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Crisis and struggle in the Middle East |
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1/9/2009 1:29:06 AM |
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The hike in food prices was causing great pain in much of the Middle East even before the worldwide economic meltdown began. Prices skyrocketed not just due to inflation, but also due to the U.S. government policy of paying farmers not to grow wheat in order to raise prices and from U.S. agribusiness taking wheat off the international market and directing production toward biofuels.
In Egypt–a U.S wheat importer–major bread shortages in April 2008 and rising food prices provoked large-scale strikes and demonstrations. Strikes and job actions in Egypt doubled from 2006 to 2007, fueled by food price hikes and 12 percent inflation.
Poor people in Yemen are spending more than a quarter of their income on bread. Police have attacked food protests in Tunisia and Morocco. Even in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, boycott campaigns have protested the high cost of food and other staples.
To understand the impact of the world economic crisis in the Middle East, let’s start with Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. This center of banking and commerce experienced a real estate boom unprecedented in Middle East history.
In a few years it became a sparkling city of high-rises–not for the Arab or East Asian workers who worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week building them–but for Western business interests operating there tax-free.
When the world stock markets crashed in October, the Persian Gulf countries lost $160 billion in one week. The Emirates injected $32 billion into the banking system, with other Gulf states following suit.
Dubai’s construction boom was all based on borrowing. Dubai’s debt was 100 percent of its gross national product. It needed an injection of capital from the Emirates to keep its banks afloat.
The real estate boom in the Gulf came to a halt. Add to this the declining price of oil, the flight of foreign capital and dwindling tourism, and one sees the effect of the economic crisis on the richest Arab countries.
The oil-rich countries of the Gulf are economic lifelines for financially-strapped Middle Eastern countries. The slowdown in the Gulf countries felt like a crash in places like Egypt, Jordan and Syria where Gulf money has helped prop up strained economies. (New York Times, Oct. 28)
Egypt receives about half of its $6 billion in annual remittances from 2 million Egyptians living and working in the Gulf. Jordan receives about $2 billion annually in remittances from its workers in the Persian Gulf, and Syria has a million workers there. These jobs no longer exist.
Anti-imperialist sentiment is always high in the Middle East. Now, with the economic crisis, we can expect more struggles in the Middle East. While we can’t predict what form these struggles will take, we must be ready to defend our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters. Their struggle will be distorted here by the lens of anti-Arab, anti-Iranian, anti-Muslim and racist invective, in order to obscure the just nature of the struggle. |
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Source: Workers.org |
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