Tag Archives: Tunisia

Tunisia debates ex-regime corruption amnesty bill

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Claiming it is a recessionary necessity for bringing back domestic investment by Tunisian businessmen and government bureaucrats affiliated with the former regime, Tunisia’s leading party (which is itself relatively aligned with the old regime) is proposing a controversial law to accelerate and streamline the process for forgiving corruption-related crimes committed before the 2010 revolution:

The economic reconciliation bill proposed by the presidency, however, calls for “an amnesty … in favour of civil servants, public officials and the like, regarding acts related to financial corruption and embezzlement of public funds, as long as such acts did not seek to achieve personal gain”, according to an English translation of the bill provided to Al Jazeera by the ICTJ.

 
Oh, well, if the embezzlement of public funds was not meant “to achieve personal gain” then I guess it must be ok.

That’s about as plausible as a former deputy governor in China’s Shandong province recently claiming that “nearly all of the money he accepted [5.6 million yuan] had simply been set aside – and that he was in principle saving money for the country.”

Tunisia Attacks: Britain to Blame or Homegrown Threats?

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The following analysis was originally published at The Globalist.

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After the recent callous murder of 30 British tourists in the holiday resort of Sousse in Tunisia and the earlier attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, some in the Tunisian security establishment are propelling a new narrative in friendly media (with assistance from willing critics in France and beyond).

According to this new chain of responsibility, it has become much harder in Tunisia to protect the country – and tourists – against the infiltration of terrorists from Libya (partially true — training for both attacks happened there), and that this makes whatever happens ultimately the UK’s fault (not true).

The implication is that the UK and other overly hasty, zealous and/or optimistic Western supporters of the 2011 intervention in Libya now share some responsibility for that country’s plentiful troubles — and by extension Tunisia’s security problems and the deaths of their own citizens.

This alternative explanation is perhaps offered out of frustration with Britain pulling back lucrative tourism relationships or eagerness to escape responsibility at home.

It sounds plausible, even gripping, at first glance. To be sure, Libya’s territory is now essentially lawless, with terrorists roaming freely and a three-way civil war. And Tunisia shares a long land border with Libya. Terrorists do indeed slip rather unimpeded across it into Tunisia.

But does that mean that countries such as the UK bear responsibility for the current struggles of neighboring Tunisia?

Remember cause and effect

That interpretation is not only a bit too convenient for Tunisia, but it also actually inverts some crucial timelines.

In terms of chronological cause-and-effect, some 1,000 Tunisian terrorists may be more responsible for Libyan instability than the other way around.

Certainly, Libya’s violent chaos does not make Tunisia more stable, but Tunisia is fundamentally grappling with a homegrown challenge. In essence, it is the echo effect of long decades of oppression under former ruler Ben-Ali that now leads to all sorts of contortions.

The Arab Spring originated in Tunisia in December 2010. Tunisia is also where the movement for change remains most intact – and where democratic power sharing has tentatively been mastered. However, life could not be changed overnight.

Mass unemployment, particularly among educated youth, remains a huge problem. The police, whose abuses sparked the initial uprising, remain an omnipresent antagonist. The state is flailing on how to guarantee free speech while stopping terrorist recruitment that capitalizes on these frustrations.

But such aggravations are not new and the recruitment is not new, nor is the Libyan war to blame.

Tunisia as a producer of terrorism in the region

Here is the upshot: A few Tunisian towns (PDF download) were contributing an astonishing number of jihadist fighters worldwide (in places like Iraq) before the Arab Spring occurred, let alone the NATO intervention in Libya – or the start of the jihad-magnet war in Syria for that matter.

After that, the floodgates opened and Tunisia reportedly became the absolute largest contributor of foreign fighters.

Thousands of these experienced Tunisian fighters – since 2010 some 3,000 are believed to have “served” in Syria and Iraq, more than from anywhere else – are merely starting to “rotate” back home now. Tunisia already had loose borders with Libya, which makes it easy to get back in.

There are also the would-be global jihadists who are turning inward on Tunisian targets because the government has succeeded in making it (somewhat) harder to reach foreign battlefields like Syria, which is still the primary goal location.

8,000 recruits were prevented from leaving in the first nine months of 2014. (Some are able to make it to Libya for training, but Libyan training of Tunisian terrorists dates to the 1980s. That is also not a new development.)

