An international anti-war conference in Cairo ended this week with a call for domestic reform. Gihan Shahine reports Perhaps it was not totally ironic that the third international Cairo Anti-War Conference ended on the same day that dozens of members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood were arrested for organising a peaceful protest calling for constitutional reforms and the lifting of Egypt's 24-year-old state of emergency. For four days, almost 1,000 Egyptian, Arab and international activists representing anti-war and anti- globalisation movements, had been arguing that the liberation of Palestine and Iraq should start with changing undemocratic regimes in the Arab world. Moments of silence was thus equally dedicated to the martyrs in Iraq and Palestine and victims of prison torture, including Naffisa El-Marakbi, a peasant who died two days after her release from a prison in the Delta village of Sarandu. The conference ended on Sunday with a peaceful protest in front of the Press Syndicate where demonstrators, under the watchful eye of anti-riot police, denounced the US and Britain and chanted the anti-regime slogans of the Kefaya (Enough) movement which has been campaigning against a fifth term for President Hosni Mubarak or a transfer of power to his son Gamal. That integration of domestic and international agendas was, perhaps, what most differentiated this year's conference, organised by the International Campaign Against American and Zionist Occupations, from previous gatherings held in Cairo in 2002 and 2003. During the conference, hundreds of activists from 25 countries, representing various anti-war and anti- globalisation movements, gathered at the Press Syndicate in Cairo in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance, and opposition to all forms of globalisation, imperialism and Zionism. Activists from Islamist, secular, communist and socialist currents from across the globe sat together sharing their views, and absorbed in friendly conversation. Leith Shobailat, chairman of a non- governmental Jordanian association for fighting Zionism and racism, told Al-Ahram Weekly that such unity was symptomatic of "a growing global recognition that colonisation, imperialism and Zionism are all faces of the same coin." Shobailat added, "Activists in anti-globalisation movements are now joining forces with those supporting resistance in Palestine and Iraq because the two groups now realise that one battle cannot be won without the other." According to comparative literature professor Abdel-Wahab El-Missiri, the author of many works on Zionism and Jewish thought, globalisation is no more than a US dynamic for hegemony. "Globalisation reduces people into consumptive beings with no identity or history," El-Missiri told the Weekly. "It is no wonder that the proponents of globalisation are also those who invaded Pakistan and Iraq, and blindly support the Israeli occupation of Palestine." That rhetoric provided a new dimension to resistance in Iraq and Palestine as "the front-line" of fighting against imperialism and globalisation. According to John Rose, author of Myths of Zionism, "the Palestinian flag has come to symbolise the dispossession of the poor peoples of the world. "The flag adorns the great anti- globalisation and anti-war mass demonstrations on every continent," Rose said. The general mood of the conference was one of defiance, where passionate speeches inspired a general spirit of hope and enthusiasm. John Riss, from the UK-based Stop the War Coalition, boasted of the fact that the global anti- war movement had forced many countries, including Holland, Poland, Hungary and Spain -- and perhaps now Italy -- to withdraw their troops from Iraq. "The American coalition started with 30 countries. It now has only 15 left," Riss said. "They are in trouble. They are on the defensive. We are stronger now in the third Cairo conference than we were in the first." But there was also general consensus that resistance was the only way to liberate Palestine and Iraq. Most delegates seemed to share British MP George Galloway's opinion that US troops in Iraq would be destroyed between "the hammer of the anti-war movement and the anvil of resistance." "They [US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair] say that resistance groups in Iraq and Palestine are terrorists," Lindsey German, from Stop the War, said. "But Nelson Mandela was called a terrorist." Those passionate speeches, according to El-Missiri, "provide an essential counter perspective to the defeatist official discourse which regards armed struggle as detrimental to the peace process when resistance is actually forcing an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza." Rose explained how the Oslo agreement has "dragged [Palestinians] into yet another round of phony peace- making," resulting in doubling the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank from 200,000 to over 400,000 between 1993 and 2000. And, according to Rose, the right of return of Palestinian refugees was deliberately sabotaged. Essam Noman, a former minister and a member of the international campaign for the support of Palestine in Lebanon, argued that the Iraqi resistance had caused the US more harm than what is being officially announced. "The US says it needs 127,000 soldiers to have peace in Iraq; today it has only 7,000-11,000 left," Noman said. "The US is becoming broke. The superpower is growing into a sick giant." Sheikh Hassan Al-Zorqani, of the Sadri Shia resistance movement in Iraq, told the Weekly that the Iraqi resistance "still has a long way to go before it liberates Iraq." He expressed enthusiasm, however, that the conference gives him "a platform to clear misconceptions about resistance." Mohamed Nazzal, a leading member in Hamas, similarly vowed that the Palestinian resistance would persist as "the only way we can liberate our lands." Nazzal explained that the truce the group announced in a recent Palestinian faction meeting in Egypt was only meant as "a halt, a fighter's rest, and a space to re-organise the Palestinian house." Palestine and Iraq, however, were generally perceived as only first steps in the Greatest US Middle East project. The dominant rhetoric was that every inch of the Arab world was at stake, with Egypt as America's biggest prize. And, of course, the Syria-Lebanon issue was a prominent item on the agenda. "They [the US and Israel] are already occupying so much of the Arab world," Galloway said. "If they come to the occupation of Lebanon and Syria, there will be nothing left of the Arab world." Many activists openly condemned what was termed "US hypocrisy," demanding Syria end its military presence in Lebanon while Israel has been occupying the Golan Heights for more than 30 years and Palestine for over half a century. But Galloway also had some harsh words for Arab rulers for "lining up to do [President] George Bush's bidding". "They [Arab rulers] are trying to destroy Syria because it is an Arab country which still has some dignity, which refuses to surrender to Israel," Galloway said. Participants seemed to vent their ire equally on demonising the US and Britain on the one hand, and complacent Arab regimes and European governments on the other. Democracy seemed to be a common topic in the critique of Arab, US and British policies. "What kind of democracy is it in Britain when British soldiers torture prisoners in Iraq and nobody puts them on trial for what they've done? When most people want Britain out of Iraq and there are 9,000 soldiers there," Galloway said. On the Arab side, Shobailat insisted people cannot support the Iraqi and Palestinian resistance unless they "topple despotic and tyrannical regimes and replace them with democratic governments." Which stands at the core of the Egyptian reform movements Kefaya and the 20 March for change. "We've had enough, 24 years under emergency law, enough torture in prison, enough poverty, unemployment, corruption, tyranny and despotism," socialist activist Kamal Khalil said. "The liberation of Jerusalem starts with the liberation of people here in Cairo."
