Tunisia caught in a tightening vice

tunisiaWhat has the “democracy” so praised by the West and its apologists brought to Tunisia? And why does the rise of Islamism seem so unstoppable? The answer lies in the way the two trends reinforce each other, even as they ferociously contend for the country’s future.

Thousands of young Tunisians drown trying to make their way to Europe, hoping that the West can offer a life that their own country cannot. Thousands are going to neighbouring Libya or other countries to wage a jihad against what they perceive as the Western way of life, thirsty for vengeance against the West and its values.

What these two different situations have in common is that for many young Tunisians, accepting the lives they’ve been given is not an option. The March 2015 massacre of 22 people at the Bardo Museum, one of Tunis’ main cultural tourist attractions and then the June murder of 38 Europeans at a beach resort in Sousse, demonstrate that Tunisia can’t escape being caught between the contending forces fighting for the allegiance of people across the region. On the one hand, millions of lives and futures are stunted or shattered by the conditions created by the world market and globalised finance, while the monopoly capitalists who rule the imperialist countries prosper. On the other, Islamist political rule is represented as the only alternative to what the West calls “democracy”, the political, social and ideological institutions whose function is to stabilise this intolerable situation.

The Islamist 23-year-old graduate who shot the tourists in Sousse was striking out at a situation where youth from poor families in the interior feel cut off from the modern world as it is enjoyed by some on the coast and people in the West in general. Their fathers work, when they can, wherever they can, in back-breaking construction and their mothers in investor-owned fields under the thumb of merciless labour contractors who act as if they own them.

Workers in factories and call centres are at the mercy of overseas orders. The educational system, especially in the technological fields, fills students with a narrow “input” of skills they can hope to “output” in a vocation promising a different life than their parents — until at last, emerging with diploma in hand, they tumble into the abyss of unemployment or mindless jobs with no prospects. The phosphate mines that bring much of the country’s wealth produce serious environmental problems and few jobs for the people who live around them. The tourism “industry” touted as the country’s hope is driven by real estate speculation and prostitution, and the huge number of people trapped in prostitution reveals what values and future the West has to offer Tunisia.

In this situation — and in a world with no socialist states and few genuine revolutionary movements, where a reality-based revolutionary vision has not yet become the property of widespread masses of people — the powerful attraction of political and jihadi Islam, now presenting itself as the main challenger to the status quo imposed by Western imperialism, is tragic but not surprising. The political motives behind the Sousse attack are no mystery: it was a demonstration of Islamism’s strength, not just militarily, but in the contested sphere of ideology and the coherence of its politics. It was an armed critique of the country’s subjugation and its unjust, illegitimate and morally corrupt establishment, a demonstration that Islamism is the only political alternative. It dealt a very serious blow to the tourism industry the country and regime depend on. It compelled the army and security forces to spread out in the big cities and coastal areas instead of concentrating on the mountainous region near Algeria and the Libyan border, where they had been mounting an offensive against fundamentalist operational zones.

President Beji Caid Essebsi’s response was to declare a state of emergency to enable new repressive measures against strikes, sit-ins and other movements that have nothing in common with jihadism and even ban public gatherings and cultural events.

“Since 2011 the country has been like a school-yard recess and now that has to end,” declared a pro-government pundit. Essebsi emphasised that his political rivals and fractious friends too had to “get into line” with his government and its Western-approved programme. For the sake of stability, he said; well-connected prominent businessmen, widely hated for robbing the public, would be protected from legal action. In short, the country whose “success” was contrasted with the daunting of the Arab Spring in Egypt, has become like Egypt, in many aspects, if not all.

Like Egypt, the US has been drawing Tunisia closer, providing significant funding and loan guarantees (even though unlike in Egypt, US moves in Tunisia are always at least tinged by rivalry with France, Tunisia’s historic overlord). In May 2015, on the heels of the Bardo museum attack, Essebsi visited Washington, where Obama named Tunisia a “Major Non-Nato ally”, a status bringing more military aid and “strategic co-operation”. In July, Tunisian media reported that a US military base and regional listening post now located in Sicily would be moved to Tunisia.

For the US, especially, Tunisia matters most as a “security problem”. Trying to “fix” Tunisia’s “dysfunctional” security services, the US, UK and France are taking charge themselves in some matters — for example, the UK’s Scotland Yard is running the investigation of the Sousse massacre.

This increasingly direct interference, motivated by these imperialists’ perceived regional and national interests and not the good of Tunisia, will not save Tunisia from disaster any more than it did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. Rather, it heightens the danger that Tunisia will be pulled into the maelstrom of the regional and civil wars between those lined up with the US and groups like Daesh who are the main challenge to its interests at the moment.

What has the “democracy” so praised by the West and its apologists brought to Tunisia? And why does the rise of Islamism seem so unstoppable? The answer lies in the way the two trends reinforce each other, even as they ferociously contend for the country’s future.

The hated Ben Ali is gone, toppled by the opening act of the Arab Spring, but the uprising left the state apparatus unchanged. Police forces organised to brutally protect the old regime remain intact. They aggressively beat youth on the streets in poor neighbourhoods and towns as much as ever, and still torture prisoners, political and otherwise. Social movements in the interior are repressed. — Pambazuka.

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