The insurrection in Tunisia and the future of the Arab Revolution

 

The
uprising took almost everyone by surprise, including the government. On
January 6 The Economist said confidently: "Tunisia’s troubles are
unlikely to unseat the 74-year-old president or even to jolt his model
of autocracy".  The North African nation had been seen as a haven of
stability and relative prosperity, albeit one ruled with an iron first.
For foreign investors, Tunis has been a safe place to invest and a
source of cheap labour. For the tourists it was a place to lie in the
sun and enjoy life.

But what looked like a thunderbolt form a clear blue sky had in
reality been prepared for decades. It reflected in part the worsening of
the economic situation, which has its most severe impact on people from
the lower social strata. But it also reflected something else, less
visible but more important. Revolution cannot be explained by poverty
alone, since the masses have always suffered poverty. It is a
dialectical process in which a thousand small injustices add up until
the accumulation reaches a critical point at which an explosion is
inevitable. When society reaches this point, any accident can provoke
the explosion.

In this case it was the self-immolation of a fruit vendor in the city
of Sidi Bouzid that was the spark that caused a general conflagration.
Mohamed Bouazizi, the young man who set himself on fire was, in reality,
a university graduate who, like so many others, was unable to find
suitable work. He tried to scrape a living selling fruit and vegetables,
but even that proved impossible when the police stopped him from
selling without a permit. In desperation he decided to end his life in a
dramatic gesture.  He died a few weeks later. This incident provoked a
massive wave of demonstrations and rioting.

The rising in the prices of food and other basic goods, rampant
unemployment and the lack of freedom caused the riots to spread and
become nation-wide. In addition to the poor people who started the
agitation, thousands of students and workers came onto the streets to
demonstrate their hatred of the regime. A new element in the equation is
the emergence of a large layer of educated youth who have no job
prospects. In a period when millions have access to television and
internet, when people are aware of the luxurious lifestyle of the rich,
the lack of escape from grinding poverty and unemployment becomes
increasingly unbearable.

Ben Ali and the Trabelsi clan were synonymous with corruption, huge
inequality, and political repression. Their corruption was so bad that
it provoked the indignation of the US ambassador, as we know from the
Wikileaks revelations. Starting as a protest against intolerable living
conditions, unemployment and the high cost of living, the mass movement
rapidly acquired a political character. It can be summed up in a single
slogan: Ben Ali must go!

Once the fire was lit there was no way of extinguishing it. A wave of
unrest has the country, with continuous mass demonstrations against
unemployment, food price rises and corruption. Large numbers of
unemployed graduates, frustration with lack of freedoms, the excesses of
the ruling class and anger at police brutality seem to have come
together to spark an unstoppable wave of public anger.

From repression to concession

The clashes became much more deadly on the weekend of 8-9 January,
and then spread to the capital Tunis. Shaken by the revolt on the
streets, the regime attempted to save itself by a combination of
repression and concessions. As always, the first recourse was the use of
bullets, tear gas and batons. The ferocity of the police repression
shocked even hardened western journalists. It is impossible to say how
many lost their lives in these bloody clashes, but according to human
rights organisations at least 60 people were killed.

But after a week it became evident that these methods were not
working. On the contrary, they only served to pour more petrol on the
flames. Once an entire people stands up and says “no”, no state, army or
police force in the world can stop them.

Once the masses begin to lose their fear, a dictatorial regime cannot save itself by repression alone.

At first, the President denied that the police over-reacted, saying
they were protecting public property against a small number of
"terrorists". This did nothing to pacify the protestors. All
universities and schools were closed in a bid to keep young people at
home and off the streets. This also failed. Little by little, as his
regime crumbled before his eyes, reality began to penetrate even the
thick skull of the president.

On 12 January, he sacked his interior minister and ordered the
release of all those detained during the riots. He also created a
special committee to “investigate corruption”. This is like Satan
investigating Beelzebub. He also promised to tackle the root cause of
the problem by creating an extra 300,000 jobs. But the unrest continued
and reached the centre of the capital on 13 January, despite a
night-time curfew.

