Thursday, February 17, 2011
American prophet Gene Sharp moves Egypt to democracy
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
You may wonder why so much attention to Egypt in this midtown New York publication, but then we are all interested in the revolt’s impact on Israel’s future. During the first of the 18 days of The Egyptian revolution many of us may have scratched our heads, asking whether US government was pro or con in regard to this worthy effort to democratize the Mideast, ruled since WWI by autocratic Sunni sheiks, unified mostly in their opposition to Israel and to the Shiite Persians of Iran. The Obama missions were taking ambivalent positions, some pro-Israel oriented and favoring the Mubarak status quo, others showing outright revolutionary democrat postures.
It might have helped us to know what became public knowledge in the last few days, that an American prophet of nonviolent establishment of democracy, in the spirit of Henry D. Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, a Harvard professor of 30 years, Gene Sharp, was behind the scenes. In 1983 he designed a Cold War defense oriented Nonviolent Sanctions Program designed for Europe, in case the Warsaw Pact armies were to take over the more vulnerable East European countries. It was for the Center of International Studies at Harvard, although concurrently he also organized an NGO, the Albert Einstein Institution in Boston, to further his studies. Funded by the U.S. Institute for Peace, in 1987 it started it conducting seminars in non-violent actions. In 1993 Gene Sharp, sometimes called the Machiavelli of passive resistance, wrote his 77-page bible, From Dictatorship to Democracy, a manual in nonviolence, at the request of a democratic Burmese newspaper publisher. It was printed and stapled in booklets in Bangkok, in two languages. The book was considered so incendiary by the military Burmese government that mere possession would cause the owner’s imprisonment for seven years. It is now in its fifth edition, 90-some easy to digest pages, and lists nearly 200 specific non-violent protest actions, economic and government targeted.
It was next translated into Indonesian, then Serbian, and, eventually, in 23 languages, including Farsi. The small Institution, originally employing up to a dozen people, in 2010 was down to two, in a two-room apartment in a working-class Boston area, with a budget of $150,000, when Gene Sharp was named by the Iranian and Venezuelan governments as the central figure in pushing for overthrow of the Iranian rulers, and studied extensively,, unraveling the Institution's Cold War era CIA connections. The Institution indeed advised anticommunist movements; in Taiwan it helped the Progressive Democratic independence party, in Tibet the Dalai Lama organization, and in Palestine tried to help form a faction within PLO that would discourage terrorism. In Serbia it trained a group of Slobodan Milosevic’s young opponents, Otpor (“Resistance”) and apparently managed the overthrow of his dictatorship; Milosevic resigned in 2000. There were further involvements in the Baltic States and Russia before the collapse of the USSR.
Moving on to the Mideast and Egypt connections, the student group called the April 4 Youth Movement, first formed in 2005 and led by Ahmed Maher, a young engineer in a political movement called Kefaya (“Enough”), became mired in the old ineffective opposition parties. By 2008, after a labor strike in March, in Malhalla, they revived, as a Facebook coordinated group. Meanwhile in Tunisia another labor strike against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took place, coordinated via Facebook, and about that time the April 6 group discovered Gene Sharp’s writings, found them well fitted to Arab countries, and got in touch with the Otpor in Serbia, traveling there to study democratic revolutionary techniques. Another influence in Qatar, Egyptian émigrés and Sharp’s adepts, called the Academy of Change, helped the Cairo group organize. In 2010 another Facebook group, led by a young Google marketing executive, Wael Ghonim, and named We Are All Khalid Said, to honor a young victim of police brutality, continued organizing, all in context with the Tunisian labor groups, who had a successful revolution on January 14. There were contacts with Nobelist El-Baradei’s group, also the older political parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the Day of Rage, January 28, in Tahrir Square, the April 6 leaders, helped by Tunisians, Otpor people, the Qatar group and local businessmen, were holding on, while the Obama emissaries worked on President Mubarak (who was pushed into non-resignation by his son Gamal Mubarak, an ex- banker hoping to inherit the dictatorship, despite being unacceptable by the party), until success came. President Obama and the State Department people had to satisfy Mideast governments of PM Netanyahu in Israel, PM Recep Tayyib Erdogan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and other leaders of the Maghreb, who advised support of Hosni Mubarak, for political balance in the region. Meanwhile Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Islamic Republic of Iran was violently suppressing his dissidents, at the same time loudly applauding the Egyptians and courting their support for his Hezbollah organization in Lebanon and Gaza.
Although the Mideast is in more turmoil – protesters in Yemen, Bahrain, teargas in Iran, cabinet change in Jordan – there appears hope in all this highly secular shift to democracy that the perpetual warring around Israel may end in our lifetime, particularly if US continues its monetary supports to Egypt (sans the rip-off). Let us hope.
Wally Dobelis thanks the NYTimes and Internet sources. You can read Gene Sharp’s manual by googling the Albert Einstein Institution.
