<?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[The toxic residue of&nbsp;colonialism]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="articleTitle" valign="top"><span id="DetailedTitle"> </span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="Tmp_hSpace10"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div id="ctl00_cphBody_dvArticleInfoBlock">
<div id="ctl00_cphBody_dvSummary" class="articleSumm">The overt age of grand empires gave way to the age of covert imperial hegemony,  but now the edifice is crumbling.</div>
<div class="Tmp_hSpace5"></div>
<div id="dvByLine_Date"><span id="ctl00_cphBody_dvByLine" class="byLine"> Richard Falk</span><span id="dvArticleDate"> Last Modified: <span id="ctl00_cphBody_lblDate">14 Feb 2011 15:44 GMT</span> </span></div>
</div>
<div id="dvToolsList">
</div>
<div class="Tmp_hSpace5" style="clear:both;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="DetailedSummary">
<div class="entry">
<table style="width:33px;border-collapse:collapse;" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://i2.wp.com/english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images/2011/2/13/2011213213531225954_20.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><span style="font-size:10px;font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:10px;font-family:Verdana;"><strong>As  traffic returns to Tahrir Square, Egyptians are left to wonder if  they&#8217;ve been sold out &#8211; like so many revolutionaries before them &#8211;  and if the demands of the revolution will survive the perils of  governance [GALLO/GETTY] </strong></span></span><strong> </strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>At least, overtly, there has been no talk from either Washington or  Tel Aviv &#8211; the governments with most to lose as the Egyptian revolution  unfolds &#8211; of military intervention. Such restraint is more expressive of  geopolitical sanity than postcolonial morality, but still it enables  some measure of change to take place that unsettles, temporarily at  least, the established political order.</p>
<p>And yet, by means seen and unseen, external actors, especially the  United States, with a distinct American blend of presumed imperial and  paternal prerogatives are seeking to shape and limit the outcome of this  extraordinary uprising of the Egyptian people, long held in subsidised  bondage by the cruel and corrupt Mubarak dictatorship. What is the most  defining feature of this American-led diplomacy-from-without is the  seeming propriety of <em>managing</em> the turmoil, so that the regime survives and the demonstrators return to what is perversely being called &#8220;normalcy&#8221;.</p>
<p>I find most astonishing that President Obama so openly claimed the  authority to instruct the Mubarak regime about how it was supposed to  respond to the revolutionary uprising. I am not surprised at the effort,  and would be surprised by its absence &#8211; but merely by the lack of any  sign of imperial shyness in a world order that is supposedly built  around the legitimacy of self-determination, national sovereignty, and  democracy.</p>
<p>And almost as surprising, is the failure of Mubarak to pretend in  public that such interference in the guise of guidance is unacceptable &#8211;  even if, behind closed doors, he listens submissively and acts  accordingly. This geopolitical theatre performance of master and servant  suggests the persistence of the colonial mentality on the part of both  coloniser &#8211; and their national collaborators.</p>
<p>The only genuine post-colonial message would be one of deference:  &#8220;Stand aside, and applaud.&#8221; The great transformative struggles of the  past century involved a series of challenges throughout the global south  to get rid of the European colonial empires. But political independence  did not bring an end to the more indirect, but still insidious, methods  of control designed to protect economic and strategic interests. Such a  dynamic meant reliance on political leaders that would sacrifice the  wellbeing of their own people to serve the wishes of their  unacknowledged former colonial masters, or their Western successors &#8211;  the United States largely displacing France and the United Kingdom in  the Middle East after the Suez crisis of 1956.</p>
<p>And these post-colonial servants of the West would be well-paid  autocrats vested with virtual ownership rights in relation to the  indigenous wealth of their country, provided they remained receptive to  foreign capital. In this regard, the Mubarak regime was a poster child  of post-colonial success.</p>
<p>Western liberal eyes were long accustomed not to notice the internal  patterns of abuse that were integral to this foreign policy success  &#8211; and if occasionally noticed by some intrepid journalist, who would  then be ignored, or if necessary discredited as some sort of &#8220;leftist&#8221;.  And if this failed to deflect criticism, they would point out, usually  with an accompanying condescending smile, that torture and the like came  with Arab cultural territory &#8211; a reality that savvy outsiders adapted  to without any discomfort.</p>