Ben Ali then promised to tackling rising food prices, allow freedom
of the press and internet, and to "deepen democracy and to revitalise
pluralism". He also said he would not amend the constitution to enable
him to stand for office again in 2014. In a last desperate move to save
himself, Ben Ali appeared on television promising that the police would
no longer be allowed to fire on demonstrators and announcing a series of
reforms and concessions. It is easy to concede that which is no longer
within one’s power to preserve.

The President only ordered a halt to the shooting, when it was clear
that any further massacres by the police would provoke a mutiny in the
army even at the top level.  A French-language website reports the
existence of growing unrest in the armed forces and an open split
between the police and the army: “One of the new and important
developments early this week was the distancing of part of the army from
the regime. On Monday, a dozen soldiers stood guard in the courthouse
of Kasserine, both to prevent possible unrest inside and to protect the
lawyers, as reported by several witnesses.

There were many reports of fraternisation between the Army and the
people and in some cases of the Army protecting the demonstrations
against the police forces. This was the reason why the army was
withdrawn from the streets of the capital and replaced by the police.
When the mass demonstration reached the presidential palace the people
and the soldiers embraced.

The protests came to a head on Friday as thousands of people gathered
outside the interior ministry, a symbol of the regime. Many climbed
onto its roof. Police responded with volleys of tear-gas grenades, but
to no avail. The masses on the streets had acquired a sense of their
power, and correctly interpreted the President’s speech as a sign of
weakness. Everywhere the slogan was raised: Ben Ali must go! Ben Ali had
already promised to step down – in 2014. But this calculation proved to
be somewhat optimistic. The people on the streets demanded – and got –
his immediate resignation.

In indecent haste, the former president dissolved his government and
the country’s parliament, packed his bags and headed for the nearest
airport. Mr Ben Ali and his family left Tunisia, and are looking for a
place of asylum. But this is easier said than done. It is a sad fact of
life that when a man is successful and prosperous he has plenty of
friends, but a failure finds all doors locked against him.

President Nicolas Sarkozy politely but firmly rejected a request for
his old friend to land his plane in France. The latest reports say he
ended up in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, where he will get a more
sympathetic welcome from the members of the House of Saud, who must be
beginning to worry that they may expect a similar fate some time in the
not too distant future.

The hasty departure of the President has prepared the ground for a
manoeuvre on the top, with Washington’s anxious hand pulling the strings
from behind the scenes. As a first step, in a televised address on
Friday afternoon, Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi announced that he
would be taking over as interim president, and a state of emergency has
been declared.

Soldiers have already begun taking down the ubiquitous portraits of
Mr Ben Ali from billboards and on the walls of public buildings around
the country. The leaders hope that by removing the outward signs of
authoritarian rule, the masses will be satisfied and go home. This would
allow the same people that ruled before to retain all the levers of
power, while allowing the people the illusion that something has
changed.

To expect these people to introduce meaningful political reforms and
free and fair elections would be the height of stupidity. Mohammed
Ghannouchi is a leading member of the old regime. He is ‘Ben Ali’s man’.
He was the architect of the very same economic policies which
contributed to the present mess. He has been at the heart of the old
regime from the beginning. He cannot be trusted to act in the interests
of the people. While delivering fine speeches about democracy and
constitutionalism, he bases himself on a state of emergency, enforced by
the army and the security forces.

This is a stalling tactic by the army and the regime elite to
suppress the protests and then restore their grip on power. The reality
behind the “democratic” façade is the maintenance of the state of
emergency decree, which bans gatherings of more than three people and
imposes a night-time curfew. Security forces have been authorised to
open fire on anyone who defies these orders.

Hypocrisy of the imperialists

All this has set the alarm bells ringing in Washington, Paris and
London. The imperialists have been shocked by events that they did not
anticipate and are powerless to control. Revolutions are no respecters
of frontiers, and least of all the artificial frontiers established by
imperialism in the past that divide the living body of the Maghreb.

North Africa and the Middle East are fundamental to the economic and
strategic interest of the USA and the EU, especially France. A BBC Arab
affairs analyst, Magdi Abdelhadi, was quoted as saying: “Mr Ben Ali’s
demise may rattle the entire post-colonial order in North Africa and the
wider Arab world.” This is very true, and it goes to the heart of the
matter.

