http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1037/sc61.htm
3 - 9 March 2011
Issue No. 1037
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Learning from others' mistakes
There is a Russian proverb: only a fool learns from his own mistakes. As
Georgia's foreign minister visits his Egyptian counterpart, there are lessons
for Egypt in the colour revolutions of eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union,
notes Eric Walberg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to view caption
Students shout slogans as they demand the reopening of schools during a
demonstration at Tahrir Square
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Central to Egypt's revolution was a tiny group of Serbian activists Otpor
(resistance), who adapted nonviolent tactics in the late 1990s and successfully
forced Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to resign in 2000. Egyptian youth
in the 6 April Youth Movement even adopted their clenched fist symbol, bringing
Otpor once again into world headlines and TV screens.
It was the 2008 strike in Mahalla Al-Kubra to protest against high food prices
and low wages that brought about this unforeseen Serbian-Egyptian alliance. A
group of tech-savvy young Cairenes decided to start a Facebook group to
organise solidarity actions around the country, attracting a surprising 70,000
supporters. The results of the strike were mixed, with police attacking
strikers and killing two demonstrators, and solidarity protests quickly
dispersed.
Determined to build on their networking success, writes Tina Rosenberg in
Foreign Policy magazine, Mohamed Adel, a 20-year-old blogger and 6 April
activist, went to Belgrade in 2009 and took a week-long course in the
strategies of nonviolent revolution with Otpor veterans, who had established
the Centre for Applied Non- Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in 2003 for
just such activists. He learned how to translate "Internetworking" into street
protests, and passed on his skills to others in the 6 April Youth Movement and
Kifaya (Enough).
The rest is history. A relatively peaceful overthrow of the Egyptian regime has
made Egyptian youth the darlings of the world -- Egyptian-American scientist
Farouk El-Baz even suggested they be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The nonviolent revolutionary tactics made famous by Otpor and used to such
remarkable success by Egyptians are an outgrowth of soft power strategies
developed most famously by Mohandas Gandhi in the anticolonial struggle in the
1920-30s, and also by the US government during the Cold War to undermine the
socialist bloc; in both cases, where direct military action against the enemy
was not feasible.
Most directly relevant in the case of Otpor is Reagan's National Endowment for
Democracy (NED, 1983), which was instrumental in bringing about the collapse of
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, funding all opposition groups left and
right intent on undermining the socialist regimes. Warren Christopher,
president Bill Clinton's first secretary of state, argued, "By enlisting
international and regional institutions in the work, the US can leverage our
own limited resources and avoid the appearance of trying to dominate others."
NED's first president, Allen Weinstein, admitted that "a lot of what we do
today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
The socialist bloc collapsed just as the Internet was taking off in the early
1990s. The tactics work well in soft dictatorships which are open to Western
penetration, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost (openness) and
perestroika (restructuring) were the vehicles for introducing them in East
Europe and the Soviet Union, as the degree of repression by the state had eased
from the days of Cold War paranoia.
The techniques involved continued to be honed through the 1990s by Gene Sharp (
From Dictatorship to Democracy, 1993) dubbed oxymoronically "the Clausewitz of
nonviolence", and Robert Helvey, a former US Army colonel and defense attaché
at the US Embassy in Burma in the 1980s. Given economic stagnation (hardly
unique to dictatorships), using a combination of defiance and ridicule of an
aging autocratic regime, and seduction of a large, poorly paid, young army and
police security apparatus, the young revolutionaries are able to mobilise mass
support for change and convince the security apparatus to step aside.
Though the details are slightly different, a scenario similar to events in
Cairo in 2011 took place throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in
1989-91. In the latter case, Boris Yeltsin's charisma pushing the military to
his side after the putsch in August 1991, bringing an end to Communist Party
hegemony.
