in Pakistan or Iran or elsewhere in the wider Muslim world despite known pubic discontent with the state of affairs in such places or despite predictions to that effect from numerous international observers. This is purely an Arab affair. Pan-Arabism is alive and kicking in the Arab street.
All eyes are on Egypt. The situation there is unpredictable but it cannot remain unresolved for long. If President Hosni Mubarak decides to quit before his term of office ends, which so far he appears determined not to do, it will be seen across the Arab world as a victory for the protesters. The protests will spread.
But not everywhere. The Arab world is highly diverse. Libya is not Lebanon. Syria is not Sudan. In particular, it says a great deal about the nature of the Gulf states that they have been wholly immune to the protests. It is not just because they are more prosperous or more conservative societies. It is also because, despite the views of those, particularly in the West, who see representative democracy as the only possible means of involving people in politics, they are much more open, cohesive and united societies. With the majlis system, citizens can have their concerns addressed directly by decision makers. Political legitimacy is not an issue in any of the GCC states. These are crucial differences.
There is, then, no question that winds of change are blowing across the Arab world. They blow unevenly — but where they are seen to blow, they blow powerfully.
The Arab Freedom epic
The Daily Star, Beirut; February 01, 2011
Rami G. Khouri
A youth waves Egyptian flags in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday as protests against the Mubarak regime continue.
LONDON—What a supreme irony it was for me to be in London and Paris between Saturday and Tuesday this week, as the popular revolt against the Hosni Mubarak regime reached its peak in Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities.
To appreciate what is taking place in the Arab world today you have to grasp the historical significance of the events that have started changing rulers and regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, with others sure to follow.
What we are witnessing is the unravelling of the post-colonial order that the British and French created in the Arab world in the 1920s and ’30s and then sustained — with American and Soviet assistance — for most of the last half century.
It is fascinating but quite provincial to focus attention — as much of the Western media is doing — on whether Facebook drove these revolts or what will happen if Muslim Brothers play a role in the governments to be formed. The Arabs are like a bride emerging on her wedding day and many people are commenting on whether her shoes match her gloves, when the real issue is how beautiful and happy she is.
The events unfolding before our eyes are the third most important historical development in the Arab region in the past century, and to miss that point is to perpetuate a tradition of Western Orientalist romanticism and racism that has been a large cause of our pain for all these years. This is the most important of the three major historical markers because it is the first one that marks a process of genuine self-determination by Arab citizens who can speak and act for themselves for the first time in their modern history.
The two other pivotal historical markers were: first, the creation of the modern Arab state system around 1920 at the hands of retreating European colonial powers. Some of them were intoxicated with both imperial power and, on occasion, with cognac, when they created most of the Arab countries that have limped into the 21st century as wrecks of statehood.
Then, second, the period around 1970-80 when the Euro-manufactured modern Arab state system turned into a collection of security and police states that treated their citizens as serfs without human rights and relied on massive foreign support to maintain the rickety Arab order for decades more.
Now, we witness the third and most significant Arab historical development, which is the spontaneous drive by millions of ordinary Arabs to finally assert their humanity, demand their rights, and take command of their own national condition and destiny.
Never before have we had entire Arab populations stand up and insist on naming their rulers, shaping their governance system, and defining the values that drive their domestic and foreign policies. Never before have we had self-determinant and free Arab citizenries. Never before have we had grassroots political, social and religious movements force leaders to change their cabinets and reorder the role of the armed forces and police.
This is a revolt against specific Arab leaders and governing elites who implemented policies that have seen the majority of Arabs dehumanized, pauperized, victimized and marginalized by their own power structure; but it is also a revolt against the tradition of major Western powers that created the modern Arab states and then fortified and maintained them as security states after the 1970s.
The process at hand now in Tunisia and Egypt will continue to ripple throughout the entire Arab world, as ordinary citizens realize that they must seize and protect their birthrights of freedom and dignity.
It is a monumental task to transform from autocracy and serfdom to democracy and human rights; the Europeans needed 500 years to make the transition from the Magna Carta to the French Revolution. The Americans needed 300 years to transition from slavery to civil rights and women’s rights.
Self-determination is a slow process that needs time. The Arab world is only now starting to engage in this exhilarating process, a full century after the false and rickety statehood that drunken retreating European colonialists left behind as they fled back to their imperial heartlands.