Tunisia’s recent terrorist attack that claimed so many British lives is one of the few recent incidents in the Middle East-North Africa region for which the UK bears little direct responsibility.

The internal politics of Tunisia – and even the factors for the rise of terrorist recruitment – remain substantially different from the other Arab Spring states. It would be a mistake to lump Tunisia’s challenges in with the rest. An honest assessment will go further toward solving them than misleading blame games.

Tunisia’s Rachid Ghannouchi addresses social issues

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Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamist democratic party Ennahda and one of the leading practical theorists of Islamic democracy outside Turkey, continues to make the rounds with European interviewers (see previous link for more). This time he gave interviews to French journalist Olivier Ravanello for a book called “On the Subject of Islam.”

While past interviews have often focused on political or economic theory questions, the book’s pull quotes on social issues have made more waves this time (at least in the relevant, Francophone circles).

Unfortunately, because the interviews were published in French and Ghannouchi’s not an extremely high-profile person if you don’t follow this topic regularly like I do, I’m guessing it’s not getting much play yet in English-language media. The quotes are collected in the French-language Tunisian edition of Huffington Post.

He states perhaps a problematic view on some issues like blasphemy laws or inheritance rights, but made interestingly pragmatic comments on abortion & homosexuality for a relatively conservative region (though Tunisia is more liberal than the region in general). I did the translations below myself and converted idiomatic phrasing where appropriate, so these are not 1:1 translations.

Quotes on homosexuality, in principle and from a legal perspective:

“We don’t approve of it. But Islam doesn’t spy on people. It preserves privacy. Everyone lives his life as he wants to, and everyone is responsible before his creator… The law does not follow people into their private lives. … What happens in your house concerns nobody. It is your choice, and nobody has the right to enter and ban you from doing this or that.”

 
This would be an improvement over existing laws in Tunisia, which the Huffington Post article says criminalized homosexuality and can result in a three-year prison sentence. Unfortunately, Mr. Ghannouchi’s own party refused to change the law when it controlled the Human Rights and Justice Ministry during the national transition.

On the former, he endorses contraception as legitimate for women to prevent pregnancy; abortion in the first 4 (maybe 5) months, i.e. “before the development of the fetus” is possibly morally permissible. After that he opposes it on principle as an “aggression against life.” According to the Huffington Post article, this is consistent with the Tunisian law allowing abortion in the first 3 months for any reason — and for physical or mental health reasons thereafter.

Essentially, Ghannouchi’s view on abortion is approximately in line with the U.S. Supreme Court’s view in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, wherein viability was estimated to be as early as 22 weeks and states could potentially ban or severely restrict it after that… But his contraception view is a lot more pragmatic than that of many U.S. Republicans.

After ISIS attack: Rise of the Tunisian Army?

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Flag-of-TunisiaAfter an ISIS terrorist attack in Tunisia’s capital left 23 dead, Tunisia’s new government announced the deployment of the Tunisian Army to protect major population centers. Reuters:

“After a meeting with the armed forces, the president has decided large cities will be secured by the army,” the president’s office said in a statement.

Middle East Monitor:

[…] the decision comes after a cabinet meeting with the three armies and the High Security Council attended by President Beji Caid Essebsi.

Essid stressed that the Tunisian authorities were working to prevent the re-occurrence of similar terrorist operations, noting “that any other terrorist operation will have very serious consequences for the country”.

The prime minister pointed out that the army and security agencies are equipped with everything they need to defend the country and cooperate with their allies. A deal to purchase eight US made Black Hawk helicopters is being concluded and the helicopters are expected to arrive in Tunisia during the second half of this year, Essid said.

 
It’s a very unusual move to deploy the Tunisian Army domestically, in contrast with peer nations across North Africa and the Middle East. Keeping the Army on the border or in the barracks was a core (self-preservation) principle of modern Tunisia’s founder, Habib Bourguiba, and has been maintained to present day. Badra Gaaloul wrote for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about this atypical trend back in November 2011, less than a year into the Arab Spring:

The political and social prominence that the military has assumed over the last year [2011] is unprecedented in Tunisia’s history. Unlike Egypt or Algeria—where the military beds with both politician and businessman and seeks the protection of its own economic interests—the Tunisian counterpart lacks political experience, as former regimes have deliberately kept it far away from the political sphere. This strategy dates to 1962, when the military fell out of favor with the first post-independence president, Habib Bourguiba, after a Lazhar Chraiti’s attempted coup. After the imprisonment or execution of key officers, Bourguiba restricted the army’s power through institutional mechanisms; in 1968, he gave the paramilitary National Guard (technically a civilian force) oversight over the army—and this arrangement has generated a long-standing antagonism ever since.

