The Jasmine Revolution - Testing Time for the White House

Left Margin

The Jasmine Revolution - Testing Time for the White
House

by Carl Bloice
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Black Commentator
January 20, 2011

http://www.blackcommentator.com/410/410_lm_jasmine_revolution.php

Shortly after the start of the New Year, Reuters reported
that "Millions of Pakistanis are growing frustrated at
widespread corruption, power cuts, poverty and rising
inflation - problems that risk pushing more young men to
join militants groups in the South Asian country of 170
million." In that atmosphere, the country's government
decided last year, as part of an economic "reform" drive to
raise the price of gas and other fuels. In the words of the
New York Times, the regime chose to raise fuel prices nine
percent effective January 1 "as the fastest and easiest way
to increase revenues, before it struggled with more
difficult tax reforms." The result was predictable; there
were protests. The newspaper Dawn reported on the
"resentment shown by political parties, civil society
organizations and people across the country."

"The increase in fuel prices was deeply unpopular, hitting
the poor hardest, and fraught with political risks of its
own," Salman Masood and J. David Goodman reported in the
Times from Islamabad.

A major party withdrew from the governing coalition and the
government collapsed. On January 7, the government rescinded
the price hike.

Into this mess stepped the U.S. State Department.

Turns out U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton tried to
convince the Pakistanis to retain the unpopular policy
decision. She says three days before the government dropped
the price hike she met with Pakistan's ambassador, Hussain
Haqqani, at the State Department in Washington and told him
it would be a "mistake" to do so. "We believe that the
government of Pakistan must reform its economic laws and
regulations, including those that affect fuel and its cost,"
Clinton later told reporters. "We have made it clear. that
we think it is a mistake to reverse the progress that was
being made to provide a stronger economic base for Pakistan
and we will continue to express that opinion."

It was a pretty heavy handed intrusion into Pakistani
affairs but the U.S. is the country's main source of aid and
much of it is funneled through the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and both are unhappy about Islamabad's refusal to
adopt their prescriptions. The IMF has refused to release
the second half of an already granted loan pending the
government agreeing to the "reform." Then again, Pakistan is
paying dearly in blood and resources for its involvement in
Washington's "war on terrorism" and is being pressured to
contribute even more to the senseless war in neighboring
Afghanistan. However, leaving aside what business it was for
Clinton to be so publicly interfering in Pakistani politics
and economic policy, the episode and what followed in places
many miles away from Pakistan speak volumes about the
international situation in 2011.

Skip ahead to January 13 to the Sudan where police brutally
tied to crush student protests against proposed cuts in
subsidies in petroleum products and sugar.

The Sudanese protests came against the background of the
secession referendum then underway in the south of the
country that is expected to split the country in to. "It is
not about the referendum - there is almost no referendum in
the north, it is for their protection against social
protests after increasing the prices," opposition politician
Yasir Arman told Reuters. "The north is feeling that the
government has betrayed all the dreams of having a new
society, of a different route that could have kept the unity
of Sudan."

The Sudanese student protests came as the world's attention
was focused on Algeria and Tunisia with the president of the
latter being literally driven from the country by the
upheaval, ending his 23 years of dictatorial rule.
Ironically, two days before Tunisian President Zine El
Abidine fled Tunis (probably with a big sack of gold), the
Christian Science Monitor said, "While the protests are
unlikely to bring down any governments in the near future,
they portend trouble ahead if leaders who have ruled with a
strong fist for decades try to keep a tighter lid on
discontent instead of creating a vent for anger."

In Algeria, protestors took the streets after the prices for
essential food items such as flour, cooking oil and sugar
doubled over the previous two weeks.

"First it was Morocco, then Tunisia, and now it is Algeria's
turn," said Aljereeza last week. "Hundreds of Algerians have
taken to the streets of the capital Algiers, some of them
shouting "Bring us sugar."

And then it was the Sudan and then Ma'an, Jordan and then
the capital, Amman.

According to AFP, almost 3,000 people staged a sit-in in
front of the Jordanian parliament building Sunday protesting
the government's economic policy and that trade unionists,
members of left-wing parties and Islamists took part in the
demonstration.

The riots that erupted in the small Jordanian city of Ma'an
are reported to have come in response of a local ethnic
conflict in which two people were killed. Angry young men
are reported to have attacked governmental buildings and
offices and cars and stores and burned tires. A witness told
the Jordanian Times, "The angry youths were shouting that
they do not believe in the system and that was why they were
destroying public properties."

"They are unhappy with the rising cost of food and, what
they say is a lack of opportunity in the country," said Al
Jazeera as the protests spread through the region. "They are
directing their anger at the government - they do not
understand why an oil rich country is unable to offer a
decent life to its people."

One problem is that the prices of many basic commodities are
rising across the globe. But the effect is uneven because in
the poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America,
people spend a greater portion of their already meager
incomes on food and fuel than those of us in developed
world.

