LENIN'S TOMB

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Tunisia's revolution and the Islamists posted by Richard Seymour

Soumayya Ghannouchi, the Guardian columnist and daughter of the Tunisian An-Nahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi, argues for a coalition of socialists, liberals and Islamists to overthrow the Tunisian state. Rachid himself argues for exactly this approach in his interview with the FT:

We cannot bring out a democratic system out of this corrupt, dictatorial system. We have to put an end to the authoritarian system and start a new one. Basing this transition on Article 56 or 57 is a continuation of the old system. The constitution was a tyranny, the state was reduced to one man, who had in his hands the executive, judicial and legislative powers and was not accountable to anyone. How can such a constitution point towards building a democratic system, even as a starting point.
The first step of building a democratic system is to build a democratic constitution. For this we need a founding council for rebuilding the state, one in which political parties, the trade unions and the civil society join. This council will rebuild the democratic constitution and will be the basis for building the democratic system.

Now, the fact that Ghannouchi is speaking from exile is not irrelevant here. Most of the leadership of the An-Nahda party is exiled in London, following from a period of repression in the early 1990s. Indeed, there's an article in Foreign Policy almost gloating about the Tunisian revolution being "Islamist-free". So, there's a real question of just how much influence the Islamists can really have. At one time, they were a serious political force in Tunisia. In the 1989 general election, their candidates - standing as 'independents' - officially received 14% of the vote. According to Francois Burgat and William Dowell's study, (The Islamic Movement in North Africa, University of Texas Press, 1993), the real figure was plausibly closer to 30-32%. The regime rigged the elections, of course, so there would no way to know for sure. Subsequent repression, combined with a period of sustained economic growth that diminished the social base for the Islamists among the petite bourgeoisie and the rural poor, reduced the weight of An-Nahda as a serious opposition force so that today it's tempting to dismiss them. But is the revolution "Islamist-free"? Can it be?

Before going any further with this, it's worth saying something about who the Islamists in Tunisia are and how the came to prominence in the first place. The origins of Tunisia's Islamist movement are in the crisis of the Seventies. In that period, a movement among the intelligentsia toward reviving Islam as a basis for politics and culture, against the alienating Euro-secularism of the Bourguibist regime, found expression in a review called Al-Ma'rifa, and at the Zaytuna University. This coincided with a similar sense of dissatisfaction among the rural poor, where Islamic traditions were not as cheerfully downplayed as they were among the regime's elite.

The material background was that Israel's humiliation of Egypt and its allies in 1967 had raised serious questions about Arab nationalism, while economic crisis was de-legitimizing Bourguiba's corporatist progressivism. The state's turn toward economic liberalisation in the same period saw a sudden sharp increase in returns for private capital, while the incomes of the public sector salariat stagnated. For the Islamist intelligentsia, some of whom had been on the Left previously, all of this betokened not merely a material problem that they could struggle over - as the radical Left was doing at just that time. It was a profound spiritual crisis. Somehow the influx of cultural influences form the imperialist world, the economic crisis, the turn toward neoliberalism and its corrupting effects, the defeat of the Arab countries, the authoritarianism of the state, and their own diminished status were related to the decline of Islam in public life. As far as Tunisia went, the root and cause of the problem was that Bourguiba's state was built on an attempt to impose on a Muslim population a template of secular republican nationalism drawn from Europe. Indeed, the convulsions that had engulfed France in the late Sixties and early Seventies proved that its model could hardly be one worthy of emulation.

By the end of the Seventies, a coherent Islamist movement had emerged, the Mouvement de la Tendance Islamique (MTI) - the tendency which Ghannouchi co-founded. It did not seek to bring about an 'Islamic state', if such a thing could exist. This is not to say that such a goal might not come to the fore if the movement acquired a mass base, but it has not been a goal of the MTI, and its successor, the An-Nahda party, since its inception. Rather, it saw its remit as being to effect moral and social change. To accomplish this, it sought to ally with the nationalists and even integrate itself with the trade union movement - unlike the majority of Islamists groups who disapprove of trade unionism as a mode of organisation based on class struggle. This position seems to have been genuine and consistent argued, but it was also forced on the movement to some extent. While the MTI articulated a moral and spiritual argument about the sources of Tunisian decline, the 1978 general strike and riots over straightforward class issues marginalised the tendency somewhat, and compelled them to engage in such issues more forthrightly. Ghannouchi himself was insistent that it was "not enough to pray five times a day and fast ... Islam is activism ... it is on the side of the poor and the oppressed".

Aside from its dialogue with the poor and oppressed, the movement maintained a consistently pluralist approach to Tunisian politics. Nazih Ayubi's study, Political Islam, argues that unlike the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, the MTI did not "put itself in the position of the exclusive actor with the rights of moral tutelage over society at large", and that this approach enabled the tendency to accept a political pluralism that was inclusive not only of secularists but also of communists. The MTI collaborated with socialists in, for example, organising protests against US and Israeli aggression. The movement constantly assailed the lack of political liberty in Bourguiba's regime, and called for "the end of single-party politics and the acceptance of political pluralism and democracy". Later, Ghannouchi called for a mobilisation of civil society against the state:

"There is no place for dominating society in the name of any legitimacy - historic, religious, proletarian, or pseudo-democratic ... Bourguiba put forward the slogan of the state's prestige, but its real content was the monopoly of the party, of the capitalist interests within which power in the country was located, and the monopoly which Bourguiba exercised over this state. The time has come to raise the slogan of the prestige of society, of the citizen, and of the power which serves both."