The collapse of Yugoslavia was more traumatic. It had also been blessed by a
charismatic leader Josip Tito who had used his monopoly on political power to
build a prosperous, relatively open socialist society. However, the pressures
for disintegration built after its socialist neighbours had collapsed. Financed
by the US and Germany, power-hungry ethnic leaders declared independence and
civil war ensued, with the Serbian heartland under Milosevic trying desperately
to hold together what had been a peaceful and popular union. By 1999, the
writing was on the wall -- with the West sanctioning, bombing and otherwise
subverting the rump Yugoslavia, a restless people turned against an aging
dictator, with a media-savvy core of activists the catalyst.
As did all opposition groups in the former Yugoslavia, Otpor took money from
NED, though it denied it at the time, disillusioning many Otpor members who
quit after helping to overthrow Milosevic, "feeling betrayed" according to
Rosenberg. CANVAS participates in workshops financed by the Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United Nations Development Program, and
Freedom House, an American group financed by NED.
The results of Otpor -inspired revolutions have been mixed to say the least.
Activists from Zimbabwe, Burma, Belarus and Iran -- over 50 countries -- have
taken CANVAS's training. The only attributable "successes" until Egypt were in
Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005) -- the so-called colour
revolutions, all of which have been a bitter disappointment, and along with
Serbia, clearly manipulated by the US to serve its geopolitical ends.
In the case of Georgia, a boyish 37-year-old Mikheil Saakashvili was catapulted
to power on the wave of a youth movement Kmara (Enough) modelled on Otpor,
winning the 2004 presidential elections with 97 per cent of the vote. He
invited in thousands of US and Israeli advisers, launched a disastrous war in
2008 against Russia, and quickly assumed dictatorial powers himself. Most of
the Israelis scurried home after the war, and even his US patron is balking at
supporting his plans to take on Russia again.
The Georgian opposition has been trying to oust Saakashvili ever since he
launched war against Russia, but he is using his media smarts (and beefed-up
security forces) to hold on to power, slavishly sending thousands of troops to
Iraq and Afghanistan in hopes of earning enough points to join NATO. A
fractious opposition must unite around an equally charismatic figure and future
elections must be rigorously monitored if it expects to oust him.
The rule-of-thumb is if you play your cards extremely well, you may be allowed
one Otpor -style revolution, so you better make good use of it. A second one is
hard to pull off, and if it happens, as in 2010 in Kyrgyzstan, it is more a
sign of political dysfunction than something to cheer about. And Western-style
electoral democracy rarely leads to social justice, especially when the country
in question is central to US geopolitical schemes, as is the case with both
Serbia and Egypt.
The strategy worked well for small ethnic groups wanting their own state, like
the Estonians, Slovenians and other eastern Europeans, ironically with the
exception of Serbians, who experienced severe economic hardship as a result of
their "revolution" and continue to resentment the role of Europe and the US in
their political affairs. As Egyptians massed in Tahrir Square, on 5 February,
70,000 Serbs marched in Belgrade protesting unemployment and poverty, charging
that the government (in typical democratic style, a razor-thin coalition
majority) is pursuing policies dictated by Europe. It is the NATO invasion and
the loss of Kosovo that Serbs remember with bitterness now, rather than the
dictatorship of Milosevic. Otpor tried to enter the political arena in 2003 but
got only 1.6 per cent of the vote and gave up, joining the Serbian President
Boris Tadiõ's centrist pro- Europe Democratic Party.
Egyptians should keep the experience of Russia, Serbia and the colour
revolutions in mind as they navigate the perilous waters of US-style democracy.
Interestingly, Georgia's Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze is visiting Egypt 1-2
March to share his experience in post- revolution transition -- not with the 6
April Youth Movement and the other revolutionaries, but with ex- Arab League
head Amr Moussa and Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, both intimately
connected with the Mubarak regime.
There is little to cheer Egypt's idealistic revolutionaries in such confabs or
in general in the state of politics in Georiga or any of the other colour
revolutions today. It would be a tragedy if a few years down the line,
Egyptians look back wistfully at pre-revolutionary times, as do many Serbs,
Georgians, east Europeans and Russians.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Post message: [email protected]
Subscribe : [email protected]
Unsubscribe : [email protected]
List owner : [email protected]
Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
