الأربعاء، 26 يناير 2011
الثلاثاء، 25 يناير 2011
الاثنين، 24 يناير 2011
Tempest in Tunis
Much is being made about the role that social networking and other technologies played in the mass protests which forced Tunisia’s President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country, ending a reign that began with a bloodless coup nearly a quarter-century ago. While there may be something novel in the way that Facebook and Twitter helped the various dissident forces to organize over the course of the last month, at the origins of what has already been dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution” was a more classic crisis, one with implications not just for the transitional government that has, for now, assumed control of the small North African country, but also for its immediate neighbors as well as for the broader Arab world in general.
The irony is that Ben Ali’s overthrow was as much the result of what he had done as what he failed to do. One has to acknowledge the economic progress and relatively capable level of governance which he presided over. Urban growth is readily apparent to anyone who travels along Tunisia’s Mediterranean coastline. Businesses, especially small and medium manufacturers, are expanding, while tourism is flourishing. The enduring influence of the progressive and secular policies of Ben Ali’s predecessor, Tunisia’s independence leader Habib Bourguiba, can be seen in the astonishing 60 percent of young women who have access to higher education.
The problem, however, was that the progress was uneven. The southern and interior regions of the country were essentially left behind by the economic boom and have experience little, if any, development. More importantly, while the economy grew and social progress was achieved, Tunisia’s politics essentially stagnated. Ben Ali, abetted by allies abroad for his secular, pro-Western political orientation, justified his authoritarian rule by citing the dangers of the Islamist extremism demonstrable next door in Algeria. Meanwhile, a growing and ever-more-prosperous middle class was increasingly frustrated by the lack of political space allowed them. In the end, these two streams of resentment, economic and political, came together in a torrent which swept away the regime.
The question of the moment is whether the events in Tunis will presage something more significant for the region.
To the east, Libya, for all its oil wealth, has certainly not delivered to the vast majority of its people much by way of goods and services—no wonder the country’s mercurial “Brother Leader” was one of the few world leaders to condemn his Tunisian counterpart’s ouster, telling state television that the protesters had been led astray by WikiLeaks. Even those relatively well off under Muammar el-Qaddafi’s rule lack basics like access to healthcare: suffice to visit any hospital ward or medical office in Tunis to find otherwise well-connected Libyans queuing to have their ailments tended to. Despite these privations, for now the ubiquitous security services remain loyal to the regime and all but the bravest (or most foolhardy) Libyans have learned over the course of more than four decades to keep their political aspirations to themselves. Nevertheless, it is an open question whether the sixty-eight-year-old Qaddafi’s feuding offspring will manage to maintain their inheritance.
To Tunisia’s west, Algeria has, at not inconsiderable cost, largely managed to put down the extremist Islamist insurgency which very nearly tore the country apart in the 1990s. But the foundations of the regime are hardly secure. The country’s 12.2 billion barrels of proved oil reserves have been as much a curse as a blessing, crowding out virtually any incentive for its elites to develop for-profit industrial and commercial sectors. Algeria’s politics have likewise ossified, never having developed beyond the one-party rule of the group that led the country to its independence. To keep themselves in power, Algerian civilian politicians have to resort to bribing their military protectors with excessive largesse, such as the $7.5 billion arms deal with Russia several years ago that contained various items like MiG-29SMT fourth-generation fighters and Varshavyanka-class diesel-electric submarines which are of questionable utility given the country’s actual security challenges.
