The Current Impasse in Belarus and the Peace Alternative

Roger Harris

Back in the 1970s, the left and even many liberals were clear that Nixon’s dropping napalm on Vietnamese villages was an abomination. By the 1990s, some thought Bill Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia was, perhaps, humanitarian. Fast forward to the present, there is sentiment that the US has a global “responsibility to protect” the less enlightened lands in the name of “democracy.” Some on the liberal-left fail to recognize the fallacy of what Jean Bricmont exposes as “humanitarian imperialism – using human rights to sell war.”

In response to a peace organization advocating no foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Belarus, a US commentator protested: “[T]here has been no US intervention in the country. There’s nothing wrong, intrinsically, with external support of democracy. Your support for someone who seems like a bloody dictator is dismaying.” So, several inevitable questions arise. What is a dictator? Has there been foreign intervention in Belarus? Who has the right to intervene? And does advocating non-intervention implicitly support a presumptive dictator?

The Belarusian presidential election as a catalyst for regime change

Opposition elements in Belarus had long planned to use the September 9 presidential election as a catalyst for regime change. Their main base is with upwardly mobile white-collar professionals. However, they would have not been able to rally the tens of thousands of demonstrators had there not been broad and genuine discontent with President Alexander Lukashenko.

Elements of the opposition leadership in Belarus are partly financed by the European Union and the US and reflect those political interests. They have adopted the red and white flag, flown during the Nazi occupation. Their Resuscitation Reform Package, modeled after a nearly identical program for Ukraine, calls for the complete neoliberal privatization of the economy and an alignment with the NATO west.

Exit polls, conducted by the opposition, were cited to claim gross electoral fraud with Lukashenko garnering only 3% of the vote. Other observers accepted that Lukashenko won a majority but not by the official count of 80%. Golos, a pro-opposition election monitoring organization using data collected by US-backed youth organizations, reported Lukashenko winning with 61.7%.

BBC News laments that the election in Belarus had “no independent observers invited.” Yet there was an election observation delegation from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which reported the August 9 election “was open and competitive and ensured that Belarus citizens could freely express their will.” But the CIS report did not have the kind conclusion or “independence” sought by the BBC, itself a quasi-governmental corporation of the British state and funded by a mandatory state levy.

The voices of political tendencies and parties in Belarus and elsewhere in Europe that consider themselves socialist or communist, but are critical of their home governments, are excluded by western media. Even leftish outlets such as Democracy Now! follow the flag repeating the US/NATO regime change narrative, without providing alternative views. DN! laments the “massive crackdown on any kind of independent reporting” in Belarus, while serving as an information gatekeeper in the homeland of the empire.

Objectively, no one authoritatively knows the real outcome of the vote.

Convenient definitions of a dictator

Being unelected or fraudulently elected is not the only definition of a dictator. The functional definition for the US government is a leader disloyal to the empire.

Washington considers the democratically elected President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro a dictator. While Juan Guaidó, who proclaimed himself president of Venezuela on a Caracas street corner and was immediately recognized by the US government, is considered a legitimate head of state.

The monarch of Saudi Arabia is considered legitimate by Washington, even though the ruling House of Saud does not even bother to conduct sham elections. This is a country where women do not have basic rights, where slavery is practiced, and where those who run afoul with the law are routinely beheaded. But Saudi Arabia is the largest purchaser of US military equipment in the world, eclipsing the next contender by a factor of 2.6. So, the Saudi monarch is not on the official US list of dictators.

Then there are the leaders chosen and installed by the US after coups, such as Ukraine in 2014. There, the US literally handpicked the post-coup leader for Ukraine from a rogue’s gallery of neo-Nazis.

Intervention in Belarus by the West

The US does not have boots on the ground in Belarus and, so far, has refrained from drone attacks on funerals or wedding parties. Despite this praiseworthy restraint by the world’s sole superpower, it would be wrong to assume that the US is not intervening in Belarus. A US hybrid warfare program has been in effect since at least 2004 when the US passed the Belarus Democracy Act creating anti-government NGOs in Belarus and prohibiting loans.

Belarus is under unilateral US sanctions, illegal under international law, but justified by a presidential declaration, which bogusly claims a “national emergency” because Belarus “constitute[s] an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

The USAID, the above-ground face of the CIA, states in Orwellian language the US regime change plans for Belarus:

“[P]romote the emergence of a…market-oriented Belarus…USAID works…to stimulate the country’s transition to a market-based economy through programs that support…private business.”

Such is the imperial mindset that the US brazenly takes upon itself to “transition” a supposedly sovereign state into a neoliberal dependency.

The website of the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout, lists some three dozen current projects in Belarus for what are euphemistically called strengthening “independent” online media, civil society, culture, and public discourse. NED’s years of hard work were on display in the media sophistication of the opposition in Belarus.

The runner-up in the Belarus presidential election with 10% of the official vote, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, fled to Lithuania, where she met with US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun. Although self-described as apolitical with no prior political experience, she proclaimed herself ready to lead Belarus. Indeed the 37-year-old has all the qualifications for a puppet president, being photogenic and speaking English. On September 4, she addressed the UN Security Council calling for punishing sanctions on her own people.

The European Union is playing an even more overt role in promoting regime change in Belarus and is planning to extend sanctions. The openly anti-Semitic government of Poland, with which Belarus shares a border, has an irredentist interest in “recovering” portions of the country which were once part of a Polish empire.

The Russian legacy

Belarus was a Soviet republic, which did not become a sovereign country until 1990 after the breakup of the USSR. Belarus has strong historical and cultural affinities with its Russian neighbor to the east. Some 70% of Belarusians speak Russian at home. In 2000, Belarus and Russia established the Union State, a supranational confederation for economic integration and common defense.

The US and the European Union yearn to use the color revolution in Belarus to complete the military occupation of Russia’s western border. Belarus is the last piece in that puzzle now that Latvia and Estonia are in the NATO camp and Ukraine is on its way.

Russia’s involvement has largely been in reaction to this hostile military encirclement. Escalation of tensions only motivates Russia to be more defensive. The best antidote to Russian intrusion is détente rather than a new cold war. Besides, the government that the US peace movement can best influence is its own.

The current impasse in Belarus

The color revolution in Belarus is now stalled and the opposing forces appear to be stalemated. Without getting into a debate over Lukashenko, the salient question is how the working people of Belarus can best determine their destiny.

The opposition claims Lukashenko’s 26-year rule of Belarus has degenerated with questionable elections, mismanagement, and corruption. But the cure could be worse than the disease, as in the case of Libya, especially if it is left up to the tender mercies of the US empire to dictate the new “democratic” leader and the form of government to follow.

