COVER FEATURE

Arab Uprising:
When Decades Happen in Weeks

- Dipankar Bhattacharya

There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen. Lenin said this nearly a hundred years ago during the turbulent days of Russian revolution. The last few weeks have once again vindicated this Leninist insight when the people of Tunisia and Egypt succeeded in ending decades of autocratic rule through weeks of massive street protests. It took the brave people of Tunisia just four weeks to not only end the 23-year-old autocratic rule of their notorious US-backed ruler, Ben Ali, but also inspire upsurges across the Arab world to put several other Ben Alis on notice. One of them, Hosni Mubarak, the octogenarian strongman of Egypt, the biggest political and military partner of the US in the region, has already had to step down in the face of sustained mass pressure. Protests are also on in countries like Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Sudan, and the rulers have already announced some measures to pacify the protesters and meet some of their demands.
The return of mass upsurges on the Arab street has revealed tremendous potential and struck a chord of global resonance. True, the upsurges had the local rulers as the immediate target and the US-Israel axis was hardly even mentioned. But the fact remains that Egypt has been the lynchpin of the US-Israel strategic axis in the Arab world. Even when Obama tried to ‘reach out’ to the Muslim world, he chose Cairo as the stage for delivering his address. Any mass upsurge for democracy in Egypt therefore has the unmistakable potential to destabilize the US-Israel strategy and pose new challenges for the US policymakers. Washington’s response to the Egyptian developments has been carefully calibrated – it was only when it became crystal clear that Mubarak had no other option but to step down immediately that the US went for a military-monitored transition. It now remains to be seen how the awakened people of Egypt respond to the challenges of transition in the coming days.
It is well known that while the US loves to topple regimes in the name of democracy, it is always afraid of democracy straying beyond the dotted lines of the Empire. Will the Egyptian urge for democracy be satisfied with the mere ouster of Mubarak, the hated and tired dictatorial face, or will it insist on more changes in the set-up that Mubarak had built over the years and in the policy trajectory he followed both internally and externally? With the opening up of the democratic space in Egypt and the larger Arab world, diverse trends in Egyptian society, history and culture will now have a chance to reassert themselves and we will have to wait and see if the once dominant trend of secular Arab nationalism can again emerge as the leading current.
While keeping a close watch on the unfolding developments, one must wholeheartedly welcome what has already been achieved by these popular uprisings. Together with popular victories in Latin America, militant student protests and workers’ struggles in Europe and the continuing people’s resistance in many parts of Asia, the Arab uprising marks a major rejection of neoliberal policies of privatization and corporate plunder. “Bread, freedom and dignity” was the central slogan of Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” (Jasmine is Tunisia’s national flower) and in Egypt too the upsurge is clearly rooted in popular anger against rising prices, growing unemployment and the spectacular accumulation of private wealth at the expense of public resources and rights. The thoroughly modern, secular and popular character of the uprising has also demolished the mischievous imperialist propaganda that demonises Islam and depicts life and politics in almost all Muslim-majority countries as being dogmatic and medieval.
Tunisia and Egypt have not only furnished inspiring examples of popular upsurges in the present phase of global financial and economic crisis, in many ways they have also shown us what people’s upsurges can be like in the twenty-first century. The electronic speed with which the protests spread and the people assembled using every new technological medium – from television and mobile phones to the internet – gave us a glimpse of how revolutionary advances in information and communication technology can be made to serve the cause of a fighting people. The uprising also showed how a modern state with all its repressive apparatus can be effectively immobilized by a united and aroused people. It was truly a people’s uprising when the people reigned supreme and seemingly all-powerful rulers had to give in.
Given the historical reality and objective conditions in the Arab street where years of dictatorial rule had pushed back the organized political parties and the trade union movement, the uprising could only have a party-less and leaderless character. It will be wrong to universalize this as the emerging era of civil society and idolize it as the politics of the multitude. Indeed, now that the pro-US Egyptian Army, bureaucracy and elitist leaders are back at calling the shots, the people of Egypt will increasingly realize the need for sustained and organized political intervention to realize their dream of a meaningful democratic transition. 

In many ways Egypt’s evolution in the latter half of twentieth century has been similar to that of India. A close ally of India during the heady days of Non-Aligned Movement, and a big votary of state-led industrialization and public welfare in early Nasser years, since 1980s Egypt has fallen headlong into the trap of neoliberal economics and pro-American geopolitics much the same way as India has. Will the rising tides of the Nile today be followed by a similar upsurge in the land of Ganga and Kaveri, Brahmaputra and Narmada?

