BRICS is turning into a collective “Non-West”

June 30, 2022

Elena Panina, Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute – Machine Translated and cleaned up from the Russian original.

MOSCOW, June 29, 2022, RUSSTRAT Institute.

BRICS expansion has been discussed for a long time. It is significant that the last summit on June 24 in the BRICS Plus format was attended by such countries as Algeria, Argentina, Cambodia, Egypt, Fiji, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Senegal, Thailand and Uzbekistan.

At the same time, the fact that the first applications for membership were submitted by Argentina and Iran, which did not take part in the BRICS Plus meeting, does not seem accidental.

Initially, the BRICS group was created as an association of the largest developing economies in the world. However, in the modern world, it is political decisions that determine the nature of the development of economic ties. It is quite logical that the first countries with a pronounced geopolitical sovereignty and having their own geopolitical scores with the collective West are preparing to join the expanded BRICS.

Iran is already almost two and a half thousand years old, since the time of Cyrus the Great is a powerful historical power, and its geopolitical significance cannot be overestimated. The geography itself determines the potential of its influence on the countries of the Arab world up to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, in the Transcaucasus, Central Asia, as well as on the Afpak region (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s state ideology has been anti-Western. Tehran is engaged in an intense struggle with the US-British coalition for influence in Iraq, and is helping Syria in the fight against terrorism.

From an economic point of view, Iran’s potential is also great. The Iranian economy is in the world’s top 20 in terms of purchasing power parity, the country is third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in terms of proven oil resources, and has 16 percent of the world’s proven gas reserves.

Argentina, since the time of General Juan Domingo Peron, has also clearly felt its geopolitical role, being one of the regional leaders in Latin America. This role is recognized all over the world. Argentina, while not one of the world’s largest economies, is nevertheless a full member of the G20. Having survived the failed war with Great Britain over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), as well as the collapse of liberal reforms according to the IMF recipes, the country has an obvious request to find an independent path of development. Today, Argentina is in a difficult economic situation, it has a huge external debt. However, the potential of Argentina as one of the global food exporters has significantly increased in recent years.

For various reasons, both Iran and Argentina are extremely interested in BRICS projects to create new international settlement systems that are alternative to the global hegemony of the dollar. Iran, which is under sanctions, life itself has forced to go to “de-dollarization”, the country practically does not use the US currency. For Argentina, the transition to a hypothetical new monetary and financial zone would mean an escape from the stranglehold of the IMF, from the pressure of American creditors, which today have an extremely destructive impact on the national economy.

In any case, against the background of aggressive pressure from the United States and its allies on potential new BRICS members, the desire of Iran and Argentina to join the community requires a certain amount of foreign policy courage. There is reason to assume that the process of their joining the BRICS will be successful, since both countries do not cause rejection even in India, which until recently was the main opponent of expansion. We can confidently predict that in the near future the process of adding new members to the BRICS will continue due to the entry of a number of Asian and African countries.

But even now, the BRICS expansion at the expense of Iran and Argentina is the final departure of the community from the idea of Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O’Neill, who coined this abbreviation twenty years ago, who decided to designate such a term as “emerging economies” that are “catching up” with the developed West.

We can say that BRICS is confidently turning into a “collective Non-West”, from a community of emerging markets it is finally transformed into a community of world powers with a pronounced geopolitical sovereignty.

ثورات معقَّمة

مايو 10, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– لا يمكن إلا الشعور بالفرح لعدم انزلاق الأوضاع في الجزائر والسودان نحو الفوضى أو الخيارات الدموية، ونجاح المعنيين في الشارع والحراك الشعبي والقوات المسلحة معاً في إيجاد مساحة للخلاف والتفاهم تحول دون الخيارات التي عصفت بالبلدان التي عرفت النسخة الأولى من الربيع العربي.

– الأسئلة الكبرى التي يطرحها وضع النسخة الجديدة من الربيع العربي تتصل بغياب كامل لأي إشارة جدية لرؤية جناحي الأحداث في الحراك الشعبي وقواه من جهة والجيش من جهة مقابلة تجاه الخيارات الكبرى للدول التي تتصل بالسياسات كأن الثورة تقول إن لا مشكلة لها مع سياسات النظام السابق وقضيتها تقتصر على الشأن الداخلي. وهذا يعني أنها حركة من داخل النظام رغم الكلام المعاكس عن ثورة لأن الثورة تُعيد صياغة كل شيء وترفع صوتها على كل ما هو نافر في السياسات السابقة تجاه القضايا المتصلة بالهوية. وحتى الآن لم نسمع كلمة عن موقف من السياسات الأميركية في المنطقة وسوق النفط وثروات الجزائر الهائلة وعلاقاتها بالشركات العالمية الكبرى، ولا عن الوضع العربي ومكانة الجزائر فيه، ولا عن فلسطين التي لم تغب يوماً عن هموم الجزائريين واهتماماتهم، وقد شكلت حضوراً منذ أيام استقلال الجزائر، مع أحمد بن بلة والهواري بومدين.

– في السودان تبدو الأمور أشدّ وضوحاً، فالغريب العجيب أن السودان الذي يشارك في حرب اليمن منذ عهد الرئيس عمر البشير، لم يرد طلب عودة قواته إلى الوطن في حركة الشارع والاعتصام المستمر أمام قيادة الجيش منذ شهر ونيّف. وهو مطلب عادي طبيعي إنساني يرد في أي حركة احتجاجية في أي بلد تشترك قواته المسلحة في حرب ليس له فيها يد ولا مصلحة وترتكب فيها المجازر ويساءل قادة العالم على درجة مسؤولياتهم فيها، ويموت فيها الجنود والضباط بلا قضية. ولا يمكن إنكار العلاقة بين هذه المشاركة والمال الخليجي الذي يصل إلى السودان بما يسيء للجيش السوداني والحركة الشعبية فيه بقبول صيغة تبدو أقرب لتحويل الجيش إلى قوات مرتزقة تشارك في الحروب الخارجية لقاء المال بدلاً من القضية، والأشدّ غرابة ومصدراً للعجب أن الإعلان الوحيد الصادر عن المجلس العسكري المتصل بمكانة السودان العربية والدولية جاء لتأكيد بقاء الجيش في حرب اليمن، والأغرب أن الحراك الشعبي الذي علق بالسلبية على الكثير الكثير مما قاله المجلس العسكري التزم الصمت تجاه هذا الإعلان.

– أما فلسطين التي نثق أنها في مكانة خاصة في عقول وقلوب السودانيين والجزائريين فقد شهدت حرباً إسرائيلية دموية خلال الأيام التي كان الآلاف من شباب الحراك الشعبي يملأون شوارع السودان والجزائر، من دون أن نشهد علماً فلسطينياً أو إعلان تضامن أو هتافاً أو خطاباً يتصل بما يجري فيها، والأمر لا علاقة له بالاشتغال بالشأن الداخلي، ولا بمفهوم الانتماء للعروبة أو للإسلام، فما تشهده فنزويلا من مخاطر داخلية أكبر بكثير، ولا صلة تربطها بهوية قومية أو دينية بفلسطين، لكن فلسطين تحضر في كل محطات الحضور الشعبي فيها، ولهذا تفسير واحد هو الضوابط التي لا تلتزمها القيادة الفنزويلية كقيادة حرة، بينما تتقيّد بها القيادات الشعبية والعسكرية في الجزائر والسودان، لالتزامها بسقوف تحول دون حضور فلسطين، وتلزمها بحصر السياسة ضد النظام السابق وفي التنافس في ما بينها والنظر للنظام الجديد، بقضية واحدة هي تقاسم السلطة، ولذلك لا يعنينا ما يجري إلا بمقدار عدم الانزلاق نحو الفوضى وعدم المساس بوحدة البلاد وسلمها الأهلي، ونشدّ على أيدي المعنيين لهذا الالتزام، لكننا نعتذر عن وصف ما يجري بالثورة أو بالتغيير الجذري، طالما أن مسائل الاستقلال الوطني والمواجهة مع مشاريع الهيمنة، والالتزام بفلسطين تشكل شأناً ثانوياً لا يستحق الذكر.

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تحديد الأدوار السياسيّة العلنيّة للجيوش العربيّة.. لماذا؟

مايو 9, 2019

د. وفيق إبراهيم

الجيوش العربية «تعود مجدّداً» لإدارة السياسة وذلك بعد أكثر من نصف قرن من التمويه بواجهات قيادية مدنية من أصول عسكرية. فرجعت قرقعة السلاح وألبسة الكاكي والبلاغات رقم «1» المتواصلة.

لماذا هذه العودة إلى العلنيّة ومن دون وسيط؟

للتذكير فقط فإنّ معظم الجيوش في المنطقة العربية قلّصت في المرحلة الماضية من أدوارها السياسية المباشرة، لكنها احتفظت بدور الداعم للأنظمة والمشرفة على تحوّل بعض جنرالاتها، قيادات مدنية ببدلات وربطات عنق من ماركات فرنسية معطرة.

لذلك فإنّ سيطرة الجيوش في أربعة بلدان عربية على السلطات السياسية فيها مثير للريبة، خصوصاً أنّ مساحاتها تزيد عن ستة ملايين كيلومتر مربع وسكانها نحو مئتين مليون نسمة مع مواقع استراتيجية هامة.

اللافت أنّ هذه العودة تتقاطع مع ثلاثة أحداث مستجدة: اندحار الإرهاب القاعدي الداعشي ذي الأصول الوهابية، ثانياً تراجع النفوذ الأميركي في سورية والعراق، وثالثاً تشكل حراك شعبي كبير وضاغط، نجح بإسقاط رئاسة بوتفليقة في الجزائر والبشير في السودان، دافعاً ليبيا نحو حرب بين بقايا جيشها بقيادة السراج. والمثير أنّ الرئيس المصري عبد الفتاح السيسي الذي وصل إلى السلطة بانقلاب نفّذه الجيش المصري في 3 أيام التقى مؤخراً بالرئيس الأميركي دونالد ترامب، وعاد ليعدّل الدستور بما يسمح للرئيس السيسي بالبقاء في ولايات رئاسية متعددة لغاية 2030 كمدني يحكم بواسطة الجيش.

للمزيد من التوضيح، فإنّ انتفاضات شعبية جزائرية بدأت قبل أشهر عدة احتجاجاً على التدهور الاقتصادي المريع الذي أصاب البلاد بحكم وهميّ من رئيس مُصاب بجلطات دماغية منذ 2013 أفقدته الحركة والإدراك. مشكلاً واجهة لحكم من رجال الأعمال وقادة الجيش، فتحرّك الجيش عندما شعر أنّ الحراك كبير وثابت وذاهب نحو إسقاط النظام. وبحركة احتوائية انقلب الجيش على بوتفليقة مسرحيّاً معلناً تسلم السلطة انتقالياً لمدة عامين وذلك لإعادة «بناء المؤسسات الدستورية والاقتصادية وتسليمها للمدنيين»، كما زعم.

لكن الوضع الآن يدفع نحو صدام بين قيادة جيش متمسكة بالسلطة وبين حراك شعبي يرفض دور الجيش في السياسة، ما يُنذر بصدامات مرتقبة.

هذا ما حدث أيضاً في السودان التي تمكّن حراكها من إقصاء الرئيس عمر البشير، لكن قيادة الجيش سارعت بحركة مسرحية احتوائية الى اعتقال البشير وتسلّم السلطة… وهي الآن في نزاع مع حراك شعبي لم يترك الميادين مُصرّاً على حقه في إدارة السلطة السياسية.

أما في ليبيا، فالمعارك مستمرّة وسط «بازار» سياسي دولي تتنافس فيه قوى كبرى وأوروبية وإقليمية وعربية.

فمما تتكوّن هذه الجيوش؟

تتألف الجيوش العربية من طابقين: القيادة في صفوف الضباط وهم أبناء طبقات وسطى تمكّنوا بنظام الترفيع العسكري من إدراك مواقع قيادية، جرى استخدامها كثيراً في التفاعلات السياسية، حتى أصبحت تشارك كثيراً في إنتاج قراراتها.

أما الأنفار منهم فهم أبناء الأرياف الذين يشكلون جسماً وطنياً فعلياً ويمثلون كلّ التعدّدية العرقية والطائفية والقومية الموجودة في بلدانها.. هذه الشرائح هي الوحيدة التي تعبّر عن سمات أوطانها بشكل كامل، لكنها تصبح رهينة القيادة العليا المسيّسة أو التي تعمل لخدمة الطبقات السياسية ورجال الأعمال.

أما لجهة الحراكات الشعبية فإنها هامة جداً، إنما في الجزء الأول من انتفاضتها.. والتي تنبثق من أسباب اقتصادية تتقاطع مع دوافع سياسية. لكن المشكلة في أبناء هذه الحراكات أنّها تندمج في ما بينها مؤقتاً، لأنها تعود بعد انتصارها ومراوحتها إلى انقساماتها الأساسية من العرقية والطائفية والفئوية.

أما لماذا تفعل ذلك فلأنّ حركة الاندماج الوطني التاريخية الضرورية لم تحصل بين أبناء المكوّنات المتناقضة لإعادة صهرهم وبناء مواطن قابل لأن يتخلى عن طوائفه وعرقه لمصلحة وطنه.

للتنويه، فإنّ الدول المدنية التاريخية قامت فور انتصار حركاتها الشعبية التاريخية بدمج داخلي على أسس ثلاثة، العدالة السياسية والاقتصادية والاجتماعية، أيّ المساواة في الحقوق السياسية وفتح المناصب لكلّ الناس، وتوزيع المال العام على المكوّنات الاجتماعية، بعدل ومن دون تحيّز لقبيلة أو عرق أو دين، أما اجتماعياً فللمواطن الحق في الانتماء إلى الدين الذي يريده إنما من دون أن يستعمله في السياسة.. حتى أنّ الزواج هو إلزامي فقط في «البلديّة».

لقد استلزم تطبيق هذه العدالات قرناً ونصف قرن حتى لم يعُد الفرنسي يعرف مَن هو الكاثوليكي ومَن هو الأرثوذكسي. ولم يعد المواطن الأميركي يعرف مَن هو الكاثوليكي أو الإنجيلي، ومَن هو من ذوي الأصول الفرنسية او الانجلوساكسونية أو من نتاج سلالات بيضاء روسية ويونانية أو أخرى.

وهذا احتاج إلى أقلّ من قرن حتى أدركت أوروبا وأميركا وأوستراليا مرحلة الدمج لعصبيات مختلفة جرى توحيدها بالسياسة والاقتصاد والاجتماع.

الخوف إذاً موجود في العلاقات التبعية بين قيادات الجيوش والسياسات الخارجية السعودية ـ الإمارات ـ الأميركيون ـ الفرنسيون ـ البريطانيون… بالإضافة إلى ارتباطات قياداتها برجال الأعمال، وكما انّ توقيت تحركها يكشف أنها محاولة لمنع تأسيس دول مدنية او تأمين اندماج يعزز من قوة الأوطان.

فهل تمنع الجيوش إعادة بناء بلدانها؟ إنّ توقيت عودتها مشبوه، خصوصاً في حركة مواكبته لاندحار الإرهاب وتقلص الهيمنة الأميركية، فهل بإمكان الجيوش التعويض على المشاريع الأميركية الخاسرة؟

يبدو انّ الحشود تتقدّم نحو استكمال أدوارها، إنما بعد اضطرابات مرتقبة قد يكون بمقدورها ان تفرض على الجيوش التراجع التدريجي والعودة إلى الثكنات وإنهاء محاولاتها للسيطرة على الدور السياسي، لذلك فإنّ المنطقة العربية تسرع نحو اضطرابات من نوع جديد، لكنها لن تكون أكثر سوءاً من الإرهاب الذي ضرب المنطقة في العقد الأخير.

توازن رعب يخيّم على المنطقة

أبريل 19, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– تبدو المنطقة في ظل فراغ سياسي لا أفق لتخطّيه في المدى المنظور، فالتمسك الأميركي بأولوية إرضاء الشهوات الإسرائيلية المنفلتة من الضوابط كلها، وما تعنيه هذه الأولوية من رفع لمنسوب التوتر وإحلال التصعيد مكان التهدئة ولغة المواجهة مكان لغة التفاوض، من جهة، ومن جهة مقابلة ربط كل الملفات المفتوحة في المنطقة من اليمن إلى سورية ولبنان والعراق بالعلاقة الأميركية الإيرانية، التي قررت إدارة الرئيس دونالد ترامب ربطها بالشروط الإسرائيلية، التي تجعل إيجاد سقف سياسي مشترك لأي من أزماتها أمراً مستحيلاً. وعندما يكون أفق التسويات مغلقاً ويكون التوتر في تصاعد، تصير المنطقة مكشوفة ومحكومة بتطوراتها بصدفة لا يعلم أحد مدى تستدرج القوى المتقابلة للانزلاق إلى حلقات أعلى من التوتر، وربما المواجهة، وكل مواجهة بلا سقوف تصير مفتوحة على احتمالات الأسوأ، وهو الحرب التي يسعى الجميع لتفاديها، لإدراك أن لا أفق لنصر حاسم أو لكلفة معقولة لأي حرب، وهذا هو توازن الرعب، بدلاً من توازن الدرع الذي يعني ضمان عدم الانزلاق نحو الحرب، الذي حكم سنوات ماضية رغم ضراوة المواجهات التي شهدتها.

