The Russian revolutionary Lenin said there were “decades where nothing happens; and there were weeks when decades happen”. If there was a time that saw decades of political conservatism, stagnancy, and immobility swept away in mere weeks, it was 2011. Last year began with the resignation of the Tunisian despot Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in January, in response to protests by Tunisian youth SSY covered here. Few people could have imagined the tidal wave of the protest that would follow as Egyptian youth inspired by the overthrow of Ben Ali organised a Day of Rage for the 25th of January in Egypt (which coincided with the “police day” public holiday).

What might have been small and manageable in the past decade proved to be very different in the first major recession of the 21st century. After decades of police brutality, corruption, dictatorship and political repression the call to action struck with popular consciousness not just in Egypt but all around the world. Millions watched glued to their screens, the first major revolution of the 21st century. After decades of rule and with no previously obvious signs of collapse the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was forced from office in the space of two weeks and now faces the death penalty for his crimes against the Egyptian people.
Egypt’s revolution took the rulers of that region completely unaware – Israel today is absolutely terrified they will no longer have a partner to keep Gaza under siege and whose new Parliament may put it’s peace treaty with Israel to a popular referendum, and the US tried hopelessly to maintain Mubarak’s rule in Egypt even as it looked impossible to most observers.
This wave of popular protest wasn’t limited to Egypt either – it has now spread to every Arab country, both pro and anti-US but with the common goal of overthrowing dictatorship and corruption.
This meant the West took very different attitudes to different parts of the Arab Spring. In Bahrain, the USA turned a blind eye as one of it’s most important allies, Saudi Arabia sent hundreds of troops to crush a popular uprising in Bahrain and to preserve the sectarian monarchy that hosts a large US military base on the Island. However when it came to Libya, a bizarre dictatorship which shared many characteristics with other Arab regimes – with the exception that it wasn’t completely in the pockets of the West – a different attitude was taken, with military action conducted by NATO to overthrow the regime.

Not a good year for these guys

This made Libya the third Muslim country in 10 years bombed by the West, after Afghanistan and Iraq. While the campaign in Libya was, from the viewpoint of London, Paris and Washington, a quite easy affair there was one war that finally seems to have drawn to a close – at least for Washington. The 8 year nightmare of Iraq for the USA ended with a formal troop withdrawal from Iraq earlier last year, as Obama redeployed US soldiers from Iraq to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Iraq war, so critical in radicalizing millions of people across the world ended not with a bang but a whimper as the USA has been forced to leave with many of it’s desires – permanent military bases, proxy for strikes on Iran and Syria, dirt cheap oil – unfulfilled. If Iraq has been a disaster, Afghanistan hasn’t turned out much better as it’s Taliban guerillas continue to make the ISAF occupation of the country as pointless, ineffective and bloody as all the previous occupations of Afghanistan have been. The Vice President of the USA, Joe Biden even went as far as to say “The Taliban are not our enemy” – an admission that the USA will negotiate and involve the Taliban in Afghan politics at some point.

The solid decade of occupation and war in Afghanistan and Iraq has proved so costly for the USA that US President Barack Obama has carried out the biggest reform of the US military “since WW2″. Moving it’s forces away from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and the Pacific (hello China) it’s a massive climbdown from the previously almost invincible US military power in the 90’s. But what other choice does Obama have, particularly when in 2011 the US faced a historic first time downgrading of it’s credit rating. When the most powerful nation in human history hasn’t got the best possible record at debt management, it’s a damning indictment of the cost of occupation and war – and may fortunately dissuade the USA from any attack on Iran, at least for the time being.
Many of the historic events we saw in 2011 – such as the resignation of Mubarak – weren’t from our sofas or bedrooms, but with other activists in comrades in the longest running student occupation in UK history. From February to September, Hetherington House a former postgraduate club, was occupied by anti-cuts students at Glasgow University. For 6 months we were able to hold a non-commercial space on Glasgow Uni campus, open to a variety of campaigns – from the protests to stop cuts to nursing, modern languages and adult education at Glasgow University, to the campaign to save the Accord Centre in the East End of Glasgow. This occupation succeeded in acting as a focal point for the anti-cuts movement across the whole of the city, as well as attracting a variety of speakers like Ken O’Keefe and Owen Jones.

