Crisis and struggle in the Middle East

Following are excerpts from a talk given by Joyce Chediac at the Nov. 15-16 Workers World Party National Conference in New York City.

Joyce Chediac speaks at New York pro-Gaza rally, Jan. 3. Photo: Peoples Video Network

The hike in food prices was causing great pain in much of the Middle East even before the worldwide economic meltdown began. Prices skyrocketed not just due to inflation, but also due to the U.S. government policy of paying farmers not to grow wheat in order to raise prices and from U.S. agribusiness taking wheat off the international market and directing production toward biofuels.

In Egypt–a U.S wheat importer–major bread shortages in April 2008 and rising food prices provoked large-scale strikes and demonstrations. Strikes and job actions in Egypt doubled from 2006 to 2007, fueled by food price hikes and 12 percent inflation.

Poor people in Yemen are spending more than a quarter of their income on bread. Police have attacked food protests in Tunisia and Morocco. Even in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, boycott campaigns have protested the high cost of food and other staples.

To understand the impact of the world economic crisis in the Middle East, let’s start with Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. This center of banking and commerce experienced a real estate boom unprecedented in Middle East history.

In a few years it became a sparkling city of high-rises–not for the Arab or East Asian workers who worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week building them–but for Western business interests operating there tax-free.

When the world stock markets crashed in October, the Persian Gulf countries lost $160 billion in one week. The Emirates injected $32 billion into the banking system, with other Gulf states following suit.

Dubai’s construction boom was all based on borrowing. Dubai’s debt was 100 percent of its gross national product. It needed an injection of capital from the Emirates to keep its banks afloat.

The real estate boom in the Gulf came to a halt. Add to this the declining price of oil, the flight of foreign capital and dwindling tourism, and one sees the effect of the economic crisis on the richest Arab countries.

The oil-rich countries of the Gulf are economic lifelines for financially-strapped Middle Eastern countries. The slowdown in the Gulf countries felt like a crash in places like Egypt, Jordan and Syria where Gulf money has helped prop up strained economies. (New York Times, Oct. 28)

Egypt receives about half of its $6 billion in annual remittances from 2 million Egyptians living and working in the Gulf. Jordan receives about $2 billion annually in remittances from its workers in the Persian Gulf, and Syria has a million workers there. These jobs no longer exist.

Anti-imperialist sentiment is always high in the Middle East. Now, with the economic crisis, we can expect more struggles in the Middle East. While we can’t predict what form these struggles will take, we must be ready to defend our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters. Their struggle will be distorted here by the lens of anti-Arab, anti-Iranian, anti-Muslim and racist invective, in order to obscure the just nature of the struggle.

Progressive groups and individuals in the Middle East have different degrees of understanding of the national question in the U.S., and what the election of an African-American president means here. What is on their minds is: Will the Obama presidency lessen the suffering imposed on them by the Pentagon, U.S. client-states like Israel and U.S.-backed Arab reactionary regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt?

Most are not optimistic. Leila Ghanem from Bada’el Magazine, Beirut International Forum, stated: “We observe with great concern [Obama’s] positions on the Palestinian issue. In this respect, we expect no change and feel we must fight against what is already in progress–war, discrimination and extermination of the Palestinian people.”

Ghanem is referring to Obama’s appointment of Rahm Israel Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, the most powerful executive branch position next to the president. As a U.S. Congressman from Chicago, Emanuel has been consistently and vocally pro-Israel, sometimes more so than George W. Bush.

In a July 2006 speech supporting a House resolution backing Israel’s bombing of occupied Palestine and Lebanon, Emanuel called the Lebanese and Palestinian governments “totalitarian entities with militias and terrorists acting as democracies.”

Choosing Emanuel as Chief of Staff sends a clear pro-Israel message. Meanwhile, Obama has said nothing of Israel’s recent tightening of the siege of Gaza, a collective punishment of the population which has caused acute shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies.

Obama wants to increase troop presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is hawkish on Iran. He competed with McCain on who most supports the Israeli settler state. Obama has not talked about dismantling U.S. bases in the Middle East or removing the huge naval armada in the Persian Gulf menacing Iran.

Obama’s Middle East policy is not fundamentally different from the policies of Bush or McCain except for Iraq. His position on Iraq reflects the overwhelming opposition to that war in the U.S.

Obama is not for a full pullout in Iraq, but calls for “a residual force [to] remain to conduct targeted counterterrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel” and for the Pentagon to “train and support Iraqi security forces.”

Obama will head a government which rules collectively for the U.S. ruling class, the same rotten oppressive ruling class that the Bush administration serves.

The U.S. ruling class is totally committed to maintaining its stranglehold on plentiful, high-quality and easily extracted Middle Eastern oil. Control of this oil is used by the U.S. to dominate the rest of the world.

This is why there is no more important region of the world to U.S. imperialism. This is why it has zero tolerance for struggle in the Middle East. There are no splits in the ruling class on this, though there might be differences from time to time on tactics.

Despite threats and attacks at every turn, the struggle in the Middle East continues and grows stronger. The Pentagon cannot stop the Iraqi resistance. The Lebanese resistance, which kept out Israeli ground forces in 2006, remains strong. The Palestinian people remain steadfast.

What the people of the Middle East need and deserve from the U.S. is a thoroughly anti-imperialist opposition to imperialist war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and throughout the Middle East. The people of the Middle East must be able to determine their own lives and control their own resources. All U.S. forces must leave. All U.S. aid to Israel and client Arab regimes must stop.

Obama will not do this. But there is a force here that can. The force that is most capable of bringing positive change to the Middle East is the U.S. working class. Today $3 trillion goes for U.S. wars and $15 million a day for Israeli attacks, while our schools are falling apart and homes and jobs are taken away.

The worldwide economic crisis has raised the prospect of class struggle here. This presents a historic opportunity for our party to find creative ways to educate our class on where their interests lie abroad as well as at home. Workers here have everything in common with the workers and liberation struggles of the Middle East and nothing in common with the U.S. ruling class, which oppresses both.