The United States and its G7 allies have on Saied to appoint a prime minister and restore parliamentary functions. Washington should seriously consider withholding military aid to urge the Saied administration to remain within existing constitutional limits and prevent any potential military crackdown against protesters.

Tunisia and the Gulf

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The Biden administration should similarly consider revoking �ճܲԾ�������’s designation as a , which provides it military aid that Saied could use to suppress the opposition. US failure to meet this challenge would represent a severe blow to President Joe Biden’s abroad and would further diminish his administration’s credibility following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban last month.

For international observers of the Arab Spring, Tunisia was initially seen as a “” as the only country that had transitioned from authoritarianism to democracy during that period. However, 10 years after the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, economic turmoil and political gridlock have worsened the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and have deeply polarized the Tunisian political landscape.

The current president, Kais Saied, was elected in 2019 as an independent candidate in a . The retired law professor’s appeal was his outsider status and his strident anti-corruption platform. However, he repeatedly clashed with the deeply divided Tunisian parliament, which has no . The Islamist Ennahda party, which is viewed by large swathes of the Tunisian public as and ineffective and has even been accused of two leftwing politicians, currently holds the most seats.

Following months of political stalemate and a worsening COVID-19 spike, Saied invoked emergency powers to dismiss his former prime minister, Hichem Mechichi, freeze parliamentary functions and use the police to target and . Saied has some for his actions given the widespread unpopularity of the parliament.

Consequently, the United States and the rest of the G7 must follow through on its urging a return to constitutional processes. It is essential that they challenge Saied’s increasing anti-parliamentarian actions, especially his reliance on the military to cement his rule, to prevent continued democratic backsliding in Tunisia.

Freedom House has repeatedly warned about an alarming systemic shift toward across the world, something which the Biden administration was aiming to address with its commitment to democracy promotion. However, events like the “” will begin to ring hollow if the United States and its allies do not take a stronger stand against democratic backsliding, such as in the case of Tunisia.

The primary option that is available to the Biden administration and US allies is reducing military aid to Tunisia until Saied enters a dialogue with the parliament. Although President Saied and his supporters have been to such suggestions and a mediation offer by a US Congress delegation has already been , the United States and its allies should increase their efforts to support dialogue.

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Crucially, the influential Tunisian General Labor Union now openly Saied’s unilateral plan to create a new constitution, demonstrating that dialogue is necessary to resolve this crisis.

Revoking �ճܲԾ�������’s major non-NATO ally designation will send a strong message and remove �ճܲԾ�������’s privileged access to US military aid. The measure would reduce the possibility of Saied continuing to use the threat of military force against protesters, an 2,000 of whom have come out on Sunday in the capital to denounce the president’s power grab.

On September 29, Saied finally a new prime minister, Najla Bouden Romdhane — the first woman to hold that office — and asked her to form a new government, whose main task would be to “put an end to the corruption and chaos that have spread throughout many state institutions.” Despite these positive steps, the United States and its democratic allies should remain vigilant and ensure the crisis in Tunisia is dissolved in a peaceful and democratic manner.

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Freedom House is an organization funded by the US government that conducts research on democracy across the globe. Its declared mission is to promote democratic change. Its motto is “Expanding Freedom and Democracy.” It recently released its “Freedom in the World 2020” that tracks the evolution of democratic and autocratic trends. This year’s report, which came out prior to the coronavirus pandemic, bears the ominous subtitle, “Democracy and pluralism are under assault.”

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The report honors Tunisia in its list of “countries in the spotlight” with this comment: “Competitive presidential and parliamentary elections reinforced the country’s democratic institutions, though a state of emergency remained in place due to the ongoing threat of terrorism.” The report confirms �ճܲԾ�������’s “status as the only Free country in the region other than Israel.”

Though still cited as a democracy, Israel appears in a somewhat less “free” light. The report places its account of Israel’s current situation under the heading, “Division and dysfunction in democracies.” After describing the path toward autocracy consciously pursued by the discredited but apparently unsinkable prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the report notes that “Israel’s score has slipped six points since 2009, an unusually large decline for an established democracy.”

Baroud notes this specific finding of the report: “Israel was classified among the world’s 25 ‘declining democracies’, which, unsurprisingly, include the United States as well.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Declining:

Weakening in the race competitive nations are in to prove themselves better than others or simply to remain consistent with its own ideals. Decline can reflect either a tendency towards increasing chaos or the erosion of the official core values through corruption and hypocrisy.

Contextual note

Baroud begins his article by calling Tunisia “the Middle East’s greatest success story.” He bases this not only on the Freedom House report, but also on a comparative study of democracies produced by the Swedish organization V-Dem Institute (Varieties of Democracy). V-Dem gave the title “Autocratization Surges — Resistance Grows” to its “Annual Democracy Report 2019.” The report concludes that, while exceptions such as Tunisia exist, democratic practices globally are in a state of decline. This is a worrying development particularly at a time when the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is threatening to undermine the prosperity of democracies, with the possible effect of encouraging the trend toward authoritarian practices.

V-Dem cites Tunisia alongside Armenia and Sudan as countries “where we have observed substantial democratic progress.” Tunisia appears to be the only country touched by the Arab Spring that has managed to maintain, under pressure, a commitment to democratic principles. V-Dem describes it as “the star pupil of democratization of the past ten years,” an accolade that has even more meaning when compared with its North African and Middle Eastern neighbors.

This indicates real progress but should not be interpreted as a clean bill of health. The report lists Tunisia among several other countries that “remain on the verge of meeting the criteria for inclusion in the group of liberal democracies again.” Even while celebrating �ճܲԾ�������’s success, Baroud describes it as a “politically unstable country” that “is still undergoing a painful democratic transition.”

Historical note

The table with the title “Countries by Score On V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index” shows Tunisia well above Israel, though both are in the category “Top 20-30%.” Ramzy Baroud uses the comparison of the trends in both countries to highlight the particularly worrying decline of democracy in Israel. In the past year, marked by three successive inconclusive elections, the autocratic tendencies of Benjamin Netanyahu have never been more apparent. Despite his obvious contempt for democratic principles with regard to the Palestinian population, Netanyahu has benefited from the unconditional support of another leader of a democratic nation known for his own autocratic proclivities: US President Donald Trump.

The Freedom House report contains a long paragraph summarizing Netanyahu’s contribution to the decline of Israel’s democracy over the past 10 years. According to the report, the prime minister began from a position that placed him at “the vanguard of nationalistic and chauvinistic populism” when he returned to power in 2009. Tracing the logic of his actions over the past decade, the report lists the numerous ways Netanyahu has undermined the principles of democracy.

Among the many charges it makes against him, the report cites these facts: “Netanyahu has taken increasingly drastic steps to maintain the loyalty of far-right groups, entrenching and expanding West Bank settlements at the expense of the moribund Palestinian peace process, banning foreign activists based on their opposition to such policies, and enacting a discriminatory law that reserved the right of self-determination in Israel to the Jewish people.” The list goes on, culminating with Netanyahu’s indictment, confirmed by the supreme court, on three separate charges of corruption and his year-long struggle to secure immunity.

Yossi Verter, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that Netanyahu’s maneuvering will, through various devious subterfuges, permit him to achieve his goal of immunity. He compares the prime minister first to “a bird of prey” and then to COVID-19: “Like a sophisticated political virus, Netanyahu attacks a party’s antibodies, time after time, and expunges them one by one until the body collapses.” Even after losing his majority in the Knesset, Netanyahu has managed to maintain a kind of psychological control over Israeli politics.

Verter cites the former director of the prime minister’s office, Yoav Horowitz, who resigned last year: “The damage Netanyahu plans to cause the state, democracy, the judicial system and anything built here in 70 years to escape justice is graver and more terrible than everything that happened to us in the most difficult war; it will take decades to fix.” In other words, whatever coalition takes over from now on, Israeli democracy is likely to remain in the state of decline the Freedom House report describes.

In his article in for Middle East Monitor, Baroud highlights a finding mentioned in the V-Dem report: “According to the Swedish report’s ‘Political Corruption Index’, Israel is the 35th most politically corrupt country, followed immediately by Botswana in Southern Africa. Interestingly, the United Arab Emirates is six spots ahead of Israel in that category and one spot ahead of the United States.”

Baroud not only agrees with both of the reports that Israel has veered further and further away from the democratic ideals it claims to embrace, but he also concludes that the West’s commitment to backing Israel unconditionally on the pretext that it can be called a democracy has, all along, been either mistaken or hypocritical. He claims that “Israel never deserved the badge of democracy, which is used to rationalize all of its wars, sieges, and mistreatment of Palestinians, in the first place.”

As the coronavirus spreads chaos throughout the world, making it impossible for anyone to predict how geopolitics will evolve in the near future, we can at least imagine that when the dust finally settles, our perception of recent history may look a bit different than what we have been accustomed to. This could provide an opportunity to rethink many of our idées reçues concerning international relations. This would be particularly welcome with regard to the Middle East. 

If Donald Trump is reelected as president in November, it’s unlikely that US policy will be any different than it is today, unless the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic create a state of chaos in America that cripple its imperial reach and its ability to influence events in the rest of the world. There’s good reason to think that if Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden is elected, his foreign policy will be similar to Trump’s, though less abrasive. 

But given everything else that is happening, today’s civilization may find itself in tatters or radically transformed by the end of the year. That could mean that humanity itself, and all the nations it contains, will be engaged in rebuilding a society on new, more sustainable principles. It may indeed be that for the first time in nearly a century, a redesign of global civilization will become the challenge of the day, from which no nation or people will be excluded. If the politicians of today or tomorrow are not up to it, other social forces may find a way of getting the job started before, following the current disaster, the decline becomes even worse.

[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

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Two recent reports highlight the challenges of developing an equitable and high-performing economy in North Africa. While Morocco and Tunisia have demonstrated a degree of political will in announcing goals for more equitable societies, there is opposition from traditional elites, and the structures of the economies themselves are obstacles to opening up opportunities for economic growth.

For example, patterns of national investment are skewed toward those sectors in which the government plays a role in minimizing risks or providing subsidies for existing companies, but does not provide financial and regulatory practices that enable the entry of new small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). From tax policies to licensing and employment policies, these SMEs face challenges that limit imports of useful technology, hold hostage needed IT infrastructure through monopolistic practices that enable corrupt technicians to have leverage over new installations, and make it difficult to obtain needed documentation for construction and engineering permits.

Oxfam Maroc

On the broader societal level,��Oxfam ��the growing economic disparity that afflicts many countries, amongst which is Morocco. One example it cites is that it would take 154 years for a normal employee to earn what the richest people in Morocco receive in a year. This is in contrast to the 1.6 million Moroccans who live in poverty, with 12% in a situation of vulnerability.

Abdeljalil Laroussi, campaign manager at Oxfam Maroc, said: “[I]nequalities in the kingdom are not a coincidence. They are the result of inadequate public policies and encouraged by international institutions. … since independence, Morocco has adopted growth models that are deepening inequalities and putting a large part of the population in a situation of extreme vulnerability.”

Moroccan leaders, starting with the king and including a number of ministers and members of parliament, have noted that these inequalities are a danger to the country in that they undermine trust in the government, increase social tensions and support disrespect for rule of law.

The Oxfam was particularly critical of disparities in tax payments. It noted that a total of “82% of corporate tax revenues come from only 2% of companies. The amount of tax losses suffered by Morocco each year due to the tax practices of multinational [companies] is $2.45 billion.” This has been noted by external agencies working with Morocco on tax reforms because, “Tax justice is an excellent way of social cohesion. It helps to correct inequalities by redistributing wealth when it is badly distributed initially, and to raise the resources needed to finance infrastructure and public services that benefit the entire community,” according to Asmae Bouslmati, the head of the Oxfam Governance Program in Morocco.

Latest unemployment data shared by Oxfam indicated that 42.8% of urban youth lack jobs. Additionally, “nearly half of the working population (46%) does not have medical coverage and women’s pensions are 70% lower than men’s. … The report added that only 64% of residents are connected to plumbing with drinkable water.”

The IMF

On the macroeconomic level, the��International Monetary Fund’s recent visit to Morocco�� a number of improvements over the past year despite continuing challenges. Its report highlighted a better business environment with the implementation of the country’s new financial inclusion strategy, financed in large part by international donors, to help promote competition and support the development of SMEs. In addition, improved fiscal management and continuing economic diversification are helping Morocco move in the right direction.

The IMF experts welcomed the reforms “aimed at strengthening the governance and efficiency of the public sector and combating corruption … particularly through the adoption of the law on access to information and the publication of the first report on implementation of the national anti-corruption strategy,”�� to a news release.

Among other reforms, the IMF pointed to “the privatization plan and efforts to refocus public enterprises on their core business. It welcomes the progress made with fiscal decentralization, while emphasizing the need to ensure good governance, transparency, and fiscal discipline at the local level.”

Meanwhile, in Tunisia…

The critical political situation in Tunisia��has affected IMF efforts to strengthen that country’s resolve to move forward with needed reforms. Given that the economy remains fragile,��the International Monetary Fund has ��with the fact that upcoming elections will have a direct impact on certain reforms, and it would be better to postpone some of the changes at this time.

Despite the support of international donors and technical assistance from the IMF, Tunisia lags in the implementation of agreed reforms. Given the current tension between the president and prime minister, which has literally brought parliamentary actions to a standstill, the IMF did not want the reform program to become hostage to the election campaigns. The sociopolitical uncertainty and continued structural limitations in the economy, such as access to finance, integration with the global financial system, high rates of unemployment for men and women and limited activity in new business development, are complex challenges.

The IMF report pointed out that: “The Tunisian economy and job creation remain burdened by significant imbalances. Growth is too dependent on consumption, while investment and exports are insufficiently dynamic. In addition, public and external debts remain high and on an upward trajectory, they generate significant non-productive financing needs and a burden for future generations.”

How Tunisia manages its economic challenges is indeed the primary issue facing the next government.

*[A version of this article was published by .]

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Although Tunisia has been largely absent from US headlines this year, the country’s fledgling democracy is at another important moment, where thoughtful US assistance can provide important encouragement toward stability.

On August 29, �ճܲԾ�������’s Assembly of the Representatives of the People approved a����under the leadership of Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, replacing former Prime Minister Habib Essid who lost a vote of no confidence in the previous month. A member of the secular Nidaa Tounes, the new prime minister nonetheless has the��, the country’s leading Islamist party.

