I remember very well visiting Tunisia in the early 1990s. Neat, clean (exceptionally so by the general standard of the region) and quiet. Near the ruins of Carthage we were told not to point our cameras in the direction of a medium-sized white villa, fenced off and guarded.
It was a “government residence,” our group was told. At the time president Zein ben Ali was in power for just a few years. I worked in the region in the late 1980s and remember very well a certain relief, which met the bloodless removal in 1987 of the “father of Tunisian nationhood” – the country’s first president Habib Bourgiba. The increasingly senile, egotistical and erratic Bourgiba was replaced in a bloodless palace coup by a young, dynamic prime minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. At the time it looked like a new beginning for a country well endowed to feed itself and prosper. Even the eccentric Bourgiba’s legacy was not all negative – Tunisia has a strong tradition of a secular education system, based on the French model.
Twenty-four years later, ben Ali and some of his relatives had to flee for their lives while others were killed or imprisoned in the wake of an ugly orgy of government violence versus mob rule, as well as much looting and marauding. Not a pretty picture. Will it become prettier or nastier now?
Tunisia’s problem is that it only had two presidents in all of its 55 years’ history of independence from France. Both started as dynamic modernizers, if not true blue democrats. Both ended at the center of a web of corruption, cronyism, repression of dissent and personality cult. But Tunisia’s story is by no means unique. Moreover, at least Bourgiba and ben Ali were not father and son. In neighboring Libya, Colonel Qaddafi has been in power continuously since 1969, preparing to transfer it to his son. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has been president since 1981, and Gamal Mubarak is being groomed now to succeed his ailing father. In Syria, the “republic as monarchy concept” has already been tested by the Assad family, which has been running the show continuously since 1971. Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen became president in 1979, and still occupies the presidential palace in Sana’a. I am deliberately omitting the Arab monarchies now (some of them more democratic than the Arab republics) because political legitimacy in monarchies flows from a different source.
Ever since Gamal Abdel Nasser suppressed the “Moslem Brotherhood” in the 1960s, the raison d’etre for the existence of most Arab authoritarian regimes was their secular character. The message most Arab dictators of different hues and colors were sending to the West and to the East alike for many years was quite simple: “If you do not accommodate us you will have to deal with the radical Muslims. They adhere to the “one man - one vote - one time” principle and, if you do not support us, we’ll establish dangerous fanatical regimes that will be much more of a problem than we are.” The West tended to agree. That’s why Egypt, for example, remains one of the foremost recipients of U.S. aid despite it being a squalid corrupt autocracy. Arab secular democrats get little support from Western countries because they are seen as unrepresentative of the wider aspirations of the Arab masses, and hence politically weak and useless.
Paradoxically, this led to a situation in which relatively moderate Islamists (like the “Moslem Brotherhood” in Egypt) have become the standard bearers of democracy by virtue of their persecution by the secular dictatorial regimes.
In another paradox, in Iraq, after the unjustly vilified U.S. invasion we see a slow and painful transition from a culture of political brutality to the one of consensus building and inclusivity with secularists and Islamists trying to work out the basics of understanding. This happening despite constant meddling in Iraqi affairs by the Iranian regime is in itself no mean feat.
Tunisia could provide another inspiring narrative. If its political class manages to integrate the Islamists led by Rashid al-Ghannoushi into mainstream politics and on the ability of Islamists, then in their turn, basic principles of democracy and plurality would be accepted. In some countries this is more difficult than in others (Syria being one of the examples of a particularly obstinate regime leading the country towards a very violent future). But with the advent of the information age it is inconceivable that a strong Islamist movement will remain politically unrepresented forever. The Arab world should try more freedom as receipt for its chronic ills. It is a risky path. But the other approach has already proved to be bankrupt and no less dangerous.
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What is Russia's place in this world? Unashamed and unreconstructed Atlanticist, Konstantin von Eggert believes his country to be part and parcel of the "global West." And while this is a minority view in Russia, the author is prepared to fight from his corner.
Konstantin Eggert is an independent Russian journalist and political analyst. In the 1990s he was Diplomatic Correspondent for “Izvestia” and later the BBC Russian Service Moscow Bureau Editor. Konstantin has also spent some time working as ExxonMobil Vice-President in Russia. He was made Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
