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He wrote in a poem:
Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains.
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions
Arab Children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are the generation that will overcome defeat
It has been 44 years since Qabbani wrote this inspirational poem and the US-led Western alliance has plundered, ruined and raped the Arab world, creating this patchwork political landscape of “client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, imperial petrol stations, a.k.a the Gulf States,” to quote author Tariq Ali.

The legacy of Anglo-French colonialism in the Arab world is no kinder to the slavery and genocidal conquest by the same people in Africa for the former, and in Australia and the United States for the later.
The Arab World became a target of complex imperial transition after World War II.
The United States took over the control of the region from the diminishing British Empire.
The result was an impressive radical anti-colonial Arab nationalism on one hand, and a deplorable Western-inspired Zionist expansionism on the other.
This, of course, was all in the context of the wider framework of the Cold War, a time when Moscow’s socialist influence had a tremendous grip on the majority of former Western colonies in Africa, the Middle East, and in Latin America.

After the Cold War, the US assumed control of the Middle East, creating numerous client states controlled by pliant potentates, a strategy Washington and its Western allies have employed successfully in African countries like Burkina Faso, Congo, Banda’s Malawi, Uganda, and lately in Libya.
The strategy has been ruthlessly thwarted in Zimbabwe, at least for now; reversed in Zambia, and is being experimented with in South Africa, where the West hopes to tame the incumbent into a pliant puppet.
South Africa’s hands are already dripping with the blood of innocent Libyans after his treacherous vote for UN Resolution 1973, the pretext upon which Libya was destroyed and plundered by the West.

For Zimbabwe, the US-led Western aggressors still hope they can set the populace against the anti-colonial nationalist Zanu-PF party, or prop up MDC-T’s scandalous and ill-educated Morgan Tsvangirai, the shameless West’s puppet politician; or in the worst case scenario, engineer scapegoat street protests that would allow a Libya like NATO invasion.
All the options are a tall order in a country whose security forces treat foreign political meddling as a legitimate provocation to war, and justifiably so.
The national sentiment is generally anti-West and anti-imperialism as well, and that is across the political divide.

After the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the bigheadedness of Western-sponsored Iraq dictator, Saddam Hussein, it became increasingly difficult for the West to rely on puppet politicians and client states, especially in the Arab world.
Washington resorted more to establishment of military bases and direct military occupation, like the just-ended nine-year military occupation of Iraq, or the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan. The opening months of 2011 were a false realisation of Nizar Qabbani’s dream.
It all appeared like the Arab world was awakening to regain its lost pride once again.

It all started with shouts of “Al-Sha’byuridisquat al-nizam!” – “The people want the downfall of the regime,” in the streets of Tunis.
There were images of raucous calls for true freedom and democracy, streaming out from Tunis to Cairo, Saana to Bahrain, Libya to Yemen, and in occupied Iraq, where demonstrators took to the streets against the corruption of the Maliki regime.
Jordan was shaken by nationwide strikes, determined fighters for democracy called for the overthrow of the Bahraini monarchy, and Syria’s Baathist regime was under siege by protesting Syrians.

Saudi Arabia was on high alert to thwart any threat to the Saudi monarchy. Attempts by the West to light the fires in Tehran flopped, but they were published.
On January 14, chanting crowds converging at Tunisia’s Ministry of the Interior got puppet president Ben Ali and his family fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
This was followed by the toppling of another Western puppet on February 11, and that was Egypt’sHosni Mubarak. Protests in Libya and Yemen did not seem like they were strong enough to topple the regimes in the respective countries, especially the seemingly indomitable Jamahiriya of Muammar Gaddafi.

The triumvirate France, US and the UK brazenly joined in the seemingly harmless protest, escalated the conflict to a fully-fledged brutal civil war, of course armed with the South African and Nigerian-backed UN Resolution 1973, and Libya was burning before Gaddafi could say “rat”.
The US was at the same time arming Saudi Arabian military invaders so they could ruthlessly thwart the uprising in Bahrain, where the fall of the monarchy was going to result in the loss of a trusted potentate.
US troops were also actively involved in cracking down on protesters in Iraq, where another puppet was under threat for corrupt rule.

