Translated "Avante!" Article by Albano Nunes, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee
All was done to it be ignored from memory, but, impelled by the popular rise, in progress, throughout the Arab world and irrigated by bloodshed, reality prevailed, and together with it, an extraordinary achievement, on the ideological level.
The Arab world has its own history. Within the Middle East, great civilizations were born and scientific and technical development, as well as the great Culture and Art achievements, owe a lot to the Arab and Islamic world, just as ourselves, the Portuguese. During their struggle for their liberation from the colonial power and the edification of independent states, the Arab peoples wrote pages of great heroism, suffering huge sacrifices before the occupant powers’ brutal repression, which had its cruellest expression with the OAS terrorist action, during the war in Algeria (1954/62). The Arab peoples national liberation movement met a first great advance under the October Revolution. It defeated the agreement between France and Great-Britain in order to share the Ottoman Empire despoilments, in Machrek (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon…) and following the II World War spread unto the Maghreb and throughout the entire Arab world.
Following in succession, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria won their independence. In Egypt, Nasser’s “free officers”, overthrew Faruk’s pro- “western” monarchy (in 1952), the Suez canal is nationalized and confront the Israeli-French- British aggression, became allied to the USSR against economical sabotage and imperialism interference. Along with the important collaboration of strong communist parties and together with the example and help of the socialist field, important anti-capitalist changes take place within several countries - as in Iraq, during the 1969 revolution, with the presence of a PCP’s delegation, on its tenth anniversary - and processes towards socialism developed, as within South Yemen, a country visited by Comrade Alvaro Cunhal in 1980.
Meanwhile imperialism, openly interfering in the new states’ home affairs and exploiting the process’ difficulties and contradictions, has achieved to hold back and defeat this first great liberating wave and, supported on Zionism, Arab reactionaries and plotters bourgeoisies, together with the most fanatical and obscurantist religious sectors, restored their power within almost the whole Arab region, swarming it with military bases and smothering the Palestine national cause. Israel and Egypt have been, this domain’s major pillars since Camp David (1979).
Islam’s diabolizing, the “Islamic terrorism” phantom, xenophobia’s and racism’s stimulus towards Muslin origin and culture immigrants, fascist ideology inherent to the “ civilization shock” theory, have only been a smoke screen in order to conceal the transnational capital’s re-colonizing violent offensive, concealing the class struggle reality, making Portuguese and other countries’ workers believe they are isolated within the hard struggle they lay hold of, in the defence of the threatened historical rights and achievements, when in reality, the concern is otherwise, as capitalism development and the deepening of its systemic crisis, aim to approach much more the workers’ class struggles, the workers and the oppressed peoples throughout the world.
The workers’ and peoples’ national and social emancipation process is irregular and uneven. Following a first wave of democratic national revolutions and even of socialist direction attempts, the Arab peoples rose again towards their political, social and national rights. Whatever will be the next developments, the situation within the Arab world shall never again be the same. The extraordinary demonstrations on the rejection of the existent state of things, national dignity and yearning for freedom and social justice, will deeply mark the Arab peoples’ long walk towards their national and social emancipation. The struggle and the sacrifice of those who fell, shall not be in vain.