The United Nations' world food price index rose 32 percent
from June to December. Much of it can be traced to poor
grain harvests - particularly grain - and weather-related
problems. These factors and an increase in market
speculation have pushed prices close to the crisis levels
that have previously provoked shortages and riots in poor
countries. "We are at a very high level," said Abdolreza
Abbassian, an economist for the United Nations' Food and
Agriculture Organization. "These levels in the previous
episode led to problems and riots across the world."

Another factor contributing to the upheavals is that the
economic crisis that was spawned in the U.S. and today
convulses Europe, has had a spillover effect. On January 11,
the Times observed that "the economic malaise that has
gripped southern Europe has spread here, sending
unemployment and public resentment skyrocketing."

Observers point to another, perhaps most significant, factor
driving the protests: the stubborn and increasing economic
inequality in these countries. While most attention has been
directed at the very real problem of unemployed college
educated youths, President Ben Ali's departure came after
the students were joined in the streets by workers and young
professionals. A general strike was called the day Ben Ali
fled.

In a January 6 statement, the leadership of the Algerian
Workers Party (PT) called for urgent measures to overcome
the crisis and "would also put a brake on all who seek to
ride the wave of legitimate anger provoked among the
Algerian citizens - who are worn out having endured constant
increases in the prices of basic commodities - to direct
this anger toward nefarious political ends."

"Because the situation is serious and because the interests
of the nation must come first, the secretariat of the
Political Bureau considers that the anger of young people
raises the urgent need for real solutions to the
unemployment problem by creating good full-time jobs, in
order to combat the despair that is generated by social
precariousness," the Party's statement read.

"These four events hitting at roughly the same time, for all
their differences, seem to crystallize a long- developing
sense that these regimes have failed to meaningfully address
this relentlessly building wave of troubles." Marc Lynch,
George Washington University associate professor of
Political Science and International Affairs. "For years,
both Arab and Western analysts and many political activists
have warned of the urgent need for reform as such problems
built and spread. Most of the Arab governments have learned
to talk a good game about the need for such reform, while
ruthlessly stripping democratic forms of any actual ability
to challenge their grip on power. Economic reforms, no
matter how impressive on paper, have increased inequality,
undermined social protections, enabled corruption, and
failed to create anything near the needed numbers of jobs.
Western governments have tried through a wide variety of
means to help promote reform, but not really democracy since
that would risk having their allied regimes voted out of
power - the core hypocrisy at the heart of American
democracy promotion efforts of which every Arab is keenly
aware. Obama talking more about democracy in public, which
seems to be the main concern of many of his critics, isn't
really going to help."

That hasn't kept Washington from trying.

In a speech last week at the Forum for the Future conference
in Doha, Qatar, Hilary Clinton addressed the problem of
young people in the region, noting that "people have grown
tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political
order." She called for "political reforms that will create
the space young people are demanding, to participate in
public affairs and have a meaningful role in the decisions
that shape their lives." What she didn't address was the
U.S. policy in the region up until now.

It should be noted that, with the exception of the Sudan
recently, the dramatic protests have occurred in what U.S.
political figures and the mass media refer to as "moderate"
countries. Each has received generous U.S. aid and military
and security coordination. During the Cold War this meant
all-too-often successful effort to physically crush the
left, trade union and progressive forces and this preserve
the unequal economic relations that serve the interests of
multinational corporations and the governing elites.
Recently they have been placated in the interest of the "war
on terror."

Last Saturday, after offering a litany of deprivation and
repression visited upon the country, the Financial Times
noted, "Despite all this, Tunisia under Mr. Ben Ali has
often been touted as a model of stability and prudent
economic management. The country opened up to foreign
investment and Mr. Ben Ali encouraged the development of a
diversified industrial base supplying European markets."

"The most imminent threat to U.S. interests in the Middle
East, however, is not war; it is revolution," a Washington
Post editor Jackson Diehl wrote last week.

Diehl went on: "The violence has already migrated to
Algeria, and Arab media are full of speculation of where the
"Tunisia scenario" will appear next: Egypt? Jordan? Libya?
All those countries are threatened by rapidly rising global
prices for food and fuel; the United Nations warned last
week of a `food price shock.' All have large numbers of
restless, unemployed youth. And all are governed by
repressive regimes that not only have refused to embrace
political reforms in the past decade but have cracked down
harder on domestic opponents since Obama took office. It's
hard not to attribute that trend at least in part to the
administration's relaxed attitude toward reform and its
reluctance to defend human rights and democracy."

The question before the Obama Administration is how to
respond to the "Jasmine Revolution' and how to move forward
with the President's promised "new beginning" in relations
with that part of the world. To do something meaningful it
must go beyond lecturing the local establishment leaders
about human rights and political plurality. It must be to
move to respond positively to the aspiration of the kids
with the rocks in the streets. It should not involve telling
the Pakistanis how to price gas.

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is
a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence
for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a
healthcare union.]

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