It takes time and energy to relegitimize an entire national governance system and power structure that have been criminalized, privatized, monopolized and militarized by small groups of petty autocrats and thieving families. Tunisia and Egypt are the first to embark on this historic journey, and other Arabs will soon follow, because most Arab countries suffer the same deficiencies that have been exposed for all to see in Egypt.
Make no mistake about it, we are witnessing an epic, historic moment of the birth of concepts that have long been denied to ordinary Arabs: the right to define ourselves and our governments, to assert our national values, to shape our governance systems, and to engage with each other and the rest of the world as free human beings, with rights that will not be denied forever.
In January 2011, a century after some Arabs started agitating for their freedoms from Ottoman and European colonial rule, and after many false starts in recent decades, we finally have a breakthrough to our full humanity.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of Beirut’s Daily Star, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
Rami G. Khouri
A youth waves Egyptian flags in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday as protests against the Mubarak regime continue.
LONDON—What a supreme irony it was for me to be in London and Paris between Saturday and Tuesday this week, as the popular revolt against the Hosni Mubarak regime reached its peak in Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities.
To appreciate what is taking place in the Arab world today you have to grasp the historical significance of the events that have started changing rulers and regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, with others sure to follow.
What we are witnessing is the unravelling of the post-colonial order that the British and French created in the Arab world in the 1920s and ’30s and then sustained — with American and Soviet assistance — for most of the last half century.
It is fascinating but quite provincial to focus attention — as much of the Western media is doing — on whether Facebook drove these revolts or what will happen if Muslim Brothers play a role in the governments to be formed. The Arabs are like a bride emerging on her wedding day and many people are commenting on whether her shoes match her gloves, when the real issue is how beautiful and happy she is.
The events unfolding before our eyes are the third most important historical development in the Arab region in the past century, and to miss that point is to perpetuate a tradition of Western Orientalist romanticism and racism that has been a large cause of our pain for all these years. This is the most important of the three major historical markers because it is the first one that marks a process of genuine self-determination by Arab citizens who can speak and act for themselves for the first time in their modern history.
The two other pivotal historical markers were: first, the creation of the modern Arab state system around 1920 at the hands of retreating European colonial powers. Some of them were intoxicated with both imperial power and, on occasion, with cognac, when they created most of the Arab countries that have limped into the 21st century as wrecks of statehood.
Then, second, the period around 1970-80 when the Euro-manufactured modern Arab state system turned into a collection of security and police states that treated their citizens as serfs without human rights and relied on massive foreign support to maintain the rickety Arab order for decades more.
Now, we witness the third and most significant Arab historical development, which is the spontaneous drive by millions of ordinary Arabs to finally assert their humanity, demand their rights, and take command of their own national condition and destiny.
Never before have we had entire Arab populations stand up and insist on naming their rulers, shaping their governance system, and defining the values that drive their domestic and foreign policies. Never before have we had self-determinant and free Arab citizenries. Never before have we had grassroots political, social and religious movements force leaders to change their cabinets and reorder the role of the armed forces and police.
This is a revolt against specific Arab leaders and governing elites who implemented policies that have seen the majority of Arabs dehumanized, pauperized, victimized and marginalized by their own power structure; but it is also a revolt against the tradition of major Western powers that created the modern Arab states and then fortified and maintained them as security states after the 1970s.
The process at hand now in Tunisia and Egypt will continue to ripple throughout the entire Arab world, as ordinary citizens realize that they must seize and protect their birthrights of freedom and dignity.
It is a monumental task to transform from autocracy and serfdom to democracy and human rights; the Europeans needed 500 years to make the transition from the Magna Carta to the French Revolution. The Americans needed 300 years to transition from slavery to civil rights and women’s rights.
Self-determination is a slow process that needs time. The Arab world is only now starting to engage in this exhilarating process, a full century after the false and rickety statehood that drunken retreating European colonialists left behind as they fled back to their imperial heartlands.
It takes time and energy to relegitimize an entire national governance system and power structure that have been criminalized, privatized, monopolized and militarized by small groups of petty autocrats and thieving families. Tunisia and Egypt are the first to embark on this historic journey, and other Arabs will soon follow, because most Arab countries suffer the same deficiencies that have been exposed for all to see in Egypt.