Belarus has enjoyed a low level of unemployment, public housing, almost no homelessness, and accessible and affordable healthcare and education. These social welfare factors compare favorably to the harsh neoliberal austerity and civil disintegration of its neighbors, now drawn into the NATO bloc. The critical issue is how can the Belarusians defend their gains in a contentious international milieu.

Tony Kevin, the former Australian ambassador to Poland, sums up the current impasse:

“Belarus is at risk, because in the Lukashenko political twilight there is confusion and fear: the people have lost their ideological moorings, and there is no coherent national vision as was recovered in Russia under Vladimir Putin starting in 2000.  Belarusians hopefully are coming to see the danger they will be in if they depose Lukashenko without knowing what comes after.”

Regardless of what the security forces might do, Lukashenko could easily be deposed if the workers in the major industrial enterprises went on a wildcat strike. Some discontented workers have walked off their jobs, but a majority look to the cautionary examples of the turncoat Solidarity in Poland, the sellout Yeltsin in Russia, and the neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

In those and other examples, state enterprises were sold off at bargain basement prices to new oligarchs and western financiers. Factory equipment was ransacked, work forces drastically downsized, and labor rights abrogated. Absent the specter of another US-backed coup like in Ukraine with its severe neoliberal austerity, Lukashenko would likely have been history.

The peace alternative – no foreign intervention in Belarus

The principle of non-intervention is enshrined in the UN Charter. There is no unilateral right to intervene into the internal affairs of another sovereign state. The greatest violator of this fundamental international law is the world’s sole superpower. The consequence, according to the late Uruguayan political analyst Eduardo Galeano has been: “Every time the US ‘saves’ a country, it converts it into either an insane asylum or a cemetery.”

A non-interventionist stance should not be confused with an endorsement of Lukashenko. Opposing US/NATO interventionism is no more an endorsement of Lukashenko than opposing the invasion of Iraq was an endorsement of Saddam Hussein. Belarus needs more than the binary choice of Lukashenko and the failed Ukrainian option. To have that space requires no foreign intervention in Belarus.

For those of us in the US, that means keeping our own government from fishing in troubled waters and letting the people of Belarus decide. They have the power and don’t need to be told what democracy looks like by those of us who will choose between Trump or Biden in November.

Argentina’s Dark Hours

Cesar Chelala

It is interesting to try to survive in a country run by incompetent and corrupt leaders. Argentines are already near 200 days on home seclusion. We call this the “infectadura,” playing with the Spanish words for infection and dictatorship. After 200 days, the only thing we have achieved with the Alberto Fernández government is the right to be among the ten most coronavirus-infected countries in the world.

In the meantime, the country’s Vice President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, continues to be the power behind the throne. Mediocrity, not meritocracy, is the rule. We live in a country of no future, no measures for protecting small industries, desultory decision-making. It is a unique experience under populist Peronism, corrupted Kirchnerism, and this strange experience the President is performing. We may call it “Puppetism.” We understand under this term something between a farce or being a puppet animated by someone else.

This is our cruel reality: we are under an oxymoronic president, incapable of taking one decision without contradicting a past statement, and a vice president – corrupt as no one before in Argentina’s history- who is pulling strings to move the puppet. Argentina is making all the right moves to be like Venezuela. Jorge Luis Borges, the noted Argentinian writer, once famously said, “Peronists are neither good nor bad. They are incorrigible.”

The latest effort of the government is a reform of the judicial system. The idea is to extend the number of federal tribunals and to put in charge judges closely allied to the government’s ideology. It is nonsensical for the government to be intent on reforming the judiciary during the most terrible pandemic of our history, instead of being focused on caring for the health of its people.

The main idea behind judicial reform is to guarantee impunity to all those accused of corruption charges during Cristina Kirchner’s presidency. Kirchner herself facing a dozen charges of bribery, embezzlement, and money laundering from her time in office as President. Besides, she is accused of giving Iran significant control of the investigation into the still unresolved bombing of AMIA, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people were killed in that terrorist attack and hundreds were injured. The Iranian government is believed to have been behind the attack. Her main accuser then was the man who is now the country’s President; none other than Alberto Fernández. Kafkaesque…

This is happening as the coronavirus pandemic has devastated Argentina’s economy. Respected economist Orlando J. Ferreres, predicts that approximately 30,000 companies will close this year due to the pandemic. According to the U.N., almost 900,000 people may lose their jobs this year, and GDP will fall in December between 8.2% and 10%.

Poverty and hunger levels are also increasing rapidly. “The country that produced food for 400 million people today needs to provide food assistance to 11 million Argentines,” says Roberto Valente, UN resident coordinator in Argentina. This number represents a quarter of the country’s total population.

We Argentinians have learned from Kafka better than any other country in the world. And Argentina seems like a country out of Kafka’s fertile imagination. We are a paradigm of surrealism. We don’t know if President Fernández has read Kafka. But even if he hasn’t read him, he is still entangled in the strings typical of Kafka’s stories. We are impotent spectators of this incredible development. But something must be said: despite hurricanes and earthquakes, despite any and all possible miseries, Argentines will never surrender. We have lived in a normal country. And we want to live in one again. Growing opposition to the regime will prove that Argentina will survive these darkest hours.

As Washington Retreats, Eastern Mediterranean Conflict Further Marginalizes NATO

Ramzy Baroud

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance in name alone. Recent events notwithstanding, the brewing conflict over territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean indicates that the military union between mostly Western countries is faltering.

The current Turkish-Greek tension is only one facet of a much larger conflict involving, aside from the two Mediterranean countries, Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, France, Libya and other Mediterranean and European countries. Notably absent from the list are the United States and Russia; the latter, in particular, stands to gain or lose much economic leverage, depending on the outcome of the conflict.

Conflicts of this nature tend to have historic roots – Turkey and Greece fought a brief but consequential war in 1974. Of relevance to the current conflagration is an agreement signed by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his Greek and Cypriot counterparts, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Nicos Anastasiades, respectively, on January 2. The agreement envisages the establishment of the EastMed pipeline which, once finalized, is projected to flood Europe with Israeli natural gas, pumped mostly from the Leviathan Basin.

Several European countries are keen on being part of, and profiting from, the project. But Europe’s gain is not just economic but also geostrategic. Cheap Israeli gas will lessen Europe’s reliance on Russia’s natural gas which arrives in Europe through two pipelines, Nord Stream and Gazprom, the latter extending through Turkey.

Gazprom alone supplies Europe with an estimated 40% of its natural gas needs, thus giving Russia significant economic and political leverage. Some European countries, especially France, have labored to liberate themselves from what they see as a Russian economic chokehold on their economies.

Indeed, the French and Italian rivalry currently under way in Libya is tantamount to colonial expeditions aimed at balancing out the over-reliance on Russian and Turkish supplies of gas and other sources of energy.

