00:00 Gilbert Achcar: Good evening to you all, and thank you for the invitation. Right, so I will give a general picture of the present state of what has been called in 2011 the Arab Spring — and now people are looking for other [?] terms. Yeah, OK. So I'll give a general introductory picture of ongoing events, but putting them in this short-term historical perspective, after which Samah will be focusing on the present situation in Sudan, and so give you enough information about what's going on — in the hope also that there should be some more active solidarity with what's happening today in the region, and especially in Sudan. The situation has become very tough in recent weeks, as you know, so solidarity is definitely needed. I'll get back to that. And we can say that until now we haven't seen anything looking like what would be and what should be expected from what one wants to call the left in this country, especially with the peculiarities that we will [inaudible] describe of what is going on in Sudan.
01:35 But first, just a reminder of the changes of mood when it comes to this part of the world — that is, the Middle East and North Africa, as it is usually called. Remember 2011: there was a lot of euphoria at the moment, the time of what was called the Arab Spring. And this euphoria was based on the expectation of very smooth and rapid change, which would be essentially a democratisation of these countries. That's how what was going on was interpreted by the mass media, by the mainstream understanding, the global mainstream [?] understanding of what was going on — which was also in large part actually wishful thinking.
02:41 I mean, this so-called Arab Spring came as a surprise to many, in the sense that they had absorbed the Orientalist — that is, the kind of stereotyping — views of the region as being steeped in its own Islamic culture, whatever it is, and therefore enjoying despotism as part of its culture. And suddenly people had to realise that in this part of the world, like everywhere else, people are longing for democracy and social justice, to use the terms [?] that are generally used. And there were some, you know, some kind of [inaudible] statements of this surprise, the discovery that after all the peoples of this region are like us — in this very Western-centred Orientalist perspective.
04:13 But then, two years later, the region was in full relapse, or full counter-revolution, in that backlash — the most tragic part being the civil war in Syria. That was followed — I mean, the regime went on the offensive, on a large-scale offensive, with Iran's support, in the year 2013, and that was followed soon after by the coup in Egypt, reinstating the authoritarian regime, but in a version that is quite worse than what existed before, so that people are actually now almost missing Hosni Mubarak and his time. And then we had the degeneration of the conditions in Libya — [the] situation into civil war.
05:17 So all that led to a massive comeback of the Orientalist [inaudible], and the kind of comments about: well, we told you, these people are not prepared culturally for democracy, whatever it is, and that's what you get when you try to destabilise authoritarian governments. And the expectation was similarly that with this backlash, that was the end of it. The Arab Spring had ended, and we had entered into some kind of Arab winter, and that was it — that was a short parenthesis, a historical parenthesis, limited to that.
06:26 And there you see again, starting from Sudan last December, followed by Algeria last February, we see two new upsurges which are very much comparable to the most important upsurges in 2011 — the uprisings that we had in six Arab countries, just for a reminder: in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and Yemen, and Syria, and Bahrain. We had six major uprisings, with all the region being shaken by very powerful social movements and social turmoil. And now we see again, after that relapse and this counter-revolutionary period that the region has been in since 2013 until last year, we see now a new upsurge in two countries, which is very much comparable in scale to these uprisings, the major uprisings of 2011.
07:28 And in this we can see confirmation of the one brand of analysis that was saying in 2011 that what was occurring was not going to be just a spring — that means a brief and smooth transition — but that it was actually only the beginning of a long-term revolutionary process that will carry on and unfold over many, many years, and actually many decades, one could say, given the complexity of what is at stake there in the region. And that analysis in 2011 was based on exploring the real roots of this explosion, that were not just, you know, a Facebook generation [?], just a kind of cultural shock, or just the democratic aspiration which had been fostered by the opening to international global culture through the new media of communication. But it was much, much deeper than that.
09:04 It was the outcome of a deep-rooted socio-economic crisis. This whole part of the world has been in a stage of economic stagnation [?], lethargy, over several decades, with very low rates of growth, especially when compared to the demographic growth of the region. And one most striking and central result of that was the fact that the region held for many, many years, and still holds, and even more so, the world record when it comes to unemployment, and especially youth — the highest rates of unemployment in the world are in the region.
10:11 And from that perspective, when you understand this in this way, you understand that this is a deep structural crisis of a whole system, that it is not only a matter of political regime but a matter of the social, economic and political system. Then you understand that that's not going to be changed in weeks or months or even a few years. It's a process that will take a long time unfolding, and that would be very hard, very difficult, given the very repressive character and despotic character of the states in the region. And that you will have, like in every long-term revolutionary process, phases of upsurge and phases of backlash — revolution, counter-revolution, restoration, all this cycle, which is well known in the history of any long-term revolutionary process, like the English one, the French one, the Chinese one, or whatever. This kind of sequence is what we will see in the region — what we could foresee since 2011 very clearly.