Ghannouchi has also made an attempt to articulate a version of womens' rights consistent with Islamist beliefs, opposing this approach to the "obscure theories of Sayyid Qutb". However, his criticisms of the Personal Status Code, which includes various rights for women, point to the limits of any claim to gender egalitarianism on the part of the MTI. That stance allowed the movement to develop into a serious challenge to Bourguiba's regime, and it came to occupy a disproportionate amount of the ageing dictator's energies. Repression included arbitrary arrest and detention of MTI activists, but also a wider series of measures to curb expressions of religiosity. Insanely Ataturkist laws were passed banning civil servants from praying, excluding women who wore the 'veil' from universities and workplaces, rescinding the licenses of taxi drivers suspected of being Islamists, and so on.

Repression against the movement was one of the factors which won it sympathy on campuses, so that it overtook the left among students. Indeed, in this period the typical adherent of the Islamists was below the age of 30, and usually below the age of 25. Moreover, this student layer overlapped with the support from the rural poor, as the youths who supported the tendency typically came from the south and interior, away from coastal Sahel and Tunis. As the movement developed, it did pick up support in urban areas of Tunis, and among some of the professional types that the regime considered its core base.

Rashid Ghannouchi was himself to become a target of Bourguiba's drive to "eradicate the fundamentalist poison", as he ended up on trial for plotting with the connivance of the Iranian government to overthrow the Tunisian state. Linda Jones' profile of Ghannouchi for Middle East Report at this time noted that while the MTI was not the "fundamentalist" sock puppet that Bourguiba had demonsied, it had profited indirectly from Bourguiba's war on trade unions and the Left. Nonetheless, Ghannouchi was jailed and sentenced to a life of hard labour on evidence that was persuasive to no one, only to be released by the subsequent Ben Ali dictatorship in its early, liberalising days.

In 1989, the movement changed its name to Hizb an-Nahda (Renaissance Party), and contested the elections staged by Ben Ali as part of his promise of liberalisation. The elections, fixed though they were, did disclose a trend which is consistent with what was happening elsewhere at the time. As Fred Halliday explained, again in Middle East Report: "Despite their failure to win any seats in parliament, the Islamist 'independents' won around 17 percent of the vote, displacing the secular left, who won around 3 percent, as the main opposition. Given that around 1.2 million of those of voting age were not registered, and given the almost complete control which the ruling party has in the rural areas, the real Islamist strength is no doubt considerably greater than 17 percent: in the Tunis area, the figure was around 30 percent." However, the Islamists' support was broader than it was deep. As a movement, it was a relatively new arrival compared to its equivalents in North Africa and the Middle East, and its handling of religious and moral issues, though in one light relatively open and progressive, could also characterised as cautious and timid. A subsequent wave of repression in 1991 and 1992, centred on legal witch hunts for 'terrorism', decimated the Islamists' organisation and sent much of the leadership into exile.

This was followed by a series of economic transformations. Among these was the restructuring of class relations in the countryside. For example, following the advice of the World Bank, the government turned over state-owned agricultural cooperatives to large landowners. While this tended to concentrate wealth among the agrarian rich, it did unleash a wave of capital accumulation and growth that undercut support for the Islamists. The privatization of public services also reduced the scale of the public sector salariat, and profoundly altered the class structure in those newly private industries. The tax codes were restructured to give the bourgoisie a lift, and entice foreign direct investment with the promise of more repatriated lolly. This combination of reforms not only enhanced the power of the ruling class, but it also gave some middle class layers a sudden income boost while also producing sufficient growth to persuade some of those who lost from the process that they had a stake in preserving the neoliberal compact. In other words, the same combination of political repression and ensuing class restructuring, did for the Islamists as had done for the Left.

Contrary to what has sometimes been implied, the An-Nahda did not subsequently disappear as a movement. Its activists continued to be convenient scapegoats, continued to suffer repression and were to be the bearers of the 'Al Qaeda' stigma once the 'war on terror' was under way. But just as the secular left has been almost invisible in Tunisia for a generation, so the An-Nahda's influence has been much diminished, and practically subterranean since 1992-3. The current revolt is not hegemonised by parties of the Left or by the Islamists. At its heart is the trade union leadership, whose outlook is social democratic. But, like it or not, An-Nahda leaders have been returning to Tunisia to participate, and will in all likelihood gain some sort of audience. As they are less sectarian than some of the cretins in this country who denounce them as far right totalitarians, (and whom it is my vocation to wind up when they start woofing and foaming at the mouth), they will probably find willing allies as well. Just as they did when they were able last able to organise as a tendency in Tunisia. To describe the revolt as "Islamist-free", therefore, is almost to miss the point. The revolution, if it advances at all, is going to have to at minimum include a general amnesty toward political exiles, which means the An-Nahda will return. As Marc Lynch points out, it's hard to see what kind of genuine democracy could obtain without this step. And if the regime, entrenched as it has been since 1956, is to be defeated, then in all likelihood it will involve some configuration of the broad coalition that both Ghannouchis, pere et fille, are calling for.

Labels: an-nahda, ghannouchi, islamism, neoliberalism, political religion, religion, sectarianism, socialism, trade unionism, tunisia

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Tommy Sheridan, the SSP and the future of the left. posted by Richard Seymour

Tommy Sheridan has been convicted of perjury and will now probably go to jail. The imprisonment of Sheridan was the only plausible result of this perjury trial. It was undoubtedly the one sought by police and by News of the World. It may not have been the result sought by members of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) who helped to instigate the perjury case. And those who leaked and sold materials to the press may not have had prison in mind. But it is the logical and necessary result of their actions, and their vociferous expressions of relief at the verdict are notable. And it is a setback for the Scottish Left. To speak frankly, I do not see the SSP having much of a role in its repair, for all that it contains some immensely talented, charming and principled people.

The SSP was once the envy of the radical left. A thriving model of socialist unity in action. It was based significantly, perhaps too significantly, on the personal credentials of Tommy Sheridan, whose inspiring lead in resistance to the Poll Tax first gave him the stature he subsequently enjoyed. It was natural that when the tabloid press came after the SSP, they would focus on Sheridan. And as they could not attack him for his politics - or at least if they did it would make little difference - they tried to attack him over his personal life, his sexual conduct. Sheridan's response was to initiate libel proceedings. I think most of his defenders consider that this was a crazy thing to have done - the bourgeois courts are a risky terrain for socialists, in which the odds are almost always stacked against you. Nonetheless, he won the support of the majority of the party for his position, which was that the attack on Sheridan was an attack on the party. But the SSP executive panicked, forced him to resign as national convenor and indicated that they would not support him in his libel case.

