LENIN'S TOMB

Friday, April 09, 2010

Revolution in Kyrgyzstan: nothing to do with tulips. posted by Richard Seymour

The 'colour revolutions' of the Bush era are not exactly in rude health. Ukraine, whose future was orange back in December 2004, has reverted to its post-Soviet rulers. Georgia, which had its 'Rose revolution' in 2003, has lost a fight it picked with Russia, and its leadership has barely survived the subsequent protests and armed mutiny. Now Kyrgyzstan has overthrown the government established by its 'Tulip revolution' some five years ago.

Kyrgyzstan's revolt was never quite like the others, however. The opposition leaders, to be sure, were educated in the techniques of popular mobilisation by right-wing Liberty Institute activists in Georgia. And they were hugely reliant on support from US institutions like USAID, as well as publishing support from Freedom House. But, whereas the masses played a largely passive role in Georgia and Ukraine, essentially supporting a struggle carried on within the state machinery, the opposition in Kyrgyzstan had to mobilise people to revolt if it wanted to take power. President Akayev was not going peacefully. They had to seize government buildings and police stations, which they did beginning in the southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad. They had to convoke mass meetings, kurultai, at which they passed resolutions declaring Akayev's reign illegitemate. They had to physically occupy the palace and drive the president out. Dragan Plavsic narrates:

on 24 March, the protests spread to the capital, Bishkek, where a mass demonstration, swelling to some 50,000, stormed the presidential palace, forcing Akayev from power. Widespread looting and arson then followed. Something of the flavour of these events was captured by Times reporter Jeremy Page when he visited the presidential palace:

In Mr Akayev’s personal quarters I found a protester in a general’s hat raiding the fridge. Another was having a go on the president’s exercise bike and a third was trying on his multicoloured ceremonial felt robes. The president himself had fled.12

These events demonstrate that, to use Page’s phrase, ‘geopolitics was not the driving force behind the Kyrgyz revolution’.

Just as it would have been wrong then to reduce the 'Tulip' revolt to external manipulation, so it would be wrong now to reduce the revolt against Kurmanbek Bakiyev's government to the "long arm of Moscow". Russia's government has certainly been agitating against Bakiyev since he declined to host a Russian military base while hosting a US base. One immediate source of the rebellion was high energy prices brought about by Russia's decision to impose new import duties on Kyrgyzstan's energy from Russia. And Roza Utunbayeva, of the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, who has declared herself the country's 'interim leader', has been cultivating Russian support, appearing on Interfax to denounce the government for having "stolen our revolution". She now thanks them for helping to "expose" the "criminal, nepotistic" regime of Bakiyev. The Social Democrats, themselves participants in the 'Tulip' revolution, allege that their candidate, Almazbek Atambayev, won last year's presidential elections, which Bakiyev claimed to have won by 83%, and are thus quite ready to pluck the fruit of this revolt with Moscow's support. And in the service of ensuring their control, they are authorising the police and militias to shoot any suspected 'looters'. (No trivial matter: the presidential fir trees have already been pinched.)

However, the Social Democrats didn't make this revolution, nor did they or Russian supporters cause it. After all, Russia's influence in Kyrgyzstan is not greater than that of America. The underlying issue is that Bakiyev embarked on exactly the same programme of privatizing and expropriating public goods as all the neoliberal rulers in central Asia have, and resorted to thuggery, nepotism and suppression of the media when his power base and popular support began to fragment. The Social Democrats are already promising to restore two major electricity companies to public ownership. Bakiyev had explicitly opposed privatization in opposition, and his victory was won on the basis of popular revulsion against the dicatorial methods of his predecessor, so when the opposition accused him of stealing the revolution, there was some merit to it. And the government's reliance on US backing, as well as its continued support for the American military base, has generated massive public opposition. American backing is held partially responsible for enabling Bakiyev's corrupt and dictatorial regime. If, as looks possible, the US base is closed, that will be one of the most popular policies the new government implements. It will also shut down one of the key bases from which the US wages war on Afghanistan, something Obama is anxious to prevent. The struggle between Russia and the US for hegemony over this region remains, despite recent nuptials in Prague, lethal.

Notwithstanding the efforts by the Social Democrats to crown themselves the victors, this is not just a repeat of the 'Tulip revolution', in which public protests facilitate a shift of power between wealthy ruling class blocs. This sharp analysis explains why:

One difference between the 7 April protests and the Tulip Revolution is the level of violence. This week’s events were the bloodiest in Kyrgyz history. In confronting protesters, the police relied on live bullets while protesters used stones and Molotov cocktails. Official reports put the number of people killed at more than 60 and those wounded at more than 500.
Another difference was of regional character. While the Tulip Revolution was sparked by protests and government building seizures in the southern regions (Jalal-Abad, Osh), this time the protests erupted mainly in the poor and remote northern regions such as Talas and Naryn, where residents have long complained of exclusion.
There are other remarkable differences between the current protests and those of five years ago.
Triggers for the protests differed. Unlike the Tulip Revolution, when the spark for mass mobilization was the Akaev regime’s efforts to block a number of wealthy opposition elites from gaining seats in parliament, the current protests were triggered by simmering anger at the grassroots level.
...
Yet another notable difference between April 2010 and March 2005 were the "engines" behind the change. During the March 2005 protests, demonstrations were organized by wealthy elites who felt that their bids to gain seats in the parliament were threatened by the incumbent Akaev regime. Such elites then mobilized their supporters in their towns and villages, relying on local networks and offers of cash. The protests we saw on 7 April were sporadic and chaotic. In many ways, they appeared to be more an uncoordinated grass-roots revolt by a disenchanted population than an elite-driven and planned campaign. As a result, the speed with which the protests erupted and spread was surprising, not only to international observers, but also to many locals. The administration and some opposition leaders seem to have not appreciated the extent of popular anger and were themselves taken aback. In other words, because there was no credible information about the distribution of power before the protests, there was little room for opposition factions and the incumbent regime to come to a negotiated settlement.