Fully aware of France’s and Italy’s intentions in Libya, the Russians and Turks are wholly involved in Libya’s military showdown between the Government of National Accord (GNA) and forces in the East, loyal to General Khalifa Haftar.

While the conflict in Libya has been under way for years, the Israel-et al EastMed pipeline has added fuel to the fire: infuriating Turkey, which is excluded from the agreement; worrying Russia, whose gas arrives in Europe partially via Turkey, and empowering Israel, which may now cement its economic integration with the European continent.

Anticipating the Israel-led alliance, on November 28, 2019, Turkey and Libya signed a Maritime Boundary Treaty, an agreement that gave Ankara access to Libya’s territorial waters. The bold maneuver allows Turkey to claim territorial rights for gas exploration in a massive region that extends from the Turkish southern coast to Libya’s north-east coast.

The ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’ (EEZ) is unacceptable in Europe because, if it remains in effect, it will cancel out the ambitious EastMed project and fundamentally alter the geopolitics – largely dictated by Europe and guaranteed by NATO – of this region.

However, NATO is no longer the once formidable and unified power. Since its inception in 1949, NATO has been on the rise. NATO members have fought major wars in the name of defending one another and also to protect ‘the West’ from the ‘Soviet menace’.

NATO remained strong and relatively unified even after the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the abrupt collapse, in 1991, of its Warsaw Pact. NATO managed to sustain a degree of unity, despite its raison d’être – defeating the Soviets – being no longer a factor, because Washington wished to maintain its military hegemony, especially in the Middle East.

While the Iraq war of 1991 was the first powerful expression of NATO’s new mission, the Iraq war of 2003 was NATO’s undoing. After failing to achieve any of its goals in Iraq, the US adopted an ‘exit strategy’ that foresaw a gradual American retreat from Iraq while, simultaneously, ‘pivoting to Asia’ in the desperate hope of slowing down China’s military encroachment in the Pacific.

The best expression of the American decision to divest militarily from the Middle East was NATO’s war on Libya in March 2011. Military strategists had to devise a bewildering term, ‘leading from behind’, to describe the role of the US in the Libya conflict. For the first time since the establishment of NATO, the US was part of a conflict that was largely controlled by comparatively smaller and weaker NATO members – Italy, France, Britain and others.

While former US President, Barack Obama, insisted on the centrality of NATO in US military strategies, it was evident that the once-powerful alliance had outweighed its usefulness for Washington.

France, in particular, continues to fight for NATO with the same ferocity it fought to keep the European Union intact. It is this French faith in European and Western ideals that has compelled Paris to fill the gap left by the gradual American withdrawal. France is currently playing the role of the military hegemon and political leader in many of the Middle East’s ongoing crises, including the flaring East Mediterranean conflict.

On December 3, 2019, France’s Emmanuel Macron stood up to US President Donald Trump, at the NATO summit in London. Here, Trump chastised NATO for its reliance on American defense and threatened to pull out of the alliance altogether if NATO members did not compensate Washington for its protection.

It’s a strange and unprecedented spectacle when countries like Israel, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Turkey and others lay claims over the Mediterranean, while NATO scrambles to stave off an outright war, among its own members. Even stranger, to see France and Germany taking over the leadership of NATO while the US remains, thus far, almost completely absent.

It is hard to imagine the reinvention of NATO, at least a NATO that caters to Washington’s interests and diktats. Judging by France’s recent behavior, the future may hold irreversible paradigm shifts. In November 2018, Macron made what then seemed as a baffling suggestion, a ‘true, European army’. Considering the rapid regional developments and the incremental collapse of NATO, Macron may one day get his army, after all.

UAE Recognition of Israel Dents Emirati Religious Soft Power

James M. Dorsey

The United Arab Emirates’ establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel is damaging its efforts to garner religious soft power by projecting itself as a model of Islamic moderation and tolerance and a force for peace. The UAE move has sparked splits within a key group, created and nurtured by the Gulf state, to project its image as a moderate religious power.

The United Arab Emirates’ bold recognition of Israel, earning it valuable brownie points in the West, has come at a cost: a blow to its efforts to earn religious soft power in the Muslim world.

The setback raises questions about the UAE’s strategy of co-opting prominent Muslim scholars with financial incentives to project the Gulf state as a model of tolerance that seeks to promote a moderate interpretation of Islam in a global competition for religious soft power with Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.

The UAE attempt to reap religious support for its opening to Israel encountered blowback when a statement by the Abu Dhabi-based Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies — one of several UAE-backed groups created to counter similar Qatari institutions and give the UAE effort religious cachet — sparked protests and resignations.

Members of the Forum’s board complained that the statement had been issued without a discussion in the Forum’s board of trustees. The board includes former Jordanian Islamic chief justice and minister of endowments Ahmad Hilayel and Abdullah Al-Maatouq, a Kuwaiti royal court advisor and former religious affairs minister and United Nations envoy.

Hamza Yusuf, the Forum’s vice president and a popular American Islamic scholar who heads Zaytuna College — the United States’ first accredited Muslim undergraduate college — distanced himself from the statement, asserting that he did “not engage in or endorse geopolitical strategies or treaties” and that his “allegiance is and has always been with the oppressed peoples of Palestine, whether Muslim, Christian, or otherwise.”

Similarly, while announcing her resignation from the Forum’s board, prominent American Muslim activist Aisha al-Adawiya, founder of the human rights group Women in Islam, said that there had been “no agreement on any kind of support for the UAE’s deal with Israel.”

So did Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem. Mr. Hussein banned Muslims from the UAE from visiting and praying at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.

However, the statement issued by Abdullah Bin Bayyah, a Mauritanian politician, religious scholar, and the head of the Forum and president of the Emirati Fatwa Council, took a different tone.

Praising “the wisdom of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces,” the statement asserted that normalization of relations with the Jewish state had “stopped Israel from extending its sovereignty over Palestinian lands” and was a means to “promote peace and stability across the world.”

Mr. Bin Bayyah’s defense of the statement reflected the UAE’s definition of moderate Islam as one that is state-controlled and preaches absolute obedience to the ruler. He insisted that “international relations and treaties are among the initiatives that fall within the policy-making purview of the ruler.”

Despite longstanding relations with Abu Dhabi’s ruling Al-Nahyan family, Mr. Bin Bayyah was long aligned with their nemesis as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and the European Council for Fatwa and Research, that was established to provide guidance to European Muslims through the dissemination of religious opinions.

The two groups were headed and founded by Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the world’s most prominent living Islamic scholars who is widely viewed as a spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatari support of the Brotherhood is a main driver of the more than three-year-old UAE-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott of the Gulf state. The Emirates and the kingdom earlier designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Members of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, including Crown Prince Mohammed and his foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, began courting Mr. Bin Bayyah in early 2013.

