Yemen and civil community [Archives:2006/935/Opinion]
By: Abdulbari Taher
Yemen is a country with unique features and characteristics. Like other third world countries, according to researchers, Yemen never went through the five stages. It never knew a single line of human development stages, according to European centralization “Marxism.” As human development stages overlap, social partitions overlap within its social fabric. Class-consciousness is a distinctive feature in Yemen and no an evolutionary theory applies to it, nor is the European civil community easy to apply.
Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain remain closer to the interpretation of Marxist intellectual and innovator Intonyo Ghramshi in detecting the civil community's birth.
No one can argue that the European capitalist state was built by civil community organizations contrary to the modern state in the third world. In these countries, state is responsible for evaluating the civil community. Interpreting civil community organizations' experience in southern Yemen gives a clear image of society's emergence, development and roots.
During World War II, labor syndicates were formed at Aden and Al-Bureiqah refineries. These syndicates later improved and expanded until they became a main part of the political equation across the country. Labor syndicates played a wonderful role in establishing journalism and the political movement. The National United Front, following from these syndicates, has a pioneering role in unity work. Mohamed Abdu Nu'man is the group's chief.
Also, there are the National Socialist Union and the Arab Nationalist Movement whose roots extend to the six labor syndicates. Mohamed Muhsen Al-Aini was the laborers' representative in the Arab Labor Union. Martyrs Abdullah Abdulmajeed Al-Salafi and Hussein Al-Qadhi are two leading figures in the six syndicates.
These syndicates backed the national struggle for independence and defending the Yemeni September 26 and October 14 revolutions. In brief, the modern political movement, which is a main part of civil community organizations, is a testimony to the development of labor syndicates. Traditional parties like liberals and unity parties were isolated from the syndicate's movements.
Press freedom flourished, as the 1940s and late 1950s witnessed issuance of Al-Hikma Magazine, a pioneering intellectual, cultural and literary magazine founded to innovate various intellectual and creative areas. Dozens of newspapers were founded in Aden, the most important of which were Ganat Al-Jazeera, Sawt Al-Yemen and Al-Mustaqbal, to which intellectual Abdullah Abdurrazaq subscribed. Literary clubs, charitable societies and Al-Mahajer newspapers flourished, particularly Hadrami ones, in East Asia and Africa.
These parties, clubs, newspapers and charitable societies marked the beginning of great transformations in Yemeni community. They contributed to the revolution's outbreak September 26, 1962 and to achieving independence November 30, 1967. The revolutionaries' victory in northern and southern Yemen is ascribable to the support extended by civil community organizations, social establishments, syndicates and societies.
Civil community and the tribe
Civil community in Yemen is real denial of the tribe, which is part of the political community, although researchers considered it part of civil community organizations. The Yemeni state was born from the tribe's womb, while the two constitute a unified part of the same body whose parts will feel pain, fever and remain sleepless due to the pain of a single part.
Commenting on research prepared by Baqer Al-Najjar on the Gulf and Arabian civil community, Dr. Mohamed Abdulmalik Al-Mutawakil is of the opinion that the tribe played a primary role in Yemen's independence. It also played an important role in maintaining social stability in the absence of the central state, as well as in limiting this state's oppression. These days, the tribe still has an integral role in creating balance that helps restrict armed forces oppression and they constitute a popular militia some regimes use to confront armed forces.
Sociological researcher Dr. Fuad Al-Salahi said the tribe has a dual role in creating balance and harmony between political civil societies. The tribe's role is prominent in being part of political society via reading the history of the modern state that emerged in 1962 following the victorious September 26 Revolution. This facilitated exploring a number of social, political, economic, local and external factors and restrictions that helped the tribe play its dual role as part of the political community and the civil community as well. The tribe is a power backing modernization policies, while at the same time hampering such policies.
Thus, Al-Salahi verified what Dr. Matrouk Al-Faleh indicated in further explaining his study on society, democracy and the state in Arab nations. Referring to Azmi Basharah's critical study, he noted, “In this study, we employ a deductive method that is not confined to criticizing the concept of the civil community, as some people exempted us from this task.
