To the great joy of all progressive minded people in the world, the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt and its ad interim replacement by a military regime is not by any means the end of the current revolutionary wave in the ‘Arab world’. Quite on the contrary. Not only are many Egyptians not accepting arbitrary military rule by a clique of corrupt generals as sufficient (however much sympathy they may have for the individual conscript fellah‘s son), but in other countries the people are rising up as well. The next weakest links in the chain of oppression in the Middle East and North Africa seem to be at this moment Bahrain and Libya, and to a lesser extent Yemen and Algeria. In the latter cases, the outlook is difficult: the military in Algeria is already in full control of the country and is able to use the bogeyman of islamism very effectively, knowing full well that most Algerians despise the corrupt and impotent regime of Abdelaziz Bouteflika but prefer it to another protracted period of civil war and massacre. Yemen’s decrepit rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who came to power after the imperialist-supported side of Yemen annexed the Soviet-supported side, is not strong at all in terms of his own political power. However, the United States has had a constant military activity in the country since the start of the Obama presidency in order to destroy certain islamist forces there, and Saudi Arabia’s extensive military power is also regularly applied across the border to defeat certain insurgencies which it sees as proxies of Iran. In both cases, this implies the revolutionary groups among the people of these countries are directly confronted with substantial military power as their direct opponent, rather than being able to confront the state as an entity apart from the interests of the average soldier. The result is a much lesser likelihood of success, given the unequal strength prevailing between the sides.
In Libya’s second most signficant city, Benghazi, there have been major protests – which is a rare public show of dissatisfaction indeed against the clownish opportunistic regime of ‘Colonel’ Ghadaffi. This latter figure, the supposed protector of his people against all outside influences and powers, has shown his love for the people by having them shot at, killing at least 24 across the country. The secret police apparatus of the country has since then been in overdrive to find and repress any sign of resistance. Much like the other failed regimes that have now been overthrown, the first response of the government has besides been to organize a Potemkin ‘counterdemonstration’, which shows nothing so much as to what extent appearance and reality are constantly manipulated into diverging by the various Arab dictators, who fear nothing more than an informed population. (Another example of this is Ghadaffi’s instinctive response to blame WikiLeaks for the events: tyrants always are inclined to shoot the messenger, as the expression goes.) In Libya at least Ghadaffi will not have the opportunity of presenting himself as the savior of the Western interests against the specter of Islamism, though: both because of the virtual nonexistence of the latter as a political force there and because of Ghadaffi’s own showmanship against the United States in earlier periods of his reign. This ensures that at least it will be a direct confrontation between his government and his people, which is the best scenario for revolutionary change.
Bahrain appears to be the most interesting case at the moment. Despite the great wealth earned from oil in that country, the government is a reactionary absolute monarchy ruled by Sunnis, while the population is majority Shia and suffers from an almost complete lack of political or social freedom. Moreover, the Sunni aristocracy has been actively attempting to import other Sunni aristocrats from Saudi Arabia and other countries in order to strengthen their position, a cynical move which shows the utter disregard for the real social development of their nation’s people the governments of this region have. Inspired by the revolutionary uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and elsewhere, there have been severe protests and demonstrations in Bahrain as well. These protesters, representing the interests of the majority in Bahrain against the monarchists and their Saudi and American masters, have been brutally repressed and fired upon by the government forces, who apparently seek to destroy any potential for revolution there by swiftly drowning it in blood. They will, however, not succeed. When two previously impervious autocrats in larger countries have been overthrown by popular action, Mao’s observation that reactionaries are paper tigers will have passed mere abstraction and become an immediately perceptible reality to the peoples of the Middle East, including in Bahrain. This applies also to the United States’ major military presence there (the US has used the country ever since its pseudo-independence from Britain in 1971 as a staging base to threaten Iran with and to control the Gulf). The US will now have to show its true colors: will it support the bloody Sheikhs and so maintain its military strategic position at the expense of its supposed commitments to democracy and progress, or will it choose to support the revolt? Staying aloof will, depending on the course of events, be likely to be an implicit endorsement of the former, just like American inaction on the question of Egypt was based on the premise that any intervention in word or deed was likely to make the situation worse in terms of support for the US. Yet the consequence of inaction is that the default prevails, which usually means the persistence of tyranny: this the Western politicians, with all their ‘democratic’ credentials, usually praise under the banner of ‘stability’.