Now that the masses have overthrown the old tyrant by a heroic
uprising, the western governments are falling over themselves in their
haste to call for democracy. President Sarkozy said he stood
side-by-side with the citizens of Tunisia, his country’s former
protectorate. Nicolas Sarkozy has raised cynicism to an art form. If
there was a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, he would undoubtedly win it.

In April 28, 2008 he declared during one of his trips to Tunisia:
"Your country is engaged in the promotion of universal human rights and
fundamental freedoms …" A few months later, the IMF Managing Director
Dominique Strauss Kahn, said in Tunis in late 2008 that Tunisia, the Ben
Ali regime was "the best model for many emerging countries.”

These men cannot plead ignorance. For decades human rights have
denounced innumerable violations in Tunisia, but this did not prevent
the French President from being the first Head of State (and one of the
few) to congratulate Ben Ali after his rigged "reelection" in 2009. Now
the same man can say without even blushing: "Only dialogue can bring a
democratic and lasting solution to the current crisis".

These foxy words are intended as a trap for the unwary. The
revolutionary masses are advised to stop fighting and instead enter a
friendly dialogue – with whom? A dialogue with the same people who have
robbed and oppressed them for decades, the same hangmen whose hands are
stained red with the blood of the people. Who is the man who offers this
friendly advice? He is the man who supported the hangmen right up to
the very moment when he was overthrown by the masses. Throughout the
uprising of the people of Tunisia, Sarkozy was silent but his government
was trying to save the dictatorship.

The army fired live ammunition at unarmed people but the spokesman of
the French government, Francois Baroin, said that condemning the
crackdown would "demonstrate interference. " – as if the permanent
presence of the French army in many African countries that have nothing
remotely to do with political democracies was not interference of the
first order.

The Minister of Agriculture, Bruno Lemaire was quite open in his
defense of the Tunisian dictator. Ben Ali "is someone who is often
misjudged" but "did a lot of things," he said. We will not know what
"things" he was referring to, whether they were good or bad. What we do
know is that the French Foreign Minister, Alliot-Marie, went even
further than her colleague, offering Ben Ali the "know-how of our
security forces". Thus the “democrats” in Paris offered the dictatorship
to help suppress its own people in a country France had colonised for
73 years. Old ways die hard.

Three days after the shooting of unarmed crowds François Fillon said
he was “worried” about the "disproportionate use of violence", thus
placing victims and executioners on the same level. Following the usual
trickery, he called on all parties to exercise restraint
and to choose the path of dialogue. But nobody has ever explained how it
is possible to “choose the path of dialogue” with police who shoot at
anything that moves.

Now that the game is up, all these “democrats” are anxious to advise
the Tunisian people. And not just in Paris. Barack Obama has graciously
condemned violence against Tunisian citizens "peacefully voicing their
opinion in Tunisia". But this same man, as we know from the Wikileaks
revelations, was in full possession of all the facts concerning the
corrupt and repressive regime in Tunis and did absolutely nothing about it.

Now this same man says: "I applaud the courage and dignity of the
Tunisian people.” But he hastened to add: "I urge all parties to
maintain calm and avoid violence, and call on the Tunisian government to
respect human rights, and to hold free and fair elections in the near
future that reflect the true will and aspirations of the Tunisian
people."

The same song is being sung on all sides. It is a soothing lullaby,
and like all lullabies it is designed to send the masses back to sleep.
They are asked to be calm, and to “avoid violence.” All that is required
of the masses is that they go home quietly, “stay calm” and above all
“avoid violence”. Is it not strange that it is always the masses who are
asked to be calm, stay quiet and “avoid violence”, when it is the rich
and powerful who have a monopoly on violence, and use this monopoly to
defend their power and privileges?

People who have had to brave the bullets and truncheons of the
police, who have seen their comrades, friends and relatives, brutally
beaten, kicked, tear-gassed, arrested, tortured and murdered in cold
blood. They were even refused access to the mangled corpses of their
loved ones. Now they are advised to keep quiet, “avoid violence” and
above all get off the streets, demobilise and go home in order to allow a
gang of thieves to determine their fate. This is a joke in very bad
taste.

