Shemali

بين الطائفة والطبقة: مثقف

2010-02-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

* نشر في "المنشور" عدد ١٨ - كانون ثاني ٢٠١٠

ليس من وقت بعيد، كانت الاحتجاجات على الكهرباء وعلى الغلاء تتفاقم على أبواب الضاحية الجنوبية لمدينة بيروت، معقل حزب الله. في ذلك الحين، كَثر المثقفون والمحللون والخبراء الذين أبدوا الحماسة (الفكرية) والعزم (الثقافي) والحزم (السياسي) في قراءة هذه الأمور كونها استنفار لمن هم قليلي الحضارة والثقافة، فكيف بهؤلاء الاحتجاج على انقطاع الكهرباء والغلاء المعيشي بحرق الدواليب!

نشطت أدمغة المثقفين والخبراء هؤلاء، لتشرح أن هؤلاء المحتجين يحرّكهم النَفَس الشيعي، والرغبة الحسينية، وعزم حزب الله على التقليل من هيبة الدولة! كما احتجت أدمغة مفكرة أخرى على الضرر البيئي لحرق الدواليب، واعترض آخرون على الإنفلات الأمني الذي يشجعه هؤلاء المحتجون من خلال صرخاتهم التي لا تلتزم ببروتوكلات الإحتجاج الحضارية!
لكن النقطة الأساسية التي اعتمد كلّ من هذه الأدمغة عليها، هو بالتركيز على أن هذا الإحتجاج هو تمرد طائفي وليس نتيجة لاحتدام الفروقات الطبقية. قام البعض بنعي الطبقات الاقتصادية بكونها مخبأة تحت أطنان من الطين والوحل الطائفي، والتبرير بالاعتماد على أن منطق الارتباط الطائفي هو المحرّك الأساسي لتلك الإحتجاجات.

عندها، قلنا أن هذه الإحتجاجات هي دليل على الإحتدام الطبقي الموجود فعلاً ضمن المجتمع اللبناني، وأجابنا الكثير من هؤلاء المثقفين بأن هذا الأمر غير صحيح وأنّ هذه الاحتجاجات هي ليست إلا محاولة “شيعية” للإنقلاب على النظام ولفرض أمر واقع جديد.

اليوم هذه الإحتجاجات بشكلها وصيغتها ونفَسِها تحصل في منطقة أخرى، في المنية والضنية في شمال لبنان، حيث الأغلبية السنية، يحتجون على انقطاع التيار الكهربائي أيضاً، لم يصعد بعد أي مثقف ليحلل أو ليشرح للشعب المتعطش للثقافة والتحليل السياسي لما يحصل هذا عند السنّة أيضاً!

بالطبع فإنّ صعود وتيرة هذه الإحتجاجات في مناطق مختلفة يؤكد أن هذه الثورات الموضعية ليست ذات طابع طائفي، بل هي نتيجة لتناقضات وفروقات إقتصادية، قد يسعى البعض إلى توجيهها إلى منطق طائفي، ولكن هي في صلبها تصوير لتناقض طبقي قائم في المجتمع بغضّ النظر عن الإنتماء الطائفي، وأن الإحتجاجات هذه يحددها أولاً الصراع الإقتصادي وليس “الثقافة الطائفية”.

هذا بالضبط ما عبّر عنه المتظاهرون في المنية والضنية حيث وجهوا بيانا إلى الحريري لفتوا فيه نظره إلى أن “سكان المناطق والأحياء الميسورة ينعمون بالتيار دائماً لأن لديهم مولّدات خاصة إذا انقطع التيار، بينما نحن أبناء المناطق الفقيرة والريفية نعيش تحت رحمة التقنين، فأين العدالة في تطبيق برنامج التقنين؟” (جريدة الاخبار، عدد الثلاثاء١٩ كانون الثاني ٢٠١٠).

الطبقة والطائفة
إنّ الطائفية أو السياسات الطائفية هي آليات تتبعها الطبقة الحاكمة لاحتواء الإحتدام الطبقي في وضعه ضمن قوالب طائفية، أي إنّ الطائفية ليست بحدّ ذاتها صفة تاريخية مُدمغة في البنيان الاجتماعي، بل هي في صلبها تدخّل من الطبقة الحاكمة الساعية إلى قولبة الصراع الاجتماعي في أطر طائفية. من هنا، إنّ الطائفية ليست بنية اجتماعية بحدّ ذاتها بل إنّها نتاج للتناقض ما بين البنى الفوقية والبنى التحتية للمجتمع الرأسمالي اللبناني.

فالطبقة الحاكمة المسيطرة على البنى الفوقية للمجتمع تسعى للحفاظ على قوامها وعلى سلطتها، وترى أن سلطتها تترابط موضوعياً بمصلحة النظام التي هي قيّمة عليه، أي النظام الرأسمالي/الطائفي. لذا، فإنّ أي تهديد لهذا النظام هو تهديد لسلطتها على المجتمع. ومن هنا فإنّ استمرارها بالحكم مرتبط بقدرتها على فرض»النظام» على المجتمع. فالتنافس البرجوازي القائم ما بين أقسام البرجوازية الحاكمة هو تنافس طائفي، إذ إنّ تكوّن هذه البرجوازية كان قد حصل على قوام طائفية وبشكل غير متوازن فيما بينها. الاختلال في توازن نمو البرجوازية الرأسمالية يعود الى تكوّن الرأسمالية في لبنان في القرن الثامن والتاسع عشر، وكون أن الرأسمالية اللبنانية لم تنشأ من ضمن ظروف ذاتية، بل نتجت تبعاً للتوسّع الرأسمالي الاوروبي الذي رأى أن المدخل الأسهل حينها هو في بناء الجسور مع المؤسسات الدينية، لتصوّره أن المؤسسات الدينية هي التي تستطيع فعلياً بقوّة الدين والسلطة الإلهية، فرض الانضباط على الناس حتى يدخلوا في سوق العمل. وبناء على هذا البنيان السياسي والأيديولوجي لبسط سلطة رأس المال، نشأت البرجوازية الجديدة المعتمدة بشكل أساسي، على هذه العلاقة الأساسية ما بين سلطة الدين والمال، وحقاً، لا خلاف بينهما.

نمط هذه العلاقات شجّع على تبلور العلاقات التنافسية ما بين البرجوازية الصاعدة على أساس صراع اقتصادي ولكن من ضمن أدوات سياسية وأيديولوجية تستخدم الإنتماء الديني الذي تحوّل حينها (أي عند نمو العلاقات الرأسمالية) الى انتماء طائفي.

إنّ استخدام الأدوات الطائفية هدفها نقل الصراع من مستواه الطبقي الموضوعي ضد البرجوازية إلى منطق الصراع القومي/الطائفي، بالضبط كما يبرر ديكتاتور فاشي الإستغلال الإقتصادي من أجل هدف أسمى كـ»المصلحة القومية» أو «مصلحة الامّة». فالعمال تحت هذه الديكتاتورية الفاشية، مثلاً، ليس لديهم أي سبب فعلي (موضوعي) يضعهم ضمن صراع مباشر ضد العمال من أمّة اخرى. هنا تقع صلب الحجّة البرجوازية القومية، والتي تقول أن استمرار الرفاهية الإقتصادية في الأمة يقع على مدى قدرة الأمة في تحقيق الانتصار على غيرها. لكن هذا المنطق عار عن الصحة، وإنّ ما يُعنى بالرفاه القومي هو فعلياً رفاه البرجوازية القومية، أو ما يسمّى بالبرجوازية الوطنية.

من هنا نستطيع رؤية كيف أن السياسات والأدوات الطائفية تلعب نفس هذا الدور وأن الصراع الطائفي هو فعلياً صراع اقتصادي/سياسي ما بين برجوازيات طائفية، تسعى إلى حماية نفسها من الصراع الطبقي في وضع المجتمع ككل في حالة حرب طائفية دائمة، تسعى إلى تأليب العامل الشيعي ضد العامل السني والعامل المسيحي ضد العامل المسلم، وهكذا دواليك. لكن الصورة لا تكتمل هنا، فمن خلال العيش سوياً على مدى العشرات من السنين، لم تستطع البرجوازيات الطائفية الحفاظ على النقاء الطائفي في صفوف العمال التي توظفهم من أجل إنتاج ثرواتها، بل اضطرت لأسباب ديموغرافية وإقتصادية استثمارية (اختلاف القدرة التوظيفية ما بين القطاعات الاقتصادية) موضوعية، إلى توظيف عمال من طوائف أخرى، ولكن بنسب متفاوتة، أي إن هناك برجوازيات طائفية استطاعت أن تحصر قسماً كبيراً من قدرتها التوظيفية في العمّال التابعين للطائفة نفسها، بينما برجوازيات أخرى لم تستطع. مما أدّى إلى استعمال هذه البرجوازيات أدوات طائفية تارة وأدوات وطنية قومية تارة أخرى، وهنا نرى كم هو سريع الانتقال لدى الكثير من السياسيين من المنطق الوطني (اللبناني) إلى المنطق الطائفي خلال ثوان معدودة.

إذاً، فمن الطبيعي أن تكون الدولة الحديثة/البرجوازية اللبنانية تتأرجح دوماً ما بين مصلحة البرجوازية الطائفية في فرض سلطانها على مستوى طائفي (المحاصصة) وبين مصلحتها مجتمعة (البرجوازيات الطائفية في توافقها فيما بينها) في فرض سلطتها على المجتمع ككل (أي على مستوى وطني).

هذا الواقع لا يخرج عن التعريف الماركسي لدور الدولة كما وضعه إنجلس في كتابه «أصل العائلة والملكية الخاصة والدولة»: «الدولة ليست بحال قوة مفروضة على المجتمع من خارجه. والدولة ليست كذلك «واقع الفكرة الأخلاقية»، «صورة وواقع العقل» كما يدّعي هيغل. الدولة هي نتاج المجتمع عند درجة معينة من تطوّره؛ الدولة هي إفصاح عن واقع أن هذا المجتمع قد وقع في تناقض مع ذاته لا يمكنه حلّه، وانقسامه إلى أضداد مستعصية هو عاجز عن الخلاص منها، ولكيلا تقوم هذه الأضداد، هذه الطبقات ذات المصالح الطبقية المتنافرة، بالتهام بعضها بعضاً والمجتمع في نضال عقيم، لهذا اقتضى الأمر قوة تقف في الظاهر فوق المجتمع، قوة تلطف الاصطدام وتبقيه ضمن حدود «النظام». إن هذه القوة المنبثقة عن المجتمع والتي تضع نفسها، مع ذلك، فوقه وتنفصل عنه أكثر فأكثر هي الدولة» (ص ١٧٧-١٧٨ من الطبعة الألمانية السادسة)». (http://lenin.public-archive.net/ar/L2605ar.html)

لكن دور الدولة الطبقية لا يحتّم عليها الانتظام على أسس برجوازية وطنية جامعة بل تنتظم على أسس التنافس البرجوازي القائم ما بين أقسام البرجوازية المسيطرة، وإذا لم يكن كذلك فلما الحاجة الى الانتخابات والصراع السياسي؟
بناء على ذلك نستطيع أن نرى بوضوح ماهية الاتفاقيات التوافقية/التنافسية التي من جهة تضع سلطة توافقية على المجتمع ككل، يتم ترجمته من خلال التنازلات عن مناطق نفوذ اقتصادية وأمنية معينة (سماح حزب الله لقوى الامن دخول الضاحية الجنوبية لإزالة المخالفات، تراجع الحريري عن جمهوره في ما يتعلق بتأمين التيار الكهربائي بشكل متواصل في المنية والضنية، أو مثلاً عون في تخلّيه عن موقفه الرافض لسلاح حزب الله لدى عودته من المنفى)؛ والتقاسم والتحاصص يحفظ حقّهم في التنافس البرجوازي الطائفي فيما بينهم.

نعود إلى قضية الكهرباء في المنية والضنية وكيف ردّت الطبقة الحاكمة من خلال نوابها على الموضوع. نشرت الأخبار في عددها يوم الثلاثاء ١٩ كانون الثاني ٢٠١٠ ردّ اللجنة المتابعة للقضية المؤلّفة من نواب من المعارضة والموالاة، والتي في بادئ الأمر رفضت قرار التقنين ولكن سرعان ما تراجعت عنه ولخّصت سبب تراجعها بالكلمات التالية : «ما واجهَنا به الحريري وباسيل جعلنا غير قادرين على التمسك بمطلبنا، لأن الأول طلب منا تسهيل تطبيق البرنامج كي لا يظهر أن إحدى مناطق نفوذه تعرقل انطلاقة حكومته، ما سيفتح عليه اعتراضات الآخرين، ومطالبتهم إيّاه بمعاملة مناطق أخرى بالمثل. فيما صارحَنا باسيل بأن جباية فواتير الكهرباء في المنية متدنية جداً، وأن حصول المنية وغيرها على التيار بطريقة دائمة سيؤثّر في تزويد العاصمة بحاجتها منه».

هذه الصورة ليست جامدة، لأن المصالح البرجوازية ليست بالضرورة محصورة ضمن قطب واحد في كل طائفة، كما نرى في معظم الطوائف اللبنانية، فهناك من يريد التحاصص والتوافق لكن ضمن شروط مختلفة (الفدرالية الطائفية كما يروّج لها سامي الجميّل مثلاً) وهناك من يرى أنه لا يقدر على المنافسة ضمن الأطر التمثيلية الطائفية الحالية، فيطرح إلغاء الطائفية السياسية (كنبيه بري مثلاً)، وليس إلغاء النظام الطائفي ككل لأنه بحاجة إليه لضمان الانضباط داخل الطائفة.

السؤال هنا ليس اذا ما الطبقة موجودة فعلاً، بل اذا ما كانت الطائفة موجودة فعلاً؟
إن المسألة الطائفية ليست كما تصوّرها الطبقة الحاكمة بأنها عبارة عن منطق متأصّل في النفوس، بل هي نمط أساسي في إطار بسط السلطة الرأسمالية وانعكاس للتنافس الإقتصادي/السياسي ما بين أقطاب البرجوازيات الطائفية على المجتمع، وهذا الانعكاس ليس محصوراً فقط بالسياسة أو بالإعلام بل هو أيضاً رزمة كبيرة من السياسات الاقتصادية والرشوات المشرّعة من خلال جهاز الدولة بهدف خلق علاقات اعتمادية اقتصادية واجتماعية ما بين البرجوازية الطائفية والعمال، إن كان ذلك من خلال مؤسسات الدولة (التوظيف الطائفي وتقاسم المناصب على مستوى طائفي) أو من خارجها (ضخ الأموال على أسس طائفية من خلال القطاع الخاص ومن خلال المؤسسات الدينية والخيرية). كل هذه الأساليب هي لاحتواء للناس وربط مصيرهم وترقيتهم الإقتصادية من خلال الأطر الطائفية.

لذا، فإن الطوائف ليست بنىً بحد ذاتها، بل هي مجموع العلاقات الاعتمادية والزبونية التي تستخدمها البرجوازية الحاكمة (في تحالفها مع المؤسسات الدينية، التي تكون إما خاضعة للبرجوازية أو مخضِعة لها أو على علاقة متوازنة معها) لبسط سيطرتها على الطبقة العاملة والطبقات المحرومة، وللحفاظ على سلطتها وعلى النظام الطبقي القائم.

هنا الإعتراض الأساسي على تعريف فواز طرابلسي للطوائف كونها: «بنى تخترق كل مناحي الحياة الاجتماعية وتتدخل في توزيع العمل (حصص الطوائف في الوظيفة العامة) وخدمات الدولة والموارد وتوزيع الثروة بين المناطق والفئات الاجتماعية. والطوائف بما هي شبكات محسوبية وتعبئة اجتماعية تولّد الامتيازات الصغيرة والحرمانات الصغيرة والتفاوت في الفرص وفي حظوظ الترقّي الاجتماعي من خلال الدولة (كما من خلال أدوارها المجتمعية في حقول التعليم والصحة والإحسان وسواها). لكن هذه الإمتيازات والحرمانات تتمّ جميعها داخل الإنقسامات والفوارق الطبقية الكبرى. لا بمعزل عنها. ولا هي تتمّ قطعاً بالنيابة عنها. هكذا تلعب الفروقات الطائفية ــــ الاجتماعية الصغيرة دورها في تمويه الانقسامات الطبقية الكبرى». (جريدة الاخبار، ١٩ كانون الثاني ٢٠١٠، فواز طرابلسي في ردّه على التقرير الذي نشرته «الأخبار» (١٦ كانون الثاني الجاري) عن محاضرة له تحت عنوان «هل توجد طبقات اجتماعية في لبنان؟»)

إن الطائفة لا وجود لها موضوعياً، بينما الطبقة موجودة موضوعياً لكونها نتيجة تناقضات ماديّة فعلية. أما الطائفة فيحدد وجودها تبعاً لعلاقات اعتمادية إقتصادية وسياسية واجتماعية، تنتجها سياسات ومصالح اقتصادية وسياسية. لذا فإن الطائفة ليست بنية في المجتمع، بالضبط كما شركة تجارية ما ليست بنية اجتماعية أو إقتصادية، بل هي شبكة من العلاقات التبادل الاقتصادية، وتقسِّمها كما تقسِّم الطائفة تناقضات طبقية موجودة موضوعياً.

