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Title: Short-Changed Author: Michael Schmidt Date: September 10, 2010 Language: en Topics: Egypt, democracy, Barack Obama, Zabalaza Source: Retrieved on 5th August 2021 from http://anarkismo.net/article/17512 Notes: Published in Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, Issue No.11, September 2010
US President Barack Obama’s military regime (for as commander-in-chief
of the world’s largest military machine, his is not merely a mild
“administration”), has proven once again that when it comes to American
imperialism’s dealing with the darker majority of humanity, having a
black man in the Oval Office simply doesn’t matter.
As we argued in the last edition of Zabalaza, the widespread myth that
Obama’s skin-colour automatically made him a better man was a deeply
racist argument that would be proven to be threadbare as soon as Obama
ordered the invasion of his first “country of colour” – and this
happened in under a month of his inauguration when he authorised sending
17,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.
But American imperialism is not just about the stick of armed
intervention or enforced regime-change: we must not forget the carrot of
aid, aid that can be temptingly held out, and then withdrawn if the
recipient nation is not suitably compliant.
Egypt, the most populous nation in the Arab world, and, along with
Nigeria and South Africa, one of the most economically and militarily
powerful states in Africa, has been the largest recipient of US aid
after Israel since it signed a peace accord with Israel in 1979 –
sometimes topping US$2 billion/year, US$1.3 billion of that in military
aid and between US$100 million to US$250 million in economic aid.
Ironically, under President George W Bush, the Americans gave US$45
million to “good governance” and “democratisation” programmes, with a
substantial chunk of that bypassing the state and going directly to
civil society organisations. But over the past year, Washington has
slashed this civil society aid to Egypt by more than half, down to US$20
million.
Not only that, but the strings attached to US aid have been drawn
tighter, with the bourgeois-democratic Freedom House warning that the
new rules gave the Egyptian government a de facto veto over which civil
society organisation received aid. All civil society organisations have
to be registered in Egypt, so the state now has both an administrative
and financial stranglehold on civil society. The organisations left high
and dry include the Egyptian Centre for Human Rights, the Andalus
Institute for Tolerance and Anti-violence Studies, online youth-run
Radio Horytna (Radio Our Freedom), and groups that work for the rights
of women and the disabled. As the Associated Press reported on April 18,
“Obama has moved away from his predecessor George W. Bush’s aggressive
push to democratise the regimes of the Middle East.”
And yet Obama has not reduced the steady flow of military aid to the
autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president-forlife. In
addition, on May 22, The National newspaper reported on secret
negotiations between Obama and Mubarak for an “endowment” of US$50
million which is being viewed by many in Cairo as “Mubarak’s trust fund”
– this within days of Mubarak’s regime having extended the state of
emergency under which the Egyptian people have languished for another
two years. The state of emergency was implemented in 1981, so for the
past 28 years, gatherings of the Egyptian popular classes have not been
tolerated by the authorities. It has been years since we have had
contact with the tiny Egyptian anarchist movement, centred on dissident
academics and writers, and their network is presumed to have been
repressed. Under the state of emergency laws, Egyptian civilians face
arrest and trial before military tribunals for “political” offences,
detention without trial and torture is rife, and participating in even
peaceful demonstrations is banned. Although in practice, in recent
years, the authorities have tolerated numerous strikes by workers, the
right to strike itself is restricted and the right to organise
independent unions severely curtailed.
The length of Egypt’s state of emergency has already exceeded the
19-year emergency rule of the white reactionary regime of South Korea
between 1972 and 1991 when all anarchist, communist and socialist
activities were explicitly outlawed. By comparison, South Africa’s
internationally condemned nationwide state of emergency lasted only
three years, from mid- 1986 to early 1990, and provoked a popular
insurrection that contributed to the dismantling of the racial (but not
geographic and class) aspects of apartheid and saw the reemergence of
the anarchist movement.
Amnesty International has no presence in Egypt, and only noted briefly
in its 2010 Report that Mubarak’s Egypt had been proven to be a torture
centre for suspects kidnapped by US agents in “extraordinary renditions”
under its so-called “war on terror” (one of them an innocent South
African Muslim). Egypt remains welcoming of Sudanese President Omar
al-Al Bashir, who is wanted for genocide, crimes against humanity and
war crimes by the International Criminal Court. And yet there are
increasing signs of restlessness and struggle for real democratic change
among the hard-pressed Egyptian popular classes, as the 81-year-old
Mubarak battles illness in his 29^(th) year of rule without an obvious
successor.
We support the oppressed classes of Egypt who have been short-changed by
Obama, in their demand for genuine, sweeping social reform – reform that
no matter how bourgeois, will unintentionally open up the space for
radical, directly democratic experimentation.