Only Pressure from Below can Bring Egypt Democracy

The decapitation of the regime was just the start. The revolution will have to go further if it's going to deliver what people want

Anyone who imagined that the Egyptian revolution would be settled with the ousting of Hosni Mubarak has already been sorely disabused. The dictator may have been bundled out of the presidential palace and demonstrators temporarily cleared from Tahrir Square. But the social and political upheaval shows every sign of spreading.
It's not just that the protests are now fanning out across north Africa and the Middle East: to Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Iran, Libya and now Bahrain – home of the US navy's fifth fleet. In Egypt itself, as in Tunisia, where the uprisings began, pressure for more far-reaching change is if anything growing, as setpiece street demonstrations have morphed into a wave of strikes.
Industrial action played a central role in the final push to drive Mubarak from power last week – just as it did in sparking resistance to the regime a couple of years ago in the textile production centre of Mahalla.

But now walkouts and occupations have mushroomed across Egypt, in defiance of the army high command's edict to return to work: on the buses and trains, in the steel and flour mills, among oil and gas workers, post office and bank employees.
Even the police who were dispatched to use lethal force against the people to save Mubarak's skin are now demanding decent pay and conditions – as their counterparts are in Tunisia. And although the impact of neoliberal reforms and economic crisis in Europe was a crucial trigger for the uprising, these aren't just bread and butter stoppages.
The strikers are also demanding the removal of bosses tied to the regime, along with officials in the unions, universities and professional bodies corrupted by the old order. That's because only the ageing autocrat has gone. The regime itself to all intents and purposes remains in place. The army has taken control but the government appointed by Mubarak is still there. So is the secret police – and the panoply of emergency legislation through which it held 80 million people in thrall for 30 years.
The army is widely respected in Egypt, partly because of its record in the 1973 war with Israel. But the military elite is part and parcel of the regime, intimately tied to the US military and deeply implicated in a web of corrupt economic privileges and privatised perks.
The top brass ditched the dictator in part because of the danger of a split in the army itself if the confrontation continued. And the new ruling army council has promised elections in six months, as well as appointing some independent figures to rush through amendments to the constitution.
But to expect the vested interests of the high command to lead a sweeping clear-out and democratisation without continuing mobilisation from below is for the birds. That's why the protesters will be back in force in Tahrir Square tomorrow, demanding an immediate change of government, an end to the state of emergency, a clear timetable for elections, the dissolution of the secret police and a full accounting for the dead, jailed and disappeared of recent weeks.
The greater the democratic cleansing of an economically parasitic regime dependent on foreign support, the more a country that has been the pivot of western power in the Middle East is likely to take an independent course.
The American government is already trying to ride the tiger of democratisation – in a country where 82% of the population has an unfavourable view of the US – and can be expected to use every trick in its playbook to limit the scope of change and prevent Egypt and others dropping out of its orbit.

Far from being a threat to reform, as Egypt's military leaders claim, only relentless pressure in the streets and workplaces can offset such meddling and deliver the change Egyptians want. Wherever this process ends, we can be sure it is only just beginning.

Egypt protests continue in the factories
Egypt's striking workers won't entrust the transition to democracy to the generals who were the backbone of the dictatorship

[Excerpt from the article by Hossam el-Hamalawy, The Guardian, 14 February 2011] 

