After unscripted Arab drama, the west sneaks back on set

People were not rebelling solely against dictators but the economic model. Yet foreign interests may again be calling the shots

A GOOD COMMENT
Soumaya Ghannoushi
The Guardian, Thursday 31 March 2011

".....Muammar Gaddafi's model of the iron-fisted ruler who fights to the last drop emboldened some dictators. While Tunisia and Egypt presented Arabs with an inspiring model of change at minimal cost, Libya stirred hopes among their rulers that they might cling on to power through naked violence and the threat of civil war. So in Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh has unleashed his thugs to massacre protesters in Taghyeer Square. In Syria Bashar al-Assad has opened fire on demonstrators in Deraa and Latakia, while in Jordan, next door, security services have brutally dispersed a peaceful picket demanding reform. Gaddafi has inspired fellow despots to shift fear to the people through the use of terror.....

Backstage, however, the French, British, Italians, and Americans are working to promote their own men among the rebels in preparation for the post-Gaddafi era. The real contest is over who calls the shots in the new Libya and who dominates its economy.....

This is part of a campaign to conceal a fundamental fact about what is happening: that people are not only rebelling against an internationally backed political authoritarianism but against the economic model imposed by the IMF, World Bank and, in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the EU's structural reform programmes. Millions have been left to fend for themselves as state-owned firms have been sold to foreign investors and a cabal of local partners: corruption flourished as a result.....

When the Tunisian people took the world by surprise, those who felt threatened by that uprising were quick to talk of "exceptions". First we were initially warned that Egypt was not Tunisia, then that Libya was not Tunisia or Egypt, and now that Yemen and Syria are not Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. But in reality the region is fundamentally interconnected. Arabs not only share a geography and language but common crises and aspirations. Though divided into 22 states, statelets, republics and monarchies, Arabs share the misfortune of living under the harshest forms of government, and are united by their yearning for democratisation. With the exception of some Gulf sheikhdoms that enjoy large oil resources and a tiny demography, most of their countries are plagued by a bleak record of economic failure and corresponding social crises. The story of the Arab revolution is not only to be found in prisons, torture chambers and political trials, but in this painful trail of economic and social misery. Ben Ali, Mubarak and their political backers in Washington, London and Paris are culpable – and so are the World Bank, IMF and WTO. In a way, they are the real makers of the Great Arab Revolution."