They invited the cleric to the Emirates the same month that Egyptian President and Muslim Brother Mohammed Morsi – the post-2011 revolt democratically elected head of state — was toppled by a UAE-backed military coup.

In a letter Mr. Bin Bayyah sent three months later to the IUMS, he announced that he was resigning from the group. He wrote: “the humble role I am attempting to undertake towards reform and reconciliation (among Muslims) requires a discourse that does not sit well with my position at the International Union of Muslim Scholars.”

Mr. Bin Bayyah wrote his letter after the IUMS had bitterly denounced the Egyptian coup and condemned the subsequent brutal repression of the Brotherhood and he published it to demonstrate to Emirati leaders that he had ended his association with Qatari-supported Islamic groups.

The courting of Mr. Bin Bayyah emanated from Prince Mohammed’s realization that he needed religious soft power to justify the UAE’s wielding of hard power that started with the Egyptian coup and expanded with military interventions in Yemen and Libya.

The emergence in recent years of Mr. Bin Bayyah – a celebrated Islamic jurist whom Islam scholar Usamaa Al-Azami dubbed “counter‐revolutionary Islam’s most important scholar” – as the religious face of the UAE coincided with the 93-year-old Mr. Qaradawi’s withdrawal from public life.

The backlash sparked by Mr. Bin Bayyah’s statement highlights the Achilles heel, at least in the Muslim world, of the UAE’s religious soft power ploy.

“The counter‐revolutionary Islamic political thought that is being developed and promoted by Bin Bayyah and the UAE suffers from certain fundamental structural problems that means its very existence is precariously predicated on the persistence of autocratic patronage,” Mr. Al-Azami asserted. “Its lack of independence means that it is not the organic product of a relatively unencumbered engagement with political modernity that might be possible in freer societies than counter‐revolutionary Gulf autocracies,” he added.

Mr. Al Azami’s criticism goes to the heart of a debate, particularly in Turkey and Indonesia, on Islam’s ability to recontextualize itself and break away from the shackles of outdated concepts and traditions without being freed from control by states that seek to impose a self-serving vision of the faith.

Expressed more bluntly, Yahya Birt, a scholar of British Islam and a convert to the faith, who has researched UAE-backed clerics, argued that there is discrepancy between how they project their sponsors abroad and the reality on the ground.

“The extracted price of government patronage is high for ulema (religious scholars) in the Middle East. Generally speaking, they have to openly support or maintain silence about autocracy at home, while speaking of democracy, pluralism, and minority rights to Western audiences,” Mr. Birt said.

The backlash to the support of the UAE recognition of Israel by the Forum and Mr. Bin Bayyah suggests a serious flaw in the Gulf state’s approach to religious soft power: It targets first and foremost Western corridors of power rather than the Muslim community at large.

Mining and Imperialism in Guatemala

Yanis Iqbal

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the long-drawn-out conflict at the Escobal silver mine in Guatemala – the second- largest in the world – is intensifying. The Escobal mine is located in southeast Guatemala, outside the town of San Rafael de las Flores, approximately 40 km from Guatemala City. Since the beginning of commercial production in early 2013, the mine has been embroiled in a conflict wherein the Xinka, a non-Mayan indigenous group and the fifth-largest autochthonous group in Guatemala, has been resolutely resisting extractivist operations.

On 24 August, 2020, more than 90 Guatemalan and international organizations signed a letter, expressing their concern at the persistent impunity for human rights violations against Xinka land defenders. The letter also highlighted an increase in cases of defamation, threats and criminalization of members of the peaceful resistance of Santa Rosa, Jalapa and Jutiapa since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first quarter of 2020, for instance, there were 8 cases of criminalization against defenders from Santa Maria Xalapan.

The increased repression of Xinka people is a result of the current correlation of forces in Guatemala which has tilted the balance in favor of the company operating the Escobal mine. In 2010, Tahoe Resource Group, a Canadian mining company, had bought a majority stake of the rights for three separate exploration and exploitation licenses for gold, silver, lead, and zinc in the Guatemalan departments of Santa Rosa and Jalapa from Goldcorp. The Canadian corporation continued to operate the mine until 2018 when it was acquired by Pan American Silver – a Vancouver-based company – for $1.1 billion. Currently, Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei has appointed Juan José Cabrera Alonso, a former General Director for the Pan American Silver company’s Guatemalan subsidiary, Minera San Rafael (MSR), as Special Secretary to the Vice President. This appointment has translated into a guarantee of investment security for Pan American Silver which can now firmly believe that the state would intervene to facilitate capital accumulation through repression. Quelvin Jiménez, lawyer for the Xinka Parliament (the elected ancestral authority of the Xinka people), says, “Now, Pan American Silver has an operator on the inside to protect its interests,”.

Resistance against the Escobal Mine

The contemporary situation at the Escobal mine is deeply enmeshed in a history of Xinka resistance which has ensured that mining operations perennially encounter the powerful force of class struggle. In 2013, the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) granted an exploitation license for the Escobal mine to Tahoe Resources after rejecting more than 250 complaints about the environmental risks of the mining project. Instead of processing these citizen complaints as necessitated by articles 46 to 48 of the Mining Law, the Director General’s office at the Ministry of Energy and Mining rejected the processing of the complaints and instantaneously granted the mining license. All this while, indigenous communities of the municipalities of San Rafael Las Flores, Nueva Santa Rosa, Casillas and Santa Rosa de Lima in the Department of Santa Rosa, and Mataquescuintla and Jalapa in the Department of Jalapa maintained that they were not consulted prior to the awarding of the licenses. Nevertheless, the company decided to ram through the anti-extractivist countercurrents and had to consequently use lethal force to continue its operations. Between 2012 and 2013, seven people were murdered, 29 individuals were physically injured, and 50 community members were arrested in connection with operations at the El Escobal mine. Between 2011 and 2015, over 125 people were criminalized through various legal proceedings. One particular incident of overt shooting neatly encapsulates the murderous methods employed by mining magnates to operate in the countries of the Global South. Apart from depicting the violence of imperialist extractivism, the case also serves as an example of the revolutionary struggle waged by the oppressed masses of the Global South.

On April 27, 2013, a group of protestors from San Rafael Las Flores approached the entrance of the El Escobal silver mine using a dirt road. To suppress these demonstrations, private security guards hired by Tahoe Resources opened fire on the campesinos, injuring seven of the men. Adolfo Agustín García, one of the men shot by the guards, had his nine-year-old son with him at the demonstration. Tahoe Resources had hired the Golan Group, the same Israeli private security corporation used by HudBay Minerals and Goldcorp to unleash violence against anti-extractivist social movements. In response to the violence, the seven men assaulted by the mining corporation filed a lawsuit in British Columbia in June 2014, accusing the company of negligence for the actions of its security personnel. The case was initially dismissed by Supreme Court Judge Laura Gerow who ruled that the case could not be heard in Canada due to high procedural costs and was better suited for Guatemala’s court system. Her decision was overturned on 26 January, 2017 by the BC Court of Appeal which concluded that Guatemala’s corrupt judiciary placed severe limitations on the plaintiffs’ potential to receive a fair trial. On 30 July, 2019, the six-year long legal battle was brought to an end by Pan American Silver which apologized to the Guatemalan plaintiffs and conceded that “the shooting on April 27, 2013, infringed the human rights of the protestors”,.

