October 2011: Egyptians in Talat Harb square, Cairo, protest against military rule; October 1956: Egyptians demonstrate in the same square against British-French invasion. Photograph: Getty/Associated Press.
Drawing on the British Pathé archive, Seumas Milne picks out the recurrent themes of imperial efforts to control the Middle East
A SUPERB COMMENT
A SUPERB COMMENT
Seumas Milne
guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 December 2011
"There's a real sense in which, more than any other part of the former colonial world, the Middle East has never been fully decolonised. Sitting on top of the bulk of the globe's oil reserves, the Arab world has been the target of continual interference and intervention ever since it became formally independent.
Carved into artificial states after the first world war, it's been bombed and occupied – by the US, Israel, Britain and France – and locked down with US bases and western-backed tyrannies. As the Palestinian blogger Lina Al-Sharif tweeted on Armistice Day this year, the "reason World War One isn't over yet is because we in the Middle East are still living the consequences"......
Since the day Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, there has been a relentless counter-drive by the western powers and their Gulf allies to buy off, crush or hijack the Arab revolutions. And they've got a deep well of experience to draw on: every centre of the Arab uprisings, from Egypt to Yemen, has lived through decades of imperial domination. All the main Nato states that bombed Libya, for example – the US, Britain, France and Italy – have had troops occupying the country well within living memory.
If the Arab revolutions are going to take control of their future, then, they'll need to have to keep an eye on their recent past. So here are seven lessons from the history of western Middle East meddling, courtesy of the archive of Pathé News, colonial-era voice of Perfidious Albion itself.
1. The west never gives up its drive to control the Middle East, whatever the setbacks.....
2. Imperial powers can usually be relied on to delude themselves about what Arabs actually think.....
3. The Big Powers are old hands at prettifying client regimes to keep the oil flowing.....
4. People in the Middle East don't forget their history – even when the US and Europe does.....
5. The west has always presented Arabs who insist on running their own affairs as fanatics.....
6. Foreign military intervention in the Middle East brings death, destruction and divide and rule.....
7. Western sponsorship of Palestine's colonisation is a permanent block on normal relations with the Arab world....."
guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 December 2011
"There's a real sense in which, more than any other part of the former colonial world, the Middle East has never been fully decolonised. Sitting on top of the bulk of the globe's oil reserves, the Arab world has been the target of continual interference and intervention ever since it became formally independent.
Carved into artificial states after the first world war, it's been bombed and occupied – by the US, Israel, Britain and France – and locked down with US bases and western-backed tyrannies. As the Palestinian blogger Lina Al-Sharif tweeted on Armistice Day this year, the "reason World War One isn't over yet is because we in the Middle East are still living the consequences"......
Since the day Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, there has been a relentless counter-drive by the western powers and their Gulf allies to buy off, crush or hijack the Arab revolutions. And they've got a deep well of experience to draw on: every centre of the Arab uprisings, from Egypt to Yemen, has lived through decades of imperial domination. All the main Nato states that bombed Libya, for example – the US, Britain, France and Italy – have had troops occupying the country well within living memory.
If the Arab revolutions are going to take control of their future, then, they'll need to have to keep an eye on their recent past. So here are seven lessons from the history of western Middle East meddling, courtesy of the archive of Pathé News, colonial-era voice of Perfidious Albion itself.
1. The west never gives up its drive to control the Middle East, whatever the setbacks.....
2. Imperial powers can usually be relied on to delude themselves about what Arabs actually think.....
3. The Big Powers are old hands at prettifying client regimes to keep the oil flowing.....
4. People in the Middle East don't forget their history – even when the US and Europe does.....
5. The west has always presented Arabs who insist on running their own affairs as fanatics.....
6. Foreign military intervention in the Middle East brings death, destruction and divide and rule.....
7. Western sponsorship of Palestine's colonisation is a permanent block on normal relations with the Arab world....."
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