As it transpired, not only did they not give him broad backing, they agreed to testify for News of the World. In justification, they claimed that Tommy Sheridan had no right to sue for libel because the allegations were true. They argued that he had no right to expect them to lie for him, and that he was putting his ego and his reputation ahead of the fortunes of the socialist left. But, even assuming that every word of the News of the World's claims were true (an assumption which I am only prepared to entertain for the sake of argument), and even if you believed that Sheridan's libel prosecution was a mistake, to actively assist the News of the World in court was not only unnecessary but self-destructive. It meant that, as witnesses on oath, they had an interest in seeing Sheridan lose and the Murdoch press win. It was always clear that a large part of the Left would consider this unforgiveable behaviour, a form of political scabbing, and that such actions would tear the hitherto united and growing socialist left in twain (twain at the very least). It is also now known, as a result of this perjury trial, that in addition to testifying for Murdoch, leading SSP member Alan McCombes secretly went to the Sunday Herald with a 'sworn affidavit' three days after Sheridan was deposed as party convenor, stating that if Sheridan had not resigned they would have "put certain information into the public domain which would have forced him to resign". This wasn't just comrades put in a difficult position. From the second the anti-Sheridan faction coagulated in the SSP executive, it pursued its quarry ruthlessly - a point that becomes more clear as time goes on.

When Sheridan won his libel case, the News of the World was out for blood. But the anti-Sheridan faction in the SSP was also overwrought. They immediately went on the offensive. In the wake of the case, numerous leading SSP members suddenly publicised their view that sexism had been rife in the SSP - though they had apparently failed to act on this belief until then. A former SSP activist wrote in The Guardian that the issue was about gender rather than class, and that Sheridan's victory was a victory for machismo. She alleged that Sheridan had used misogynistic language about SSP members, describing them as a "cabal of women". This misrepresented, perhaps intentionally, an open letter from Sheridan to members of the SSP which used the phrase "cabal of comrades". But it contributed to a political mythology, which is still propagated to this day, and which casts Sheridan as a misogynist.

And this has remained an important part of the SSP's rationalisations for their methods. The current issue of Scottish Socialist Youth, for example, revels in Sheridan's conviction and depicts him as a "mad shagger", and the sex clubs he allegedly visited as tantamount to brothels - thus he is characterised as a macho prick, availing himself of (what some would see as) some of the worst forms of female oppression. Just one point about this. If it is indeed the case that Sheridan's alleged actions mark him out as a chauvinist, then it is time for SSP members and apologists to stop pretending that the allegations against him were solely to do with personal morality and thus not at all to do with the politics of the SSP. By their own account, the allegations were definitely political, and definitely damaging to the SSP.

But this sort of narrative re-framing would be no more than natural behaviour among people who had allowed personal bitterness to overtake their political judgment and made quite a few angry opponents of former supporters in the process. At this point, with News of the World beaten, Sheridan and his supporters took it as a good time to vacate the remnants of the once great and now greatly reduced SSP. What then happened defies belief. Members of the SSP conspired to instigate a perjury prosecution, by bringing materials to the police and the media (for a considerable sum of money, naturally) that would incriminate Sheridan.

George McNeilage either recorded a private conversation and sold it to News of the World for £200,000, or he participated in a fake intended to implicate Sheridan in perjury, and sold it to News of the World for £200,000. Then Barbara Scott produced a handwritten minute of unusual detail, which many members of the executive of the time don't recall seeing before, from a meeting which purportedly proved that Sheridan lied, and marched down to the local constabulary of the Lothian and Borders police with that minute. The invocation of principle in a case like this can be dangerous. But I like to think that I know an issue of principle when I see it, and I think on principle it is aborrent and reprehensible to make yourself a police informant or sell a former comrade to the newspapers, even for the sake of something as important as a factional vendetta.

A prosecution was initiated. Once again, leading SSP members bore witness, but this time for the prosecution. Of 42 prosecution witnesses, 24 were SSP members, 16 from the original executive. Were it not for this footage, those minutes, and that testimony, Tommy Sheridan would be a free man. Were it not for a this extraordinary factionalism, the News of the World and Lothian and Borders police could not have hounded and persecuted Sheridan and his wife. He is now expected to go to prison.

This is a setback, as I said. Anyone who believes otherwise is not living in the real world. But Scotland also saw one of the biggest protests against the cuts after the comprehensive spending review. It is going to be at the forefront of resistance to Tory austerity. And if the major electoral vehicle for the Scottish radical left now lies in tatters, its former star now heading to jail, there will be ample opportunity to rebuild the Left. And in that future Left, I do see a role for Tommy Sheridan.

Labels: media, news of the world, rupert murdoch, sectarianism, socialism, ssp, tabloid frenzy, tommy sheridan

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Belfast burning posted by Richard Seymour

Come on, you all know the words: #It was on the twelfth when the Pope shite himself/It was on the Shankill road...# No? You haven't heard that? My, you have lived a sheltered life, haven't you? How about this one?: #We shall be mastered by no fenian bastard/For we are the boys of the POTV [Pride of the Village - an exuberantly violent flute band from Templepatrick]...# You're joking me? You've not heard tell of that one either? Well, these are popular folk songs where I come from. I don't know about the songs on the other side. There were some Catholics in our estate, but they didn't exactly go around the place singing - or, rather, they did, but it was more likely to be 'Hey Frankie' by Sisters Sledge than the 'Soldier's Song'. I suppose I just felt like mentioning this because I caused some minor offence when, at my Marxism talk, I jokingly suggested that I have a privileged position from which to view the 'culture' wars, as Northern Ireland doesn't really have a culture. Let me tell you this, boy: Northern Ireland has culture coming out of its arse. (Or is that kultur?) Why, look, just look at it. Culture, curling out in magnificent, glossy segments. It's like cross between a bakery and a Canadian logging camp.