Tahoe’s barbarous policies were lent full support by the Guatemalan state which went as far as to enact a campaign of terror to consolidate extractive capital’s dominance. On May 3, 2013, President Perez Molina imposed a 30-day state of siege in the municipalities surrounding the Escobal mine amid a growing number of community-level consultations and plebiscites against mining operations. During the siege, 8, 500 military personnel were deployed in four municipalities and areas of resistance were militarily penetrated by tanks and armored vehicles. The state of siege suspended basic constitutional rights, barred public assembly, allowed the military to indefinitely detain anyone without charge/trial and lifted restrictions on searches and seizures. However, the siege was never authorized by the Guatemalan Congress. For Tahoe Resources, the siege was an important measure through which indigenous resistance to its operations was temporarily subdued. MSR praised the state of siege through a paid ad published in the print media on May 7, 2013. The ad was additionally signed by 36 construction companies which expressed their “respect and support for the government’s decision to re-establish public order and the rule of law in Santa Rosa and Jalapa.”

In spite of state-sanctioned violence oriented towards capital accumulation, the Xinka people did not capitulate to the extractive elites and instead, resiliently opposed the mining bourgeoisie through community actions, international solidarity and organizational strategies. As a result of these revolutionary efforts, the Guatemalan Constitutional Tribunal was forced to halt the Escobal project in 2017 while it investigated allegations of lack of consultation. This judgment was upheld on 4 September, 2018, when the constitutional court confirmed that the Escobal mining license will remain suspended until a consultation in line with ILO convention 169 is completed by the MEM. As per the constitutional court, the consultation comprises of four stages: “1) definition of the area of influence of the project, 2) a pre-consultation phase to determine the process, 3) the consultation itself, and 4) the presentation of consultation results to the Guatemalan Supreme Court.” Flouting the judicial orders of the constitutional court, Tahoe and the MEM declared the completion of stage one of the consultation process on November 15, 2018, without ever informing the Xinka leadership. On top of the patent exclusion of the Xinka people, the company has only included the municipality of San Rafael las Flores – where the mine’s industrial plant is located – as the “area of influence of the project”. In opposition to this definition of the mine’s area of influence, the Xinka Parliament has univocally asserted that the all-encompassing impacts of the mine cannot be reduced to such a small area. It has further criticized the inadequacy of the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) in determining the area of influence with regard to cultural and spiritual impacts.

In the cotemporary period, we are witnessing the direct continuation of ceaseless attempts to sabotage the consultation process laid out by the constitutional court and undercut Xinka resistance. Articulating these regressive efforts aimed at weakening Xinka community’s political potency, a blog post by the NGO Earthworks states: “Rather than the open, inclusive consultation promised in the Court ruling, the Xinka have faced threats, intimidation, and an exclusionary, potentially illegal process that seems to have a preordained outcome: the reopening of a mine that the Xinka say will destroy their way of life”.

Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, attempts are afoot to emasculate the proper participation of the Xinka people. Pan American Silver recently collected signatures and ID numbers from community members who received their donation to dishonestly demonstrate local support for the mining project. Commenting on these manipulative tactics, Luis Fernando García Monroy – on behalf of the Xinka Parliament – said: “COVID-19 isn’t the only health crisis we’re facing. For a decade, communities surrounding the Escobal mine have fought to protect their health from mining activities. Guatemalan courts ordered Pan American Silver to suspend its operations during the consultation and this includes community outreach, which gives rise to tension and conflict. Pan American Silver should tell its employees to stay home and stop trying to buy support for the mine during this significant health crisis,”.

Extractive Imperialism in Guatemala

While the present-day conflict revolving around the Escobal mine is socially situated in the antagonistic relations between the Xinka community and the mining companies, it is also economically embedded in the structures of extractive imperialism in Guatemala. Through this extractive imperialism, the country’s natural resources have been laid open for the over-exploitative practices of multinational companies. The path for this capitalist expansion was paved by the Guatemalan state which instituted a number of laws to attract foreign investment: the new Mining Law of 1997 which reduced the royalty rate for mining companies from 6% to 1% of production value; the General Electricity Law of 1996 which reduced costs for energy-intensive mining projects; the “Maquila Law” of 1988 which exempted exporters from taxes on inputs and the 1998 Foreign Investment Law which expanded rights for foreign investors. With the help of these laws, mineral and metal exports increased from a low of 0.385% of merchandise exports in 2003 to a high of 9.626% in 2011, ten times the rate of Latin America; and mining concessions expanded by over 1000% from 1998 to 2008.

As Guatemala was imperialistically pillaged by transnational companies, a “generalized” atmosphere of extractive capital accumulation was generated. Francisco Mateo, a protagonist of anti-extractivism in Huehuetenango (a city in western Guatemala), a former member of the Departmental Assembly in Defense of Life and Territory in Huehuetenango (ADH) and a member of the Huista Council, a local affiliate of the CPO (Mayan People’s Council), explains how an “integrated” capital accumulation is taking place, comprehensively uprooting entire territories: “We see here a new despojo (dispossession) because we are not talking about a mining project, nor are we talking about an energy project. It is a total concession of territory. Just in Huehuetenango, there are thirty‐six approved mining licenses. There are twenty energy projects, between small, medium, and large. Then there are three petroleum projects in the northern zone…They try to make it seem like these [energy] projects are independent and that they don’t have anything to do with mining. How could that be? Without the energy, there can’t be mining. Thus they are completely interrelated. There is a fusion within capital; there are deals.”

Because of the comprehensive consolidation of extractive capital in Guatemala, there has been a heightened internal war against people who oppose mining and energy projects. To take an example, Bernardo Caal Xol is a Maya Q’eq’chi’ teacher and trade unionist who, for 5 years, has been defending the rights of the communities of Santa María Cahabón who have been affected by the construction of the OXEC hydroelectric plant on the Oxec and Cahabón rivers in the northern department of Alta Verapaz. In response to his activism, companies accused Caal of carrying out alleged acts of violence against employees of NETZONE SA, an OXEC contractor, on 15 October 2015. On 9 November 2018, a court sentenced him to seven years and four months in prison based on trumped up charges. Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, says: “Having reviewed the…criminal proceedings against Bernardo Caal, it’s clear that there’s no evidence of the crimes that he’s accused of. On the contrary, the proceedings against Bernardo show the same patterns of criminalization of human rights defenders that we have documented in the country for years.”

