(en) Britain, AF Organise #83 - The Arab Spring? Could it turn into the Arab Summer?

The great expectations un leashed by the events in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in North 
Africa and the Middle East seem to have turned into an Arab Winter, with the apparent 
ending or at least hibernation of the movements that emerged there, with, in Egypt, the 
military back in the saddle. ---- But three years after the Arab Spring, the situation 
remains as explosive as ever. The uprising against the Assad regime in Syria has resulted 
in a civil war in which many thousands have been killed, injured and made homeless. In the 
region the regimes supported by Russia-Syria, Iran and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, are in 
bloody conflict with the petrol autocracies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc and with the 
Turkish state which are supported by the Western powers. ---- However, whilst the regimes 
supported by Russia are relatively united, in part because they are fighting for survival, 
the regimes supported by the West are divided and in disarray. Syria has the direct 
military support of Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and units of Iraqi Shiite 
militias.

This is apparent in the region in
particular in the conflict in Syria
and Iraq. Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates funded the
Salafist groups of the Syrian
opposition, whilst Qatar funded
the Muslim Brotherhood. This
echoes the situation in Egypt
where the Saudis supported the
crushing of the Muslim
Brotherhood government by the
military, whilst Qatar and Turkey
denounced it.

The Saudi monarchy knows that
the Muslim Brotherhood has a
republican rhetoric and wishes to
topple all the monarchies of the
region. In addition, for the
Wahhabi rulers of Saudi Arabia,
the Brotherhood presents a rival
for their hegemony over the
Sunni Muslims of the region.
Qatar has long had an enmity for
Saudi Arabia and has allied with
the Brotherhood in order to
increase its own influence in the
region. This led to worsening
relations between Saudi Arabia
and its local allies Bahrain and
the United Arab Emirates on one
hand and Qatar on the other.

Islamic State (IS)

The situation has been further
aggravated by the meteoric rise
of the Islamic State in Syria and
Iraq. In Iraq the local Al Qaida
leader Al-Baghdadi sent some of
his forces into Syria to attack the
Assad regime. These forces
became Jabhat Al-Nusra and
developed as elite forces among
the Syrian groups attacking
Assad. This all changed when Al-
Baghdadi decided to set up his
Caliphate of the Levant. This was
not condoned by the Al Qaida
leadership and its supreme head
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the heir to
Osama Bin Laden. The resulting
bloody clash between Al Nusra
and IS resulted in major losses on
both sides. This in turn led to the
birth of the mostly Salafist Syrian
Islamic Front with strong ties to
the Muslim Brotherhhod of Syria,
also in conflict with IS, and with
Al Nusra taking the side of the
Front in certain localities.

Al Qaida has always seen the USA
as its main enemy. The fact that
now IS may be creating some sort
of alliance between the US and
Iran is deeply disturbing to Al
Qaida as until now Iran, despite
being Shi?ite, was outside the US
bloc. They are also worried that
the scope for a fight against the
US will be inhibited by IS
concentrating on local fights
against the Shi?ites of Iran,
Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shi?ite
militias, and their murderous
drive against the Kurds in Syria
and Iraq. In addition, the Al Qaida
leadership, having read various
guerrilla manuals, are concerned
that the establishment of a
Caliphate in the region would
mean that it could be surrounded
and annihilated, which goes
against the strategy of a fluid
guerrilla war.

The Islamic State is an embryonic
gangster state, one based on
extortion, terror and torture. It
intends to wipe out any local
rivals, even if they see
themselves as Salafist. Hence
their hatred for Al Nusra and the
Islamic Front in Syria and for
various Islamist armed groups in
Iraq who they see as rivals in
their drive to complete
hegemony over Sunni Muslims.

Whilst US military strikes
seriously weakened Al Qaida in
terms of wiping out much of its
leadership, the dispute between
IS and Al Qaida is much more
serious and has the potentiality
to fatally cripple it, whilst the
tactics of IS in attempting to set
up a Caliphate may well lead to
defeat and annihilation.