Of course, this is rather unfair and, if I was being entirely serious, would place me right alongside the ridiculous handwringing unionist and nationalist politicians and reverends bleating about how violence has no place in a civilized society. Next, I'd be saying how disgawsted ay awm with the oitrayt vayilence n thawggery awn display. These rictus-mouthed, pious officials and holy-holy sooks look and sound ridiculous, and powerless, because in a way they are. The British state rules round these parts, and the British state has already determined what the contours of the settlement are to be. If you doubt this, ask the DUP. They were shit full of opposition to the institutions of Good Friday, and led hundreds of thousands of Protestant ~~bigots~~ constituents to believe that it was possible to overthrow this arrangement - now they're it's guardians. So, if everyone is happy, and if the settlement is so wonderful for both sides (because there are only two sides of any argument in Northern Ireland), how could it possibly be that there are protests, sit-down strikes, and now riots, hijackings and bomb scares, with police being shot at and injured? It must be the Republican dissidents. Or, as you English put it, the three Bs: bog-trotting bastards in balaclavas. That's the line from Martin McGuinness, Peter Robinson, and the Chief Constable. It's always the same story: a small minority ruining it for everyone else.

Aye, as they say, right. No such thing. There has been constant sectarianism and violence since the peace accords, not to mention racist pogroms, and while one doesn't discount the existence of a minority of Republicans who can't let go of the dream, they can't be blamed for every sign of social distress and dissent. The short background is that the Orange Order, (whose role in the origins of racial supremacy was recently the subject of heated debate here), have yet to abandon their hobby of marching on nationalist communities during the bonfire season around 12th July each year. There's nothing intimidating about this, you understand: it's just a friendly hello, and an invitation to experience Orange culture up close. Most peaceful Catholic residents enjoy the opportunity to gawp at the gallons of Harp lager consumed, the tattoos, the pot bellies, the stanley knives, and the young man twirling a baton made from a stick, two tennis balls and red-white-and-blue sticky tape.

Essentially, it works like this. In the weeks before the big parades day, the 12th, loyalists in Protestant estates construct a make-shift mountain in some grassy area of the estate, from pallets, tires, furniture, planks, and consumer durables, all stolen from back yards, living rooms and industrial estates. At the top of this mountain, they pin an effigy which they invite people to believe is the Pope or some lesser papist. Then on the evening of the 11th July, they get a wee bit pissed, go round bricking Catholic windows, maybe find a 'fenian' out after curfew and give him something to think about, then head back to the mountain to set it on fire. Beholding this blazing sacrificial behemoth, like little Orange druids, they drink more lager to the sound of loyalist songs not a kick in the arse away from the childish ditties I recounted at the top of this post. Having spent all night getting sozzled in twenty-four packs and bigotry, anyone in a flute band hastily throws on a uniform and heads off with his musical implement, more lager, plenty of fags, and some mates, to march through some fortunate town centre or village. And, if tradition is duly revered, someone identified as a 'taig' will likely get his ballicks booted in, or cut off. I myself have a rather special memory of the Murray Memorial Flute Band's antics in my own home town. They got a bit lathered and apparently staggered on to an Ulsterbus where - would you believe it? - the driver was a Catholic. In a fit of inspiration, they dragged him outside and stabbed him so many times that when an old dear tried to staunch the bleeding by wrapping him in ten towels, she ended up with a mass of blood-soaked cloth and a dead man in her arms. Ah, blessed culture.

Where was I? Oh yes. A minority of recalcitrant Catholics do sometimes try to obstruct these harmless cultural festivals with their petty, resentful protests. They stage sit-down protests and block the roads, absurdly claiming that residents have rights. This being in flagrant defiance of the decisions of the Parades Commission, the residents are all too often setting themselves up against the police, who have the werewithal to remove them. And then you get 'trouble'. This year, Catholic residents of Ardoyne did just that: they staged a sit-down strike. They insisted to anyone who would listen, that they were not Republican dissidents, but residents protecting their area. Now, as Splintered Sunrise suggests, there's a lot of young unemployed men who are always up for a fight with the cops in Northern Ireland. This made up a fairly hefty proportion of loyalist rioters when I was still living there. For many of my young peers, it was recreation. In a social landscape with fuck all to do unless you've got money, the opportunity to take on the forces of authority for a few nights, and even end up in the news, is not to be missed. The more adventurous elements even found the time to hijack cars, break into factories and set up road blocks. And if the same police have been part of a machinery that is oppressing you, and has been since you were born, there's probably an added frisson in causing injury to a few of them.

The trouble is, of course, that after a few days and nights in which a slightly other-worldly atmosphere descends on the six counties, everything goes back to normal. Young people go back to being unemployed, poverty remains poverty, and the working class still gets battered by the extreme neoliberalism of a sectarian proto-state that reduces every important political question to whether it is Protestants or Catholics who are predominantly getting shafted. Sectarianism remains the life-blood of Northern Ireland politics, loyalist gangs still extort, rob and apply vigilante 'justice', and the political leadership ventilates about peace while also regularly exhaling bigotry about ethnic minorities and gays. Nothing changes. They let out a bit of steam, and it goes back to the way it was. And that's the crisis: that things stay exactly as they are.

