Arab Revolutions

In nature an earthquake is followed
by aftershocks. These can be as catastrophic in their effects as the
original explosion. What we are now witnessing is the same phenomenon
in terms of society and politics. The revolutionary earthquake in Egypt
and Tunisia has sent seismic shocks to the most distant parts of the
Arab speaking world. Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Bahrain, Jordan,
Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Djibouti — the list is growing longer, not by the
day but by the hour.

The Egyptian military top brass have
taken over the running of the country and, while they are promising a
transition to “democracy” at some stage, they are more concerned in the
short term about what they see as “chaos and disorder”. That is, not
just the rallies that have gripped all of Egypt’s major cities, but
something far more dangerous in their view, the growing strike wave.

Today (February 14th) marks one month since the
revolutionary overthrow of the hated dictator Ben Ali in Tunisia on
January 14. The last month has been a constant struggle between the
ruling class which wants to return to bourgeois normality and workers
and youth who carried out the revolution and who are struggling to stop
the old regime from trying to make a comeback.

There are situations in which mass
demonstrations are sufficient to bring about the fall of a regime. But
Egypt is not one of them. All the efforts of the masses to bring about
the overthrow of Mubarak through demonstrations and street protests have
so far failed to achieve their principal objective.

The Egyptian revolution, following on
rapidly from the Tunisian uprising, has sent shockwaves across the whole
of the Arab world. All the serious strategists of capital are
discussing the “domino effect” of the events unfolding in Egypt. None of
them, however, had anticipated any of this.

One of the salient features of a
revolution is that the masses conquer the fear of the state and
repression. This has been graphically demonstrated on the streets of
Egypt. At the same time the surge of a mass upheaval breaks the taboos
in the psychology of the soldiers and the army begins to cleave on a
class basis. A rare fraternity between the security forces and the
masses, whom they are supposed to crush, develops as the revolution
blossoms.

“The sky was filled with rocks. The
fighting around me was so terrible we could smell the blood.” With these
words Robert Fisk describes the dramatic events in Tahrir Square, where
the forces of the Revolution met the counterrevolution head-on. All day
and all through the night, a ferocious battle raged in the Square and
the surrounding streets.

The revolution in Egypt is reaching a
critical point. The old state power is collapsing under the hammer blows
of the masses but revolution is a struggle of living forces. The old
regime does not intend to surrender without a fight. The
counterrevolutionary forces are going onto the offensive. There is
ferocious fighting on the streets of Cairo between pro- and anti-Mubarak
elements.

The
whole of Egypt is now in a precarious balance. That same precariousness
applies to the role of the armed forces, the sole remaining fulcrum of
the regime. On paper it is a formidable force, as solid as the
aforementioned pyramid. But armies are composed of human beings, and are
subject to the same pressures as any other social stratum or
institution.

After a much criticized silence, Hosni Mubarak has finally made a
statement regarding the protests. The initial reaction to the speech was
one of anger. Mubarak’s speech was quite predictable, basically
praising the poor, promising reform and what not. Even though these
blatant lies that reek of condescension are enough reason to ignite the
streets of Egypt with fury, it was Mubarak’s last statement that angered
the people the most.

The popular uprising against the Hosni
Mubarak government continues. On Sunday morning the sun rose over
another tense day following a night of mass defiance and anti-government
protests that turned the curfew into a dead letter. This fact
strikingly exposes the real situation.

Day five of the revolution and the
movement continues to grow in size and intensity. Last night’s curfew
was ignored, and today there are more people on the streets than
yesterday. A new curfew was called for four o’clock Egyptian time, but
this is no more effective than the previous one. Even before the curfew
came into effect, larger numbers of protestors were gathering on the
streets.