IS TUNISIA THE GREAT HOPE?

In the midst of yet another peaceful exchange of power since the 2011 overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia remains the Arab world’s best hope for a stable democracy in the near term.

Since the passage of the 2014 constitution, ensuring the procedural standards of democracy—such as free and fair elections, broad participation and power-sharing—seems to come easier to the North African country than solving problems such as the current economic crisis.

At present, �ճܲԾ�������’s tourism industry continues to lag, and at least $2 billion has been��. Although Chahed had pledged to fight corruption as a top priority and has incorporated labor unions into his government, many Tunisians����that true reform will take place. They are weary of����in the name of reconciliation, and fear a backslide from democracy in the face of��, including����and a concentration of ��in the western region of the country.

What appears to be of greater interest for American policymakers are the security challenges facing Tunisia. Remarkably, Tunisia is the highest per-capita exporter of jihadists to the Islamic State, often through����with Libya. Terrorist attacks within Tunisia have shown that violence����between the two North African countries.

Extremism correlates with the high��, as well as the geographical and����found in Tunisia.

The Obama administration has offered assistance to Tunisia since Ben Ali fled, providing consistent loan guarantees����thereafter. For 2016, Congress and the Obama administration more than����to nearly $142 million, earmarked for security assistance, economic assistance and democratic governance, in that order. Requests for 2017 come in at a similar level of distribution. A full 45% of the package would go to military purposes, whereas only 19% would be earmarked for democratic governance.

US AID TO THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

Given this emphasis on military assistance, Washington must be vigilant that����be used to protect nascent democracy, not replace it. Nearby Egypt serves as a cautionary tale of how politically powerful a US-supported military can become. Care must be taken to not create a bloated security sector, as the influx of external resources����internal power balances.

Though Tunisia presents the greatest promise of democracy in the Arab world, its aid package from the United States is dwarfed by what goes to Israel and at least four other Arab countries: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

As the future of Tunisian assistance will soon fall to the new US president and Congress, this balance of aid distribution in the Middle East and North Africa should be reconsidered to reward and reflect America’s����toward democratic countries that protect a wide array of human rights.

US aid to Tunisia should focus more on curbing the causes and motivations of terrorism, rather than providing helicopters, large projectiles and ammunition. American policymakers should further note that although highly corrupt autocracies are more stable than less corrupt ones, low-corruption democracies are actually the��.

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As Tunisia continues the transition from past authoritarian rule to democracy, the US should take the cause of mitigating corruption as a central prong in democracy promotion. This can be achieved by providing funding for the improvement of����within public sector institutions, thereby encouraging transparency within bureaucracies.

Providing aid with the intention of decreasing youth unemployment, inequality and corruption would have a broader impact on �ճܲԾ�������’s chance at maintaining democracy than weapons that could end up in the hands of the Islamic State or similar outfits, as has happened across the region.

Tunisia has legitimate security concerns worthy of US assistance, but strengthening its fragile democracy should be the primary focus.

*[This article was originally published by and .]

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Following the success of government spending in post-war Europe, the��Arab world adopted a state-driven model of economic development.��Morocco implemented this model in the 1960s and 1970s, pursuing expensive projects in industry, infrastructure and social services.

By 1983, Morocco’s debt equaled 85% of its gross domestic product (GDP) and its government faced severe budget deficits. In response, Morocco subscribed to the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These programs pushed��a��free-market strategy that marginalized populations dependent on public sector employment and services.��Morocco’s experience resembles those of other����in the Arab world.

Decentralization

In subsequent decades, governments in the Middle East and North Africa attempted to redress the negative outcomes of structural adjustment. They promoted��decentralization as a����to the problems of powerlessness and inequality. This policy reinforced the efficient��provision of services and encouraged the participation of citizens��in managing local affairs. In Morocco and elsewhere, ostensible local participation became a way to attract foreign donors who encouraged democracy and pluralism. However, participation does not always result in productive exchanges between citizens and governing institutions.

Despite significant barriers to broad inclusion, decentralization has resulted in the proliferation of local development organizations in��. There has also been much public-private collaboration to improve access to social and financial services. Still, many programs make formal market inclusion a requisite condition for accessing these services. Thus,��the most disadvantaged populations do not��reap any benefits.

For example, participation in��a government program that subsidizes store appliances requires registration��in the National Fund for Social Security. Participants must��also pay a����of 5,000 Moroccan dirhams ($515). These administrative demands immediately disqualify shopkeepers who cannot support the costs of formality. Similar barriers deter participation in other programs that provide managerial and financial assistance for small enterprises. As a result, many people turn to informal sources of support in order to launch and maintain their businesses.

Informality in Morocco

The growth of the informal sector in Morocco followed the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s. The reduction in government jobs and arrival of rural populations led many urban dwellers to engage in informal commercial activities. Today, the volatile nature of the informal sector discourages governments from investing in comprehensive regulation schemes.

Moreover, the informal sector is a major employer and income generator in the Arab world. Heavy-handed efforts to regulate the informal sector could have deleterious effects on local livelihoods and result in political unrest. This was the case in Tunisia following the��self-immolation of Mohammed al-Bouazizi, a street��vendor.

In Morocco, the urban informal����makes up more than 15% of the GDP. The examples of informality are numerous: street vendors throng weekly markets; smugglers transport goods into northern cities; neighborhood grocers extend lines of credit to their clients. Informality cultivates a shadow economy that buoys up people in precarious financial situations through flexibility and negotiation. However, it does not solve the problems of marginalization or illegal business practices.

Ultimately, informality reflects a wider trend of prioritizing market integration over the equitable provision of services in the Arab world. As countries in the Middle East and North Africa experience climate change, migration and political conflict, their economies will transform. It remains unknown whether the informal sector will withstand these shocks or implode under the pressure of exclusionary development policies.

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On June 26, the world watched in horror as terrorists unleashed a series of attacks in . While people struggle to make sense of the devastation left in the wake of these incidents, governments across the globe aim to prevent further strikes on their soil from the (IS), a radical movement that is both indebted to its terrorist forefathers while being a distinct challenge for countries in the Middle East and beyond.

The carnage in Kuwait with an explosion inside the Imam al-Sadiq mosque. A suicide bombing killed 27 people and wounded 227 others. The attack was claimed by an IS affiliate, Najd Province, which said it was targeting Shiite Muslims. The perpetrator was later to be a Saudi national who snuck into the country.

The day continued to unravel in France, where a man his boss before attempting to ignite the chemical factory where they both worked.

Then, in the seaside town of Sousse in Tunisia, a young man dressed as a tourist opened fire on European beachgoers at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel. The attack had an almost immediate on a tourism industry that has struggled to recover since the 2011 revolution and was still suffering from an assault on the in March 2015. Media later revealed the attacker as a student from Kairouan, �ճܲԾ�������’s fourth largest city and a meeting place for the now banned group Ansar al-Sharia.

The Islamic State: Shocking Without Awe

While IS did not immediately take credit for all the attacks, together these events follow a of lone wolf terrorist attacks that have come to be associated with the group. Due to this, the Islamic State, which from Ayman al-Zawahiri’s al-Qaeda in 2014, is both indebted to and distinct from its former parent organization. Al-Qaeda made its name by engaging in well-coordinated, meticulously planned attacks that sought to instill fear and awe in witnesses, be they victims or potential recruits.

Thus far, while the radical breakaway organization of the Islamic State has showed interest in publicizing its barbarism and making a name for itself via gruesome videos spread on social media, it has not demonstrated the interest or capability in launching attacks on the level of al-Qaeda. Though this could change, the group’s primary —establishing, expanding and ruling an Islamic State within Syria and Iraq—suggests that such an objective will continue to take precedence over planning complex attacks far from the battlefield. This does not mean that terrorist attacks launched or inspired by IS are not a threat to the West or countries in the Middle East—the aforementioned events clearly indicate otherwise. But the attacks will more likely than not continue to be carried out by IS sympathizers or foreign fighters who have returned from Syria and Iraq.

Given that the events in Tunisia and France were carried out by disaffected locals—inspired by but not directly carried out by IS—it must be understood that these attacks spring from domestic contexts, potentially related to but distinct from other countries experiencing similar strikes.

In Saudi Arabia, years of fundamentalist Wahhabi-based and high have left the country with a large percentage of youth who have little to do, no money to spend and very conservative religious views. Similarly, Tunisia experiences high unemployment, particularly among the country’s , and a political climate that for years only offered one alternative to secular dictatorship: Islam. In France, the country’s failure to fully certain segments of its French Muslim population has resulted in years of tension, spurring the gruesome attack against the offices of in January 2015. While some may credit IS for these attacks, they arise from local circumstances, a far cry from the 19 hijackers who traveled to the United States with a plan already in mind.

Stopping IS at the Source: Home

Since these terrorist attacks originate in local contexts, stopping such incidents will require responding to the specific conditions that each attack originates within. While Europe faces a risk from IS sympathizers, a European response that favors heavy-handed tactics over integration and dialogue will likely fail, as it would further the “Muslim as victim” narrative that drives many European Muslims to extremism in the first place.

In Saudi Arabia, the country must maintain its path toward development, providing youth with jobs, while keeping an eye on the country’s notoriously conservative judiciary.

Tunisian authorities must recognize that Tunisia is sending more fighters to IS than any other by making serious efforts to counter radical preaching, solving an unemployment crisis that contributed in no small way to the revolution, and giving young people an opportunity to contribute to their country. Despite the many changes that have taken place since the revolution, a class of older men still dominate the ranks of �ճܲԾ�������’s political and social leadership. Giving youth opportunities that go beyond mere paychecks would serve Tunisia well in stemming the threat of terrorist activity within its borders and dampening the enthusiasm that many young men have for running off to go play hero in a foreign land.

Although the Islamic State is indebted to al-Qaeda in popularizing the rhetoric and ideology behind the movement that is often called “jihadist” in the West, solving the problem of lone wolf attacks inspired by IS will be fundamentally different.

In confronting al-Qaeda, the US and its allies attacked the group’s leadership, giving it nowhere to hide, while cleaving potential supporters away from the terrorist organization and bringing them into the mainstream political debate. While such tactics will likely be effective in defeating IS in Syria, stopping lone wolf attacks outside of Syria and Iraq will require different steps. Governments, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, must respond to the local nuances that make young men in places such as Tunisia, France and Saudi Arabia ripe for radicalization.

IS does reach a significant number of young sympathizers via social media, but these youths were already alienated and pushed beyond the edges of society. As such, lone wolf attacks inspired by the group will continue to originate from alienated young men, not from the group’s leadership. If the world sees the Islamic State as a mere extension of al-Qaeda, the measures taken against it will fail.

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Tunisia, once hailed as a successful transition model in the , was recently hit by yet another deadly attack against tourists, leaving 38 people dead near the coastal town of Sousse. Just a few months after the Bardo Museum assault, the latest attack is likely to cast another shadow on the country’s success story, leaving many wondering how to counter the radicalization of Tunisian youth.

On June 26, Seifeddine Rezgui, a 23-year old Tunisian student from the town of Gaafour, walked along the beach of the Imperial Marhaba Hotel armed with an assault rifle and opened fire, carefully selecting his victims and apparently sparing Tunisians. The gunman left unharmed a group of hotel workers, who formed a human shield around the entrance of a building to prevent him from entering. The shooting spree ended when Rezgui was shot dead by security forces near the site of the attack.

Outrage spread quickly across and beyond Tunisia. This latest attack raises important questions about the radicalization of , the country’s counterterrorism approach and the future of its economy, which is heavily dependent on tourism.

The radicalisation of Seifeddine Rezgui

Shortly after the attack, video footage of the young attacker breakdancing in front of a camera several years ago emerged. In a similar vein, the postgraduate student is reported to have been a fan of Real Madrid Football Club and hip hop music.

Shortly after the attack, Islamic State (IS)-related social media accounts released a picture showing Rezgui sitting between two guns, referring to him as Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani, a reference to the city of Kairouan, where Rezgui pursued his studies. Kairouan, home to the holy mosque of Uqba, is considered by many as Islam’s fourth holiest site. IS has also urged its followers to carry out attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Security forces said that Rezgui was not on their watch list and did not appear to have traveled abroad (at least legally). Authorities and observers are still working to puzzle together where he became radicalized. Forensic evidence indicates that he was the only gunman, despite some eyewitnesses describing another person having been involved in the shooting.

Rezgui’s hometown of Gaafour in the northwestern governorate of Siliana is an impoverished place, by Zeineb Marzouk as an “epicenter of marginalization, poverty and strife” in an article for Tunisia Live.

Marzouk argues that the clue to his radicalization might only be 200 meters away from his home, referring to a Salafi mosque in the El Zouhour neighborhood. “The mosque in El Zouhour is dominated by Salafists who are radicalizing the young people. In their ideology, women are kept at home and the wearing of niqab is quite normal. But this is not Gaafour’s real image, they are the root of all the problems here,” a 65-year-old resident told Tunisia Live.

Many locals denied, however, that he was radicalized in the town and pointed to Kairouan, where he spent most of time. Locals told the Tunisian news site that Rezgui’s family was “moderate” and “balanced,” known for their good manners and kindness, with neighbors and family friends expressing shock��about the 23-year-old’s actions.

In Kairouan, the God’s Mercy Mosque, a small house of worship in the old city near where Rezgui lived, has now come under heavy scrutiny by Tunisian security services. Investigators are also probing potential links between Salafists in Kairouan and Sousse, Grazia Longo wrote for La Stampa. The imam of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, Taieb Ghozzi, warned of radicalization in the city’s mosques.

On June 30, several days after the attack, Dafer Neji, a spokesman for the Tunisian prime minister, told Reuters that Rezgui trained in a jihadist camp in Libya last year—at the same time as the two gunmen who attacked the Bardo Museum in March 2015. While Rezgui obtained a passport in 2014, it contained no exit stamps, according to officials, indicating that he might have made a clandestine journey to Libya.

Reports say that Rezgui gave few (if any) clues to family and friends about his radical views. After hearing the news of the attack, Rezgui’s father, Hakim Rezgui, said he could not comprehend what happened: “My God, I am so shocked … I don’t know who has contacted him, influenced him or who has put these ideas in his head. He has new friends who got him into this.” An aunt of the gunman said: “He was a blank page, he didn’t tell us anything about what he was planning. The first time we knew about it was when we saw it on the news.”

