webmaster
© Copyright DEHAI-Eritrea OnLine, 1993-2011
All rights reserved
From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Jan 05 2011 - 21:21:05 EST
Inspiring Story of Tunisian Protests Ignored by Washington
By Rob Prince, January 4, 2011
*(Pictured: Tunisian President Ben Ali and French President Sarkozy.)*
*1. They Just Don't Stop Protesting
*Not even torture, which is rampant, or live bullets, which the Tunisian
authorities are using with greater frequency, stop them.
It is more than two weeks since a distraught and unemployed young university
graduate, Mohammed Bouazizi, sat down in front of the town hall in the
central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, poured gasoline on himself and lit a
match. Bouazizi's act of self-immolation and protest against Tunisia's high
unemployment, rampant corruption and decades of repression by the government
of Zine Ben Ali triggered a protest movement, first in the country's center
and south, but now virtually everywhere, including the capital, Tunis.
Unwilling to admit how his own regime has contributed to the crisis, Ben
Ali, predictably blames the protests on 'radical elements,' 'chaos mongers'
( an interesting and empty phrase) and 'a minority of mercenaries' rather
than on the policies Tunisia has implemented during his 23 years in power.
Neither the intervention of the Tunisian security forces and army using live
ammunition nor Zine Ben Ali's sacking of 4 members of his cabinet combined
with promises of a $5 billion state jobs program has stopped the wave of
anger and protest, which at the time of this writing (January 2, 2011)
continues and is more and more taking the form of a national uprising. While
some property has been destroyed, the overwhelming amount of violence has
come from the state and the security forces. Virtually all of the
demonstrations have been peaceful to date. That said, the economic
grievances which fueled the initial outbursts now have a more political
aspect to them as more and more voices within Tunisia outside of the ruling
party, the Rassemblement Constitutionelle Democratique (RCD), are calling
for Ben Ali and his increasingly influential wife, Leila Trabelsi, to step
down and relinquish power.
Ben Ali is giving no indication of stepping down. He has combined increased
repression on the one hand with a media campaign and promises of economic
and social reform on the other. Ben Ali is gambling that the protests, which
seem to be led mostly by unemployed youth as well as some elements of
Tunisian's student and labor movement, are a spontaneous expression of
frustration that will fizzle sooner rather than later. While this might be
the case, it appears that broad sectors of Tunisian society are more
supportive of the protestors than the government and that Ben Ali's promised
reforms are too little too late. Even if he is able to maintain his grip on
power for the moment, his social base support has narrowed to the military,
police and security apparatus, along with the support of a few key European
governments, France key among them.
*2.* *The United States Remains Silent
*The United States State Department remains silent in face of the Tunisian
protests. Since the protests began on December 17, 2010, there has been
little media coverage in the mainstream US media, virtually nothing on
mainstream television, nothing in the *New York Times* or *Wall Street
Journa*l, or for that matter even *Democracy Now*! This is in sharp contrast
with the European, North African and Middle Eastern media where theTunisian
protests have become big news. In two articles in the British
*Guardian, *columnist
Brian Whitaker calls the Tunisian protests the 'most important and most
inspiring story from the Middle East this
year'<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/30/tunisia-uprising-egypt-hostages>.
In another story a few days earlier, he wrote a scathing critique of the
Tunisian government commenting at the end that Ben Ali's days in power are
probably numbered<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/28/tunisia-ben-ali>
.
The Obama Administration's failure to comment on the Tunisian events is
another indication of its more general hypocrisy when it comes to supporting
human rights in Middle East countries. It is not that the administration is
unaware of the situation in the country. The WikiLeaks cables concerning
Tunisia, from a former US ambassador to the State Department, contained very
explicit and damning information, detailing the repressive environment in
the country and the rampant corruption, most especially of the families of
President Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi, at one point labeling the
regime as a 'kleptocracy'.
So why the measured silence by the Nobel Peace Prize winner?
A number of factors come into place, central among them, the Obama
Administration is wary about opening up another front of social unrest with
Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia on its hands. If Washington has no
particular love for Ben Ali, still they worry about a replacement, wanting
one that would, like Ben Ali and Bourguiba before him, support US strategic
policy in the Middle East and Africa, who will cooperate with NATO and
AFRICOM as Ben Ali has. It would not be the first time that the Obama
Administration has thrown a U.S. commitment to human rights concerns to the
winds to maintain strategic support for this or that tyrant.