الطائفية لا تنتهي من خلال الترميم البرجوازي، بل من خلال الثورة الاشتراكية
إن التخلّص من الطائفية لا يمكن أن يكون نتاج البرجوازية الطائفية نفسها، بل إن التخلّص منها لا يتمّ إلا من خلال تأجيج الصراع الطبقي بوجه البرجوازيات الطائفية وبوجه النظام والدولة البرجوازية ككلّ، والفصل فيما بينهما هو كالفصل ما بين القنّاص وسلاحه، إن تجريد القناص من السلاح، لن يمنعه من الإتيان بسلاح آخر، والتخلّص من القناص من دون التخلّص من السلاح لن يمنع قناصاً آخر من استعماله.

وهنا يتلازم منطق التخلّص من النظام الطائفي في صلب سيرورة بناء الثورة العمالية الاشتراكية، بالضبط كما يتلاصق مفهوم التخلّص من العنصرية مع منطق التحرر العمالي. الطائفية هي السلاح الأبرز لدى الطبقة البرجوازية الحاكمة في ضرب نمو الوعي الطبقي، لذا على اليسار الربط ما بين الصراع الطبقي والصراع ضد النظام الطائفي، وليس من خلال نشر الأوهام عن وجود برجوازية وطنية قد تستطيع أن تخلّصنا من شرّ الطائفية.

إنّ مصلحة الطبقة العاملة في تحررها من القمع والاستغلال يترتب عليها بأن تتلاحم فيما بينها (على مستوى الوعي الطبقي والسياسي) في رفضها للسياسات ونهج التفرقة الطائفية، وأن تقوم بتوجيه سخطها ضد البرجوازيات الطائفية وحلفائها من المؤسسات الدينية والدولة. إن المنطق القائل بأن الدولة البرجوازية يمكن ترميمها أو إعادة صياغتها على أسس وطنية هو منطق يسعى إلى تأخير نمو الصراع الطبقي وليس إلى تأجيجه.

التغيير لن يبدأ من خلال التراضي أو إعطاء النصائح للبرجوازية، بل بمواجهتها بشكل مباشر، ومن خلال بناء الاطر التنظيمية القادرة على تصويب تلك المواجهة، وهنا ضرورة بناء التنظيم الثوري القادر على هذه المهمة والذي يستطيع النظر إلى التناقضات الطبقية التي تنشأ ضمن شبكة العلاقات الطائفية وعلى المستوى الوطني والربط فيما بينها، إذ إنّ اندحار الطائفية داخل الطبقة العاملة، لا يتمّ إلا من خلال صراعها ضد النظام الرأسمالي القائم وضد البرجوازية الحاكمة ومن خلال الاستيلاء الثوري على السلطة السياسية حتى تندثر هذه الاخيرة (الدولة) أمام نمو قدرة الطبقة العاملة على تنظيم نفسها ضمن المجتمع الإشتراكي الجديد.

ومن يحرق الدواليب اليوم في الضاحية الجنوبية أو في المنية، أو في أية بقعة أخرى، هو من يحمل نواة السيرورة الثورية التي تستطيع ان تنهي النظام الطائفي.

باسم شيت - المنشور، عدد ١٨، كانون الثاني ٢٠١٠

Time for revolution in the Middle East

2009-02-07T01:59:00.001-08:00

In April 2008 Egypt’s interior ministry was faced with a dilemma. Should it send state security forces to Mahalla al-Kubra, the restive industrial town in the Nile Delta, or to Egypt’s border with Gaza, where it feared hungry Palestinians would attempt another breakout.

Arab rulers fear anger over Palestine will fuse with domestic discontent and lead to growing struggle. Their dilemma is bound up with the question of “permanent revolution” in the Middle East.

The notion of permanent revolution was first put forward by Karl Marx and developed by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky sought to understand how revolutions could develop in countries where the working class was still relatively small compared to the peasantry and other groups.

If workers take the lead in the fight for democratic change, land reform and against imperialist powers, the theory goes, then they could develop this fight into a challenge to capitalism itself.

If this revolutionary process spreads to other, more developed countries, where workers are more numerous, it can become “permanent”.

In the region with the biggest reserves of easily accessible good quality oil, workers often have to fight regimes backed by imperial powers. For imperialism, the stakes are high.

All the major Middle East states, with the exception of Syria and Iran, are firm allies of Western, and specifically US, imperialism. The US and its allies supply Israel with all the arms it requires to keep these states in line. It also picks up the wages bill for Egypt’s security forces – to ensure that its population of 75 million remains firmly under the boot.

But although Western leaders and multinational oil companies have benefited massively from the resources of the Middle East, the region is dramatically different today from when oil was first discovered there.

Humiliating

In 1933 the US paid a humiliatingly small sum of £30,000 to the founder of Saudi Arabia to allow US companies to pump crude oil.

Aramco was the US company originally set up for such a purpose. Today it has become Saudi Aramco and is owned by Saudi Arabia. It is the biggest oil firm in the world with the largest proven reserves and greatest productive capacity.

The oil dollars have transformed organisations such as the Kuwait Investment Authority, which manages local and global investments for the Kuwaiti state, and its equivalents in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

They are now major financial players and the Arab ruling classes are firmly integrated into global capitalism.

With this comes the fear that all could be lost if the growing anger and frustration that exists inside all Arab countries explodes. This fear is well grounded.

When Gamal Abdul Nasser took power during Egypt’s revolution in 1952, he nationalised the Suez Canal, all the major banks and insurance companies, shipping firms and 600 major industrial and commercial companies – including Shell Oil, BP and Lever Brothers (part of Unilever).

Nasser implemented major land reforms and seized the assets of 600 of the wealthiest families.

His example inspired a wave of similar revolutions that at one point even menaced Saudi Arabia – at the time an overwhelmingly rural country with a tiny working class.

The threat of Nasser and the Arab nationalist revolutions galvanised France, Britain, the US and Israel to launch a series of wars.

The first attempt to crush the Arab nationalists during the Suez Crisis in 1956 ended in humiliating failure for the imperialists. At the time it seemed anything was possible.

But Nasser and other nationalist leaders attempted to limit the scope of the revolutions. The workers that had been instrumental in toppling the old order found themselves losing out in a strategy that put “Arab unity” above all else.

The process of permanent revolution was derailed as nationalists sought to use the power of the masses, but also prevent workers taking control themselves and overthrowing capitalism in the region.

But any blow to imperialism was a threat to the Western powers.

In 1967 Israel launched its Six Day War and crushed the Arab armies. Following the defeat it became “pragmatic” for the Arab regimes to end their hostility to imperialism.

Countries like Egypt embraced the US and made peace with Israel, while Syria, which refused to do the same, faced isolation and military attack.

The war of 1967, and the subsequent war in 1973, served their purpose. The “Arab front”, as the US called it, was broken. Now came heavy repression and the transformation of the region into dictatorships.

The regimes adopted neoliberalism, and along with the concentration of oil wealth in the hands of a few families, this has left Arab societies more polarised than at any other time in their history.

A vast gulf separates the small layer of rich rulers from the mass of workers, urban poor and peasantry, whose income barely covers the basics of life.

Just a glance at the Arab rich list illustrates this. Despite losing some £16 billion in the credit crunch, the richest 50 Arab families – excluding royals and wealth from oil – have amassed a fortune of £127 billion between them.

Adding the wealth of the royal families makes the figure stratospheric. Here is just a sprinkling of royal fortunes: the Saudi king has an estimated £18 billion, the emir of the United Arab Emirates some £6.5 billion, that of Kuwait £11 billion, and Qatar’s ruler £3 billion.

Meanwhile, the size of Jordan’s entire economy, with its six million people, was a pitiful £18 billion in 2007.

But the region has undergone another transformation. Today Arab societies are overwhelmingly urban. In 1970, for example, only one in four Lebanese lived in cities. Today the ratio is reversed. The same is true of countries such as Saudi Arabia.

And although the oil industry remains fantastically profitable, it employs a tiny minority of workers across the region. The vast majority work in construction or the textile factories, or they drive trains, or sweep the roads or till the land.

The fact that workers are beginning to smart against poverty and repression, is rattling the nerves of the regimes and their Western backers.

The struggles against Israel in Palestine, and in Lebanon in 2006, cross the thin line between “politics” and “economics”. Mass struggle made its first tangible breakthrough in the fight against imperialism.

When tens of thousands of Egyptians faced down regime thugs to oppose the invasion of Iraq, and Israel’s wars on Palestine and Lebanon, they inspired workers in places such as Mahalla el-Kubra to launch their strikes.

It is a simple step to draw parallels between Mahalla citizens battling riot police and the Palestinians facing Israeli border guards in the West Bank. This parallel can be heard in the chants of the demonstrators themselves.

These demonstrations are growing in scale and intensity. Some 100,000 people took to the streets of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria on Friday of last week in an unprecedented show of force.

Riot police quietly gave way despite a ban on any protest by Egyptian authorities.

Imperialism

The Middle East has never lost its status as the “greatest material prize in history”. For this reason the West’s reliance on Israel has not diminished, as some thought it would following the US invasion of Iraq.

One of the aims of the Iraq war was to forcibly assert US hegemony. It has instead exposed its limits.

The lesson of the US debacle in Iraq is that the West needs Israel now more than ever. Oil remains the obsession of global capitalism – and it needs to keep a strong guard over it. This can be measured by the size of Israel’s armed forces – imperialism’s “facts on the ground”.

Even though Israel’s economy is half the size of Egypt’s, it can call on its arsenal of western supplied modern tanks, the most up to date warplanes, attack helicopters, warships, submarines, missiles and nuclear warheads.

This exposes as a lie any notion that Palestinian fighters, with their light arms and crude homemade rockets, are a military threat to Israel.

But if Hamas’s rockets, or those of Lebanon’s Hizbollah, have little military value, they pack a powerful political punch. They are a testament to continuing resistance in the face of a formidable military foe.

It is for this reason that these resistance organisations have such a high status among ordinary people. They have succeeded in resisting Israel’s occupation where all the Arab armies failed.

This fact was not lost on Egypt’s beleaguered foreign minister.

In response to Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s call for mass demonstrations in Egypt, the minister declared, “Let me tell you that the Egyptian armed forces are tasked with defending Egypt. If need be, they will also protect Egypt against people like you.”

The West is looking nervously at what Israel’s short-term military goals in Gaza can mean for the long term survival of the Arab regimes.

Hanging over all of them are the memories of the 1950s and 1960s. Then regimes that were seen as complicit with imperialism were swept aside by waves of revolution.

The intertwining of the struggle against imperialism and the Arab regimes makes the likelihood of permanent revolution stronger.

Many people may still have their doubts about the prospect of Arab workers making such a revolution. But the Arab regimes and their allies in the West do not share them.

Simon Assaf

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

History of Salafism

2008-06-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Since the earliest civilisations, the Arabian peninsula has been the home of nomadic pastoralists who used the camel, domesticated in about 1000 BCE, to travel from oasis to oasis in the search for pasture and water for their flocks. Over the centuries, these pastoralists traversed vast distances to trade between ancient empires, and by the 7th century CE, they established great merchant town of Mecca.

Before the advent of Islam, the Bedouin traders chief obligation was to their tribe and not wider society, with disputes between clans, tribes and merchants often degenerating into bloody feuds.

Islam, founded in 622CE, supplanted the anarchy of tribal rule with a single code of laws based on universal obligations of moral and social behaviour. In the centuries following founding of the religion, Muslim rulers built empires that were to stretch from China in the east to Spain in the west. Muslim cities became world centres of great learning, where artisans, merchants and traders could live free from the arbitrary laws of the old societies.

The rise of the Muslim empires created new centres of Islam with their capitals in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus and Granada. Mecca was to remain the spiritual home of the religion, but over time the Arabian Peninsula would slip into isolation.

The hajj pilgrimage, however, remained a point of contact with the global Muslim community. Over the centuries, waves of pilgrims brought with them many variants of Islam, often fused with pre-Islamic cultures and practices. Islam itself developed distinct schools of interpretations and, after a bloody struggle for succession, the religion split into two branches, the Sunni and the Shia. A mystical branch of the religion, known as Sufism, also gained many adherents.

In the 1740s, a religious reformer from the Najd, Sheikh Muhammad ibn Wahab (1703-91), began to denounce religious practices he considered contravened the true teachings of Islam. Ibn Wahab preached that Muslims had to return to the founding principles of the religion, and adopt the simple lifestyle of the ‘noble ancestors’, known as the Salaf.

Central to Ibn Wahab’s message was that the Tawhid, the union with god, could only be achieved by the strict acceptance of the teachings of the Koran, the Muslim holy book. The religious establishment and the Shia, who Ibn Wahab denounced as apostates, shunned this new reform movement.

Persecuted, ibn Wahab sought refuge in the oasis of Diriyya in the Najd, a province nominally under the control of the Ottoman Empire (now part of central Suadi Arabia). Ibn Wahab found a willing convert in Muhammad Ibd Saud, the ruler of Diriyya. The two men forged an alliance that would combine zealots and tribesmen into a powerful military and ideological force. Ibn Saud, his son and grandson, used the sword to spread Wahabism, and their rule, across the Arabian Peninsula.

After ibn Wahab's death in 1792, the chiefs of the al-Sauds assumed the title of Wahabi imams—political and religious figures whose rule had religious authority. The descendents of Ibn Saud and Ibn Wahab—know as the al-Sheikhs—would dominate the religious and civil authorities of future Saudi kingdoms.

Between 1744 and 1818, the Sauds conquered the Najd, seized the holy city of Mecca, and founded their first kingdom. Ibn Saud’s great camel army reached as far as the Shia holy city of Kaballa in southern Iraq, where they sacked the tomb of the Imam Hussein, the founder of the Shia branch of Islam. Meanwhile Wahabi privateers raided the merchant ships of non-believers along the Trucial Coast until the British Navy halted their activities.

The raid on Karballa and the capture of Mecca shocked the Ottoman Sultan, while the growing influence of Wahabism threatened the religious authority of the empire. Enraged by the actions of these desert raiders, the Sultan called on Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt, to crush the Wahabis and their allies. In 1819, Muhammad Ali marched his army on Dirriya and defeated the Bedouin tribes. The Saudi chief was taken in chains to the Ottoman capital and executed.

In 1824, Turki ibn Abdullah, a descendent on Ibn Saud, raised a new Bedouin army and drove the Egyptians out of the Najd. The second kingdom flourished under Turki until he was assassinated by his cousin in 1834. His murder ushered in an era of internecine fighting until Turki’s son Faisal restored their power in 1843.

Faisal ruled the Najd until his death in 1865, but his kingdom did not survive him. A rival Najdi clan, the al-Rachids, allied itself with the Ottoman Empire to depose the al-Sauds. Faisal’s heir, Abl al-Rahman, attempted to regain power in 1891, but his uprising was crushed and he fled to Kuwait.

Abd al-Rahman never realised his dream to rule the Najd, but in 1902 his 20-year-old son, Ibn Aziz al Saud (known in the West as Ibn Saud) set out with a band of 70 men for Riyadh, and according to official Saudi history, scaled the walls of the capital, ambushed the governor and declared himself the ruler of the Emirate of Najd.

In 1905, the young Ibn Saud forged an alliance with Britain, a powerful ally against the Ottoman Empire. Over the next 20 years he build a formidable army of 50,000 Wahabi warriors, known as the Ikhwan, a force to match that of his ancestor Mohammad Ibn Saud. With his army, Ibn Saud conquered province after province of the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1916, at the height of the First World War, the British-backed ruler of the Hijaz, the Hashmite Sherif Hussein, led a revolt against the Ottoman Empire. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1924, the Sherif Hussein declared himself the Caliph of Islam, a move that incensed Ibn Saud and his Wahabi warriors.

Ibn Saud launched his army on the Hijaz, and after a series of bloody battles captured Mecca, Madina, and al-Taif. The Ikhwan now had control of the holy cities, and set about destroying all manifestations of Islam that did not adhere to the doctrine of Tawhid. In January 1926, the last stronghold of the Hashemites, the port city of Jeddah, fell to Ibn Saud.

