<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[People Power in the Middle&nbsp;East]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" width="100%" align="center">
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<td class="normal_text" style="padding-left:15px;" align="right">21:47 01/27/2011</td>
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<td class="title_text" height="20px"><strong>People Power in the Middle East</strong></td>
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<td class="caption_text" align="center">There are leaders emerging even now on the ground.</td>
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<td class="normal_text" style="padding-top:10px;"><strong>By M. Shahid Alam</strong></p>
<p>From  his weekly perch at CNN, Fareed Zakaria, speculated last Sunday (or the  Sunday before) whether George Bush could take credit for the events  that were unfolding in Tunisia, whether this was the late fruit of the  neoconservative project to bring &#8216;democracy&#8217; to the Middle East.</p>
<p>It  is quite extraordinary watching Zakaria – a Muslim born and raised in  India, and scion of a leading political family – mimic with such  facility the language of America’s ruling classes, and show scarce a  trace of empathy for the world’s oppressed, despite his propinquity to  them by reason of history and geography. He does have a bias for India,  but here too he only shows a concern for India’s strategic interests,  not the interests of its subjugated classes, minorities and ethnicities.  This I offer only as an aside about how easy it is for members of the  upper classes in countries like India, Pakistan or Egypt to slip into an  American skin whenever that dissimulation offers greater personal  advantages.</p>
<p>As a cover for deepening US control over the Middle  East – here is the latest civilizing mission for you – the  neoconservatives in the Bush administration argued that the Islamic  world produces ‘terrorists’ because it lives under autocracies. To solve  the ‘terrorist’ problem, therefore, the US would have to bring  democracy to the Middle East. This demagoguery only reveals the  bankruptcy of America’s political class. It is a shame when the  President of the United States and his neoconservative puppet-masters  peddle such absurdities without being greeted by squeals of laughter –  and shouted down as hypocritical, as farcical.</p>
<p>Which country has  been the leading ally and sponsor these past decades of nearly all the  despotisms in the Middle East – those of royal pedigree and others  seeking to become royalties?</p>
<p>Regardless, the real plan of United  States failed miserably. It was dispatched to its grave by a people’s  resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.</p>
<p>Yet, George Bush and  his neoconservative allies can take some credit for the wave of  protests that is spreading across the Middle East – from Tunisia and  Algeria to Egypt and Yemen. The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan,  its attacks on Pakistan, interventions in Somalia and Yemen, its  shamefaced support for Israel’s murderous wars against the Palestinians  and the Lebanese, and its deepening sanctions and daily threats against  Iran have produced one result for sure: they have accelerated the pace  of history in this part of the world.</p>
<p>The imperial dictum of the  United States during its global war against ‘terrorism’ – you are with  us or you are against us – forced nearly all the Muslim potentates to  kowtow openly before their masters. As the duplicity of these potentates  deepened, this shame became impossible to hide. Indeed, on several  occasions, they were forced to flaunt their true colors. Saudi Arabia  and Egypt openly blamed Hezbullah when Israel launched its bombing and  invasion of southern Lebanon in July 2006; they repeated this  performance again when Israel began its massacres in Gaza in December of  2008. Saudi Arabia has been ready to relinquish sovereign rights over  its airspace, should Israel want to launch an attack against Iran.  Indeed, Wikileaks has revealed that the Saudis were urging their masters  to “cut off the snake’s head” – that is, launch a war against Iran.  Openly, Egypt has been collaborating with Israel to tighten the deadly  noose around Gaza.</p>
<p>The most egregious case of this surrender of  potentates is the one presented by the Palestinian Authority. The  treachery of the PLO against its people had begun in 1993 with the Oslo  Accords. Over the last ten years, they have carried this surrender to  its logical conclusion. The top henchmen of the PA have castrated  themselves to become Israeli eunuchs, openly and secretly cheering  Israel’s total war against Gaza and the strangulation of the West Bank.</p>
<p>Did  these surrenders, sellouts, humiliations go unnoticed by the peoples of  this region stretching from Mauritania and Egypt to Pakistan and  Indonesia?</p>
