بين الطائفة والطبقة: مثقف

* 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

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

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

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

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

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

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.