The capture of Jeddah marked the end of the era of conquest, and in agreement with Britain, Ibn Saud began to mark out the borders of his new kingdom. When Ibn Saud declared himself the ruler of the Kingdom of Hijaz and the Sultanate of Najd in the great mosque in Mecca, he laid the foundations of modern Saudi Arabia. In September 1932, the king renamed the country the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Power in the new kingdom rested on two pillars, the House of Saud and the Ulema, a religious body with authority over all aspects of social and legal life. The Ulema would colonise the ranks of lawyers, judges and civil service, and although they were free to dispense law according to the Wahabi principles, they had little influence over the kingdom’s economic and foreign policies.

The rise of the third kingdom drew little interest from the outside world until the discovery of oil in 1933. This oil would elevate Saudi Arabia from one of the poorest countries in the Middle East into the world’s largest producer of oil. This transformation was to place a strain on the founding principles of the kingdom and the alliance that brought it to power. Oil wealth, however, would also allow the Wahabi doctrine to spread across the Muslim world.

The Ikhwan Movement
The Ikhwan (Brethren) were the supporters of Ibn Saud and followers of Wahabism. They established communities, which also served as military garrisons, where they could put into practice the principles of Salaf, the simple lifestyle of the first convert of Islam.

Ibn Saud supplied the communities with seeds, tools, money and weapons. By 1915, there were more than 200 settlements of 60,000 men ready to heed Ibn Saud's call for holy war.

The Ikhwan became the dedicated striking arm of the young king. In 1921, the Ikhwan defeated the Saud’s traditional rivals the al-Rachids. Other expeditions succeeded in conquering the Asir and the Eastern Region.

The Ikhwan, however were known for their lack of discipline. Often they would raid British protectorates in defiance of Ibn Saud’s orders. One such raid on Transjordan, now the Kingdom of Jordan, was met by a devastating counterattack by the British army.

By 1927 Ibn Saud was finding it difficult to control his unruly army, and their continued raids compromised his alliance with Britain. Tensions finally spilled over into open revolt when Ibn Saud introduced the telegraph into his territories. The Ikhwan denounced the new invention as a work of the devil and rose in revolt.

With the help of the British, Ibn Saud crushed the rebellion. In 1930 the survivors were offered posts in a new military body, the White Army, that swore loyalty to the king.

Iraq: glossing over the long defeat

2008-04-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

My article, The Iraq surge: glossing over the long defeat has just been published in International Socialism journal.

"Iraq is now a different place from one year ago. We must do all we can to ensure that 2008 will bring even greater progress."1
George Bush, January 2008

During his Middle East visit in January George Bush boasted that the “surge” of 38,000 US troops had bought stability to Iraq, and that sections of the resistance were now cooperating with US forces in pacifying key parts of the country. General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, claimed attacks were down to a level “not seen since the late spring and summer of 2005”.2 The number of soldiers lost by the US fell to 24 for December 2007—the lowest since the occupation began.3 The military now boasts that it receives unprecedented cooperation and information leading to a “cascade effect”—the collapse of resistance organisations.4

The logic behind the surge was that a sustained US military offensive would break the political deadlock that has hampered attempts to stabilise the occupation. Bush listed a number of policy “benchmarks” to track this progress, including a new oil revenue sharing agreement, national reconciliation, the reintegration of former members of the old regime, and disarmament of militias.5 But the short terms successes for the surge mask deep problems for the occupation.

The insurgent offensive
The US military dismissed the small acts of resistance that began soon after the fall of Baghdad as the death throes of “regime remnants” and were confident that mass arrests would end the attacks. Instead a cycle of repression and protest galvanised growing anger at the occupation and created the conditions for the rise of the resistance.

The resistance comprised former units of the Iraqi army; small groups of fighters under the leadership of local mosques; Islamic militants drawn from across the Arab world; adherents of the ultra-puritanical and exclusive Salafi version of Islam (also known as Wahabis); fighters affiliated to nationalist political currents; and Shia community and political organisations, in particular the movement headed by the young Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The resistance had no national leadership. Instead it was the product of hundreds of independent groups, largely defined by the area they lived in. The decentralised nature of this resistance made it impossible for the US to launch an effective counter-insurgency strategy.6

In April 2004 a nationwide uprising broke out, centred on the mainly Sunni city of Fallujah and Shia areas in southern Iraq, destroying the credibility of the occupation. The battle for Fallujah was waged by a combination of Salafis and local resistance organisations. A decisive role was played by the Shia masses in Baghdad, who blocked the Iraqi army from joining the US assault on the city. In the aftermath of the April uprising attacks on coalition forces topped 2,000 a month, rising steadily over the next two years to a peak of 5,000. The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff warned that, although the most powerful army in the world was not yet broken, “it was breakable”.7

In the wake of the uprising the US conceded national elections. These were boycotted by Sunnis, but vast numbers of Shias voted under instruction from their religious leaders. The government formed after the elections drew its support exclusively from Shias and Kurds, creating conditions for a split in the resistance and the growth of sectarian divisions.8

An article in this journal three years ago warned of limits of the resistance:

"Islamist groups have played a leading role in the resistance, and it is possible for a national liberation movement to develop with an Islamist leadership, as the experience of Lebanon demonstrates. But the question of forging links of resistance across sectarian and ethnic divisions remains important, as at the moment neither Sunni nor Shia clerics in Iraq can on their own speak for a genuinely national movement. Resistance has been most successful when it has appeared as a force for national unity with a broad popular appeal, rather than as a specifically Sunni Islamist or Shia project."9

Following the elections, the US appointed John Negroponte as director of national intelligence with the aim of physically wiping out the resistance. He armed Shia sectarian forces and encouraged them to terrorise the population into submission. The Iraqi ministry of the interior was handed over to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq,10 and its militia, the Badr Brigades, launched a mass campaign of terror, known as the “war of the corpses”, which would have a profound impact on Iraqi society. It triggered the biggest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the fall of Palestine in 1948.11

The limits of the resistance became pronounced as Iraq became a battleground in several separate yet interrelated wars. In Sunni areas there was a struggle between nationalists and Salafi currents, while in Shia areas there was a fight between nationalist sectarian forces and the religious establishment. In all areas there was opposition to the occupation.

The Shia resistance
The US has claimed to be fighting a “proxy war” against Iran, which is said to be arming, training and funding Shia militias. The accusation owed more to the US obsession with Iran in the next phase in the “long war” than to any facts on the ground. The classification of the Shias as “Iranian” (Iran is a Shia Muslim state) hides deepseated complexities.

A central aim of the “surge” was to disarm “the militias”—a coded reference to Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Sadr was one of the key victors of the resistance that drove the British out of Basra and the south of Iraq. His organisation dominates large parts of Baghdad and is challenging for control over other Shia areas of the country. The biggest influence on Sadr’s brand of nationalism is Lebanon’s Hizbollah. As one of his aids put it, “We want to become Iraq’s Hizbollah. We want to show that we can defend our country from the occupying forces and provide security from internal enemies. We also want to be the main centre of social services in the country”.12 The US sees Sadr as one of the biggest impediments to the future of the occupation.

For Shia Muslims, the 2003 invasion had removed their chief tormentor, Saddam Hussein, and US troops had initially been welcomed in Shia neighbourhoods of the capital. But the honeymoon was short lived, and in the months following the invasion Shias joined the rest of the population in the protests that exploded into a national uprising. However, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq, was able to demobilise Shias in return for the US agreeing to elections. In the elections Sistani’s patronage brought together diverse Shia currents in the United Iraqi List, which emerged as the strongest force and entered into an uneasy accommodation with the occupation. Sadr, a junior cleric, gave way to Sistani. But the new government found it impossible to rule the country, and as its popularity among Shia declined, so too did Sistani’s influence.

The outbreak of sectarian fighting severely tested Sadr’s Mahdi Army. It was in danger of splintering into three pieces after the destruction of the Shia shrine at Samara in February 2006. Large sections broke away to join in the sectarian “cleansing” of Baghdad and other mixed areas, while Sadr himself withdrew from sight and was declared an enemy by sections of the resistance. This crisis showed the difficulties in maintaining an anti-occupation nationalist current defined by narrow Islamist politics. However, when the Samara shrine was attacked for a second time, Sadr re-emerged and was able to maintain control over his fighters. He ordered his ministers to resign from the government and has since attempted to rebuild the Shia-Sunni cooperation seen in the April 2004 uprising.

Sadr responded to the announcement of the “surge” by calling a ceasefire since he did not want his fighters to face a US military offensive, and this has frustrated attempts by the occupation to disband his army.

In May 2007 he called for the formation of a “reform and reconciliation project” with elements of the Sunni resistance. This marked a political break with Sistani’s United Iraqi List.13 Babak Rahimi of the University of California notes:

"Sadr’s most recent tactic is to reshape himself as a true Iraqi nationalist. He is now operating on both political and military levels, which reflects his long term strategic vision for consolidating power, especially in non-Shia regions. Sadr represents not merely a military challenge to the US presence in Iraq, but a major political one as well."14

Some of the Shia sectarian parties associated with Sistani’s list have pushed for the partition of Iraq. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and a key US ally, set out a plan for federalism that would, in effect, give his party control over large parts of Iraqi oil wealth. Al-Hakim’s plan found favour with the US who have been raising the possibility of the “soft partition” of the country.15 But for Sadr the break-up of the country is unacceptable. He draws his support from the slums of Baghdad, from Basra in the south and from rural areas around the major cities. Federalism would cut the capital adrift from the wealth of the country, formalise sectarian cleansing and launch Iraq into an endless cycle of ethnic and sectarian conflict.

The Sunni resistance
The resistance in Sunni Muslim areas comprises two broad formations: that of the nationalist groups and that associated with Al Qaida. The nationalist groups share a pan-Islamic nationalist ideology and are divided mainly by geography. Ishmael Jubouri, the leader of the Islamic Army in Iraq—one of the resistance umbrella organisations—told the Washington Post that his organisation was predominantly composed of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and some Shias. He described the organisation as “Islamic nationalist”, and claimed it was hostile to the Salafis and Al-Qaida.16

Diffuse and localised resistance began to coalesce into larger formations from 2005 to 2007. There are eight such fronts, according to Abdul Jabbar al-Kubaysi, the secretary general of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance.17 One such organisation, the Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance, is itself an alliance of six groups: the Islamic Army in Iraq, the al-Mujahideen Army, Ansar al-Sunna, the al-Fatiheen Army, the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (Jameh) and Iraqi Hamas.18 These organisations, with their extensive networks of supporters, logistics and intelligence, have engaged the occupation forces in a withering campaign of roadside bombs and ambushes, accounting for the bulk of US casualties.

The nationalist currents have combined opposition to the occupation with attempts at accommodation. An offensive in 2006 forced the US military to seek negotiations, leading to talks in Jordan. The US offered a general amnesty, a reversal of the de-Baathification programme and their de facto recognition as representatives of Sunni Iraq,19 even while continuing to denounce the resistance as “terrorists” in public. Many of Bush’s “surge benchmarks” were hammered out during these talks.

The rationale on the nationalist side for entering into negotiations was the feeling that the formation of a government dominated by sectarian Shia forces left them isolated. A spokesman for nationalist Islamic Army in Iraq told Al Jazeera: “There are two occupations in Iraq: Iran on one side through the militias which they control and through direct involvement with the national guard and the intelligence services, and the American occupation which destroys the Iraqi people”.20

The Salafi current and some nationalists denounced these negotiations as a betrayal. They were unprepared to talk to an enemy they considered on the verge of defeat, and maintained that the talks were throwing the occupation a lifeline. Yet many groups saw negotiations as a natural stage in any uprising. So the Islamic Army in Iraq said, “Al Qaida has accused the insurgent groups of desiring a truce with the Americans, and thus, obviously, they do not understand the difference between conditional negotiations and surrender”.21

The US eventually realised it could exploit the growing schism inside the resistance, drawing sections of it into a political process under the US’s control and demobilising them.

The Islamic State of Iraq
As talks gained momentum, the Salafi current seized control over Sunni areas with disastrous consequences.

Ayman al-Zawahari, the deputy leader of Al Qaida, had broadcast a message in July 2005 proclaiming that the US had lost the war in Iraq and that the resistance should prepare for the withdrawal of foreign troops. He instructed the Salafi-inspired fighters to accept the leadership of Musab al_Zaraqawi—the Jordanian born leader of Al Qaida in Iraq—and bring all other resistance organisations under their control. The Salafis then established the “Islamic State of Iraq” in the areas under their control, and began enforcing puritanical doctrines alien to Iraq’s overwhelmingly secular culture.22 They used these areas as bases to launch waves of attacks on Shia Muslims.23

The Salafi current in Middle Eastern Islam can trace its roots to Sheikh Muhammad ibn Wahab, an 18th century religious reformer in the Arabian Peninsula who denounced practices he considered to contravene the true teachings of the religion. Muslims had to return to the supposed founding principles of Islam and adopt the simple lifestyle of the “noble ancestors”. His movement attacked the Sunni religious establishment and the Shia, who ibn Wahab denounced as apostates, and was able to increase its influence through an alliance with the powerful ibn Saud, whose armies sacked the tomb of Hussein in Kaballah—one of the holiest Shia places. It is ibn Saud’s descendants who rule Saudi Arabia today and the Wahabi doctrine is Saudi Arabia’s rigidly imposed official religion. But in recent decades some of its adherents have concluded that Wahabism has become the ideological cover for growing corruption. They have attracted layers of the disenchanted Arab middle classes, urban poor and dispossessed by preaching a return to the original principles of Salafism.

Salafi anger at imperialism and corrupt local regimes has propelled the Salafis into the resistance in both Afghanistan and Iraq. However, as a doctrine that sees other interpretations of the faith as apostatasy, it also targets Shias, Sufis and non-Muslims. It frames its overtly sectarian campaign against Shias in Iraq, including deadly attacks on their mosques, markets and religious festivals, as a religious and political battle against what it perceives as a Shia government in alliance with the US.

Attacks on Shias drew harsh criticism from the mainstream sections of the resistance. The Association of Muslim Scholars, the mouthpiece of the nationalist current inside Sunni areas, aimed a stinging rebuke at al-Zaraqawi and the Salafis:

"There is no religious basis allowing you to take your revenge on the innocent while ignoring the true criminals…this only serves the most deadly wishes of our enemies—the desire to tear apart our country and to initiate a battle amongst the faithful. The threats made by al-Zaraqawi have damaged the image of the jihad and take away from the success of the jihadi resistance project in Iraq."24

This war of the Salafis against Shia “apostates” culminated in the destruction of the golden mosque in Samara (an attack that echoed the sacking of Kerballa by ibn Saud), which triggered murderous retaliation by death squads from the Badr Brigades and some elements of the Mahdi Army. Areas such as Haifa Street in Baghdad, once a key battleground between the resistance and the occupation, became a frontline between Shia and Sunni death squads. The capital was carved into a Shia east and Sunni west. Mixed neighbourhoods were torn in two. Regions around Baghdad became killing fields pitting Iraqi against Iraqi. Sunnis began to flee north and west, Shias south and east.

The waves of sectarian bombings, kidnappings and terror created a deep unease inside Sunni areas. An open fight developed when the Islamic State of Iraq attempted to take control of the mainstream nationalist resistance organisations, and by summer 2007 there was a furious battle between the nationalist and Salafi wings of the insurgency. A spokesman for one nationalist group complained that “the decline in jihadi operations against the occupier is due to the fact that they are engaged by Al Qaida” and that in the large “area of its operations” against the nationalists “Al Qaida did not target a single American, Shiite militia or the Shiite police”.25

The struggle within the Sunni insurgency culminated in the assassination of Harith Tahir al-Dari, the respected commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigades. Al-Dari was the nephew of Dr Harith Sulaiman al-Dari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars and Iraq’s most prominent Sunni cleric. The irony for the Salafis was that the 1920 Brigades had refused to join in the negotiations with the US and had been working for a truce between the warring factions.

The US moved to exploit the contradiction in Salafi strategy. Former CIA officer Michael Scheuer summed up the scale of what he called their “blunder”:

Al-Zaraqawi’s attempt to force himself into the leadership of the Iraqi insurgency, his zeal in taking credit for most resistance activities, his decision to televise the beheading of captives and his indiscriminate slaughter of Shiites, whether or not they were working for the US-backed regime, all undercut what must be regarded as the always limited potential for Shiite-Sunni cooperation after the occupation ends. Al-Zaraqawi’s actions alienated many neutral and anti-American Sunnis and led to the transitionary success of the so-called “Awakening” programmes in the Anbar Province and elsewhere.26

The occupation now discovered that thousands of resistance fighters were willing to swap sides, at least temporarily. The US could boast in the autumn of last year that Sunni organisations were fighting alongside occupation troops to crush the Islamic State of Iraq. Colonel Joseph Davidson of the 2nd Infantry Division told the Washington Post that his troops were “partnering with Sunni insurgents from the 1920 Revolution Brigades, which includes former members of ousted president Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army”.27

There was an acceleration in the formation of the Majalis al-Sawaha (the Awakening Councils) by Sunni militias to fight the Islamic State of Iraq.28 With the blessing of and funding from the US military, they became a serious challenge to the resistance and a counterweight to Sunni insurgent groups. In some areas they have developed into sectarian militias similar to the Badr Brigades.