The most stable country in the region is Morocco. The political openness of their country—in comparison to its neighbors, it is a veritable oasis of liberalism—allows Moroccans to better manage some of the same aspirations which have brought other North African countries to the brink of the abyss. The monarchy itself, especially under King Mohammed VI, has been a force for liberalization, even forcing through reforms like the new family code advancing women’s rights over conservative objections. Moreover, even the lack of significant oil reserves has been good for the country insofar as it has made the enterprising merchants and industrialists of Casablanca—rather than rents—the driving force behind a more balanced economic development. In a step that might prove a model for the region, the kingdom has recently moved toward devolving more governmental functions to local governments, not just in the Western Sahara, which was offered a unique autonomy statute, but elsewhere
What is the role for the United States in this dynamic? While one has to be realistic about America’s ability to “do” anything in the Arab Muslim world, the United States nonetheless has an important interest in the security and stability of the Maghreb region. Consequently, there are steps which Washington and other international actors can take that would advance these goals. For example, rivalries between the states in the region have proven to be significant obstacles to the economic integration and political cooperation which they sorely need. The Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), first agreed to between Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia in 1989, was supposed to spur the creation of an organic regional partnership. However, the Union has been “frozen” since 1994—yet another victim of longstanding tensions between Morocco and Algeria over the latter’s support of the Polisario Front secessionists in the Western Sahara. Loss of earnings due to the UMA’s failure is on the order of 2 per cent of average annual GDP for each country. For Tunisia alone this resulted in the failure to create some 20,000 jobs a year. In a country with a population of 20 million, the additional 320,000 jobs might well have meant the difference for Ben Ali between enjoying old age in Tunis with its libertine cosmopolitanism and spending it in Riyadh with its Wahhabist strictures. In fact, the number almost exactly matches the number of jobs which last week the embattled president belatedly promised to create for unemployed graduates within two years. In short, the key to political stability in this sensitive geopolitical space that is in everyone’s interests is sustainable economic growth and a commensurate political space that allows the youthful majorities of these countries to have a real stake in the future, their own and that of their countries. Achieving those goals is the only way to prevent the tempest in Tunis from boiling over
The President "Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali" and the Hairdresser
The irony about American diplomacy is that while official statements from the U.S. government are often met with skepticism, the famously leaked secret diplomatic cables from American overseas embassies have been received as scriptures. Local gossips collected by American ambassadors became irrefutable indictments of regimes and rulers. It was already public knowledge that Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali ruled Tunisia with an iron fist. Everyone knew of the political prisoners and the political exiles, of the lack of human rights and of organizations to protect them, of the quasi single-party rule. But the other side of the regime, the incredible corruption of the ruling family, was only exposed to the world at the end of 2010, in an American diplomatic cable dated from June 2008. Barely two months later, a couple of protest suicides had snowballed into mass protests, riots, and a palace coup. After twenty-three years in power, Ben Ali was on the run, seeking exile in Saudi Arabia.
In a region where regimes are coup-proof, when republics endure hereditary presidencies, the matter of the fall of Ben Ali invites investigation. Tunisia was another Middle Eastern autocracy, but it had unique characteristics: it aimed to excel economically, to be modern, global, part of the information age, with internet startups and call centers. These ambitions had driven the government to nurture a substantial middle class, whose well-educated young are capable of assuming demanding jobs in Paris or London or New York. Some actually do, but many others have preferred to return home after a period abroad. There is the appeal of a small country, the mild climate, the Mediterranean beaches, the old town of Sidi Bou Said, the glamour of Hammamet. There is also security: the absence of risk from Islamists and leftists, all the trouble makers being in prison or exile. Tunisia is a safe place to raise children, with strong family values, Muslim but in a Mediterranean rather than a Wahhabi sort of way.
To that middle class, the Ben Ali regime had offered a clear social contract: they would be denied a political voice, but they would prosper economically under the aegis of business-friendly government policies. Tunisia was a darling of the West and of the IMF, the home of an “economic miracle”. Thanks to an excellent relationship with France and, beyond France, with the European Union, the Tunisian economy hummed along as a satellite of the vast Common Market on the northern shore of the Mediterranean. Tourism, agricultural goods, textiles and tech services are produced locally by a wage competitive and reliable workforce, for the enjoyment of northern neighbors.
The relative economic success—5–6% of GDP growth per year in the 2000s—allowed to employ Tunisians of all classes and give them decent standards of living, reducing the demographic pressure. Relatively fewer Tunisians, by comparison with their Moroccan and Algerian neighbors, sought to immigrate to countries of the European Union. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: Europe invested in the small country to keep the locals local, and the regime helped by blocking emigration and welcoming foreign direct investments. The IMF was delighted. So were Brussels and Paris.
But a storm gathered. First, economic success had fed expectations. Tunisia had bet on tertiary education in order to integrate the global economy at a higher level on the value-added chain, in the service sector, churning out university graduates destined to join the middle class. But as Europe stalled under the global economic recession of the late 2000s, so did Tunisia. A gap opened between population growth and job growth, and unemployment grew across the board, from university graduates to low-skilled workers.
