ISRAELI CINEMA WARILY MEETS REALITY PAGE 14

SEPTEMBER 2006

Cuba

after

Fidel

BY MAURICE LEMOINE

A WORLD OF CONFLICT SINCE 9/11

Lebanon: no

civil war

this time

FIDEL CASTRO, who was about to

undergo an operation, transferred his constitutional responsibilities as

president of Cuba on 31 July to a team of seven, including his brother Raul. The

world held its breath and thousands of exiled Cubans in Miami celebrated the illness and

even the death of the “tyrant”. The Florida-based Cuban American

National Foundation, which had supported the invasion of Iraq in April 2003 on the prin

ciple of “Iraq today, tomorrow Cuba”, immediately called for a civil or military uprising to

overthrow the regime in Havana. President George Bush assured the population of Cuba

on 2 August that the United States would support them in any eff orts to establish a transi

tional government committed to democracy (1): this was a threat to anyone who might

support the present regime and oppose the US defi nition of a “Free Cuba”.

The uprising was supposed to be a historic event in which chaos would reign and hun

dreds of thousands of Cubans would take to the streets demanding freedom. But the days

went by and there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. True, whether or not Castro

takes the helm again, the scene has been set for the debate on what comes next: succession

or transition. He has been in solo power for 47 years and there is certainly some dissatisfac

tion and opposition. There are people who do not support his revolution and who may even

be against it. Shortages, bureaucracy, loss of freedoms (speech, free association, the right

of assembly), imprisonment of opponents: all these are real shortcomings in Cuba. They are

widely condemned. Some commentators have pointed out that

the US has mounted many invasion, assassination and sabotage attempts involving Cuba

since 1959 and that its trade embargo has crippled Cuba’s economy. Others argue that these

are merely excuses, as though history could be divided into watertight compartments and

present problems had nothing to do with past interference.

In 2005 Washington appointed a Cuba transition coordinator, Caleb McCarry, who

had previously served in Afghanistan. On 10 July this year, the commission for assistance

to a free Cuba, co-chaired by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary

of commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, issued a report stressing the urgency of working “to ensure

that the Castro regime’s succession strategy does not succeed”.

The report promised $80m for US aid to Cuba, adding that these resources would be

passed directly to dissidents, who will be trained and supplied with equipment. This is

both brazen interference in Cuban internal

EDITIONS CERCLE D’ART

WIFREDO LAM: ‘The Brothers’ (1976)

aff airs and a sentence of doom for the Cuban

opposition. As the president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, points out, as long

as this policy is pursued there will be Cubans involved in plotting with the US and accept

ing its money. He does not know any country where these would not be regarded as crimi

nal activities (2). The report notes that the “plan” con

tains an annexe that is secret for reasons of national security and to ensure its eff ective

implementation. When it come to the US’s secret measures, the history of the Americas

from Salvador Allende to Sandinista Nicaragua leaves little to the imagination.

However, leaving aside the self-proclaimed supporters of transition, a signifi cant propor

tion of other Cubans welcome the revolution’s advances in education, health and social serv

ices, and respect Fidel and his “old-timers”, plus the new young leaders who will be called

upon to carry on his work. Is Cuba as isolated from the world as some

have claimed? Africa and Asia have relations with Cuba, while the revolutionary changes

in Latin America have brought to power new heads of state who are better informed about

the real situation in Cuba and the reasons for its atypical combination of one-party system

and advanced social policies. Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and

Evo Morales of Bolivia have already taken steps to end Cuban isolation. Castro was

feted at the Mercosur summit at Cordoba in Argentina and on 21 July he signed an impor

tant trade agreement with the member states of this regional body, including Brazil and

Argentina. The agreement openly defi es the US trade embargo and pays homage to a small

country that refuses to bow to the greatest power in the world.

In shaping its own future, Cuba will seek examples and support in its relations with

the Mercosur zone, where people already talk about democratic and sovereign socialism for

the 21st century. Cuba will also draw on its own living resources. It will not look to the

US, which wants to add it to its list of colonies, or to Europe, which both lectures Cuba and

disdains it. TRANSLATED BY BARBARA WILSON

(1) Agence France Presse, 3 August 2006.

(2) BBC Mundo, London, 13 July 2006.

Israel has always feared Lebanon’s multi-confessional culture and wanted to break it up. But the latest attack, unlike earlier interventions and invasions, has so far failed to provoke internal confl ict.

BY GEORGES CORM

ISRAEL, as a “Jewish state”, to quote the

title of the book by Theodor Herzl who founded the Zionist Movement in 1897,

was in trouble from the start. It came up against a tradition of religious pluralism in

the Middle East that had held for more than 1,000 years, embracing Christian members

of the Eastern Church and Muslims (Sunni, Druze, Shia and Alawite). In Palestine,

Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, all the religious communities, including the Jewish

communities, lived in close juxtaposition (1). Any proposal to establish a state exclusively

for Jews in this pluralist environment was bound to encounter strong resistance.

The Christians in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria were fi rst to sound the alarm on the Arab

side. Early in the 20th century they realised the threat that such a state would represent: in

it, a community swollen by an infl ux of people from outside the region (Ashkenazi Jews fl ee

ing persecution in Russia and eastern Europe) would hold a monopoly on power. Eastern

Christians saw that the Zionist project, supported by the European colonial powers,

would inevitably be perceived as a crusade and as such would damage centuries of good

relations between Christians and Muslims in

Georges Corm is a former Lebanese minister of fi nance and author of ‘Le Proche-Orient éclaté, 1956-2006’ (Gallimard, Paris, 2006) and ‘Orient-Occident, la fracture imaginaire’ (La Découverte, Paris, 2005)

the Middle East. If the project were successful,

some members of the local Christian communities might seek to establish a Christian state,

on the principle that they had just as much right to do so as Jews from outside the region.

The Jewish settlers were inclined to regard the Christian minorities in the Middle East as

potential allies, even before the state of Israel was established. But they were disappointed.

The Christians in the Greater Lebanese state established under French mandate in 1919

remained mostly indiff erent. The Lebanese poet Charles Corm (who wrote in French)

called on Lebanon to return to its Phoenician roots: in this he was not seeking to follow the

Zionist pattern but to establish a modern form of Lebanese nationalism that would transcend

the divisions between Christians and Muslims. In the same period Egyptian nationalists

looked back to the age of the Pharaohs and the fi rst Iraqi nationalists invoked their glorious

Babylonian heritage. Michel Chiha, a brilliant and infl uential

Lebanese journalist who also wrote in French and loved France, constantly warned the Leb

anese against the destabilising eff ect that an Israeli state would have throughout the Mid

dle East. He foresaw that Lebanese pluralism would be attacked as the antithesis of Israeli

exclusiveness. Youakim Moubarac, a Maronite priest who wrote extensively about the dia

logue between Islam and Christianity and the

Continued on page 2

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Iraq: the various, diverse and

confl icting Shia factions page 3

Israel: can it face the failure of this

summer’s campaigns? page 4

Democracy: under threat from

PMs and presidents page 5

Afghanistan: the Taliban revives

and even expands page 6

Somalia: the CIA backs a successful

Islamist coup page 7

Venezuela: local government to

create popular revolution page 8

Guatemala: a culture of violence

with total impunity page 9

Poland: rightwing government,

migrating workforce page 12

India: the new best friend and trade

partner of the US page 14

A manifesto: slower food for a

better, sustainable future page 16