FORUM: Perils of meddling in the Middle East

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Published: 4 March, 2011
by JEREMY CORBYN

A whirlwind of unrest is blowing through the Middle East. But the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan warn against the West’s military involvement 

ON January 1 nobody would have seriously predicted that within eight weeks two of the longest-serving north African heads of state would have been driven out of office, a third embroiled in a civil war, two others under enormous pressure and all the others, including the Saudi royal family, looking nervously over their shoulders at popular rebellions all around them.

Tunisia, which I visited last week, now celebrates January 14 as its new national day. That was the date on which President Ben Ali was forced from office and cut a pathetic figure as his executive jet flew around the Mediterr­an­ean looking for fuel and eventually somewhere to land. He is now in Saudi Arabia and gravely ill from a stroke. 

As in Tunisia, the mass demonstrations in Egypt were motivated by anger at the seemingly endless rule of Hosni Mubarak, the nature of the one-party state and arbitrary imprisonment and torture by the police of Islamists and secular left groups, all of whom were demanding democratic rights of representation.

The other huge motivating force in Tunisia and Egypt, but also in Yemen, Bahrain and Algeria, is the terrifying level of unemployment among young people in society, in a region where more than half the population is under 25 anyway. 

It’s interesting to note that in all these cases the Western bankers and credit-rating agencies had given universal approval to the economic strategies being followed, which included privatisation, inward westward investment and a growing gap between the richest and poorest.

There have been huge tensions within Yemen for a long time, partly from the reunification of the country and the subsequent inequalities from that, but also from border clashes with Saudi Arabia, pursuing what it calls its own anti-terror strategy. 

Bahrain had a Western-style constitution on independence in 1964. It was suspended and since then there have been continuing protests concerning violation of human rights and lack of democratic freedoms. These boiled over last month. The difference in Bahrain is that its harbour is home to the US 5th fleet, and is seen as the most important military outpost for the US, as part of NATO, to use within the region.

All these countries have enormous reserves of oil and gas, which have been hugely profitable to Western interests. They have also been a ready market for arms supplied by European countries, including Britain.  

The EU has a series of trade agreements with a number of north African countries and Israel, and these are all conditional on a supposedly tough human rights clause. Just as Israel ignores the human rights element in its trade relations with Europe, in the bombing of Gaza, imprisonment of parliamentarians and Palestinian activists, Tunisia and Egypt had burgeoning cells full of political activists unjustly imprisoned.

In the case of Libya, it has made the journey from being the pariah state of Gaddafi’s green Revolution, including having been a terror suspect state bombed by the US in the 1980s, 

to being a favoured nation for trade and specifically arms sales. 

Gaddafi has now gone from hero to zero in less than two weeks and is apparently being sought by the international criminal courts, which have moved with unprecedented speed. 

The speed of movement against Gaddafi is in contrast to the snail-like progress of putting into effect the findings of the Goldstone Commission in Gaza in 2008-9. 

Suffering is never equal, and it’s heartbreaking to see that Western citizens have by and large been rescued from Libya yet tens of thousands of migrant workers from the Philippines, Thailand and Bangladesh remain in a desperate situation on the borders with Egypt and Tunisia.  Obviously one hopes there will be sufficient UN resources deployed to ensure their safety.  

The history of the Middle East is one of Western meddling and exploitation and we must understand that the revolution that is going on is a pan-Arab movement of a search for fairness in society but also an identity of rights and democracy. 

Those calling for military involvement should look no further than the effects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and heed the words of a democracy protester in Benghazi last week. When asked if he wanted Western involvement, he unhesitatingly said: no, we’ll do this ourselves, and the problem with Western forces is, they never leave. 

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North