On October 22, 2011 Muammar Gaddafi was captured by US special forces, assisted by Western-sponsored Libyan rebels, after his convoy had first been bombed by US drones, before being decimated to smithereens by French stealth bombers. Immediately after the capture, Gaddafi was callously executed in broad daylight, and Hilary Clinton was beamed heartily laughing and enjoying every bit of the proceedings.
The determinants for the uprisings in the Arab world were economic, especially in Tunisia and Egypt; where rising unemployment, escalating prices, and scarcity of essential commodities were a real issue of concern.

They were also political, especially in Libya, where allegations of cronyism, corruption, repression, torture, and lack of transparency were quite strong, especially from members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) from Benghazi, itself a long time affiliate of al-Qaeda, Osama’s terrorist organisation.
US Vice President Joe Bidden indicated that his major worry was Egypt and Saudi Arabia, of course the real worry being Israel’s fate in the event of regime change in Egypt or of the fall of the Saudi monarchy in Saudi Arabia.

The US fears a democratic Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt could be out of control and renege on the so-called “Peace Treaty,” whose sole purpose is the isolation and extermination of Palestinian people.
After the fall of Mubarak, Washington craftily hijacked the Egyptian revolution and re-routed the political process into a carefully orchestrated change from above, led by Mubarak’s Defence Minister MohamadHussainTantawi, a long-time ally of the Pentagon.

Just like the bulk of Libya’s puppet TNC is made up of former Gaddafi officials, the Egyptian Military Council is also largely made up of members of the Mubarak regime.
While the CIA and MOSSAD are busy engaging in desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Military Council is trying to silence protesting Egyptians, and to put a stop to labour mobilisations. The idea is to ensure that there is no serious shift in Egypt’s relations with Israel.
The Arab Spring has not really translated into high-powered social movements capable of producing new political organisations that triumph at the polls along the lines of the South American model.

The last thing the US and its Western allies would want is another round of leftist leaders in the mould of Bolivia’s Evo Morales, or Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez-not in the Middle East. This is why efforts to roll back the mass movements are in earnest progress right now.
The affection for democracy in Libya did not extend to any other country in the Arab region.

In the name of pre-empting a massacre whose possibility was never proven or verified, NATO massacred at least 50 000 innocent Libyan civilians, and the aggression transformed the duplicitous Gaddafi into a respected “anti-imperialist,” despite his publicly known cosy relationship with Italy’s Berlusconi and Britain’s Tony Blair.
He was murdered in undeserved honour of a matyre.

In Bahrain, the US green-lighted a brutal Saudi military intervention to preserve a hated despot, crush the movement for democracy, enhance religious sectarianism, and organise secret executions of protestors.
If Gaddafi was as reliable and predictable as the Bahraini monarchy, he would have been allowed to carry out any crack down of his choice against the Al-Qaeda affiliates that engineered the Benghazi protests.
He blundered in assuming that the US and the West would never fight alongside Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda.

Given a choice between an unreliable and unpredictable Gaddafi, and the amateurish Al-Qaeda affiliates ready to die toppling Gaddafi, the West opted to join the Al-Qaeda rebels in fighting down Gaddafi’s rule, mostly to secure full control of Libya’s huge oil reserves, and also to thwart Gaddafi’s economic and political ambitions in Africa, especially the idea of the United States of Africa.
The opposition in Syria has openly denounced any prospect of Western military intervention in the ongoing struggle against the Baathist outfit ruling there. Iraq and Libya have been disastrous enough to enlighten would be admirers.

But not all people in the developing world are as discerning as the Syrians. There are hopelessly delusional Zimbabweans with a dangerously narrow sense of perception that leads them not only to celebrate and admire the sad chapter of what has become known as the “Arab Spring,” but also to ignorantly rhapsodise about the vainglorious possibility of a Harare bombing by Western warplanes and American drones.
MDC-T sees this prospect as its roadmap to power should their scandalous and absolutely shallow leader fail to secure undeserved victory at the polls.

Why a party that openly advocates for imperial aggression as a form of intervention in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe should ever be allowed to exist is a wonder that defies democratic logic.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome! It is homeland or death!

• Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.