What is the future of the Arab Revolutions?

People came out demanding change.

Washington stood by its dictator. The protests grew. People died.

Protesters stuck flowers down the gun barrels of the soldiers.

The Army protected the people.  

The US then asked for a peaceful transition.

It called for the downfall of their strongman. The dictator fell.

People Power had won. A couple of years later, one of the largest US military bases in the world was shut down.

That was 1986. Ferdinand Marcos. Manila. The Philippines. That's when the phrase “People Power” became known to many in this generation. 

Yet, 35 years later, that country is still a vassal state of America. The poor man of South East Asia. There was no liberation.

This is a warning to the new Arab revolution.

What do Washington, London and Paris have in mind for the Arab World?

The Barcelona Declaration of 1995 called for a Free Trade Area.

Both the U.S. and E.U. had a road-map to one day integrate the European Union, Israel, Turkey, and the Arab World into a 'Mediterranean Union”

The prize is a 350 million strong consumer market. For that they need to shift from kleptocracies to democracies. But not real ones. The leaders must be co-opted.

Zbigniew Brerzhinski is the architect of a strategy to counter what is called the “Arab Awakening”.

The aim is: “Democratic Evolution. Avoid Revolution”.

He and his friends knew the dangers and difficulties. In 2008 he put it bluntly:

“Before it was easier to control a million people than kill them; today, it is easier to kill a million people than control them”

But what we have been seeing over the last few weeks has not been in the plan. These are not colour-coded revolutions.

This is much too fast, much too unpredictable and much too democratic. From Bahrain to Benghazi. Algiers to Alexandria to Amman. And soon, Rabat and maybe Riyadh, Dubai and Kuwait.   

This week, Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain replaced Tahrir Square. 1.2 million people where two thirds are Shiite, with no rights. More than half the workforce is imported from South India. 

The Saudis, next door, cannot accept a truly democratic Bahrain. The big Saudi oilfields nearby are Shiite majorities. Saudis are not shy in sending tanks and planes to bomb in Yemen. They are rumoured to have sent police forces to Bahrain. 

And as for awakening: the people of the Arab World have not just woken up. They were already awake.

What the Arab people are doing now is mobilise.

Egypt, maybe Tunisia, so far, look like a takeover, not yet a transformation.

When millions of people were in the streets, they had power.

When they are not, power flows back to the bureaucracy.

Revolution is in the air. So is counter-revolution.

The Egyptian military high command are all Mubarak cronies. In their 70s.

The coup leader, Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, is 75 & commanded the Republican Guards.
This is not 1952. The Colonels are not in power. 
With all due respect to Egyptians who may hold respect for their military, their generals look a lot like the Pakistani Generals. Controlling the economy. A finger in every pie. A business as much as an army.

Can a new Egypt be born without overthrowing this whole system?

If the answer is no, this means one thing ultimately: taking on the generals.

The young are at the forefront of this revolution.

But it is also a revolution of the working class. The regime cracked just as the strikes started to spread like wildfire.

In the next phase, it's what the working class does that will be crucial.

As a blogger says, "We have to take Tahrir to the factories now."

      One in three of Egypt's workforce is found on the farms, in the villages, in the rural areas. Food prices are rocketing but they are not getting the benefits. They will come in to the picture.

 
There are three possible outcomes:
1)         The Mubarak regime without Mubarak survives but gets a facelift

      2)         These people co-opt the elections this year while the army stays in the background

      3)         There is a real social and political revolution. Radical change. Wealth and power is redistributed, The             entire structure of power is re-organised.

Washington, and the Egyptian elites cannot want an Egypt that is truly democratic, with an independent foreign policy.

      If the people have free will:

      They will demand the lifting of the siege of Gaza. To stop being prison guards and to let the people of Gaza free.

      They will demand that Cairo stop selling natural gas to Israel at half price.

      They will demand that US Fifth Fleet no longer sail through the Suez Canal on its way to the base to Bahrain.

      They will demand that the 1979 Camp David accords with Israel are scrapped.

Could this end up like Latin America?

Could the Arab World shift to the Left and break free from the US?

Latin America also had dictators in place for decades. By the early 1990s, people had given up on that continent. 

Who foresaw that ex. Colonel Hugo Chavez would come into office in the late 1990s?

He calls himself a socialist, is redistributing the oil wealth to the majority and nationalises foreign companies.

He has a vision of a united Latin America.

Chavez also looked at the example of another Colonel.

Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab nation.

Who knows which direction this will go.

So far, the uprisings are not being called Muslim revolutions but secular, Arab revolutions.

The US with all its power has tried to topple Chavez. Several times. It failed.

It tried to topple Evo Morales of Bolivia. It failed.

It tried to topple Rafael Correa of Ecuador. It failed.

The US is over-stretched.

The US economy is in debt up to its eyeballs.

The US is in crisis.

There could be no better time for the Arab people to rise.

That's why it will succeed.

Thank you for listening.

Farid gave this speech at SOAS on Thursday 17th of February.