�ճܲԾ�������’s reaction to the attack

Tunisian officials have heavily condemned the attack, and authorities arrested 12 people suspected to be linked to it. At the time of writing, security forces were hunting two men who trained with Rezgui in Libya. Standing alongside his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany, Tunisian Interior Minister Najem Gharsalli said: “We will find all those involved, whether it was just logistical support or not.”

On June 27, Tunisians and foreigners gathered for a march in Sousse denouncing terrorism and the attacks. Activists also came to the beaches of Sousse to show solidarity with the victims. “We, the Tunisian people, support the families of the victims with a heavy heart,” one Sousse resident told Tunisia Live. Some, however, criticized the government for not providing enough security and for reacting too slowly to the attack—some accounts say that it took over half an hour to stop Rezgui.

After the shooting, Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid announced a security clampdown, which would include more armed guards at popular archaeological sites and tourist zones. A key part of this strategy is to close around 80 mosques which, Essid said, spread “venom.” The mosques were supposed to be closed within a week.

Tunisia has a long history of secularism and is seen as one of the most secular countries in the Arab world. �ճܲԾ�������’s first post-independence president, Habib Bourguiba, and his successor, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, enacted secular measures—in many cases forcibly. While a family code under then-President Bourguiba gave women equality with men in several areas, critics pointed to persecution of Islamist movements and the closures of mosques.

�ճܲԾ�������’s foreign fighter dilemma

The question of radicalization does not only relate to �ճܲԾ�������’s internal dynamics and domestic security. More than 3,000 Tunisians have gone to fight abroad in Syria, Iraq and Libya. By some estimates, there are more Tunisians fighting in Iraq and Syria than people from any other country.

Tunisia has experienced Islamist militant attacks on its soil in the past, including an assault on the US Embassy in Tunis in 2012 and the deadly bombing of a synagogue on the island of Djerba in 2002. Observers have noted a rise in Islamist militancy since the fall of President Ben Ali in 2011, while Tunisian security forces continue to fight militants, some of them linked to al-Qaeda, in the Chaambi mountains near the border to Algeria.

In June 2014, �ճܲԾ�������’s interior minister said that at least 2,400 Tunisian jihadists are fighting in Syria. This number has only risen since, with many of those traveling abroad to join the Islamic State.

Dario Cristiani, an adjunct professor in international affairs at Vesalius College in Brussels, points out in an article for The Jamestown Foundation that in recent years, Tunisians have fought abroad in Somalia, Iraq and Mali. It was two Tunisians who killed the anti-Taliban leader in Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud, just two days before 9/11. While the presence of Tunisians among jihadist organizations is nothing new, the scale of the problem has significantly changed, making it vital to look analytically at the path taken by young Tunisians to radicalization, Cristiani argues.

The president of �ճܲԾ�������’s National Union of Imams, Fadhel Achour, told Middle East Eye about the way radical preachers tailor their recruitment: “These people aren’t stupid or naïve, their arguments are good. They explain everything—the bad economy, the lack of social values—through the absence of religion in Tunisia.” Simon Speakman Cordall, writing for Middle East Eye, stresses that “for young men living in Gaafour and hundreds of other remote Tunisian towns, the mosque’s radical messages help them make sense of a lifetime of poverty and crime.”

Achour argued that the planned mosque closures would only lead to people going “to fight jihad in Syria” or the Chaambi mountains. Mohamed Iqbel Ben Rejeb, the president of the Rescue Association for Tunisians Trapped Abroad, which mediates between the families of foreign fighters and state authorities, voiced similar doubts. “If we close mosques we’re sending a message to these young men that the government is fighting religion in the same way Ben Ali did,” he told Middle East Eye. “Instead, we should be controlling these mosques … making sure they have imams well versed in the Quran and known for their competence.”

Following the Bardo Museum attack in March, Tunisian state authorities promised to restrict militants’ access to funds and have pushed for strong counterterrorism laws that would, for example, increase the time during which suspects can be held without being charged from six to 15 days. Rights groups have said that such measures could undermine free speech and give too much power to the police, which under previous regimes has a history of abusive behavior.

In conjunction with the planned mosque closures, critics say there is a danger that Tunisia may return to its dark days of authoritarianism.

Tourism economy ����

The deadly attack at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel is likely to harm �ճܲԾ�������’s tourism sector, a crucial source of jobs and foreign currency in the North African nation, which is plagued by unemployment.

Tunisia earned $1.95 billion in revenues from tourism in 2014 and expects to lose at least $515 million this year, approximately a quarter of expected earnings, Tourism Minister Salma Loumi said on June 29. According to some estimates, tourism accounts for 7% of gross domestic product (GDP) and employs around 400,000 people.

The government has announced several measures to help the tourism industry survive, including a 4% VAT reduction, special loans for tourism-related ventures and compensation packages for unemployed tourism workers. Hotels have also vowed to take extra security measures.

The expected losses will make efforts to lower unemployment, which stands at around 15%, a lot more difficult for a government that is trying to grow the economy. While the two countries face somewhat different challenges, Egypt, once a thriving tourist destination, has still not recovered from losing visitors as a result of the 2011 uprising and the subsequent turmoil.

In the coming months, observers will keep a close eye on how Tunisia responds to the Sousse attack, including whether the government can keep a balance between preserving newly found freedoms and efforts to fight radicalism.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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The Economist recently highlighted the contrast between post-revolt societies in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Here, many countries have struggled through prolonged, messy and bloody transitions that are pockmarked by revolt and counter-revolt, sectarianism, the redrawing of post-colonial borders and the rise of retrograde groups as revolutionary forces.

Almost 30 years after they brutally crushed pro-democracy student protests, Korean police are projecting themselves as K-cops—the counterpart of K-pop, South Korea’s most popular cultural export and successful soft power tool. Today, Korean police are largely everything that Middle Eastern and North African security forces are not.

Restructuring Korean police and ensuring that its legitimacy and credibility was publicly accepted was no mean task. Much like Middle Eastern and North African security forces, South Korean police emerged from regime change as the distrusted and despised enforcer of repression that had brutally suppressed dissent, killed hundreds if not thousands and tortured regime critics.

It took almost a decade for Korean police to launch deep-seated structural reform that gave substance to a public relations campaign designed to recast the force’s image and engender public trust. By contrast, transition in the Middle East and North Africa is in its infancy, and given state and institutional resistance, change will likely take far longer than it did in South Korea and Southeast Asia.

Learning Lessons

Even so, there are lessons to be learned from the Asian experience in political transition, which has progressed to the point where South Korea is projecting its K-cops internationally as models of professionalism in crowd control and the management of protest. The Korean police force has ditched the use of tear gas in favor of the lipstick line: unarmed female officers deployed as a front line defense to defuse tensions with protesters. Big-eared cartoon mascots are ubiquitous on all the police’s insignia, including traffic signs.

The message underlying the approach to policing, as well as the marketing campaign, is as much driven by a desire to capitalize commercially on South Korea’s success as it is by a desire to enhance the country’s prestige—the notion that policing in line with standards of freedom of expression, protest and dissent and adherence to human rights is more likely to ensure public order than brute force. Despite the fact that regimes in the Middle East and North Africa largely see heavy-handed repression of dissent as key to their survival, some countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman have engaged the Koreans’ advisory services in a bid to put a better face on what remain autocratic regimes.

The appeal to autocracies is that smarter policing reduces the risk of repression boomeranging with resentment of security forces becoming a driver of protest as it did for youth groups in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. By the same token, the risk for activists is that failure to reform security forces in the immediate aftermath of the toppling of an autocrat by a popular revolt could create the circumstances conducive to a reversal of hard-won political change. Early stage security sector reform would also help enhance the credibility of a post-revolt government and confidence in its sincerity and willingness to initiate structural changes aimed at breaking with the autocratic past.

The failure to reform security forces in Egypt was at the heart of the reversal of the gains of anti-government protests in 2011, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Two years later, the police and security forces played a major role in persuading the military to overthrow Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president, and introduce a dictatorship even more repressive than that of Mubarak.

Political scientist Terence Lee, in his recently published study of military responses to popular protests in authoritarian Asia, used the examples of the brutal repression of protest in Korea in 1987, Burma in 1998 and a year later on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to argue that the military is the ultimate arbiter of whether a popular revolt succeeds. In doing so, Lee appears to assume that the role of the military and security forces is interchangeable. That may be true for Asian countries like China and Myanmar where police, security and armed forces are effectively branches of the military.

In the Middle East and North Africa, where the military and law enforcement are separate entities with different vested interests, protesters need to play one against the other and adopt different post-revolt strategies toward each of them. The need for differentiation is reinforced by the fact that Middle Eastern and North African leaders, irrespective of whether they hail from a dynasty or the military, distrust their armed forces.

Maintaining Control

To maintain control, Middle Eastern and North African rulers have adopted strategies toward their militaries that include emasculation; provision of economic perks; reliance on elite units populated by members of the ruler’s tribe, clan or family; hiring of mercenary forces; and the creation of parallel armed forces that keep each other in check. Ironically, if Myanmar were in the Middle East or North Africa, it would have been in a category of its own as the only autocracy ruled directly by the military in uniform.

© Shutterstock

The flip side of the rulers’ different strategies is that not all Middle Eastern militaries are likely to act as monolithic units in case of a popular challenge to the regime—as was the case in Tunisia and Egypt, and Myanmar in the case of Southeast Asia—or contain a reformist faction strong enough to swing the balance against an autocrat in places such as the Philippines and Indonesia or Syria, Yemen and Libya. In Arab countries where the military was built around tribe, sect and clan, mass protests have descended into civil war or anarchy.

For protesters, forging an alliance with the military is a double-edged sword, particularly in the aftermath of the toppling of an autocrat, when the interests of demonstrators and soldiers diverge. Protesters run the risk of being marginalized, because they are ill-equipped and do not have the time and ability to make the transition from contentious street politics to power and backroom electoral politics.

In a perverse way, Tunisians owe the fact that their country emerged from the Arab Spring relatively successfully to their ousted ruler, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Under Ben Ali, who rose from the ranks of the security forces, the military saw its budget significantly reduced, its manpower downsized and its top leadership sidelined, if not physically eliminated.

As a result, the interests of the militaries in Tunisia and Myanmar were not dissimilar. In Tunisia, marginalization meant the military had a vested interest in a change of regime that would dismantle the security force state. In Myanmar, liberalization—albeit with retention of some degree of behind-the-scenes control—was needed to eliminate the cost of international isolation for the nation and the ruling generals themselves.

In Egypt, Mubarak’s effort to create a dynasty of his own by grooming his eldest son, Gamal Mubarak, as his successor posed a threat to the military. Not only was Gamal a man who had not risen in the ranks of the military, but he was a neoliberal that threatened the statist interests of the military, the largest force in the Egyptian economy.

Alliances in political transition between militaries and activists tend to be short-term and short-lived. That is evident from the transitions in both Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. The interests of the two diverge as soon as an autocrat has been toppled.

For the militaries in, for example, Myanmar and Egypt, change was not about the ideals of the revolt, but about restructuring an autocratic system in ways that ensured their vested interests were protected. Myanmar appears to be a process of two steps forward, one step back. Egypt has been one of regression that led it from military rule to the election of the country’s first democratically elected president to a military coup against him and the rise of a repressive regime that makes the Mubarak era look benign.

Post-Revolt

There are no easy solutions to the management of post-revolt diverging interests. Popular forces do not have the time or the experience to make a quick and effective transition from contentious street politics to the backroom dealings of power or electoral politics. That is true even if layers of civil society that had developed over time in countries like Myanmar played a key role in forming an opportunistic alliance with the military. It is certainly true in the Middle East and North Africa, where the main drivers of the revolt were not the usual suspects—workers and trade unions or political groupings and parties—but what sociologist Asef Bayat called social non-movements such as soccer fans.

Acknowledging the post-revolt divergence of interests, however, does not answer the question of why countries like the Philippines and Indonesia were relatively successful in making a political transition toward democracy, irrespective of how imperfect those democracies may be. Lee boils the answer down to what he calls increased personalism of the autocrat, as well as within the Filipino and Indonesian militaries.

In Lee’s view, the popular revolts provided an opportunity for some senior officers who were unhappy with the emergence of military personalities and the personalization of their country’s autocracy to hitch their political ambitions to those of the protesters. That may be true for the individual motivations of dissenting officers. It explains dissatisfaction within the military with Marcos’ interference in appointments and promotions. Lee is also right in his observation that in Asia, the militaries remained loyal to the autocratic regime like in Burma in 2007 and on Tiananmen Square because there was an absence of personalism.

Yet the aspirations and gripes of individual officers can only be part of the picture, and not all autocrats interfered with military appointments; in fact, a majority of autocrats in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa did or do not.

Similarly, the fact that Marcos failed to build institutions that would have fortified autocracy fails to provide a satisfactory answer. Neither does the fact that senior military officers close to General Suharto enjoyed political and economic perks that others in the command did not. Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh also avoided embedding their authority in institutionalized power-sharing.

By the same token, Suharto’s tactic of divide and rule resembles those Arab militaries that were organized around a core of elite units bound by tribe, clan or family—as was the case in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The difference was that the disenfranchised in those militaries were not members of the tribal, clan or family elite that uniformly benefitted from the autocrat’s perks, but rather the military’s rank and file. As a result, the interests of the military’s command and key units and those of the regime remained in-sync in times of domestic political crisis. The defection of senior officers or even key units in Syria and Yemen during the recent uprisings and subsequent violence do not fundamentally question that notion.

The cases of the Philippines and Egypt demonstrate, moreover, that the military’s relationship with its US counterpart plays an important role. In both the Philippines and Egypt, a US decision to drop Washington’s support of the autocrat influenced military thinking. The relationship with the United States was important to the Egyptian military, given that it was independent of and not supervised by the Mubarak government. The military relied on annual US aid to the tune of $1.3 billion, as well as arms deals that satisfied its appetite for weapons and equipment and underwrote the armed forces’ military industry.