<p>Actually, in this instance, such practices were quite convenient,  Egypt serving as one of the interrogation sites for the insidious  practice of &#8220;extreme rendition&#8221;, by which the CIA transports &#8220;terrorist  suspects&#8221; to accommodating foreign countries that willingly provide  torture tools and facilities. Is this what is meant by &#8220;a human rights  presidency&#8221;? The irony should not be overlooked that President Obama&#8217;s  special envoy to the Mubarak government in the crisis was none other  than Frank Wisner, an American with a most notable CIA lineage.</p>
<p>There should be clarity about the relationship between this kind of  post-colonial state, serving US regional interests &#8211; oil, Israel,  containment of Islam, avoidance of unwanted proliferation of nuclear  weapons &#8211; in exchange for power, privilege, and wealth vested in a tiny  corrupt national elite that sacrifices the wellbeing and dignity of the  national populace in the process.</p>
<p>Such a structure in the post-colonial era, where national sovereignty  and human rights infuse popular consciousness can only be maintained by  erecting high barriers of fear, reinforced by state terror, designed to  intimidate the populace from pursuing their goals and values. When  these barriers are breached, as recently in Tunisia and Egypt, then the  fragility of the oppressive regime glows in the dark.</p>
<p>The dictator either runs for the nearest exit, as did Tunisia&#8217;s Zine  El Abidine Ben Ali, or is dumped by his entourage and foreign friends so  that the revolutionary challenge can be tricked into a premature  accommodation. This latter process seemed to represent the one of latest  maneuverings of the palace elite in Cairo and their backers in the  White House. Only time will tell whether the furies of counterrevolution  will win the day, possibly by gunfire and whip &#8211; and possibly through  mollifying gestures of reform that become unfulfillable promises in due  course if the old regime is not totally reconstructed.</p>
<p>Unfulfillable &#8211; because corruption and gross disparities of wealth  amid mass impoverishment can only be sustained, post-Tahrir Square,  through the reimposition of oppressive rule. And if it is not  oppressive, then it will not be able for very long to withstand demands  for rights, for social and economic justice, and due cause for  solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.</p>
<p>Here is the crux of the ethical irony. Washington is respectful of  the logic of self-determination, so long as it converges with the US  grand strategy, and is oblivious to the will of the people whenever its  expression is seen as posing a threat to the neoliberal overlords of the  globalised world economy, or to strategic alignments that seem so dear  to State Department or Pentagon planners.</p>
<p>As a result there is an inevitable to-ing and fro-ing as the United  States tries to bob and weave, celebrating the advent of democracy in  Egypt,complaining about the violence and torture of the tottering regime  &#8211; while doing what it can to manage the process from outside, which  means preventing genuine change, much less a democratic transformation  of the Egyptian state. Anointing the main CIA contact and Mubarak  loyalist, Omar Suleiman, to preside over the transition process on  behalf of Egypt seems a thinly disguised plan to throw Mubarak to the  crowd, while stabilising the regime he presided over for more than 30  years.</p>
<p>I would have expected more subtlety on the part of the geopolitical  managers, but perhaps its absence is one more sign of imperial myopia  that so often accompanies the decline of great empires.</p>
<p>It is notable that most protesters, when asked by the media about  their reasons for risking death and violence by being in the Egyptian  streets, responded with variations on the phrases: &#8220;We want our rights&#8221;  or: &#8220;We want freedom and dignity&#8221;. Of course, joblessness, poverty, food  security &#8211; and anger at the corruption, abuses, and dynastic  pretensions of the Mubarak regime offer an understandable infrastructure  of rage that undoubtedly fuels the revolutionary fires. But it is  &#8220;rights&#8221; and &#8220;dignity&#8221; that seem to float on the surface of this  awakened political consciousness.</p>
<p>These ideas, to a large extent nurtured in the hothouse of Western  consciousness and then innocently exported as a sign of good will, like  &#8220;nationalism&#8221; a century earlier, might originally be intended only as  public relations move, but over time, such ideas gave rise to the dreams  of the oppressed and victimised &#8211; and when the unexpected historical  moment finally arrived, burst into flame. I remember talking a decade or  so ago to Indonesian radicals in Jakarta who talked of the extent to  which their initial involvement in anti-colonial struggle was  stimulated by what they had learned from their Dutch colonial teachers  about the rise of nationalism as a political ideology in the West.</p>