– على طرفي المواجهة في الإقليم تقف واشنطن وموسكو على ضفتي اشتباك مفتوح في جبهات متعددة، خلافاً لكل المراحل الماضية، ولا يبدو للحوار بعد فرصة لصناعة التسويات، فمن فنزويلا إلى سورية وأوكرانيا، وصولاً إلى السودان والجزائر وليبيا، تقف واشنطن في ضفة وتقف موسكو في ضفة مقابلة، وعندما تتقدّم إحداهما كانت الأخرى تتراجع، بينما نراها اليوم تتقدم، ومثلما جاءت واشنطن إلى سورية ولم تراع كونها من المحيط الأمني الحيوي لروسيا، ذهبت موسكو إلى فنزويلا، والتوتر المتصاعد لن يعني وقوع الحرب بين الدولتين العظميين، بل زيادة توازن الرعب الحاكم في المنطقة.

– بالتوازي لا تبدو أميركا و»إسرائيل» قادرتين على التقدم في المجال العسكري، لذلك تخوضان حرباً مالية تتولاها واشنطن، وحرباً إعلامية ونفسية تخوضها تل أبيب، وفيما يبدو محور المقاومة مقتدراً على الصعيد العسكري، إلا أنه يبدو متحسباً للانزلاق من أي خطوة عسكرية محسوبة نحو مواجهة أكبر، ولذلك تبدو الاستعراضات الإسرائيلية العسكريّة ضمن إطار الدعاية العسكرية الإعلامية والنفسية، قادرة على اللعب في الوقت الضائع، لكنها حذرة من إيقاع أي خسائر بشرية تجعل الرد عليها إلزامياً، وتفتح الباب لتصاعد منسوب المواجهة والتوتر، ويبدو تركيز محور المقاومة على إنهاء الجرح السوري المفتوح للتحرّر من أعبائه، من إدلب إلى المنطقة الشرقية للفرات، لرسم قواعد اشتباك تتناسب مع الحرب المالية والنفسية وتخرج من توازن الرعب القائم.

– ربما يكون في واشنطن وتل أبيب من يتوهّم بمتغيرات نوعية في مصادر قوة محور المقاومة بفعل الحرب المالية، لكن الأكيد أن زمن الاختبار الضروري لهذا الوهم ليس طويلاً، مقابل الإمعان في اختبار مدى زمن صبر محور المقاومة على الاستعراضات العسكرية الإسرائيلية، وعندما تلتقي نهايتا الزمنين، زمن فعالية الحرب المالية وزمن صبر محور المقاومة، مع زمن حسم استرداد الجغرافيا السورية، ستدخل المنطقة في وضع جديد، قد تكون الحرب إحدى مفرداته، ما لم تحدث مفاجأة بحجم تفاهم روسي أميركي على سقوف تسويات كبرى، أو فك حلقات التصعيد بالتدريج بعضها عن بعض. ومرة أخرى تكون سورية هي المقياس، بفصل التسوية حولها عن سائر ملفات المواجهة، وإلا فتوازن الرعب مرشح في العام المقبل للارتفاع إلى حرارة أعلى، والانزلاق نحو نقاط الخطر سيكون وارداً بقوة.

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دروس في ذكرى الحرب اللبنانية

أبريل 13, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– قبل أربعة وأربعين عاماً انطلقت الشرارة التي أشعلت حرباً امتدت لخمسة عشر عاماً في لبنان، قبل أن تنتهي باتفاق الطائف الذي أعاد ترسيم حدود التوازنات المحلية والإقليمية التي ستحكم لبنان الخارج من الحرب، والأكيد أن هذا الحدث اللبناني والعربي والإقليمي الكبير وما استدرجه من سياسات وتطوّرات كان الاجتياح الإسرائيلي عام 1982 أبرزها، وكان اتفاق السابع عشر من أيار لإنهاء علاقة لبنان بالصراع مع «إسرائيل»، برعاية أميركية مباشرة وحضور عسكري أميركي مباشر أحد أهم ملامحها الدولية والإقليمية، تحتاج إلى الكثير من الدراسة والبحث لفهم أسبابها العميقة، الأعمق والأبعد من فهم أطراف الحرب لسياق انخراطهم أو تورطهم فيها.

– الدرس الأهم الذي تقوله الحرب اللبنانية خصوصاً للجيل الذي انخرط في غمارها تحت شعارات اعتقد أن الحرب سبيله لتحقيقها، أن الحماسة والصدق لا يعوّضان عدم دقة الحسابات، وأن النيات الطيبة كثيراً ما تخدم في ساحات حساسة وفي لحظات حرجة مشاريع شريرة، فقد ثبت سوء الخيار وعقم الرهان، بعد سنوات من الحرب تكفلت بإحراق الأخضر واليابس وإيقاظ العصبيات والغرائز وتدمير العمران في الحجر والبشر، واستخلاف أجيال ولدت وترعرعت في ثقافة التعصب والقتل والجهل والعصبية على مصير وطن، تقاتل حول هويته ومستقبله قادة الحركة الطالبية والمثقفون والحالمون بالتغيير، كل على هواه ووفق رؤيته. وصار وقف الحرب أغلى من أي هدف يبرر استمرارها، وصار الثابت الوحيد أن الخط الأحمر الذي يجب أن يحكم كل مشروع سياسي حالم يميناً أو يساراً، هو عدم المجازفة بالسلم الأهلي، الذي صار كما المقاومة التي أدارت ظهرها للحرب الداخلية ومقتضيات الانخراط فيها، ثمرتان ذهبيتان يكفي الحفاظ عليهما إطاراً لأي مشروع سياسي جدي، يرى تحسين الأداء السياسي والإصلاح السياسي والتقدّم في بناء الدولة ومهماتها، أهدافاً نبيلة يقتضي الخوض فيها والسعي إليها مع الحذر من الوقوع في محظور المساس بإحدى هاتين الثمرتين أو إحداهما.

– تحتاج الحركات الاحتجاجية الناشئة في العالم العربي، سواء تلك التي اكتوت بخماسين الربيع العربي، أو تلك التي تختبر مشاريعها التغييرية الآن، إلى هذا الدرس ومثله درس ثانٍ حول كون الدولة، كهياكل لإدارة الشأن العام، بمعزل عن درجة صواب خياراتها السياسية الداخلية والخارجية، منجزاً حضارياً وإنسانياً يشكّل التفريط به تحت شعار الثورية والتغيير، عملاً أحمق وقفزة في المجهول ومخاطرة بالذهاب إلى الفوضى وشريعة الغاب واستيلاد أشكال من التوحش السياسي والاجتماعي، تستجلب معها كائنات تناسب استمرارها وتناسلها ثقافة وسلوكاً، تتكفل بخلق سياقها وتناسلها، وتحويل الأوطان ساحات تعبث بها كل أشكال التدخلات الخارجية، وتستثمر فيها كل أجهزة المخابرات، وتستنهض كل العصبيات والغرائز، بحيث يمكن القول بمسؤولية إن الدولة السيئة تبقى أفضل ألف مرة من اللادولة، وإن السعي لتغيير سياسات وأداء الدولة يجب أن يلتزم الحذر من الوقوع في فخ تدمير هياكل الدولة، والذهاب نحو تشريع الفوضى. وهذا لا يجوز أن يعني دعوة للتكلّس والذعر من كل دعوة للتغيير، بل الحذر من التسرّع في إجراء الحسابات واستسهال القفز إلى المجهول.

– أسئلة لا بد من الجواب عليها بتأنٍ حول الحرب اللبنانية ومثلها حروب أخرى، تتصل بالنظرة الغربية لكيانات المنطقة، التي رسمت حدودها بأقلام القناصل وخرائط وزراء الخارجية، وأبرز ما فيها ذلك التلازم بين اتفاق سايكس بيكو ووعد بلفور، والحاجة الوظيفية لترسيم الحدود في تمرير نشوء كيان الاحتلال الاستيطاني في فلسطين، والحاجة لامتصاص الفائض السكاني الناتج عن تهجير الفلسطينيين دون امتلاك فائض قوة يتيح التفكير بالحرب، وتركيب معادلات للديمغرافيا السكانية داخل حدود كيانات الجغرافيا السياسية للكيانات، تتيح تفجيرها من الداخل عند فشلها في تحقيق الهدف، كما حدث مع لبنان، أو عند امتلاكها فائض قوة يهدد أمن «إسرائيل»، كما يحدث اليوم مع لبنان، وكما قالت الحرب على سورية أمس، وكما هو الحال منذ عقد ونيّف في العراق.

– هل بلغ اللبنانيون رشداً سياسياً كافياً لسلوكهم طريق بناء دولة عصيّة على اللعب بتوازنات الديمغرافيا، وعصيّة على الحرب بقوة إدراك قواعد الجغرافيا، وعصيّة على الكسر بالتهديد، وعصيّة على العصر بالإغراءات؟

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الجيوش الوطنية ضمانة بقاء الأوطان… وتمييز الدولة عن السلطة

أبريل 8, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– من الجزائر إلى ليبيا إلى السودان تعود إلى الظهور المعادلة التي عرفتها سورية ومصر في مواجهة الربيع العربي وتداعياته. وفيما رسمت كل تجربة معالمها الخاصة بقي الجامع المشترك بينها هو حقيقة أن الجيوش الوطنية هي ضمانة بقاء الأوطان، وأن الحملات التي استهدفت الجيوش الوطنية خلال نصف قرن مضى تحت شعارات رفض العسكرة، ومعارك الحريات، وتحوّلت لاحقاً نحو أخذ المجتمعات العربية إلى الفوضى بالسعي لتقويض المؤسسة العسكرية، ونمت على أطرافها ظواهر التناغم والتعايش بين الحكومات الغربية والتيارات الإسلامية المتطرفة، كانت جزءاً من مخطط مبرمج لإسقاط فكرة الدولة الوطنية، تحت شعار مواجهة السلطة. وعندما تسقط الدولة تنشأ دويلات مكانها، وتتوزع الولاءات على حسابها، وتنشطر الأوطان وفقاً لنظرية ربط القومية بالدين، فتتكامل مع مشروع كان قيد الإعداد هو إعلان كيان الاحتلال دولة قومية لليهود.

– لا يزال المسار المتعرّج للأزمة الجزائرية يتسبب بالقلق، لكن مع درجة عالية من الثقة والأمان وفرتهما درجة الحكمة والشجاعة التي أبداها كل من الجيش والشارع، في تمييز الدولة عن السلطة، وربط الجيش بالوطن، وفتح المسار الدستوري على تغيير سلمي يحفظ الدولة والوطن ويتيح التنافس والتناوب على ممارسة السلطة، وفقاً لليقين الذي كرسته الحرب الأميركية على العراق لجهة العلاقة بين تحطيم جدران الدولة والصيغة الوطنية مع إسقاط الجيش. وشيئاً فشيئاً يقترب الاستحقاق الجزائري من اكتشاف عدم وجود وصفة جاهزة للمواءمة بين بنية السلطة وأحلام الشارع، حيث لا تبشّر الأوضاع الحزبية للمعارضة بقدرتها على إنجاب مولود سياسي يقدم بديلاً متفوقاً على النموذج السابق للسلطة، فيبدو الإنجاز الأهم في عدم الانزلاق بموجات الغضب الشعبي نحو تحطيم بنية الدولة، أو السماح بالنيل من الجيش، وترك ما عدا ذلك مفتوحاً على كل الاحتمالات السلمية.

– في السودان تقدّم الجيش وقيادته خطوة من السير على الطريقة الجزائرية بإعلان قيادة الجيش أنها معنية بالأزمة، ودعوتها لسماع صوت الشارع، ورفضها التصادم مع المتظاهرين، ويبدو الشارع الذي يشبه الشارع الجزائري في عدم امتلاك وصفة جاهزة تأتيه من صفوف المعارضة وقياداتها لأخذ السودان نحو خلاص سياسي واقتصادي يقيني، متمسكاً بالتفاعل الإيجابي مع الجيش وعدم الانجرار للخطاب الغوغائي الذي يبيت الشر للسودان بتصوير الجيش مجرد جهاز سلطوي يجب استهدافه تحت شعار الانتفاضة الشعبية للتغيير، في محاولة مشبوهة تتقدم بها بعض الأطراف المسكونة بالشعارات والخلفيات والارتباطات ذاتها للذين وصلوا إلى الحكم على صهوة الربيع العربي وكان ما جلبوه لبلدانهم هو الخراب والفوضى.

– في ليبيا أمسك الجيش بزمام المبادرة وأخذ على عاتقه مهمّة توحيد البلاد وتطهيرها من الجماعات المسلحة ومن التشكيلات المرتبطة بتنظيم القاعدة وداعش والأخوان المسلمين، وتشكّل حملته نحو طرابلس بعدما أعدّ لها العدّة العنوان الأبرز في فرص ليبيا للخروج من محنة، يبدو بوضوح أن الغرب ومن ورائه الأمم المتحدة يريدون لها الاستمرار، وعلى إيقاع تقدّم الجيش الليبي نحو طرابلس تبدو فرص الخلاص أوفر، فبدون وطن موحد وجيش وطني واحد، ستبقى ليبيا بنفطها الوافر ومساحاتها الشاسعة محطّ أنظار اللاعبين والعابثين، لبقائها ساحة ومنعها من العودة دولة.

– الانتباه الروسي لما يجري في ساحات تحضر فيها الجيوش الوطنية، يعبر عن إدراك دبلوماسي للدور السياسي الروسي في المنطقة، ومصر الواقعة على حدود المثلث السوادني الليبي الجزائري مدعوة لتنشيط حضورها المستقل ضماناً لأمنها الوطني واستعداداً لدور يمنحها فرصة رد الاعتبار لدور الجيوش الوطنية.

تحية للجيش الجزائري

أبريل 3, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– في خصوصية تصعب مقارنتها بحالات أخرى لبلاد عربية شهدت حراكاً تحت عنوان التغيير السياسي فشلت محاولات أخذها نحو الفوضى السياسية والأمنية لعب الجيش الجزائري دور صمام الأمان وضابط الإيقاع وبيضة القبان، دون أن يقوم بتولي السلطة مباشرة ودون أن يكون سنداً للسلطة بوجه الحراك الشعبي المنطلق من تعب وإنهاك التمديد والتجديد للرئيس عبد العزيز بوتفليقة لولاية خامسة وهو في حال صحية تصعب معها عليه ممارسة السلطة، ودون أن يستقيل من المسؤولية القيادية تاركاً لتوازن الشارع واللاعبين المستترين الداخليين والخارجيين التحكم بمسار الأحداث.

– نجح الجيش الجزائري بالتدخل وفقاً لمنطق الجرعات التنشيطية لفرض استجابة الرئيس بوتفليقة ومساعديه والفريق المساند لبقائه والمستفيد من هذا البقاء، لسقوف وطنية للحراك الشعبي، عنوانها حفظ المكانة الوطنية للرئيس بوتفليقة، وقطع الطريق على الحاشية الفاسدة والمستفيدة من استغلال التمديد والتجديد لولايته الرئاسية لفرض هيمنتها على المشهد الجزائري، كما نجح بربط الحراك الشعبي بعناوين مفتوحة على سلوك الطرق الدستورية للتغيير، رغم محاولات بعض المعارضة وقادتها دفع الحراك نحو شعارات عبثية من نوع الدعوة لرحيل النظام والرئيس بلا بدائل دستورية تلتزم الانتقال السلمي للسلطة، فقطع الطريق على الفوضى التي تبدأ سياسيّة وسرعان ما تتحوّل وتنتهي فوضى أمنيّة تفتح الباب لمشاريع التفتيت والتقسيم وحضور العصبيات وطغيانها على الحال الوطنية.

– رفض الجيش الوقوع في إغراء وضع اليد على السلطة، وما كان سيرتبه ذلك من جعله هدفاً مباشراً لمواجهة تحاول تحريك الشارع بوجهه، كما كان مرسوماً لو تبنى الدفاع الأعمى عن موقف المحيطين بالرئيس، فشكل ترفعه وتميّزه معاً ضماناً لبقائه معصوماً بنظر الشارع عن الخطيئة التي تبعده عن صفة الوطنية ومكانة الشرف التي يتبوأها في الوجدان العام للجزائريين، فمكّنه ذلك من حماية الوحدة الوطنية كواحدة من الثوابت، ومن تحصين فكرة الدولة ومؤسساتها الدستورية بوجه خطر الانحلال الذي يحضر بقوة في مثل هذه الحالات، ونجح بتشكيل عمود فقري لعمل أمني كبير حمى المتظاهرين وحفظ سلميّة الحراك، وسيطر على كل التحرّكات الجارية تحت الطاولة لفرض مشاريع أمنية تراهن على تعميم الفوضى.

– الجزائر كدولة عربية مفصلية بحجمها واقتصادها وتاريخها، تقع تحت عين الكثيرين من المتربّصين بثرواتها، وموقعها الاستراتيجي، وقد وفّر الفساد وتكلّس النظام السياسي فيها فرصة ذهبية لمخططات هؤلاء المتربصين، سواء في الداخل أو من الخارج، وقد ساهم دور الجيش الجزائري مع خبرة الفئات الشعبية والنخب التي وقفت في قلب الحراك من موقع وطني وفي لتاريخ الجزائر وموقعها بوجه المشاريع الأجنبية، ووفي لتاريخ تضحيات الجزائر بوجه مشاريع الحرب الأهلية، في تفادي تكرار مشاهد شهدتها البلدان التي عرفت النماذج السوداء للربيع العربي، قدمت تأكيداً إضافياً على الدور المحوري للجيوش الوطنية في حماية المسارات الدستورية، وحفظ الثوابت الوطنية، وصيانة الوحدة الوطنية وفرض حتمية سلوك طريق التحوّلات السلمية على الحياة السياسية.