Make no mistake about it, we are witnessing an epic, historic moment of the birth of concepts that have long been denied to ordinary Arabs: the right to define ourselves and our governments, to assert our national values, to shape our governance systems, and to engage with each other and the rest of the world as free human beings, with rights that will not be denied forever.
In January 2011, a century after some Arabs started agitating for their freedoms from Ottoman and European colonial rule, and after many false starts in recent decades, we finally have a breakthrough to our full humanity.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of Beirut’s Daily Star, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
A revolutionary leadership gap
Al Masry Al Youm, Sat, 05/02/2011 -
Noha El-Hennawy
For eleven days, tens of thousands of protesters have been taking to the streets, raising highly politicized demands and impressing analysts who always contended that such an uprising could not happen on Egyptian soil.
And with unprecedented persistence, demonstrators have been sleeping night-on-night in the square in downtown Cairo, refusing to suspend their sit in until President Hosni Mubarak steps down.
Despite bloody attempts to quell the protest, the movement seems to have established itself as a force to be reckoned with, succeeding in mobilizing western pressure on Mubarak’s regime and provoking concessions--albeit limited--from the 82-year-old president. While the sporadic and decentralized nature of the protest is believed to have contributed to mobilizing large masses, analysts believe the critical time to rally around a leadership and a precise blueprint for reforms has come.
“If there is a good leadership that enjoys enough credibility, it can present itself as an alternative to Mubarak and assure people who do not necessarily like Mubarak but support him for fear of chaos or the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood,” says Samer Soliman, political science professor at the American University in Cairo.
Leadership is also needed to develop further pro-democratic demands post Mubarak’s ouster, adds Soliman.
“What will we do if Mubarak disappears tomorrow?” asks Soliman. “It is also very important to have a leadership that would negotiate the reforms [with the regime]. You cannot have 5000 people sit at the negotiation table."
The main spark of the uprising was a youth-initiated call on the social-networking website Facebook. Inspired by the Tunisian revolt, which culminated in the ouster of Zein Elabedine Ben Ali, youth-led groups called for mass rallies to denounce Mubarak's rule.
The plea resonated with tens of thousands of Egyptians, who on 25 January broke the spiral of silence and flooded to Tahrir Squar shouting slogans against Mubarak. Three days later, hundreds of thousands marched to Tahrir Square after a bloody battle with the riot police. Since then, protestors have been camping in downtown.
In response, Mubarak sacked the old cabinet, announced that he would not run for a sixth presidential term in September, and pledged two constitutional amendments that might relax restrictions on eligibility conditions for presidential candidates and put a curb on the number of terms a president can serve. Upon these announcements, public sympathy with the anti-Mubarak protests began to wane.
Thousands took to the streets hailing Mubarak’s concessions and urging the opposition to suspend the sit-in for the sake of national stability.
“The lack of leadership is problematic. These protesters are not part of a single political movement,” says Ashraf al-Sherif, political scientist with the American University in Cairo, who has been participating in the protests on the square for the past few days.
“Hence, the regime will find no one to negotiate the post-Mubarak arrangements with except the Muslim Brotherhood because it is the only organized entity that participated in the protests,” he adds.
The Muslim Brotherhood has thrown its full backing behind the uprising since Friday. It has risen as the savior of the revolt after its members succeeded in thwarting an attempt by pro-Mubarak thugs to evacuate the Tahrir Square on Wednesday. Despite the group’s reluctance to raise religious slogans, their recent success in safeguarding the revolt aroused fears that the Islamist group might hijack the uprising.
“The way out is to have young protesters come up with a document with popular demands and negotiate with the regime over these demands,” says al-Sherif.
Hazem Kandil, a Los Angeles-based Egyptian analyst, agrees.
“The textbook definition of how to transform protests into a revolutionary situation is by establishing dual sovereignty; an old regime holding on, and a new one demanding recognition,” he says.
To increase pressures on the regime, protesters should elect a committee to draft a new constitution and form an interim government that could earn recognition from the masses, the army and other states, Kandil adds.
“It will be the people's government and they can defend it and take directions from it. But instead, they keep relying on people to come out every day and pressure the regime to give in, which is highly unlikely, knowing the stubbornness of the man on board,” he explains.
Yet such a scenario seems far-fetched given the decentralized nature of the uprising, according to historian Sherif Younes, who has also been at the square.