11:18 And all the more [so] that we are speaking of a region that is — the comparison here would not be the English Revolution or the French Revolution, but the whole European transformation, or at least Western Europe, to take a more homogeneous [area]. So from that perspective, what was to be expected was that you could have successive phases politically speaking, but socially, with the explosion of 2011, with the lid being removed from this boiling situation there, this social turmoil would not stop. And that's exactly what happened. And that's what the media don't pay much attention to — much more attention, as we know, to any group of crazy cutters of heads than to big social movements.
12:23 But you had big social movements throughout these years in most countries of the region: in Morocco; Tunisia, which is presented as the success story because of the democratic gains of the Arab Spring — but Tunisia is far from having [?] solved those structural problems that I mentioned, and it has seen quite a number of social, local or even national upsurges since then; in Sudan — Sudan has been through several upsurges also, one in 2013, one in 2011, and so there were a number of events before the present major uprising, that's how we should call it; Jordan; Iraq. So I mean, many countries of the region have seen this continuous social turmoil.
13:29 And if it didn't happen in Egypt recently, that's because of the very harsh repression that took place in that country in 2013, and the very despotic character of the Sisi regime, and political problems, which we could get back to later on, connected to the lack of alternatives and the disappointment of the mass movement with an experience over three years leading to a return of the old regime, in worse [form]. And speaking of Egypt: the Egyptian experience — which, for obvious reasons, given the centrality of Egypt, has the largest population of all Arab-speaking countries, and is a country that is very central, even geographically speaking — the attention given to Egypt is naturally higher. This model of Egypt is very much known by the populations of the region, and we can see how much this affects what's going on now in Sudan.
15:05 And that is because, especially for these two countries, Egypt is very much, let's say, an experience from which they can draw major lessons. And that's because one thing that is common to the three countries — Sudan, Algeria and Egypt — is that among all Arab-speaking countries, these three countries are those where the armed forces are the centre of gravity. So they are in some way military dictatorships, even if they can be a liberal military dictatorship, as the one you had in Algeria, or a semi-liberal one that we had in Egypt under Mubarak, or a fully despotic one, like in Sudan. But what they have in common is that basically they are military dictatorships. That is, the army is the real centre of power, and it's the army that makes kings — that is, presidents — in those countries.
16:42 That's a difference with several other countries of the region, like the monarchies, and the monarchy-like republics of Syria, or Libya under Gaddafi, where you have ruling families completely controlling the state and owning the state, and turning the armed forces, or the elite bodies of these armed forces, into their private militias, their private guards. That's not the case in the three countries that we mentioned. Because of that, it's more — I mean, rule by the army as an institution, which is at the centre of political power.
17:14 And there you can see how similar the scenario is. In 2011, when you have this big uprising, after weeks of protests, big massive protests, the military came to the conclusion that the president had become a hot potato, and — the president — that's what you can have in such regimes, which you wouldn't have in Syria, for instance, or in any of the monarchies, because you have Praetorian guards, and therefore in order to topple the ruling family you have to break the state, you have to [inaudible] with the whole core of the state, and that will be very brutal. What we had in Egypt was the army removing the president in order to preserve the regime. So the regime hasn't changed, but they [?] would get rid of the tip of the iceberg while preserving the iceberg — which you cannot do in the other situations that I mentioned, where they are stuck: you can't separate the tip from the mass, from the main body of the state.
18:48 So that's what we had, and indeed we had a repetition of that in Sudan and in Algeria. First the army pushed Bouteflika, the president, away, and the same in Sudan — even more like Egypt, a military council removed Omar Bashir, the president. But revolutionary processes in history are also learning processes — a learning curve of the mass movement — and people assimilate the lessons. And here, although [we're] not speaking of the same country, because everybody knows what happened in Egypt, you have this sharp awareness of this. And therefore one key result of this is that we haven't seen in the two countries the kind of illusions that we have seen in Egypt on two occasions, 2011 [and] 2013. The vast majority of the mass movement in Egypt believed in some progressive role of the army — that the army will fulfil the aspirations of the mass movement — and then they were very bitterly disillusioned.
20:25 Now, this lesson has been very well understood, and that's why we can see very clearly that in both countries, in Algeria and [in Sudan], civilian government — that's a very, very clear and central demand of the movement in the two countries. And here, speaking of learning process and all that, we come to that point — I will discuss the issue of the leadership. Because one very crucial factor in the fate of the 2011 explosion was the issue of leadership. It's not new to anybody here, I'm sure, in this room, that leadership issues are absolutely crucial in revolutionary politics.