“Arab region policies aim to eliminate the idea of the civil community and weaken its function. This should not be discussed from the authority's point of view and general cultural and social restrictions imposed on the civil community. They should be discussed, taking into account social functions, powers and systems. as they are thought of as overlapping themes between countryside and urbanization in the Arab world,” he added. “These policies work on forging urbanization and blending it into the civil community, its power and effectiveness toward democratic transformations.”
He then highlighted how the European city is distinguished from the Arab one, as the former embraces social engagements and cultural surrounding for social fabric in its framework called civil community. But the modern Arab city has no parallel function to the European one, as rural activities began to dominate urban ones. Consequently, social activities and their relation to the Islamic system create a meaningless idea out of civil community. The result is Arab nations breaking relations between civil community and democratic transformation. The study recommends the private community replace the civil community. Meanwhile, traditional effective elements and forces ruled out by the civil community concept will exist.
Here, both researchers Al-Salahi and Al-Faleh reach consensus on homogeneity between civil and private communities, having no controversy on what Al-Mutawakil presented in his comment. Civil and private community integration never will express the spirit of reality, it never will serve development, nor does it respond to any viewpoints or forceful tactics that researchers fight hard, particularly Al-Faleh, who was arrested and exiled for his scientific and enlightening viewpoints.
The private community's power, including the tribe, does not justify private and civil community integration, as Al-Salahi believes, nor does it give the tribe civil community's role, as Al-Mutawakil believes. Also, it does not play a role for the sake of marginalization or homogeneity, as Al-Faleh believes. Al-Faleh purifies oppression from society's shedding of blood, democratic obstacles and establishing civil community.
Dr. Azmi Bisharah does not deny civil community's existence but he criticizes it, setting accurate conditions as he realizes that the history of intellectual development requires innovation. He says the civil community may be useful to the Arab battling for democracy in case it is understood well. It is sometimes harmful to democracy while another time, it may liberate Arab man.
Bisharah criticizes ready-made answers presented by the civil community about the authority of a single party in secularist states through establishing a social reference outside the country. This is a response to decision making bureaucracy and centralization in liberalist states. It also is a response to the markets' economy, social life, health, culture and art, as well as a reaction to third world dictatorships on one hand and organic and traditional structures on the other.
Variety in understanding and employing the civil community is an expression of a political crisis on the part of change movements and critical forces after defeating ready-made answers that never follow Yemeni historical, economic and political analysis. These answers derive from philosophical horizons and the like.
Bisharah criticizes the current civil community's status, expressing curiosity about jumping over various stages and favoring prepared solutions. It is obvious that seeking justice, freedom, equality and solidarity between nations surpasses all that can be expressed through liberalist and democratic countries. It also surpasses what has been expressed in the state of social luxury and socialism.
A famed intellectual questions, “What is the theoretical framework for such modern anticipation timed by the West against the civil community?” I think the theoretical framework is awareness growing through various stages of history for a list of features:
1- Insisting on separation between the state and the community or between governmental institutions and civil community organizations as a historical condition, social awareness or historical development.
2- Understanding the difference between the state's policies and the economy's mechanisms as a condition historically developing with the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the bourgeois.
3- The individual should be respected as a citizen of a particular country, regardless of his political party affiliation.
4- Insisting on differences between social institution mechanisms, their goals and functions on one hand, and the economy's mechanisms, goals and functions on the other.
5- Making at least a theoretical distinction between social organizations formed by liberals and organic structures into which man is born.
6- Stressing the difference between representative democracy in liberalist states, direct democracy (so-called face-to-face democracy) and active participation in decision making, at least theoretically, in voluntary societies and modern social institutions.
These are the historical conditions for the emergence of the civil community idea with its modern and distinctive concept distinguishing it from other political ideas of the age.
Abdulbari Taher is a Yemeni Journalist and the former chairman of Yemeni Journalists Syndicate.
——
[archive-e:935-v:14-y:2006-d:2006-04-06-p:opinion]