“This can only happen if there has been a strong leadership and a more ideological consistency among protesters,” says Younes pointing out that the uprising lacks political vision for the future.
“This uprising knows what it does not want more than it knows what it really wants. It knows who should leave but does not know who should come instead,” he says.
Given the lack of leadership and outlook, the continuation of protests is the only way to force the regime to make more concessions, adds Younes.
For some young activists, the existing environment hampers any attempt to discuss leadership and a common manifesto.
“We are are still being shot at with bullets and beaten with stones and insulted in the [state-owned] media," says Alaa Saif, a 29-year-old left-wing activist and blogger.
“How can we promulgate our demands and choose a leadership while under siege and attack?” he wonders.
At least 300 people have been killed in clashes since the first day of protests. Earlier this week, Tahrir Square turned into a battlefield after dozens of pro-Mubarak thugs attacked demonstrators with light weapons and molotov cocktails. Some of these assailants even stormed in on camels and horsebacks, waving swords and iron chains to disperse the anti-Mubarak crowd. At least eight were killed in the duel.
"We have a clear vision...If the attacks cease and we start feeling secure, we will be able to get together and discuss ideas," adds Saif.
None of the leaders of most official opposition parties are likely to be accepted as a leader to speak on behalf of the movement. Most such parties have little credibility and a meager constituency. Some independent names have been suggested as rallying figures that could serve the leadership vacuum, including Mohamed ElBaradei, former heard of the UN nuclear watchdog and Amr Moussa, current secretary-general of the Arab League and a former foreign minister whose sharp criticism of the US and Israel have earned him wide popularity among lay Egyptians.
“Both do not belong to the current regime. They are known for their liberal and national positions. They are not tainted with corruption and are internationally accepted,” says al-Sherif.
Earlier this week, a group of independent writers, legal experts and businessmen hammered out a bill that could serve as a vantage point for negotiations with the regime.
The six-point bill urges President Mubarak to delegate all his authorities to his deputy, Omar Suleiman, to introduce necessary constitutional amendments. It also demands the lifting of the state of emergency, the formation of a new independent cabinet, and no retribution to be taken against protesters.
Yet, it remains to be seen whether the bill is enough to win-over protesters who insist that Mubarak be ousted.
Noha El-Hennawy
For eleven days, tens of thousands of protesters have been taking to the streets, raising highly politicized demands and impressing analysts who always contended that such an uprising could not happen on Egyptian soil.
And with unprecedented persistence, demonstrators have been sleeping night-on-night in the square in downtown Cairo, refusing to suspend their sit in until President Hosni Mubarak steps down.
Despite bloody attempts to quell the protest, the movement seems to have established itself as a force to be reckoned with, succeeding in mobilizing western pressure on Mubarak’s regime and provoking concessions--albeit limited--from the 82-year-old president. While the sporadic and decentralized nature of the protest is believed to have contributed to mobilizing large masses, analysts believe the critical time to rally around a leadership and a precise blueprint for reforms has come.
“If there is a good leadership that enjoys enough credibility, it can present itself as an alternative to Mubarak and assure people who do not necessarily like Mubarak but support him for fear of chaos or the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood,” says Samer Soliman, political science professor at the American University in Cairo.
Leadership is also needed to develop further pro-democratic demands post Mubarak’s ouster, adds Soliman.
“What will we do if Mubarak disappears tomorrow?” asks Soliman. “It is also very important to have a leadership that would negotiate the reforms [with the regime]. You cannot have 5000 people sit at the negotiation table."
The main spark of the uprising was a youth-initiated call on the social-networking website Facebook. Inspired by the Tunisian revolt, which culminated in the ouster of Zein Elabedine Ben Ali, youth-led groups called for mass rallies to denounce Mubarak's rule.
The plea resonated with tens of thousands of Egyptians, who on 25 January broke the spiral of silence and flooded to Tahrir Squar shouting slogans against Mubarak. Three days later, hundreds of thousands marched to Tahrir Square after a bloody battle with the riot police. Since then, protestors have been camping in downtown.
In response, Mubarak sacked the old cabinet, announced that he would not run for a sixth presidential term in September, and pledged two constitutional amendments that might relax restrictions on eligibility conditions for presidential candidates and put a curb on the number of terms a president can serve. Upon these announcements, public sympathy with the anti-Mubarak protests began to wane.
