January 28, 2011
Uprisings: From Tunis to Cairo
Dictators do not usually die in bed. Successful retirement is always a problem for them, and not all solve it. It is a problem for everybody else when they leave. What’s to be done afterward? The popular uprising that overturned the dictatorial Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali regime in Tunisia in mid-January sent a thrill of hope through Arab populations. Aside from the exceptional and complex case of Lebanon, Arab nations have since the demise of the Ottoman Empire mostly suffered from European quasi empire, their own exploitative military and party dictatorships, and recently, hereditary family dictatorships, a reversion to absolute monarchy in secular guise. The dream of a united independent Arab nation to replace the Ottomans was destroyed by World War I peace settlements, which left the major Arab peoples in European empires as mandated states under the League of Nations. Following World War II and the Suez fiasco, in the cold war setting of the American alliance with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel, the region found itself dominated by Israeli arms and American support for existing regimes. The rise and subsequent failure of Colonel Gamel Abdel Nasser’s Arab Socialism in Egypt and Yemen did not interrupt most of the region’s political passivity, and Egypt itself, after the Camp David accords in 1978, became an American client state. This calm was disturbed only by the Iranian popular overthrow of the Shah, communal turbulence in Lebanon, and then the Gulf War and American invasion of Iraq.more from William Pfaff at the NYRB here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 01:18 PM | Permalink
Comments
Very interesting article that show how a gifted writer may modify the news, events, history and economy data to serve his own theory and ideology...
I would only quote the pfaffology discourse that points that the western intervention, mostly USA, is the cause of all evils:
"Egypt itself, after the Camp David accords in 1978, became an American client state...
Surely it should be clear that any American effort to become the foreign patron of a new Tunisian government would fatally compromise existing moderate forces, further radicalize the Islamic movement...Typical of that American-endorsed order was the deposed Tunisian president Ben Ali...His( Ben Ali) 1987 succession to the Tunisian presidency—in the “medical coup” that followed when Habib Bourguiba, the republic’s founder (in 1957) become president-for-life, was too enfeebled to carry on—was reportedly arranged collaboratively by Italian and Algerian intelligence. According to some experts, the French, former colonial rulers of the country, and the CIA were not directly involved, but they soon took a proprietary interest in the regime that followed..."
Posted by: Mirel | Jan 30, 2011 8:18:09 AM
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