– في ثلاث مراحل تاريخية لعبت الجزائر دور النموذج، فكانت الجزائر التي قدّمت المدرسة المثالية المتقدّمة لمناهضة الاستعمار، وكانت الجزائر أول مَن أحبط في التسعينيات مشاريع الفوضى الأهلية قبل نماذج الربيع العربي الجديدة، وها هي اليوم الجزائر تتقدّم مسار الانتقال السلمي والدستوري في ظل حراك شعبي مليوني لثورة بيضاء يحميها الجيش ويمنع الاستيلاء عليها وتوظيفها في مشاريع داخلية وخارجية مشبوهة، ويفرض كضابط إيقاع وبيضة قبان سقفاً يُبقي للسياسة والتغيير مرادفاً هو المصلحة الوطنية العليا.

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Algeria Expels Reuters Reporter for Spreading Fake News

April 1, 2019

The Algerian authorities have expelled a Reuters reporter from the country after spreading fake news about clashes with protesters in its capital.

Tarek Ammarah is a Tunisian reporter working for Reuters who entered Algeria a couple of days ago to cover the ‘events in the country’, seems not what’s happening but his own agenda.

The Reuters Tunisian reporter was briefly detained then expelled back to his country.

Why this is important for Syria News other than it’s related to an important Arab country that kept good relations with Syria? At the very early days of the Syrian crisis, 26 March 2011, the Syrian authorities arrested the Reuters office manager in Damascus a Jordanian reporter Khaled Oweis, guess why? For spreading fake news.

It’s not a coincidence that in both cases Reuters reporter is not from the same country where the events are occurring, it’s not a coincidence that both reporters were detained by the authorities for the same reason and then expelled to their bordering countries. And it’s not a coincidence that both reporters spread fake news.

In the details of the case of the Jordanian Reuters reporter Khaled Oweis, the reporter aired a video report about the protests in Daraa, in the very first weeks of the crisis in the country. In his video report, the Jordanian Reuters reporter walk with a Syrian policeman carried on a stretcher in the National Hospital in Daraa, the policeman was injured with a bullet.

The video report aired by Reuters and was instantly resubmitted by all publications in the world, it’s coming from Reuters who feed news to most news agencies around the globe, was doctored in a very heinous way and was showing a conversation between the reporter and the policeman whining from his injury on the stretcher being rushed to the operation room at the hospital, yet Reuters reporter insisted to ask him about what happened:

The Reuters reporter asked the injured policeman what happened? The Injured policeman trying to speak but his voice lowered and suppressed by the voice of the Reuters reporter who said in a louder voice trying to imply it’s the words of the policeman: You were ordered to shoot at the peaceful protesters?

The injured policeman trying to raise his voice but again we can’t hear properly what he says but Reuters reporter again says in a louder voice: You’re saying that you refused to shoot at the unarmed protersters and a security officer shot you from behind for disobeying orders?

This what the Reuters video that went viral on all news channels around the world showed. However, later that evening another story came out from the same site.

Thanks to a Syrian TV cameraman who happened to be at the same place with his camera rolling there was a completely different story that the Syrian TV later showed in the evening and here’s what happened:

Reuters asking the injured policeman on the stretcher: What happened?
Policeman: We were securing a small protest in the city of Daraa, we were unarmed when we started hearing gunshots and I was injured.
Reuters: You were armed and were ordered to shoot at the peaceful protesters?
Injured policeman raising his voice and whining but clearly saying: No, we were unarmed and we received gunshots from the protestors side.
Reuters: You’re saying you refused to shoot at the unarmed protesters and a security officer shot you from behind for disobeying orders?
Injured policeman now raising his voice to the loudest he could: No, no, we are unarmed, we were shot at from the protesters’ side.

Once the Syrian TV aired what its cameraman recorded on his camera, the Reuters office manager in Syria Khaled Oweis was arrested for fabricating and spreading fake news. Remember, this was at the height of the so-called Arab Spring and after its episodes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and where people would buy the same repeated narrative at the beginning.

An international uproar against the Syrian government was unleashed condemning the ‘suppressing of free speech’ in the country and demanding the ‘immediate release of the journalist’. The Syrian authorities took the best decision they did that time and expelled all foreign reporters from the country altogether, later the authorities started allowing some back, those from friendly countries with no agendas were granted permits and free movement, those from hostile countries were given special temporary missions and were not free to go wherever they wanted.

CNN, among others, took advantage of this decision to justify embedding its reporters with al-Qaeda terrorist groups in Syria, despite getting the special temporary permits, they’ve sent their reporters to report 100% biased reports praising al-Qaeda terrorists who were at the time fighting under the banner of the FSA.

A CNN crew went as far as actually carrying out the bombing of the gas pipeline in Baba Amr district in Homs along with a cell of al-Qaeda terrorists and aired its doctored report to show it was the Syrian government that bombed that pipeline that left the city of Homs without electricity in one of the coldest winters in the country, details here: When CNN Crew Blew Up the Oil Pipeline in Homs.

Mainstream Media attack on Syria

Khaled Oweis, the Jordanian reporter for Reuters covering Syria, continued his propaganda campaign against the country but from his office in Amman, Jordan, reporting news from doubted sources as if he’s witnessing the events by himself firsthand from the country he was expelled from.

Back to the Algerian episode and the ‘visiting Tunisian Reuters reporter’ story, he was detained in the Algerian capital for reporting: ‘Witnesses told Reuters that Algerian policemen fired rubber bullets and teargas against protesters in the Algerian capital today, Friday, while about a million persons gathered to call on the stepping down of the President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika’.

The report was instantly circulated by all news agencies around the world, coming from Reuters, of course, and would cause more chaos in the country that is witnessing unprecedented protests, so far very peaceful, but needs some instigations by the Mainstream Media to convert it into a civil war.

In Algeria, the West cannot play the sectarian card they played in Syria, because Algerians are almost all of the same religion and sect. They cannot split parts of the people against the army, they witnessed their own episode of Western-sponsored anti-Islamic ‘Mujahideen’ in the 90s of last century and paid a hefty bill in blood for that.

Let’s pray the Algerians will stay vigilant towards these foreign instigators and act swiftly against those who try to push a new bloodshedding in another secular Arab country under the guise of democracy.

It’s the elections whenever it’s due in any country not under the US hegemony that will cause riots in the targeted country and the US can sneak in to ‘force democracy’ onto them. Those pro-the US in the targeted countries will either boycott the elections, push high their demands, claim the elections being rigged, and claim that their losing candidates to have won the elections to cause confusion among the public. Those under the US hegemony already no need even to have elections, like in the case of the Saudis and Qataris for instance. Saudi Arabia does not have a constitution to start with.

Read:

• Freedom of Press or Freedom of Crime: Reuters Creates News in Syria for NATO
• How Bad is Reuters on Syria? Very Bad!
• Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) hijacks Twitter-Feed of Thomson Reuters

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The Palestinian Political Scene is in a State of Paralysis: “The People Reject Normalization with Israel”

An Interview with Abdel Bari Atwan

By Abdel Bari Atwan and Mohsen Abdelmoumen

Global Research, April 01, 2019

American Herald Tribune 18 March 2019

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: What is your analysis of the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Gaza?

Abdel Bari Atwan: The Palestinian political scene is in a state of paralysis, which is a direct consequence of the disastrous Oslo process. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is not in good health, so the stage is now set for the post-Abu Mazen period. But nobody has a roadmap for where to go. Abu Mazen is the last of the founding fathers, and his departure will cause the Fateh movement to fragment and lose influence, as happened to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) after the death of George Habash. So chaos and confusion prevail. I wouldn’t be surprised if people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip draw inspiration from the demonstrations in Sudan and Algeria.

MA: What about the Palestinians’ right of return to their lands stolen since 1948 and the deal of the century that removes the Palestinian right of return? Has the deal of the century been abandoned or is it still valid?

ABA: The ‘Deal of the Century’ cannot be pulled off. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi consigned it to an early death, as it plunged the deal’s broker into crisis. No Palestinian could accept it anyway. The Palestinian Revolution began in the refugee camps. It was all about the right of return. To abandon it would be to abandon the Palestinian cause. That right and others cannot be bought off with promises of investment or improved economic conditions, as the deal proposes. Palestine is not Northern Ireland.

MA: How do you explain that at the moment when in Europe and in the USA, we see rising a great critical movement of Israel, like the BDS which advocate different forms of boycott, Arab countries are normalizing their relations with the Zionist and criminal entity of Israel?

ABA: These moves towards normalization are not too worrying, as they are confined to the governments and do not extend to the peoples.The peoples reject normalization with Israel, as the cases of Jordan and Egypt show. It’s the same in every other Arab country. Israel is alarmed by BDS and how it may develop in future. This explains its frenetic efforts to brand all criticism and opposition anywhere in the world as anti-Semitic: it fears to become a pariah state and the only way it can avoid that is to criminalize and close down exposure and discussion of its behavior.

MA: What is your reading of the Warsaw conference of February 13 and 14, when we saw the alliance between Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, etc. and the Zionist and criminal entity Israel against Iran?

ABA: The Warsaw Conference was a one-man show, starring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was staged for his benefit, but I believe it was a failure. Its original purpose was to launch a new US-led alliance — a so-called ‘Arab Nato’ — that would act as the spearhead of an international coalition against Iran and include Israel as a member, probably informally at first. But the Gulf States that the US is trying to turn into allies of Israel are not representative of the Arab world as a whole. They account for less than 5% of the Arab population, and their own peoples overwhelmingly reject normalization with Israel. In recent years these states have been able to play a dominant role in the Arab world due to their oil wealth and their manipulation of political Islam. But political Islam has been changing in nature, and the importance of oil in the global energy picture has been declining, so their ‘golden age’ is drawing to a close.

MA: How did we get to the fact that some Arab countries come to betray and sell themselves to the Zionist and criminal entity of Israel?

The Political Vulnerability and Impunity of the Israel Lobby. The Intellectual Advocates of “Greater Israel”

ABA: It’s not new, and mainly it’s a matter of perceived self-preservation. Regimes see the goodwill of the US as vital, and Israel as the key to the US’ heart. They talk about a shared interest in confronting Iran but that shouldn’t be taken at face value. Israel talks up the Iranian threat as a way of trying to sideline the Palestinian cause, and the Gulf States do the same to bolster the rule of their regimes. This also entails the poisonous fuelling of Sunni-Shii sectarianism.

MA: I did an investigation a few years ago about the activities of the Israeli lobby in Congo. What is your reading of Israel’s strategic redeployment in Africa?

ABA: Africa is currently an arena of rivalry for influence and competing interests involving many countries – the US, China, Turkey, Israel, Russia, and others. Israel does not have much to offer Africa, other than political influence in Washington. It is eager to establish a presence and exert influence on the periphery of important Arab countries like Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt.These countries are all in a weakened state at present and preoccupied with internal problems. But they will eventually recover and their governments will awaken. Sub-Saharan Africa is their natural hinterland and they cannot be prized apart in the long term.

MA: The people of Yemen is experiencing a criminal war waged by Saudi Arabia and its allies in total silence. How do you explain this silence of the international community and the media?

ABA: The West turned a blind eye to the Yemen war when it was launched four years ago because of Saudi influence and interests. It gave Saudi Arabia a chance to resolve the conflict in its favor. But neither Saudi Arabia nor the West appreciated the nature of Yemen or its people into account. They should have heeded the advice of the kingdom’s founder, King Abdelaziz, who ordered his sons Faisal and Saud to withdraw when they tried to invade the country. The latest war on Yemen has had a catastrophic effect, but in military terms, it has been a failure. The international silence is now beginning to be broken, and I hope that continues.

MA: What is your reading of events happening in Venezuela? Do you think that the United States will come to a direct military intervention?

ABA: What is happening in Venezuela is a US-sponsored coup attempt and I believe it will fail.

MA: There is no longer any mention of the Khashoggi case, which showed the true face of the Saudi regime and raised a worldwide outcry. How do you explain that?

ABA: The Khashoggi case is closely linked to Trump’s fate. Trump’s opponents in the US seized on it as a stick with which to beat him, due to his close association with the current Saudi leadership. That’s why there was such an outcry over the killing, however horrific, on an individual, but no similar reaction to Saudi actions that caused thousands of deaths such as the war on Yemen (until recently) and the proxy intervention in Syria. It should not be any surprise, however, that US and Western interests ultimately prevailed over human rights concerns, in this case like so many others. The Israel Lobby has also played a part in suppressing the outcry.  But the affair will have a longer-term impact. It laid bare Saudi Arabia’s high-handedness and dominance in the region.

MA: How do you analyze the events taking place in Algeria against the fifth term of Bouteflika?

ABA: The protests were not so much against Bouteflika as against the ruling elite that was using him as a front and was too divided to agree on a replacement for him, long after he should have been allowed to retire. The powers-that-be made three mistaken assumptions: first, that the fifth term could be pushed through; second, that Algerians would rather have stability than democracy; and third, that the terrifying memory of the bloody decade of the 1990s would deter demonstrations or protests, for fear of repeating what happened in Syria or Libya. They seemed to think, perhaps based on Syria’s experience, that concessions are a slippery slope and not compromising pays off in the longer term. But now they have had to give at least the appearance of backing down due to the strength of popular feeling. The question now is what comes next: a measure of genuine but controlled reform as in Morocco or an Egyptian-style scenario where the army runs things behind a facade of pro-forma elections?

MA: Intelligence reports indicate a redeployment of Daesh to Libya. Can we end the terrorism of Daesh and Al Qaeda without really fighting the ideological matrix of these groups? Is it enough defeating these groups militarily?

ABA: Daesh is finished above ground in the Arab world. But it will continue to exist underground because the conditions that incubated still exist. In my view, the challenge is not so much to fight the ideology as to address those conditions. The ideology, or at least its adoption or acceptance in some places and by some people, is a product of these ‘failed-state’ conditions and the marginalization they cause. In many cases – Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen – they are a consequence, in whole or in part, of direct or indirect Western military intervention. Putting an end to these interventions would be a step to tackling the problem.

MA: Are we not witnessing the continuation of the Cold War between the US administration on one side and Russia and China on the other? How do you explain the need for the United States to have an enemy?

ABA: The US can’t sleep unless it has an enemy. It has become an obsession, though creating or talking up external enemies has always been a means of advancing the interests of domestic power elites.But the picture is changing. America is no longer rules the world in matters of war and peace. Its real power is not its military might but the US Dollar. Its abuse of its financial and commercial power has become so extensive that an international alliance is taking shape to deprive it of this weapon.

*

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Abdel Bari Atwan is a Palestinian journalist born in 1950 in Deir al-Balah, a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He lived in a family of 11 children. After graduating from primary school in the refugee camp, he continued his studies in Jordan. He then studied journalism at Cairo University. After working for many Arab newspapers, he ran until 2013 al-Quds al-Arabi, a newspaper he founded in London in 1989 with other Palestinian expatriates. Today, he is the editor-in-chief of Rai al-Youm, an Arab world digital news and opinion website. He lives and works in London.

Mohsen Abdelmoumen is an independent Algerian journalist. He wrote in several Algerian newspapers such as Alger Républicain and in different sites of the alternative press.

All images in this article are from American Herald Tribune

The original source of this article is American Herald Tribune

Copyright © Abdel Bari Atwan and Mohsen Abdelmoumen, American Herald Tribune, 2019

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عن الجزائر… حتى ينتهي المخاض بسلام

مارس 13, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– يحتاج أي تحليل أو موقف مما تشهده الجزائر إلى إدراك خطورة الوقوع في قياسات التشبيه بتجارب أخرى، تتجاهل فرادة الحالة الجزائرية. فالحديث عن أن دور الجزائر قد حان في تجارب الربيع العربي المقيت، يتجاهل أن التجربة الاختبارية لكل ما شهدناه من مسمّيات الربيع كان في الجزائر في ما عرفته في تسعينيات القرن الماضي من انتخابات أوصلت الجماعات الإسلامية إلى الأغلبية البرلمانية، وما تلاها من حرب ضروس نزفت خلالها الجزائر لعشر سنوات عرفت بالعشرية السوداء. والقول بأن الحال في الجزائر تكرار لما شهدته سورية أو مصر مجاف للحقيقة. فالجزائر رغم كل التشوش الذي أصاب موقفها في محطات عربية مفصلية، لم تغادر ثوابت رئيسية في الاستقلال ولا تزال دولتها على كل ما فيها من علل وفساد دولة رعاية اجتماعية، في بلد كثير الثروات، وهي في هذا نصف سورية ونصف ليبيا، لكنها من حيث الموضوع الراهن الذي فجّر الشارع وفتح ملف الأحداث، تشكل نصف مصر، فالرئيس عبد العزيز بوتفيلقة الذي يملك تاريخاً وطنياً يستحق التقدير، بات عاجزاً عن ممارسة الحكم، وترشيحه لولاية خامسة شكل استفزازاً قاسياً للشارع والنخب، خصوصاً الذين لا مخططات مسيئة لبلدهم تسيِّر تحركاتهم أو تتحكم بمواقفهم.