In a similar manner, violence against Guatemalan anti-mining activists has solidified. On the night of 5 August, 2020, unknown persons raided the home of indigenous rights defender Ubaldino García Canan in the municipality of Olopa, Chiquimula. García Canan is a Maya Ch’orti indigenous rights defender and has demonstrated against the operations of the mining company Cantera Los Manantiales. He is also a member of the Maya Ch’orti Indigenous Council of Olopa, and has facilitated the organized articulation of indigenous resistance against extractivism. Attacks on Garcia Canan are politically patterned with another  Maya Ch’orti’ indigenous leader Medardo Alonzo Lucero, also a member of the Indigenous Council and a leader in the opposition movement against the activities of Cantera Los Manantiales, having been murdered on 15 June, 2020, in La Cumbre, Olopa.

The intensification of violence against Guatemalan dissidents is a natural corollary of extractive imperialism which demands unquestioning obedience to the exigencies of metropolitan capital. For extractive imperialism, the availability of exploitable resources is superior to the existence of human beings. Correspondingly, the capitalist forces operating in Guatemala are having no qualms about enacting violence against those whom they perceive to be hindering the process of accumulation. This profit-oriented violence will continue to exist as long as we live under the regime of predatory capitalism which, in the words of Samir Amin, “has become the enemy of all of humanity.”

Australian study reveals rise in mental health problems during COVID-19 pandemic

John Mackay

A study investigating the acute mental health responses of Australian adults during the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a significant negative impact, in particular on those already vulnerable.

The study was published in PLOS One, a scientific journal focused on the discipline of nature and medicine. Investigators from the University of New South Wales in Sydney obtained responses from over 5,000 adults using an online questionnaire, administered via social media during the then-peak of the pandemic and initial lockdown, from March 27 to April 7.

The questionnaire examined fears and behavioural responses to the pandemic and assessed the severity of physiological distress, such as levels of depression, anxiety and stress, including anxiety about health, contamination fears, alcohol use and physical activity.

The majority of respondents (78 percent) reported their mental health had worsened since the outbreak of the pandemic, with a quarter (25.9 percent) either very or extremely worried about contracting the disease and over half (52.7 percent) worried about family or friends being infected.

Feelings of uncertainty, loneliness and financial worries occurred in 50 percent of those surveyed. Rates of depression, anxiety and stress levels were 65 percent, 50 percent and 64 percent, respectively.

Nearly half (45 percent) of participants reported currently undergoing mental health treatment that included counselling and medications.

Those with a self-reported history of a mental health diagnosis, such as depression and anxiety, had significantly higher distress, health anxiety and fears of COVID-19 compared to those without a prior diagnosis.

The study also found higher rates of distress among those who were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, those who identified as non-binary or a different gender identity, and those whose occupation was a carer or stay-at-home parent.

The authors concluded that these results highlight the need for proactive and accessible mental health services to address these needs, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable, including people with a prior history of mental health problems.

The underlying factors for increased mental health burden during the pandemic can be complex. However, the main causes are thought to involve continued health concern of infection or the social stigma of being infected, the breakdown in social support due to isolation, as well as the anxiety of losing employment or receiving reduced earnings.

The authors noted that similar research has emerged in other countries, including China, Italy, India, Mexico, Spain, the US and UK. These studies also have shown increased rates of psychological distress. While the methods of data collection differed between the studies, however, the Australian study’s results were among those that demonstrated higher rates of poor mental health.

Research into past pandemics, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, had shown higher rates of fears, psychological distress, including depression, anxiety and stress and insomnia, and other mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress in people with pre-existing mental illness. This impact included front-line health care workers and survivors of SARS who had severe or life-threatening cases of the disease.

Evidence of the mental health impact of the pandemic is demonstrated too in the increased demand for mental health services. The helpline Lifeline answered almost 90,000 calls for help in March. That is equivalent to a call every 30 seconds. It was a 25 percent increase over the corresponding month the previous year.

More recently, when the Victorian Labor Party government imposed a total lockdown on Melbourne public housing towers in July, Lifeline statistics showed a 22 percent increase in calls from that state.

When Stage 4 restrictions were later announced for Melbourne, calls to Lifeline from Victoria increased by 30 percent. From the beginning of August, Victorian use of Beyond Blue, another mental health helpline, was also 90 percent higher than across other states in Australia.

Among young people, the mental health service Headspace has seen an estimated 50 percent rise in referrals for young people who “have been admitted to a hospital emergency department because of a mental health crisis,” according to a recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation report.

A week into the Stage 4 lockdown in early August, the Victorian government said data showed a 33 percent rise in children and young people in the state presenting to hospital with self-harm injuries, compared to the corresponding time in 2019.

These results point to a deep crisis in the health care system. According to an Australian Medical Association report in 2018, mental health services are “grossly underfunded.” A “marked lack of capacity at all levels of mental health care” caused “unacceptable delays to care.”

While the federal government claimed it has added $500 million to funding for mental health services during the pandemic, there is ample evidence that this is insufficient.

An interim report by the Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health last year found that the state’s mental health services were extremely underfunded. If Victoria’s funding were to reach even the national average, it would have required an additional $1.44 billion in 2016–17.

Dr Kerryn Rubin, the chair of the Victorian branch of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists told the Guardian: “The issue now is that simply there are far more people needing support and services than there are people to provide them in the private sector.” Further, community mental health services operated only “Monday to Friday, nine to five.”

Mental health practitioners are often concentrated in wealthier suburbs or charge fees people cannot afford. “Bulk billing” for mental health services, so that patients do not have to pay upfront fees, is not widespread. People can face long waiting times for counselling services or may be ineligible to access support.

Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, director of Melbourne’s Monash Alfred psychiatry research centre, told the Guardian that help lines such as Lifeline and Beyond Blue were relatively easy to access. However, “people who previously would have accessed the private sector are struggling to do that because they can’t get an appointment for four, eight, twelve weeks, at which point in time often something that started off as a minor or moderate problem becomes a severe problem.”

In March, leading mental health expert Professor Patrick McGorry called for an urgent overhaul of mental health services to cope with the aftermath of the pandemic.

“The people who lived through the Great Depression had reduced life expectancy; if you develop a mental illness your life expectancy is reduced,” he said. “It may be that the vocational pathways for a generation of young people are constrained for the next few years and that is going to lead to huge mental health problems and suicide rates as well.”

Despite these calls, the data shows that the services remain woefully inadequate.

Unifor selects Ford Canada as target company to establish “pattern contract”

Carl Bronski

Unifor President Jerry Dias announced Tuesday that Ford Canada has been selected as the “target company” for negotiating a “pattern contract” for collective agreements covering the 17,000 production and skilled trades workers at the Detroit Three automakers’ Canadian operations.