Labels: british empire, loyalism, neoliberalism, northern ireland, republicanism, sectarianism, unionism

Friday, June 19, 2009

Attacks on Romanians in Belfast posted by Richard Seymour

Now, you might be thinking, "bigotry in Belfast? Well, I never!" True, the attacks on Romanians earlier this week come after years of assaults and intimidation of Chinese workers which reached a bloody crescendo in 2003 and 2004. And it follows attacks on Polish workers earlier this year, in which Unionist politicians tried to cover up the extent of what was happening. Actually, Unionist politicians like Sammy Wilson - one of the few people in the world who really does have a face like a well-smacked arse - have been openly encouraging discrimination against migrant workers. But I do consider it significant that the attackers were chanting BNP and Combat-18 slogans as they did this. Not because there's a powerful Nazi organisation in Ulster, but it does look as if Northern Ireland's disproportionate number of violent young bigots have been heartened by the recent success of fascism in the mainland. Eamonn McCann, noting the lack of BNP presence in the areas affected, suggests that the attackers are "invoking an established brand rather than acting at the instigation of an organisation". (Mind you, it seems the BNP have just established their national call centre in Dundonald, and presumably intend to try and build a little family of fascists in the area: can't you just hear the pitter-patter of tiny goosesteeps?)

Over at Splintered Sunrise, I see that the UDA boss is ventilating over the BNP's malevolent influence, desperately trying to deflect any blame that might be placed on his right-wing paramilitary outfit: "It seems that what is exercising Hard Bap is the possibility that the UDA’s good name might be besmirched by commentators linking it with the BNP. Which sort of says something about Nick Griffin’s push for respectability." This won't fly, of course. Studies have shown that 90% of racist crime in Northern Ireland takes place in Loyalist areas. It may not be that the UDA are actually encouraging such attacks, but there is a powerful continuity in the methods of violence and intimidation, and the bigotry underwriting them. Moreover, it seems that some other things don't change either: most of Northern Ireland's minorities consider the Police Service of Northern Ireland (née RUC) to be institutionally racist. Well, of course it is. It is the still largely unreconstructed authority of an occupying power that has spent decades terrorising Catholic estates. On top of that, the Crown Prosecution Service only seems to try a fraction of the reported cases of racist violence. So, if you're being driven out of your home by some jumped up Rangers fans with an admiration for the fascist way of doing things, you can't rely on the police, and you can't rely on the courts. And as for the Assembly, they've done fuck all about it for years, despite having pledged to do so. (The lack of consideration given to migrants in policymaking is discussed in this lengthy and useful report [pdf]). The efforts of solidarity campaigners is all that is coming down the pipeline.

McCann argues that the root of this is more than a deflection of older forms of sectarian violence, though, and I think this is crucial:

It is not to excuse the assaults to point to the fact that the Protestant working class, and its young people in particular, have been the main losers from change in Northern Ireland. It's not that they have taken a hit that their equivalents on the Catholic side have not also suffered. Whatever your religion, the poorer you are here the more likely you are to have not benefited at all from the agreement hailed around the world as ushering in a peace based on mutual tolerance. It's no accident that the Real IRA draws its support almost exclusively from the least well-off in the Catholic community.
The snarling young men who forced the Romanian families out have the additional grievance that the Protestant community's sense of itself as living in "their" state has been shattered by the developments symbolised by Sinn Féin sitting snugly in government with the DUP. That none of them can remember the glory days of untrammelled unionist rule matters little. They feel – and it's a feeling they know is endorsed and welcomed by many nationalists – that Catholics are on the way up, Protestants on the way down.

I know that complaint very well. One used to hear quite a bit (from Protestants) in the 1990s, that while once it was the Catholics who were being victimised, now it's the poor Prods. The neoliberal consensus reinforces this sense of grievance by reducing the sphere of legitimate arguments about public spending and resources to sectarian ones: not, will we close this hospital, but will this hospital be closed in a Protestant, or a Catholic area. This entails McCann's conclusion that, while it is necessary to confront these thugs - physically, if it comes to that - it is also essential to build the kind of radical anti-neoliberal left that has just done so splendidly well in the south of Ireland.

Labels: bj4bw, migrant workers, neoliberalism, northern ireland, pogroms, racism, sectarianism

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Shooting up squaddies. posted by Richard Seymour

Northern Irish politics is, as a rule, boring. Think about the material you have to work with. Between Martin McGuinness' lachrymose banalities and Peter Robinson's rigid bigotry (there is a great deal of both in Stormont), there is little room to be inspiring. The only occasional frisson is when one of the demented crackpots of the hard right says something unspeakably ignorant and stupid. Sammy Wilson, the environment minister, denies that there is such a thing as man-made global warming, and that ensures that his smug, dopy-eyed, reddened face gets on the news for a week. (Sammy is also, you may care to know, an Ulster Jobs for Ulster Workers guy). Likewise, when Iris Robinson MP, spouse to First Minister Peter, describes homosexuality as being "viler" than child abuse, there follows a brief uproar before the the usual run of anti-gay violence is resumed with vengeance. (Not that Nothern Ireland has a problem with exaggerated machismo - anyone who says it does will receive a boot in the ballicks.) Though I have not visited NI for years, and don't feel much connection to it, it is hard not to be embarrassed by the kinds of people who get elected in that neck of the woods. They are so obviously unfit for the job. They should be spreading mulch and spouting misanthropy out in the suburbs and farming communities.

At any rate, this grotesque charade is underwritten by a neoliberal and sectarian consensus that is impoverishing an already vitiated and lacklustre social landscape. The parties compete not on the basis of class issues or even left-right ideologies as such, but strictly on the Nationalist-Unionist dichotomy. To be represented, one has to accept one or other label. Meanwhile, the only answer that any of the political parties offer to the poverty and social misery of the statelet is to turn it into a sort of corporate theme park, open up investment opportunities by privatizing and cutting business taxes. Intriguingly, this is one question on which even Ian Paisley favours a 'united Ireland', in that both he and Martin McGuinness favoured cutting corporation taxes to 12.5%, the level pertaining in the Republic of Ireland. If the name were not already taken, the place could soon be re-dubbed the Northern Marianas. No wonder people are anxious to get the hell out of the place. Emigration is at record levels, and a quarter of the permanent residents have spent more than six months abroad. People get as far away as they can for as long as they can, before family commitments or whatever else it is draws them back in. This is grim stuff, but it doesn't make good copy. It is boring.