– الدعوات لدعم غير مشروط لحراك الشارع ليحسم الموقف ويرسم المستقبل، تتجاهل ما توفره السيولة التي يقدمها حراك الشارع مهما بلغ نبل المقاصد، ومهما كانت درجة الانضباط. وهذه السيولة تشكل هدفاً بحد ذاتها، يراد له أن يطول في ظل استعصاء مطلوب يحول دون اي حل سياسي يضمن خروجاً سلمياً من الأزمة، حتى تتكسر هيبة الدولة ومؤسساتها ويتم تحييدها من المشهد، وخصوصاً مؤسسة الجيش الوطني الجزائري، وتذبل هياكل السلطة وتتآكل، بينما يتعب الشارع المتدفق بحيوية، فيصير المجال متاحاً للتشكيلات المنظمة أن تنزل إلى الساحة بمخططاتها السياسية والأمنية، وهي تملك طول النفس وحسن التنظيم والمقدرات والدعم الخارجي وتفرض أجندتها على الجميع، وفي ظل الأهمية الاستثنائية للجزائر في أسواق النفط والغاز ومشاريع الخصخصة، قد يكون التحرر من الجغرافيا والديمغرافيا الجزائرية كأعباء، لحساب منظومة خفيفة الأثقال تمسك ملفات النفط والغاز، بعدما قالت التجربة الليبية الكثير عن القدرة على التحكم بهذه الثروات مهما اشتدّت وتسعّرت الحرب والفوضى، مقابل ترك الداخل الفقير والريفي للجماعات الإسلامية بمتشدديها ومعتدليها يتنافسون ويتحاربون.

– الخطوات التي أقدم عليها الرئيس الجزائري شكلت خطوة في اتجاه فتح الطريق لمسار سلمي للخروج من الأزمة، لكنها كما يقول الشارع الجزائري ونخبه النظيفة غير كافية، بحيث لا يقبل استبدال التجديد بالتمديد، والمطلوب خريطة طريق واضحة للانتقال إلى دستور جديد وانتخابات في ظل حكومة انتقالية موثوقة، في ظل غياب قيادات سياسية موثوقة وازنة في الشارع وقادرة على قيادته، مقابل هامشية تشكيلات المعارضة التقليدية بإسلامييها وعلمانييها في لحظات التأجج الشعبي الذي يصعب الرهان على دوامه، كما تقول التجارب، وهو ما لا يجب أن يُحرجنا بالقول إن الجيش لا يزال يشكل الجهة الأشد موثوقية لتحقيق هذا الغرض الانتقالي، برعاية الحكومة التي تتولّى صلاحيات الرئاسة لزمن محدود، مع تحويل الندوة الوطنية إلى جمعية تأسيسية تحلّ مكان البرلمان وتضمّ أبرز قواه، بالإضافة إلى رموز الحراك وقادة الأحزاب، لتخرج بدستور يتناسب مع غياب القيادات التاريخية، وبالتالي ينتقل من النظام الرئاسي إلى النظام البرلماني الذي يتيح قراراً جماعياً للدولة، عبر حكومات وحدة وطنية تتمثل فيها التكتلات بحجم وزنها النيابي، وتمنع التسلط على الحكم عبر شخصيات مموّهة، تضيع معها ثوابت الجزائر والتزاماتها في مجال الأمن القومي، وهكذا تحفظ للجيش مكانته ودوره، وهذا ما يحول دون وقوع الجزائر في النتيجتين المصرية والتونسية بوجههما الأخواني أو بالعودة للنظام القديم بحلة جديدة، أو ذهابها للمسار الليبي. وفي كل الأحوال الجزائر لن تكون سورية، ليس لأنها ليست بأهميتها، بل لأن الكتلة الشعبية الوازنة والغالبة في سورية بقيت وراء مشروع الدولة ورئيسها ولأن ليس في الجزائر قائد تاريخي صاعد يمثل وجدانها الوطني والقومي قادر على قيادتها كالرئيس بشار الأسد.

– لأننا نحبّ الجزائر لا نستطيع أن نقف بلا شروط وراء الحكم أو الشارع، بل نقف بقوة مع مسار سياسي سلمي ينهي الأزمة بسلاسة ويحفظ ثوابتها، لأننا ضنينون ببلد الثورة العظيمة، ونريد أن نشهد ضماناً يحول دون أن تضيع منا الجزائر.

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Algerian President Bouteflika abandons re-election bid amid protests

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Mon Mar 11, 2019

Algeria’s octogenarian president has abandoned his attempt to contest a fifth term amid nearly-month-long protests against the country’s changeless political scene.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced the decision not to contest the April polls on Monday, and also postponed the election itself, Reuters reported.

PressTV-Algeria’s Bouteflika to seek fifth presidential term

Algeria’s ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is to seek a fifth term in April elections despite health issues that have kept him largely out of the public eye for years.

The 82-year-old has been in power for the past 20 years, but is reportedly in poor health conditions after suffering a stroke in 2013.

Protesters say they disapprove of the country’s old political system, which is dominated by veterans of the 1954-1962 independence war against France, who include the president himself.

Opponents have also cited suspicion that the president was being kept in office to protect the grip of the military and business elite.

New generation ‘to be empowered’

Bouteflika’s office said a new constitution would now be put to public vote, adding that his last duty would be to contribute to the founding of a new system that would be in “the hands of a new generation of Algerians.”

An “inclusive and independent” national conference will oversee the transition, drafting a new constitution and setting the date for elections, it noted. “The conference should finish its work by the end of 2019, with elections to follow,” Reuters added.

As an apparent token of the government’s submission to the protesters, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, meanwhile, resigned from his post. He was replaced by Interior Minister Noureddine Bedoui, who is not known for maintaining comparably close ties with the president.

The public swarmed the streets following the announcement, this time celebrating their triumph over those supporting the president’s continued incumbency.

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• Algeria’s Bouteflika drops re-election bid amid protests
• الرئيس بوتفليقة يعلن تأجيل الانتخابات الرئاسية وعدم ترشحه

Arms sales to Middle East increase dramatically, research shows

SIPRI research shows that Saudi Arabia became world’s top arms buyer

Saudi Arabia’s arms purchases grew by 192 percent over 2014-2018 (AFP)

Published date: 10 March 2019 09:00 UTC | Last update: 23 sec ago

Arms flows to the Middle East grew by 87 percent in the past five years and now account for more than a third of the global trade, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report on Sunday.

The defence think tank’s annual survey showed that Saudi Arabia became the world’s top arms importer between 2014-18, with a growth of 192 percent compared to the preceding five years.

Egypt, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq also ranked in the top 10 list of global arms buyers.

The report shows how the United States and European nations sell jets, jeeps and other gear that is used in controversial wars in Yemen and beyond, SIPRI researcher Pieter Wezeman told Middle East Eye.

“Weapons from the US, the UK and France are in high demand in the Gulf, where conflicts and tensions are rife. Russia, France and Germany dramatically increased their arms sales to Egypt in the past five years,” said Wezeman.

The growth in Middle Eastern imports was, in part, driven by the need to replace military gear that was deployed and destroyed in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya, said Wezeman.

It was also driven by tensions and a regional arms race, he added.

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The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel are readying for a potential conflict with Iran, said the 12-page report. Since 2017, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and others have rowed with Qatar in a rift, which, at times, looked like it could turn violent.

Between 2014-18, Saudi received 94 combat jets fitted with cruise missiles and other guided weapons from the US and Britain.

Over the next five years, it is set to get 98 more jets, 83 tanks and defensive missile systems from the US, 737 armoured vehicles from Canada, five frigates from Spain, and Ukrainian short-range ballistic missiles.

Between 2014-18, the UAE received missile defence systems, short-range ballistic missiles and some 1,700 armoured personnel carriers from the US as well as three corvettes from France, the report says.

Qatari imports grew by 225 percent over the period, including German tanks, French combat aircraft and Chinese short-range ballistic missiles. It is set to receive 93 combat aircraft from the US, France and Britain and four frigates from Italy.

Iran, which is under a UN arms embargo, accounted for just 0.9 percent of Middle Eastern imports.

For Wezeman, “the gap is widening” between Iran and its foes across the Gulf, which have more advanced weapons.

US remains top arms seller

The US has kept its position as the world’s top arms seller. Its exports grew by 29 percent these past five years, with more than half of its shipments (52 percent) going to customers in the Middle East.

British sales grew by 5.9 percent over the same period. A total of 59 percent of UK arms deliveries went to the Middle East — most of it combat aircraft destined for Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Arming governments in the turbulent Middle East is increasingly controversial in the West, said Patrick Wilcken, an arms control specialist with Amnesty International, a UK-based rights watchdog.

He pointed to cases where sales are merited – such as re-tooling Iraq’s army after it lost much of its hardware and territory during the so-called Islamic State (IS) group’s surprise attack in 2014.

But, more often, western arms end up being used in human rights abuses, he added, pointing to Egypt’s crackdown on opponents, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

He blasted the “hypocrisy” of western governments not following their own rules by continuing to supply authoritarian leaders who commit wartime abuses or violations against their own people.

“A critical problem for the region is the emergence of armed groups like IS,” Wilcken told MEE.

A critical problem for the region is the emergence of armed groups like IS

– Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International

“In Yemen, totally unaccountable militias are being armed and supported by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which is setting the scene for a future period of instability and human rights violations.”

The problem has not gone unnoticed in western capitals.

In the US, lawmakers in both houses have passed resolutions to end US support for the Saudi-led coalition, though US President Donald Trump has vowed to veto the document if it reaches his desk.

In Britain, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for a ban on arms exports to Saudi. Last month, a parliamentary committee concluded that the UK was on “the wrong side of the law” by arming Riyadh.

In October, Amnesty released a report about French-built armoured vehicles being used by Egyptian government forces to “disperse protests and crush dissent” in crackdowns between 2012-2015.

Germany, however, has taken a stand. This week, it extended until the end of March a unilateral freeze on arms supplies to Saudi over its war in Yemen and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This has caused a rift with Britain and France, its partners in European defence projects, as it puts a question mark over orders, including a $13.1bn deal to sell 48 Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Riyadh.

Jeff Abramson, a scholar at the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group, said the US should follow Germany’s example.

“Instead of being challenged, the US continues to claim a larger share of an expanding global arms market,” Abramson told MEE.

“As such, the US should take the lead in promoting responsible behavior, rather than encouraging trade to repressive and irresponsible regimes, such as those in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

Other findings

The report made other interesting findings.

These past five years, Turkey has increased exports of armoured vehicles, missiles and other gear by 170 percent, becoming the world’s 14th most important arms exporter and the second biggest in the Middle East, after Israel.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE were among Turkey’s top three importers of weapons in the past five years, despite Ankara being at odds with its customers over Khashoggi and the blockade on Qatar.

Continuing to buy arms from Turkey may be a bid by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to keep ties with Ankara on track despite the rift, said Wezeman.

Also, Algeria increased its arms imports by 55 percent over the past five years, with shipments from Russia, China, Germany and elsewhere.

This made it the world’s fifth biggest arms importer despite only having a $168bn economy.

Algeria buys arms for military prestige, to tackle militants from neighbouring Libya and because of its “long-standing rivalry with Morocco”, said Wezeman.

Sipri measures the volume of deliveries of arms, not the dollar value of deals. The volume of deliveries to each country tend to fluctuate, so it presents data in five-year periods that a give a more stable indication of trends.

Syria: March Revolution Re-Visited

Thursday, 07 March 2019

Source

March 8, 1963 Revolution, in reaction, at least to the then repeated coups and exploitation of the homeland resources, has indeed been the driving force behind the Syrians aspiration and desire for freedom, equality and justice. 56 years since then, Syria today, notwithstanding all the sinister plots, conspiracies and the foreign-backed terrorism, is still the throbbing heart and bastion of resistance and civilization. The major pivotal role of the Baath Arab Socialist Party and the late President Hafez Al-Assad in March 8 Revolution, and later in the Correction Movement, has and will ever have immense contributions to the current steadfastness of Syria, under the wise historic leadership of President Bashar Hafez Al-Assad, the guardian of all humanity against every evil and terrorism.

In his March 8, 1990 Speech, President Hafez Assad’s outlined that by then

• We covered the most difficult stages as we put our shoulders to the wheel and exerted concerted efforts to set things right and balance the books.
• Our belief is deep seated that life is an eternal revolution and man is the essence and target.
• The revolution is the locomotive to change status for a better condition to serve man`s aspirations. Speaking of man as an essence and target of the revolution, we tend to think of the youth where we find an optimal personification of man.
• As I described them before, the youth are the hope for the future and the future hope lies in the present.
• Freedom lives along with man and thrives on with his development because it needs a system in life like any other one. Plants grow according to a system; the earth, planets and the human body function according to a very accurate and precise system, but when it malfunctions, destabilization occurs and the system degenerates and collapses altogether.
• The corrective movement was a necessity being an achievement of our party and people. It was the victory of freedom where I used to say time and again that we are as strong as we have freedom and free as much as we are strong.
• The movement has been the bandwagon in all institutions where people participated in the premiership councils, the elected people`s assembly, and councils of the elected domestic administration.
• It is taken for granted that the nation concerned should consult, coordinate and stick together in perilous circumstances. It is pitiful that the other powerful nations coincide with the fragmentation of the Arab weak nations. The Arab nations do not weigh the imminent perils adequately.
• We should not distance ourselves from the past. In a nutshell, we say that he who reads history and geography would realize that since the decadence of the Arab state, we started to lose parts of our people and land all over the Arab region.
• The ongoing events and the new challenges today set an additional alarm to make us gear up in order not to lose what we hold.
• Syria has been and will be keen on preserving the nation`s dignity.
• A lot wanted to distort or mayhem the nature of our relations with the Soviet Union, but I would say that our nexus is stable as it has ever been in the past. We have been true friends long ago and relations were nurtured by close cooperation.
• We do not abnegate or be ungracious especially when it comes to colossal issues. The Soviet Union stood by us and supported us in our just struggle in confronting aggression. Such stances will remain an essential page in the history of our relations and will forge them.
• Let us continue building man and land and boost the team spirit. Let us nourish altruism and the national spirit, abnegate selfishness and strengthen the national unity to scatter love everywhere and treat each other tolerably and preserve the dignity of the nation.

   In his March 8, 1989 Speech, President Hafez Assad’s outlined that by then

• What has been realized since the beginning of the revolution is something we are proud of with respect to the scientific profusion and technical cadres, economic growth, social betterment and the increase in production and services.
• Such truth is obvious in all walks of life as in the educational institutions, health sector, factories, natural wealth and agriculture.
• Undoubtedly, our position today is much better with regard to the economic impedimenta, and our economy is robust because we tend to develop our resources constantly.
• This job makes it incumbent on us to slog feverishly and hone our skills and promote teamwork. We all realize that what affects the country would recoil and every success we accomplish would benefit all.
• We must be determined to strengthen our national unity in tune with the aspirations of our people, and by inculcating the national spirit we create the cooperation spirit among all citizens and the atmosphere of initiative and creativity to lay firm grounds of self sufficiency.
• We still have a lot to do to build the nation and achieve production booms, and enhance our steadfastness and capability to extirpate aggression and occupation.
• All that would require the reliance on our people and the support of our friends and the assimilation of the general world opinion of our causes. The basis of our stand remains the firm belief in the causes and in our preparedness to defend them.

 On the 25th Anniversary of the 8th of March Revolution, President Hafez Assad’s outlined that by then

• On the morning of this day in 1963, the sun of the revolution scattered in the sky heralding a new phase in history that eliminates colonization and backwardness, a stage where we embarked on a march of unity, liberty and socialism.
• We have encountered hardships and conspiracies, but owing to our resolve and determination, we have overcome these hurdles and offered great sacrifices for optimal and noble targets to preserve our national unity where we achieved superbly. We made Syria a modern state and the base of the Arab struggle to defend ourselves and liberate the usurped land.
• We covered wide strides on the path of the democratic front. The constitutional institutions exercised their jurisdictions satisfactorily and the interior front remained impervious where no enemy or conspirator is able to smear the nation or undermine its national struggle.
• In the domains of culture and education, progress was remarkable where universities and institutes mushroomed exponentially. Furthermore, in the fields of public health, many well-equipped hospitals and dispensaries were erected. Healthcare and childcare were given prominent attention including vaccination and inoculation campaigns against diseases.
• We opted for the motto of self sufficiency. It is so important especially during the current status where we challenge a fierce enemy supported by a super power like the USA.
• If October war liberated part of the land it means that it constituted a turning point and a catalyst in the conflict with the Israeli invasion. It was the first time when the Arabs moved from defense to attack position. The Zionist media and its allies could not divert this reality from being seen by the world.
• The results of October war were reflected upon the Arab fighter by sharpening him with self confidence and preparedness to sacrifice.
• The honorable battle which was fought by our armed forces against the Israeli invasion in Lebanon bears witness where the forces defended Lebanon and offered thousands of sacrifices.
• Our people in Golan and Palestine express their steadfastness by stones and other means.
• Blessed are your sacrifices, martyrs and the wounded.
• We must build a powerful nation to become a castle of love and steadfastness against invaders. We are a great nation working hard for our unity and solidarity. We must stick together and have one unified will.