As a result, the notion of personalism as an impetus for militaries to embrace political change leaves unanswered the question of why personalism that characterizes Middle Eastern and North African autocracies has not played a role in attitudes of the military or key segments of militaries in the region.

Key Difference

One difference between Asia and the Middle East and North Africa is the concept of neo-patriarchy developed by the late Palestinian-American scholar Hisham Sharabi, which serves to popularize autocratic personality cults. In Sharabi’s analysis, Middle Eastern and North African autocrats, unlike their Asian counterparts—with North Korea as an exception—positioned themselves as authoritarian father figures who franchise their authoritarianism throughout the society. The autocrat is the father of the nation who sits on top of a pyramid of authoritarian fathers such as the head of government, the provincial governor, the village head and the paternalistic head of the nuclear family.

© Shutterstock

In characterizing Asian autocracies, Lee draws a distinction between two kinds of autocracies: ones that are built around the person of the autocrat; and ones that are built around a sharing of power by underlying institutions. In Lee’s view, autocrats who build their power around themselves like in the case of Marcos and Suharto are more prone to the risk of the military siding with protesters.

That theory seems to be invalid in the Middle East and North Africa, where except for perhaps in the case of Iran, power-sharing is not the norm. More frequently, there is deliberate competition between institutions—as in the case of Syria’s multiple security services—that is designed to keep various forces in check.

Attempting to develop a conceptual model that enhances frameworks developed in recent decades and explains why, when and how militaries turn against the autocratic status quo and opt for political change is important not only as a key to understanding developments in the Middle East and North Africa and predicting of the role of militaries in popular revolts, but also to deepening knowledge about civil-military relations.

The contrast in the analysis of Asia as opposed to the Middle East and North Africa is stark.

Intellectuals and scholars accepted until the eruption of popular revolts in 2011 the notion that the Middle East and North Africa were exceptional in their autocratic resilience and stability. F. Gregory Gause III, a political scientist and Gulf scholar, wrote:

“Academics directed their attention toward explaining the mechanisms that Arab states had developed to weather popular dissent … We in the academic community made assumptions that, as valid as they might have been in the past, turned out to be wrong in 2011 … Academic specialists on Arab politics, such as myself, have quite a bit of rethinking to do … Explaining the stability of Arab authoritarians was an important analytic task, but it led some of us to underestimate the forces for change that were bubbling below, and at times above, the surface of Arab politics.”

By contrast, Asia became the hand maiden of contemporary concepts of protest, with the Philippines in 1968 coining the phrase: people power.

Other factors that influence the attitudes of militaries toward popular revolts and highlight differences between Asia and the Middle East and North Africa are national identity, the role of regional powers and donor support of civil society in autocratic societies.

As a summary outline, national identity in the Middle East and North Africa has proved to be far more fragile and contentious than in Southeast Asia. That has raised the specter of a redrawing of borders in the Middle East and North Africa and the emergence of new states based on ethnicity or sect.

That is not to say national identity is not a factor in Asia. Yet Singapore, traumatized by its departure from Malaysia, has successfully managed communal relations, while identity politics remain prominent in Malaysia itself as well as in Myanmar and southern Thailand. Nonetheless, unlike the Middle East and North Africa, Southeast Asian nations are not looking any time soon at re-drawing their borders.

Similarly, transition in Southeast Asia benefited from the absence of regional powers like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, all of which sought and seek to impose their will on other countries in the region.

Finally, Arab autocrats—with Egypt in the lead—successfully restricted donor aid to civil society organizations in ways their Southeast Asian counterparts appear not to have.

All of this amounts to a first tentative stab at developing an agenda for research that would enhance scholarly and policy understanding of the why, when and how of the role of militaries in processes of political change. Southeast Asia and Korea have the benefit of hindsight. The Middle East and North Africa is a messy and bloody work in progress.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As the number of Britons confirmed dead in the Sousse massacre continues to climb, Prime Minister David Cameron has again  out putting British troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but he has conceded that the Islamic State (IS) is plotting “terrible attacks” on Western soil.

This is a sign that the attack in Tunisia has made the magnitude of the war against IS clearer than ever. Until now, the British government has been able to downplay it—an official strategy reminiscent of the aftermath of July 7, 2005.

In the days after 52 people were killed in the 7/7 attacks in London, the Blair government was insistent that the Iraq War had nothing whatsoever to do with the appalling massacre. That argument had to be  back eight weeks later when Al Jazeera screened a “martyr video” recorded by one of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, which drew an explicit link between the attack and British foreign policy.

Khan said: “We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.” He went on: “Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters.”

In retrospect, the government’s insistence that these were simply evil men undertaking terrible actions that were utterly unconnected with the war is understandable, given that the Iraq War went on to permanently contaminate former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s legacy.

Now, here we are again ten years later. This time, the connection is more complex, but the link with Britain is clear enough. Yet the extraordinary element is that the great majority of people in the United Kingdom are hardly aware that this is a major war—and that Britain is at the center of it.

It was clear some days before the  in Tunisia and Kuwait that Islamic State leaders wanted to take the war to their external enemies, whether Shiite communities in the Middle East or elements of the more distant “far enemy” such as the UK. As The New York Times  it: “While officials in the three countries investigated the attacks, many noted that the leaders of IS have repeatedly called for sympathizers to kill and sow mayhem at home.”

The same week, the spokesman for IS, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the group’s followers for Ramadan, telling them that acts during the Muslim holy month earned greater rewards in heaven. “Muslims, embark and hasten toward jihad,” Adnani  in an audio message. “Oh mujahedeen everywhere, rush and go to make Ramadan a month of disasters for the infidels.”

It is now almost certain that the Sousse attack by a young engineering student, Seifeddiene Rezgui, was not a “lone wolf” operation but supported by a larger group and aimed specifically at a hotel in which most of those killed would be British. It may even have been directed from the Islamic State. The British government has committed a huge force of 600 police to the investigation.

While one intention was seriously to wreck the Tunisian tourist industry, leading to higher unemployment and more anger and resentment, providing a better environment for recruiting young people to the IS cause, it was probably part of a much wider intention to bring the conflict home to the coalition of countries now engaged in the air war.

This makes for uncomfortable connections, especially as most people in Britain simply do not recognize that the country is part of a large coalition that has been waging a major air offensive on IS forces in Iraq and Syria for almost a year.

True scale

The Pentagon surprised the US public recently by reporting that there had been around 15,600 air sorties since the campaign started in August 2014, and that air and drone strikes are killing IS supporters at the rate of 1,000 a . The US is the main actor, but the UK is second in terms of the number of air and armed drone strikes.

Britain’s principal contributions are Tornado ground-attack aircraft and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles. The Ministry of Defence is singularly cautious about releasing details of British involvement, especially of the two squadrons of Reaper drones, but it is  that more attacks have been carried out in recent months by the armed drones, which are “flown” from RAF Waddington, south of Lincoln, than by the Tornadoes.

The ministry gives even vaguer details of casualties; on those few occasions when information about attacks is released, almost nothing is said about those killed and injured. This persistent obfuscation means there has been surprisingly little debate about the true scale of the war and Britain’s part in it.

One of the grim ironies of the Sousse attack is that the appalling loss of life might alert more people in the UK to the true extent of the war. Equally, IS will no doubt encourage further attacks on the countries at war with it; counterterrorism forces in countries as far afield as the United States, Australia, Canada, France and Britain will accordingly be intensifying their work.

It is possible that the Sousse massacre will turn out to be an isolated attack on British nationals, but it is very unlikely. The reality is that the war with IS in Iraq and Syria is beginning to extend beyond those countries and the Middle East—even beyond the established battlegrounds of  and . What happened to the holidaymakers in Sousse may only be the beginning of a new phase.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar when Muslims are supposed to fast, pray and lead pure lives. This year, on June 26, tragic attacks took place on the same day of this holy month in Tunisia, Kuwait and France.

In Tunisia, 39 people died in an attack on Imperial Marhaba Hotel in Sousse, “a palm-flecked town on the northeast Tunisian coast,” home to vacationing European tourists. In Kuwait, the Imam Sadiq Mosque was targeted when more than 2,000 Shiite worshippers were kneeling down to pray, leaving at least 27 dead and more than 300 injured. In France, a US-owned gas and chemicals company near Lyon was attacked. Although only two people died in an explosion there, a decapitated head was found on the railings of the factory site.

The Islamic State (IS) has claimed credit for the Tunisian attack. Now, foreigners are fleeing the country, which will suffer immensely because over 15.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) relies on tourism. This sector generates an estimated 473,000 jobs, 13.8% of the total employment.

Tunisia is the great hope of the Arab world. This is the country where the Arab Uprisings began. It has managed a relatively peaceful transition to democracy, even as neighboring Libya has imploded into civil war and Egypt has slipped back into tyrannical military rule. The Islamic State attack is a major setback for��Tunisia because life itself is perceived to be under threat.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Tunisian Prime Minister Habib al-Essid declared that 80 mosques not controlled by the state would be closed down because they were purportedly inciting violence.

Tunisians could do well to remember that overreaction is unwise. During Easter 1916, some Irish nationalists launched an innocuous rebellion that was scarcely a threat to the grand British Empire. However, this was the height of World War I and the British were on an edge. Their draconian repression in Ireland made martyrs out of the dead and fueled a fervor that eventually led to Irish independence. The far more recent attacks has led to damaging consequences.

�ճܲԾ�������’s en masse closing down of mosques is a knee-jerk reaction. More importantly, they are an unreasonable restraint on the liberty of belief, faith and worship of Tunisian citizens.

An Islamic State affiliate has claimed credit for the attack in Kuwait. This tiny oil-rich state, ruled by the Sunni al-Sabah family, is sandwiched between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The US State Department that 30-35% of Kuwaitis are Shiite. They are underrepresented in government and resent being less than equal in a political system not renowned for its fairness. Kuwait’s ruling family is in the throes of corruption scandals and is reportedly feuding for power. As Shiite-dominated Iraq is moving closer to Iran, Kuwait is drifting toward Saudi Arabia. The Shiite-Sunni sectarian schism that is blighting the Middle East is playing out in every country, and Kuwait is no exception.

The IS attack has put the ruling al-Sabah family in a bind. Either it defends the Shiites to stabilize Kuwait, or it persists with the anti-Shiite Wahhabist doctrine that it formally adheres to and promotes in its schools. As mentioned in a previous , this is the Middle East’s version of the Thirty Years’ War.

Earlier this year, the Charlie Hebdo . The recent attack has rattled the country. Modern sensibilities are particularly susceptible to beheadings, and the days of the guillotine are long gone in la grande nation. French President François Hollande held a second emergency defense council meeting and declared afterward: “It’s difficult for a society to live for years under the threat of attack. The question is not if there will be another attack … but when.” He is right.

Thanks to its history of rebellions and revolutions, France has a legendary intelligence apparatus. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, the French government promised to pour in billions of euros to beef up its intelligence and counter jihadist ideology. It even began a de-radicalization scheme that involves online anti-jihadist material and improved training for imams. Yet jihadist ideology is seducing disaffected youths in France’s wretched banlieues. Pourquoi?

Well, part of the answer is the economy. French unemployment reached a high in the last quarter of 2014. This figure of over 10% is misleading, because it is a percentage of “active population” and the numbers of the active have dropped alarmingly. Among disaffected Muslim minorities living in terrible ghettos, jobs are few and pay little.

Yet there is something more brewing. The French are notoriously racist and treat minorities shamefully. Resentment is a toxic brew and makes young French Muslims susceptible to the charms of violent jihad.

French economic woes are miniscule when compared to the Greek ones, where the debt crisis has reached a flashpoint. By June 30, Greece has to pay €1.6 billion to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It needs a new bailout to pay back an earlier bailout. The myth of the inviolability of creditor rights is leading to a circular repayment that defies logic. Instead of writing off some debt and taking a haircut, creditors want to lend yet more money to Greece on the fictional basis that it will all one day be repaid.

The creditors led by Germany demand austerity and fiscal reforms. They propose deregulation of the labor market, pension cuts and further reductions in public sector wages. They also want an increase in value-added tax on food, restaurants and tourism, and the elimination of tax breaks of the Greek islands. The Greeks have made concessions but want leniency, particularly in light of the fact that Syriza was voted in to lighten the weight of debt crushing the country. This anti-austerity party won power in a protest vote in Greece and has .

Negotiations have put Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras between a rock and a hard place. If he gives in to creditors, his supporters will view him as Judas. If he cocks a snook at eurozone and IMF bigwigs, a Greek default might lead to an exit from the euro and economic collapse. To remove his head from the chopping block, Tsipras has a referendum on July 5 so the Greek people themselves can make “a worthy decision” for future generations, for Greek history, for the country’s sovereignty and dignity.

In an act of breathtaking arrogance, eurozone finance ministers have rejected Tsipras’ request to extend the bailout program beyond June 30. Tsipras and his colleagues have not been the most adroit of negotiators. They have been guilty of many a faux pas such as skipping post-negotiation dinners with their creditors. Yet they are right to opt for a referendum. It is the only option for Syriza because they are being asked to go against what they campaigned for in the land of the fabled Athenian democracy. By their irresponsible intransigence, eurozone leaders are playing footsie with the euro and the destiny of the European project.

Even as Europe totters, the Chinese are feeling the tremors. Stocks sank in Shanghai on June 26. The Chinese have long feared three things. First, they worry about the bursting of a real estate bubble that has resulted in ghost cities. Second, they are uneasy about bad debts on the books of their banks. Many of these debts are owed by zombie construction companies. Third, they fear that the end of the yearlong debt-fueled stock market rally might spill over into the wider Chinese economy.

Even as top American and Chinese officials engaged in powwows during the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington DC, the Chinese worried more about their economy. To reassure everyone, Premier Li Keqiang declared that “China had the ability to maintain growth at a medium-high speed and upgrade the economy to a medium-high level.” Also, the central bank announced a targeted cut of the reserved requirement ratio as well as 2015’s third reduction of the one-year deposit and lending rates beginning June 28 to boost the economy.

For once, it is not the economy that is on top of Uncle Sam’s mind. A Supreme Court, where five out of nine justices are Republican appointees, handed down two rulings that have delighted US President Barack Obama, Democrats and liberals. First, Obama’s health care legislation that allows the federal government to dole out nationwide tax subsidies for poor and middle-class people so they can buy health insurance has been upheld in a 6-3 . The richest and fattest country in the world spends an obscene of its nearly GDP on health care but still fails to provide health care to millions. The justices have blessed Obama’s health care reform to make the United States a kinder and gentler nation.