The Salafis were in retreat across the country by the beginning of 2008. The US military claimed it had killed 2,400 Salafi fighters, captured 8,800 and pushed the rest out of Baghdad and Anbar province. In an interview with the Washington Post, one local Salafi commander admitted, “We do not deny the difficulties we are facing right now. The Americans have not defeated us, but the turnaround of the Sunnis against us had made us lose a lot and suffer very painfully”.29

However, the upbeat statements by the US have drawn a note of caution from former leading CIA agent Mike Scheuer:

"The bottom line is that even if Al Qaida in Iraq is defeated, the Iraqi insurgency—because it is authentic—will continue. In this light, current US successes—while worthwhile and to be applauded—will not be a major factor, let alone determinative, in defeating the Iraqi insurgency."30

An unstable occupation
In the heady days following the invasion the Bush administration was confident that Iraq would become a model for neoliberal economic success. Deregulation, privatisation and investment funded by rising oil production would draw in a layer of Iraqi society to act as a buffer between the US and Iraqi people. Yet most of the oil revenue was either shipped out of the country, funnelled into private accounts, or remains unspent. In January 2008 the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, admitted to Congress that the Iraqi government had only spent 4.4 percent of its reconstruction budget.31 Iraq was once considered one of the most economically and socially advanced states in the Middle East. Now it is teetering on the edge of disaster. The failure to rebuild its infrastructure, revive the economy, or provide security are all testimony to the failure of the occupation.

The invasion of Iraq was supposed to be a “cakewalk”, in the words of the now discredited neocons. Five years of occupation have seen the humiliation of the most powerful army in history, and the US has been reduced to trying to “manage the defeat” since the uprising of April 2004.

The occupation has found some comfort in the setbacks faced by the Salafis, cooperation with some former resistance forces and moves towards federalism. Yet this conceals deeper problems it continues to face. Neither the Mahdi Army nor the nationalists have been defeated, and the Iraqi government remains unstable, while the economic and social collapse has deprived the US of a layer of Iraqi society that could rule on its behalf. In this context the “surge” is a crude method to keep a lid on the resistance. Despite the proclamations of victory, the Iraq war has become a long and grinding defeat for the US. The final chapter on this occupation is yet to be written.

Notes

1: BBC News 24, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7183194.stm

2: International Herald Tribune, 30 December 2007.

3: US casualty figures are compiled by www.icasualties.org

4: “Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled”, Washington Post, 15 October 2007.

5: The full list of benchmarks is: to perform constitutional review; enact de-Baathification reform; form semi-autonomous regions; hold provincial elections; address amnesty for former insurgents; establish support for Baghdad Security Plan; ensure minority rights in Iraqi legislature; keep Iraqi Security Forces free from partisan interference; disarm militias; provide military support in Baghdad; empower Iraqi security forces; ensure impartial law enforcement; establish support for Baghdad Security Plan by the Maliki government; reduce sectarian violence; establish neighbourhood security in Baghdad; increase independence of the Iraqi security forces; implement new oil legislation; and distribute Iraqi resources equitably.

6: See Alexander and Assaf, 2005a, for more on the rise of the resistance.

7: “US Army Chief: Iraq War Has Sapped Ability To Fight Iran”, Haaretz, 22 October 2007, www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/915742.html

8: For more on the sectarian distribution of Iraqi ministries see Alexander and Assaf, 2005b.

9: Alexander and Assaf, 2005a.

10: Renamed the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council in 2007.

11: “Iraq Displacement-2007 Mid-year Review”, International Organisation for Migration, www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pid/423

12: Cited by Rahimi, 2007a.

13: Rahimi, 2007b.

14: Rahimi, 2007b.

15: “The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq”, The Brooking Institute, www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/06iraq_joseph.aspx

16: “Marines Widen Their Net South of Baghdad”, Washington Post, 28 November 2004, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16794-2004Nov27.html

17: “Iraqi Voices of Resistance”, The Brussels Tribunal, www.brusselstribunal.org/resistance.htm

18: Many had been formed out of similar alliances composed of members of the old regime. One formation declared that “22 Iraqi Resistance fighting groups had convened a unification congress in a liberated neighbourhood in Baghdad. The congress resolved to unite all the resistance groups that were in attendance at the meeting, which agreed that its aim was the total liberation of the entirety of Iraq, however long that might take. The congress resolved to create a supreme command of the Jihad and liberation struggle and it elected Iraqi president Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri [a key ally of Saddam Hussein in the 1968 coup] the supreme commander.” The statements from the nationalist current of the Iraqi resistance can be found at www.albasrah.net

19: “Iraq: Amman Talks Could Bring Political Breakthrough”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 3 November 2006, www.rferl.org

20: “Inside The Islamic Army of Iraq”, Al Jazeera, 20 November 2006, www.aljazeera.net

21: “The Islamic Army In Iraq Issues A Response To The Messages of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi”, www.alhesbah.org/v/showthread?t=119646

22: Their attempt to set up a state, or emirate, was to generate deep divisions among insurgent groups. This strategy flows directly out of the experiences of Islamists during the Algerian Civil War in the 1980s. The Salafis would impose their rule in “liberated” areas while avoiding any direct confrontation with the more powerful enemy. The state was able to contain these areas and hope that the population would eventually sue for peace or turn against the Salafis.

23: Some commentators, such as leading academic Juan Cole, maintain that this strategy was also adopted by some of the nationalist groups. For more on this go to www.juancole.com

24: Communique from the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, 15 September 2005, www.globalterroralert.com/pdf/0905/zarqawi-amsulema.pdf

25: From www.hanein.info

26: Terrorism Monitor, volume 5, issue 22, the Jamestown Foundation, www.jamestown.org

27: “Offensive Targets Al Qaida In Iraq”, Washington Post, 20 June 2007. The 1920 Revolution Brigades denied the report: “We say to the occupation and to your followers and agents that you made a very big lie in linking us with the Diyalia anti Al Qaida campaign.” The group maintains that the organisation to which the US military spokesman referred was “Iraqi Hamas”, a splinter from the 1920 Revolution Brigades.

28: One such organisation is the Al-Qassas Brigade (also known as the Revenge Brigade). This militia was formed in March 2006 during the height of the “war of the corpses”. Its primary focus was fighting Shia death squads, the Iraqi army, interior ministry troops, the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army. It rarely attacked US troops.

29: “Shift In Tactics Aims To Revive Struggling Insurgency”, Washington Post, 2 February 2008.

30: Terrorism Monitor, volume 4, issue 34, the Jamestown Foundation, www.jamestown.org

31: “GAO Questions Report on Iraq”, AP News, 15 January 2008.

References

Alexander, Anne, and Simon Assaf, 2005a, “Iraq: The Rise of the Resistance”, International Socialism 105 (winter 2005), www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=52

Alexander, Anne, and Simon Assaf, 2005b, “The Elections and the Resistance in Iraq”, International Socialism 106 (spring 2005), www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=89

Rahimi, Babak, 2007a, “Moqtada al-Sadr’s New Alliance with Tehran”, Terrorism Monitor, volume 5, issue 4 (1 March 2007), the Jamestown Foundation, www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370263

Rahimi, Babak, 2007b, “A Shiite Storm Looms on the Horizon: Sadr and SIIC Relations”, Terrorism Monitor, volume 5, issue 10 (24 May 2007), the Jamestown Foundation,
www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373425

Women were braver than a hundred men

2008-01-09T04:14:00.000-08:00

Socialist Review (UK) have feature by by Anne Alexander and Farah Koubaissy on Egyptian women and the new strike movement.

Resistance to the neoliberal policies of the Egyptian government has led to a strike wave involving thousands of workers. Anne Alexander describes how women have played a key role in the struggle and Farah Koubaissy visits a tobacco factory where one woman, Hagga Aisha, has led the strikes.

"Egypt: open for business" runs a headline on the Egyptian government's investment website. World Bank officials appear to agree. Last October they named Egypt "Top Performer in Doing Business 2008". Economic growth is strong, averaging 7 percent per year over the past three years. At the urging of the International Monetary Fund, the government began a privatisation programme in 1991 which has led to the sell-off of hundreds of state-run firms, while cuts in corporation taxes have made life easier and more profitable for both foreign and domestic investors. But behind the facade of glossy investment brochures and flashy websites there is another side to Egypt's economic "success": rampant inflation which has pushed millions of Egyptian workers to the margins of survival and led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs.

For the past year a strike wave has been rolling through Egypt's industrial heartland. Thousands of Egypt's working poor have struck back at the brutal neoliberal policies of their government — occupying their workplaces to demand the payment of overdue wages and bonuses and taking to the streets to demand the sacking of corrupt bosses and union officials. Textile workers, railway workers, tobacco packers, postal workers, teachers, even tax collectors have given voice to the growing anger of Egypt's working class.

The untold story of the past year is the crucial role of women workers in organising the biggest wave of industrial action for a generation. Women workers have emerged as rank and file trade union organisers and are playing a leading part in challenging the corrupt government-run trade union federation. Their actions have won remarkable successes — across Egypt worried state officials and managers have promised wage rises, back pay and payment of benefits.

A crucial factor in the background has been the wave of pro-democracy protests which spread across Egypt in 2005. Although there are few direct connections between the emerging workers' movement and the democracy movement, the strike wave is part of a broader pattern of mobilisation from below against Mubarak's dictatorship. Crucially, the strike has the potential to revitalise the democracy movement, as workers draw their own conclusions about the need for political change.

Lowest paid
Women make up around 20 percent of Egypt's workforce and are employed mainly in agriculture, teaching and public administration; industrial workers account for slightly less than 5 percent of the female labour force. Rates of pay are appallingly low, particularly in the textile sector, which employs large numbers of women. Egyptian weavers in the private sector can earn around £90 a month, approximately double the rates paid to their counterparts in the public sector. Women are often concentrated in the lowest-paid and least-skilled jobs. Garment workers at the Mansura-Espana factory, for example, earn as little as £11 per month. Unskilled jobs are also most likely to be filled by workers without contracts, or those on short term contracts. One recent study of the textile industry found that even in relatively large workplaces up to 65 percent of the workforce were working without contracts.

The current round of strikes began in December 2006. Workers in the state textile factory in the industrial town of Mahalla al-Kubra were waiting anxiously for their pay packets. Prime minister Ahmad Nazif, a staunch neoliberal and enthusiast for privatisation, had promised all public sector workers an annual bonus equivalent to two months pay. Disappointment quickly turned to fury as workers discovered that they had received only the standard bonus. Some 3,000 women garment workers stormed into the main spinning and weaving sheds and demanded that their male colleagues stop work. "Where are the men? Here are the women!" they chanted. Then 10,000 workers gathered in the factory courtyard and once again women were at the forefront. Strike leader Muhammad Attar later recalled, "The women almost tore apart every representative from management who came to negotiate."

Events at the Mansura-Espana garments company in the town of Talkha in the Nile Delta show how even the most vulnerable workers can find the strength to challenge the remorseless logic of neoliberal capitalism. Three quarters of the factory's 284 workers are women. Until recently workers were expected to work overtime for 14p an hour and punished with cuts in their salaries if they refused.

On 21 April this year 150 of the workforce declared a strike. Rumours were rife that the land on which the factory stood had been sold to a property developer and that the main shareholder, Egyptian United Bank, was planning to shut down the company. Fearing that they would be locked out and the factory closed, strikers took over the shop floor, sleeping between the machines at night. According to Hossam el-Hamalawy, a journalist and activist who visited the strikers in May, one manager threatened to report the women to the police on trumped-up charges of "prostitution" because they were spending the night in the company of their male colleagues. In June five women activists, Souad Mamdouh, Souad Salama, Sabreen Sabri, Hoda Said and Nermin Abbas, and their male colleague Mohsen el-Shaer were sacked and referred to the police for investigation on charges of inciting the strike.

Despite increasing pressure from the police, officials from the state-run Textile Workers Federation and management, the strikers held out for two months, only ending their occupation after an agreement was signed guaranteeing the future of the factory. Management and government officials also conceded other demands including the back payment of some unpaid bonuses, no victimisations and payment for the period of the strike.

The Mansoura-Espana factory occupation shows how even a brief taste of workers' collective power undermines the oppressive relationships which structure our society. Suddenly the previously unthinkable idea of spending nights away from home, sleeping on a factory floor with male work colleagues, became a reality. Habits of deference to abusive bosses, fear of the secret police and passive acceptance of the role of government trade union officials were all shaken to the core. As one of the strikers explained after the negotiation of a deal to save the factory, managers and state officials had also become painfully aware of the workers' collective strength: "The management now knows what we are capable of… If they don't give us the rest of our rights we will occupy the factory again."

The transforming power of workers' action is also visible in Mahalla al-Kubra. Women workers were involved at the heart of a week-long occupation of the factory in September 2007 over management's failure to implement concessions won during the December 2006 strike. In the process they have not only gained confidence in their capacity to lead resistance, but also changed the views of many of their male colleagues. As one of the male workers told journalists from the socialist newspaper Al-Ishtiraki, during the second strike, "We don't talk about 'women' and 'men' here. The women of Misr Spinning [factory] are braver than a hundred men. They are standing shoulder to shoulder with the men in the strike."

A new generation of trade union leaders
Aisha Abd-al-Aziz Abu-Samada is one of a growing layer of trade union activists who are challenging the state-run official union federations. The key organiser and spokesperson for workers in the Hennawi Tobacco factory in the Delta town of Damanhur, she is better known as Hagga Aisha — a term of respect for someone who has completed the Muslim pilgrimage.

The largely women workers at the private company face atrocious working conditions. The pace of work is relentless. Today the factory employs 350 to do the work that 1,000 did five years ago. They work long hours, starting at 8 in the morning and finishing around 6 at night, for a daily wage of 98p. The work is exhausting and unhealthy. The workers constantly inhale tobacco dust, and many suffer from respiratory diseases. Since new management took over in April 2003, the company has stopped providing plastic shoes and protective gear for the workers. Company security guards frequently harass the workers, often singling out those who stand up to management bullying.

As one of the women workers explained, "I have been working in the factory since I was 11 years old and have served 25 years with the company. Despite this they have refused to promote me or lighten my workload. There were 25 girls doing this work before, but now there are only five of us so the pressure has increased. One time I was five minutes late for work and they fined me six pounds, which is half my daily wage. I went to complain to the boss and he said, 'If you drop this issue I'll make you a supervisor.' But I refused and went to try and get justice in the courts."

In April 2003 the new managers decided to cancel the workers' social allowance and cut their annual bonus from the 85 days set down in law to 30 days. Aisha was one of a group of workers who launched a court case against the company. She also organised a number of strikes over the unpaid bonuses. As a member of the factory's union committee she began to campaign for the union to defend the workers' rights, but quickly found that the other committee members were more interested in reaching a deal with management. Aisha's persistent refusal to sign up to a shoddy compromise put her on a collision course with the rest of the union committee. She did everything she could to derail the deal. They stopped inviting her to their meetings. It was this experience which convinced her that the union committee was taking decisions which were against the interests of the workers. In March this year her fears were confirmed when the union committee signed a new collective agreement with management which settled the dispute by offering the workers a lump sum of £8 for their unpaid bonuses and allowances, when in reality they were owed between £212 and £397.

Managers and union officials probably thought that the matter was closed, but the workers had other ideas. On 4 August Hagga Aisha and a group of colleagues informed management and the union committee that unless their bonuses and allowances were paid a strike would begin the next day. The following morning around 100 workers occupied the factory, while another 100 piled into a flotilla of buses and headed off to Cairo for protests outside the Ministry of Labour and the General Federation of Trade Unions.

Hagga Aisha took on the role of spokesperson as well as organising the strike. She liaised with the media and made sure that journalists were there to hear the strikers' stories on 5 August. She arranged the transport from Damanhur to the ministry headquarters in the Cairo suburb of Madinat Nasr and led a delegation of workers to the General Federation of Trade Unions.

Bureaucrats from the General Union for Food Industries were stunned to receive a petition signed by hundreds of the workers announcing that they had withdrawn confidence from the factory union committee and demanding elections for new officials. When the strikers met the minister of labour, Aisha Abd-al-Hadi, Hagga Aisha was part of the negotiating team. She was the only member of the factory union committee who stood up for the workers' demands, despite their efforts to keep her isolated.

Leading role
Other women threw themselves enthusiastically into the strike. They gave detailed information about their complaints and demands to the media, providing documents to back up their stories. In addition they played a fantastic organisational role. They divided up responsibilities, turning up for the strike with everything they could easily carry from the larder at home — cheese, fruit juice and bread — and divided it up among the strikers who were camping out in front of the ministry. They knew that the day would be very full and food and drink would help keep the strikers' voices strong after their long, tiring journey. Even visiting journalists were not allowed to escape without sharing a hunk of cheese or a drink of mango juice, because, as one of the strikers put it, "we're all in this together".