The revolt spreads

The eruption of popular discontent in Tunisia and neighbouring
Algeria is a nightmare for authoritarian leaders across North Africa and
the wider Arab world. The corrupt and reactionary regimes in North
Africa and the Middle East are shaking in their shoes. They fear that
the example set by the masses in Tunisia will be followed tomorrow by
the workers and peasants of other countries where the same problems
exist. That is why within a few days the revolt had expanded to the
neighbouring country of Algeria over price hikes in sugar, milk and
flour, which resulted in the death of at least five people.

Al Jazeera reported that youths were heard chanting ‘bring us sugar’
and demonstrators broke into warehouses to steal sacks of flour in
protest against food prices, which had risen between 20 and 30 percent
in the first week of January. In a bid to calm the protesters, the
Algerian government imposed urgent cuts on import duties and taxes to
help bring down food costs and states that it has now “turned the page”
on the nationwide food riots.

members of a self-defence committee

Riots in several Algerian towns subsided only after the government
promised to do whatever was necessary to protect citizens from the
rising cost of living. Libya, Morocco and Jordan have also announced
plans to ease prices of basic goods. But the situation in Algeria
remains very unstable. Let us remember that during the whole year of
2001 the southern Berber region of Algeria (Kabilia) was the scene of a
widespread insurrection. In Morocco too, the reactionary regime of King
Mohammed VI is very unstable and has many similarities to the situation
in Tunisia.

Just before Ben Ali was overthrown, columnist Abdelrahman al-Rashed
wrote in the Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper: “Much of what prevents
protest and civil disobedience is simply the psychological barrier.” The
overthrow of Ben Ali, as well as efforts in Algeria to appease anger
over price increases will have had the effect of puncturing the fear
that has long kept discontent in check across the region. Satellite news
and social media can sidestep such autocratic tactics and can quickly
fuse frustrations of young people in isolated, deprived regions into a
broad movement.

The flame of revolt is spreading to other Arab countries. The
revolutionary movement in Tunisia has been closely followed on regional
satellite television channels and the Internet across the Middle East
where high unemployment, bulging young populations, rocketing inflation
and a widening gap between rich and poor are adding fuel to the fire.

Algeria is just next door to Tunisia, but Amman is 1,500 miles
(2,500km) from Tunis, but the reason for the protesters’ anger was the
same, and so too were the calls for the leader to resign. Feeling the
ground quake under his feet, King Abdullah II ordered a reduction in
prices and taxes on some foods and fuels. The government has already
allocated £141m in the 2011 budget to subsidise bread, on which many
poor in the country of 7 million people depend. The money will also be
used to reduce the price of fuel as well as creating jobs, but it was a
case of too little and too late.

According to a report by Al Jazeera, demonstrators were seen holding
banner reading ‘Jordan is not only for the rich. Bread is a red line.
Beware of our starvation and fury’. More than 5,000 people staged
protests across Jordan in "a day of rage" to protest against escalating
food prices and unemployment on the same day as, in another part of the
Arab world, Tunisia’s president fled the north African state after weeks
of violent demonstrations.

Jordanian University students and Ba’athist party supporters also
held rallies in Irbid, Karak, Salt and Maan, demanding that the prime
minister, Samir Rifai, step down. Official reports claim that police
successfully contained the demonstrators by forming circles around them,
and no arrests were made. After seeing what happened in Tunisia the
Jordanian authorities realised that bloody clashes could turn the
protests into an insurrection.

Jordanian blog Ammon news reported that at the protest, called "the
day of rage", people chanted: "United class, united government has
sucked your blood," and waving posters with bread attached. "We are
protesting the policies of the government, high prices and repeated
taxation that made the Jordanian people revolt," Tawfiq al-Batoush, a
former head of Karak municipality, told Reuters.

A report by Tom Pfeiffer, Reuters, Saturday,
January 15, 2011 contained very interesting quotes:  “This could happen
anywhere,” said Imane, a restaurant owner in Egypt who did not want to
give her full name. “The satellite and Internet images we can see
nowadays mean people who would normally be subdued can now see others
getting what they want.”

“We are not used to something like this in this part of the world,”
said Kamal Mohsen, a 23-year-old Lebanese student. “It is bigger than a
dream in a region where people keep saying ‘what can we do?’