Second, in a 5-4 , the justices have made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states of the US. Justice Anthony Kennedy declared that the plaintiffs asked “for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” Ironically, Kennedy is a Ronald Reagan appointee and this has left many Republicans apoplectic.

Justice Antonin Scalia, a fellow Catholic and colleague, damned the judgment as a “judicial Putsch” and “a threat to democracy.” Scalia is being hyperbolic but has a point. The US would have been better off if this measure had been implemented via a , the land of Kennedy’s roots. As Chief Justice John Roberts points out, social policy is best determined by legislatures and not judges. Yet leaving aside constitutional and philosophical musings, Obama is right when he says that this judgment “is a big step in our march toward equality.”

*[You can receive “The World This Week” directly in your inbox by subscribing to our mailing list. Simply visit����and enter your email address in the space provided. Meanwhile, please find below five of our finest articles for the week.]

[seperator style=”style1″]Let’s Not Forget Our Own Extremism[/seperator]

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To deem behavior or opinion as extremist depends on a particular point of view.

In January, a million people gathered behind world leaders who elbowed each other to be out in front of a “Je Suis Charlie” banner. When normality does not sell, as Vincente del Bosque puts it, elites cut out an increasingly radical profile. Behind them, among the masses, it looks as if intolerance is drawing a crowd.

But it begs the question, if we have civilized ourselves in part by cultivating tolerance, then why do we appear to be living in times of such virulent extremism? Are many of us so inundated with radical political viewpoints and infatuated with war that we now assume that the word “intolerant” cannot be associated with the expression of our own (Western) politically extremist views?

To deem behavior or opinion as extremist depends on a presumptive point of view. I would like to think that the preferred standpoint is one that draws from the better…

[seperator style=”style1″]BBC and India’s Problematic Romance[/seperator]

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In this edition of The Interview, 51�Թ� talks to former Bureau Chief of BBC New Delhi Sir Mark Tully.

The relationship between the Indian public and the government has often been fraught with tension. During such times, foreign broadcasters like the BBC have found it easier to make inroads in a new cultural setting and communicated effectively with the Indian audience.

However, in the history of independent India, the relationship between the government and foreign media has not always been stable. On June 25, 1975, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency—known as the “Emergency”—during which the BBC office in India was shut down. More recently, the Indian government made an attempt at stopping the British broadcaster from airing India’s Daughter, a documentary on sexual violence in the country.

Sir Mark Tully, an author and the former bureau chief of BBC New Delhi, started his career in India with the transistor radio in the 1960s. He has witnessed…

[seperator style=”style1″]Media Promote Stereotypes Against Roma People[/seperator]

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When a nomadic people like the Roma do not have their own country, who will stand up for them?

It is fascinating to see people all over Europe listening to and enjoying the music and art of the Roma people, who are often known as “gypsies.” Roma have contributed to the history, culture and literature of the region, being not only a separate ethnic minority, but also an integral part of the societies and nations in both the Americas and Europe.

Even today, however, they remain stigmatized and disparaged. Media portrayals promote stereotypes about the Roma, accenting the negative aspects, and complicating their interrelationships with non-gypsies.

In mid-October 2013, a story broke out in international media that a 4-year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed girl named Maria was living with a gypsy couple claiming to be her parents, with whom she bore no physical resemblance. According to The Greek Reporter, on October 16, during a routine “operation” on a Roma settlement in Greece, police spotted the child…

[seperator style=”style1″]Asian-African Summits Are Not a Waste of Time[/seperator]

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Despite many countries in Asia and Africa being underdeveloped, South-South cooperation is still important.

Indonesia plays a central role in Asian-African relations. In 1955, the country hosted the Bandung Conference, where President Sukarno took special pride in addressing the representatives of 25 nations—the majority of which had only recently achieved sovereignty—portraying himself as the leader of the group he termed “Newly Emerging Forces” (NEFOS). The aim was to counter Western imperialism and colonialism.

In 1992, almost four decades later, then-Indonesian President Suharto addressed a grown body of states at the 10th summit of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) in Jakarta, seeing a further need for “Third World” countries to represent their interests collectively.

On April 24, exactly 60 years after the first large-scale Asian-African summit, incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo reiterated in his speech at the Asian-African Conference 2015 the relevance of South-South cooperation. He accused industrialized nations of actively hampering the development of poorer countries. Soon after the 2015 summit, critics voiced their concern…

[seperator style=”style1″]Ukraine on Brink of Financial Collapse[/seperator]

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Will Europe allow a bankrupt Ukraine to fall back under Russian domination?

Ukraine is on the brink of financial collapse. The country is unable to meet interest payments. Its gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 6.8% in 2014 and is expected to fall by an even greater extent this year. Meanwhile, it has to defend itself against a neighbor that guaranteed its borders as recently as 1994.

Instead of stepping forward to help Ukraine financially, the European Union (EU) and the United States are both leaving the job to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF is offering Ukraine $40 billion, whereas the EU says it can only manage $2 billion.

The European Union has already extended 40 times as much credit to Greece as it has given to Ukraine, whose population is four times that of Greece. If this ratio reflects the EU’s real priority, it is unbalanced. GDP per head in Greece is about three times that of Ukraine. Like Greece, Ukraine has a lot…

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The post The World This Week: Terror Hits Tunisia, Kuwait and France appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The proliferation of terrorist attacks like the Bardo Museum incident in March have put pressure on ��authorities. Terrorism has moved from the mountains and border zones to urban areas. Instead of��targeting security forces��and the military, these attacks now focus on��politicians and .

With this radical shift in terrorist strategy, a host of intellectuals, journalists and security specialists, along with many Tunisian nationals, have called for a prompt of the Anti-Terrorism Law, which was previously introduced��by the regime of former��President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2003. The heated over this law, which Ben Ali exploited to liquidate and crush political opponents, was sparked shortly after the tragic attack on the Bardo National Museum, which caused��22 deaths.

There have been relatively minor amendments to the law after the 2011 revolution. Observers expect the law in its latest version to be presented in front of��parliament for ratification, having been approved by the council of ministers on April 8.

Supporters of the Counter-Terrorism Act consider the new legislation to be a guarantee for enforcing the authority of the state and affirming its determination to fight terrorism. They believe this law can remarkably reduce the number of Tunisians affiliated with extremist , as it consists of harsh punitive sanctions that leave anyone suspected of terrorism��with��no leeway to escape punishment.

Key sections of the law include Chapter 11: “Whoever intentionally disrupts in any manner whatsoever the normal operations and the smooth running of military institutions and establishments shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of three years and a fine of 15,000��dinars.” Another important section is enshrined in Chapter 14: “Whoever participates, among unarmed assemblies, in any attack on the institutions and establishments of the armed forces shall be punished by imprisonment for ten years and a fine of 50,000 dinars. The penalty is doubled for whoever carries a hidden or a wholly or partially visible weapon.”

Supporters also see the Counter-Terrorism Act as a way to enable security officers to take the initiative in tracking, chasing and gunning down suspects in case of non-compliance with the orders of the police and armed forces. It will allow authorities to confiscate money and property of individuals, groups, associations, charitable organizations or citizens who are suspected of having any affiliation with groups labeled as extremist.

During the term of former acting-Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa, and during the��reign��of incumbent Prime Minister Habib Essid, a large number of nongovernmental organizations (NGO), private educational institutions, Islamic kindergartens and media outlets were dissolved on the grounds that they incited terrorism, contributed to the dissemination of extremist ideas or provided logistical support to terrorists. Their funds and assets were seized not following a decision announced by an official court, but according to the provisions of a issued by a “crisis cell” composed of Prime Minister Essid and the ministers of interior, defense, foreign affairs and justice.

Further adding to the ambiguity of the Anti-Terrorism Law are paradoxical declarations by Tunisian officials. Minister of Justice Mohammed Salah Ben Aissa told al-Araby��al-Jadeed on March 14 that the “anti-terrorism law safeguards freedoms” and is consistent with the protection of . However, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi after the bloody terrorist attack on the Bardo Museum that “freedom ends when terrorism begins.”

Such an assertion has raised concern among observers and human rights activists. Analysts argue that President Essebsi’s speech the endeavor of �ճܲԾ�������’s ruling regime to limit freedoms in its fight against terrorism, thus giving precedence to security over human rights in this difficult transitional phase. Justifiably, fears are heightened when one recognizes the implications of the new Anti-Terrorism Law.

The draft law provides��victims of ��with guarantees of��compensation, thereby entitling them to free health care. However, it also includes a number of gaps and flaws. It enables the government to crack down on public and personal freedoms—such as freedom of belief, opinion and expression through, among other things, censorship on Facebook and bank accounts—while disregarding the requirements for fair trials of suspects. The new law, by giving priority to security measures, legitimizes tightening control over the personal data of Tunisian citizens through strategies such as wire-tapping, surveillance of electronic correspondence and monitoring online social networks.��One of its other aims is to prevent access to terrorist-related websites on cellphones.

The draft of the new law does not include sufficient judicial control procedures that enable the judiciary to check and counterbalance the executive branch and its security agencies through supervision. It seems the government’s agenda is to expand the powers of security officers in dealing with the problem of terrorism. The Anti-Terrorism Law, as it stands, gives judges exceptionally broad powers, enabling them to order non-public trials, restrict the presence of lawyers and bar the presence of the media or human rights organizations.

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Lack of Definition

The crux of the in the draft of the Anti-Terrorism Law lies in the fact that it does not supply a specific and conceptually clear definition of “terrorism.” Its definition of terrorism as “each individual or collective project that aims, by its very nature or context, to spread terror” is broad. It serves to legitimize strict state control over the public sphere, making it possible for the government to crack down on the right to protest.

Particularly worrying��is that Article 13 of the law considers “damaging public and private property or public facilities and disrupting transportation” to be terrorist offenses. This provision redefines, albeit indirectly, any popular protest action such as demonstrations. Sit-ins in public squares, streets and roads—as forms of protest against the country’s economic or social policies—become instances of terrorist acts endangering public good and threats to social peace and national security. In this draft law, it is viable to find the seeds of future power abuse that will culminate in cracking down on the freedom of assembly and protest, and in the containment of citizens in public life.

In this critical period of �ճܲԾ�������’s from a dictatorship to��a democracy, the Anti-Terrorism Law draws legitimacy from a variety of factors. The security of the country and regional concerns in North Africa—due to the in Libya, the rising tension at the border with Algeria and fear of the Islamic State’s in Tunisia—explain the siren call for the ratification of the Counter-Terrorism Act.

But the law in its entirety must��be to the new developments that have changed the status of human rights in Tunisia since��the 2011 . To defend the argument of “safety and security” to the exclusion of the fundamental rights of citizens is dangerous, because it may lead to a new conflict between the state and citizens and to a strained relationship between citizens, the police and security officers.

The ratification of the Counter-Terrorism Act, without introducing crucial revisions, may lead Tunisians to live once again under the tightened grip of a repressive police state. It is true that counterterrorism is essential in order��to ensure public safety. But in order to succeed, it requires awareness-raising over��the dangers of extremism, a reform of security policy, the education and training of police officers and a restructuring of the armed forces.

Extremism cannot be completely eradicated by simply enacting punitive laws. Successful counterterrorism measures also entail a diagnosis of the reasons��behind��extremism. Fundamentally, such initiatives��should involve the adoption of cultural, psychological, educational, social and economic policies to effectively deal with extremists.

The main concern for Tunisia is how to guarantee security while avoiding any attempt to jeopardize��the country’s newly gained civil liberties. Therefore, in reviewing the articles of the law, ��must��give the fight against terrorism the importance it is due, but without violating human rights.

The Tunisian citizen of today��is��what we might call a parody of the Cartesian argument: “I think, therefore I am.”��Unlike 2010, Tunisians of 2015 are more likely to hold a placard��that states:��“I am a citizen, therefore I am free. I am free, therefore, I am.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The post The Dangers of �ճܲԾ�������’s Anti-Terrorism Law appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After the tragic (IS)����on tourists visiting the iconic Bardo Museum in Tunis, one key point needs reasserting: has been the Arab world’s post-2011 success story. It is heartening to see a long-authoritarian Muslim country opening itself up to widespread participation in governance and social inclusion, and doing so in a way that respects both Islamic and secular values.

It was precisely this strength that drew the Islamic State’s ire and its local partisans’ fire. But neither the attack’s occurrence, nor the institutional problems it exposed should provoke a domestic or international response that suffocates the fledgling democratic order.

Organizations such as and the Islamic State,�� as they are, emerged from common Arab regional experience. For decades, a plethora of post-colonial security (mukhabarat) states in the region embraced ever more cronyistic and repressive rule. They simply deemed harsh authoritarianism necessary, and saw it as the only way to fend off an array of opposition groups inspired by selective readings of Islamic doctrine or regional history.

Since these mukhabarat states undermined any peaceful opposition, religious and secular alike, some of their domestic opponents embraced the exact sort of anti-state, anti-Western violence that confirmed the darkest Islamist stereotype.

In this way, violent, isolationist politics and correspondingly violent state attempts to crush them simply reinforced one another. That left little room for pluralistic, free domestic expression. On top of that, the strategy stopped working: Widespread citizen mobilization ended up toppling most mukhabarat regimes, including �ճܲԾ�������’s.

Tunisia and its two immediate eastern neighbors, and , all overthrew repressive regimes in 2011. But Tunisia was the only one to emerge as a viable democracy because it was able to strike a particular balance.

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On the one hand, it did not have a strong left-over military “deep state,” as in Egypt, whose army and intelligence services were hardly committed to an open political system. On the other hand, perhaps helped by its small demographic and geographical size, Tunisia could cobble out a new order through the reconfiguration of existing political groups, all of which had been crushed in Libya.

This is how Tunisia avoided both a return to military rule,��as in , and a descent into violent chaos,��as in . The balance struck there is exactly the kind of political order that threatens organizations such as IS. These groups can only inspire and recruit a sufficient range of disenchanted Arabs and Muslims if they have no hope of living in a free, self-determined, pluralist society.

