Globalising opposition

The newly-founded Arab Forum for Resisting Globalisation held its first conference in Beirut last weekend. The coming WTO meeting in Doha was a constant theme. Zeina Abu Rizk reports from Beirut
Last weekend, almost five hundred people took part in a two-day conference held in Beirut by the Arab Forum for Resisting Globalisation. Those who attended were treated to lectures on the role the Arab world can play in resisting globalisation, the impact of 11 September on anti-capitalist movements and a call to take action at the upcoming conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which takes place in Doha this month.
The organisers of the anti-globalisation conference, a group of Arab NGOs, held meetings last August and September in Beirut to prepare a new Arab and international movement against globalisation policies. Those meetings involved Lebanese and Palestinian activists in Lebanon, as well as activists from Iraq, Tunis, Morocco, and Sudan. As a result they founded the Arab Forum for Resisting Globalisation.
The forum's goal, as defined by its founders, is to create a permanent Arab network resisting globalisation. The network aims to coordinate the exchange of information and expertise among concerned groups in Arab countries. It will also liaise with the international anti-globalisation movement.
The forum also seeks to represent a unified Arab "voice" criticising globalisation from the standpoint of Arab world grievances.
The forum has already decided to act: one of its first engagements will be the WTO ministerial meeting in Doha. As a result of the Beirut conference, a forum sub- committee approved the tactic of holding popular meetings and sit-ins to protest globalisation, mentioning the Doha conference specifically. Rallies will also be organised to support Palestinians in South Lebanon.
The initial meeting of the new forum won interest from around the world, not just the region. Among the lecturers at the initial meeting was French farmer Jose Bove, who shot to fame by wrecking a McDonald's restaurant. Arab delegates came from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan and Palestine.
Bove's statements were particularly rousing. He said, "Popular demonstrations will be banned [in Doha], which is one of the reasons why it was chosen to host [the meeting]. Despite that, we will face the challenge and have a presence in Doha." He also applauded the involvement of the Arab world in the anti-globalisation movement.
Bove also discussed the challenges raised by globalisation in the wake of 11 September. "We cannot consider what happened on 11 September a setback to the anti- globalisation movement," Bove said. "But we can say that what happened...was one of the results of globalisation, in that it has ostracised large parts of humanity."
Bove then moved his thoughts to the region. He argued that "one of the first manifestations of globalisation was the war against Iraq and the siege imposed upon it."
He also accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) of being an instrument of globalisation. "It imposes the hegemony of certain states over other states. Those whose interests conflict with the interests of the United States get punished."
Bove then denounced Israel as a "bridge for neo-liberalism," saying his visit to the Palestinian territories last June had opened his eyes to the economic dimension of the conflict in the occupied territories.
Mufid Qteish, a founding member of the forum, spoke, too. He argued that the US has used the events of 11 September to inaugurate a campaign of revenge against the rest of the world. He said America was using international organisations, including the United Nations, to legitimise aggression.
"11 September will mark the beginning of a new, more dangerous and more sombre history," he said.
Qteish also discussed regional issues. Referring to both the Palestinian and Iraqi "tragedies," he said that in the Arab world "all types of oppression" take place, "including embargoes, the confiscation of resources, and an increase in the technological gap between countries here and the countries of the developed world."
Many speakers remarked that, wealth, not religion, was the main thing dividing peoples. Abu Ahmed Fouad, a member in Syria of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said globalisation "divides humanity into a great majority of poor, marginalised, and oppressed people on one hand, and a few capitalists on the other."
Dr Fawaz Trabulsi, speaking on behalf of the National Gathering for Salvation and Change, said the world was not divided between Islam and Christianity, but between "the rich and poor and the arrogant and the oppressed."
Bove concluded that "our slogan is that we must globalise the [anti-globalisation] struggle in order to globalise hope."
Meanwhile, opposition to the Doha meeting is coming from across the region, as well as Beirut. In Egypt, 355 intellectuals and other Egyptians signed a petition aimed at the WTO meeting in Doha. The petitioners expressed their opposition to "liberal globalisation in view of its violation of all peoples of the world and the pressures it exerts on governments to give up their social commitments to their citizens." The petition charged the WTO with being one of the organisations responsible for such policies.
It also warned that "the anti-globalisation movement all over the world is preparing for a new confrontation with the WTO [during its meeting in Doha]," hoping to cause the meeting to fail, as it managed at Seattle.
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