Views /Opinion

Since we are embarking on revolutions that are deeper, more widespread and possibly more violent, we have to learn from the first experience that failed in many ways because it omitted the most important aspect of revolutions, that is, the economic side.
There is nothing wrong, in this case, to call for Arab revolutionaries to learn from coups of the old Arab military conducted under revolutionary slogans. They must first learn to do what the generals who came to power in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya, which was foremost to control the economy and the country’s wealth and resources. The economy is the backbone of life and politics in the whole world. Believing that the revolution is just a coup to topple the old regime without immediately laying hands on the economy is moronic.
When the Baath Party came to power in Syria, it immediately raised unmissed socialist and economic slogans, because it knows perfectly well that things will not be under its control unless it lays its hands on the levers of economic powers after the military.
Believe me, there is no value for the military authority if it did not immediately dominate the economy of the country. If it does not do so, the economic sharks of any country can overpower any system no matter how brutal its military is.
Did you see what happened in Egypt and Tunisia? People elected two new regimes. However, the economic sharks in both countries felt threatened, so they started from the first day of the revolutions on working to thwart them and make them fail in order to restore things back to square one.
We observed during the transition phase and during the period of President Mohamed Mursi how the economic sharks have turned the country into an economic hell. They succeeded in collapsing the economy and deteriorating living conditions, so that people started bemoaning the former regime after they found that their lives have become very miserable without knowing that the economic meltdown is not the result of a new rule, but because employers who allied with the deep state have put sticks in the new system’s wheels to fail it; therefore, making people turn against the regime. 
The economic sharks were very naive regarding the revolutions of the recent Arab Spring, where they thought they had succeeded a resounding success in turning people against the new regime; even many blessed the military coup against the system.
The same thing had happened in Tunisia, where the economic sharks who allied with Ben Ali’s regime played an important role in thwarting the new government and removing it from power under the influence of economic meltdown. Like in Egypt, the renaissance government was not able to achieve any real progress on the social and economic levels, because the reins of the economy were all in the hands of the old guards who allied with the fallen regime.
In both Egypt and Tunisia, the economic sharks were working to thwart the revolution since the beginning by using economic pressure and turning people’s lives into hell; making them disbelieve in the revolution and in the new regimes.
It is true that the new regimes in Egypt and Tunisia made a lot of mistakes and failed in managing many files, but we must not forget that the economic sharks played an important role in revolutionising people and making them turn against the new governments, and they succeeded.
Napoleon once said: “Armies crawl on their bellies.” It means that they are driven by their livelihoods. Therefore, any system can manipulate people through controlling their livelihoods.
Would the revolutions in the countries of the Arab Spring get stuck in this way and the remnants of the old regimes return to power in more than one place if the rebels paid attention to the economic side? Of course not!
I am not calling in any way to nationalise the economy as the Baathists and Nasserites did, since it is impossible to do so in the modern economic world, being tied to the global economy.
However, any revolution needs to control the economy in the manner it deems appropriate in order not to fall prey to the hyaenas of business and finance.
Let the future revolutionaries learn from the experience of their ancestors, and let them know that there is no value to topple any president or even control the army before controlling the reins of the economy and wealth of the country.