 

On the 24th Anniversary of the 8th March Revolution, 8-3-1987, the Late President Hafez Al-Assad underlined:

•  Our revolution is incessant and strong. It has firm principles and able to accept the challenge and to confront the difficulties.
•  Our revolution confronted the enemies everywhere. We insist on accepting the challenges and defeating it and on making flags of our people which express hopes and aspirations of our nation and their right to fight for their unity, freedom and progress high.
•  The revolution has stepped great steps in realizing its targets through overcoming the obstacles. The revolution through its achievements and victories became the most significant defiance to the colonialist and Zionist forces.
•  We are used not to surrender to any threat or any aggressor , not to be frightened by anything and not to accept any foreign dictations.
• We accept the challenge directed to us. Our decision is to realize triumph on our enemies and to foil the plots as well as making firm steps on the victory road.
• We are strong with our revolution and people, with our aims that express the people’s conscious and with our determination to struggle and offer sacrifices.
• We are strong with our national unity which was always our weapon in each battle and with determination of our people to struggle and offer sacrifices in order to make Syria remaining free, strong and steadfast.
•  We are strong with the Arab nation’s people who refuse surrender and who are always ready to wage battles of liberation, unity and confrontation of surrender and humiliation.
•  Our revolution wasn’t an accidental event in the history of our country and nation, it was a remarkable incident in the history and a turning point in the country’s track of development. It has shouldered the people and the progressive revolutionary vanguards the responsibility of the power.
• It has established the strong base of the Arab steadfastness in the face of the imperialist and Zionist schemes and the strong base of the real Arab action for realizing the Arab unity and the unified Socialist Arab society.
•  Through the 8th March revolution and the Correctionist Movement, Syria has achieved progress in the political, economic, social and cultural domains and became pioneer in the Arab national liberation movement and in the lead of the countries marching on the road of progress and sociality.
• Syria became the basic force of the Arab steadfastness in the face of Imperialism and Zionism and the foundation stone in the Arab action to liberate the usurped Arab territories and restore the Arab rights.
•  Syria became, according to testimony of all people including the enemies, a force that has to be taken into consideration.
•  The 8th March Revolution has offered radical changes in Syria in all fields of life. We will not hesitate in the progress, we will not going back whatever the threats and the challenges were.
• The pressures we are facing will not be to any further extent able to create strategic difficulties for us. We will tackle these pressures and will find the useful and long term solutions to them.
•  The 8th March Revolution is considered a people revolution launched under the leadership of the Baath Arab Socialist Party. The people are the base of this revolution. The Correctionist Movement restored the revolution and the party to people and vice versa and it has trusted people and allowed them to take part in the planning, taking decisions and implementing through the institutional establishments and the popular organizations.
• Our national unity is the basis which we depend on in working and cooperating to confront the interior and exterior tasks. The national unity proved its efficiency in the circumstances and the battles we passed through and it will remain the basis of the internal building and confrontation of the antagonist forces.
•  The legislative decree No.15 for 1971 which included the Local Administration Law was considered a second great step, after the first step of the People’s Assembly, in the road of realizing the popular democracy and engaging the people representatives in managing citizen’s affairs.
•  The Popular democracy isn’t a motto but it is a real practice enriched by experience. We are still looking forward enlarging and enhancing the popular democracy experience to make wide scale of people partners in shouldering responsibility and taking implementing decisions.
•  Last month, the Local Administration carried out elections of the 4th session of the governorates councils and the 2nd session of the cities and towns councils. The electors who won the elections were elected by the citizens. It is pleasing to me that the number of the winning women in these elections amounted 140 comparing with the 65 women in the previous elections. This refers to the fact that women are achieving progress in the society and its establishments to take their natural position, practice their right and duties and to shoulder their responsibilities.
•  The application of popular democracy has reached advanced stages. It is a very important experience to make people manage their affaires by themselves and implement the decision they take to improve their life in all fields.
•  We appreciate the proposals submitted by the Soviet Union for disarmament and call for reviewing them with great seriousness and responsibility to reach a situation removing people’s fear from the nuclear destruction and contributing in solving the international dispute according to the UN charter principles and the peace interests.
•  Getting rid of the nuclear threatening is not limited to one state or other area in the world but it is considered an issue of every state, area and person keen on the life and civilization.

On the 16th anniversary of the 8th March revolution, 8-3-1979, the beloved late President Hafez Al-Assad delivered the following landmark speech:

 

Dear citizens:

As a new day in the age of the 8th March revolution starts, we will review in this occasion our actions in the last years. We will review what we have implemented and what was hampered to be carried out due to the circumstances. We will evaluate the actions and will deduce the results.

We will review the actions in the Arab world and the neighboring countries and then we will review the whole world. Through this we will emphasize on our process and will be reassured on the safety of it. We will go forward the future with more resolution and trust after correcting the process’ flaws and eradicating its obstacles. We will do all of this with high responsibility and under the principles of our great party, the Baath Arab Socialist Party , leader of the 8th March revolution .

This review in this time of every year pushes us forward, activates our potentials and gives us more clear view because it is true and sincere and takes into consideration viewing issues according to the people viewpoint and taking decisions in light of the people’s higher interest.

If we limited this occasion just on celebrating it without reviewing ourselves, thus we will rip it off its characteristics and emptying it its real content. We have to avoid committing such mistake.

So, we were used every year to unveil to our people the issue of accountability to be familiar with the makers of the revolution process. To make issues more clear in front of them, this occasion was, during the last eight years, an opportunity to cast light on our achievements in all fields, unveil the default points  and tackle them.

Tomorrow, the citizens will get a statement of the achievements realized in the agricultural, industrial, trade and service fields. This is a clear evidence of what has realized in the last year since celebrating the 15th anniversary of the revolution.

If the annual realization of the economic achievements has become in the latest year firm part of our life process, the achievements in other fields, mainly boosting the revolution process, applying the party’s principles, have been attached more importance in this process. This was more important in consolidating notions of the revolution and moving from theoretical way to the practical one and from defining the aims to working realize them.

We had emphasized during the last eight years that pursuing the revolution course we have to incessantly work and to be real revolutionaries in our behavior, action and target. The revolution is not a work program or just goals, it is in the first class a specific behavior. As we apply this behavior, as we ensure the success to the revolution process. This behavior will be guided and directed by hopes and targets of the nation and the people which the Baath Arab Socialist Party has been inspired in formulating its principles and targets.

If the revolutionary has to be vanguard and ideal, this requires him to be in permanent contact with people .

What we have realized in the revolution path is not enough, however every day we feel that the more in every field is required. This feeling motivate us to double action and to make “working which advances the saying” the title of our process.

In spite of our need for more successful and feasible work, we have to be assured that we are standing on firm ground and acknowledging clearly our way to the hoped-for future. We have to trust in our capacity to pass this way firmly in spite of the plots contrives by our enemies.

We are building on a strong popular base with the help of the people who believe in our revolution. We pursue this policy in the internal, political, economic and social building as well as in the national building for consolidating the Arab solidarity and consolidating any possible unity step. We pursue this policy also in the international field to boost the position of our country and nation in defending the Arab territories and rights.

We do all of this lifting the flag of our nation’s honor and dignity and resisting anything that may undermine the Arab dignity. For this target, we sacrifice whatever this was great because as we always assert that the life is meaningless without dignity.

Dear brothers:

The achievements we are realizing in our country in different fields are the way to attain our nation’s targets, apply the party’s aims of unity, freedom and socialism, set-up industry, expand the cultivation area and foster the economic base.

We are incessantly working to ensure the social life of citizens and upgrading their standards of living. We will construct schools, institutes and universities, set up the public facilities and improve the services. We will continually work to ensure the social life of citizens and follow up building the popular democracy through the establishments achieving the target of the popular democracy.

At the same time we are confirming the role of the popular organization and resuming efforts to let this role efficient completely.

We do all of this to realize the highest goals manifested in building up the human being and defending the national causes.

I am saying this with full knowledge that there are a lot of complains in the aforementioned fields. We have complains in the fields of agriculture, industry, services and popular democracy. We have a lot of complains, I don’t want to say that we have realized what we want. What we want in the different fields of life is great like our nation and like its history and its civilization. It is will not come into anyone’s mind that this will be realized in a limited period of time measured by few years or more than this.

But I want to say that we are making a progress, not standing in the same place, leaving the starting point far from us and closing reasonably to the target.

I want to say that the 8th March revolution, which came as a response to our aspirations, has passed acceptable stages. This constitutes in this historical phase the laying down of foundations of  building the future.

The road is very long and rocky, but the will of people is able to attain the target and eradicate any obstacle in this road.

The revolution is not a skip limited to a specific time, it is an advanced successive action.

The revolution has a firm will to carry our successive achievements. Thus the revolution was immune in front of the infiltrators. The will of revolution remained stronger and more firm than the will of falsification.

In this way, we made a progress and we waged the October War, and from the liberation aim we have decided to fight on the northern and southern fronts.

I don’t want to speak about the performance and the epics of our forces in the October war because everyone knows it. This war was a heroic epic in which the Syrian soldier had proved his potentials, qualifications and bravery and was an honor to the Arab nation.

The October war was the greatest achievement to our people and a great historical evident which left imprints on the Arab and international life. This war has directly and indirectly affected different aspects of political, military, economic and cultural life which in turn made it one of the most significant incidents in the history.

It is not possible to let the tragic incidents carried out by Egypt governor- backed by the USA and the world Zionism, to dominate our comprehension and evaluation of the October war, the great action which we have realized with the heroics and sacrifices of our people.

There is no doubt that our next generations will be more proud than us in the October war and will know the great value of this great incidents. Here, I want to highlight an essential matter that we didn’t just fight with honor and heroism but we limitless dealt with our brothers with honor and truthfulness and sacrifice exceeding all considerations and regional interests.

You notice that more than one time I approach speaking about the war issue and didn’t complete the road. As I have said in the past one day in which all details will be presented is inevitably coming.

While the Arab soldiers in the Golan and Sinai are competing to martyrdom, it hasn’t come into our mind that the political leadership in Egypt was working to divide the unified rank and arranging for a reconciliation with the enemy aiming to get Egypt out of its national context through the Sinai agreement, the surrender visit, David Camp scheme and Begin-Alsadat-Carter meetings.

We had lived five years and half of suffering due to the insistence of the Egyptian regime to detach Egypt from the Arab nation and to dress it a cover which Egypt and its people and army reject it.

We had suffered in our brotherly and sincere attempts to take the Egyptian regime away from the surrender track. We had endeavored this in the bilateral and Arab meetings and through the mediations of some sides in the Riyadh meeting and other meetings.

Our concerns were the sincere commitment to the target and the and certain conviction in the fact that the  Arab solidarity is the road of their triumph and that the action unity is the guarantee to attain targets.

We were shocked that the regime in Egypt was violating any accord and then suggesting the isolation in action and preferring the association with the enemy more than a meeting including the friends. We were shocked that this regime was accepting a humiliating conditions that seek behind fake interests. In spite of this submission, the regime didn’t restore the Sinai land, didn’t save the Egyptian people from the incessant Israeli aggression threats and didn’t attain the Egyptian people demands of security and food.

This regime is suffering from many complexes. It is suffering from the foreigner complex which means that it is impressed by anything foreign. It sees that anything outside the country has the capability and power while the Egyptian people and the Arab nation have no capability or power.

Outside Egypt, this regime is keen to take feelings and advices of the governors into consideration while the Arabs have no feelings, no advices, no rights and no interests deserving the consideration and respect.

In this regime consideration, anything the foreigners saying is good while anything the Arabs say is bad.

I wish that no one that I want to enter arguments, but I want to highlight some of the realities I know and which were established during the latest four or five years process.

The Arab countries had repeatedly called on the Egyptian President to give up the surrender track and the prospects of return were widely opened in front of him, but he gave no ears to this and opened his heart to the nation’s enemies who want the evil to it.

since the Egyptian President’s visit to Jerusalem and his bowing to the Flag of Israel and the and honor to the Israeli soldier, we have a sad image of a regime getting out from its nation’s consensus and isolate itself  and on the other hand approaching from an enemy trying to extort  and to obtain a high price regarding its agreement to make the Egyptian regime signing the surrender document.

We are mistaken if we think that the enemy aimed only to subjugate the Egyptian regime but it also wanted to impose surrender on the Arab nation, expecting that the subjugation of the Egyptian regime will drag many Arab countries to the surrender track.

This is what they expect, but fie on their plans and suppositions. What they are doing is a deal full of cheat and collusion to attain a profit at the expense of right, justice, history and all justice realities consolidated by human being throughout the ages with great effort and blood.

The Arab Governor, who is part in this deal, was looking for a selfish opportunist profit. Bust, as the people’s process and the history demonstrated such cheat and silly issues will not remain steadfast in front of the history movement and the people’s power.

They may delude people that they had realized peace, but time will pass quickly and the world will discover reality. The realities will clearly appear. They didn’t realize the peace and what they had realized from the peace point of view worth nothing.

All of the world will see that the region, after this signing, is still in a state of war and didn’t move to the peace reality because as I have said they didn’t make peace, and if we had to call what they are doing ‘peace’, it is worthy to mention that they are making the peace of war not the peace of security because the peace of security is the peace of community which is in turn built on justice.

Anyway, you, in this country and the Arab nation had chosen the way of justice, right, honor and dignity. You know that this way has a tax. You had chosen the difficult and the rocky road but it is the more honor and secure road.

All of us will remain ready, we will unhesitating pay the wanted tax and sacrifice. We will offer this faithfully and with satisfaction.

Our response to the surrender course was highlighting and uplifting the flag of steadfastness to put an end to the deterioration of the Arab stance and Arab front. The conferences of the national front for steadfastness and confrontation in Tripoli, Algeria and Damascus were considered as warning to enemies of the Arab nation because it is stronger than their conspiracies.

Then, the 9th Arab Summit conference in Baghdad was held to confirm to the world that the Arab nation  is keen to realize solidarity and is refusing surrender and calling for peace on the basis of the Israeli occupation evaluation from the Arab territories and admitting the firm rights of the Palestinian Arab people. The Baghdad summit approved a work program to commit to it for the sake of the Arab nation’s dignity and rights.

On the course of steadfastness and resisting surrender, the Syrian and Iraqi countries met in the framework of the joint Arab action charter. This meeting was the commence of the serious unity action which became advancing with high responsibility and keenness to make firm steps and to make the findings meet aspirations and wishes of the Arab nation.

In implementing the joint Arab action charter, we express our keenness to benefit from the past experiences and to make the action matching the principles we believe in and the targets we are fighting for. We express our hope that our sincere and serious action will be the essence of more wide and comprehensive Arab action.

Dear citizens:

Nowadays, we live in an unrest world suffering from unbalance and underestimation of values. In Such a world, we can avoid stumbling through adhering to our values and principles to make principles of our process clear to our people and the world.

The Arab unity is our supreme goal which we are fighting to realize without tedious and hesitation. We are part of the Arab nation, so until the realization of this Arab unity goal we will hard work for realizing and boosting the Arab solidarity.

Our commitment to the freedom of nation and citizen is a principled commitment which we will do our utmost apply.

We had chosen the course of socialism to build up our life and ensure the happy life to our people.

We are keen to preserve our moral values and our historical Arab heritage which they are considered the basis of our society and life.

We are non-aligned country believing in principles of the Non-Aligned Movement and working to foster the Movement, disseminate its principles and boost its role in the international life.

We are with liberalization everywhere and we are supporting its allies. We are with struggle of the 3rd World people in order to find a just world economic system protecting the people’s fortunes and using these fortunes for the interest of humanity.

We are friend to anyone seeks our friendship and enemies to any one seeks our hostility. In this framework we greet our friends in the socialist countries and appreciate their support to our just conflict.

We are peace callers, wherever there is peace there will be no prejudice and aggression and there will be restoration to every usurped right.

In the light of these principles, we are urging on revolution, building up our generation and next generations and fostering the armed forces –the shield and protector of our country- and ensuring to it factors of steadfastness and victory. We are fighting to liberate the Arab lands and restoring the Arab rights and we are also working to play the civilized role convenient for our people and nation.

Dear brothers:

We are celebrating this anniversary of the 8th March revolution with the absence of great leader who devoted his life for serving his people and nation. So, we have to ask God to have mercy upon the brother and friend late president Hwari Bu Madian.

We are trusting that Algeria under its new leadership will remain as it always, the country of dignity, struggle, revolution and the Arab nation.

In this moment I salute the martyrs, the ideal of the nation and the struggle.

Finally, I salute all of you and call on you to resume our integrant action, hoping to celebrate the next anniversary of the 8th March revolution with more achievements in all domains.

