A year after the Arab Uprising Middle East remains turbulent. By Latheef Farook

Road ahead for the inspiring Arab uprising which toppled some tyrants and threatening the others, is going to be long, turbulent and violent. 

Only little more than a year ago such uprisings were unimaginable in view of the extreme oppressive nature of the regimes throughout the region. The mere fact that people are sacrificing their lives to assert their rights and dignity which were denied to them for generations shows that dictators are, sooner or later, are bound to disappear and the political map of Middle East and North African, MENA, is likely to change. 

Already the uprisings have taken dictators and their Western guardians by surprise and shaken the region. The people’s movements have reached a stage where it cannot be held back and it is likely to continue despite the brutality unleashed. However there are powerful and ruthless forces trying to crush the uprisings. 

So far the uprisings, began in January last year in Tunisia, have toppled ruthless regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya while shaking the very foundations of  Syrian dictator Basher Al Assad and other dictators.  

Rulers in the region have been some of most oppressive and cruel dictators in this planet. They were installed in power by European colonial powers, especially Britain and France, in the aftermath of the World War 1. Following Turkey’s defeat in the World War 1, the MENA region which was under Turkey’s Ottoman Empire was brought under Britain and France.  Accordingly Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Yemen, Egypt and Sudan were brought under Britain while Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco came under France and Libya under Italy.

After dividing the region into small countries, Britain and France installed their stooges in power and continued their exploitation with no respect to the rights and feelings of the people. They ensured that the predominantly Muslim region remains volatile and Islam and Muslims never become powerful forces to challenge the West.   

In fact even before the World War 1, as early as second half of 19th century, British colonial power decided to plant an alien entity in the Middle East to create tension and turmoil to keep the Muslims occupied and backward.    

It was around the same time Zionist Jews decided to establish a Jewish state in Palestine after kicking out the indigenous Palestinians from their lands. This common   goal brought   Britain and the Zionist Jews together. They jointly worked towards this end and the result was the eviction of Palestinians from their homes and the establishment of Zionist Jewish racist state in Palestine in 1948.

In the aftermath of World War 11 one after the other Asian, African and Latin American countries became independent and started asserting their new found freedom and dignity. Colonial powers did withdraw from some Middle East countries. However their stooges remained in power in all Arab countries and served their masters’ interests sacrificing the interests of their own people. The result was the oppressive dictatorships.  

These short sighted dictators, often with military and tribal backgrounds, ruled their countries according to their whims and fancies .Without any exception they all adopted secular policies and distanced themselves from Islam and Islamic forces to please their colonial masters. They enjoyed unlimited power. They are the sources of justice and they are law unto themselves. Accountability was unheard of. They behaved as if the country was their family property and freely looted the nation’s wealth.

There was no opposition and dissent was mercilessly suppressed. Government controlled media fed the people with lies. Free media was unknown. Arbitrary arrests, torture and killings have been order of the day. They maintained numerous secret service units to spy on people. In Egypt alone there were more than 60 secret service apparatus spying on different groups of people. This is the same case with all Arab countries.

People had no say in decision making process .They were ignored and their needs, desires and aspirations were not even taken notice of. They compromised their countries’ sovereignty and dignity without any shame. For example they accorded red carpet welcome to Zionist, American, British and French leaders who openly butcher innocent Arabs. They aligned and facilitated the American war against Arab countries and the killing of innocent people. For example Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries not only aligned with America and NATO but also provided facilities to invade and destroy Afghanistan,Iraq,Libya and collaborated in the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Unable to speak for fear of being arrested, tortured and killed people throughout the region remained deeply frustrated and furious with their rulers. They also watched for decades their rulers abandoning the Palestinians and honey mooning with Zionists   who harass, humiliate and slaughter Palestinians on a daily basis, grab Palestinian lands and desecrate Masjid Al Aqsa-Islam’s third holiest Mosque.

Thus the time was ripe for an uprising .It was a burning volcano awaiting eruption.  All what was needed was a spark which came in January last year when the 26-year-old unemployed graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself and committed suicide in a public square in Tunis when the police prevented him from selling fruits and vegetables on the  street without permission for mere survival  .