Since Hosni Mubarak fled from Cairo, and even before then, some middle-class activists have been urging Egyptians, in the name of patriotism, to suspend their protests and return to work, singing some of the most ridiculous lullabies: "Let's build a new Egypt", "Let's work harder than ever before". They clearly do not know that Egyptians are already among the hardest working people in the world.
Those activists want us to trust Mubarak's generals with the transition to democracy – the same junta that provided the backbone of his dictatorship over the past 30 years. And while I believe the supreme council of the armed forces, which received $1.3bn from the US in 2010, will eventually engineer the transition to a "civilian" government, I have no doubt it will be a government that guarantees the continuation of a system that never touches the army's privileges, that keeps the armed forces as the institution that has the final say in politics, that guarantees Egypt continues to follow the much hated US foreign policy.
A civilian government should not be made up of cabinet members who have simply removed their military uniforms. A civilian government means one that fully represents the Egyptian people's demands and desires without any intervention from the top brass. I think it will be very hard to accomplish this, if the junta allows it at all. The military has been the ruling institution in this country since 1952. Its leaders are part of the establishment. And while the young officers and soldiers are our allies, we cannot for one second lend our trust and confidence to the generals.
All classes in Egypt took part in the uprising. Mubarak managed to alienate all social classes in society. In Tahrir Square, you found sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite, together with the workers, middle-class citizens and the urban poor. But remember that it's only when the mass strikes started on Wednesday that the regime started crumbling and the army had to force Mubarak to resign because the system was about to collapse.
Some have been surprised to see workers striking. This is naive. The workers have been staging the longest and most sustained strike wave in Egypt's history since 1946, one that began in the textiles city of Mahalla. It's not the workers' fault if the world hasn't been paying attention. Every single day over the past three years there has been a strike in some factory in Egypt, whether it's in Cairo or the provinces. These strikes were both economic and political in nature.
From the first day of the January 25 uprising, the working class has been taking part in the protests. However, the workers were at first taking part as "demonstrators" and not necessarily as "workers" – meaning, they were not moving independently. The government had brought the economy to halt, not the protesters, with their curfews, and by shutting down the banks and businesses. It was a capitalist strike, aimed at terrorising the Egyptian people. Only when the government tried to bring the country back to "normal" on 8 February did the workers return to their factories, discuss the current situation and start to organise en masse, moving as an independent block. These workers are not going home any time soon. Many of the strikers have already started raising additional demands, including the right to establish free trade unions away from the corrupt, state-backed Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions.
On Saturday I started receiving news that thousands of public transport workers were staging protests in el-Gabal el-Ahmar. The temporary workers at Helwan Steel Mills are also protesting. The railway technicians continue to bring trains to a halt. Thousands of workers at the el-Hawamdiya sugar factory are protesting and oil workers announced a strike on Sunday over work conditions. Nearly every single sector in the Egyptian economy has witnessed either strikes or mass protests. Even sections of the police have joined in.
At this point, the Tahrir Square occupation is to be suspended. We have to take Tahrir to the factories now. As the revolution proceeds, an inevitable class polarisation will take place. We have to be vigilant. We hold the keys to the liberation of the entire region, not just Egypt. Onwards we must go, with a permanent revolution that will empower the people of this country with direct democracy from below.

Diary of an Egyptian Rebel

[Selections from the diary of the tumultuous days of revolution, published by Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif in The Guardian, 4 February 2011]

As people look down from balconies they wave at them: "Come down from the heights / come and get your rights." People wave back. For two hours we walk the neighbourhood chanting against corruption, unemployment, sectarian division, fear. "We're your kids, we're part of you / What we're doing is for you." By the time we head to Tahrir Square, the focus of the protests, we are five thousand.
As the protests from every quarter approach Tahrir the Central Security Forces start using teargas, rubber bullets, shotguns and live ammunition. They turn the march into a battle. Much of the ammunition is marked 'made in the USA'. This is not a surprise but is noted and commented on by everybody. ...
The government has removed police and all security from the streets and neighbourhoods are policing themselves. Young people have formed neighbourhood watches and are guarding their areas. Everyone – particularly women – are talking about how much safer they feel with the police off the streets.
Today is the "million person protest" and the atmosphere in the square is brilliant. We look like people who've woken up from a spell, a nightmare. How many are we? In the square there are hundreds of thousands. Across Egypt, the military estimate 4 million out on the streets. And the watchword everywhere is "silmiyyah" (peaceable). We say to each other, how did they divide us? How did they make us think badly of our youth, of each other? We revel in the inclusiveness, the generosity, the humour that comes so easily to us. People offer each other food and drink, people chat, people pick up litter. Streetsweepers, businessmen, waiters, academics, farmers, we are all here together. There is no going back….
In the square the mood is sober, determined, indignant. The disinformation, the smears being spread by the government are hurting – perhaps more than the wounds and bruises so many people are carrying. Now I properly understand why revolutions need to seize radio and TV stations – you need to stop the other side lying about you. That this regime should dare to say that the protesters are agents of Israel, Iran and Hamas(!) beggars belief. This is what people are talking about. This, and that there's no turning back.