 

On the 12th Anniversary of the 8 march revolution,8-3-1975, the Late President Hafez Al-Assad underscored:

•   We know the way and the goal we are heading towards with confidence, belief and strength that will enable us to realize the target which is mainly marked by good, right and justice.
•  I am convinced that our enemies and their allies have absolutely no doubt that we ,in Syria, will not yield to any pressure.
• They are deep-rooted people and part of a deep-rooted people and nation, they are organizing and building up themselves, and have the determination to realize victory and will reach this.
•  It is very important that the 8 march revolution come and we achieve great progress on the revolution track with firm resolution, realize more achievements in the internal building domain and at the same time booster the efforts to liberate territories and restore rights.
•  It is great evidence that the 8 march revolution will always be as its people wish, an incessant movement which is considered the main characteristic of revolution. For us, the revolution in its essence is a persistent work to transmit toward the best and an incessant effort for progress and building and realizing more achievements to people. The road of revolution is endless, whatever we pass stages we have more ones in front of us. Revolution needs more hard working and energy.
•  The essential point in the continuity of this track is the incessant interaction between the revolution and people, between the leadership and people and the adherence to principle and to norms of revolution. Thus, people will be the support of the revolution, which in turn will ensure the continuity of progress and success.
•  Our people, who struggled for social justice and socialist metamorphosis, were bounded to fight the imperialist and Zionist forces and to wage the war of liberation.
•  Our armed forces are the shield of the country and the defender of our land and rights. They are the first confronting force, which its heroism in the wars of October and Golan had realized great appreciation and admiration in the Arab nation and the world.
•  Our armed forces gained care and will gain more to preserve its high level of readiness and combating capacity and to remain the immune force that is frightening the enemy.
•  Our armed forces had played its role and will remain doing this with honor, it renewed the nation’s championships, asserting that a nation containing such these brave men  will not conquer.
•  We are enforcing our defensive capacity in face of an enemy fed up with weapons after the heavy losses it obtained in the October war. This enemy disguised to every human values and principles and insist on resuming aggression and occupying lands.
•  As we are speaking about national and Arab struggle and about the circumstances it is passing through, which require popular awareness and determination to realize success.
•  As we are speaking about all of this, we have to refer to an important part of our people; to half of our people, to women, especially due to the fact that this year is the year of woman.
•  The world people are now celebrating the international woman year. No people are prior than us in celebrating this year. In our country, woman played pivotal role in all phases of history and our struggle against colonialism. Her struggle was multiple. She was struggling with herself , with her husband, with her son, with her father and with her brother. She is fighting against hardness of circumstances and against disorder of life.
•  Of course this issue is new. All of us have to know that this taking must be translated into realities, measurements and laws. This thing must be clear, it doesn’t just mean issuing legislative decree or law to the People’s Assembly, but we have to be confident in contents of the law.
•  If man in general knows how much he suffered during his suffering , woman in our countries deserve best appreciation and respect and complete cooperation of us in attaining her aspirations to be the genuine person who is able to donate and to give his country all his potentials.
• I am always saying our logo must be martyrdom or victory, and I am saying martyrdom because it’s our way to victory.
• The best to conclude my word is to ask God to have mercy on our martyrs who fight for the sake of nation.

Dr. Mohamad Abdo Al-Ibrahim

Editor-in-Chief

alibrahim56@hotmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/Mohamad.Abdo.AlIbrahim

http://syriatimes.sy/

http://www.presidentassad.net/

President Hafez Al-Assad

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نصرُ وسلامةُ الجزائر … قرارٌ للأوفياء

بقلم المهندس: ميشيل كلاغاصي

غالبيتهم ولدوا وترعرعوا في ظله وتحت مظلته، ولم يعرفوا رئيسا ًغيره، واليوم يتظاهرون ويفقدون حماستهم لترشيحه! … هل هو حقا ً من كان يحكمهم في السنوات الأخيرة،

 أم نال منه المرض، وحوله إلى صورة رئيس , هل هو التغيير أم الإصلاح أم بابٌ للفوضى وطريقٌ نحو المجهول ؟… من يتربص بالجزائر، أهو بعض الداخل، أم طقس “الربيع” وأجوائه التي لا تزال تعصف بالدول العربية؟ أم برودة جبال الألب الفرنسية؟ أم شغف أمريكي لإفتتاح سوقٍ جديدة لنقل الإرهاب والإرهابيين من سوق الهزائم في سوريا والعراق إلى سوق إستثمارٍ جديد، هل هو حصارٌ تركي لمصر، أم صراعٌ تركي – مصري، وعلى أمل تفادي الطوفان …

وسط تظاهراتٍ عارمة عمت مختلف المدن الجزائرية، أربعة عشر مرشحا ً قدموا أوراق ترشحهم باليد، ووحده الرئيس بوتفليقة من أرسل أوراقه بطريقةٍ أغضبت البعض، فالرئيس في جنيف لإجراء بعض الفحوصات الطبية، وسط شكوكٍ حول حالته الصحية، وإمكانية صموده وتعافيه وعودته، بملء إرادته أو ببقائه هناك للأبد، فصحيفة “لوموند الفرنسية” عنونت نسختها اليوم “بوتفليقة ,,, انتهى”، فهل تكون بذلك قد كشفت السر …؟

فما نُقل عن الرئيس وعوده بإجراء إنتخاباتٍ مبكرة وبدستورٍ جديد وبإنشاء هيئة تضمن النزاهة والشفافية في الإنتخابات، وبكل ما يحمل تغييرا ً جذريا ً في النظام الجزائري، وكل ذلك في حال فوزه بالولاية الخامسة.

وهنا نطرح السؤال، لماذا تأخرت الجزائر كما تتأخر الإصلاحات في العالم العربي عموما ً، ولماذا لا تأتي قبل إنقسام المجتمع وتحوله إلى صراع داخلي يسمح للأطراف الداخلية والخارجية وأصحاب النوايا والمشاريع الخبيثة، بالحصول على الفرصة “الذهبية” للنيل من الأوطان.

أي حالٍ إنتظره الرئيس بوتفليقة وجعله يتمسك بالحكم، فالجزائريون يعلمون أنه خلال السنوات الماضية لم يكن هو الحاكم الفعلي مع تدهور حالته الصحية، في حين بقيت البلاد متروكة لمن يديرها من وراء الستار، وسط رضا البعض وإمتعاض البعض الاّخر؟

هل وجد بعض الجزائريون في الانتخابات الحالية الفرصة للتغيير والإصلاح , أم هناك صيدٍ في ماءٍ عكر , وهناك من يسعى لتصفية الحسابات مع الدولة والشعب باّنٍ واحد , فالجزائر ورغم عواصف “الربيع” والإرهاب و”التطبيع” و”صفقة القرن” التي ضربت المنطقة العربية , لم تجعل الجزائريون يتخلون عن البوصلة العربية وقضية فلسطين المركزية, ولم تتحول بنادقهم من كتف المقاومة إلى كتف التطبيع مع العدو الإسرائيلي, ولم تتوقف حكومات الرئيس بوتفليقة المتعاقبة – قدر إمكانها – عن دعم المقاومة والدول والشعوب المقاومة, ولم يتخل الجزائريون عن مجدٍ وإرثٍ صنعوه بدماء مليون ونصف المليون شهيد , دفاعا ًعن كرامتهم وسيادتهم وإستقلالهم, ولا يمكن استبعاد مخططا ً خارجيا ً يسعى للنيل من الجزائر وشعبها من بوابة التطرف الداخلي المغلف بثوب “المعارضة”, ومن تدخلٍ إقليمي ودولي, يبدأ من تركيا ولا ينتهي بمصر مرورا ً ب ليبيا.

حتى الاّن يتسم الوضع الجزائري بالغموض والترقب والخطورة, على وقع التظاهرات التي تعم عديد المدن, على وقع خطابات رؤساء الأحزاب المؤيدة أو المعارضة لترشح الرئيس عبد العزيز بوتفليقة لولايةٍ رئاسية خامسة … فقد ألهب عبد العزيز بلعيد رئيس “جبهة المستقبل الجزائري” الشارع الجزائري بحديثه عن عدم تكرار “السيناريو السوري”, فيما اعتبر المرشح ورئيس الحكومة الأسبق علي بن فليس أن ترشيح بوتفليقة ” إهانة للشعب الجزائري”, أما السيدة زبيدة عسول “رئيسة حزب الإتحاد من أجل التغيير” اعتبرت أن وعود بوتفليقة ليست سوى “مناورة” ودعت لإستمرار التظاهر, في الوقت الذي أعلن فيه أكبر الأحزاب الإسلامية “حزب مجتمع السلم” مقاطعته للإنتخابات في خطوة خطيرة وتضع إشارة الإستفاهم حول موقفهم ما بعد المقاطعة …؟

نعتقد أنه في الجزائر الكثير من العقلاء والحريصون على وحدة البلاد وأمنها وسلمها الأهلي والداخلي، بوجود مؤسسةٍ عسكرية تحترم الشعب الجزائري وتقف على مسافة واحدة من الجميع، ونتمنى السلامة والهدوء والإحتكام إلى صوت العقل قبل صناديق الإقتراع، وأن تسعى كل الأطراف لتعزيز الثقة بالجزائر – الوطن للجميع أولا ً، وبكل جزائري حر صادق محب لوطنه، وأن نصر الوطن هو مسؤولية جميع الجزائريين.

وربما تكون هذه مناسبة للتعبير عن خشية العقلاء في الشارع العربي، من جنون وعمالة بعض الأنظمة العربية، التي تخلت وتاّمرت على سوريا والعراق واليمن وليبيا، ولن تتوان عن متابعة مهامها، في استهداف الجزائر ومصر على طرفي ليبيا المسكينة… فالقطار المسموم يسير ويقترب من نهاية محطته في سوريا والعراق، وسط عراقيل تضعها تلك الأنظمة بأوامر أسيادها لتأخير الإنتصار السوري ويترددون في إعادة فتح سفاراتهم، وإعلان هزيمتهم وتعقلهم , فنصر سوريا هو نصرٌ للجزائر, ولكل الدول العربية, بتأكيد السيد حمودة الصباغ رئيس مجلس الشعب السوري في اجتماع البرلمانيين العرب في الأردن بالأمس.

   ( الثلاثاء 2019/03/05 SyriaNow) 

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Algerian Army Chief Vows to Secure Protest-hit Country

March 5, 2019

Algeria’s army chief on Tuesday pledged to guarantee the country’s security following mass demonstrations against ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term in office.

General Ahmad Gaid Salah also criticized those who he said “want to take (Algeria) back” to the dark years of civil war, in a speech published on the defense ministry’s website.

Source: AFP

رئيس أركان الجيش الجزائري يتهم أطرافاً بالرغبة في إعادة البلاد إلى زمن الحرب الأهلية

الميادين نت

 

رئيس أركان الجيش الجزائري الفريق أحمد قايد صالح يؤكد أن الجيش سيعمل على ضمان أمن البلاد ولن يسمح بالعودة إلى عصر إراقة الدماء، متهِّماً أطرافاً بالرغبة في إعادة البلاد إلى زمن الحرب الأهلية، قائلاً إنها “منزعجة من استقرار الجزائر”.

كد رئيس أركان الجيش الجزائري الفريق أحمد قايد صالح أن الجيش سيعمل على ضمان أمن البلاد ولن يسمح بالعودة إلى عصر إراقة الدماء.

صالح شدد على أن الجيش الجزائري “سيبقى مسيطراً على مقاليد الأمور لحماية الأمن”، قائلاً إن “الشعب الذي أفشل الإرهاب مطالب بأن يعرف اليوم كيف يتعامل مع الظروف بعقلانية” .

رئيس الأركان اتهم أطرافاً “بالرغبة في إعادة البلاد الى زمن الحرب الأهلية”، قائلاً “إنها منزعجة من استقرار الجزائر”.

وأتت هذه المواقف في وقت تتواصل فيه التظاهرات الطالبية في العاصمة الجزائرية الرافضة لترشّح الرئيس عبد العزيز بوتفليقة لولاية رئاسية خامسة.

التظاهرات انطلقت من ساحة البريد المركزيّ بوسط العاصمة وردّد فيها المشاركون شعاراتهم المندّدة بالولاية الخامسة فيما سجّل انتشار مكثّف لعناصر الشرطة.

من جهته، أفاد مراسلنا بالدعوة إلى تظاهرات جديدة في مختلف المدن الجزائرية يوم الجمعة تحت عنوان “جمعة الكرامة” فيما صدرت دعوات للصحافيين إلى التظاهر الخميس.

وكان 5 مرشّحين في الانتخابات الرئاسية الجزائرية أودعوا ملفّات ترشيحهم لدى المجلس الدستوريّ و بينهم الرئيس عبد العزيز بوتفليقة، فيما أعلنت شخصياتٌ سياسيةٌ مستقلّةٌ ومعارضة انسحابها من السباق الانتخابيّ.

وانتهت ليلة الأحدالماضي المهلة المحددة لتقديم ملفات الترشح للانتخابات الرئاسية في الجزائر المقررة في الثامن عشر من نيسان/ أبريل المقبل.

وتعهّد الرئيس الجزائري عبد العزيز بوتفليقة بإجراء انتخابات مبكرة خلال أقل من عام، اذا أُعيد انتخابه.

واوضح عبد الغني زعلان مدير حملة الرئيس الجزائري عبد العزيز بوتفليقة الانتخابية إن الأخير يتعهّد في حال انتخابه بتنظيم انتخابات رئاسية مبكرة خلال عام لن يكون مرشحاً فيها، مشيراً إلى أنه سيلقي رسالته إلى الشعب الجزائري بعد ترشحه للانتخابات.

القياديّ في حملة الرئيس بوتفليقة الانتخابية بلقاسم ساحلي قال إنّ تطبيق المادة 102 من الدستور غير مطروح حالياً لأنّ صحة الرئيس بوتفليقة ليست كما كانت في السابق لكنها لن تمنعه من أداء مهمّاته.

موقف ساحلي أتى في برنامج “حوار الساعة” على الميادين.

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The Return of Louis XVI: Emmanuel Macron, Roi de L’Ancien Regime

MARTIN SIEFF | 29.12.2018 | WORLD / EUROPE

It is easy to imagine ridiculous young President Emmanuel Macron of France as his fellow-free trading liberal King Louis XVI. Macron’s extraordinary pretensions to “dignity” and being a “king” far from elevating him have stripped him of all the bogus credibility that the corrupt, servile and stupid mainstream media of Europe and the United States tried to give him.

Far from raising the embattled Fifth Republic to new heights of achievement and success, it is already clear that Le Jeune Macron is destroying it. The contrast with the founder of the Republic, the great and truly regal Charles de Gaulle could not be greater.

The 1.96 meters tall De Gaulle towered over his nation in many ways. Twice he was his country’s literal savior: First as the leader of the Free French Resistance against the Nazis and as President of France from 1944 to 1946. And then returning to power in 1958, De Gaulle saved his nation from disintegration and civil war.

He ended the long ferocious conflict in Algeria, survived at least six assassination plots on his life and rebuilt his nation into the most powerful and prosperous state in Western Europe. He also defied the United States repeatedly, courageously criticized US conduct of the Vietnam War and built a lasting relationship of friendship and understanding with the Soviet Union.

Macron is physically not a small man, standing at 1.78 meters: He only acts and looks that way. Only a year into office, it is now irreversibly clear that young Macron is fated to make a mockery of every great achievement of De Gaulle, Le Vieux, including the Fifth Republic itself.

Ridiculous young Macron has inflicted ruinous new hardships on the long-suffering French people in the name of his global financial masters. He has loyally proved to be Washington’s poodle in petty-minded and destructive attempts to impose yet more economic sanctions on Russia.

Far from withdrawing France from needless ruinous wars in the Arab and Muslim worlds as Le Grand Charles did in Algeria, Macron continues to eagerly support and promote the disastrous Western interventions in Syria and Libya.

The true parallel to Macron is not De Gaulle, who restored the wealth, stability, dignity and pride of his nation but of the hapless, witless, very internationalist and liberal King Louis XVI, last monarch of L’Ancien Regime.

Like Macron Louis was an eager, arrogant and idiotic young technocrat. Like Macron, he was an internationalist revolutionary and a free trader. He supported the American colonies in their successful revolution against the British Empire.

It never occurred to Louis, just as it never occurred to Macron, or his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande that supporting revolutionary wars thousands of miles away could ever come back to haunt them at home. But that is exactly what happened. The collapse of ordered societies in Syria and Libya unleashed of millions of immigrants into France and other European nations with dire social consequences.

Louis suffered “blowback” too. American revolutionary Benjamin Franklin set up underground societies in France that within a decade toppled the most powerful kingdom in Europe.

Far from being the reactionary he has been caricatured as for more than 200 years, King Louis was one of the leading fashionable liberals and technocrats of his time. He especially revered English free-market economist Adam Smith, whose book “The Wealth of Nations” was published in 1776 (the same year as the American Revolution). So only a decade later, Louis fatefully signed his own 1786 Eden Free Trade Treaty with neighboring Britain.

As I noted in my own 2012 economic history “That Should Still Be Us”, the treaty proved to be a catastrophe: Cheap industrialized goods from the more advanced British economy flooded into France while the British cannily retained barriers of their own against French agricultural and other exports.

The French economy collapsed. Millions of people were thrown out of work. They and their families starved. Within three years the Great Revolution had exploded and the monarchy was toppled.

Louis, like Macron today, was convinced his advanced economic theories were more important than petty human suffering. It took the French Revolution and the loss, first of his crown and then of his own head to teach him otherwise.

Like Louis, Macron has shown no understanding or sympathy for the sufferings of ordinary people crushed beneath his absurd, unnecessary policies. Like Louis, his mask of liberalism and civilized compassion vanished as soon as his own people dared to disagree with him. Like Louis his only answer now is repression. Like Louis, he does not have a clue.

