December 19, 2011
Guardian (UK)

The 'Arab Spring' and the West: Seven Lessons From History

by Seumas Milne

There's a real sense in which, more than any other part of the former colonial world, the Middle East has never been fully decolonised. Sitting on top of the bulk of the globe's oil reserves, the Arab world has been the target of continual interference and intervention ever since it became formally independent.

Carved into artificial states after the first world war, it's been bombed and occupied - by the US, Israel, Britain and France - and locked down with US bases and western-backed tyrannies. As the Palestinian blogger Lina Al-Sharif tweeted on Armistice Day this year, the "reason World War One isn't over yet is because we in the Middle East are still living the consequences".

The Arab uprisings that erupted in Tunisia a year ago have focused on corruption, poverty and lack of freedom, rather than western domination or Israeli occupation. But the fact that they kicked off against western-backed dictatorships meant they posed an immediate threat to the strategic order.

Since the day Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, there has been a relentless counter-drive by the western powers and their Gulf allies to buy off, crush or hijack the Arab revolutions. . . .

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Pepe Escobar, "Egypt's Nationalists At Odds With Vested Interests," Asia Times, February 8, 2011