Thousands took to the streets hailing Mubarak’s concessions and urging the opposition to suspend the sit-in for the sake of national stability.
“The lack of leadership is problematic. These protesters are not part of a single political movement,” says Ashraf al-Sherif, political scientist with the American University in Cairo, who has been participating in the protests on the square for the past few days.
“Hence, the regime will find no one to negotiate the post-Mubarak arrangements with except the Muslim Brotherhood because it is the only organized entity that participated in the protests,” he adds.
The Muslim Brotherhood has thrown its full backing behind the uprising since Friday. It has risen as the savior of the revolt after its members succeeded in thwarting an attempt by pro-Mubarak thugs to evacuate the Tahrir Square on Wednesday. Despite the group’s reluctance to raise religious slogans, their recent success in safeguarding the revolt aroused fears that the Islamist group might hijack the uprising.
“The way out is to have young protesters come up with a document with popular demands and negotiate with the regime over these demands,” says al-Sherif.
Hazem Kandil, a Los Angeles-based Egyptian analyst, agrees.
“The textbook definition of how to transform protests into a revolutionary situation is by establishing dual sovereignty; an old regime holding on, and a new one demanding recognition,” he says.
To increase pressures on the regime, protesters should elect a committee to draft a new constitution and form an interim government that could earn recognition from the masses, the army and other states, Kandil adds.
“It will be the people's government and they can defend it and take directions from it. But instead, they keep relying on people to come out every day and pressure the regime to give in, which is highly unlikely, knowing the stubbornness of the man on board,” he explains.
Yet such a scenario seems far-fetched given the decentralized nature of the uprising, according to historian Sherif Younes, who has also been at the square.
“This can only happen if there has been a strong leadership and a more ideological consistency among protesters,” says Younes pointing out that the uprising lacks political vision for the future.
“This uprising knows what it does not want more than it knows what it really wants. It knows who should leave but does not know who should come instead,” he says.
Given the lack of leadership and outlook, the continuation of protests is the only way to force the regime to make more concessions, adds Younes.
For some young activists, the existing environment hampers any attempt to discuss leadership and a common manifesto.
“We are are still being shot at with bullets and beaten with stones and insulted in the [state-owned] media," says Alaa Saif, a 29-year-old left-wing activist and blogger.
“How can we promulgate our demands and choose a leadership while under siege and attack?” he wonders.
At least 300 people have been killed in clashes since the first day of protests. Earlier this week, Tahrir Square turned into a battlefield after dozens of pro-Mubarak thugs attacked demonstrators with light weapons and molotov cocktails. Some of these assailants even stormed in on camels and horsebacks, waving swords and iron chains to disperse the anti-Mubarak crowd. At least eight were killed in the duel.
"We have a clear vision...If the attacks cease and we start feeling secure, we will be able to get together and discuss ideas," adds Saif.
None of the leaders of most official opposition parties are likely to be accepted as a leader to speak on behalf of the movement. Most such parties have little credibility and a meager constituency. Some independent names have been suggested as rallying figures that could serve the leadership vacuum, including Mohamed ElBaradei, former heard of the UN nuclear watchdog and Amr Moussa, current secretary-general of the Arab League and a former foreign minister whose sharp criticism of the US and Israel have earned him wide popularity among lay Egyptians.
“Both do not belong to the current regime. They are known for their liberal and national positions. They are not tainted with corruption and are internationally accepted,” says al-Sherif.
Earlier this week, a group of independent writers, legal experts and businessmen hammered out a bill that could serve as a vantage point for negotiations with the regime.
The six-point bill urges President Mubarak to delegate all his authorities to his deputy, Omar Suleiman, to introduce necessary constitutional amendments. It also demands the lifting of the state of emergency, the formation of a new independent cabinet, and no retribution to be taken against protesters.
Yet, it remains to be seen whether the bill is enough to win-over protesters who insist that Mubarak be ousted.
viernes, 4 de febrero de 2011
Egipto: Caos bajo los cielos: qué magnífica situación
SLAVOJ ZIZEK 03/02/2011
En las revueltas de Túnez y Egipto hay algo que no puede por menos de llamarnos poderosamente la atención, y es la patente ausencia del fundamentalismo islámico: siguiendo la más pura tradición democrática laica, la gente se ha limitado a levantarse contra un régimen opresivo y corrupto, y contra su propia pobreza, para exigir libertad y esperanza económica. El cínico postulado liberal de cuño occidental, según el cual en los países árabes las concepciones realmente democráticas únicamente están presentes en las élites más abiertas, mientras que a la gran mayoría de la población solo la puede movilizar el fundamentalismo religioso o el nacionalismo, ha quedado desmentido. Evidentemente, la gran pregunta es: ¿qué ocurrirá el día después? ¿Quién se alzará con el triunfo político?