A core ideological premise of IS and similar violent movements is that pluralistic, flexible sociopolitical systems are anathema to Islam, and nothing more than a Trojan horse for neo-imperial domination and religious humiliation. Excessively authoritarian, Islamophobic or militaristic behavior by Western countries only flatters this premise and is, therefore, a major goal of militant attacks.

Yet Tunisia itself is a clear riposte to this ideology — proof that Muslims of diverse opinions about the proper role and nature of Islam in politics can overcome the polarization that has occurred elsewhere.

The three-year process that led to �ճܲԾ�������’s new constitution and freely-elected government was by no means a foregone conclusion. But it now stands as one of the few hopeful and dramatic political outcomes in the region over recent years, especially from the perspective of globally inclusive values. Most Tunisians will not give this hard-won achievement up quickly, meaning that the country’s core political commitment is unlikely to be dramatically undone.

Instead, the real challenges from the attack are twofold.

As in any new state, governance in Tunisia is fragile. The combination of �ճܲԾ�������’s situation — close to a major staging ground for IS and al-Qaeda fighters in Libya and the newness of the country’s institutions — means it is vulnerable to ongoing attacks.

Tunisia also faces the dilemma that all open societies subjected to mass attacks must grapple with: How to enhance security without the sort of militarization and repression that reinforce the core message of IS. Al-Qaeda’s attacks were very good at provoking violent and counterproductive responses from the United States — responses that, in the end, begat IS itself.

Likewise, fears of excessive crackdowns and more local IS recruits spiked in and its European neighbors after the attacks in January.

Smaller, less institutionalized Tunisia must resist the temptation to curb free expression or stigmatize groups of Muslims — temptations that proved too hard to resist elsewhere.

But there are hopeful examples: and have themselves been subject to dramatic attacks by violent Islamists in recent years. But in neither case has the attack succeeded in stopping tourism or curbing a relatively high degree of religious and secular pluralism.

Let’s hope this can be true for Tunisia as well.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The post Tunisia Was Attacked For Its Success, Not Its Challenges appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Until now, seemed to have escaped the worst of the violence that has beset the countries of the . Instead, this small nation, whose revolution for democracy and dignity sparked a wave of protest across the Arab world four years ago, looked like the only success story left.

But the��shocking ��at the Bardo Museum in Tunis on March 18, which��left at least 20 , including 17 foreign tourists, marks a profound setback to this rare democratic transition, and it may herald a new wave of violence and political crisis.

Jihadi groups have emerged in force in Tunisia since the Arab Spring, staging small-scale attacks on the military in a mountainous region near the Algerian border, a��violent on the US Embassy in Tunis in 2012, and then high-profile����of two opposition politicians, Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, in 2013. Most worryingly, up to��3,000 young Tunisians��have to fight against the Assad regime in , the largest contingents from any single country. Many joined Islamic State, while others went to the of al-Qaeda,��Jabhat al-Nusra.

It was easy to explain all this as a side-effect from the fall of the Ben Ali regime, often described as an island of secularism in the Middle East. In the chaos that followed former President ’s flight, these groups rapidly took ground and flourished.

In truth, however, radical Salafism had been reemerging in Tunisia ever since the early 2000s.

For many young Tunisians, Salafism often began as a personal spiritual search, fueled by readings they found on the Internet and religious programs on Gulf satellite television channels. In some cases, the Ben Ali regime encouraged this quietist Salafism, even as it continued a two-decade crackdown on the main Islamist movement, Ennahda.

Ben Ali’s rule was never secular. Rather than trying to separate religion and state, he instead sought to monopolize control of all things religious, from dictating Friday sermons in mosques to articulating what Islam should mean to Tunisians. Yet even then, there were signs of an emerging jihadist threat. A 2002 attack on a synagogue on the island of Djerba killed 19 people, mostly tourists, and was by��al-Qaeda. Then in 2006-07, hundreds of young men were jailed after a failed armed assault in Suleiman.

Beji Caid Essebsi / Flickr

After the fall of Ben Ali in 2011, many Salafi leaders came out of jail or returned from exile abroad. In the new security vacuum, their groups flourished, appealing to young, frustrated and unemployed Tunisians who saw there would be no quick solution to the deep socioeconomic crisis that triggered the revolution in the first place. The chaos in Libya next door only served their cause.

The Islamist movement , which�� the first elections in October 2011��and led a coalition government, thought at first it could coax the more extreme Salafi elements onto a path of moderation, but later had to admit its naivety. The government blamed the two political assassinations of 2013 on the group Ansar al-Sharia and�� it; but it is still not clear who was really behind the attacks.

Eventually, Ennahda was�� out of power��in January 2014, in large part because of its security failings. And since then, the situation has scarcely improved.

Groups such as��al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb��(AQIM) to operate in Tunisia. Until now, the Islamic State was not thought to have made headway in the country, but it is as yet unclear whether the group played any role in inspiring or orchestrating the Bardo attack.

Crackdown

�ճܲԾ�������’s new government, which won elections in October 2014 by promising security, will now be under pressure to launch a tough crackdown. In that spirit, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, whose party Nidaa Tounes leads the government,�� after the attack: “We should mobilise the Tunisian people to get rid of [terrorists] totally.”

Even as the shootings unfolded, politicians were meeting in the historic parliament building next door, debating a new draft of the anti-terrorism law. �ճܲԾ�������’s tourist industry, which is a major source of income and which was beginning to revive after the Arab Spring, will be badly affected for many seasons to come and won’t recover until the country feels much safer.

There are real risks of a slide back into authoritarianism. Until now, rival Tunisian politicians have resolved their differences and drafted a new constitution through dialogue and consensus-building. That dialogue, together with the lack of interference from a weak, apolitical military, explained the success of �ճܲԾ�������’s transition.

But under the new government, a tough new tone is already being struck. Essebsi campaigned at the last elections by promising to install “respect for the state” and by frequently criticizing even the moderate Islamists of Ennahda.

His challenge now will be to provide Tunisians with the security they deserve, without resorting to the authoritarianism that is so rapidly reemerging across the countries of the Arab Spring.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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The post �ճܲԾ�������’s Security Nightmare Predates the Arab Spring appeared first on 51�Թ�.

On October 26, Tunisia held its first parliamentary elections since an uprising ousted former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. US President Barack Obama “the people of Tunisia on the democratic election of a new parliament — an important milestone in �ճܲԾ�������’s historic political transition.” Due to exceptional efforts by security and military forces, the elections were held without any major incidents. While already gearing up for the presidential election on November 23, the parliamentary results were surprising and will certainly change the country’s political landscape.

Surprising Results

In the run-up to the parliamentary vote, Nidaa Tounes, a secular party, was not expected to beat the Islamist Ennahda, which won the most seats in the 2011 Constituent Assembly election. Nidaa Tounes’ victory can be explained by two factors. First, Ennahda faced many internal and external difficulties during its two years in office following Ben Ali’s ouster. Financial difficulties and terrorist attacks increased criticism of the party and led to its declining popularity among Tunisians. Second, Nidaa Tounes attracted many voters who were opposed to Islamism and aimed to eliminate Ennahda from power. Nidaa Tounes became the “useful vote,” in that people voted for the party even if it was not their preferred choice. This tactic succeeded to regroup a number of votes in favor of the party. Kais Saied, an expert in constitutional law, considered this a “sanction vote,” since the goal was to defeat Ennahda.

Another surprise was the party that won the third most seats: the Free Patriotic Union (FPU). The FPU is a new party founded and led by Slim Riahi, a 42-year-old businessman. The party won 16 seats in parliament, while many well-known parties gained less than five seats. Riahi was accused of buying votes. However, he contested this accusation, arguing that his promises for investment around the country were sufficient to convince Tunisian voters.

Nonetheless, all parties considered the legislative elections to be a success. This was reinforced by amicable reactions from the two main parties. Rachid Ghannouchi, the head of Ennahda, congratulated Nidaa Tounes’ leader, Beji Caid el-Sebsi, for winning the elections. This reinforced the peaceful character of the Tunisian democratic transition, especially when compared to other countries in the region.

Post-Election Issues

The parliamentary elections raise three important issues for �ճܲԾ�������’s future. First, the government formation and composition is still unclear, since no party has the majority and, therefore, a coalition is required. At the time of writing, a coalition government has yet to be announced. This may change after the presidential election’s results are known.

Nidaa Tounes’ success has been called a “hard victory,” as it still depends on a coalition to form a government. But if the party ends up leading the next government and if el-Sebsi wins the presidential election, Nidaa Tounes will have gained huge political powers.

In �ճܲԾ�������’s current political landscape, it is hard to envision a coalition between Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes, but cooperation between the two parties is possible. With its 16 seats in parliament, the FPU is waiting to be sought after by Nidaa Tounes or Ennahda. The Popular Front, a leftist party with 15 seats, is completely opposed to a coalition with the Islamists, but has economic and social policies that are different from Nidaa Tounes’ plans. Some constitutional experts argue that in case of an impasse, parliament can select a technocratic government.

Second, some politicians expressed fears about Nidaa Tounes, accusing it of including former members of the Democratic Constitutional Rally — Ben Ali’s former party. Even el-Sebsi, with his experience and charisma, was accused of participating in undemocratic regimes prior to the uprising. The Nidaa Tounes leader was a minister under Habib Bourguiba, �ճܲԾ�������’s first president, and he occupied the post of parliamentary president under Ben Ali. He was also the prime minister of the first transitional government after the 2011 uprising. However, el-Sebsi declared that he supports democracy and founded Nidaa Tounes to balance political forces in Tunisia.

Third, the results of the legislative elections have increased the importance of the presidential vote. Ennahda has no candidates, whereas el-Sebsi has become the one who is most likely to win — possibly even in the first round. Therefore, Ennahda has focused on lending support to an independent candidate in order to defeat el-Sebsi and to avoid the political domination by Nidaa Tounes. In the end, Ennahda’s Shura Council decided on November 7 not to impose one particular candidate for its partisans; the only recommendation it has given is to vote for an independent runner.

The Main Conclusions

The legislative elections increased rivalry between Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes and has weakened many known parties, particularly Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol. It also showed that Ennahda had overestimated its chances to win the parliamentary elections. Its decision not to field a candidate for the presidential elections seems risky, as el-Sebsi is now likely to win.

Crucially, priorities for voters are not economic or social. Instead, security has been of utmost concern. Accusations by secular and leftist parties that Ennahda was lenient on Salafist movements weakened the party’s position in the parliamentary elections and contributed to Nidaa Tounes’ victory. However, Islamism is still an important factor that will influence Tunisian politics.

Nidaa Tounes’ success has been called a “hard victory,” as it still depends on a coalition to form a government. But if the party ends up leading the next government and if el-Sebsi wins the presidential election, Nidaa Tounes will have gained huge political powers. However, the party’s leaders have criticized Ennahda for fearing an eventual political domination, arguing that �ճܲԾ�������’s new constitution guards against dictatorships.

With the “useful vote” slogan, Nidaa Tounes has managed to influence decisions at the ballot box. But the question remains: Will el-Sebsi win the presidential election?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy. ��

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As we set out to make sense of the world for October, five key developments took place.

First, President won a narrow electoral victory to stay on in office. Plagued by scandals and hobbled with a faltering economy, she still rode to power on the support of the poor. Rousseff’s patrician opponent was distrusted by a large section of the population that values the bolsa familia program instituted by the president’s party under her predecessor. The initiative is widely regarded as among the best targeted programs for poverty alleviation and a quarter of ’s families depend on it. Clearly, it has proven to be a great vote catcher as well.

Rousseff won after a bitter and acrimonious campaign. Now, she faces the big challenge of reviving the Brazilian . Inflation, rising public debt and an increasing current account deficit that has reached 3.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP) cast a dark shadow on Brazil’s future. Widespread corruption and the series of scandals buffeting Rousseff’s government do not help either. After her victory, markets have tumbled and many investors are expected to flee the country. Expect tough times ahead for the South American giant.

Second, has been raging in West Africa. With the death count reaching 5,000, there is a risk of an epidemic that might spread to other continents. While the hype is all about US intervention and what the so-called West can do to help, Cuba is providing crucial medical expertise. The World Health Organization has that ’s decision to send a 165-member medical team to is “the largest offer of a foreign medical team from a single country during this outbreak.” Perhaps US lawmakers could do well to reconsider their reactionary intransigence on Cuba and start a rapprochement with their long-sworn enemy by cooperating to contain Ebola.

Third, the world economy seems to be slowing down. Share prices, bond yields, inflation rates and oil prices are all falling. The elephant in the room is , the factory of the world that has been growing on steroids for the last decade and more. Weighed down by debts that have increased to of the GDP, fears of a slowdown have intensified. Keyu Jin of the London School of Economics “China’s skewed growth model,” and believes that restructuring the economy is an urgent if difficult challenge. As she points out: “Wage suppression, financial repression, and an undervalued exchange rate subsidize exports and production, at the expense of households, which are thus compelled to save, weakening domestic demand.”

The��Islamic State��(IS) seems to be weakening after being in the ascendant for a while. Its siege of the��Syrian��town of Ain al-Arab, known as��Kobane��in Kurdish, failed.��

Fears about China are still unrealized but the nightmares about the eurozone seem to be coming true. Even the German economy, the one shining light of hope in Europe, is now . Industrial output and exports have plunged. Investor confidence is dropping too. In tough economic times, a row has broken out between and the . Prime Minister has that the will not be paying £1.7 billion to the EU. The Dutch are unhappy too. The dispute threatens the future of the EU and the economy of the eurozone. This week, The Economist declared the eurozone to be “the world’s biggest economic problem,” and stated that the region is “marching towards stagnation and inflation.”

Fourth, the parliament was attacked by a crazy gunman. He was dealt with relatively comfortably and shot dead by security. In the aftermath of the event, ’s right-wing prime minister that there are “increasing places where the planet is descending into savagery.” So, to protect citizens, his government plans to acquire greater powers of surveillance and detention. Fear has long been an enemy of liberty and, in an with , Laura Poitras talks about how Americans now “live in a country that a) legalized torture and b) where no one was ever held to account for it.” It seems the Canadians might soon emulate their southern neighbors in trammeling their freedom.