While the occupation of the Hetherington House ended, the networks and connections built up between different activists and groups hasn’t disappeared. There’s now a vibrant anti-cuts group for the whole of Glasgow that many of the former occupiers are involved in – the Coalition of Resistance. COR’s been in existence since May and has already become the largest and most active anti-cuts group in Glasgow, organising strike buses for J3O and N30, building the October 1st demonstration, the march to save the accord and providing a space for anyone from any political background who wants to fight the cuts to come to. COR will be an important part of anti-cuts activism in the next year, and a vital space for Socialists to operate in.
Another front that will be opening in the next few years is the Independence campaign in Scotland. After 4 years of SNP minority rule, alongside a Tory Government in Westminster many Labour Party members must have thought they were a shoe in for the Holyrood elections held in May of last year. What they actually faced was the biggest defeat for Labour and Unionism imaginable – central belt seats where the Labour party had majorities you’d normally find in one party states were seized by the SNP for the first time in it’s history, producing a revolutionary result in Scottish politics – a pro-independence majority in Holyrood for the first time ever.

This means after 300 years of unionist misrule, the Scottish population will finally have a choice over our constitutional future. And for Unionism, it couldn’t come at a worse time, where a Tory party that has less MP’s in Scotland than Pandas is trying to force through a brutal package of austerity. This is Scotland’s gain from the revolutionary year that was 2011 – the chance to take our nation out of the world’s oldest empire, and a possibility for the Radical Left to shape that debate and the Scotland that emerges. 2011 will be remembered as the year that saw arrogant, embedded and reactionary power crumble fall – from Cairo to Tunis to Pollok – lets organise to make sure 2012 continues in the same vein.

If you’ve just booked a holiday in the middle east, you’re a bit fucked. That’s one way of interpreting the news coverage from across the Arab world. Another, slightly more upbeat way to interpret it is that we are witnessing the resurgence of workers rights all across the middle east in revolts which aren’t about imposing medieval Islamic fundametalism OR installing CIA puppets with the help of teenagers in colourful shirts. The origins of these uprisings – and the demands being made – all seem to have similar origins, against corruption, autocratic rule, poverty and regime thuggery.
The overthrow of Mubarak has meant potential squeaky bum time for every Arab despot from the Mediterranean to the Gulf. If Mubarak can be overthrown it can happen to literally anyone of them – the Egyptian regime after all had a massive secret police force of 1.4 million officers and informants, a repressive army that many of the Arab regimes under threat today can only dream of.

Mad President with Mad Shagger

In Libya for example, the regime of Colonel Gaddaffi has had to call in mercenaries to fight the uprising that’s spread across the country. In Bahrain, the regime has chosen to attack the protesters with deadly force right from the start of their protests, firing on peaceful demonstrators who have been trying to copy the tactics used in Egypt and transform Bahrain’s Pearl Square into their own version of Liberation Square.

Doctors have told the media about indiscriminate firing upon the demonstrators in Pearl Square by the Bahraini army. These scenes of cold blooded murder have shamed the UK government into revoking several arms licences for weapons it previously sold to Bahrain’s Government.

Tahrir Square, Pearl Square, Everysquare!

The United States is, just like it did in Egypt, still hedging it’s bets and refusing to come out and directly call for Bahrain’s king Al Khalifa to resign. Instead it’s calling for the rights of protesters to be “respected”. It wasn’t long ago that Hillary Clinton called Bahrain a “model partner” and said she was “impressed by the commitment that the government has to the democratic path that Bahrain is walking on.” The USA has one very large reason to keep it’s eye on the island state – a massive US military base that is due for a $580 million dollar upgrade over the next 5 years.

Bahrain is situated in the Persian Gulf, and would be a vital staging post for the USA if it ever had to go to war against Iran, or protect the oil routes and pro-Western Gulf States like Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. Any popular revolution which overthrows the corrupt Royal Family of Bahrain may also decide it doesn’t want to be involved in a US war with Iran over oil. The USA is shit scared of losing all it’s regional allies, or at the very least, having less compliant allies in their place.