Zein El Abidine Ben Ali followed Bourguiba’s footsteps. His crackdown on the military was the harshest in its history. Ben Ali (himself from a military background) focused on preemptively weakening the army and monopolizing power by marginalizing the military establishment: in 1991, he accused a group of officers of plotting a coup. The officers maintained that the charges against them were fabricated to discourage others from thinking about a rise to political power through the military. Officers accused of involvement or belonged to Islamist groups were imprisoned, placed under house arrest, or forced into early retirement. Between 1991 and 2011, the total number of personnel was reduced to about 40,000. Ben Ali reduced the ministry of defense’s budget, delayed promotions, and introduced a compulsory retirement for often the most competent officers. The military’s role was strictly defined as defending the country, contributing to economic development, dealing with natural disasters, and taking part in UN-led global peacekeeping efforts.

 
Although the Tunisian Army took center stage again very briefly during the late 2010 Tunisian Revolution that sparked the Arab Spring, the Army restricted its role to protecting voting sites from attacks and filling in for police until the latter returned to their jobs. The police and internal security forces were spooked by the initial uprising, which began as a protest against chronic abuses by police that have fostered a climate of mass resentment and terrorist sympathizing for many years in Tunisia.

It seems likely that the huge gap between public support for the non-meddlesome Tunisian Army and public hatred for the abusive police and security forces may have encouraged the decision to involve the Army more heavily in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Tunis. However, the longer the Army finds itself in the role of a police force and domestic counterterrorism force, the likelier it becomes that it loses credibility and support. Moreover, it may come to be seen as bearing shared responsibility with the Old Guard leadership of the new coalition government for any crackdown that is probably about to happen.

4-party grand coalition deal reached in Tunisia

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Four parties and some independents have formed a grand coalition government in Tunisia after months of struggling to assemble a coalition that had a majority but did not include the second-place Ennahda (the main Islamic democrats party), which led much of the transition after the Arab Spring.

Eventually, first place Nidaa Tounes (the secular Bourguibist party), which leads the new cabinet and holds the presidency, recognized that the math wasn’t there to leave out Ennahda and invited them to join, along with two other secular parties, Free Patriotic Union and Afek Tounes. After the October 2014 elections, Nidaa Tounes controls about 40% of the seats in the unicameral Assembly of the Representatives of the People, while Ennahda controls about 32%. Between them, they hold over 70% of the seats and about 85% of the seats with the addition of the 3rd and 5th largest parties.

This has left the new coalition on the receiving end of charges that it has restored One-Party Rule (like what the country experienced for much of its post-independence period), but that ignores the reality that other parties captured very little of the vote but won enough seats to make a smaller coalition very difficult. 12 parties won more than 1% of the vote, and 14 parties plus independents hold seats. The bulk of votes and seats went to Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda. The margin between 2nd (Ennahda) and 3rd place (Free Patriotic Union) is a whopping 53 seats.

Last month, Nidaa Tounes had proposed a coalition with the 3rd largest party (probably its closest ideological match) but that fell 5 seats short of a majority, and neither 2nd place Ennahda nor the 4th place marxist-leninist-secularists of the Popular Front supported a minority government arrangement. (The Popular Front were not invited to participate in this government either and have announced their displeasure with the new coalition too. 5th place Afek Tounes joined instead.)

Bringing four of the five biggest parties on board (including Ennahda), while presenting a rather overwhelming unity force, guarantees that the coalition could survive even if one of them drops out later. Moreover, it at least gives a say in governance to a collective 70%+ of voters, without giving disproportionate power to parties that won just 1-2% of the vote each last October. After all, even a 3-party coalition of Nidaa Tounes, Free Patriotic Union, and Popular Front (or Afek Tounes) — but without Ennahda — would have only had the support of only about 45% of all voters, even if it held a majority of seats in the assembly. That’s a good way to delegitimize democracy at the start. In contrast, this four-party coalition will be providing majority rule as well as representing various political factions and minorities.