You may wonder why so much attention to Egypt in this midtown New York publication, but then we are all interested in the revolt’s impact on Israel’s future. During the first of the 18 days of The Egyptian revolution many of us may have scratched our heads, asking whether US government was pro or con in regard to this worthy effort to democratize the Mideast, ruled since WWI by autocratic Sunni sheiks, unified mostly in their opposition to Israel and to the Shiite Persians of Iran. The Obama missions were taking ambivalent positions, some pro-Israel oriented and favoring the Mubarak status quo, others showing outright revolutionary democrat postures.
It might have helped us to know what became public knowledge in the last few days, that an American prophet of nonviolent establishment of democracy, in the spirit of Henry D. Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, a Harvard professor of 30 years, Gene Sharp, was behind the scenes. In 1983 he designed a Cold War defense oriented Nonviolent Sanctions Program designed for Europe, in case the Warsaw Pact armies were to take over the more vulnerable East European countries. It was for the Center of International Studies at Harvard, although concurrently he also organized an NGO, the Albert Einstein Institution in Boston, to further his studies. Funded by the U.S. Institute for Peace, in 1987 it started it conducting seminars in non-violent actions. In 1993 Gene Sharp, sometimes called the Machiavelli of passive resistance, wrote his 77-page bible, From Dictatorship to Democracy, a manual in nonviolence, at the request of a democratic Burmese newspaper publisher. It was printed and stapled in booklets in Bangkok, in two languages. The book was considered so incendiary by the military Burmese government that mere possession would cause the owner’s imprisonment for seven years. It is now in its fifth edition, 90-some easy to digest pages, and lists nearly 200 specific non-violent protest actions, economic and government targeted.
It was next translated into Indonesian, then Serbian, and, eventually, in 23 languages, including Farsi. The small Institution, originally employing up to a dozen people, in 2010 was down to two, in a two-room apartment in a working-class Boston area, with a budget of $150,000, when Gene Sharp was named by the Iranian and Venezuelan governments as the central figure in pushing for overthrow of the Iranian rulers, and studied extensively,, unraveling the Institution's Cold War era CIA connections. The Institution indeed advised anticommunist movements; in Taiwan it helped the Progressive Democratic independence party, in Tibet the Dalai Lama organization, and in Palestine tried to help form a faction within PLO that would discourage terrorism. In Serbia it trained a group of Slobodan Milosevic’s young opponents, Otpor (“Resistance”) and apparently managed the overthrow of his dictatorship; Milosevic resigned in 2000. There were further involvements in the Baltic States and Russia before the collapse of the USSR.
Moving on to the Mideast and Egypt connections, the student group called the April 4 Youth Movement, first formed in 2005 and led by Ahmed Maher, a young engineer in a political movement called Kefaya (“Enough”), became mired in the old ineffective opposition parties. By 2008, after a labor strike in March, in Malhalla, they revived, as a Facebook coordinated group. Meanwhile in Tunisia another labor strike against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took place, coordinated via Facebook, and about that time the April 6 group discovered Gene Sharp’s writings, found them well fitted to Arab countries, and got in touch with the Otpor in Serbia, traveling there to study democratic revolutionary techniques. Another influence in Qatar, Egyptian émigrés and Sharp’s adepts, called the Academy of Change, helped the Cairo group organize. In 2010 another Facebook group, led by a young Google marketing executive, Wael Ghonim, and named We Are All Khalid Said, to honor a young victim of police brutality, continued organizing, all in context with the Tunisian labor groups, who had a successful revolution on January 14. There were contacts with Nobelist El-Baradei’s group, also the older political parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the Day of Rage, January 28, in Tahrir Square, the April 6 leaders, helped by Tunisians, Otpor people, the Qatar group and local businessmen, were holding on, while the Obama emissaries worked on President Mubarak (who was pushed into non-resignation by his son Gamal Mubarak, an ex- banker hoping to inherit the dictatorship, despite being unacceptable by the party), until success came. President Obama and the State Department people had to satisfy Mideast governments of PM Netanyahu in Israel, PM Recep Tayyib Erdogan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and other leaders of the Maghreb, who advised support of Hosni Mubarak, for political balance in the region. Meanwhile Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Islamic Republic of Iran was violently suppressing his dissidents, at the same time loudly applauding the Egyptians and courting their support for his Hezbollah organization in Lebanon and Gaza.
Although the Mideast is in more turmoil – protesters in Yemen, Bahrain, teargas in Iran, cabinet change in Jordan – there appears hope in all this highly secular shift to democracy that the perpetual warring around Israel may end in our lifetime, particularly if US continues its monetary supports to Egypt (sans the rip-off). Let us hope.
Wally Dobelis thanks the NYTimes and Internet sources. You can read Gene Sharp’s manual by googling the Albert Einstein Institution.
Labels: Ahmed Maher, C.I.A.Albert Einstein Institution, CIA, el Baradai, Eugene Sharp, Facebook, Fron Dictator to Democracy, Gene Sharp, Kefaya, Mubarak, Otpor, Serbia, Wail Ghonim
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:47 AM 