There are also economic considerations. Tunisia has been played up as an
IMF-World Bank poster child, an example of how following 'the Washington
Consensus', -- i.e., the IMF structural adjustment program -- leads to
success. Except it didn't. Take for example Tunisia's rush to privatization,
one of the IMF's sacred cows -- you know, that line of reasoning made
popular by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, that somehow the private
sector sector can conduct business better than the state. According to the
dogma, privatization is supposed to lead to increased competitiveness and
greater efficiencies. Perhaps under certain (increasingly rare)
circumstances the logic works.
But in Tunisia – as in many other places, privatization became a means of
the two ruling families, the Ben Alis and Trabelsis, to buy up state
property at bargain basement prices and make a financial killing. It did not
lead to a growth of Tunisian entrepreneurship, but simply to a greater
concentration of economic power in the hands of the two families, and the
corruption involved was so bad that even the U.S. ambassador (in a WikiLeaks
cable) was embarrassed.
Yet despite the current economic crisis, which these structural adjustment
programs only exacerbated, the IMF continues to pressure Tunisia to 'stay
the course'…cut remaining subsidies on basic food stuffs and fuel, privatize
its social security system and open up its financial sector even further.
And once again, the IMF is oblivious to how those policies have only
deepened the socio-economic crisis in the country and that an entirely
different economic strategy is in order.
*3.* *'Most Inspiring Story Coming Out Of The Middle East This Year'
*There is another reason for Washington's hesitancy, call it 'revolutionary
contagion' …what starts in one place, as in the strategically not
particularly important Tunisia, could spread to…Egypt, Saudi Arabia and who
knows where else. Signs abound. Just to the west, Algerians are protesting
inadequate housing that they have been promised for years. Although current
turmoil in Egypt appears to center around the bombing of a Coptic Church,
with accusations of the hand of al Qaeda in the attack, under the surface,
for all its differences with Tunisia, Egypt too is facing serious
socio-economic problems.
And throughout the Middle East, governments are nervous. The Iranian and
Syrian press have commented on Tunisia's unemployment and corruption
problems, as if they too don't have to deal with similar drawbacks. Saudi
commentators (of all people) are lecturing Ben Ali on the need for
democracy, etc. Throughout the region among the ruling elites there is the
growing concern that the Tunisian protests could spread to their countries.
And they have reason for concern, for despite many differences,
unemployment, corruption and dictatorship are by no means limited to
Tunisia.
So already, 'the Tunisian example' in two short weeks has spread beyond the
country's borders and governments are taking the events seriously. If Ben
Ali will not relinquish power (yet), still, he reshuffled his cabinet firing
four ministers and promised a $5 billion jobs program. He also was careful
to visit Mohammed Bouazizi (the young man who set himself aflame) as well as
meet with the families of those killed by the security forces. As the
protests grew in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarek, speaking to the ruling political
party in Egypt, seemingly 'out of nowhere', announced that Egypt too would
launch a $3.5 billion jobs program to deal with Egyptian unemployment.
Coincidence? In a gesture to help Ben Ali, Muhammar Khadaffi in nearby Libya
announced that Libya would not limit entry to Tunisians seeking jobs.
Khadaffi also announced a major government financed housing project not long
ago.
Nesrine Malik, like Brian Whitaker, writing in the
*Guardian*<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/31/tunisia-inspiring-rebellion-arab-world>
on
New Year's Eve, calls the Tunisian protests 'one of the most inspiring
episodes of indigenous revolt against a repressive regime.' Referring to the
Tunisian protests she comments: 'Change is sometimes more likely to happen
when people know what it looks like, when the first person dares to point to
the emperor and say that he is naked.'
And if events continue in Tunisia, what does it mean for the other
'geriatric regimes' of the Middle East, many of which themselves are on the
verge of transitions of power? For if the Tunisian people can stand up to
power and oppression, why not the others?
Meanwhile the protests in Tunisia continue…*La Lutta Continua.*
*Rob Prince is the publisher of the* *Colorado Progressive Jewish
News*<http://robertjprince.wordpress.com/>
.