No wonder that the newspapers are almost uniformly treating the attack on a military base in county Antrim last night as back-to-the-good-old-days. They are not the only ones to see it that way. Ian Paisley Jr., who is his father with the interesting bits removed, apparently remarked that the attacks represent a "defining moment", adding that "For the last 10 years people believed things like this happened in foreign countries, places like Basra. Unfortunately it has returned to our doorstep." How to begin to parse a thought like that? With the suggestion, from a Unionist, that the occupation of the north of Ireland in some sense recalls the occupation of Iraq? Or with the insinuation that the relative peace since Omagh was illusory, merely what "people believed"? Actually, the Unionist right has for some time been trying to increase their leverage by highlighting an alleged resurgence in 'dissident' Republicanism, first raised by Sir Hugh Orde. It would be just dandy for them if there was a plausible new terrorist threat with which to either undermine the Assembly, weaken the Republicans, or just mobilise a disheartened electoral base (the DUP were supposed to chase Sinn Fein out of Stormont, not form a coalition with them).

Are we really on the verge of a new war, as the Unionists suggest, and as so much lurid commentary in the British media implies? Hardly. Whoever carried out last night's attack doesn't have the muscle to duke it out with the British state, even supposing it isn't penetrated from top to bottom by intelligence moles. The Provos fought that war for a quarter of a century, and could only reach a stalemate. That failed guerilla strategy was precisely what resulted in the timid consensus politics of today's Sinn Fein. Groups like the 'Real IRA' and 'Continuity IRA' don't take this point, of course. Representing dissenting minorities in the Provisional IRA's leadership at the time of the Good Friday agreement and the peace process that preceded it, they still insist that a Republic can be acquired by an elite armed struggle. If it can't, then all has been in vain. As Bobby Sands' younger sister, former Provisional IRA executive member, and current 'Real IRA' member Bernadette Sands McKevitt put it: "Bobby did not die for cross-border bodies with executive powers. He did not die for nationalists to be equal British citizens within the Northern Ireland state". The blood that was shed in the course of that war is indeed hard to square with such an inglorious outcome. But ironically it was this insistence that led the 'Real IRA' to undertake their most infamous attack, the Omagh bombing, which itself was the final nail in the coffin for this kind of combat Republicanism. The idea that the armed struggle could be revived today is frankly absurd. Gerry Adams can openly call for his constituents to support the police hunt because he knows full well that the Catholic working class is sick to death of the futile armed struggle, the brutal 'discipline' that went with it and the harsh counterinsurgency of the British state. There is no popular constituency for this kind of fight.

The dull reality is that this shooting amounts to a brief, bloody intrusion on a perpetually gloomy twilight of increasing sectarianism (there are more 'peace walls' than ever before), rising poverty (the worst rates in the UK), and violent criminality (often by the husks of former combatant organisations). It is the convulsion of a movement experiencing its last gasps, one whose purpose was just but whose means were always ruinous. No one who matters need panic. Soon enough, everyone can get on with squandering and selling out yet another generation.

Labels: 'terrorism', ira, northern ireland, republicanism, sectarianism, sinn fein, socialism

Friday, February 06, 2009

Those Iraqi elections posted by Richard Seymour

It was predictable enough that US military officials would hail the recent elections as a blinding success and final proof that all of gruesome carnage of the last six years has been worth it. Equally predictable was that a rabid minority, including William Shawcross and John Rentoul in the UK, would take their word for it. I just decline at this point to contemplate the kind of mentality that could entertain such thoughts after all that has taken place. What actually happened in the elections, however, is worth thinking about.

As far as we presently know, on a turnout of approximately 51% (early claims of 60% or more were unfounded), Maliki and the secular nationalist parties have gained a boost. Maliki's gains appear to be due to his current 'nationalist' posture, and his distancing himself from the sectarian politics of his Da'wa party. For all its flaws, and however much credit really belongs to other forces, Maliki was able to obtain a withdrawal timetable under his watch, and no doubt he is being rewarded for this. Despite the fact that the relative lull in violence was bought by a succession of political compromises and negotiations, Maliki undoubtedly got some of the credit for the increase in peace and security. The good side of this is that Iraq has overwhelmingly rejected the party-cum-death-squad, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. Given that it was probably the SIIC's Badr Brigades that were responsible for assassinating some of the six local councillors during the run up to the elections (yeah, sure, they've been disbanded); given their ability to bribe and bully the electorate; and given that they had been the largest political party represented in the parliament, this is quite a kick in the teeth. The SIIC, for a long time America's closest allies in Iraq, has easily been the most dangerous and sectarian force in Iraq, and their defeat has long been overdue. Their hopes of running a 9-governate mini-state called the 'South of Baghdad Region' have ended in richly deserved failure.

Reports on the Sadrists' results point to a decline. The Sadrists did not run a single slate, but rather backed two separate parties in the election. The New York Times reports that they kept their distance in public in order to avoid being too closely associated with what many Iraqis consider a discredited and corrupt political process. That may have been a wise move, because it looks like those two lists didn't do very well. UK newspapers are taking cues from British intelligence, who claim that their joint operations with Maliki against the Sadrists in Basra have seriously destroyed the party's base and let to a Sadrist meltdown. The Sadrists were, during the peak of resistance, seen as the most likely dominant force in any post-occupation Iraq. It would be a major success for British-sponsored ultra-violence if they had truly routed the Sadrists.