“Young people across the Arab world should go to the streets and do
the same. It is time that we claim our rights,” said Mohsen, the
Lebanese student. “Arab leaders should be very scared because they do
not have anything to offer their people but fear and when Tunisians win,
the fear will be broken and what happens will be contagious. It is only
a matter of time,” he added.

Of all the Arab countries, the most important is Egypt, with its
powerful working class. The concerns about its future were expressed in a
recent article in the Daily Star, a Lebanese daily:

The International Monetary Fund said that with current unemployment
rates already very high, the region needs to create close to 100 million
new jobs by 2020. But in a situation where budgets are being strained
by the soaring cost of imported food and fuel, this will be impossible,
especially in those countries lacking big energy reserves.

“There is a danger in … getting a bit too comfortable with the ‘Arab
state will muddle through’ argument,” said Stephen Cook of the U.S.
Council on Foreign Relations in a blog this week. “It may not be the
last days of … [Egypt’s President Hosni] Mubarak or any other Middle
Eastern strongman. But there is clearly something going on in the
region.”

The need for a revolutionary perspective

Bourgeois political experts console themselves with the idea that the
Tunisia’s example will not spread and unseat autocratic governments
from Rabat to Riyadh because opposition movements are weak and
demoralised. But that misses the point entirely.

The uprising in Tunisia was not organised by the opposition, which is
also weak and demoralised. It was a spontaneous uprising of the masses,
and was unstoppable precisely because there was no “responsible”
reformist organisation to lead it into safe channels. The weakness or
absence of reformist mass organisations is not a reflection of the
strength of autocratic regimes, but of weakness. Once the masses begin
to move, it will be like a car going downhill with no brakes.

As we pointed out in relation to Iran, the spontaneous character of
the movement is at the same time its strength and its weakness. In
Tunisia the masses were strong enough to overthrow a corrupt and rotten
regime. But the question is: what happens now?

"Our big problem is the lack of political perspective, "said Nizar
Amami, one of the leaders of the branch of PTT UGTT, speaking to
Mediapart on noon on Monday in Tunis. "No party has emerged; the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, the legal opposition party) is too
weak. The UGTT has taken the place of the opposition to launch slogans,
solidarity actions and so on, but as for the [political] project …
Still, the regime has been really destabilised, and that is something
really unprecedented."

Emma Murphy is a professor at the School of Government and
International Affairs at Durham University and an expert on Tunisian
affairs. She was asked by the BBC:

“Can they [the legal opposition] deliver anything more for the Tunisian people?”

She answered as follows:

We can confidently predict that in the next weeks and months an army
of “friends of democracy” will descend on Tunis: representatives of
“free” trade unions with suitcases full of dollars, men in suits from
the USA and the EU, NGOs by the dozen, the “Socialist” International,
the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and other “respectable” fronts for the
CIA, all anxious to provide advice and (for those willing to follow it)
considerable material resources. The aim of these people can be summed
up in one word: the restoration of order.

Order can be restored by different means. Counterrevolution can be
carried out in a  as well as a dictatorial guise. What Ben Ali could not
achieve by bullets and truncheons, his successors and their imperialist
backers hope to achieve through smiles and kind words, aided by dollars
and euros. However, the objective remains the same: to get the people
off the streets, to return the worker to his lathe, the peasant to his
farm, the student to his studies. What they fervently desire is a speedy
return to normality: that is to say, a speedy return to the old slavery under a new name.

Absolutely no trust can be placed in these hypocritical “democrats”.
These self-same governments backed the dictatorial regime of Zine
al-Abidine Ben Ali. Western big business made handsome profits there and
had no reason to complain at the low wages, since that was the basis
for their profits in the first place. These ladies and gentlemen
maintained a polite silence for decades about the rotten and repressive
regime in Tunis because that same regime was defending their profits.
Now that that regime has been overthrown, they suddenly find a voice to
plead for “calm”.

Events are moving with lightening speed. Even as I write these lines,
Ghannouchi has already been replaced by the speaker of the
Parliament Foued Mbazaa who is attempting to cobble together a national
unity government to call new elections in 60 days. This shows that the
regime is weak and riven with splits.

Workers and youth of Tunisia, be on your guard! What you have
conquered is the result of your own heroic struggles and sacrifices. Do
not allow what has been won with blood to be taken from you by fraud! Do
not place your trust in fine speeches and hollow promises. Trust only
your own strength, your own self-organisation, your own determination.