Neither the government nor opposition factions are in full control of the crowds. Already, there are reports of destruction of property and marauding in Bishkek and the regions that have seen protests.

If the 'Tulip revolution' wasn't a precise replica of its Georgian and Ukrainian cousins, this revolt is as different as can be. Despite an extraordinarily violent crackdown by Bakiyev, the grassroots insurgency prevailed. Protesters succeeded in taking over police stations, weapons, even winning police over to their side. They have demonstrated that the state does not possess a tight control over the means of violence, and that therefore popular demands cannot be ignored or suppressed. The Social Democrats, despite attempting to take the reins of power, still don't really control the country. If they attempt to control it with violence, they may face the same end as Bakiyev and Akayev.

Labels: 'colour revolution', capitalism, Georgia, kyrgyzstan, neoliberalism, privatisation, putin, revolution, russia, ukraine, US imperialism

Sunday, December 27, 2009

New Iran protests posted by Richard Seymour

There were those, some months back, who tried to characterise the Iranian reform movement as a flash-in-the-pan upsurge of the "Gucci crowd", a collective bed-wetting of the bourgoisie. They were deeply sceptical of a movement whose apparent stimulus was an allegedly rigged election, in which the losing candidate was supported by the 'Modern Right' neoliberal Rafsanjani, of Iran-Contra fame. They reminded people of the synthetic 'colour revolutions' that have taken place. And indeed, it was hard not to think of that spate of spectacles, in which often well-heeled masses turned out for big protests before either facilitating the assumption of power of a neoliberal faction, or dying out entirely. Think of the 'Cedar Revolution' - the Lebanese bourgeoisie, face-painted and out in force, towing their Syrian house servants behind them. That spectacle moistened a few crotches among Anglosphere liberals, but it was immediately outnumbered by more sizeable Hizbollah organised protests, and it didn't last as a mass movement.

The characterisation of the Iranian movement in those terms was false in several ways. For a start, notwithstanding the 'confessions' issuing from various protesters tortured by the basiji, there is no evidence of any US involvement in the 'Green' movement. Secondly, it can't be assumed that the revolt was simply a movement of the comprador bourgeoisie. Ahmadinejad had done relatively little for the working class. Moreover, far from the movement being restricted to some symbolic appearances in big metropolitan centres, the revolts spread to poor working class areas. Even if it had been a movement exclusively of the middle classes, I would have wanted it to win - to win more than it bargained for, in a sense. It was clear, though, that the revolt wasn't just about Mousavi or the sector of capital backing him, and the rebellion persisted even after the bloody state attacks on protests left several people dead and many wounded. Not long ago Al Qods day, Iran's national day of solidarity with the Palestinians, also became an opposition protest - quite appropriately, I might add. Palestine has better allies than Ahmadinejad.

Students in particular continued to speak out and protest, while the most politicised and advanced sectors of the working class were attacked. Some Anglophone readers equate 'students' with 'middle class' (wrongly as it happens), but one result of the Iranian revolution was an explosion in higher education so that it can no longer be considered a preserve of the privileged. Indeed, just as the radicalism of some students in Britain resulted in part from the matriculation of the working classes, so the radicalism of Iranian students could be said to result in part from their poor background and the miserable economic prospects that await them despite their labours.

At any rate, when Ayatollah Montazeri died a week before Christmas, it would have been reasonable to expect some upheaval. Montazeri was no leftist, though he was initially one of the Republic's 'permanent revolutionaries' working for its export internationally. At the same time, he opposed excessive vengeance against the old Shah ruling class, and helped humanise the Republic during the 1980s when it was undergoing some of its most vicious purges, notably the killing of thousands of prisoners in 1988. He opposed the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and became an ally of the reform movement in the 1990s. Having criticised Ayatollah Khamenei, whose political instincts are usually reactionary, he was placed under house arrest. Most significantly, he issued a fatwa against Ahmadinejad's re-election this year. He instantly became a muse to the 'Green' movement. Upon his death, the protesters didn't mourn - they organised. Protests broke out not only in Tehran, where some reports apparently speak of protesters taking control of the streets, but also in Najafabad (Montazeri's birthplace), Isfahan, and Zanjan, where police allegedly tried to prevent memorial services from taking place. In the protests that followed, the state responded with its usual combination of tact and diplomacy. Yesterday, the day of Ashura, eight were killed and three hundred injured according to Le Monde. The dead reportedly include Mousavi's nephew. But if drowning the last protests in blood didn't work, how can the authorities assume that it will work this time? Look at these protesters:

If those writing the reform movement off as another 'colour revolution' were correct, we probably wouldn't be witnessing such scenes. There is no way that this is over. The old order in the Middle East, from the US-backed Mubarak dictatorship to the Islamic Republic, is breaking apart. A counsel of despair tells us that the only alternative to the current regime in Iran is some schlemiel maintained by Washington. However, this assumes that the current Iranian ruling class is the country's best vanguard against imperialism - an absurd proposition. The reformers are not Washington stooges, and their success would make attacks and sanctions emanating from Washington less plausible. It also assumes that no social class or coalition in Iran has the resources to build a better, more just state under the duress of pressure from the US. That has always been an excuse of developmentalist, and even 'socialist', despotisms. But there is no reason for us to accept this.

Labels: 'colour revolution', bourgeoisie, democracy, iran, protests, US imperialism, working class