As it is, I suspect that Sadr's representation will have fallen not so much because of British operations in Basra, but a) because of a sustained campaign of repression of the Sadrist movement (only yesterday, a senior Sadrist was shot by police), and b) partly as a corollary, because his movement is no longer as central to ending the occupation as it once was. Sadr's representatives were booted out of six ministerial posts, presumably at the behest of the US, and the Mahdi Army has been forced to maintain a ceasefire even as his movement has been harrassed. Sadr himself has been keeping relatively quiet, immersing himself in religious studies in Iran. Having obtained some measure of control over the movement, he has continued to try to barter for power within the state while appearing to keep his distance from it. Areas where the Sadrists were once a local power are now being taken control of by Maliki (apparently to the dismay of locals). In an intriguing twist, it looks as if Maliki and the Sadrists were cutting a power-sharing deal in some of the councils. That presumably doesn't look very good if you're supposed to be standing as an alternative to Maliki.

In the Sunni areas, alleged voter fraud and the assassination of four candidates has sort of undermined the legitimacy of the results, but so far reports indicate that secular nationalist parties are taking control of formerly Kurdish-controlled councils (Kirkuk did not vote, and there is still a fight to be won over whether it will be part of 'Iraqi Kurdistan' or a Sunni Arab governorate of Iraq. There isn't much to say about who won what, because the reportage largely focuses on the fact that there were Sunni candidates and that Sunnis did turn out to vote this time. The crushing defeat of the sectarian SIIC and the strengthening of nationalist Sunnis is going to be seen as a victory for 'centralists' - those who don't support the sectarian break-up of the country. Yet, there are reasons to doubt this. After all, as per the Biden-Gelb plan - which Obama supports - power is still being distributed in a patrimonial fashion, and along sectarian lines, notwithstanding the passage of the Provincial Powers Act last year, which sought to contain and reverse some of the effects of the 2006 constitution. The vote still broke down roughly on sectarian lines, with no party able to appeal beyond the bounds of its previous ethnic base. American-designed plans to turn Iraq into a loose federation of relatively autonomous zones determined by ethnicity are still being pushed through (and this process certainly contributed to the sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing that took place). The military and police are still dominated by militia competition, since they have mainly absorbed the militias (this could be why cops are killing politicians). Maliki likes to talk tough about militias, but everyone knows he rewarded the militias of his own Da'wa party for their role in the Basra attack. They, along with the Badr Corps, the US sponsored 'Sons of Iraq' militias (why not call them 'Sons of Sam'?) and the peshmerga are all integrated into the security institutions. But their being integrated doesn't mean they're not feuding. And, as Dahr Jamail reports, there is now rivalry between the different 'Awakenings Councils', as well as between them and Sunni parties. It looks increasingly as if however Iraqis vote, sectarianism has been built into the Iraqi state.

Labels: iraq, maliki, occupation, sadrists, sectarianism, siic, US imperialism

Monday, March 17, 2008

The re-division of Iraq posted by Richard Seymour

Re-territorialising the Middle East was a crucial goal of the Iraq war. It wasn't just to take control of the oil spigot, but to do so in such a way that the geographies of resistance to the US and Israel were converted into pliable subordinates or assets. I am not talking about the more extreme neoconservative fantasies in which practically the whole region is converted into a system of pro-American free market states. They expected dividends from the conquest that would weaken Islamist and nationalist opposition and strengthen pro-American currents in Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Not only that, but they would, by securing an alliance with Iraqi Kurds, be better placed to thwart wider Kurdish goals and strengthen the Turkish state. Transforming Iraq from a potentially powerful, large, Arab nationalist bulwark into a politically and spatially divided system of lily pads was an important component of this strategy. If it hasn't always been obvious that the US would engage in a bipartisan political strategy to divide Iraq into three effective mini-states, it was clear that US planners regarded the territorial division of the Middle East bequeathed by its colonial forebears as part of the problem. Perhaps they saw 2003 as being pivotal in the same way that 1918 had been.

At any rate, the Biden strategy has offered the occupiers a way out of the 'quagmire' that appears to be working, at least inasmuch as it reduces the problems that the US were faced with a year ago. By arming each side in the civil war that the US has helped create, using the Kurdish peshmerga as a counterinsurgency army, 'tilting' toward the Sunni 'Awakening Councils' and sponsoring the most sectarian elements in the south, the US has experienced a reduction in attacks on its troops and has seen less turmoil in the admittedly thin representative institutions that it has set up. Displacing a war of resistance into a domestic civil war has been useful in many ways, and enshrining sectarianism in brick and mortar gives it the appearance of an 'fact on the ground' of the kind that the Israelis like to establish. One manifestation of this was the announcement last year that there would be a new federal region set up, known as the 'South of Baghdad Region' encompassing all Shi'ite majority regions. Furious efforts were apparently under way to establish this, and it was due to start kicking in during April, when the US-driven federalist laws start to have effect. Under these laws, any area which wishes to be a federal region must have a referendum, with 50% turnout or more, and a simple majority in favour of the move. One would think that if they had pushed through the sectarian constitution in the first place, they could achieve the effective secession of the south. However, the resistance of Sunni and less sectarian Shi'ite groups such as the Sadrists may well have scuppered this plan (Who the hell do they think they are?). Further, it looks as if there may be competitors in the federalist field, with some pursuing a Basra region - if Basra opts out of the southern region, it won't happen. The new geographical units in which the occupied political economy of Iraq will be elaborated could this be a strong central state, three distinct regions based on ethnicity (hence the routine bouts of ethnic cleansing), or a cluster of micro-regionalisms. What will be unleashed in April, therefore, will be an intense political struggle. All of the ethnic cleansing, the sectarian political strategies, the death squads and kidnappings have been building up to this. How to best manage close-range US dominance? Who can profit most from it, and how? At what scale of political unit can one most easily exact rent in the process of occupation, and ensure advantages in the long run? There will be more blood, a great deal more, before those questions are answered.