Surprisingly, perhaps, in a country where women rarely stand up to claim all their rights, I felt that both men and women welcomed Aisha's leading role in the strike. The strikers had the greatest respect for her and considered that she was demanding the rights of all the workers — women and men. I did not perceive any division of roles on the basis of gender. I was impressed by the atmosphere of unity and cooperation between men and women workers, and by their strong sense that they faced the same conditions and shared the same struggle for justice.

When I asked Hagga Aisha whether there were tensions or divisions between men and women, she said it was a secondary issue in terms of the conditions the workers faced. Her answer to my question as to whether the members of the union committee disliked her because she was a woman was, "If I had been a man, and stood up for the workers' rights as I did, they would have treated me just the same."

The strike quickly won concessions from the minister of labour, who promised that workers' demands would be met in full. Yet the battle is far from over, as Hagga Aisha faced victimisation from both management and the government union in the aftermath of the strike. What is certain, however, is that she and thousands of women workers like her are no longer alone in their struggle for justice.

Peasant daughters and factory girls

2008-01-04T02:31:00.001-08:00

Over 100 years ago a movement among women factory workers turned Lebanese society on its head. The amiyaa (factory girl) became a bi-word for independence, militancy and the struggle for change.

The roots of this movement lay in the rise of silk industry and the development of capitalism.

Sericulture, raising silkworms to produce thread, had long been part of the lives of peasants in the region. There was an ancient cottage industry of silkworm breeding and many peasants mastered the art of teasing thread out of cocoons and combining them to produce thread.

But it was the modernisation of the industry that was to profoundly alter social relations in Lebanon. On the heals of the first global economic boom (1850-1890) the silk merchants of Lyon and Marseilles sought out new sources of raw thread.

Lebanon, then a province of the Ottoman empire, proved to be ideal. The rise in silk manufacture drew the region into the orbit of French capitalism.

Between 1836 and 1857 silk's share in the exports from Beirut port hovered around 22 percent, by 1873 it accounted for 82.5 percent of all exports. The value of the silk also rose. Researcher Akram Khater notes: "While in the 1840s the price of 1 oka (1.228 kilograms) [of raw silk] hovered around 12 piastres, by 1857 French merchants were paying 45 piastres per oka, and those prices persisted through the 1870s."

On the back of this trade a new urban class of traders, money lenders and merchants began to settle in Beirut, while in the villages a peasant family could gain some financial independence from their feudal masters by raising silk cocoons. These cocoons would be transported by donkey or mule to processing centres or directly to the port.

The rise of the loom, homespun industries and a new class of manufacturers profoundly altered class relations under the feudal system. Feudal lords found themselves in debt to silk merchants while their former peasants became independent artisans. Capitalism replaced the hoe with the loom, and the corvee (free work for the lords) gave way to wage labour.

The drive towards industry drew in European manufacturers. In 1836 the Portalis Enterprise build the first modern silk spinning mill in the region in the village of Btater. The handsome profits made by the French firm tempted others, including English and Lebanese capital, to copy their success. But it was the collapse of feudalism in many parts of Lebanon and a blight that destroyed the French silk crop in 1865 that was to herald the fundamental changes for the native industries.

Capital chased lower wages and higher productivity in the search for bigger returns on investment. The new workers in Lebanon were prepared to work longer hours and pay was low. In 1851 women were paid 1 piastre for 12-15 hour day. In comparison French women spinners received 4 piastres (French men received 8.8 piastres). French silk workers also had a long tradition of struggle, with revolts in 1744 and 1786, and general strikes in 1853, 1863 and 1867. It was tempting for factory owners to relocated to areas where there was “better labour relations.”

At first the main source of workers were the orphanages that sprung up following the civil war, then factory owners turned to the villages to supply them with labour. But this left the owners at the whim of the village chiefs who often drove hard a bargain for their daughters' labour (the elders also kept their wages). Factory owners solved the problem by employing village girls directly, and in the process created the first native working class.

It would be wrong to create an image of rural bliss before the arrival of factories, a woman’s place was low in social rank in a society that was itself highly stratified. But the idea of women staying at home was unheard of among peasants. Women would work the fields alongside men, only upper class women would be veiled or hidden in a harem. From field to workbench was not a great leap for peasant women, but for the first time factory work brought together women from different villages in common work (and into contact with men outside their families).

Textile workers represented the most downtrodden and exploited workers, most silk workers in the new factories were girls and young women under eighteen years of age, many were children. The girls, usually unmarried, often lived in dormitories near the mills. The factory work was arduous and dangerous, and long hours and heavy work took its toll on their health. Hundreds of girls would be crammed into workshops stooped over boiling pans unravelling silk cocoons or feeding the spinning machines.

In the 1890s over twelve thousand unmarried women and girls - over 23 percent of the total population of women of working age - were working outside their villages in 149 modern factories. By 1914 there were 120,000 textile workers in Syria and Lebanon.

With French machines, however, came French traditions. As early as 1840, Antoine Portalis, chief shareholder of Portalis Enterprise, dismissed four French women reelers working as instructors in the Btater factory because they were discovered to be “disseminating subversive ideas.”

Factory girls proved adept in learning the skills of class struggle and developed novel tactics to divide employers. Khater writes, “Some women, after promising to work for one factory owner, would at the last minute threaten to go to a competitor’s factory if wages were not raised.” Often women in different factories would conspire in this tactic, creating tensions among the owners who often accused each other trying to steal their rival’s workers. Another common tactic was to lower the quality of silk produced as a bargaining chip to improve work conditions (the so-called Italian strike tactic). By the 1890s women were resorting openly to strikes. This growing militancy was to quadruple their wages in a generation, achieving parity with French women workers.

The women also earned a reputation for hard-headed independence. “Are you going to behave like a factory girl?” mothers would chide their daughters, while men would be taunted by their neighbours because their daughters were “factory girls who they could not control.” The authorities at the time blamed “European vagrants and agitators” for this new found militancy. Reports circulated of mysterious French agitators wandering around the villages preaching class struggle. Whether these rumours are true or not underscore the growing fear that the former docile workers were beginning to realise the value of their labour and the power of industrial action.

Meanwhile church, mosque and state mourned the “corruption of the daughters of the village.”

The growing financial independence of wage labour transformed the lives of women. At the height of the silk boom their earnings accounted for a third of disposable income. They could raise their own dowries, educate their children, emigrate or go into business (women, for example, had a monopoly on the overcoat trade in Alleppo). The rate of marriage breakdowns rose as women used their financial independence to break free from unhappy relationships. Many saved their wages, emigrated and became pedlars in the lucrative New York and Boston markets, while others fed the growing demand for luxuries like coffee and sugar.

Their work also shaped how they saw their role in society. American social workers in the 1880s and 1890s were shocked to discover that newly emigrated Lebanese and Syrian women had no concept of their role “in the home.” Often, the official reports noted, the women would look bemused when asked why they did not keep house while the men went out to work.

This militancy, self-confidence and independence created a moral panic and a new right-wing moralism. The moralists wanted to define a new role for women as home keeper - the so-called “modern woman”. Although this idea originally emerged out of the western middle classes, it soon found Lebanese willing to preach it with all the zeal of new converts. Girls were to be taught to become “queens of the house” and look after their husbands and children. They should not work in factories, go on strike, have financial independence or sexual liberty. These moral campaigners found a ready pool of supporters among the middle classes of Beirut (and other cities).

Through the pulpits and magazines these moralists called for “family values” and “tradition”. An article in one US-based magazine, Al-Huda, defined good and bad women thus: “The good woman is one who attends to her duties and helps her mother, and as a bride makes her husband happy and her house a paradise. The bad woman is a disease of civilisation who spends her earnings on herself, wears corsets, feathers in her hat and makeup.”

Another magazine produced a plan for these women to follow in order to learn how to keep home, including what to teach their children and how to cater for the needs of their husbands. Another scorned women for such trivial pursuits such as “reading romance novels and attending parties” when they should be paying more attention to “meaningful” pursuits such as cooking and washing the children. Although this morality emerged from the middle classes, it was the working class who had to conform – middle class households had servants to perform this tedious daily tasks.

Khater writes on the influence of the Arab-American press in this campaign back home: “Using clinical terms, they [the moralists] identified women’s work as the ‘disease’ that was ‘infecting’ the communal body and simultaneously destroying ‘traditional honour’ and ‘modern morality’. In a singular turn of phrase, then, these authors collapsed women’s economic independence with sexual freedom and defied both as detrimental ... Like the Anglo-Saxon bourgeois moralists who surrounded them, the [Lebanese] authors sought then to universalise the ’true’ gender identity that derived from middle class history and sensibilities.”

These attempts to force women into the home did not go unchallenged. Women rights campaigner Julia Dimashqiya wrote in the Beirut-based New Woman magazine that a young woman “must enter society through the wide door of work,” while Dawud Naqash (one the few men to support equality) chided men for trying to drive working women into the “idleness of the house.” New girls schools were also set up to teach this morality, leading one equality campaigner, Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad, to complain in Minerva magazine that “the purpose behind educating a girl should not be limited to teaching them how to be a wife unless we teach the boy in school how to become a husband.”

Underscoring all the debates lay the factory girl as the antithesis of a dutiful daughter or wife. And their militancy was infectious. In 1913 women tobacco workers in Beirut struck for, and won, 15 months wages for 12 months work, improvement in working conditions, paid holidays, and better health provisions – an exceptional victory even by modern standards. The struggle for equality became tangled with the struggle of working women for change.

The struggles of factory girls hold many lessons for women today, the most important being that women must return to their real traditional roles: leading the struggle for change.

Sources:
Khater, Akram Fouad : Inventing Home. University of California Press
Quataert, Donald: Textile Workers in the Ottoman Empire, 1650-1922. Binghamton University, State University of New York

AUB Guerrilla University

2007-09-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

1970 “Guerrilla U” -Newsweek Magazine
According to a reporter, “Politics at AUB today is tied directly to the Palestinian guerrilla movement… The aggressive young men and women who spring from AUB appear torn between admiration for their American-Style education and distrust of the country that offers it.

‘Of course we reject American foreign policy and the capitalist mentality of most Americans,’ an AUB student who doubles as a guerrilla group leader said recently. ‘But we have also learned to respect a culture that gives rebels even the right to think and say what they want. If there should be a Palestinian state run by us, it would be anti-imperialist, anti-Washington and anti-bourgeois. But I don’t believe it would be truly anti-American.’”

1971: The 28 day sit-in:
Excerpts: Day to Day Rundown of Developments

Monday 10 May
The three-man Student Affairs Committee (composed of Committee Chairman Elie Salem, Provost Samir Thabet and Dean of Students Robert Najemy) reveals to 15 student representatives…that the Administration has decided to raise tuition fees by 10 per cent starting with the academic years subsequent to 1971-72.

Tuesday 11 May
The Student Council holds its weekly meeting in West Hall and takes a unanimous decision late in the evening to issue a statement Wednesday, May 12, calling for an open strike starting Thursday, May 13, to protest the unilateral and surprise decision of the Administration.

Wednesday 12 May
The Student Council issues a statement protesting the 10 percent increase tuition fees to be effective next semester… The Student Council statement goes on to call for an open strike starting Thursday, May 13 until the President of this University comes out with a clear cut statement in which he:

1. Declares the cancellation of the 10 percent increase in tuition fees.
2. Announces his readiness to negotiate with the Student Council the possibility of reasonable decreases in the current tuition fees.
3. Declares his acceptance of the Student Council demands to investigate the books of the University at the Comptroller’s Office to see whether there are reasonable grounds for decrease in current tuition fees.

Thursday 13 May
AUB students start the open strike by abstaining from classes. Busloads of Squad 16 policemen remain parked off campus for the whole day. Tight security measures stall University entrances filter students, faculty and members of the Administration and non-academic staff only into campus. Others are prevented from coming in…

Friday 14 May
Scores of students congregate outside West Hall at 10 a.m. on this second day of strike and march on to College Hall where they stage a two-hour sit-in…The sit-in at College Hall, where most of the Administration offices are found, is seen as an escalation of the open strike, the students close the doors of College Hall thus making it impossible for members of the administration to enter or to leave the building…

[Speaking on behalf of the Student Council, Bassam] Diab goes on to say in the name of the Student Council: ‘…the intended increases would have adverse effects on economic and social conditions in Lebanon – they would increase obstacles for the lower and middle income groups to join the university and would accelerate the rise in cost of living in Lebanon.’

Saturday 15 May
The strike enters its third day running without incident. The ‘Voice of the Students’ broadcasts from West Hall statements calling for reversal of the Administration decision.”
Academic Program Is Suspended…
Following ‘No Vote’ to Proposals and Occupation of Jessup, Fisk Halls, Including Office of the Dean; Maher Masri: ‘It’s Just What We Expected!’”

Excerpts:
President Samuel B. Kirkwood suspended last night the AUB academic program for the year 1970-71. His move, according to Student Council President Maher Masri, was ‘just what the students expected.’

It came a few hours after the students had embarked on their ‘creeping occupation’ by midnight of Jessup and Fisk Halls, including the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences…

‘In Jessup Hall,’ said Masri, ‘the office of the dean has become the office of the students.’

As of Wednesday morning all of the medical students from the first, second, third and fourth years will go on strike.

11 October1971: Proving our mettle
Letter to Studentsfrom the Student Council

The Administration has been able to describe the strike and its underlying motivations as ‘political’ in nature. Some administrators claimed the strike was part of the tug-of-war on campus between the Right and the Left. Others associated it with the movement to liberate Palestine. Some administrators referred to it as a Zionist-inspired plot to close down the University. Others passed the word that it was directed against the AUB workers and tourism in Lebanon…etc.

We, the students, were able to prove our mettle throughout the 28-day strike and as recently as last Saturday, October 9, when we turned the NSP ( Nutrition Science Program) Farm Trip into a demonstration of solidarity with our 22 colleagues who have been suspended from the University.

In recent days, we expressed our dismay over the reprisal measures taken by the Administration to suffocate the voice of the students through the display of posters; the organization of fund drives and sessions of the Speaker’s Corner; the endorsement of an appeal for reintegration of the suspended students by over 1,200 of their colleagues; the rendition of ‘strike songs’ such as ‘We Ahall [sic] Overcome’ and ‘O Freedom’ at the Hangout Party and the Farm Trip; and the financing of LOOKOUT…etc.

Student participation in the University’s educational and administrative affairs should become part of the students’ education. Needless to say that student participation should be built on the premise of freedom and democracy.

Lebanon 1971-72

2007-09-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

Student Protests and the Coming Crisis in Lebanon (Merip 1973)

by Samih Farsoun

Introduction
In 1971 students at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon went on strike, occupied university buildings, and clashed with rightist students and police. This activity was triggered by the university administration's announcement of a 10% increase In tuition fees.

Student demands included rescinding the tuition increase but quickly widened to incorporate demands dealing with political and civil rights. In the same year, students in the state-funded Lebanese University (LU) also went on strike and marched In demonstrations, making similar political demands and stressing the liberalization of the university. They, too, clashed with government security forces.

In 1972 students of the Lebanese University once again went on strike, this time for 50 days. During the strike the students held rallies, discussions and demonstrations. They pasted their demands and pictures of their clashes with police over those of candidates for election to Lebanon's parliament.

They occupied and barricaded themselves in the building of the Ministry of Education. They clashed again with government security forces, and suffered many wounded.

In their demands and in their militant actions the students were supported and joined by secondary school students, vocational school, students and teachers' school students in Beirut, Tripoli and Jounieh. These students also occupied their respective administration buildings and clashed with the police.

Following the suppression by government security forces using tanks and armored cars, workers and members of leftist, communist and Arab nationalist parties joined in a demonstration in April 1972 estimated at 20,000 people to protest the government actions.

During the last quarter of 1972, increasing labor unrest and strikes led to government suppression, notably against the strikers of the Ghandour Company, (1) resulting in the death and Injury of several workers. Others were dismissed from their jobs and prosecuted by the government. (2)

Beirut Arab University (BAU) students joined workers' organizations, left-of-center parties and other progressive students to protest government oppression and demand political and civil rights.

A rally of 12,000 persons heard the president of the BAU student union call on the government "to desist encroaching on the democratic freedoms [and) the freedom of action of the Palestinian resistance." In February 1973 BAU students and others held demonstratIons In support of the actions of Egyptian students. (3)

While the number of students involved in the February actions was small, it increased dramatically with the mass protests that followed the April 10 Israeli attack on Fatah leaders in Beirut. This increase has continued in response to the Lebanese army crackdown on the Palestinian resistance organizations.