¿Adónde debería ir Mubarak? La respuesta está clara: al Tribunal de La Haya
El auge del islamismo fue siempre el reverso de la desaparición de la izquierda laica
En Túnez, cuando se constituyó un nuevo Gobierno provisional, de él quedaron excluidos los islamistas y la izquierda más radical. Los demócratas petulantes reaccionaron diciendo: "bueno, son fundamentalmente lo mismo, dos extremos totalitarios", pero ¿son las cosas tan simples? ¿Acaso a lo largo del tiempo quienes se han venido enfrentando no han sido precisamente los islamistas y la izquierda? Aunque unos y otros estén momentáneamente unidos contra el régimen, cuando se acerquen a la victoria su unidad se resquebrajará y se embarcarán en un combate a muerte, con frecuencia más cruel que el librado contra su enemigo común.
¿Acaso no asistimos precisamente a esa pugna después de las últimas elecciones iraníes? Lo que cientos de miles de partidarios de Musavi defendían era el sueño popular que alentó la revolución jomeinista, es decir, libertad y justicia. Aunque ese sueño fuera una utopía, entre los estudiantes y la gente corriente supuso una imponente explosión de creatividad política y social, de experimentos y debates organizativos. Esa auténtica apertura que desató inusitadas fuerzas de transformación social, un momento en el que "todo parecía posible", fue después poco a poco sofocado cuando las fuerzas vivas islamistas se hicieron con el control político.
Aun ante movimientos abiertamente fundamentalistas, hay que tener cuidado de no perder de vista el componente social. A los talibanes se los suele presentar como un grupo fundamentalista islámico que se impone mediante el terror; sin embargo, cuando en la primavera de 2009 ocuparon el valle paquistaní del Swat, The New York Times informó de que habían fraguado "una revolución de clase que explota las profundas fisuras existentes entre un pequeño grupo de terratenientes acaudalados y sus desposeídos arrendatarios". Si al "aprovecharse" de los sufrimientos de los campesinos lostalibanes estaban "dando la voz de alarma sobre los riesgos que pesan sobre Pakistán, que sigue siendo mayormente feudal", ¿qué es lo que impedía a los demócratas partidarios de ese país, así como de EE UU, "aprovecharse" igualmente de esos sufrimientos, tratando de ayudar a los campesinos sin tierra? ¿Acaso las fuerzas feudales paquistaníes son el "aliado natural" de la democracia liberal?
Es inevitable llegar a la conclusión de que el auge del radicalismo islámico fue siempre el reverso de la desaparición de la izquierda laica en los países musulmanes. Cuando Afganistán aparece retratado como el ejemplo más extremo de país fundamentalista musulmán, hay que preguntarse si todavía alguien se acuerda de que hace 40 años era un país con una sólida tradición laica en el que un poderoso partido comunista se hizo con el poder sin contar con la Unión Soviética. ¿Adónde fue a parar esa tradición laica?
Resulta esencial situar en ese contexto los acontecimientos que están teniendo lugar en Túnez y Egipto (y en Yemen y... ojalá hasta en Arabia Saudí). Si la situación se "estabiliza", de manera que los antiguos regímenes sobrevivan con ciertas operaciones cosméticas de carácter democrático, se generará una insuperable oleada fundamentalista. Para que sobrevivan los elementos clave del legado democrático, sus partidarios precisan de la ayuda fraterna de la izquierda radical.
Si nos ubicamos de nuevo en Egipto, veremos que la reacción más vergonzosa y peligrosamente oportunista fue la de Tony Blair, tal como la recogió la CNN: el cambio es necesario, pero debería ser un cambio estable. Hoy en día, un "cambio estable" en Egipto solo puede significar un compromiso con las fuerzas de Mubarak por medio de una ligera ampliación del círculo de poder. Por eso hablar ahora de transición pacífica es una obscenidad: al aplastar a la oposición, el propio Mubarak la hizo imposible. Una vez que lanzó al Ejército contra los manifestantes, la opción estuvo clara: o bien una transformación cosmética en la que algo cambie para que todo siga igual o bien una auténtica ruptura.