While the Bahraini regime is cracking down violently it doesn’t appear to be as desperate and bloody as what’s going on in Libya right now. According to twitter reports from the country, there are major demonstrations across the country (particularly the eastern half). The response of the regime has to be fire on peaceful demonstrators, including those mourning the victims of the regime.

Libya is an interesting case, about 20 or 30 years ago any attempt to overthrow Gaddaffi by the people would have been welcomed with open arms by the west. Colonel Gaddaffi took power in a military coup in 1969, making him the Arab world’s longest serving (and most batshit insane) leader. When he took power he was an Arab nationalist, who earned the hatred of the west for expelling multinationals from Libya, nationalising companies and funding a variety of armed revolutionary organisations.

Gaddaffi provided the Provisional IRA with a whole ship of kalashnikovs, missiles, mortars and semtex in the 1980′s. This ship – the Eksund – was intercepted by the French Navy, denying the provos this bonanza. But had they received the weaponry they would have had enough materials to launch a “Tet Offensive” of their own which may have actually forced the British into unconditional withdrawal.

Since then Gaddaffi’s ditched all the support for terrorism, WMD etc and become the West’s best mate, which is probably why they aren’t so keen on calling for him to resign just now. Gaddafi’s Libya also hasn’t done too badly – it’s the most developed country in Africa, thanks in no small part to the oil wealth of the country. But whatever subsidies Gaddafi has introduced, they’ve not been enough to buy off his populace.

Gaddafi’s extreme response to the protests is probably influenced by the fact he has nowhere to go if toppled, he’s insulted too many of the rich Gulf states to go looking for asylum. He may actually end up being put up against the wall, instead of going into retirement in Sharm El Sheik like Mubarak, or fleeing to Europe like his good pal Ben Ali.

Protesters smash a model Green Book - Gaddafi's novel of mad things.

Which is on one level a shame, given all the years of comedy he’s provided SSY. I’d encourage you to enjoy the hilarious aspects of the Gaddaffi regime while it lasts, such as his plan to abolish Switzerland or “FIFA. reform or abolition”. Unfortunately SSY sources tell us that the Colonel is too busy just now to formulate an opinion on a ten team SPL but he’ll get round to it as soon as he is free.

Alongside Bahrain and Libya are two other Arab and another non-Arab regime in the middle east facing protests, Yemen, Algeria and Iran respectively. In Yemen, pro-democracy supporters and Government loyalists have both taken to the streets, with running gun battles between the two. The strategy of the Yemeni regime appears to be similar to that of Mubarak in his dying days – unleash your political allies to murder your opponents without having to rely on conscript soldiers to do your dirty work.

It remains to be seen whether this strategy will serve Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh any better than it did Mubarak, but at the very least the protesters have forced him to announce he won’t stand in 2013 for President again (after 32 years in office). In Algeria, protests have been repressed by riot police. Thankfully, so far there does not appear to be a coordinated campaign of lethal repression by the military/regime loyalists in Algeria as in other Arab countries. The Algerian opposition says it will demonstrate every Saturday until the regime falls, lets hope they keep up the momentum.

Iranian demonstrators have some experience of police repression from after the country’s disputed Presidential elections in 2009. Iranian regime loyalists didn’t look on it kindly then, and don’t appear to like it much now – saying organisers of the protests should be executed. The Iranian regime is a growing regional power and could barely contain it’s glee when the Egyptian President was toppled. Although the revolutions underway across the Arab world are not Islamic (or at least not Islamic enough for the Iranian regime) they are undermining western allies, which is good enough for Tehran. It would be particularly ironic if this process the Iranian Mullahs are cheering on consumes them as well.

Whatever happens next, if the regimes stay or fall nothing will be the same in the Middle East. Dictatorships previously viewed as benign are now shown to be willing to open fire on their own citizens, just out of the mere fear that they might be toppled by people power. Mubarak down, Boutfelika, Ahmadinejahd, Saleh, Gaddafi and Al Khalifi to go.