Tunisian despot under attack

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In the second anniversary of the Gafsa, the Armed Tunisian isurrection against Bourguiba. Resistance: force called for general strike and proletarian insurrection which shook its foundations, President Bourguiba's one-party parliamentary, dictatorship in Tunisia has suffered another form of violent Ten days ago, a commando group entered the country from the Western border with Algeria and launched an attack to capture the town of Gafsa.

Their first targets were the military and police headquarters and barracks. The attack seems to have taken the Tunisian armed forces completely by surprise, but after twenty hours of fighting and heavy losses they regained control of the town.

Later, an organisation proclaiming itself the Armed Tunisian Resistance, claimed histoRic event Which market which marked the 'starting point of a movement whose final goal is the liberation of our people from the dictatorship of the Destour (Danamrihn's narty_the univ neo-colonialist domination of Tunisia'.

The Algerian regime was quick to deny any complicity in the raid, and suspicion swiftly fell on Tunisia's other neighbour, the military dictatorship of Libya.

Algerian involvement had never seemed very likely: relations between the two regimes have grown much closer recently as they have been brought to share an increasing range of common interests by international developments and pressures within their own borders.

Hostility

On the other hand, Gaddafi's regime has moved to a position of deepening hostility to the Destour dictatorship and has long been heavily involved in plotting within the Tunisian opposition, and training armed forces inside Libya.

Indeed at the time of the raid on Gafsa, the Tunisian army was largely massed on the Libvan border to prevent any cursion of armed opposition Gaddafi Once they had entered the popular committees and have come to liberate you from a dictatorial regime; here are the; arms' Their expectations of sparking a rising were based on the objective conditions faced by the Tunisian proletariat.

A new level of harsher repression has been enforced by the dictatorship since the insurrection of February 1978, with large numbers of trade union leaders and militants still serving heavy prison sentences.

Price increases

The recent spate of price increases on essential commodities has intensified the mass working class hostility to the Destour regime led by Prime Minister Nouira.

Gafsa, the centre of a major mining area, has a long history of proletarian struggle-both against French colonial rule and against the petty bourgeois nationalists who have controlled. Tunisia since independence.

Large caches of arm's have their continuing full-scale military occupation since the raid.

But it seems that though the Armed Tunisian Resistance fighters met with a sympathetic welcome, they were unable to lead any major uprising. Their forces are now scattered, hiding in the country or concealed in the town by supporters.

Bourguiba's regime has survived another violent blow. Its response has been to increase military spending (supposedly against the threat of 'external aggression' that is, a Libyan invasion) and to call on the French imperialists for helpFrench warships are now patrolling the Tunisian coast.

This show of force would undoubtedly be enough to repel any projected Libyan attack.

But Giscard d'Estaing knows as well as Bourguiba and Nouira that the real threat to the Tunisian dictatorship comes not from the 'socialism' of Gaddafi's dictatorship, but from the might of the Tunisian proletariat and its struggles against oppression and imperialist exploitation.

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astro s The history of Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba in the last twenty years -in conmon with that of nearly all other Stalinist regimes-is one of violent and unprepared shifts and lurches in policy.

These lurches have mostly been concerned with the question of incentives to work ('moral' or materTà 10e o e o ae „æk and the role of the market of decentralisation of the state administration.

No solution The fact that the regime, like its Stalinist peers, has never been able to find a stable solution to these problems reflects the contradictions of bureaucratic rule in a non-capitalist Though in Cuba in particular the changes are usually made in the name of a struggle against bureaucratism, they always embody the hostility of the bureaucracy to giving up its own privileges and power and to unleashing, politically and economically, the creative power of the working class.

The last few weeks has seen a new upheaval in Cuba which reflects these unsolved problems.

The combination of the sluggishness of the world price of Cuba's main export (sugar), the rapid inflation of import prices, especially oil, along with the perennial bureaucratic deformations of Cuba's internal economic Castro with brother Raoul administration has meant a resumption in recent months of severe economic austerity in the island after a period in which there had been easier possibilities of obtaining consumer goods.

Political opposition This is perhaps one of the things which led to a flurry of political opposition to Castro in December and early January.

Correspondents of bourgeols papers have reported the painting of anti-government slogans on walls and the distribution of leaflets; though none of them report the political content of these.

Whatever that is, the Castro regime has used such developments as a pretext to step up the outward signs of repression.

Havana at the end of last month was reported to be bristling with armed police, and security patrols by the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution were stepped up.

The bureaucracy might have faced another problem By Enriqu as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Cuban reaction to this was delayed; and when it came was extremely muted compared with the delirium of joy and enthusiasm usually given in Havana for the actions of the Kremlin.

Though Castro happily connives in Ethiopian genocide in Eritrea, he may still have been a little embarassed by Moscow's blatant political gangstęrism in Afganistan, particularly because of his chairmanship Conference Soviet invasion.

ties eărly produce a regime's Castro in the chair as Titt of the non-aligned conference which he recently dominated with a pro-Soviet linthe fact that many of the countries which voted with Cuba in the Havana Conference last summer succumbed to imperialist pressure and voted against the Soviet Union in the UN general assembly two weeks ago was one of the factors which accounts for Cuba's cautious approach to the The international and national political pressures seemed to combine with the growing economic difficul in January to new shift in the structure and PRESIDEL 11-1 Non-aligned of the economic policies which have been implemented since that time.

The insistence that all enterprises of the Cuban nationalised economy must show a profit-a new policy introduced in 1975-would logically involve, as we predicted at the time the renewed possibility of unemployment in Cuba.

This appears to be what is happening. And the trend was given a boost a few weeks ago when the head of the planning commission JUCEPLAN (Humberto Perez) urged that. 'excess' workers should be sacked. Under a new scheme unemployed workers are to receive 70% of their last