<p>It is true that the ‘Arab street’ – the West’s choice  words for denigrating people’s will in the Middle East – did not explode  into action at the American invasion of Iraq, but many in Iraq did  deliver their message quite forcefully to the Americans – both Iraq’s  Shi’as and Sunnis. If the people did not speak out then, it was because  they stood against brutal dictatorships and despotisms that had  established an iron grip over their lives. Yes, the people had been  cowed by the brutality of these regimes: but they were not without  resolution, they were not without a determination to overthrow their  bondage. They were only waiting for their chance, for some spark that  would ignite their hearts and reduce to cinders their fear of arrests,  torture and killings that would be brought upon them by their  tormentors.</p>
<p>Now that moment is here. The fear of tyrants was first  cast aside by the Tunisians; within weeks their tyrant boarded a jet  and fled across the Mediterranean. The sparks from this conflagration  have now spread both west and east – to Algeria, Egypt, and Yemen. In  the days ahead, it may spread to Sudan, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and who  knows where else. Perhaps, Saudi Arabia and the other oil-wells  disguised as countries, as sheikhdoms, may remain immune to this  conflagration – as they remained immune to the earlier conflagration of  Arab nationalism. But their time too will come – it will come in other  ways.</p>
<p>This is not a declaration of victory – for that is still far  away. The forces of tyranny and reaction – in cahoots with their puppet  masters in the United States, Israel, Britain and France – will use  brute force to suppress the rise of people power, they will use every  subterfuge to deceive the people, and they will find many allies in  upper and middle classes enriched by the terrorist regimes they have  served. The people will stand up to the brute force that will be brought  against them. They will see through the deceptions of the threatened  regimes – the half-measures that will be proffered to break the momentum  of the people’s movements. The Tunisians have seen through the pathetic  ploys of their so-called coalition government – and are demanding the  departure of all the members of Ben Ali’s cohort of bandits.</p>
<p>It is  impossible to predict how this new historical phase, how this remaking  of the Middle East will proceed. The Western media declares that the  protests unfolding before us are leaderless, but that is only because  they cannot see the leaders. Certainly, there are leaders emerging even  now on the ground, from the ranks of workers, students, teachers,  engineers, lawyers and doctors, from the cohorts of the unemployed, from  the archipelago of prisons where these regimes have tortured their  victims. Of the cadres of older leaders, many are still in prison:  others planning their return from forced exile. If these older leaders  hesitate to join the protests, to offer leadership, they will be  replaced by new cadres of younger, untainted and more vigorous  leadership.</p>
<p>Yes, the neoconservatives may well take some credit  for this ominous (for them) turn of events. By their stupendous  overreach, this clan of conspirators has done much harm to their host  country. In the wake of the wars they have unleashed, forcing the US to  spend trillions on the military, its competitors have been stealing the  march, leaving it behind in one field after another. Now this has been  duly acknowledged by President Obama in his State of the Union address.</p>
<p>The  events unfolding mark yet another attempt by an important segment of  the Islamicate to end the stasis of history imposed upon them. Starting  with the industrial programs of Mohammad Ali Pasha in the early decades  of the 19th century, Western powers have reversed several previous  attempts by the Arabs to re-enter the stage of history. Will the Western  powers again choose to stand in the way of this new beginning? Almost  certainly, they will try both overtly and covertly. Is it possible that  this time such obstructionism is too late – and counterproductive as  well? In the early 1920s, the Western powers failed to dismember Turkey.  They have failed to derail the Iranian revolution. Can they now stand  up against another surge of people power in the Arab world, in  Afghanistan and Pakistan – and beyond?</p>
<p><em>&#8211; M. Shahid Alam is  professor of economics at Northeastern University. He is author of  Israeli Exceptionalism (Palgrave, 2009) and Poverty from the Wealth of  Nations (Macmillan, 2000). He contributed this article to  PalestineChronicle.com.</em></td>
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<p><a href="http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16589">People Power in the Middle East</a>.</p>
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