21:29 And this massive uprising that you had in 2011, the beginning of this long-term revolutionary process, happened at a time when you had practically no leadership in the region that was able to embody or represent the aspirations of the movement, and be strong and powerful enough and well-organised enough to lead the movement into the fulfilment of the popular aspirations. The closest we've been to such a situation is Tunisia, because of the existence — and that was actually, if you are looking for a reason why it started in Tunisia, that's it, that's the reason — it's the only country in the region where you had an autonomous, powerful workers' movement, autonomous at least at the grassroots level, rank-and-file, intermediary level. That was a genuine labour movement, which had on previous occasions clashed with the government, and which was absolutely instrumental in transforming what started as a regional protest into a national uprising, and that managed to transform the political institutions, at least in the sense of democratising them, in Tunisia.
23:03 So aside from that, there was no leadership that was what was required, and even in Tunisia, beyond ensuring the democratic transition. That's why — actually, again here — that's why Tunisia is a success story. It's not because this country has such a marvellous culture, or whatever — that kind of explanation. It's because of the labour movement. And that's one thing that you won't [?] find in political science: [it] could be the very obvious connection between democracy and labour, and the existence of free unions, real labour union freedoms.
24:04 So what we have here in the two countries are quite different cases. In Algeria we are in a situation that is rather similar to those of 2011, in the sense that there is no recognised leadership of the movement — as we had in Syria at the beginning, except that in Syria [?] it was even better organised, in the form of what was called the Local Coordination councils. Even that is not very much. It's a very — well, people spoke a lot of leaderless [movements] about 2011, which was not accurate, but if anything is leaderless, the closest to that would be what's happening in Algeria. This is despite attempts by some to create some kind of representation, but that's nothing that is recognised by the whole popular movement. And therefore we are stuck in this situation, and the army has the initiative. We have a movement demanding civilian democratic government, but not able to translate that into concrete demands, in the face of an army that is ruling the country very openly, and which is looking forward to organising some kind of transition that would remain very much within the parameters of the regime — that is, new elections and things of that kind [?], and then proclaim it's the end of [it].
26:11 Well, in Sudan we have something very different. And Samah [?] will be discussing the country, but to say in comparative terms: it's the most advanced case of leadership that we have seen in any of the uprisings until now in the region since 2011. This is the most advanced one, because you have a recognised leadership, and a progressive recognised leadership, of the mass movement, which is the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change — the initiative for which was by one of the key organisers of all that in Sudan, which is the Sudanese Professionals Association, as it's called, which was created underground three years ago by doctors and journalists and lawyers, organised underground in order to carry on the fight against the Bashir regime.
27:13 And then we had more recently the formation of this [coalition] around the declaration, that joint declaration, where you have this Professionals Association, that now got much larger than it was at the beginning, with a lot of other professional or labour groups joining. We have political parties — a rather wide spectrum of political forces, from the Communist Party to liberal Muslim parties like the Umma [?] Party — and armed [?] struggle movements, some of the ethnic, also, wars that were going on in Sudan, or the Sudan People's [?] Liberation Army, the north part of it — and feminists. That's even more of a peculiarity, a point showing the advancement of what's going on in Sudan compared to what we had in 2011 [?].
28:52 And so that's — I mean, there we can see there is a leadership. This leadership has a very clear programme about the transition, and designed a quite detailed blueprint for the transition, and they didn't fall [?] also into the trap of asking for or accepting elections to be organised at short notice, because they know that that would benefit the powers that be, [with] all the means and all that. So that's why they asked for a relatively long transitional period — four years; now they accepted three years — before the organisation of elections, during which there will be institutions created by the mass movement, by its leadership. And that's what they got into negotiation with the army about, as you know.
29:54 Now I leave it to Samah to speak of the ongoing situation. But since the 3rd of June we have had a brutal crackdown, faced by a general strike. I won't get into a more detailed discussion of that; we'll have the opportunity, all of us, to discuss this again. But just to say what will be decisive is the ability [inaudible], as in Algeria. But that's essentially in Sudan, where the prospects are — the alternative is clear. The decisive issue will be the impact of the mass movement on the armed forces — that is, whether they carry on suppressing, by stages, gradually, this mass movement without a rebellion in the ranks of the armed forces. And that's something that the leadership understood quite well, because many of their statements were appealing to the soldiers and the low-ranking officers and all that of the armed forces. So that would be crucial.
31:01 And also, what I started with — the solidarity issue — it's really, really very important, because you have international reactionary support, especially by the Saudi kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt too — which are the best friends of [inaudible] and of London also, of the government of this country. They are very much involved in supporting the military. Well, European governments, Britain included, have taken — well, at least on the face of it, they paid this lip service to democracy and all that, by demanding that those responsible for the repression be judged, and an international inquiry, and things like that. But really the movement in Sudan would need much stronger support, a whole [?] movement by the progressive movement, by the democratic movement, the feminist movement, the anti-racist movement, in order to exert pressure on the governments for the benefit of the Sudanese. [applause]
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