The demands of the students included some specific to their academic endeavors and others of a more general nature. For example, in addition to calling for support of the Palestinian resistance movement and for Lebanese mobilization for defense against Israel, the students demanded that university graduates be guaranteed work and that the government take steps for the development of Lebanon's agricultural and industrial sectors and not just services and tourism.

They have also called for a genuine national university with a full-fledged technical program, state grants and scholarships for students from lower class backgrounds, and the Arabization of the academic programs so that persons from the working classes will not be at a disadvantage in not knowing French or English.

The implications of the specific academic demands in combination with the more general social and political ones represent a significant challenge to the socio-economic and political policy of Lebanon's government and to Lebanon's political-economic establishment. They are revolutionary demands which if implemented would begin to bring about fundamental changes in Lebanese society.

These student activists, while they do not form a Leninist revolutionary vanguard, do seem to be constructing a militant leftist movement in support of the Palestinian resistance movement and in sympathy with the exploited workers and peasants, especially those in southern Lebanon who live under constant threat of Israeli reprisals and terror.

Current student political activism in Lebanon, as well as in other Arab countries, has some features in common with the student movement there in the fifties. The most prominent similarity is the strongly nationalist and anti-imperialist character of the movement. During the heyday of the pan Arab struggle led by Nasser, the students in Lebanon participated prominently in the fight to keep Lebanon out of the America n-sp on sore d Baghdad Pact (now known as CENTO).

The differences of the current movement with that of the fifties are perhaps more Important than the similarities. The current activists are much more clearly In opposition to incumbent governments and ruling classes. Moreover, they are not directly linked to or controlled by established political parties as was often the case during the period of struggle against colonial rule.

Today Lebanon, like many Arab countries, has a political leadership nominally committed to economic development and national independence. The educational system Itself has been greatly expanded in the last two decades, largely In response to popular demand. Why, after nearly fifteen years of relative calm, has student activism re-emerged in Lebanon? What are the underlying causes of this activism?

The thesis proposed, here is that the current prevailing political, economic and cultural conditions in Lebanon and the region which have, more than ever before, exposed the contradictory interests of the ruling classes and the masses, are the underlying causes of the student upheaval.

These condition are the determinants of the student movement's general political orientation and its specific student demands. In addition, the educational system itself embodies and reflects many of these contradictions and contributes directly to this activism.

Lebanon's Economic Conditions
Lebanon experienced a general economic boom after World War II which came to an end in 1966-7, with the crash of Lebanon's largest bank, Intra, and the June War of 1967. This economic boom had been a result of two external factors which circumscribe Lebanon's regional role.

The first was the loss of Palestine and the closure of the port of Haifa to import and oil trade with the Arab hinterland to the east, and the redirecting of that trade through Beirut. Disrupted by the 1967 war, this function may be recovering. As a contributor to the Lebanese economy, however, its future is not promising. According to- a United Nations economic study of Lebanon:

“Revenue from transit Is not likely to increase much In the future, as neighboring countries are In the process of Increasing the handling capacity of their seaports by extensive construction and are Improving their means of land transportation. Syria Is building a seaport In Tartous, with handling capacity which exceeds that In Latakia; It Is also Improving Its road network and Is building a railway that may ultimately serve transit shipments to Iraq.

“Similarly, Iraq Is planning to Increase the handling capacity of the seaport of Basrah. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates are planning to build or expand their seaports, or both. Jordan has ambitious plans for Aqaba.” (4)

The second main source of the boom has been the development of the oil regions of the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf. Vast capital from the oil areas found its way into banks in Lebanon and into real estate Investments in Beirut. This oil boom in the Arab hinterland also became the basis of a lucrative market which Lebanese merchants and middlemen exploited.

These same Arabian oil-based markets created a demand for technical and professional services which Lebanese citizens and other inhabitants of Lebanon (namely Palestinians and Egyptian and Syrian émigrés) catered to.

Additionally, those same markets generated a demand for skilled workers many of whom migrated there to earn double and triple the incomes they generally make in their home countries. This same oil wealth helped expand enormously the summer resort Industry of Mount Lebanon as thousands of desert Arabs came to spend the hot summer months in the country.

Most important of all has been the vast capital inflow which created a strong dynamism in the banking sector, a fact which contributed to the boom In the rest of the economy too. This activity finally came to a halt with the crash of Lebanon's largest bank (Bank Intra, which reputedly owned or controlled at that time over 20% of all Lebanese economic interests) and the war of 1967. These two serious disruptions caused the flight of millions of dollars from Lebanon to European and United States banks. (5)

This, according to Azhari, Secretary of the Association of Banks, signalled the end of the laissez faire economic system of Lebanon. In fact, Arab oil capital is increasingly bypassing Lebanon altogether for placement in Europe and the United States.

A United Nations study notes 'the increased business acumen of investors from the Gulf States has led to diversification of capital flows at the expense of Lebanon." (6) It should be added that the competitive European and United States banking interests are now establishing branches directly at the source of oil-based capital, especially in Bahrain.

The lucrative markets of the Arabian peninsula and Gulf are becoming saturated, requiring less Lebanese middleman activity, and their governments have begun erecting various barriers against the economic activity of foreigners, including Lebanese and Palestinians.

Ever since the 1966-1967 period Lebanon has been experiencing an economic slowdown alarming enough to the government that it has earnestly initiated studies, with the help of the United Nations, concerning the feasibility of national economic development planning. Symptoms of the economic slowdown are many.

For example, Azhari reports that the volume of transactions on the Beirut stock exchange have declined drastically and progressively : from L.L. 28.9 m in 1965 to L.L. 4.7 m in 1968. (7) Capital investments in corporations declined from L.L. 304 millions in 1965 to L.L. 170 millions in 1966, L.L. 120 millions in 1967 and L.L. 49 millions in 1968. (8)

Even the export of agricultural products to the Arab oil-based markets, important in the overall balance of payments, seems to be heading for a slowdown. (9) In addition, a rapidly increasing trade and balance of payment deficit has been building up. (10) Currently, 1973, Lebanese financiers and Western bankers note that there are no investment opportunities in Lebanon.

Capital in Lebanese banks is increasingly exported to Western banking and monetary institutions as well as lent to other governments such as Algeria. (11) Thus, while there seem to be indications of some current resurgence in oil-based capital deposits in Lebanon, this capital seems to be leaving the country partly because of no investment opportunities.

Large loans have been made recently by Lebanese bankers to countries like India and Algeria, and even the World Bank. World Bank President Robert McNamara visited Lebanon recently to encourage this trend.

The lack of Investment opportunities and the generally bleak outlook of the Lebanese economy and in turn of the well being of the people are a consequence of the lopsided character of its development. In his study of the economy, Khalaf notes that between 1950 and 1966 national Income has been growing at about 7% annually.

And since the rate of population Increases Is estimated to be two per cent per annum (12), this means that per capita Incomes have been rising at an average annual rate of at least five percent. While relatively impressive, this rate of growth has not been equally distributed among the various sectors.

A brief look... Is sufficient to Indicate that on the average the 'services' sectors have been growing considerably faster than the goods sectors. This difference Is particularly pronounced In the case of finance, transportation and trade sectors where compounded annual rates of growth ... were as high as 10.7, 9.7, and 8.5 % respectively [and] which exceeded those of agriculture (3.6%) and Industry i5.3%). (I3)

Table I shows the structure of the economy: sectors of the economy by proportion of the labor force and value of the Gross National Product (GNP). By 1966 less than one-third (28%) of the labor force was engaged In the services sector which generated 68% of the GNP. (14) In other words, two thirds of the labor force must struggle for only one-third of the national income.

More specifically, Saba points out that the lopsided structure of the economy generates a distributional pattern of Income that favors entrepreneurs and capitalists rat her than wage and salary earners. In trade, the share of wages and salaries amounts to only 10% of the total Income generated, compared with 36% In Industry and 66% In construction. The share of profits and Interest In the trade sector amounts to 85% of total Income. (I5)

Furthermore, Hudson notes the tendency among Lebanese entrepreneurs "to opt for short-run gains in their business investments at the expense of long-run benefits." (16) Indeed, according to the IRFED Mission study, in the finance sector, national income per employed person was L.L.45,500 and in commerce L.L. 8,849 while by contrast, It was L.L. 3,500 in industry and handicraft and L.L. 1,082 In agriculture. (17)

It should be clear from the above that the lopsided economic development and the character of the trade and services sector are partly responsible for the lack of investment potential and of jobs. Perhaps the development of the services sector has reached its limits while the agricultural and Industrial sectors stagnate.

These trends mean that the material well-being of the majority of the population Is stagnating if not deterioratIng. The consequences of these trends have been especially acute in the urban areas.

Over the last two decades growth has taken place in Lebanon's economy, but not development of benefit to the whole population. This distinction refers to the fact that a highly skewed wealth and income distribution is generated and maintained. Increases in national surplus are either consumed by a wealthy minority or exported rather than invested in local economic development plans of benefit to the whole population.

This is a typical neo-colonial relationship Which is attendant upon the collaboration of a native class of entrepreneurs and big. landlords who actively participate in creating In their own country a lopsided, dependent economic structure complimentary to that of the metropolis. (18)

The lopsided economic development of Lebanon is a consequence of its regional political-economic role. The country is a conduit not only of oil flowing from the east Arab hinterland, (19) but also for the collection and export of Arab oil based capital to the Euro-American money markets. 85% of all deposits In Lebanese banks are with foreign-owned or foreign-controlled banks operating In Lebanon. (20) Four of the five largest banks in the country are branches of foreign metropolitan banks. These capital transfers have contributed importantly to Euro-dollar holdings in Europe.

Lebanon is also a market and a center for the Importation and distribution (in the Arab East) of Western manufactured goods. The highly concentrated Import trade sector Is a major feature of the economic structure, by itself generating 31% of the GNP.

Table I
Sectors of the Economy by Proportion of the Labor force and Value of the GNP, 1960
Labor Force GNP
Sector % %
Agriculture 49 18
Industry, Handicraft and Construction 19 12
Services: Trade, Finance Transport , etc. 28 61
Government 4 9

Source: IRFED Mission, 1, 1960.

Table II
Income Distribution in Lebanon L. L.
Income Percent Average
Strata of Annual Percent of Families Income GNP
Miserable 9 1,000 2
Poor 41 2,000 16
Moderate Income 32 3,500 22
Well to do 14 10,000 28
Rich 4 40,000 32

Source: IRFED Mission, I, 1960-1961: 93 $1. 00

Recently the country has experienced some Industrial growth.(21) Most of the new industrial enterprises are either foreign owned (including those owned by Lebanese émigrés holding dual citizenship) or jointly owned corporations. This is mostly light industry, capital intensive, operating under license, and oriented not just to Lebanon but also to the larger neighboring Arab markets.

The central regional location of the country, its transport facilities, credit availability, its membership in the Arab common market, cheap labor, and, most importantly, the lack of restrictions on profit and capital transfers are all significant reasons for this development. In fact, government policy encourages it.

Per capita income in 1963 was $449 for Lebanese citizens and $361 for inhabitants of Lebanon, including Palestinians and Syrians. (22) While these figures compare well with those from neighboring Arab countries. they mask a highly unequal distribution. The best income distribution data available is for 1960 and comes from the IRFED Mission study.

There are no indications that in the last decade this income distribution has fundamentally changed. The indications that do exist point to an increase in the inequality. Table 11 indicates that 50% of the families (a larger share of the population since lower-income families are as a rule larger than higher income ones) make below $700 per year while another 32% earn on the average a little over $1,000 per year.

In short, 82% of the families (and a higher percentage of the total population) have a very hard time making ends meet, especially in view of the high cost of living. The average per capita income of the poor ($166 in rural areas and among a large section of the urban poor) is quite a contrast to the average per capita income of the elite ($3,680). (23)

Thus, despite the seeming prosperity, the elite who earn 32% of the GNP have helped develop a highly skewed services economy which perpetuates poverty among the majority of the population.

The concrete difficulties the economic slowdown and the highly skewed income distribution are causing for all classes (other than the tiny elite), including the educated middle class, are compounded by the double process of inflation and the rapid rise of the cost of living since the mid-sixties and especially over the last two years. This is caused in part by inflationary trends in Western countries from which Lebanon imports most all it needs - food as well as machines. Al-Nahar Economic Supplement reports:

Over the last two years the cost of sugar increased 17.6%, of meat 21.5%, of butter 34%, of local-type butter 42%, of cheese 26%, of vegetables 45%, of fruit 15%... The rise in the cost of clothing ranges between 14 and 20%. 24 over a one year period, the cost of potatoes has increased 80%, onions 200%, and garlic 233%. (25)

The average consumer-spends over 33% (higher among the poorer classes) of his/her income on food. The government cost of living index increased in 1971-2 at a rate double that of the year before.

This rise in the cost of living is paralleled by a more dramatic rise in the cost of education, especially as secondary and higher education (other than liberal arts or law) are primarily private and require a considerable financial outlay by the family. Between 1939 and 1970 the total cost of education has increased 14 times while between 1960 and 1970 the rise in cost averaged 10% per year.

Even government "free schools" have experienced a 25% rise in fees in the same period. Data from a study by a government employees' cooperative points out that the average cost of education per year in the elementary level is L.L. 240, in the intermediate level LL. 315, and in the secondary level L.L. 360 (the exchange rate is roughly L.L. 3 = $1).

Thus a family with three children (a rather small number given the average size of Lebanese families) must pay a minimum of L.L. 1000. per year, or about L.L. 100 per month for education. This amounts to as much as 50% of a poor family's Income. (26) High costs may be a reason for the high dropout rate: 50% of the elementary level students never continue into the junior high school level.

The economic trends delineated above highlight a most significant and frustrating aspect facing everyone in Lebanon, particularly the students: the spectre of unemployment. The job shortage is apparent at all levels of skill, including among university graduates. The agricultural share of the GNP declined from 20% in 1950 to 12% in 1965 while the industrial sector increased slightly from 13% to 15%.

It has been the services sector, especially trade, transport and finance, that has expanded. And yet, all along in the services sector, much of whatever expansion does take place tends to be for short-term profits of benefit to the larger merchants and businessmen, as Saba and Hudson point out, and tends to create few new jobs.

The agricultural sector, according to government experts, is experiencing a reduction in the number of jobs while the industrial sector creates too few to accommodate the increase in the number of job seekers.

The onus of creating new jobs falls to the services sector which has recently been experiencing difficulties. Banking, commerce, communications and education as well as the nascent market. researching, media planning and copy writing had expanded the demand for Intellectually skilled manpower during the boom years In Lebanon and in the oil producing regions.

This rapid rate of increase in the tertiary sector created the beginnings of mass clerical labor in the country. Since 1965-7, however, this rate of expansion has declined and may have stopped altogether while the rapid population growth rate continues. The concentrated and lopsided structure of the services sector itself has set severe limits on the absorption of the increasing supply of labor. Hudson notes:

“Assuming that Industry can continue to open up some 4,000 jobs a year... by 1980 agriculture will have lost between 40,000 and 50,000 jobs and Industry Will have picked up 60,000 jobs, which means... that these two sectors will supply some 330,000 jobs for an active population of between 870,000 and 915,000. Can the service sector map up the difference?... The best educated guess Is that It cannot. “

The Lebanese government experts predict that by 1980 Lebanon would have 34% of the active population unemployed. (28) These unemployment figures actually do not take into consideration the problem of underemployment typical of underdeveloped societies such as Lebanon. This increasing unemployment is a source of popular disaffection that is particularly focused among the student population.

A higher birth rate among the humbler classes compounds the problem. Seventy percent of the population is under 35 years of age and over 50% is under 20 years of age. The estimated annual rate of population increase is 2.8 (3.5 for resident Palestinians).

This rapid population increase not only puts a strain on the job market but points out the great need for housing (slums are rapidly increasing), health and educational services. A rapid population increase without a commensurate social-economic expansion of the country Is bound to create stagnation, if not deterioration, in the material and psychological well-being of the people.

The "free enterprise" (29) system of benefit to the elite is unlikely to change course voluntarily, to start investing in socially relevant sectors and create the requisite number of jobs for the population at all skill levels. This is a basis for one of the student grievances.

Traditionally Lebanon has solved its population increase and lack of economic opportunity via emigration, either temporary or permanent. (30) The cash remittances have helped the resident kinsmen. While heavy permanent migration during the first quarter of the twentieth century took place as a result of the Lebanese silk trade bust of that period, temporary emigration to various parts of the world has continued into recent times.