Worse, joblessness coincided with severe inflation in food prices. Autocracies find it politically expedient to use a combination of subventions and price controls to keep food prices artificially low. But Tunisia was no longer that kind of economy. As it liberalized its markets, prices fluctuated according to supply and demand. The global recession did not affect demand much—the social contract promised Tunisians they would be fed meat and fish. But the government, with its credentials as a low-risk country with a balanced budget, could not resort to price subsidies. So prices went up, up until the regime fell.
Perhaps the regime did not need to fall. The nail in Ben Ali’s coffin was not economic duress but the hatred that cut across all classes for the corruption of his “family”: that is, his relatives and those of his second wife, twenty-one-years his junior, Leila Trabelsi, a hairdresser. The “Family” owed its fortunes to its political connections. Legitimate owners were expropriated from valuable lands, turned over to members of the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans. Government contracts and gifts were awarded to members of the clans. Banks made nonperforming loans to well-connected borrowers. Two nephews were involved in the theft of the yacht of a French tycoon (eventually returned), and a brother was a notorious drug trafficker. Businessmen had to pay protection money to the “Family.”
The amount of economic performance shaved off by corruption may never be known, and it will take a rigorous investigation to verify how the gossips reported in the diplomatic cable compare with the real extent of fraudulence. But the tales of the Trabelsis’ venality were enough to gut the regime of any legitimacy. Disgust was universal. When the economic crisis reached the shores of Tunisia, isolated acts of despair in the poorer hinterland—young men immolated themselves on high-voltage lines—quickly led everyone into the streets of Tunis. The speed at which protests spread caught everyone by surprise, and was itself a testimony to the technological advance of Tunisia. Protesters enjoyed instant communication. There was nothing to save Ben Ali and the Trabelsis.
One lesson of democratization processes is that people are reluctant to shoot their own children. This is why it is advisable for the offspring of the officer corps to be educated in palace schools and abroad. Were university students to riot, commanders would still find the poise to order the repression. In the final days of the Ben Ali regime, the police shot at the crowds, and may be up to fifty protestors were killed. But the army quickly abandoned the ruler, sealing his fate. The discontent was general, and if the children of officers belonged to the middle class catered to by Ben Ali, they too joined the others in the streets of Tunis. All-out repression would have been cannibalism.
By sacrificing the president, the army also hoped to save the regime and to preserve the profitable connection to the European Union, which would have suffered from bloodshed. The political system of Tunisia is notoriously closed, and old hands of the regime took over the transitional government, resisting calls for genuine political opening and multiparty elections. The odds are that the old men will have their way. Immediately after Ben Ali left, looters replaced protesters into the streets, creating chaos and pillage sure to scare off the middle class, which will demand of the army that it protects its lifestyle.
The middle class is also unlikely to want to open the door to the Islamists, whose historical leader, an exile in London since the 1990s, has made himself available as a Khomeini-like figure, ready to return to save the country. In 1987, a young Ben Ali, then Prime Minister, had deposed the elderly Bourguiba, his mentor and the historical figure of Tunisian nationalism. Bourguiba had been a temperamental autocrat in his own right, whose failed socialist policies had fed a powerful Islamist opposition that recruited from the have-nots and the rural areas. Ben Ali had pushed the old man aside on account of senility, embraced market-oriented reforms and crushed the Islamists. He built up a middle class to bolster his rule, but that group betrayed him. Ben Ali missed that the middle class could tolerate his autocracy, if that was the price to contain the radicals, but not systematic racketeering from the family of a hairdresser.
It is not clear who Tunisia’s next strongman will be, as contenders are advanced in age and politically tainted by a long career under Bourguiba and Ben Ali. But the money is that the regime will weather the crisis. Decades of quasi single-party rule did not allow for the development of a credible opposition, and a shift toward democracy would require that the urban middle class makes some kind of arrangement with the have-nots, the low-skilled workforce and the rural folks who are often attracted to the Islamists. Tunisia resembles prerevolutionary Iran: the shah’s twin sister had a terrible reputation that rubbed off on her modernizing brother, and helped his downfall. But a post-Pahlavi scenario is unlikely, the social and institutional structure of Iran and Tunisia being too different.
Tunisia is more like Italy after the fall of Mussolini: the dictator had made the trains to run on time, and democracy would have to work its ways within single-party rule. Over time, a responsible opposition may develop in Tunisia, allowing for a functioning democracy. In the short term, looters only have themselves to blame: mugging foreign tourists in a country living off tourism is a sure sign of self-destructiveness. The middle class took down Ben Ali, but it may not be strong enough yet to take over the country
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