Wednesday, February 16, 2011
What lesson does Egypt has for us
EGYPT
Alex Tuscano
Egypt had a special place in the modern international political history. Under its second president Gamal Abdel Nasser it was a leading country in the non alignment movement. (The organization was founded in Belgrade in 1961, and was largely the brainchild of Yugoslavia's President, Josip Broz Tito, India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt's second President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Indonesia's first President, Sukarno. All four leaders were prominent advocates of a middle course for states in the Developing World between the Western and Eastern blocs in the Cold War.) From this point of view Indian should remember those days of the initial nonalignment movement in a very special way. Nehru and President Nasser used to find themselves together as the pillars of the nonalignment movement.
We have moved very far away from that historical time. In spite of some efforts to keep the nonalignment movement alive it has died a natural death finding no relevance in the unipolar or multipolar world of today. India has moved into a position where it finds itself into a very close proximity with US. Hosni Mubarak had gone to the extent that he was labelled as an agent of United States of America. Here lies the folly of Egypt. Being a Muslim country, what we remember of Egypt from the time of President Gamal Abdel Nasser is that it was not only a secular country but also anti imperialist and anti feudal. This is what made Egypt to hold a leading position in the non aligned nations.
While we have moved away from the past and Mobarak is considered sitting in the laps of US, we still have to give a great honour to the people of Egypt. After tolerating President Mubarak for long thirty years they have finally called it a day. The unseating of President Mubarak is a success of a spectacular nature. It was not a bloody or non bloody coup by some military general or some fundamentalist leader. During the movement there was an apprehension from different corners that Egypt could go by Iran way. That it did not happen is definitely due to the greatness of the civil society of Egypt. The Muslim brothers who are supposed to have wide social network could not bid for the hot seat. The military stood as silent spectator with its tanks and guns very close to the people who were protesting in the square and across the country. Even after Mubarak left the seat and the army took over as an interim arrangement the civil society set a stuff warning to the military that if the democratic process is not put in place at the earliest they will be back to the square again.
There were basically three lessons I would like to draw from the experience of Egypt’s political revolution that has taken place.
1.
Whenever a country and its leaders go closer to the laps of United States of America that country degenerates into an undemocratic dictatorial state. America finds it very easy to work with countries that are ruled by dictators than with the truly democratic states. The outcome in the Middle East Muslim countries is that because of this interference by the US these countries have gone the most fundamentalist way and terrorism come to its peak.
a. We have an example of Iran. There was a democratically elected prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh (1951) who was a pro socialist leader. When he nationalised the British owned Petroleum companies, the Capitalist block lead by US liquidated that government and imposed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran through operation Ajax (1953). Shah ruled Iran in an autocratic manner with his strings in the hands of US. There was a massive opposition over a period of time. The left remnants were still there but badly mutilated by Shah. Their bid to power was unsuccessful and what came in the place of Shah of Iran is the most fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini. This gives rise to a tremendous tension between US and Iran and it lead to the long war between Iraq and Iran US doing a back seat driving.
b. Another example we have is famous Afghanistan. It was always used as a buffer state between the soviet Union and the western block. Afghanistan was ruled by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan which was very pro Soviet Union and implementing socialist agenda, carrying out land reform and equal status for women. But America wanted to destroy the link between USSR and Afghanistan. They started using Muslim militants to dislodge the government. Finally Brezhnev sent his troops and imposed what is called socialism from above in seventies. American did not accept this invasion by the Soviet Union. It created Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in Pakistan to defeat the Soviet Union backed Dr. Mohammad Najibullah’s government. The Taliban with active support of the US managed to stage a coup and hanged Dr. Mohammad Najibullah and destroyed all the cultural heritages of Afghanistan. This was followed by 9/11 and war on terror in Afghanistan. It has become clear that this war will not end. There will be no winners and the losers will be the common people who live in tremendous insecurity and violence with no hope of peace and livelihood at the end.
c. The third example is Iraq about which less is said is better. We have too many questions and no answers. We do not know whether it was a war to unearth the weapon of mass destruction or capture the oil fields of Iraq. Here too we have an unprecedented violence, terrorism and insecurity. We knew Iraq to be a secular state under the rule of the dictator Saddam Husain who was not aligned to US.
Coming to Egypt, the civil society appears to be very strong and has succeeded in preventing the disasters the above mentioned states have faced. We do hope the transition to democracy without the fundamentalists Muslim Brothers will happen under the pressure of civil society.
2.
The second most important lesson that we need to learn is from the non violent nature of the protest of the people of Egypt which has succeeded. Sparing a few skirmishes here and there, which were not started by the people though, the entire movement against Mubarak was non violent. Those who died were done to death by the state sponsored terrorism. But this kind of terrorism was defeated by the non violent movement of the civil society. The army remained silent and police force was brought to silence. The violent arm of the state was reduced to silent watch dog with its tail down.
We need to draw an important lesson from Egypt. In most cases if the people confront violence of the state then they are forced to retaliate. The violence of the state exists in the form of not only the police and the arm forces but most particularly in the form of capitalist expansion at the cost of people’s right to life, right to dwelling places, their habitat, right to land, livelihood and employment. This dual state violence gives rise to the violence of the extremists. We will have to acknowledge that the maoist violence was on the rise when the state was vehemently going right and left to exploit the forests and the mineral wealth at the cost of the adivasies in the recent past.
Egypt’s experience should drive home a strong lesson to the ruling elite and the state that violence emanates from the state. It should also drive home a strong lesson to the civil society that we can win and change the world in a non violent way of politics.
3. We seem to see a kind of (I should term it as) Gramscian political development taking place where the role of the civil society and the civil society organizations seem to take a centre stage.
The Neo liberal ideology removed from the state the power to regulate markets and economy, a process started way back in September 1973 by putting an end to the left government and the life of Salvador Allende. This necessarily led to the civil society organizations taking a role of regulation (Geoffrey Pleyers). To give an example, Seattle failure of WTO attempt to introduce trade liberalization. There are innumerable examples where civil society organizations are playing a role of checkmating the neoliberal policies.
The left in our country should learn a lesson from this and instead of messing up in Kerala, West Bengal, Tripura and in the Parliament come to the streets and join the civil society to bring about a change that will effectively oppose all evils in our political and economic development. The civil society should be more focused and also bring the Maoist out of the ‘jubgles’ to join the politics of the civil society. There is no civilized politics than the politics of the civil society to bring about a change. We gained our freedom from the British rule by the civil society’s united civil disobedience. We gained our second freedom from the emergency rule of Indira Gandhi also through the civil society’s civil disobedience.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)