Despite an overwhelming vote in support of strike action by autoworkers at Ford, General Motors and Fiat-Chrysler (FCA) late last month, Dias’ goal is to conclude yet another concessionary agreement with Ford prior to the Monday, Sept. 21 11:59 p.m. strike deadline. Unifor would then seek to make that agreement the “pattern” in negotiations with GM and FCA.

Dias also announced that the union is seeking to negotiate three-year deals with the auto companies in order to synchronize with the next round of United Auto Worker (UAW) contract renewals with the Detroit Three in the United States in 2023.

Since they split along national lines in 1985, both Unifor (the former Canadian Auto Workers) and the UAW have pitted workers against each other in a never-ending race to the bottom. They have worked with their “own” corporate managements to whip-saw jobs and wages back and forth across borders, while promoting, respectively, Canadian and American nationalism, thereby dividing autoworkers and blocking the emergence of a common struggle against all concessions, job cuts, and plant shutdowns.

Dias’ attempt to synchronize contract years is not designed to unite American and Canadian autoworkers in a common struggle, but rather to continue and deepen the fratricidal scramble of each against all.

Dias has complained that the auto investment pledges the Detroit Three made to the UAW in the 2019 negotiations have drained the well for investments in Canada in this contract round. In other words, he intends to create a situation in 2023 where Unifor and the UAW will go head-to-head to determine which union is capable of offering up autoworkers to the auto bosses for the cheapest price.

In naming Ford as the “target company,” Dias is hoping to trade off further concessions on work rules and, at best, meagre wage and benefit “increases” in exchange for the automaker giving a new product commitment for the threatened Oakville Assembly Plant. The company employs about 4,500 autoworkers there, and an additional 1,600 workers at its two engine facilities in Windsor. The cornerstone Oakville plant has already experienced almost 1,000 layoffs in just over a year, and is reported to be the Detroit Three plant in Canada most vulnerable to closure in the near future. Industry analysts citing multiple “well-placed sources” have placed a question mark over operations continuing past 2023, when scheduled production runs of the Ford Edge SUV and Lincoln Nautilus are slated to end.

Although Dias evinced “confidence” that new product can be negotiated for the Oakville plant, Ford management was quick to respond on Tuesday that any deal must leave the company “operationally competitive amidst intense global competition.” The company continued, “In light of global economic uncertainties, it’s more important than ever to maintain jobs in Canada. We’ll be asking our employees to work with us to help shape this new reality.”

Unifor is putting Ford in a position to dictate these terms by effectively ruling out strike action. The last strike as part of regular bargaining with the Detroit Three occurred in 1996, and Dias intends to keep it that way. Referring to the impact of the pandemic on the auto sector, Dias said of the current contract fight earlier this year, “no one is going to want a disruption. And I mean nobody; both the workers and the automakers.”

Talking like a corporate consultant, Dias used his press conference to appeal once again to the big business federal Liberal and Ontario Conservative governments to pony up with billions of dollars of subsidies for the automakers, particularly for electric car production. Unifor is currently engaged in close consultation with the Trudeau Liberal government, with Dias meeting with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland last week, to help it craft a package of measures to revive corporate Canada’s productivity and profitability.

Giving full voice to the union’s Canadian nationalist outlook, Dias urged the Trudeau Liberal government to fund a “national auto strategy.” Even if government funding is provided on this basis, it will not save a single job. During the financial crisis of 2008-09, the provision of over $13 billion by the federal and Ontario provincial governments to the Big Three was used to consolidate their balance sheets and step up the attacks on workers, including by introducing the regressive two-tier wage system.

Moreover, the restructuring of the auto industry is occurring on a global scale. Autoworkers have nothing to gain by supporting their “own” ruling class in this scramble for markets and profitability, which will invariably result in a deterioration in working conditions for autoworkers in every country.

It is expected that vehicle production in Canada by the Detroit Three automakers will fall another 27 percent over the life of the next contract. The latest layoffs at Ford and the lack of new scheduled product will be used as a battering ram to intimidate autoworkers into accepting yet another round of concessions.

The claim made by Unifor, the CAW before it, and the UAW that jobs can be “saved” through concessions has proven to be a cruel hoax. Workers should recall that in the lead-up to the shuttering of the GM Oshawa truck plant in 2010 and the GM Oshawa assembly plant in 2019, Unifor justified the imposition of concessions-laden contracts with the claim that iron-clad guarantees had been secured to keep both facilities open.

In the current round of bargaining, Fiat-Chrysler and General Motors are also intending, with Unifor’s connivance, to use threatened job losses to extort givebacks. At FCA’s Brampton assembly facility, major investments are needed to retain jobs. Two vehicle models would need to be added at FCA’s Windsor Assembly to replace the 1,500 third-shift jobs that were chopped earlier this year. Also under threat is FCA’s Etobicoke aluminum casting plant and half of the 1,300 jobs at GM’s St. Catharine’s propulsion and engine facility.

Autoworkers must recognize that their jobs and livelihoods cannot be defended with nationalist appeals to corporate bosses and capitalist governments to support “their” auto industry. Instead, they must take as their starting point the understanding that they share the same basic interests—secure and decent-paying jobs, workplace safety, an end to two-tier wages—as their class brothers and sisters in the United States, Mexico, and internationally.

In response to the global offensive being waged by automakers to cut costs and increase the pace of work, Canadian autoworkers must establish independent rank-and-file committees to seize control of the contract struggle from Unifor, unify their fight with autoworkers in the United States and Mexico, and demand the restoration of all concessions and job security for all.

Such a struggle would receive powerful support from autoworkers in the US, who have begun to establish rank-and-file safety committees to combat the dangerous working conditions in the plants jointly imposed by the automakers and the corrupt UAW amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic, and by Mexican autoworkers, who bravely conducted job actions earlier this year to press for the temporary shutdown of the North American auto industry.

Opposition to Unifor’s pro-corporate, nationalist course is mounting among rank-and-file workers, as shown by the broad support for a petition demanding that the full details of any agreement Unifor negotiates be made public well before ratification votes. In the past, Unifor has used highly-selected “highlights” brochures to conceal critical information about concessions from rank-and-file workers so as to ensure support for sell-out deals.

A veteran worker at the FCA assembly plant in Windsor wrote to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “A number of people are concerned about the continued regression of our wages. The erosion of solidarity with the recent hires. The fear of the coronavirus. The lack of concern by the management and union for workers’ rights and safety. The list is a mile long.”

A recent retiree from the Oakville assembly plant added, “Bargaining for products and investments are not the focus of the majority of Canadian auto workers. And, as we saw from the last contract, future investment is never a guarantee to jobs. We were promised a $1 billion investment this year. Over the years we have given up raises, vacation pay, sick leave, and benefits for product allocation and investment. These companies will renege on these two issues if they can profit from it.”