The idea of a “national government”, inclusive of the various legal
political parties and perhaps one or two others whom the military do not
consider a threat to the stability of the country and its relations
with important allies such as the US and the EU. This is yet another
trap. The “legal opposition” is a pack of weak, cowardly opportunists,
compromised by years of collusion with – or submission to – the Ben Ali
regime.

The people of Tunisia are not fools or little children to be lulled
to sleep by hypocritical words. They must not demobilise but, on the
contrary, step up the mobilisation, and give it an organised and
generalised expression. The remnants of the old regime must be given no
respite. These gangsters must not be allowed to re-organise a new
“democratic” version of the old regime. The time for talking is long
past. No more intrigues! Down with the government! An immediate end to
the state of emergency! For full freedom of assembly, organisation and
speech! For a revolutionary constituent assembly! For the immediate
disbanding of all repressive bodies and a people’s trial for the
murderers and torturers!

In order to achieve these demands, a nationwide general strike must
be organised. The working class is the only force that has the necessary
weight to overthrow the old regime and to rebuild society from top to
bottom. The proletariat must place itself at the head of society. This
is the only way forward. The call for a general strike has already found
an echo in sections of the UGTT. According to reports, regional general
strikes took place in several regions last week (Kasserine,
Sfax, Gabes, Kairouan and Jendouba).

In order to prepare a general strike action committees must be formed
at all levels: local, regional and national. Life itself teaches us
that the only way to get freedom and justice is through the direct
action of the masses. In Tunisia the question of power is posed point
blank. It is necessary to organise and mobilise the entire people to
bring about the decisive overthrow of the old regime.

There have been reports of widespread looting all last night. This
has been clearly organised by the police force and agent provocateurs
loyal to Ben Ali. They want to create a situation of chaos which they
hope would allow them to derail the revolution and make a comeback.
There are also reports of neighbourhood committees being set up for
self-defence.

The workers must fraternise with the soldiers who are on their side.
There should be an appeal to the ranks of the army to form soldiers’
committees to link up with the people. The workers and peasants must
obtain arms for self-defence and set up a people’s militia in every
factory, district and village to keep order and defend themselves
against bandits and counterrevolutionaries. This is crucial to the
success of the revolution.

The revival of Arab Marxism

I have no doubt that there will be “clever” people who for some
peculiar reason consider themselves to be Marxists who will say that
what is happening in Tunisia is “not a revolution”, although, truth to
tell, they cannot say what it is. In his book The Permanent Revolution,
Trotsky compares Mensheviks to an old school teacher who for many years
has given lessons on the spring. Then one morning he opens the window,
and when he is greeted by radiant sunshine and birdsong, slams the
window shut and declares these things to be a monstrous aberration of
Nature.

Genuine Marxists proceed from living reality, not lifeless schemas.
The revolution in Tunisia in many ways resembles the February revolution
in Russia in 1917. The revolution has clearly begun, but it is not
finished. It has succeeded in overthrowing the old regime, but has not
yet been able to put anything in its place. Therefore, it is possible
that the revolution may be defeated, particularly in the absence of a
genuinely revolutionary leadership.

If it had not been for the presence of the Bolshevik Party, the
February Revolution would have ended in defeat. Moreover, if it had not
been for the presence of Lenin and Trotsky, the Bolshevik Party itself
would have been incapable of playing the role that it did. The
leadership would have remained with the reformist leaders of the
soviets, and the revolution would have ended in shipwreck. If that had
occurred, there can be no doubt that the same “clever” Marxists would be
writing learned books explaining that, of course, there was no
revolution in Russia, because of a, b, c, and d.

As I was preparing this article and reading different reports on the
Internet, I happened to read a few anarchist blogs. I was interested to
see that there are “clever” people, not only among the Marxists but also
among the anarchists. The author of the aforementioned blog, complained
bitterly about the lack of support for the revolution in Tunisia
because it does not fit in with anarchist prejudices. He at least has
healthy revolutionary instincts, unlike the pedants who refuse to give
the Tunisian revolution a birth certificate because it does not fit in
with their stupid preconceptions.