The Yellow Vest protestors are not going away. The French people are heartedly sick and tired of the 50- percent real unemployment, wide open immigration borders, slashed welfare programs and breakdown of law and order that Macron and the European Union elite has foisted on them., The Latest French Revolution is not over: it is only beginning.

Macron has ignored the ominous lessons of history. Now he is doomed to repeat them.

Photo: Flickr

Iran’s definitive account of the Iraq war: Written by a female Iraqi Kurd

by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog

On September 22nd there was a terrible terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Ahvaz which killed 25 innocent people and wounded 70 other people. This was universally reported in the West as having occurred at a “military parade”, when it was actually a parade to commemorate the 1980 start of the Western-backed, Western-funded, Western-armed invasion which used Iraq to try to destroy the democratic 1979 Iranian Revolution.

But none of those accurate adjectives can be said in the West…no, no, no – it was just a no-reason-needed military parade, as if Iran was a warmongering nation prepping its fanatical people for imperialist adventures. (Iran has not invaded a country in well-over 200 years.)

The timing of the attack was obviously (though not primarily) a way to divert the world’s attention from the deadliest conflict of the last quarter of the 20th century. Instead of talking about what disaster and death was heaped on Iran from 1980-1988, it was Iranian “militarism” which was discussed and not anyone else’s.

But ho-hum, more misreporting on Iran. In other news: the sun rose this morning. This is just life for all socialist-inspired democratic revolutions – Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China, etc., have all had their sufferings ignored, their mistakes amplified and their successes denied. To even raise this point makes one an unthinking “apologist”, an Islamofascist, a totalitarian commie, blah blah blah.

This is the front cover art for the book One Woman’s War: Da (Mother) written by Seyedeh Azam Hosseini. The book cover art copyright is believed to belong to Mazda Publishers.

The tragic event, and the subsequent false histories of the Western media, makes this an appropriate time to bring up what has become the most important literary reference for Iranians regarding the war – a book called Da. “Da” means mother in Kurdish, and not in Farsi. The book was written by a woman whose Iraqi Kurdish family had emigrated to Iran when she was a child.

How could the definitive account on the Iranian view of the Iran-Iraq War have been written by an Iraqi Kurd, and a female to boot?!

You would think Iranians hate Iraqis; you are certain that Iran hates women; and you assume that Iran has a war against the Kurds, just like Iraq, Turkey and Syria. If you assume everyone follows the dictates of capitalism’s identity politics, you likely would predict that this book is a litany of accusations and compiled hatreds towards Iran.

If you assume all these things it’s because you fail to realize that Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was inspired by socialism, which demands a citizen and a government loudly banish racism from the public sphere. Much like this stoned surfer-dude American idiot who wrote an article titled Whoa. The Soviet Union Got Racial Equality Right Before America?, you are way, way, WAY off. (And when did America get racial equality “right”?)

For a comparison: Can anyone imagine that France’s definitive account on the Algerian War for Independence would come from a non-White? Their most famous work on Algeria is The Stranger by Albert Camus, who was an isolated-from-Algerians pied noir whose refusal to condemn French oppression was selfishly defined by the fact that he cared more for his mother’s comfort than a million dead Algerians. Heaven forbid that Madame Camus would have to relocate back to France, even if that meant ending a war and a 132-year occupation.… Camus’ view of morality is 100% rooted in Western capitalism individualism, after all, which is the reason its popularity still endures today.

But Iran had no problem making Da a huge best-seller despite the author’s Iraqi Kurdish roots; and, somehow, Iranian men took time out of their daily oppression of women to find out their thoughts and feelings on past experiences. The 700-page account of the war was read by everyone, including President Rohani.

The book is a memoir of Seyyedeh (indicating lineage from Prophet Mohammad) Zahra Hoseyni, a teenager who was living with her extremely poor but tight-knit family on the border city of Khorramshahr. The city was the first to be sneak-attacked by the Iraqis, and the massacres and devastation wrought there would be reflected by a Farsi pun on the city’s name: “City of Blood”.

A memoir of the last, worst traditional war in our modern times

The book is not an easy read, as Hoseyni recounts one tragedy after another.

In short, for those attacked by Iraq the war was one day from hell after another, with each one worse than the next. Hunger, thirst, physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, the nightmares of screaming planes, repeatedly watching people go insane with the pain of mourning, every weary pause only giving rise to recent tragic memories, the constant filth and lack of clean water a bombarded people must deal with, actual nightmares when sleep does come, the perpetual sound of war which then makes silent pauses totally strange, and the constant, constant guilt of being alive combined with the knowledge that death from a shell could come at any moment.

So much of the book is something like a horror hallucination of the first few weeks of an unexpected, undeserved war, combined with a recounting of the vast citizen efforts to fight back.

Each according to their abilities, of course: Hoseyni is an young lioness fighting for the cubs of the Iranian nation and Khorramshahr. She accepts responsibility after responsibility, and even refuses to back down to proud & protective Iranian men in her insistence on going to the front to help amid the bullets and bombs. She volunteers as a corpse-washer, which turned out to be a never-ending job, and which is certainly a job few would want. Her beloved father and brother die at the front, but still she endures and gives, gives, gives. Everyone is looking at her and seeing a person with an iron sense of justice, duty and faith.

What I suggest makes this memoir so compelling and successful is that, in Hoseyni’s retelling, she remembers not only that every day was a living hell but that every moment within every day was a living hell. Hoseyni repeatedly talks about the constant abyss of mourning and horror opening up inside her at every moment; seemingly dozens of times a day she is assaulted by an event/tragedy/memory/feeling which could send a normal person to a hospital for weeks of recovery and therapy. It is unlikely that a memoir by a male would admit the incredibly sad emotions which any human would go through in Hoseyni’s situation.

And yet Hoseyni appeared to all as indomitable (even after she is wounded at the front). She simply said a prayer of “Ya Hossain” and rushed towards another difficult task nobody else wanted. She was the model defender of the nation – indeed, Iran’s war “Mother” is not even a “true” Iranian, in non-socialist logic — but the book reveals that she was able to live this ideal even though her feelings were the absolute opposite of proud glory.

Saying a prayer before a difficult task can go a very long way, but it’s this juxtaposition of a public persona of revolutionary steel combined with total inner crumbling which makes the book so compelling. How she could do what she did – when she could not even bring herself to eat, nor sleep, nor mourn day after day after day – is astounding and an inspiration to anyone sanctioned by injustice.

For those who are not just uninterested in religion but who also actively detest religion, I’m sorry to objectively report that a huge part of her strength came from her religious faith – she and her family were pious people who took their title of “Seyed” as a serious injunction to be moral examples. However, the family was also extremely politically aware and active – these were true revolutionaries; they were also so poor as to come from the “correct” class to qualify as a revolutionary, although such prejudices represent antiquated notions about who can or cannot be a socialist.

There is much to learn from the war memoirs from World War I, II, or the Holocaust, but Da is exceptional in that it is from our modern times. When she recounts her rage and disbelief at BBC Radio’s totally misguided coverage of the war, we in 2018 share her shock at “fake news”.

Da should be essential reading to any war hawk advocating invasion in any foreign country which has had a socialist-inspired revolution, because you will be facing a very unique type of people. Whether it be the USSR, China, Vietnam, Korea or Iran, these are societies which cannot be divided into tribes or identities, as they have achieved socialist cultural unity:

“I saw myself as a tree with deep roots, resisting being pulled from the ground. How could I allow myself to be uprooted? Although born in Basra, I felt no attachment to the place. I loved Iran…my love for Khorramshahr overwhelmed all reason and logic.”

The Western capitalist and anti-multicultural societies of continental Europe cannot imagine that an immigrant is capable of ever feeling this way, and thus many there want immigrants expelled or at least segregated.

But the old tricks of divide and conquer, Balkanisation or the political segregation of Lebanonization will not work in socialist-inspired nations. The author recounts how Saddam Hussein tried exactly that – telling Iranian Arabs to join their Arab brother – but only the most reactionary fell for such a stupid worldview.

Hoseyni talks about the MKO/MEK terrorist group (and I am only talking about them because Western nations and their propaganda outlets keep pushing them back into the spotlight): stealing corpses to inflate their body counts for propaganda purposes, attacking people who disagreed with them at public debates, working as spies for Iraq and giving them coordinates of places to bomb, attacking ardent revolutionaries and then literally rubbing salt or pepper in their wounds out of sadism. The idea that the MKO isn’t detested by 100% of Iranians, and that they have a zero percent chance of ever being rehabilitated – much less being democratically elected into power – is totally, totally absurd to Iranians. Again, why would anyone even talk about them anymore? Oh yes, because they are propped by the West, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

She also talks about what an exceptionally politically-open society Iran was in the early days of the Revolution, and few non-Iranians know that much of this remains true today. Parliament was open to anyone to come observe and even shout disruptions, Khomeini held public audiences for two hours twice a week and received anyone and everyone, elected representatives were easily accessible and lived the common, poor lives of a nation under war. All of this is in stark contrast to the leaders of seemingly every Arab nation not named “Algeria”, and it also shows the democratic bonafides, the more-than-majority support, of the Iranian Islamic Revolution: you can shudder at the word “Islamic” all you want, but the revolution was democratic in the truest sense of the word and no matter in what country that word is uttered.

Western culture is full of ‘war porn’, but Iran is not titillated by such things

“The fall of Khorramshahr and the things I had experienced in the past weeks had made me more aware of how people suffered.”

Such are the types of wisdoms Hoseyni tosses off, but there is no doubt that they are not false cliches for her, nor for millions of other Iranians.

It reminds me of a major problem with America and the West: they are so war-crazy, and yet everything they know about it – to anyone under 85 – is totally fictitious, video-game-like nonsense.

The American view of war is truly one constant cliche, where glory appears to be a feeling to run after but which Hoseyni proves it is actually the result of living through unwanted horrors and tragedies.

It’s true that the younger generation of Iranians has little memory of the sacrifices, bombardments and war rationing, but the way Iran and the US remember their war martyrs is so very different.

Can you name one famous American solider who died in Iraq or Afghanistan? All I can think of is Pat Tillman, and that’s only because he was also an American football player (and who was killed by friendly fire). However, Iran is full of portraits and memorials to dead soldiers and even dead teenagers…one cannot even make a comparison of the psychological/emotional/human gravity of war in the minds of the average Iranian versus the average American.

My point is that, for all their fighting, ever since Vietnam Americans have essentially been hero-worshipping an empty solider’s uniform. Unless we are talking about rural Americans from their lower class, most Americans really have no personal/psychological connection to actual war, unlike Iranians.

Such people, like the 4-F Trump, grow enraged at taking anyone knee during the National Anthem to protest the undeniable mass incarceration/mass murder/mass oppression of an ethnic minority, but there is no truly human element present – their honouring is phony and faceless.

Say what you will about Iran, but you cannot say that.

Furthermore, Iranian martyrdom – where death is assured – is far, far different from the power-trip fantasies and motivations of the American solider and the American chickenhawk playing Call of Duty video games.

For Iran war is not a glory, but a horror, and whatever sacrifices the nation must make due to the Western Cold war…at least it is better than the Hot War. Befuddled Western “analysts” of Iran cannot imagine this type of logic playing such a large part in Iranian policymaking because they have zero experiences and comprehension of any war which is not just on a two-dimensional screen.

Iran fights in places like Syria, Iraq an Afghanistan because their allies, cousins and cultural-cousins are being attacked, and also because justice itself is being attacked; America fights wars because it seems like fun, because they have such neat toys to play with, and they fight without gallantry and without esteem from the locals they claim to be “fighting with”. America massacres and plunders; Iran’s forces are far closer to Mao’s Long March injunction that soldiers should not take even a pin from locals they were trying to liberate from fascism.

Thirty years after the end of Iran’s “War of Sacred Defense” Iran’s “military parades” are attacked, but the world still doesn’t really comprehend exactly what the West is attacking in Iran. Da is an unsparing account of a civilian Islamic socialist revolutionary in wartime – reading this memoir would certainly help Westerners understand what they remain up against as they keep trying to implode Iran’s socialist-inspired democracy.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.

Dr. Saïd Bouamama: “Bouteflika Symbolizes the Freezing of Several Trends and It Does Not Make It Possible To Build Anything”

“Why was there so much support for the creation of Israel as a state and then? It is simply because this state serves as a bridgehead for all interventions, all strategies of interference, and so on. And so, we should not consider the fight as being only between Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, in confronting Israel, the Palestinians – and that is why it is a central cause in the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle – clash with the entire imperialist camp.”

Saïd Bouamama is a sociologist, activist and political Algerian residing in France. A doctor in socio-economics, he has written mainly on topics related to immigration, such as discrimination and racism.

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: What is your reading of the geopolitical situation that prevails in Syria at the moment?

Dr. Saïd Bouamama: The situation in Syria is at first a situation of failure of imperialism. In fact, what is happening in Syria has been an attempt to destabilize the Syrian state by supporting jihadist groups. We think what we want from Bashar al-Assad, but he has made a great service to mankind by stopping this destabilization and this attempt to balkanize Syria. Because in reality, it is a balkanization. If we look at all the last wars, what I call the new colonial wars, what is left? Iraq is cut in pieces, Afghanistan is a complete chaos, in Somalia, it is the slaughter, and Sudan is cut in two. In reality, there is such competition today between great powers that, in order to continue to make profits, it is necessary to destabilize states that may be states of resistance or states that do not accept the rules imposed by a number of large countries. This is what happened in Syria whose stake was first of all the control of the region and the access to the regional geostrategy, that is to say, the control of the oil resources of the region.

How do you explain that the Trump Administration threatens to strike at the positions of the Syrian Army, Iran, and Russia even though in reality, those who are encircled in Idlib are for the most part terrorists of Al Nosra and Daesh? Saving Idlib, isn’t that saving al-Nosra and Daech? Does the US want to save the imperialist soldiers al-Nusra and Daesh?

I think we need to become lucid and stop being naive. There is no consistent fight against terrorism on the part of the United States. In reality, they fight it when it suits them and they support it when it suits them. And it’s not new. It must be remembered that the first great advances of the so-called jihadist groups were in Afghanistan, and the pretext for supporting them was to oppose the Soviet Union. We must not forget that whenever the interest of the United States requires destabilization, they let these groups do. They are only fought when the interest of the United States is in question, and therefore there is not a consistent fight of the United States against them. There is a fight at a time, in pieces, and a support at other times. It’s important to keep in mind that the United States does not have a coherent policy, they know only the politics of their economic interest, even in destroying countries and provoking the massacre of the populations, and if it is necessary for that by supporting terrorist groups, well, they do it. Unfortunately, it was done before Syria and if we are not able to immunize, it will be done again elsewhere.

I interviewed Noam Chomsky a few years ago and he told me verbatim that Syria was going to be divided into several areas. There is currently a US redeployment in northern Syria. Do not you think there is a risk of total confrontation, especially between the United States and Russia?

In fact, the US project, at this stage, is part of a long process of destabilizing all states with an economic size, a geographical area, and oil and gas wealth or strategic minerals to balkanize them, to cut them into several pieces, because it’s easier to maintain domination in chaos. And so, we had a number of wars before. With Syria, it is the same project today, but there are other countries and, in particular, there is the will to balkanize Iran. Let us not forget that the United States has not given up on destabilizing Iran. But Iran, in terms of the balance of power, is another matter and the United States is extremely cautious. Russia has understood this very well and has made agreements. Russia is not naïve and understood if it continued to let this balkanization, it could be balkanized itself, this is the big project of the United States – and so Russia has understood very well that its interest was to stop this process.

Before the Chechen sector enters the game?

Exactly, and that is why we have such strong support from Russia to Syria and that agreements with Iran exist.

The Russians regard Syria and Iran as strategic depths.

Exactly. It’s like it’s an inside front. And the Russians are right. Every decline before the balkanization offensive is, in the long term, the danger of war with Russia which is increasing. And whenever there is a failure of this project of balkanization, it is the danger of war that recedes. And today, the good news is that they did not succeed in Syria. And so, it makes them a bit more cautious, but of course, they do not give up.

Do not you think that Algeria is another target of imperialism, especially US and Israeli?

Of course, it is a target and we can even say that if Syria had been defeated, Algeria would be the next target country. There is Iran and then Algeria. There are not thousands of other countries that have this geographical area and this economic depth, so Algeria is on the line of fire. Besides, there is a man to listen to, even if he is an idiot, it is Bernard-Henri Lévy. He often comes to unveil the strategies of imperialism because he wants to strut. This man has nevertheless declared publicly that Algeria actually means three countries and that it was necessary to separate South, North, and Kabylia, in three countries. We can see that behind this, there are spaces, places called think tanks in which they think about different types of divisions, and in Algeria, there is actually a cutting plan. If Algerians stop being patriots and to defend the integrity of the territory, excuses will be found to intervene.

According to you, are our revolutions, Algerians, and Africans, completed? Do not you think that we need a second wind to our revolutions to complete the struggle of our ancestors?

It is absolutely necessary. First, we must not feel guilty. We’ve come from so far. We must not underestimate what was the colonization of Algeria and what was slavery for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. That is to say that the work is immense to recover from such a trauma. We must not say “we are zero”, etc. On the other hand, it is clear that the emancipatory project that led to independence was a project that required going much further than what we have done today. Issues as important as the issues of economic development, the distribution of wealth, the involvement of people in decisions, are still tasks ahead and so, yes, there is a need for a second wind. We also know that independence has given birth to a whole series of parasites, people who take advantage of the state apparatus to divert income, etc. and so there is indeed a need to refocus the process on those who have actually done it, those who have an interest in leading Algeria to real independence.

