[Debate] Robert Fisk: Counter-revolution – the next deadly chapter

[Riaz K Tayob]

  Robert Fisk: Counter-revolution – the next deadly chapter


Robert Fisk <http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/robert-fisk> Author 
Biography

Saturday 21 April 2012


It was my old Jordanian-Palestinian chum Rami Khouri who first spotted 
what is going on in the Middle East right now: it's the 
counter-revolution. Bahrain is crushing dissent. Syria is crushing 
dissent. Mubarak's former head of intelligence, the sinister Omar 
Suleiman, is standing for president in Egypt – the cancellation of his 
candidacy last week by a dodgy "electoral committee" may well be 
overturned. Libya is at war with itself. Yemen has got its former 
dictator's sidekick back. Sixty-one dead in a battle between soldiers 
and al-Qa'ida last week – in a single day. All in all, a pretty mess.

But let me quote Khouri. "In Washington-speak, a 'crisis' is like love: 
you can define it any way you want, but you know when it happens to you. 
So a popular revolt in Bahrain for full civil rights is a crisis that 
must be crushed by force. But a revolt in Syria is a blessed event that 
deserves support. Similarly, this peculiar mindset warns against Iranian 
support to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, while accepting as perfectly 
logical and legitimate for the US and its allies to send arms and money 
to their favourite rebel groups around the region – not to mention 
attacking entire countries..."

And there you have it. As Khouri notes, there's now a new group called 
the "Security Cooperation Forum" linking the US with the Gulf 
Cooperation Council. La Clinton turned up to assure the oil states of 
Washington's "rock solid and unwavering commitment" to the GCC. Now 
where have we heard that before? Why, isn't that what Obama is always 
saying to the Israelis? And weren't Bibi Netanyahu of Israel and King 
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia the two guys who called Obama to ask him to 
save Mubarak?

And in Syria – where the Qataris and the Saudis are all too keen to send 
weapons for the rebels – things are not going very well for the 
revolution. After claiming for weeks a year ago that "armed bands" were 
attacking government forces, the bands now exist and are well and truly 
attacking Assad's legions. For many tens of thousands who were prepared 
to demonstrate peacefully – albeit at the cost of their lives – this has 
become a disaster. Syrian friends of mine call it a "tragedy". They 
blame the Gulf states for encouraging the armed uprising. "Our 
revolution was pure and clean and now it's a war," one of them said to 
me last week. I believe them.

And the violence is creeping ever closer to Lebanon. Last week's killing 
of TV cameraman Ali Shabaan has shocked the normally unflappable 
Lebanese, with even the pro-Syrian Hezbollah condemning his death – like 
the Hezbollah, of course, Shabaan was a Shia – and citizens of Lebanon 
have noted that while Syrian troops were on their border, Lebanese 
troops, at the time of the shooting, were nowhere to be seen. Pro-Syrian 
MPs in the Lebanese parliament have even blamed their own security 
authorities for Shabaan's death.

I suppose it's a rueful observation to make, but some of the early 
revolutions in the Arab world did not exactly go according to plan. A 
few days ago, the Algerians celebrated the 50th anniversary of their 
victory over the French. French television showed major documentaries on 
the fearful struggle which cost the lives of at least half a million 
people, films which could be seen in Algeria. But what have the Arabs 
got for their titanic battles? A pseudo-dictator and a corrupt elite, a 
shameful unemployment figure and enough oil to make Algeria rival Saudi 
Arabia – if the revolution had worked, that is.

Nasser's revolution wasn't exactly a roaring success – maybe Nasser was 
in personal terms, but he and his successors were awful, running Egypt 
as if it was their personal property, taking Egypt into two bloody wars 
against Israel. Now there are signs that Iraq may be helping Syrian 
rebels – just as it did under Saddam's rule, when he and President 
Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez loathed each other. And now Sunni 
militants inside Iraq have declared war on Iran – now that there are no 
more Americans to attack.

If this seems a pessimistic horizon, then so be it. I suspect that the 
Arab Awakening will still be going on after we've all died of old age. 
But eventually, I think, there will be real freedoms in the Middle East, 
yes, and dignity for all its peoples, and an astonishment among the next 
generation that their fathers and grandfathers tolerated dictators for 
so long. And they will ask what happened to missing fathers and 
grandfathers.

I say this because a brave group of women gather every day in Beirut to 
remember their loved ones – all men, Lebanese and Palestinian – who were 
taken from their homes or from the street during the long years of 
Syrian rule in Lebanon. Many who made the dismal journey to Damascus 
were offered false hope by middlemen wanting bribes but have kept their 
faith intact. The Lebanese daily L'Orient-Le Jour carries a weekly 
column on each missing man.

Samia Abdullah is waiting for her brother Imad, a 20-year-old Fatah 
fighter who disappeared in 1984. Fatme Zayat wants her sons back; they 
have been missing for 27 years. Afife Abdullah is looking for seven 
members of her family. Adele Said el-Hajj waits for her son, Ali, who 
was arrested by the Syrians in 1989. That's 23 years. The Lebanese civil 
war ended in 1990. Thousands are still missing. Last month marked the 
37th anniversary of its beginning. Some Lebanese at the time even 
claimed it was a revolution.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-counterrevolution--the-next-deadly-chapter-7665823.html

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