For decades the idea has been carefully cultivated that there is no
basis for socialism and Marxism among the masses of the Middle East and
North Africa. Insofar as there is any opposition – so the argument goes –
it is under the banner of Islamic fundamentalism. But this argument is
false to the core and is disproved by events in Tunisia. The young women
who went onto the streets to confront the police did not wear the
burka. They are educated and intelligent people who speak good French
and English. They are not demanding the introduction of sharia law but
democratic rights and jobs.

Those so-called leftists who have been flirting with Islamic
fundamentalism display a contempt for the level of understanding of the
Arab workers and youth. To paint the fundamentalists as a revolutionary
tendency is a betrayal of the cause of socialism. The future Arab
Revolution will take place not under the black flag of Islamic
fundamentalism but under the red flag of socialism.

In the past there was a strong socialist and communist tradition in
the Arab world. But the crimes of Stalinism had their most terrible
effect in this part of the world. The mass Communist Parties in Iraq and
Sudan were destroyed by the treacherous policy of “two stages”, which
handed power on a plate to so-called “bourgeois progressives” like
Kassim and Nimeiri. This led to the annihilation of the Communist
vanguard and the consolidation of dictatorial regimes like that of
Saddam Hussein, with all that this implied for the peoples of the Middle
East.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The same is true of politics. Into the vacuum
left by the collapse of Stalinism stepped the Islamic fundamentalists,
who pose as “anti-imperialists”, despite the fact that they were
supported and financed by US imperialism to combat “communism” and fight
the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. It is sufficient to recall that Osama
bin Laden was an agent of the CIA until he quarrelled with his old
friends in Washington.

On the demonstration in Brussels this afternoon (January 15), a
comrade reported a conversation with an old Tunisian women. She asked:
“Have you seen men with long beards at the our demonstrations in
Tunisia? No! Because we do not need those people to liberate ourselves.”
The fundamentalists have always been used as a means of diverting the
masses from the socialist revolution. It is no accident that Rashid
Ghannoushi, an Islamic leader, has been allowed to come back from exile
and is now being played up in the Tunisian media. Many are saying: “we
did not kick out Ben Ali to get the Islamists!”

It is very important to stress that this is the first time that an
Arab dictator has been overthrown by the people themselves without
outside intervention. This represents a decisive break with a fatalistic
view that has unfortunately become widespread in the Arab world that
says: “yes there have been many struggles but we were always defeated”.
It is significant that on the Brussels demonstration today the main
slogan chanted was: “Yes we can!”

Regarding the impact in other countries, an activist in the movement, writing in nawaat.org,
one of the voices of the insurrection had this to say: "‎"The Tunisian
people have given a lesson to the whole world, and to those oppressed in
the Arab world in particular: expect nothing from anyone else and
everything from yourself, and overcome the fear that paralyses your will
and your energy.""

The socialist traditions are still alive and are gathering strength. A
new generation of Arab activists is growing up under conditions of
capitalist crisis. In the course of struggle they are learning fast.
What they are looking for is the ideas of Marxism. The magnificent work
of Marxy.com is
beginning to produce important results, not just in defending the ideas
and principles of Marxism, but in organising practical revolutionary
work and solidarity, as their campaign in support of the Tunisian
Revolution shows.

Yesterday evening during a on the Tunisian-based television
Nessma (the television of the Greater Maghreb) with intellectuals and
journalists the question was asked about how to get back the wealth the
Ben Ali family had robbed from the people. One journalist said: We
should nationalise the banks and all assets of the Trabelis clan. Then
one mentioned the “Tunisian spring”, and another one spontaneously added
"yes we know about that Marxist article (referring to the title of the first article on Marxy.com on the Tunisian insurrection) but we have not reached that spring yet".

This is a small anecdote, but it reveals the echo that the ideas of
Marxism are getting amongst the left in Tunisia.  What we have just
witnessed in Tunisia is nothing less than the beginnings of the Arab
Revolution, a colossal event that will change the course of world
history. From one country to another the flames of revolt will spread
from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. The revolutionary movement will
develop and mature and raise itself to the level of the tasks demanded
by history. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the masses, the forces of
Marxism will grow with them. The Arab Revolution will triumph as a
socialist revolution or it will not triumph at all.