While the rate of emigration during the decline of the silk Industry reached a high of 15,000 persons per year in the 1900-14 period, it has been less than 3,000 per year since World War II. (31) A recent United Nations study Indicates higher rates of emigration. (32)

The latest area to open up and attract numbers of eastern Mediterranean Arabs, including Lebanese, has been the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf. By 1968 there were 35,000 Lebanese living in Kuwait. (33) In this and other ways, the oil producing Arab areas have been responsible for the post-War economic boom in Lebanon. However, the Arabian Peninsula area of opportunity as currently structured can hardly continue to absorb all the potential immigrants from Lebanon and other Mediterranean Arab countries.

Those job markets have become increasingly saturated, the locals of those areas have been trained, and various restrictions on immigration have been instituted by the local governments. (34) in short with the previous areas of opportunity for Lebanese emigrants limited, most Lebanese youth will be forced to make their livings in Lebanon.

The closing of this traditional escape valve will mean that pressure from the youth on the lopsided and highly stratified Lebanese social structure will mount. (35) Recent student political activism may only be the initial phase of a more widespread social upheaval.

Illiterate, semiliterate, unskilled and semiskilled rural-to-urban migrants and urban workers have no chance to emigrate out of Lebanon on either a temporary or permanent basis. Of all the segments of the Lebanese population, they are increasing most rapidly. It is from among them that the greatest pressure will be forthcoming.

The Lebanese Political System
The political system of the country which makes possible its economic role and indeed encourages its lopsided development is of benefit primarily to foreign capitalists, their domestic agents and executives (comprador bourgeoisie), domestic finance and mercantile capitalists, and big semi-feudal landlords, many of whom are turning to the development of cash crops for export.

This native capitalist class which is interlocked with and dependent upon foreign corporate interests may be termed the "dependent bourgeoisie." (36) The structure of the power elite which dominates the society includes the twin elites of the state and the church.

The dominant foreign element in Lebanon is the United States. Its influence, which has been on the rise here since World War II, was consolidated, to the disadvantage of the French, in the 1950's. U.S. political influence was symbolized by the landings of U.S. Marines in 1958 and American arbitration efforts between warring parties in the civil war of that year.

U.S. political influence has coincided with economic penetration. Both Aramco and the Iraq Petroleum Company own major oil pipelines and coastal oil shipping terminals on Lebanese territory-(IPC facilities were recently nationalized in Lebanon following the nationalization in Iraq itself).

Nearly all of the major American banks (Bank of America, Chase, First National City, etc.) have branches in Beirut. Most of the major New York brokerage houses (Merrill Lynch, Dupont, etc.) operate branches in Beirut directed at the vast regional oil-based capital market.

U.S. private interests own significant if not controlling shares in two of Lebanon's biggest employers, Middle East Airlines and Trans Mediterranean Airways. The number of U.S. companies operating in Lebanon rose from 147 in 1961 to 264 in 1965. (37)

Lebanon imports over 50% of its goods from the United States and Britain, including from U.S.-owned corporations located in Britain. U.S. and. other Western corporations set up businesses and plants in Lebanon to take advantage of cheap labor and its central regional role.

They also raise most of their investment capital from local banks. Their profits are repatriated to their countries, thus contributing further to the decapitalization of Lebanon and the region. (38)

Finally, one cannot end the discussion of American influence without pointing to the American University of Beirut (AUB), which has had a profound Intellectual, cultural, ideological and even economic and diplomatic impact on Lebanon and the adjoining Arab states.

AUB takes pride in pointing out the number of presidents, cabinet ministers, and other high officials who are its graduates. A recent cabinet of "expert" ministers in Lebanon included several AUB professors or ex-faculty members.

But above all, AUB's influence is in the ideological realm, particularly concerning the path, means and goals of economic and social development of Lebanon and other Near Eastern states. The model of socio-economic development propagated directly and indirectly at AUB— and which influences the Arab, including Lebanese, elite - is the one generated and exported by the United States. (39)

The dependence of Lebanon on Euro-American regional economic and political interests expresses itself in the country as an ideology which sees Lebanon as the economic, cultural and even diplomatic bridge between the Arab East and the West. A corollary tenet of this ideology sees the country as the bulwark of free enterprise and free trade.

These tenets reflect well the vested interest of the domestic dependent capitalists who need access to Western corporations and to the markets of the oil-rich Arabian peninsula and Gulf. Import of oil capital for Lebanese banks, export and re-export of food and manufactured products to the regional markets, and the expert services rendered to oil and other companies In the area require that there be no trade or protection barriers.

This is the lifeline not only of the foreign corporate interests but also of the Lebanese trade, banking, service specialists (auditing, insurance, consulting, design and engineering, and public relations firms), and transport (airline and trucking) interests which together generate such a large proportion of the national income.

To a lesser extent, it Is also of significance to the big landlords who are increasingly developing export cash crops. This ideology, as manifested in the government policy of a “free enterprise" economy, favors the trade and services sector and the interlocked foreign interests despite the fact that the commodity producing sectors (agriculture and industry) engage over two-thirds of the actively employed population in Lebanon.

In short, both the foreign capitalists and the domestic bourgeoisie have a strong coincidence of interests and therefore a class alliance concerned with the maintenance of the political-economic system. It is against this policy and such vested interests that the student rebels, through their demands for developing the commodity producing sectors,'have been struggling.

The Lebanese state is interlocked, and only rarely uncooperative, with the harmonious interests of both the foreign capitalists and the domestic dependent bourgeoisie and semi-feudal landlords, although occasional conflict erupts between local industrialists and big Import merchants.

Indeed, the Parliament and, in turn, most ministerial cabinets of the executive branch of the government are composed of deputies who are members of the varied sectors of the domestic dependent bourgeoisie (including lawyers retained by foreign corporations), the semi-feudal lords and their political allies. (40)

In addition to free enterprise, the ideology of this ruling class. includes the political sovereignty and independence of Lebanon from surrounding Arab territories. This ideology has become a principle slogan in support of the status quo - both the political-economic and the religious-sectarian arrangement.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN DIVISIONS
The notion of Lebanon as a confessional democracy composed of socio-religious groupings or sects, each with its own elite, competing and fractured at the highest level is an ideology of the domestic ruling class, reinforced by its constant utilization in Western and Western-inspired literature to explain Lebanon's political structure. (41)

Sectarianism in Lebanon certainly is built into many important aspects of public life. Western observers, including scholars,.in accordance with the dominant political science methodology, adopt a "value free" perspective that in effect celebrates the status quo as a unique exercise of pluralist democracy.

It is rarely if ever analyzed as a mechanism of social-political control by the ruling elite. The ideology of patriotic national unity is precisely based on these sectarian divisions : to unite the country by means of maintaining and accentuating these divisions in order to justify the existing social structure and political economy, with its overlapping sectarian and class divisions. (42)

Notables (zuama) in the ruling class tend also to be sectarian religious leaders. In turn, church clerics are political leaders in their own right. (43)

The state guarantees the sects much autonomy and important legal jurisdictions. Ecclesiastical courts control family law, including inheritance and wills, and have control over religious endowments.

In at least this respect the church, or perhaps more correctly the churches, are a legal arm of the state. With its powerful ideological and value-generating function the church wholeheartedly supports and, in turn, receives sustenance from the state.

Even the Sunni Muslim clerics (and zu'ama), who originally put up the greatest resistance to the creation of Lebanon as an entity separate from greater Syria or a greater Arab state, now strongly support the established regime.(44)

The varied churches are the staunchest supporters of sectarianism, and therefore of the Lebanese state as presently constituted, since this state structure guarantees their continued autonomous existence and strength.

Any criticism of Lebanon and its declared ideology is considered by the churches, especially of the Christian sects, as an attack on them. Unlike the Catholic church and clergy in Latin American countries, the churches of Lebanon— Christian, Muslim or Druze— have no progressive rhetoric and much less progressive action; they hardly even have a reformist stand In this they are also supported by the extensive Euro-American missionary institutions operating in the country.

The churches of the major sects own various amounts of rural and urban real estate. These holdings, along with philanthropic support coming from abroad (especially French and Italian catholic missionary and institutional help for the Christians, and Saudi Arabian and other Arab governmental and private help for the Muslims), allow the church bureaucracies to concentrate independent economic power.

Thus, the economic, political and religious interests of the varied churches of the country also coincide with the interests of the domestic and foreign capitalists — all of which coalesce around the ideology that Lebanon should be an independent, open society, a bridge with ties to East and West.

LEBANON AND THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE
Arab nationalism, which calls for pan-Arab unity or military-political-economic links to (predominantly Muslim) Arab neighbors, is seen as a threat not only by the domestic dependent bourgeoisie (and its sectarian clerical allies) but also by their foreign "partners" in the United States and Europe to the extent that such Arab nationalism represents a revolutionary or mass-based movement which may disrupt the present arrangement.

It should be noted here that what is at stake for the United States is not Lebanon alone but Lebanon as a key state in the complex structure of political and economic control and of military strategic considerations in the Arab Middle East.

The Lebanese regime was the first Arab regime to clash directly and openly with the popular Palestinian guerrilla organizations, in 1969. This attempt to contain and control the guerrillas in Lebanon led to the Cairo Accords which gave the Palestinians a restricted freedom of action.

This was made possible for the Palestinians primarily because of the popular mass and student support they enjoyed, not only among the Lebanese but also among other Arab populations. The Palestinians became a spearhead of a more general activism among the Arab masses. This threatened the ruling regimes of many an Arab state. In Jordan. it led to the Jordanian army massacre of Palestinians in 1970 and 1971.

This setback for the Palestinians, their isolation on the pan-Arab level (since many of the regimes are intent on a so-called 'political settlement'), and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon have spurred the Lebanese regime in 1973 to tighten further the restrictions on the Palestinian guerrillas and to try to contain them militarily despite their popular support. (45) This has created tension between the army and Palestinian guerrillas which broke out in heavy fighting in the same year.

The political pressure of the nascent left in Lebanon and its parliamentary leadership, along with pan-Arab pressure, helped calm the situation. However, the government policy towards the Palestinian resistance organizations, and the fact that it has succumbed to Israeli threats and reprisals as well as to United States pressure, have alienated large sections of the working classes and of the student population. (46) As indicated by their demands, this government policy is a major source of disaffection and of political activism on the part of the students.

Support of the Palestinian resistance movement and rejection of the political settlement (considered political surrender to Israeli-United States policies) in the Middle East is the single most important ideological issue separating the masses and students from the regime. This is so not only for Lebanese students but also for the active Egyptian, Tunisian and Moroccan students as well.

THE LEFT AND THE LEBANESE POLITICAL SYSTEM
In general, the long standing pan-Arab, progressive and even revolutionary ideology of large portions of the students is directly antithetical to the Lebanese nationalist and conservative ideology, policy and practice of the ruling class and its state. This ideological contradiction is clearly another source of disaffection and an underlying cause of student activism.

Political opposition in Lebanon has been forced to take to the streets or to engage in extra-institutional means as the varied segments of the domestic dependent bourgeoisie and semi-feudal lords have monopolized control of the political institutions of the country. Until recently, politics has been nothing but the competition of segments, factions, blocs and personalities all belonging to the ruling class of the dependent bourgeoisie and semi-feudal lords.

This is called "political feudalism" (Al-Iqtaa al-Siyasi) by left-of-center groups and the more progressive students. Indeed, not until 1969 were left-of-center doctrinal parties, with alternative socio-economic platforms and representing the interests of the working classes, legalized. And not until the 1972 elections did a few of the doctrinal parties' leadership get elected into the Parliament. Tens of thousands of votes were cast for left-of-center candidates in these most recent elections.

However, the electoral laws promulgated by the conservative parliament discriminate against such doctrinal political leadership as the voter must vote in his birthplace, not in his place of residence or place of work. Thus, it forces the mass of workers, artisans and patty functionaries who are of rural background either to vote for one of the semi-feudal lords in their rural districts or become disenfranchised.

The patronage relations in such areas and the socio-economic pressure facing the urban immigrant force him to register his city-born children as being born in the village. The laws, the gerrymandering and the economic pressures reinforce semi-feudal and sectarian relations. Politics thus takes on the form of sectarian politics and inhibits the development of working-class consciousness.

Indeed, sectarian politics helps mask class distinctions and the contradictory interests of working class peoples of all sects against those of the dependent and foreign bourgeoisie of all sects. Sectarian influences color student political attitudes toward the Palestinian resistance and its revolutionary stance. (47) "Political feudalism" tends to permit the inheritance of a political position by the child or kinsman of a political notable. The current leadership illustrates this well.

The numbers and influence of left-of-center deputies are too small to make parliamentary politics serve the genuine material and ideological interests of the masses. The parties and other organizations of the masses continue to rely on street politics and extra-institutional means. Parliamentary tokenism has not dampened student activism at all.

Popular pressure and agitation, periodic political and economic crises, and the example of the Palestinians have forced the "modernization" of the state apparatus and social service programs including rural electrification.

These were instituted by exfra-parliamentary "cabinets of experts" who were frequently liberal university professors. None of these reforms have been permitted by the conservative parliament to undermine the privileges of the local bourgeoisie and the landlords. There has been no land reform program, for example.

THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
The role of education, the character of the educational system and the social background of the student body are critical factors in the cluster of causes of student political activism in Lebanon. With the development of an economy so dependent on services, especially in its regional role of providing technical, managerial and professional expertise to the Arab East, higher education has become a passport to social and economic success.

This value is partly reflected in the phenomenal expansion of the educational system. The number of primary and secondary students increased from 131,000 in 1943 to 265,922 in 1959 and to 511,543 in 1967.(48)

The numerical expansion has meant an increasing number and proportion of students from working classes and disadvantaged sects. This is so despite the fact that education beyond the elementary level is primarily private and costly.

Even at the elementary level, and more so at the intermediate, secondary and higher levels, the best schools are the expensive, private schools run by religious establishments, especially the Christian ones. Thus, from the beginning, the educational system operates to perpetuate sectarian and class divisions in the society.

Since the mid fifties, rapid expansion in the university student population has taken place: 2.4 university students per 1,000 population in 1950 had increased to 8.2 students per 1,000 in 1963.(49) In absolute numbers, the increase over the decade from 1958-9 to 1969-70 was from 7,000 students to more than 35,000. (50)

Additionally, a greater number of Lebanese are going overseas to complete their education: 40% of those holding degrees in the country have studied in Europe or the United States. Most in this group come from the wealthier classes. Within Lebanon, students from the humbler classes have increased substantially. (51)

There exist three highly independent educational systems side by side: an Anglo-American system with coursework conducted in English and culminating in the American University of Beirut and Beirut University College (formerly Beirut College for Women); a French (and subsidiary Italian) system with instruction in French and culminating in the Jesuit Universite St. Joseph (USJ) and in large part the Lebanese University (LU); and a Lebanese-Arab system which is poorly and haphazardly developed and has comparatively fewer secondary schools and culminates in the Egyptian funded Beirut Arab University (BAU) and sections of the Lebanese University.

The two original universities, the American and the French, are small, with 3500 and 3000 students respectively, and expensive, utilizing a foreign language of instruction and catering primarily to the children of the elite and the upper middle class.

Developed in the 19th Century, they are basically liberal universities with small, expensive technical schools. The Beirut Arab University (16,000 students) and the Lebanese University (12,000 students), less exclusive and less expensive, are styled on the continental European system.

Despite the phenomenal increase in the student bodies of the two Arab universities since their establishment in the fifties, there has been little expansion in the facilities such as laboratory space or in the number of faculty. The quality of the faculty has also not improved. A large segment of the faculty remain part-timers, a "taxi faculty," giving mass lectures and hurrying off to their other jobs.

BAU and LU offer only a liberal arts curriculum and law. Because of their low cost, they attract students from the middle and working classes who have no choice but to take a degree in humanities or law. (52) These old curricula with no applied disciplines may have been well-suited during a colonial era for a small elite, but hardly satisfy the needs of students from the lower classes. (53)

These students desire a more relevant and practical training in order to find and hold jobs. There has been a radical change in the social character of the student body, particularly in the state-run Lebanese University, while no serious change in the educational system or curricula has taken place.

This contradiction is an important source of student disaffection and accounts for demands to revamp the curricula and develop full technical programs. The demand to Arabize the coursework reflects not only the increasing entry of people not competent in French or English, from the working classes, but also a more politically conscious student population.

High school and university liberal arts graduates face the most difficult conditions of a constricted job market. (54) Sons of the elite of whatever -sect and whatever education are oriented and helped by their families into placement in good positions in the private and state sectors (nepotism and corruption are extensive).

The bilingual and trilingual graduates of the local foreign and overseas universities find places in Euro-American enterprises in Lebanon and in the region, or found their own. But sons of the humbler classes do not benefit as much from the orienting function of the family and must depend on their diplomas for jobs.

In this restricted job market, with a liberal arts diploma, the risk of unemployment or, at best, underemployment and low salaries is high. The student whose origin is working class is least able to forecast or guarantee his future social-economic position. This source of anxiety highlights the frustration derived from the fact that for the working classes the great panacea, education, has not paid off.