Aquí está por tanto el quid de la cuestión: no se puede decir, como en el caso de Argelia hace una década, que permitir unas elecciones auténticamente libres equivalga a entregar el poder a los fundamentalistas islámicos. Israel se quitó la máscara de la hipocresía democrática y apoyó abiertamente a Mubarak, y, al apoyar al tirano objeto de la revuelta, ¡dio nuevas alas al antisemitismo popular!
Otra de las preocupaciones de los demócratas es que no haya un poder político organizado que llene el vacío cuando Mubarak se vaya: por supuesto que no lo hay; ya se ocupó él de que así fuera, reduciendo cualquier posible oposición a la condición de ornamento marginal. De manera que el resultado será como el del título de la famosa novela de Agatha Christie, Y entonces no quedó ninguno. Según el razonamiento de Mubarak, o él o el caos; pero es un razonamiento que va en su contra.
La hipocresía de los demócratas occidentales es asombrosa: antes apoyaban públicamente la democracia, pero ahora, cuando el pueblo se alza contra los tiranos para defender, no la religión, sino una libertad y una justicia laicas, se muestran "profundamente preocupados"... ¿Por qué esa preocupación? ¿Por qué no alegrarse de que la libertad tenga una oportunidad? Hoy día, el lema de Mao Zedong resulta más pertinente que nunca: "bajo los cielos hay caos: qué magnífica situación".
Entonces, ¿adónde debería ir Mubarak? La respuesta a esta pregunta también está clara: a La Haya. Si hay alguien que merece sentarse allí, es él.
Slavoj Zizek es filósofo esloveno. Traducción de Jesús Cuéllar Menezo.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/Caos/cielos/magnifica/situacion/elpepuopi/20110203elpepiopi_4/Te
En las revueltas de Túnez y Egipto hay algo que no puede por menos de llamarnos poderosamente la atención, y es la patente ausencia del fundamentalismo islámico: siguiendo la más pura tradición democrática laica, la gente se ha limitado a levantarse contra un régimen opresivo y corrupto, y contra su propia pobreza, para exigir libertad y esperanza económica. El cínico postulado liberal de cuño occidental, según el cual en los países árabes las concepciones realmente democráticas únicamente están presentes en las élites más abiertas, mientras que a la gran mayoría de la población solo la puede movilizar el fundamentalismo religioso o el nacionalismo, ha quedado desmentido. Evidentemente, la gran pregunta es: ¿qué ocurrirá el día después? ¿Quién se alzará con el triunfo político?
¿Adónde debería ir Mubarak? La respuesta está clara: al Tribunal de La Haya
El auge del islamismo fue siempre el reverso de la desaparición de la izquierda laica
En Túnez, cuando se constituyó un nuevo Gobierno provisional, de él quedaron excluidos los islamistas y la izquierda más radical. Los demócratas petulantes reaccionaron diciendo: "bueno, son fundamentalmente lo mismo, dos extremos totalitarios", pero ¿son las cosas tan simples? ¿Acaso a lo largo del tiempo quienes se han venido enfrentando no han sido precisamente los islamistas y la izquierda? Aunque unos y otros estén momentáneamente unidos contra el régimen, cuando se acerquen a la victoria su unidad se resquebrajará y se embarcarán en un combate a muerte, con frecuencia más cruel que el librado contra su enemigo común.
¿Acaso no asistimos precisamente a esa pugna después de las últimas elecciones iraníes? Lo que cientos de miles de partidarios de Musavi defendían era el sueño popular que alentó la revolución jomeinista, es decir, libertad y justicia. Aunque ese sueño fuera una utopía, entre los estudiantes y la gente corriente supuso una imponente explosión de creatividad política y social, de experimentos y debates organizativos. Esa auténtica apertura que desató inusitadas fuerzas de transformación social, un momento en el que "todo parecía posible", fue después poco a poco sofocado cuando las fuerzas vivas islamistas se hicieron con el control político.