The result was the spontaneous nationwide uprising which forced the corrupt and oppressive dictator Zine El Abdeen Ben Ali   to flee the country on Friday 14 January 2011 -after killing around hundred people in trying to crush the uprising. Ben Ali first tried to flee to Malta where his flight was refused permission to land. Then he turned to Libya’ ousted leader  Muammar Gaddafi and his close friend President Nicolas Sarkozy .He was refused asylum and finally, perhaps, under pressure from United States, Ben Ali was given refuge in Saudi Arabia –the land of Islam turned by Saudi dictators into a  haven for disgraced tyrants known for their hostility towards Islam. Before going to Saudi Arabia Ben Ali’s wife Leila Trabelsi took 1.4 tons of gold bars worth 45 million Euros to Dubai.

This dramatic development   encouraged suppressed people in the region to rise up for their rights.

Then came the Egyptian uprising described as one of the most peaceful freedom struggles in the known human history. Millions of people came out to streets and forced American-Israeli puppet Hosni Mubarak, modern pharaoh who looted around $62 billion while most Egyptians lived on a dollar a day income, to leave after killing more than 850 peaceful demonstrators.

Though the dictator was kicked out his brutal armed forces, carefully screened, selected and trained with American and Zionist supervision remain intact. Under Mubarak the Egyptian armed forces controlled almost every sector of the economy and functioned like a corporate conglomerate. Bulk of the American annual aid of $ 1.5 billion was spent on the armed forces. On the other hand Israel’s dreaded secret arm Mossad had very close relations with the Egypt’s armed forces and Cairo was its main centre of activities in the Middle East. 

Today the  affairs of the country is run by  the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF),comprising of this very same corrupt armed forces  led by aging commanders and security apparatus which indiscriminately arrested, tortured, killed and brutalized the people. Egypt has been a police state with more than a million informers. And this will not change easily.  Thus the road ahead for Egyptian uprising is going to be long and tough one.

Then came the fierce uprising in Yemen where after almost ten months of peaceful demonstrations, indiscriminate killings and destruction Abdullah Saleh who ruled for more than three decades was forced out   though he still   tries to manipulate. Saudi Arabia tried its best to protect Saleh to serve as buffer only to realize that people’s power is more powerful than the weapons and armed forces.

Inspired by the Arab uprising oppressed Libyans rose up against the 42 year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. They only asked for freedom and basic rights. Instead of talking ,describing them as rats and cockroaches, Gaddafi  unleashed a campaign of unprecedented killing spree providing the opportunity for American, British, French and Israeli war mongers to enter Libya to   bomb and kill hundreds of thousands of  people and destroy the infrastructure .The so called UN authorized humanitarian intervention  has pushed Libya to stone age.

Once prosperous Libya today is a wasteland and the US, British, French and  Israeli plunderers are already there to loot Libyan wealth. Western media, integral part of   war machine, never reports the carnage.

In Syria it is sheer barbarity. Here too the oppressed people rose up demanding political freedom.  Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad started killing peaceful demonstrators to crush the freedom movement as his father did. So far Bashar has killed more than 5000 peaceful demonstrators and continue to torture hundreds of thousands.   

Killing their own people has been an established tradition for Bashar and his father Hafiz Al Assad who captured power in a military coup in November 1970. Assads belong to ruling minority Alwaites who are only around six per percent of the Syrian population and whom the Sunnis consider as heretical .Since 1970 Syria has been under Alawite tyranny and the repeated uprisings for political rights by more than 75 percent Sunnis were crushed under Hafiz’s scorched earth policy.

In February 1982 in the city of Hama, Assad’s troops committed one of the worst massacres   in the region. He destroyed mosques, churches, hospitals, schools and houses, centers of heritage of the city followed by similar massacres in other cities of Syria. Around 40.000 people in Hama and 70.000 people across Syria were massacred though up to date no one knows how many perished .In addition 15,000 missing have not been found to this day and 100,000 expelled."The Syrian regime also committed several other massacres in places such as Jisr Alshaghoor on the morning of Eid Al-Adha, and Al-Raqah where tens of citizens who were held captive in a secondary school and burnt to death alive. Most of them killed were women, children and elderly. 