The worker also addressed the corruption of the UAW, which he insisted is not an exception but the rule. “The thought of these guys selling us out for personal gain has also been a topic of discussion at ratification during the last 4 contract ratification meetings,” wrote the worker. “I was not surprised when the UAW leadership was indicted.”

Collapse in oil prices threatens social and political unrest in Middle East and North Africa

Jean Shaoul

The collapse in oil prices earlier in the year, along with cuts in oil production and the world-wide recession following the COVID-19 pandemic, is having a devastating impact on economic and social conditions in the oil-producing countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The repercussions spread far beyond the oil producers’ borders.

Oil prices, which started the year at around $60 a barrel—nearly half that of a decade ago—fell to $40 in March and plummeted into negative territory before rising again to around $40 a barrel in recent weeks. This year, oil revenues are expected to be around $300 billion, down from $575 billion in 2019 and more than $1 trillion in 2012.

While oil production may just be profitable at $40 a barrel, none of the Arab states except Qatar can balance their budgets at this level. The worst affected, Algeria and Oman, need prices to rise to $157 and $87 a barrel, respectively. Even the largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, which relies on oil for 70 percent of its budget, needs $80 a barrel to balance its books.

In June, the International Monetary Fund estimated that the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar—would shrink by 7.6 percent this year, while Iraq’s economy is expected to contract by 7.5 percent and Iran’s by 6 percent, on top of a 7.6 percent decline in 2019 and 5.4 percent in 2018 due to Washington’s unilateral pull-out from the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Since March, the Arab petro-states have slashed public expenditure—including the salaries of public sector workers, who form 90 percent of regular, full-time workers—raised sales taxes and petrol prices, all of which have fallen hardest on the poor.

Subventions, which for the corporate sector have far exceeded any poverty relief measures, have been borrowed on the international money markets and are eating into foreign currency reserves. Even Saudi Arabia, which faces a budget deficit for 2020 equal to 16 percent of GDP, has only two years’ reserves left at current spending rates. More tax rises and privatisations are on the agenda, with its giant desalination plant, the world’s largest, up for sale.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation, known as Sabic, one of the world’s largest petrochemicals producers, lost $592 million in the second quarter of this year compared to a $570 billion profit in the same period last year, and is seeking to raise $1 billion via a bond issue.

The pandemic has also decimated all the sectors earmarked for diversification outside the oil industry: aviation—in particular, the airlines Etihad and Emirates—tourism, hospitality, real estate and logistics. While the annual Haj and Umrah to Mecca brought in 2.6 million pilgrims last year, this year’s cancellation of the pilgrimages is expected to result in losses of some $15 billion. Iraq’s religious sites have been similarly affected.

Unemployment is expected to rise to 13 percent in Saudi Arabia, where it is estimated that around 20 percent of its 34 million population already live in poverty, as it cuts back its social safety net.

The first and hardest hit have been the Gulf’s 30 million migrant workers from South Asia, the Philippines and the MENA region, who outnumber citizens in four of the six Gulf states. As restrictions and curfews made work all but impossible, many found themselves stranded.

Unable to return home due to travel restrictions, and in some cases, notably India, the refusal of their home country to accept them due to fears they would spread the coronavirus, they were left without income, often with months of wages owing. While companies were ordered to provide them with food and accommodation, no action was taken to ensure they complied, forcing migrant workers to depend on charities to survive. Without work, most have lost their health insurance, leaving them without medical care and medication.

Now, as international flights resume, some states have begun deporting foreign workers to their countries of origin. Many are refusing to leave without receiving their unpaid wages and end-of-service gratuity payment—part of their employment contract—that is usually around one month’s salary per year of employment.

Not only have migrant workers suffered appalling hardship during the lockdown, but they have also been unable to send home part of their wages in remittances to their families. Remittances constitute as much as 10 percent of GDP in several countries, with some of the worst affected in the Middle East, including the West Bank and Gaza (17 percent), Lebanon (14 percent), Yemen (13.7 percent) and Jordan (10 percent). The loss of remittances means the end of a vital lifeline for many.

As well as starting to deport migrant workers, most of the Gulf states are refusing to issue new work visas, as they implement long-planned “labour localisation” programmes and cut back on public sector jobs that have been the traditional source of employment for Gulf citizens.

This will have a major impact on neighbouring Arab countries. More than 2.5 million Egyptians, or nearly 3 percent of the total population, 5 percent of Lebanese and Jordanian workers and 9 percent of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, work in the rich oil-producing states. If they can continue to work in the Gulf, it will be at lower rates of pay. If not, they will be back home in countries with some of the highest rates of unemployment and lowest pay in the world, particularly among young graduates. To cite one example, doctors earn $185 a month in Egypt, a fraction of what they earn in the Gulf.

The downturn in the Gulf states’ economies will mean fewer imports from their neighbours and fewer jobs. About 21 percent of Egypt’s exports went to the Gulf, 32 percent of Jordan’s and 38 percent of Lebanon’s. The pandemic and the recession have also affected regional tourism, which constituted 10 percent of GDP in Egypt and Jordan, and 18 percent in Lebanon in 2018. While most visitors come from Europe, Gulf tourists stay longer and spend more as they seek to avoid the crushing summer heat at home.

Oil revenues enabled the Gulf monarchies to placate sections of the working class at home and shore up suitably subservient ruling elites elsewhere as they suppressed their own working class, via grants and loans—particularly following the Arab Spring in 2011 that saw mass protests across the region against social inequality and hated governments.

For years, Saudi Arabia acted as banker of last resort for Jordan and Lebanon, until their foreign policies diverged from Riyadh’s. Together with the UAE, in 2013 it provided $30 billion in aid to Egypt’s brutal dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (although its largesse evaporated after el-Sisi declined to send troops to fight in Yemen), and $3 billion to the new military-dominated regime in Sudan, while Qatar has provided aid for Hamas in Gaza. That generosity is not set to continue.

Ordinary people will be made to pay for the economic crisis accelerated by the pandemic. Mass unemployment, the gutting of welfare systems, such as they are, and a stepped-up assault on wages and conditions flow inexorably from the government handouts to the region’s kleptocrats.

Economic developments in the Middle East’s richest countries testify to the interconnectedness of the world economy and presage a mounting social catastrophe that will provoke a new revolutionary upsurge of workers throughout the region.

In the last year, there has been a fresh wave of working-class struggles across the region, including strikes and mass protests in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, public service workers’ strikes in Israel and mass teacher strikes in Jordan. These must be elevated into a conscious struggle for socialism that brings together all sections of the working class in each country, across the region, and throughout the world against capitalism for the socialist reorganisation of society.