This fact contributes to the alienation of the working classes from the Lebanese regime. The anxiety, frustration and alienation of the students are further compounded by the character of the state-based educational system and the private ones linked to it.

The system is modelled on the French centralized system utilizing state examinations. Progress to higher educational levels depends on successful passage through state exams in which the rate of failure is very high, perhaps as high as 70%.

This high rate of failure is especially severe among students from the government schools and free sectarian schools, due to the poor quality of their education. The sciences and mathematics are taught in a foreign language. Large sections of the working classes of Lebanon, therefore, never progress beyond the lowest levels of the educational system. In addition to the high rates of failure and dropout, students spend many more years than are necessary, at all levels, to acquire their diplomas, trying year after year to pass the terminal exams.

Whatever educational reforms have been instituted have been brought about by the agitation and activism of progressive parties and groups and of the students themselves. The "pragmatic" policy of the government has improved the coordination of academic programs in some cases, but has done little to meet the substantial demands for a genuine national university, with technical as well as liberal programs, which would be available to the children of the poor, and would not be secondary and ancillary to institutions like AUB and USJ.

Another substantial issue is the "democratization" of education: dismantling barriers like entry exams, administrative fiats on size of class, and such. Recently, for example, the size of the entering class at the Teachers' College was reduced from 1200 to 300, while the government was simultaneously pointing out a shortage of teachers in official government schools.

Government proposals stating the need for "planning and programming;' education with the demands of the labor market have led to a policy of erecting barriers to control the entry of students into various programs. It seems as if the government policy for solving the dilemma of the difference in the supply of graduates and job openings is simply the reduction of the number of graduates rather than the planned economic development of the country.

The contradiction between government policy and student demands has led to a crisis in the Ministry of Education, including a series of resignations of Ministers over official subversion of attempted reforms. Within the educational system, as in the whole social structure, the crisis is long standing and fundamental, with the established system resisting any substantial change.

The activism of the students at all the universities has been led by the established and recognized student unions: the student government at AUB and the student unions at LU and BAU. All these organizations have come under the leadership of progressive students who have been vigorous in pursuing student and more general political demands and have been responsive to the ideological and material interests of the working classes.

It is worth noting that at AUB the student government was created In the 1950's by the administration to bring student activists and proliferating student organizations under its influence. Once the leadership of the student government was captured by more progressive and activist students, the administration decreed its dissolution in 1970. This, along with the 10% hike in tuition, triggered more student activism.

More recently a student government was reestablished at AUB, although until April and May of this year its leadership was in the hands of more "moderate" elements. Following the clashes with the Israelis and later between the Lebanese army and the Palestinians,more militant activities became the order of the day.

This led to severe clashes between progressive student groups and reactionary Lebanese nationalist student groups attached to some right-wing parties. At LU, too a quiescent period was broken by Palestinian-related events of this spring.

CONCLUSION
The contradiction between the changed social character, size, needs and aspirations of the student body and the present structure of the educational system and the university system in particular takes on a greater political significance as the state, interlocked with the interests of the dependent bourgeoisle and semi-feudal landlords, is reluctant to institute fundamental change in education or the economy. It is this official inertia which is at the base of student disaffection and activism.

The dependent bourgeoisie, its semi-feudal allies, and the linked foreign corporate interests, along with the highly skilled professionals, are prospering while the masses experience material deterioration. The bureaucrats struggle to preserve there petty interests while the small merchants, shopkeepers and renters are afraid that serious social change may shut off the tourist and summer trade as has happened in the neighboring states of Syria and Egypt.

The dominant class and its state seem unwilling and unable to do much about the dilemma of the masses. Additionally, because of the ideological contradictions between the privileged ruling classes and the masses, Lebanon's working classes are becoming more alienated.

Many middle class professionals, both Lebanese and resident Palestinian, enter the political-economic establishment while an increasing number, underemployed and unemployed, enter the ranks of the progressive and revolutionary left along with the students. Even some highly educated children of the native bourgeoisie are joining revolutionary groups.

Student action by itself is not sufficient to bring about fundamental social change in Lebanon or other Arab countries. It is a political force which can contribute to a revolutionary movement only in conjunction with mass-based movements of the working class in Lebanon and the Arab world.

NOTES
1 Ghandour Is one of the oldest and largest Lebanese-owned industries, specializing In food processing and the manufacture of candy and baked goods.

2 See the running account of these events and their consequences In AN-NAHAR, November 1972 -January 1973.

3 See MERIP REPORTS no. 17, May 1973.

4 United Nations, "Prospective Growth and Development of the Lebanese Economy," STUDIES ON SELECTED DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1970,p.13.

5 Azharl, N. LIEVOLUTION DU SYSTEME ECONOMIQUE LIBANAIS, Paris, 1970, p. 128.

6 United Nat Ions," Prospective Growth p.2.

7 Azharl, p. 128.

8 Ibid.

9 United Nations, "Prospective Growth...," p. 11.

10 Ibid., p. 2.

11 See AN-NAHAR, Economic Supplement, December 24,1972, P. 12; see also AN-NAHAR, December 22,1972, p. 7 and December 28,1972, p. 7.

12 This' Is really rather low. Kingsley Davis and others, Including the United Nations, estimate the rate of population Increase at closer to 3% per year.

13 Khalaf, N. ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE SIZE OF NATIONS, Leiden, 1971, p. 164.

14 Saylgh, Y. and M. Atallah, A SECOND LOOK AT THE LEBANESE ECONOMY (in Arabic), Beirut, 1966, p. 14.

15 Saba, E.S. "The Implications of the Foreign Sector In the Lebanese Economy," MIDDLE EAST ECONOMIC PAPERS, Beirut, 1962, p. 152.

16 Hudson. M.C. THE PRECARIOUS REPUBLIC, Now York, 1968, p. 66.

17 L'Institut International do Recherche at do Formation on vue do Developpernont Integral at harmonise (I RFED) Mission, BESOINS ET POSSI 01 LITES DE DEVELOPPEMENT DU LI BAN. Beirut, 1960, p. 33.

18 For an analysis of the appearance of such 'distorted' bourgeoisie In Syria and Lebanon In the nineteenth century. see F. Qazan. "The Economic Situation and the Evolution of a Distorted Bourgoolsio In Lebanon and Syria during the Nineteenth Century (in Arabic)." In AT-TARIQ. No.4, April 1972.

19 Apart from the IPC (Iraq Petroleum Company) pipeline and terminal, nearly 40% of Aramco's (Arabian-American Oil Company) oil is pumped through the pipeline whose terminal Is In Lebanon. Other foreign oil companies have refineries serving the local markets.

20 Kishil, M. ABOUT THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM AND THE LEFT IN LEBANON (in Arabic), Belrut. 2967, P. 28.

21 See Khalaf.

22 Hudson, p. 84.

23 United Nations, SOCIAL WELFARE PLANNING IN THE CONTEXT OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS, 1970, P. 14.

24 AN-NAHAR, Economic Supplement, May 28,1972t.p. 4-5.

25 AN-NAHA R, December 28, 1972, p. 7.

26 Above figures are taken from "The Octopus of Inflation, the Educational'Sphere," In AT-TARIQ, November 1972, p. 126-125.

27 Hudson, p. 69.

28 These calculations are based on the questionable assumption "that by 1980 Lebanon will have eliminated about 60 per cant of the foreign laborers (mainly Syrians)...and that these jobs will be filled by Lebanese. Otherwise 38 per cent of the Lebanese active work force would be unemployed by 1980 (Hudson, p.84).11 This figure, in turn, does not take Into consideration the 300,000 Palestinians In residence in Lebanon and who compete for jobs, albeit mostly menial jobs.

29 This laissez falre policy of the government Is slowly changing as the government increasingly Intervenes through monetary and fiscal policies, and through medium term capital expenditure program In the public sector. See also Azhari.

30 On the other hand, Immigration Into Lebanon has been comparable with the outflow : Armenians came In during and after World War 1, Palestinians during and after 1948 and repatriates and others from Egypt, Syria and Iraq during the 19601s.

31 IRFED Mission, p. 49.

32 United Nations, Economic and Social Council, "The Outflow of Trained Personnel from Lebanon," OUTFLOW OF TRAINED PERSO,NNtL FROM DEVELOPING TO DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, 1970, p. 31.

33 Ibid.

34 Libya may be able to absorb some although the Levant Arabs face competition from Egyptians. This Is more so with the political union recently established between Egypt and Libya.

35 United Nations, Economic and Social Council, p.43.

36 FAD of the United Nations says the following : "Fiscal policy has...been conducive to the promotion of trade, tourism and othbr services .... The pattern of government expenditure Is likewise reflective of greater concern for trade and services than for agriculture and Industry. This Is best Illustrated by the nqture of the development projects receiving the greater share of public expenditures" (FAO, 1960, 1, p. 6-7; also cited In Hoss, S.A., "Economic Concentration in Lebanon," MIDDLE EAST ECONOMIC PAPERS, Beirut, 1963, p. 69-70).

Addltionally,"...the high degree of monopoly power which economic concentration has placed at the disposal of a relatively small number of businessman In certain lines of Imports Is capable of being exercised, and has on occasion been applied, to suppress an established local manufacturer or to discourage a would-be competitor from starting a local manufacturing business" (Hoss, p. 69-70).

37 Hudson, P. 63. Some set up plants In the country : Merck, Sharp and Dohme (as Frosst); Proctor & Gamble; Kleenex; beverage companles such as Seven-Up, Pepsi, etc.; Esso fertilizers. Others, such as Johns-Manville, own shares In local Industries (e.g. Eternit). Many an Industrial company Is owned by entrepreneurs who hold dual citizenships and who have businesses In both countries. They are (or are sons of) Lebanese emigres who are not strictly domestic capitall sts. The Edward Nasser group Is a recent example.

38 This dominant political-economic position the United States has developed In Lebanon Is at the expense of the traditional Influence of Fr:nce and French economic Interests. Nevertheless, the Impact of Fr nce politically, economically (airline, cernept and banking Inter. ests, etc.) and especially culturally (missionary, philanthropic and welfare activity; schools and a major university) Is still formidable. In addition, much of the Lebanese armed forces ordnance Is also of French manufacture.

39 Such an Intellectual and Ideological tradition Is an expression of the Interests of the metropole, and has had the consequence of maintaining dependence and underdevelopment In the satellite countries. See Frank, A;G., LATIN AMERICA: UNDERDEVELOPMENT OR REVOLUTION, Now York, 1969; Johnson, D., "Dependence and the international System." In J.D. Cockcroft, et al., DEPENDENCE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT, Garden City (N.Y.), 1972; Dog Santos. T., LA CRISIS DE LA TEORIA DEL DESARROLLO Y LAS RELACIONES DE DEPENDENCIA, EN AMERICA LATINA, Santiago, 2968;

40 Baaklini, A., LEGISLATURES AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: LEBANON 1840-1970 (unpublished PhD dissertation), SUNY/ Albany, 1972; Thabet, J., '.'Class and Sectarian Background of the Electoral Systpm In Lebanon"(In Arabic), In AT-TARIQ, No.4, April 1972.

41 See, for example, Binder, L.,ed., POLITICS IN LEBANON, Now York, 1966; Hudson; etc.

42 G. Deeb, a young Lebanese Intellectual, writes the following The [ideology of] patriotic unity on the one hand Is an acknowe'dgement that sectarianism Is the only division In the country, and on the other hand a method of governing based on this sectarian difference and the claim to avoid Its dangers. Thus we see that the philosophy of the national unity Is there to divide the country on sectarian basis and to unite It on evervthing else; It divides the country for the Interest of the regime and It unites the country also for the Interest of the regime." Deeb, G. , "The Political System and the Citizen In Lebanon," THE PREFERRED POLITICAL SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPMENT, Beirut, 1971, p.27, as cited In Baaklini, p. 178. See also Joseph, S., "A Precarious Balance : Problems of Social Integration In Lebanon," Paper given at the Third Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Toronto, Canada, 1969; Thabet, 19.72.

43 In addition to clerics being In Parliament, the best example of the Importance of the clergy Is the role and Influence of the Maronite Patriarch. During the 1958 civil strife which was essentially a conflict between different factions of the ruling notables. the Patriarch came out against the government zu'ama and In support of the rebellious opposition zuama. While this act of the Patriarch was supposed to have helped keep the 1958 conflict from turning Into a sectarian war, according to the literature, It was an act which helped restore Lebanon to the status quo ants In which traditional elite all had a share In the power structure. It also helped stop the drift towards a pro-Western partisan policy course that the Chamoun regime had set Lebanon on.

44 For example, Hassan Khalld, the Sunni Mufti (highest religious cleric) of the Lebanese republic had the following to say In a speech during the Palestine Commando-Lebanese Government conflict of 1969 : "Each one of us hould feel that he Is for Lebanon. and that
this duty Is to protect Lebanon from all possible harm, by exerting all our energy, understanding, thinking, faith and knowledge. We should guard It so It remains strong and respected; we should guard It as a shield for our strong and powerful Arab nation." Quoted In Rabbat, E., MEDIATION IN LEBANESE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (in Arabic) Beirut, 1970, p. 472 and cited In Baaklini.

45 Israel's strategy of reprisals, devastation and selective terior Is designed to create conflict between the Lebanese and the Palestinian resistance movement. In doing so, Israel hopes to activate both the Lebanese Government and the conservative and reactionary Lebanese forces to crack down on the Palestinians and on all progressive forces who support them. Israel's strategy Is not altogether unsuccessful In Lebanon. Conservative political leaders have called on the Palestinian guerrillas to 'eliminate their presence from Lebanon.' Rightist Irregulars and militia have on several occasions clashed with elements of the guer. rilla organizations. Rightist student groups as well have clashed with progressive students who support the guerrillas.

46 The popular support for the Palestinians In Lebanon Is Indicated by the 250,000 people who marched In the varied funerals deriving from the Israeli commando raid on Beirut, April 10, 1973. This Is over one fifth of the city. Additionally, a general strike In support of the Palestinians and censuring government inactivity took place soon after the funeral.

47 Barakat, H., "Social Factors Influencing Attitudes of University Students In Lebanon Towards the Palestinian Resistance Movement," JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES, Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn, 1971.

48 1 RFED Mission, p. 62; United Nations, "Demographic Characteristics of Youth in the Arab Countries of the Middle East : Present Situat Ions and Growth Prospects, 1970-1990,11 STUDIES ON SELECTED DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1970, p. 82.

49 Hudson, p. 78.

50 United Nations, Economic and Social Council, "The Outflow...," p. 37.

51 Indirect evidence for this comes from a survey on attitudes toward the Palestinian Resistance Movement among university students In the country. Among the randomly selected students, those whose parents earned L.L. 5.000 or less per year constituted 10% of the Arab student body at the American University of Beirut, 7% at the University of Saint Joseph, and 25% at Lebanon University. In addition, 17% at A.U.B., 14% at U.S.J. and 26% at L.U. had parents who earned between L.L. 5,000-10,000 per year (Barakat, p. 98). it should be noted that both A.U.B. and U.S.J. are facing budgetary crises that will probably force cutbacks In their size and concentration of facilities In fields such as app lied sciences. U.S.J. may cease to exist altogether. These developments will only accentuate and contribute to the developing crisis in the educational system that we are describing here.

52 Enrollment at the Lebanese University Is 47% In law, and the rest primarily In literature, while 50% Is In literature In the Beirut Arab University and 16% In law. U.N.,"Outflow of Trained Personnel..." p.42.

53 While English-using AUB has developed very limited programs In medicine, engineering and agriculture, the French-using Jesuit university has small professional programs In medicine, pharmacy and dentistry. BAU and LU have hardly any technical or professional programs, although they were established more recently, In the 1950's.

54 Hudson notes: "Ironically, even though Lebanon Is deficient In administrative skills, liberal arts graduates do not find government jobs easily available because of the lack of positions. a situatlon aggravated by the allocation of posts according to sectarian considerations." Pp.66-7.

Tripoli 1940

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Portrait of a young prostitute taken in Tripoli 1940s.
Copyright © Arab Image Foundation

Encounters

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Portraits, form the top: Tripoli 1940s, Beirut 1920s, Saida 1950s
Copyright © Arab Image Foundation

Refugees 2

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Quartier nord au camp de Mar Mkhayel à Beyrouth, 1924. © Coll. Bibliothèque Orientale-USJ

Armenian refugees

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Le quartier nord du camp de Mar Mkhayel à Beyrouth en 1924. © Coll. Bibliothèque Orientale - USJ

Lebanon famine 1917

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Dock hands 1909

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Dock hands 1902

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Agricultural workers 1895

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Silk workers 1880s

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Children of peasants 1900s

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Church school and village school 1890s

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Allies navy bombing Beirut port during World War 1

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Figure

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Welcome

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Songs of innocence

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Blake angels

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Blake self portrait

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William Blake

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