Hafiz al Assad dispatched troops to Lebanon in 1976  supposed to protect Palestinian refugees from Israeli backed Christian Falangists.Instead of protecting, under a de facto alliance with Israel, Hafiz   allowed Falangists to besiege Palestinian camps of Karantina and Tel al Zaatar where an estimated 30,000 Palestinians were killed and an equal number injured.

Encouraged by the Arab uprisings once again the oppressed Syrians rose up and Bashar, in the footsteps of his father, started slaughtering peaceful demonstrators while committing medieval style barbarity in his house to house search, arbitrary arrest, torture and killings of Sunni Muslims. Both Russia and China threw their weight behind Bashar who knows that so called champions of human rights in Washington, London and Paris would do nothing other than hoodwinking the world with statements as Alawites have been great asset to Israel unlike Sunnis who would question and resist Israeli atrocities.

In Syria it is the  people determined to overthrow Bashar  at any cost versus and Bashar backed by Russia and China while US, UK and France turning blind eye .It appears river of blood is continue to flow  before  Bashar is ousted.

In Jordan already the repeated people’s demonstrations have sent a clear message to the American installed King Abdulla who, it appears, refuses to understand the mood of the people perhaps under US-Israeli pressure.

There were also simultaneous  uprisings in the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council which were all ,directly or indirectly ,brought under American, and thereby Israeli, security umbrella. In Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes surviving under American protection, people did rise against the regime only to be crushed brutally. There were many Shiites uprisings during the past year and the government established policy has been to crush them while offering financial incentives to placate Sunnis. However the situation remains tense and the oppressed people raise their grievances against the family rule, their crime, corruption and collaboration with enemies of Islam and Muslims in their crime against Muslims worldwide.

Saudi Arabia is a burning volcano awaiting eruption.

Meanwhile Shiites who constitute around 75 to 80 percent of the population of Bahrain came out in peaceful protests demanding restoration of their basic human rights .These peaceful marches were   mercilessly crushed by the minority Sunni regime under whom prostitution remains an industry and liquor flows like river. Saudi Arabia ,never known to have fought a war though spend billions on  sophisticated weapons only to make Western weapons industry flourish, dispatched troops to help Bahrain crush the Shiite uprising. Television footages speak volume for the senseless atrocities and cruelties unleashed on peaceful demonstrations .The situation remains volatile.

Meanwhile other GCC countries, ruled by tribal sheikhs and sultans, also provided financial incentives   placate their citizens   and prevent potential uprisings. A year after the Arab uprising today people who taste the hard won freedom realize that, together and peacefully, they can overthrow tyrants, end tyranny and gain their long deprived rights and privileges. Therefore the Arab uprising is likely to intensify and spread. Meanwhile dictators who enjoyed power and comforts will certainly try their best to remain power-   with the backing of America, UK, Europe and Israel.

People in the MENA are very well aware the American, British and French claim of democracy, freedom and human rights are nothing but farce. They remember how the democratic forces in Algeria were crushed when the Islamic party, FIS, won the free and fair elections. They also remember how more than  1.5 million Palestinians who voted for Hamas in a free and fair elections ,supervised by former United States President Jimmy Carter,  have been subjected to an economic blockade described by many as genocide .

In 1953, the   CIA led by one of President Theodore Roosevelt’s grandsons, initiated a coup in Iran,   removed the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a dictator, in power. Shah was supported by the CIA in creating the Iranian SAVAK, a vicious secret police for the Shah’s dictatorial government.

Thus the road ahead for the peaceful demonstrators seeking political change is going to be long, turbulent and violent one. However Middle East will never be the same as it was a year ago.

Latheef Farook is a senior journalist who, after working for almost ten years in the Ceylon Daily News and the Ceylon Observer, led s group of Sri Lankan journalists to Dubai in 1979 to re launch Gulf News. He returned home after a quarter century working in the Gulf and now based in Colombo .His e mail is [email protected]