Aun ante movimientos abiertamente fundamentalistas, hay que tener cuidado de no perder de vista el componente social. A los talibanes se los suele presentar como un grupo fundamentalista islámico que se impone mediante el terror; sin embargo, cuando en la primavera de 2009 ocuparon el valle paquistaní del Swat, The New York Times informó de que habían fraguado "una revolución de clase que explota las profundas fisuras existentes entre un pequeño grupo de terratenientes acaudalados y sus desposeídos arrendatarios". Si al "aprovecharse" de los sufrimientos de los campesinos lostalibanes estaban "dando la voz de alarma sobre los riesgos que pesan sobre Pakistán, que sigue siendo mayormente feudal", ¿qué es lo que impedía a los demócratas partidarios de ese país, así como de EE UU, "aprovecharse" igualmente de esos sufrimientos, tratando de ayudar a los campesinos sin tierra? ¿Acaso las fuerzas feudales paquistaníes son el "aliado natural" de la democracia liberal?
Es inevitable llegar a la conclusión de que el auge del radicalismo islámico fue siempre el reverso de la desaparición de la izquierda laica en los países musulmanes. Cuando Afganistán aparece retratado como el ejemplo más extremo de país fundamentalista musulmán, hay que preguntarse si todavía alguien se acuerda de que hace 40 años era un país con una sólida tradición laica en el que un poderoso partido comunista se hizo con el poder sin contar con la Unión Soviética. ¿Adónde fue a parar esa tradición laica?
Resulta esencial situar en ese contexto los acontecimientos que están teniendo lugar en Túnez y Egipto (y en Yemen y... ojalá hasta en Arabia Saudí). Si la situación se "estabiliza", de manera que los antiguos regímenes sobrevivan con ciertas operaciones cosméticas de carácter democrático, se generará una insuperable oleada fundamentalista. Para que sobrevivan los elementos clave del legado democrático, sus partidarios precisan de la ayuda fraterna de la izquierda radical.
Si nos ubicamos de nuevo en Egipto, veremos que la reacción más vergonzosa y peligrosamente oportunista fue la de Tony Blair, tal como la recogió la CNN: el cambio es necesario, pero debería ser un cambio estable. Hoy en día, un "cambio estable" en Egipto solo puede significar un compromiso con las fuerzas de Mubarak por medio de una ligera ampliación del círculo de poder. Por eso hablar ahora de transición pacífica es una obscenidad: al aplastar a la oposición, el propio Mubarak la hizo imposible. Una vez que lanzó al Ejército contra los manifestantes, la opción estuvo clara: o bien una transformación cosmética en la que algo cambie para que todo siga igual o bien una auténtica ruptura.
Aquí está por tanto el quid de la cuestión: no se puede decir, como en el caso de Argelia hace una década, que permitir unas elecciones auténticamente libres equivalga a entregar el poder a los fundamentalistas islámicos. Israel se quitó la máscara de la hipocresía democrática y apoyó abiertamente a Mubarak, y, al apoyar al tirano objeto de la revuelta, ¡dio nuevas alas al antisemitismo popular!
Otra de las preocupaciones de los demócratas es que no haya un poder político organizado que llene el vacío cuando Mubarak se vaya: por supuesto que no lo hay; ya se ocupó él de que así fuera, reduciendo cualquier posible oposición a la condición de ornamento marginal. De manera que el resultado será como el del título de la famosa novela de Agatha Christie, Y entonces no quedó ninguno. Según el razonamiento de Mubarak, o él o el caos; pero es un razonamiento que va en su contra.
La hipocresía de los demócratas occidentales es asombrosa: antes apoyaban públicamente la democracia, pero ahora, cuando el pueblo se alza contra los tiranos para defender, no la religión, sino una libertad y una justicia laicas, se muestran "profundamente preocupados"... ¿Por qué esa preocupación? ¿Por qué no alegrarse de que la libertad tenga una oportunidad? Hoy día, el lema de Mao Zedong resulta más pertinente que nunca: "bajo los cielos hay caos: qué magnífica situación".
Entonces, ¿adónde debería ir Mubarak? La respuesta a esta pregunta también está clara: a La Haya. Si hay alguien que merece sentarse allí, es él.
Slavoj Zizek es filósofo esloveno. Traducción de Jesús Cuéllar Menezo.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/Caos/cielos/magnifica/situacion/elpepuopi/20110203elpepiopi_4/Te
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