US Aggravation of the Situation

Whilst the Islamic State is a major
threat to the masses in the
region, the development of Shiite
armed militias like the Peace
Brigades and the League of
Righteousness also pose threats.
In all of this the US role has
proved to be one of further
aggravating the situation in the
region when they armed Islamist
groupings opposed to the Assad
regime. In fact the US role in the
region has proved to be
disastrous from the beginning,
not least damaging the US itself.

The overthrow of Saddam meant
that the Sunni minority which
ruled Iraq since the fall of the
Ottoman Empire have been
marginalised, opening the way
for IS to forge an uneasy alliance
with old Baathist military and ex-
administrators and with Sunni
tribes. Meanwhile a pre-
dominantly Shiite government in
Iraq has grown closer to Iran,
itself ruled by a Shiite theocracy.
The US has emerged from the
Bush adventures weakened as
have its allies in the region, whilst
its sworn enemy, the Iranian
state, has been strengthened.

The US policy of sanctioning and
encircling Iran has been shown to
be a complete failure, with Iran
actually extending its influence in
the region. It has good relations
with the Afghan government of
Hamid Karzai whilst Iraq has
become an important market for
Iranian exports, including energy,
food and tourism. Iraq turned a
blind eye to Shiite militias going
to the aid of the Assad regime
and to Iranian aid for Assad
crossing Iraqi borders.

The economic sanctions carried
out by the USA and the EU
against Iran, whilst hitting it
economically, have not seriously
affected the regime there. China,
India, Russia and Turkey have
ignored these sanctions and have
continued to trade with Iran. By
2013 the US had to start changing
its policies towards Iran and
begin negotiating over sanctions
and Iran?s nuclear programme.

This is an indicator of the decline
of the USA as a world power. It
has had serious setbacks in
Afghanistan and Iraq on a military
level. It now has an enormous
debt, not least because of its
massively expensive military
adventures. Its economy is still in
crisis and it no longer has the
funds to maintain global
domination. An indication of this
loss of power is that the latest
Pentagon budget only envisages
a ground force of just under
500,000 troops, the lowest
since 1940.

Before the USA concentrated on
the menace of the Islamic State,
it was pre-occupied with
countering its opponents on a
world scale, and had plans on
moving its forces and resources
further East with a concentration
on eastern Asia in order to
counter China. This meant a
certain marginalisation of Saudi
Arabia, which feels itself
abandoned by its old ally, and
deeply concerned by the US?s
readiness to talk with Iran.
Similarly the US military
adventure in Afghanistan sorely
vexed both Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan, another ally of the USA,
who were well disposed towards
the Taliban.

This means that both Russia and
China have taken advantage of
the situation, both in the region
and elsewhere, as in the Ukraine
with Russian military intervention
there, and the beginnings of a
new accord between China
and India.

Unresolved Issues

The Palestinian question has still
not been answered and has
indeed been aggravated by the
recent murderous campaign in
Gaza by the Israeli state, a key
ally of the USA. The Kurdish
question, where greater
cohesion, under very painful
circumstances, is developing
between the Kurds of Syria, Iraq
and Turkey and where greater
autonomy is being called for by
the Iraqi Kurds is extremely
important for the region. The
relatively strong secularist
tradition among the Kurds is
important for the region. Conflict
could easily break out between
the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party)
based within the Turkish state,
and the ruling parties in Iraqi
Kurdistan.

We remain sceptical about the
apparent libertarian rhetoric of
the PKK but are always ready to
support any grassroots
movements for popular
assemblies, for greater
emancipation of women and
for communalisation.

The promise of the Arab Spring
of 2011 still remains unfulfilled.
There are certain signs that a
new spring may burst forth and
lead to further popular revolts
that could threaten the
militarist regimes, the monar -
chies and theocracies of the
whole region from the Atlantic to
the Gulf. Speed the day, speed
the day when all these blood-
sucking gangsters are swept
away on a tide of popular
discontent.