Finally, the Middle East and North Africa experienced major developments. Elections in were a success. The country voted for its first full parliament since 2011. Nidaa Tounes, the secular party, won 83 seats, while , the party, which had dominated �ճܲԾ�������’s politics since the revolution, came second with 68 seats. Parliamentary democracy seems to be taking root in the country where the commenced, which might provide a template for other nations in the region.

The (IS) seems to be weakening after being in the ascendant for a while. Its siege of the town of Ain al-Arab, known as in Kurdish, failed. The and its allies, notably , have been conducting air strikes against IS targets. Kurdish fighters are finally being armed, while forces from Iraqi have even started to stream across the border to support their kinsmen. The violence in the Middle East will not end anytime soon, but the specter of an IS has receded.

As ever, we invite you to send us blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, cartoons and more. Click to become a contributor. Meanwhile, please find below our finest articles for October.

[seperator style=”style1″]1: Ensuring Decent Work for Domestic Workers in Singapore[/seperator]

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Despite Singapore’s meteoric rise into a developed state, it has failed to guarantee equality for domestic workers.

There are approximately 215,000 migrant domestic workers from Southeast Asia and South Asia in Singapore. These women who cook, clean and take on caregiver roles are among the least protected workers in this affluent city-state. Reports of physical and sexual abuse are frequently heard of, and activists have long criticized the Singapore government for not…

[seperator]2: The Missing Piece in the Syria-Iraq Debate[/seperator]

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The Turkmen across Syria and Iraq are stuck between sectarian conflict and Kurdish nationalism.

Syria and Iraq are now one battleground involving local militants, governments and foreign jihadists. In this mix, ethnic Turkmen are the largest population that is seldom talked about. Yet with over 4 million people spread across the hottest areas of the conflict, Turkmen are one of the groups suffering most under the twin assaults of the Assad regime and the…

[seperator]3: India’s Stumbling Spy Agency Needs Reform[/seperator]

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India’s imperial-era intelligence apparatus has multiple flaws and needs radical overhaul.

Since India’s independence in 1947, the country has been a democracy. Elections are held as scheduled, the press is largely free and parliament convenes regularly. Despite these democratic practices, India retains a strong streak of authoritarianism. India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) is the classic example of the limits of Indian democracy. It has been shrouded in secrecy since…��

[seperator]4: From Pol Pot to ISIS: “Anything That Flies on Everything That Moves”[/seperator]

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Western policies vis-à-vis Cambodia, Iraq and now Syria only help strengthen the extremist cause.

In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said: “Anything that flies on everything that moves.” As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s…

[seperator]5: How Women Are Bearing the Brunt of the Ebola Epidemic”[/seperator]

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Three-quarters of Ebola victims are women, with caretakers especially at risk.

The deadliest Ebola outbreak on record is sweeping West Africa, with over 3,400 lives claimed already. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 20,000 additional cases will be reported by November. And women are being affected most severely. In fact, 75% of those who have died from Ebola are women. “Women have been affected in so many, many ways. Even though…��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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’s��parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled for October 26 and November 23, come at a critical juncture in the country’s advance toward��,��and face challenges to yielding an encouraging outcome for the nation’s future. Faith in democracy among Tunisians is at a low��,��after five transitional governments that have done little to address the demands of freedom, dignity and prosperity that sparked the����in December 2010.

These circumstances accentuate two critical reasons behind the importance of these elections. First, a second free and fair election would be a vital benchmark for democratic consolidation. Consider the case of��. Coercion and fraud marred its second presidential election in 2014, indicative of the country’s stalled democratic transition. Second, the elections also offer a previously unrealized opportunity to �ճܲԾ�������’s marginalized youth, who have thus far been left out of the political scene to gain agency in the post-revolution period.

�ճܲԾ�������’s second elections since the overthrow of����present a stress test for the new����and the opportunity for an electoral transfer of power. Actions taken by political parties, the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) and voters this summer bode well for the election season, and help us identify three conditions that must be fulfilled to confirm the elections’ success. These are ethical and peaceful behavior by the political parties, international validation of the elections’ legitimacy and high voter turnout.

First, 23 political parties signed a����on July 22 regulating conduct for the electoral process. This is a promising step to ensure the elections are free, transparent and peaceful. Second, the Independent High Authority for Elections has signed an agreement to allow for a election observer��. Third, over 930,000 Tunisians����up to vote during the registration period, bringing the total of potential voters to 67% of those eligible, compared to����in the first election in 2011.

However, if these three conditions are not realized, the elections may signal eroding public support for the crucial but difficult reforms needed to fulfill the demands of the revolution, and may decrease foreign investor confidence, thus exacerbating the already weak economy.

Public perception of democracy has faded after initial euphoria following the ratification of the constitution in January. The most recent International Republican Institute����reveals that a record 39% of people feel Tunisia is not a democracy at all. Even a majority of those who consider Tunisia as democratic expressed that they were not at all satisfied with the results of democracy. This sentiment of dissatisfaction is the highest among �ճܲԾ�������’s youth.

Crucially, youth must not be left out of the transition process. A low youth turnout may express discontent that portends instability of the kind that ignited the revolution. Conversely, high youth turnout may demonstrate a sanguine desire to participate in shaping �ճܲԾ�������’s future once again.

The youth-led����of the revolution has not translated into a similar role for young Tunisians in the transition process. Rather, politicians’ failure to address the youth’s chief concern —�� — has contributed to a strong feeling of marginalization and distrust in Tunisian politics.

Youth, aged 15-29, make up over 30% of the labor force, but constitute a disproportionate����of the unemployed. With an����rate of over 30% that has risen since the revolution, youth understandably feel that their needs are being relegated by politicians who are perceived as merely paying lip service to youth development. Additionally, the age gap between Tunisian youth and politicians, the lack of outreach from political parties to youth and the����of former regime officials to the political scene compound this sense of estrangement.

Civil Society Activism

Ignored by their government, many Tunisian youth have turned to civil society organizations to act as agents of change. Emboldened by a new freedom of expression in the post-revolution period, youth-led organizations have proliferated. , a watchdog��nongovernmental organization (NGO), is one such group that strives to raise political efficacy in Tunisian society.

Started in 2011, I WATCH works on voter����and election monitoring, as well as improving governmental transparency and fighting corruption. This summer, the NGO was����along with many other youth organizations in promoting voter registration. Forty percent of newly registered����were younger than 30, signaling a renewed willingness to participate in politics. I WATCH also conducted a��, whose results reinforce the idea that young people are interested in politics and in contributing to the country’s decision-making, but feel their participation has not been valued. These responses make it difficult to predict the amount of youth that will go to the polls — one of the primary unanswered questions leading up to the elections.

The parliamentary and presidential elections will serve as one measure of the Tunisian populace’s commitment to democracy. Problems with unemployment in the economy and disenchantment with political parties threaten this commitment. A free, transparent and peaceful election season can build a solid foundation of support for economic, judicial, public administration and security sector����that are necessary for the country’s democratic consolidation.

Crucially, youth must not be left out of the transition process. A low youth turnout may express discontent that portends instability of the kind that ignited the revolution. Conversely, high youth turnout may demonstrate a sanguine desire to participate in shaping �ճܲԾ�������’s future once again.

This author believes that dissatisfaction among youth with their current situation will drive them to the polls to actively contribute to the transition toward democracy. This October and November are crucial to reengage Tunisian society to the country’s democratic development. The elections can keep Tunisia on the right path, avoiding the pitfalls of Egypt and��’s��thorny transition processes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In most Arab countries, photos of the dictator will appear just about everywhere. On billboards, street corners and in random shops — you name it. Yes, the vain dictator just loves seeing his face wherever he goes. Perhaps he should carry a mirror instead.

While has gone back to such a situation with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in , those days are long gone, and so is Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The former president, who was known for his secular policies, ironically ran away to the most theocratic country in the world: Saudi Arabia. And no one has heard so much as a whisper out of him since.

Today, in Tunisia, you no longer see the dictator’s face down the street — the country has been on a political rollercoaster ride and is set for elections. But Tunisia, dubbed as the success story of the so-called “,” has changed in the everyday person’s mind. The fact that you can sit in a cafe on Avenue Habib Bourguiba — named after the country’s first president who ruled with an iron fist — and talk about politics is a big step forward. Many people are tired of politics, I am told, but the fact that Tunisians can have an open debate over where their country is headed is a remarkable departure from the Ben Ali era.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for other places in the Arab and Muslim world. In countries such as Egypt, , , , , — you name it — the walls have ears, as the saying goes. In these nations, there is a fear of speaking about politics in public; a fear that spies for the regime are listening.

In Tunisia, however, it is indeed refreshing to see that people are no longer afraid of walls with ears. It is refreshing that Ben Ali’s face no longer ruins the country’s streets. But that’s where we have to hold the phone. While the dictator has gone, Tunisian officials have gone into a security frenzy following terrorist attacks and violence that have marred the country’s transition.

In the capital city, away from the tourist resorts in Hammamet and Sousse, barbed wire and barricades are common. These are not only found around government buildings, but they’re also along busy streets in the city center. You could be walking down a populated street with plenty of people sitting in cafes and suddenly come up against barbed wire that stands in your way — yes, it does throw you off at first. Or you could turn around and see security forces pull up with sniffer dogs.

This may be true, but Tunisia is in dire need of reform and investment — so much that Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa recently held an international conference to say the country is open for business. According to the same analyst, foreign investors from Europe want to enter the Tunisian market, but are concerned about security and stability.

Of course, it is understandable as to why authorities have employed such tactics. Tunisia has been caught in the middle of yet another conflict in neighboring , as well as violence on the Algeria border. Those countries’ ills have trickled down on Tunisia and the outcome has seen terrorist attacks that were once unheard of in the country. When bombs explode and bullets fly, citizens will be scared — that much is clear. Added to that, En-Nahda, a moderate Islamist party that ruled the country in a coalition after Ben Ali’s ouster, was heavily criticized for being lenient on extremist Salafist groups that had set out to impose their order in Tunisia. These issues combined have resulted in security hysteria.

However, while Tunisian authorities lay barbed wire around the capital before elections to boost security, the quality of the country’s services have taken a toll. Simply put, Tunisia has a trash problem. Littered along many streets, you will see — and smell — rubbish that has simply been thrown away. As a Tunisian citizen tells me: “The government have gone mad about security, but why don’t they pick up the trash?”

While security concerns are understandable in a country that has undergone its highs and lows over the past three years, the next government must dig deep in its pockets and improve civil services. I am told by a Tunisian analyst that security is the first step to reform. Once a country is stable, other changes will follow, including those in the education system and civil services.

This may be true, but Tunisia is in dire need of reform and investment — so much that Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa recently held an international conference to say the country is open for business. According to the same analyst, foreign investors from Europe want to enter the Tunisian market, but are concerned about security and stability. That said, barbed wire and barricades do not signify a stable country; if anything, it shows a country on edge.

Therefore, to attract investment, Tunisia needs to do two things. First, it must secure its borders to avoid blowback from Algeria and Libya, and clamp down on homegrown extremists who pose a threat to security. A country where bombs explode will not see euros being pumped into it any time soon. Second, as I have argued in a previous , Tunisia must improve its education system to suit the modern day. If �ճܲԾ�������’s education meets the demands of 21^st century industries in technology, science and so on, foreign investors will set their eyes on the country.

With elections around the corner, the future is far from certain, but investors should keep a close eye on Tunisia.

*[This article was originally published at .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As a researcher, what’s the first thing you do when you land in , the birthplace of the ? You talk about politics, of course. My taxi driver tells me not much has changed since the fall of . For him, the country has two main problems.

First, holds any state back, in particular those in the and world, as well as . Well, that’s pretty clear, but how? You see, hurdles on a racetrack mean people have to jump over them. But when you have bureaucratic hurdles — which corrupt officials are happy to make a buck out of — for basic things such as starting a business, people have to jump even higher. In the end, activity takes a beating and modern industries continue to lack innovation.

Added to that, when land is siphoned off at a fraction of the price to the benefit of dodgy officials and businessmen, a state’s economy loses out and so do its people, since money is concentrated in the hands of a few. With so many residential developments in Tunisia that have multiplied since 2011, I wonder if they were sold at full market value.

Second, and this is the biggest part to chow down, in Tunisia and the Arab world is outdated. Those who graduate do not have the skills that industries demand. So, what’s needed? An overhaul of the curriculum to suit the modern, globalized world so the youth and the economy benefit. The youth are the next generation and it is high time that aging autocrats realize that.

For the taxi driver, �ճܲԾ�������’s education system has been problematic ever since post-independence, when it tried to follow the model but instead fell flat on its face, incapable of innovating itself. In 2012, Tunisian officials stated that English would be encouraged more in school rather than French, the country’s second language after Arabic. Two years later, the education system is seeing gradual change as English is being pushed more, alongside Arabic and French — the best development for the taxi driver. This actually began under Ben Ali with the British Council.

North Africans are some of the most multilingual people I have ever met: Arabic, French, English, Spanish, Italian and sometimes more. They have what many people in Britain and the US don’t have: the ability to speak in languages other than their mother tongue.��

Of course, other areas of the education system need reforming, but language carries huge potential in the years to come. Why? Well, without trying to sound like an imperial Brit, there are two main ways English can assist the youth in Tunisia.

First, are some of the most multilingual people I have ever met: Arabic, French, English, Spanish, Italian and sometimes more. They have what many people in and the don’t have: the ability to speak in languages other than their mother tongue. For industries around the world, North Africans who are this skilled in language — and in other fields — should be a recruiter’s dream. These individuals represent huge potential to work in many sectors, including science, trading and more. With a lack of suitable jobs in , it is little wonder as to why youth actively search for employment in the , and . The more well-versed they are in English, the better chance the youth have at getting a job in these industries and regions.

Second, a country whose population is well-versed in English could see more investment from English-speaking nations, which would create jobs and boost the economy. It would also empower a disenfranchised youth population that sees no future career prospects. is rife in North Africa and it is time for governments to seek solutions.

In fact, as a minister , English is the language of most international industries. This includes science, banking, technology and trading. While French investment in Francophone countries has been the way forward since nation-states were born, only represents a fraction of potential foreign direct investment (FDI). Even then, France is no longer the imperial power it once was. The state’s investments around the world have shrunk in recent years. Investment from industries that use English as a first language could view Tunisia as a frontier to tap. Considering that �ճܲԾ�������’s FDI has plummeted since 2011, along with high unemployment, a stagnant economy and rising inflation, new avenues must be explored by the next government.