Labels: biden, iraq, occupation, sectarianism, US imperialism

Friday, April 27, 2007

Bipartisan Bill to Divide Iraq. posted by Richard Seymour

A right-wing Republican presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback, and right-wing Democratic presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden, have collaborated on a bipartisan bill to divide Iraq into three states. They call this 'Plan B', although a more appropriate title would be 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. It's been floated by liberal-leaning intellectuals like Peter Galbraith, as well as former Carter assistant Leslie Gelb, and has been echoed by 'realistic' critics of the war in the British papers. The White House have not favoured this so far, despite the fact that their divisive strategies and patronage of corrupt Kurdish and sectarian Shiite groups are certainly likely to generate a weak central state, and despite the fact that the 'federal' constitution they have tried to impose does more or less divide Iraq into three. Note that the formal structure of a single country would remain in any event - no American politician wants to give a large part of Iraq effectively to Iranian control. But the central state would be weak, vulnerable to fracture and patrimonial corruption, and ultimately guided by the American embassy.

The wall in Adhamiya, which analysts say is creating de facto segregation, and which has already produced several local protests, is a crucial test for the American state. If they can use this formal sectarian lockdown to gain better control of the situation, then the Bidens and Brownbacks will probably have a better hearing in the NSC and other policymaking bodies.

Labels: 'war on terror', iraq, partition, sectarianism, US imperialism

Thursday, April 26, 2007

The Baghdad Clampdown posted by Richard Seymour

Is it humorous or grim, this pretence that American actions in Iraq have anything to do with the well-being of Iraqis? Perhaps both, a death-head grin, that favour to which almost a million Iraqis have returned. On the one hand, the atrocious rate of mortality under the rubric of the 'surge' is being deliberately suppressed, even as the Foreign Office works hard to prevent one of the Lancet authors from presenting the information that was knowingly smeared by the Ministry of Defense. On another entirely separate field of digits, what Reuters refers to as "the Baghdad neighbourhood wall" (fuck off) is proceeding despite "the hostility the project sparked among residents in Adhamiya", also reflected in comments by Sadr, several Sunni representatives, and even Maliki who (gasp) is supposed to be flexing his muscles with the Americans to 'modify' the wall. Maliki, like an Anglican church-goer, has no muscles to flex. He is a hanging vine draped around the American embassy. If anyone is exerting any pressure, it is probably those capable of mobilising popular constituencies.

As Simon Assaf rightly points out, the wall is being built around a stronghold of anti-occupation resistance in a fashion similar to the carving up of Fallujah after it was destroyed by two successive American attacks. It has nothing to do with protecting the people that America wishes to crush. There have already been protests about this in Adhamiya, but Sadr has called for a mass protest against this "sectarian, racist and unjust wall that seeks to divide" Iraqis, a hugely positive step. Unity over this crucial battle could ironically have the effect of substantially undermining the sectarian political dynamics supported by the US and its client-regime.

Another aspect of the Baghdad clampdown is the appearance of torture stations across the capital. Aside from erecting enclosures, some of them formal walls, others make-shift concrete barriers, the US has been building up a large and secret apparatus of incarceration across the capital, with a rolling wave of torture - the scorched, blackened skin of an electrocuted detainee is the ensign of the occupation. And let us not forget, since a large number of the new civilian deaths are attributed to death squads, that the Special Police Commando unit, particularly its notorious Wolves Brigade, continues to operate on behalf of the occupiers (although you have to love the US army pretending that these guys are somehow maverick outsiders, as if General Petraeus didn' take full credit for their training and operations). No small part of the toll from death squad activity will be directly attributable to those forces.

And they're worried about sectarianism in Iraq. Sure.

Labels: 'war on terror', baghdad, iraq, sectarianism, separation wall

Monday, April 23, 2007

Divide and conquer: Baghdad's separation wall. posted by Richard Seymour

What can you say? Ostensibly, it is being built to protect the citizens of Adhamiya from sectarian war, but the citizens don't want it, their representatives don't want it, and even the spineless Maliki is saying don't build it - construction has already began without consultation or permission from anyone because, of course, Iraq is now a democratic society with a free government.

This carve-up, the Yugoslavian Solution, was recommended by Harry Reid, reflects a strategy long advocated by Democrats like Biden, but also Chalabi groupies like Nibras Kasimi of the Hudson Institute and also the De-Baathification Committee, who recommended a 'closed canton model':

The ‘Fallouja Model’ and the ‘Kadhimiya Canton’: After the November 2004 offensive to take-back Fallouja from the insurgents, the U.S. military embarked on a drastically new experiment of controlling the turbulent town of 200,000 souls: fence the population in. Instead of bringing back old Ba’athists like the failed ‘Fallouja Brigade’ experiment of April 2004 to police the town, which only ended-up emboldening the insurgents, the Americans opted to turn Fallouja into a vast interment camp. But for a few incidents here and there, the plan worked very well.

All residents of Fallouja were issued special localized IDs, and unknown vehicles were barred from entering the town. The US forces set-up a perimeter around the dense urban center. However, this chokehold did not completely surround Fallouja’s ‘rural suburbs’ on the western back of the Euphrates River—hence, there is room for improvement on this particular model.

A ‘closed canton’ model was voluntarily imposed on the Kadhimiya suburb in northern Baghdad. This Shi'a center with a population of 500,000 is now virtually closed off: entry points have been bottle-necked to a handful, and no unfamiliar cars are allowed to pass through. The levels of violence in Kadhimiya have been drastically reduced over the past year since this model was put in place. In lieu of car bombs and suicide bombers, the insurgents now resort to lobbing mortar attacks to get the residents of Kadhimiya. But there is a feeling among the resident that their town is safe—a spectacular feat considering that it borders some major hotbeds of insurgent activity.

Certainly, if you were to turn Iraq into a vast prison camp with walls, concrete perimiters and barbed wire fences dividing the place up, it would be much easier to control. On the other hand, that doesn't look like much fun for Iraqis, and it does tend to reinforce the 'civil war' dynamic.

Labels: iraq, sectarianism, separation wall, US imperialism