<p>Ideas may be disseminated with conservative intent, but if they later  become appropriated on behalf of the struggles of oppressed peoples,  such ideas are reborn &#8211; and serve as the underpinnings of a new  emancipatory politics. Nothing better illustrates this Hegelian journey  than the idea of &#8220;self-determination&#8221;, initially proclaimed by Woodrow  Wilson after World War I. Wilson was a leader who sought above all to  maintain order, believed in satisfying the aims of foreign investors and  corporations, and had no complaints about the European colonial  empires. For him, self-determination was merely a convenient means to  arrange the permanent breakup of the Ottoman Empire through the  formation of a series of ethnic states.</p>
<p>Little did Wilson imagine, despite warnings from his secretary of  state, that self-determination could serve other gods &#8211; and become a  powerful mobilising tool to overthrow colonial rule. In our time, human  rights has followed a similarly winding path, sometimes being no more  than a propaganda banner used to taunt enemies during the Cold War,  sometimes as a convenient hedge against imperial identity &#8211; and  sometimes as the foundation of revolutionary zeal, as seems to be the  case in the unfinished and ongoing struggles for rights and dignity  taking place throughout the Arab world in a variety of forms.</p>
<p>It is impossible to predict how this future will play out. There are  too many forces at play in circumstances of radical uncertainty. In  Egypt, for instance, it is widely believed that the army holds most of  the cards, and that where it finally decides to put its weight will  determine the outcome. But is such conventional wisdom not just one more  sign that hard power realism dominates our imagination, and that  historical agency belongs in the end to the generals and their weapons,  and not to the people in the streets?</p>
<p>Of course, there is a blurring of pressures as the army could have  been merely trying to go with the flow, siding with the winner once the  outcome was clear. Is there any reason to rely on the wisdom, judgment,  and good will of armies &#8211; not just in Egypt whose commanders owe their  positions to Mubarak &#8211; but throughout the world?</p>
<p>In Iran the army did stand aside, and a revolutionary process  transformed the Shah&#8217;s edifice of corrupt and brutal governance. The  people momentarily prevailed, only to have their extraordinary  nonviolent victory snatched away in a subsequent counter-revolutionary  move that substituted theocracy for democracy.</p>
<p>There are few instances of revolutionary victory, and in those few  instances, it is rarer still to carry forward the revolutionary mission  without disruption. The challenge is to sustain the revolution in the  face of almost inevitable counter-revolutionary projects, some launched  by those who were part of the earlier movement unified against the old  order, but now determined to hijack the victory for its own ends. The  complexities of the revolutionary moment require utmost vigilance on the  part of those who view emancipation, justice, and democracy as their  animating ideals, because there will be enemies who seek to seize power  at the expense of humane politics.</p>
<p>One of the most impressive features of the Egyptian revolution up to  this point has been the extraordinary ethos of nonviolence and  solidarity exhibited by the massed demonstrators, even in the face of  repeated bloody provocations of the <em>baltagiyya</em> dispatched by  the regime. This ethos refused to be diverted by these provocations, and  we can only hope against hope that the provocations will cease, and  that counter-revolutionary tides will subside, sensing either the  futility of assaulting history or imploding at long last from the build  up of corrosive effects from a long embrace of an encompassing  illegitimacy.</p>
<p><strong><em>Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of  International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished  Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of  California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous  publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing  the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice  (Routledge, 2008).</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. </em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>The views expressed in this article are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera&#8217;s editorial policy.</em></strong></p>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/2011213201140768988.html">The toxic residue of colonialism &#8211; Opinion &#8211; Al Jazeera English</a>.</p>
]]></html><thumbnail_url><![CDATA[https://i2.wp.com/english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images/2011/2/13/2011213213531225954_20.jpg?fit=440%2C330]]></thumbnail_url><thumbnail_width><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_width><thumbnail_height><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_height></oembed>