On balance, this grand coalition is excellent news, in my opinion. This is the path forward for the next few years in the first term of elective democracy under the new, post-Arab Spring Constitution. Everyone is on the hook for failures and bad decisions as part of the coalition, so it removes some incentives to be obstructionist or to root for failure. It also encourages party supporters not to fight each other outside a political context.

Major, controversial ministries like Interior, Defense, and Justice have been given to independents, which might also help defuse tensions and reduce the risk of those offices being turned into political weapons. Less controversial key ministries have been divided between Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda, with the winning secularists representing the high-profile public face of Tunisia (via the Foreign Ministry and Finance Ministry for example), while the lower-profile but important work at the Employment Ministry goes to the Islamists, along with various junior ministries. Giving the Islamists the Employment Ministry seems an ideal choice, as that’s a major focus/concern of the party and has been a big factor in their popularity. The coalition’s other big challenge will be combating the appeal of terrorist recruiters in Tunisia.

Prime Minister Habib Essid spoke to members of the Assembly after the coalition proposal was overwhelmingly adopted and said “The motto of this government will be work, then work… and nothing other than work.”

Time to get to it, then.

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Tunisia’s Rachid Ghannouchi on Islamic democracy

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Qantara.de, a Germany-based publication promoting Western-Islamic dialogue, yesterday published an interview by Daniel Bax and Tsafrir Cohen (translated by Katy Derbyshire) with Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s mainstream Islamist party, Ennahda. That party, which initially led the country’s transition government after the December 2010 revolution, recently lost the first regular legislative and parliamentary elections, and it is now the largest opposition party in the Assembly.

Below are some excerpts from the interview that I found particularly interesting.

On the new constitution (background) and on Islamic democrats:

…we’re very proud of this constitution. We not only supported it; we also helped develop it. I don’t regard it as a secular constitution, but as one that unites Islam, democracy and modernity. We don’t see any conflict between moderate secularism and moderate Islam. There are Christian democratic parties in many European countries, such as Germany; elsewhere, there are democratic parties with Buddhist or Hindu backgrounds. Why should there not be Islamic democratic parties?

 
On the right to non-belief and secularism in an Islamic society:

…Islam guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, and that this applies in both directions: for adopting and rejecting the faith.

 
On the internal diversity and divisions of Islam (background):

There have always been different schools of thought throughout the history of Islam. But for 14 centuries of Islamic history, Islamic societies have always been pluralist and accepted people who followed other religions or none at all, and guaranteed this freedom and diversity. This acceptance of diversity is not something we had to import from the West either. When we look at Western countries, acceptance of diversity only evolved there after the Renaissance. Before that, there were religious wars that lasted for decades.

 
On universal rights:

Q: The French Revolution is regarded as the birth of enlightenment, democracy and human rights. What’s your position on these values?

Ghannouchi: The Tunisian constitution is founded on two pillars: the principles of Islam and the principles of modern society and human rights, which are a product of the Enlightenment. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights [in 1948] was drawn up by people of many different cultural origins.

Q: There is also an “Islamic Declaration of Human Rights”, which was drawn up in 1990 by several Muslim states and which deviates from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a number of points, for instance on equal rights for women and men or rights for minorities. What do you think of it?

Ghannouchi: It represents an attempt to combine the principles of Islam with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But for me, there’s no contradiction between human rights and Islamic values. We accept that in our constitution, and that’s also part of the foundations of my thinking.

 
He also addressed the country’s severe terrorism recruitment problem, but he mainly attributed that to the decades of misery under repressive rule, which only began to end four years ago.

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November 12, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 106

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Topics: US elections, Tunisia elections, Burkina Faso coup. People: Nate, Bill. People: Bill, Nate. Produced: November 10th, 2014.

Discussion Points:

– US midterms: What happened? What’s next?
– What will the impact of the successful Tunisian elections be on the country itself and the region?
– Will Burkina Faso’s uprising lead to similar uprisings across sub-Saharan Africa?

Episode 106 (59 min)
AFD 106

Related links
Segment 1

– Our 2014 Elections Coverage

Segment 2

– The Economist: Tunisia’s presidential election: In the shade of Bourguiba
– The Guardian: Tunisia election results: Nida Tunis wins most seats, sidelining Islamists
– The Guardian: Tunisia is showing the Arab world how to nurture democracy | Soumaya Ghannoushi

Segment 3

– Our Burkina Faso Coverage

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