That is to say, if I understand you correctly, the sincere Algerian patriots who can find themselves among the young, within the population and the healthy vital forces of the nation?

Absolutely. And the matter of youth is, of course, an essential issue. When a part of the youth turns to the jihadists, we can not pretend that it is not important. This means that we have failed on a number of things and we must resume the fight. You know, young people just want to build their future. It is when the future becomes unthinkable when they can no longer imagine it, that they turn to the past and that charlatans can come to divert their legitimate anger. And so, yes, there is a need to take this breath and there is a need to recover the dynamics of the first two decades of independence. Remember the atmosphere when young people graduated from university in the years 1974-1975. It was full of hope for the future, it was the idea of building the country, it was the idea of agrarian reform and going to see the farmers, etc. We have to find that breath that has been lost notably because of parasites who have hijacked the process.

Do not you think that there is a real danger due to the various separatist movements in Algeria? Should the political and economic elite not be self-critical and remain alert to the geopolitical challenges that lie in wait for us? Can Algeria, according to you, go towards a gradual positive change well controlled without being afraid? Second question: has the red and black decade not vaccinated us against Islamist terrorists?

On the first question, yes, there are real dangers with the separatist movements, which nevertheless remain extremely minor, including in Kabylia.

And in Ghardaia.

Yes. In fact, one of the reasons for the development of these movements is that we have been shy about the issue of identity. Today, things are catching up, the Amazigh language is recognized, etc. but it took too long for it and when a right claim is not taken into account, charlatans can come to pick up the frustration. Algeria is pluricultural and multilingual and it is a wealth. There is no reason to consider this as a weakness, therefore, it must be accepted and pull the rug from under the feet to all who would like to exploit this issue.

On the side of the elites, there is no secret, all those who are attached, whatever their political and economic opinions, to the territorial integrity of Algeria and to true independence, must have in mind that this can only be done if there is a minimum of economic redistribution. That is to say that if there is no economic redistribution, if poverty sets in if people are in misery, charlatans can come again instrumentalize. That’s why our youth, even the one who listened to charlatans, is first and foremost a victim because in reality, if it had could think about her future, it would never have listened to these thugs.

You talk about the 1990s. Today, when we talk about the presence of Algerians at Daesh, they are very minor in comparison with the other peoples of the Maghreb.

Absolutely.

How do you analyze this? Have not we been vaccinated by the red decade?

Unfortunately, you are never totally vaccinated. But this has developed real resistance mechanisms and you must know that people who, at first, were able to listen to charlatans, turned away when they saw what this project of society was. There have been entire regions where huge votes have gone in favor of charlatans and which today do not want to hear about these people. So, we can see that it was a popular experience and, yes, there are antibodies in Algeria, stronger than in other countries, because there was this tragedy. We paid a high price for it. But be careful, as long as the causes are untreated, the disease can always come back and we return to the previous question about the distribution of economic wealth.

The fifth term of President Bouteflika is evoked. Do not you think that the time has come to accompany a process of renewal of the entire political class in Algeria, even at the level of “the opposition”, because, for me, the crisis is not only at the level of power, but also at the level of “the opposition”? Should the fifth term not be abandoned to inject new blood into Algeria and vaccinate the country against various risks, both internal and external? Should we not abandon this alternative of an additional term of the current president and go towards a change piloted – why not – by the army which remains the most structured force in Algeria? What is your opinion on this subject?

In any case, I am completely opposed to the idea of a fifth term. Today, Bouteflika symbolizes the freezing of several trends and it does not make it possible to build anything. I also think that there is a gap between the entire political class and the civil part of the nation. We must succeed in bringing to the political class all these young union activists, these doctors, all this generation that was born after. We must pass the baton on the basis, always, of territorial integrity and economic independence. It is time for a new generation to emerge.

President Bouteflika is very sick, very tired and he should give way to someone else.It’s common sense. What is your opinion about that?

Absolutely. It is an absolute necessity and we must also question the image we give to our own people and other peoples by keeping a sick president at all costs.

To say that we are against a fifth term is not to be unpatriotic or anti-national, on the contrary, we serve our country. Do not you think that those who are against a fifth term are the real patriots?

Absolutely. I think being a patriot today means being against the fifth term. Of course.

There is a country whose people are legally killed, it is Palestine. Do not you think that Israel, in addition to being a rogue state, is reaping all the benefits of the problems associated with the various US strategies to balkanize the Arab-Muslim region?

Of course. Why was there so much support for the creation of Israel as a state and then? It is simply because this state serves as a bridgehead for all interventions, all strategies of interference, and so on. And so, we should not consider the fight as being only between Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, in confronting Israel, the Palestinians – and that is why it is a central cause in the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle – clash with the entire imperialist camp. And Israel is not isolated, because precisely, there is this support. In reality, let’s imagine that tomorrow there is a democratic and secular Palestinian state, where Muslims, Christians, atheists live together, the end of Israel would mean that the whole imperialist strategy has failed. Israel is a tool of the great powers and of course benefits from imperialist strategies.

What’s left of Frantz Fanon’s message?

Unfortunately, Fanon’s message has been largely forgotten. Fanon said: “pay attention to the emergence of business managers of the West in the newly independent countries”, that is to say, people who will do the work the West did before with its army. It tends to be forgotten. The message of hope is that, on Frantz Fanon, in particular, we see his name come back while he had completely disappeared. A new generation rediscovers Fanon, unfortunately after several decades of forgetfulness, and we see more and more Fanon quoted and more and more young people take back his image. There is a return to Fanon and this is good news.

What prompted you to write your book “Manuel stratégique de l’Afrique“?

What prompted me to write this book was the tiredness of the wars that followed each other. And in “wars”, I put the black decade in Algeria until the French intervention in Mali. The question was “what is happening on this continent?” and the need to answer all the theories that were given to us, which were culturalist theories, that is to say we were told the war in Algeria as an opposition between Muslims and military, elsewhere we were told that it was tribes that were fighting each other. All of this seemed completely wrong to me in relation to the realities. So I went to look at what was common in all these wars. Of course, I had intuitions and I actually came across the confirmation of my intuitions. All these wars have one thing in common: the economic challenge. Whether in Algeria, we must have in mind the interests of the major powers for Algerian oil and gas, whether it is in the Congo with these wars that do not end and the wealth of the Congo. In fact, the African continent is the richest continent and the continent where we still make discoveries of ores and oil in the sea offshore, and it is, therefore, an enormous challenge for the great powers and there are wars to control the spaces of raw materials. In addition, the great fear of Western countries was the emergence of new countries like China, India or Brazil that trade with African countries and trade with more egalitarian rules and with less domination. And, indeed, it is the direct interest of the great imperialist powers that is at stake. When Algeria makes a contract with China for the construction of roads, etc., you imagine that those who used to consider Algeria as their market are not happy. When it is the Congo that has a contract, Belgium cannot be happy. And so, there are these two factors that combine and explain the African drama, because it’s a real drama. From Algiers to the Congo, there have been dozens of wars since independence, and I have only spoken of wars since independence, I did not talk about wars of independence. I just reported the ones from 1960 until today. All these wars are the same.

Why did you choose the Investing’action editions of our friend Michel Collon? Have other publishers refused to publish your book? Is your book disturbing? Have you been censored?

No, I have not been censored. I did not even think of presenting this book to other publishers for the simple reason that I know very well where we are today in many publishing houses on anti-imperialist issues. This project was born following a number of articles that I wrote on the news and where, while talking with Michel, he told me: “But Saïd, you do not realize, you told us about Algeria, you told us about Congo, you told us about this and that, when do you make us an overall book?” This is how this book was made. Quite frankly, I do not see major publishers taking it back today. It is unimaginable in the French-speaking world. It is different in other countries, for example in England.

Or in the United States.

Yes, in the United States, it would be different, but in the French-speaking world, it is clear that publishing houses today are closed on these issues.

What the committed, anti-imperialist, intellectual that you are, can say to the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist resistance fighters?

That we must never despair of peoples. There are times when we believe that things are over, there are times when we despair of seeing failures, but in reality, as long as oppression exists, resistance exists, and we are sometimes surprised that two years after our despair, well, there is an offensive in a country we did not think at all. I think we came out of the recoil period. We must not underestimate what happened in Syria, which is the end of this process of decline; we must not underestimate the resistance in Latin America, Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc.

In Cuba.

In Cuba, yes. All this points to one thing: since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we were going from recoil to recoil, people were losing, losing, losing. And there, there is a stop. Of course, we have retreated so much that we have trouble to learn the facts. But if we combine all this, if we look at the struggles in all countries, we see a youth that mobilizes, etc. So, yes, in the short term, at a year or two, there is no immediate change, but we see that people are beginning to learn from this period of twenty-five years of decline. And today, we have breakpoints. For example, they eliminated Gbagbo, but look at the number of protesters demanding that Gbagbo come back. It was unimaginable a few years ago. And so, we can see that something is moving in anti-imperialism and I think we are entering a new mobilization sequence. That’s for the southern countries. For here, it’s to us to be up to it, to live up to the challenge and to make known the struggles that will develop.

Do not you think that we need a global anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist front that will be decisive in the struggles ahead?

My previous book, just before the last one, is a book called “La Tricontinentale : les peuples du Tiers-Monde à l’assaut du ciel “. Why did I write this book? Because the tri-continental conference in Cuba in 1965-1966 was the moment in which there was a unity of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and that at the same time, all the progressive movements in Europe were in support of the Tricontinental. It was the moment when we were furthest, I think, in this movement. If I wrote this book, it’s because I think it’s time to find that kind of dynamic.

Source

Looking to the Past, not ISIS, for the True Meaning of Islam

Posted on May 28, 2017

by Richard Edmondson

Emir Abdelkader, 19th century Muslim humanist and sheikh

[Ed. note – British journalist Robert Fisk has published an interesting historical retrospect on Abdelkader ibn Muhieddine, or Emir Abdelkader, an Algerian Muslim leader of the 19th century who fought against French imperialism and was a great champion of human rights–of all people. Abdelkader intervened at one point to save a community of Christians in Damascus, Syria, where he spent a portion of his life, and while Fisk doesn’t bother to point it out, his act of saving Syrian Christians is something he shares in common with the present-day leader of Syria, Bashar Assad.

I thought it timely to post such an article since we’ve just seen a deranged individual arrested in Portland, Oregon after allegedly stabbing three people, killing two of them, while spouting hatred for Muslims–a man whose last name is “Christian” no less. So you’ll see a lengthy excerpt from Fisk’s essay on Abdelkader, along with a link to the original article, and just below that I’m also tossing in a video of a group of Syrians, including about 3,000 students, taking a walking tour of Aleppo’s recently-liberated historic areas. A Syrian woman you’ll see interviewed in the video, Anushka Arakelyan, says she hopes that the city will one day be “the same as it was before the war.”

“There are no nationalities here. All people love each other; all live together, rejoice together, cry together and wait together,” she added.

“Aleppo will be the same as it was before the war. We hope and wait,” Arakelyan said.

“As one Russian song says, we hope and wait, and we will wait and hope,” she added.

“We love Aleppo very much. Aleppo is a very good city, very hospitable city. I’m very happy to live here. Here, there are no nationalities. All people love each other; all live together, rejoice together, cry together and wait together,” she concluded. (Uprooted Palestinians )

It would seem, from this lady’s remarkable words, that there are plenty of Muslims who today carry on in the spirit of Abdelkader, and that therefore we don’t have to look to the past to find “the true meaning of Islam”–plenty of examples we can point to in the present. ]

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We must look to the past, not Isis, for the true meaning of Islam

By Robert Fisk

After the Manchester massacre… yes, and after Nice and Paris, Mosul and Abu Ghraib and 7/7 and the Haditha massacre – remember those 28 civilians, including children, killed by US Marines, four more than Manchester but no minute’s silence for them? And of course 9/11…

Counterbalancing cruelty is no response, of course. Just a reminder. As long as we bomb the Middle East instead of seeking justice there, we too will be attacked. But what we must concentrate upon, according to the monstrous Trump, is terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. And fear. And security. Which we will not have while we are promoting death in the Muslim world and selling weapons to its dictators. Believe in “terror” and Isis wins. Believe in justice and Isis is defeated.

So I suspect it’s time to raise the ghost of a man known as the Emir Abdelkader – Muslim, Sufi, sheikh, ferocious warrior, humanist, mystic, protector of his people against Western barbarism, protector of Christians against Muslim barbarism, so brave that the Algerian state insisted his bones were brought home from his beloved Damascus, so noble that Abe Lincoln sent him a pair of Colt pistols and the French gave him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. He loved education, he admired the Greek philosophers, he forbade his fighters to destroy books, he worshipped a religion which believed – so he thought – in human rights. But hands up all readers who know the name of Abdelkader.

We should think of him now more than ever.

He was not a “moderate” because he fought back savagely against the French occupation of his land. He was not an extremist because, in his imprisonment at the Chateau d’Amboise, he talked of Christians and Muslims as brothers. He was supported by Victor Hugo and Lord Londonderry and earned the respect of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III) and the French state paid him a pension of 100,000 francs. He deserved it.

When the French invaded Algeria, Abdelkader Ibn Muhiedin al-Juzairi (Abdelkader, son of Muhiedin, the Algerian,1808-1883, for those who like obituaries) embarked on a successful guerrilla war against one of the best equipped armies in the Western world – and won. He set up his own state in western Algeria – Muslim but employing Christian and Jewish advisors – and created separate departments (defence, education, etc), which stretched as far as the Moroccan border. It even had its own currency, the “muhamediya”. He made peace with the French – a truce which the French broke by invading his lands yet again. Abdelkader demanded a priest to minister for his French prisoners, even giving them back their freedom when he had no food for them. The French sacked the Algerian towns they captured, a hundred Hadithas to suppress Abdelkader’s resistance. When at last he was defeated, he surrendered in honour – handing over his horse as a warrior – on the promise of exile in Alexandria or Acre. Again the French betrayed him, packing him off to prison in Toulon and then to the interior of France.

Yet in his French exile, he preached peace and brotherhood and studied French and spoke of the wisdom of Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Ptolemy and Averoes and later wrote a book, Call to the Intelligent, which should be available on every social media platform. He also, by the way, wrote a book on horses which proves he was ever an Arab in the saddle. But his courage was demonstrated yet again in Damascus in 1860 where he lived as an honoured exile. The Christian-Druze civil war in Lebanon had spread to Damascus where the Christian population found themselves surrounded by the Muslim Druze who arrived with Isis-like cruelty, brandishing swords and knives to slaughter their adversaries.

Abdelkader sent his Algerian Muslim guards – his personal militia – to bash their way through the mob and escort more than 10,000 Christians to his estate. And when the crowds with their knives arrived at his door, he greeted them with a speech which is still recited in the Middle East (though utterly ignored these days in the West).

“You pitiful creatures!” he shouted. “Is this the way you honour the Prophet? God punish you! Shame on you, shame! The day will come when you will pay for this … I will not hand over a single Christian. They are my brothers. Get out of here or I’ll set my guards on you.”

Muslim historians claim Abdelkader saved 15,000 Christians, which may be a bit of an exaggeration. But here was a man for Muslims to emulate and Westerners to admire.

His fury was expressed in words which would surely have been used today against the cult-like caliphate executioners of Isis. Of course, the “Christian” West would honour him at the time (although, interestingly, he received a letter of praise from the Muslim leader of wildly independent Chechnya). He was an “interfaith dialogue” man to please Pope Francis.

Abdelkader was invited to Paris. An American town was named after him – Elkader in Clayton County, Iowa, and it’s still there, population 1,273. Founded in the mid-19th century, it was natural to call your home after a man who was, was he not, honouring the Rights of Man of American Independence and the French Revolution? Abdelkader flirted with Freemasonry – most scholars believe he was not taken in – and loved science to such an extent that he accepted an invitation to the opening of the Suez Canal, which was surely an imperial rather than a primarily scientific project. Abdelkader met De Lesseps. He saw himself, one suspects, as Islam’s renaissance man, a man for all seasons, the Muslim for all people, an example rather than a saint, a philosopher rather than a priest.

But of course, Abdelkader’s native Algeria is a neighbour of Libya from where Salman Abedi’s family came, and Abdelkader died in Syria, whose assault by US aircraft – according to Abedi’s sister – was the reason he slaughtered the innocent of Manchester. And so geography contracts and history fades, and Abedi’s crime is, for now, more important than all of Abdelkader’s life and teaching and example. So for Mancunians, whether they tattoo bees onto themselves or merely buy flowers, why not pop into Manchester’s central library in St Peter’s Square and ask for Elsa Marsten’s The Compassionate Warrior or John Kiser’s Commander of the Faithful or, published just a few months ago, Mustapha Sherif’s L’Emir Abdelkader: Apotre de la fraternite?

They are no antidotes for sorrow or mourning. But they prove that Isis does not represent Islam and that a Muslim can earn the honour of the world.

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The Complete History of Nasser, the Icon of Arabism [English Subtitles]

A must see to understand why Syria and its LION are WANTED