At the end of the day, the future of a country will be determined by decisions made in the present. Aside from security and stability concerns, Tunisians want change. From those I have spoken to, education is the first thing that slips off their tongue. Such reform will not occur overnight, as many of them rightly point out, but for the next generation of youth to see the fruits of the harvest, the correct change must be pursued today. Failure to do so will result in the continuation of brain drain.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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While there has been much debate within the international community over what should be done in Syria, France has adopted a more assertive, if not , position. From the very beginning of the Syrian conflict, the French government was the the Syrian National Coalition in November 2012. It was also the first government to promise arms to the rebels.

Later, French President François Hollande to “punish” the Assad regime, while most of his European counterparts remained very skeptical of such an intervention. Nonetheless, the French government finally decided not to deliver arms to the insurgents. Following the on Syria’s chemical weapons in September 2013, the idea of a military intervention was abandoned.

Meanwhile, in Africa, France launched a military intervention in Mali in January 2013 and has been involved in the Central African Republic since December 2013.

To many, French foreign policy seems to be quite messy and inconsistent. However, there are very rational explanations behind it that can justify these mixed foreign policy decisions. France’s strategy in Syria — and elsewhere — has been shaped by long-standing and well-identified interests.

Nonetheless, by promoting France’s interests, President Hollande has probably done more harm than good to his own country as well as to Europe and, above all, the Syrian people.

Drivers of French Foreign Policy

France’s strategy in Syria has been defined according to a set of three key drivers. The first is related to French interests in the Middle East. Following its colonial legacy and historical tradition, France has always conducted, especially since Charles de Gaulle’s time in office, a pro-active policy toward Arab states. The French “Arab policy” has taken the form of economic, military and diplomatic relations with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and, more recently, Qatar.

Thus, what has sometimes been called France’s “aggressive” policy on Syria is nothing but a reflection of its well-established interests in the region. France has certain ; before the war, it also expected to use the country as a “hub” for oil and gas transit.

In addition to that, France has deep in neighboring Lebanon. Since the end of the mandate period in the 1930s, Paris has constantly sought to maintain and develop strong diplomatic and cultural ties with Lebanon in order to establish its influence in the region.

Lastly, Syria takes on a prominent geostrategic dimension, especially in respect to its role within the Russian-Iranian axis. Indeed, the three countries share a common interest in counterbalancing Western powers on the world stage. They have been developing a strong relationship for the last decade. France’s influence and interests in the Middle East are threatened by this new geopolitical axis.

This explains why the French government was initially willing to deliver arms to rebels in Syria. It eventually backed down for three reasons. First, French experts feared the delivery of arms would trigger a flare-up in the entire region. The had already proven that it was really hard to control arms flows after their delivery. Second, following the stagnation of the conflict, it became unclear whether arms would benefit the “right” opposition groups or the jihadists, against which France has been fighting for the last decade. Third, France was forced to abandon its project due to the reticence of the international community.

A second driver of France’s foreign policy is its desire to be recognized as a global power. While such a claim was relevant under de Gaulle and even before his time, the role of France on the international stage has become unclear since then.

A subsequent priority for French leaders was and still is to guarantee France’s independence in decision-making. This explains why France had been so assertive in promoting a military strike against the Syrian government. It wanted to show that it could take the initiative on matters as important as the Syrian crisis. Paris had to step back eventually.

Once again, domestic tensions arose as the possibility of another military intervention was mentioned. Further, the compromise found by Russia and the US regarding a deal on Syria’s chemical weapons made a military intervention obsolete.

External factors are not the only elements that have shaped Hollande’s strategy in Syria. Logically, the foreign policy of any given country, and France makes no exception, is intrinsically connected to, if not determined by, the situation at the domestic level.

Ever since Hollande became president in 2012, he has faced growing challenges at home, especially regarding the economic situation. Despite the measures he took, unemployment remains high and economic growth has barely recovered. He has not been able to satisfy neither the left-wing, which sees him as having reneged on his electoral promises, nor the right-wing, which blames him for not going far enough. Overall, Hollande is often depicted as ineffective, not to say feeble.

This explains France’s current policy in Syria in three ways. First, by focusing on serious issues abroad, Hollande attempts to distract from the problems at home. Second, the idea that France has a significant role to play in international affairs enjoys a . Third, for Hollande, being a on the international stage clears himself of being too soft on the domestic scene and gives him a bit more legitimacy and credibility.

Thus, France’s policy toward Syria is not irrational. It is the result of political and geopolitical calculations coupled with domestic considerations. Yet whether this strategy has been successful is much more debatable. In fact, the main issue is that President Hollande has been far too gung-ho to deal with the Syrian crisis. This has not been without consequences.

Hollande’s Gung-Ho Strategy

France’s strategy in Syria has had several boomerang effects. To begin with, recent events have shown that France does not have the political means, nor the material capacity to play by its own rules. While Hollande was ready to launch a military strike in August 2013, US President Barack Obama stepped back and waited for the approval of Congress.

Hollande found himself in a very embarrassing situation. This event exemplified France’s dependency on the US. In other words, it seems that without the support of Washington, or at least of some of its allies, France is .

Moreover, the question was finally solved by the US-Russian deal on Syria’s chemical weapons. For most of the international community, the deal represented a good compromise between a potentially damaging military intervention and the human costs of a “doing-nothing” policy.

However, for the French government, the situation was particularly humiliating since it . Thus, this event not only revealed France’s lack of influence on the international stage, but also showed that the international community could merely do without it.

Overall, the way the French government dealt with the entire crisis contributed to its de-legitimization. The fact that the French president was ready to launch a military strike without seeking parliamentary consent was seen as highly undemocratic. Besides, President Hollande did not appear to give much credit to international law when he declared that it “” rather than being a constraint to a military intervention.

By bypassing both principles of democracy and legality, France deeply damaged its credibility. In sum, the way the French government has managed the Syrian crisis has only succeeded in deepening its .

France’s strategy toward Syria has also negatively impacted Europe. Hollande’s assertive policy has . On the question of arming the rebels, Germany, Sweden and Austria had always been very cautious and disapproved of French — and British — rushed statements about the need to help the insurgency fight back against the Assad regime. Likewise, the Germans and Italians were very critical of France’s military activism. The the French warmongers would threaten the security of European troops in Lebanon.

While France has justified its policy regarding the need to protect the Syrian population, one must not forget that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ultimately, the Syrian people have been the very first victim of France’s ineffective strategy in their country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In its most hard-worded statement to date, the Libyan government on March 20 vowed to eliminate terrorism and mobilize "the national military force" to confront the threat.

According to the : "The cities of Benghazi, Derna, Sirte and others face a terrorist war led by Libyan and foreign elements that have hostile and sinister agendas." The embattled government also called for international help to curb rampant security threats.

March 19 marked the anniversary of the NATO-led military campaign that helped oust Muammar Qadhafi. Three years later, the country is beset by almost daily internecine fighting; attacks on security officers, foreigners and activists; economic problems; oil blockades; and virtually a nonexistent political process.

While international cooperation was pivotal to ejecting Libya's idiosyncratic dictator during the uprising, assistance lacks luster in its restive aftermath. Earlier this month, representatives of over 30 countries converged on Rome to discuss how to stabilize Libya. The biggest international gathering in two years was rife with rhetoric, but sparse on specifics.

Foreign efforts to help Libya founder on the fundamental problem of institutional nonexistence, which was epitomized in the recent sacking of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan after the infamous  incident.

When militias loaded a North Korean-flagged vessel with crude oil worth $30 million from a rebel-held port, Zeidan's beleaguered government offered tough words but little capacity to impose order. The former prime minister vowed to bomb the tanker — threats that rang hollow in a country of unclear lines of authority and tenuous loyalties.

In his first public  since the dismissal, Zeidan admitted his requests to "prepare a force to take action were ignored" and the military did not carry out his orders. The disheartened premier tried soliciting help from loyal militias, but their limited capacities and "weather conditions" allowed the tanker to escape to sea, throwing the sinking government into further disarray.

While existing international regulations would stop rebels benefiting from the illicitly obtained crude — and since the US Navy SEALs intercepted the tanker and returned it to Libya — the incident became emblematic of the government's contracting reach and growing irrelevance.

International efforts to train and assist the military are built on a problematic premise that Libya operates as a nation-state. Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdulaziz in  acknowledged that his country "suffers from the inexistence of institutions," which makes it markedly different from Tunisia and Egypt.

Meanwhile, Ambassador to France Alshiabani Mansour Abuhamoud went even further  his country not only failed to inherit "a state in the technical sense of the term," but even "a culture of institutions among people."

Admittedly, Libyan society is bitterly divided, with deep scars left unhealed since the civil war. The state lacks basic attributes of a functioning government, such as a monopoly on violence, resources and popular legitimacy.

The government's glaring inability to follow through on its threats and safeguard the country's resources erodes public trust, which manifested itself starkly in the February 20 constituent assembly poll where only 15% of eligible voters cast ballots.

Lessons From Tunisia

While Libya faces truly formidable challenges in establishing a normally functioning state, it may need to glean lessons from its tiny western neighbor: Tunisia. As chaotic and sporadic as the Tunisian transitional process may have looked, it nevertheless took place within the confines of the political arena.

National disputes were largely solved within the National Constituent Assembly, with differences settled through deliberations and debate. Such a venue is absent in Libya where abundantly available weapons are the primary tools of exerting political influence, while militias employ them copiously to press their demands.

Libya's General National Congress, elected in July 2012, is discredited as a corrupt and inefficient platform for Islamist-leaning militias that even security officers are loathe to protect. When protesters stormed the parliament earlier this month, some  stated that security guards cheered on rioters who shot two deputies.

Libya can look to Tunisia to heed lessons on building an inclusive transitional body that represents minorities and transcends ideological rivalries. The recently elected constitution-drafting body inherently lacks this capacity as it is based on a divisive formula boycotted by the Amazigh and Tebu minorities, who fear the constitution will not protect their rights.

But beyond that, Libya needs a sustained and concerted international effort to help erect a law-governed state from scratch that exercises monopoly on violence and control over resources.

*[This article was originally published by the .]

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Once again, Tunisia is now considered to be the democratic frontrunner in the Arab world as well as the last remaining hope of the Arab Spring. Its new constitution, passed by the National Constituent Assembly on January 26, is unparalleled in terms of political and religious freedoms, the relationship between religion and politics, and gender equality.

Perhaps even more importantly, the small North African country exemplifies how a national dialogue process, backed by persistent civil society intermediaries and international support, can reach a consensus on the fundamentals of a new political system even in a highly polarized society.

In a region where political conflict is usually "solved" by force or repression, Tunisia impressively demonstrates that the process of negotiation might be tough, however, it is bound to produce more democratic and presumably more sustainable results.

The people and regimes in the entire Arab world will keep an eye on Tunisia. The people because they consider the country to be a role model, and the rulers because they see their power being threatened by the first real Arab alternative to their own authoritarian systems.

At the same time, the positive developments in the Tunisian democratization process are a direct result of the negative developments in other states of the region, namely Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

Learning a Lesson from Egypt

The removal of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 and the following repression of the Muslim Brotherhood acted as a wake-up call for key political actors in Tunisia. This is particularly true for the Islamist Ennahda — the dominant party in the previous government coalition.

Ennahda, throughout its history, has always been more progressive and tolerant in its vision of political and social order as opposed to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Still, the Ennahda-led government made efforts to Islamize the social sphere and sought to enshrine Islam as the state religion in the constitution.

After Morsi’s removal, representatives of Ennahda publicly expressed their concern over a similar development in their own country. As a result, the party learnt a lesson from events in Egypt. Ennahda engaged seriously in the national dialogue process and showed a surprising willingness to compromise as the constitution was drafted.

What is more, Ennahda – due to the pressure from the street and the parliamentary opposition – declared that it would resign in the national interest to make room for a "caretaker government" until the next elections, which is expected to take place in autumn 2014. Notably, the party kept its word and stood down.

Thus, for the first time in the Arab world, an Islamist-dominated government which rose to power through elections had relinquished its role at the top..

The Tunisian opposition has also learnt lessons from Egypt. At first, the opposition felt encouraged to call for the toppling of the Islamist-led government. However, the bloody confrontations in Egypt convinced key opposition figures, such as former Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi, to enter direct and serious dialogue with the leader of Ennahda, Rachid Ghannouchi.

Moreover, the rise of Jihadist groups in Libya, the Sahel region, and Syria had an impact on Tunisia’s domestic political process. Initially, the Ennahda government more or less turned a blind eye to potentially militant Tunisian Salafis. Also, no obstacles were put in the way of young Tunisians departing for Syria to join the battle there.

Yet Ennahda again – even if hesitantly – drew its lessons from homegrown militants’ linking up with international Jihadi actors and engaging in violent attacks against Tunisian security forces. The Islamist Ennahda party dissociates itself explicitly from the potentially militant Salafi camp. Classifying the Salafist group Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist organization in August 2013 was but one example of the government’s new strategy.

The increasing anarchy in Libya, where weapons circulate freely and Jihadists can move undisturbed, further reinforced the readiness for dialogue between the government and the opposition in Tunisia.

While Libya continues to gradually fall apart, Tunisia’s political elite as well as important social forces have become acutely aware that only by standing together will they be strong enough to face the challenges of building solid state institutions in a difficult regional environment.

Egypt's Impact on Morocco and Algeria

Apart from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria have also drawn lessons from the events in Egypt, although not necessarily in the sense of democratization. For example, the Moroccan king has used the events in Egypt to weaken the Islamist ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (PJD), through a cabinet reshuffle. The PJD, probably with an eye on Egypt, has accepted this more or less without complaining.

In Algeria, the Muslim Brotherhood criticized the reception of the new Egyptian foreign minister. But, even though they have decided to boycott the upcoming Algerian presidential elections in April, their oppositional rhetoric in the domestic sphere is subdued these days. With Algeria's civil war in the 1990s, Islamists have a strong interest in demarcating themselves from their violent "brothers."

Such political learning processes are not new. But thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and the intense media coverage of pan-Arab television stations, the Arab public is informed about events in other states faster and better than ever before. This has increased the pressure on political elites to act. Lessons have to be drawn faster – this can be an opportunity, as Tunisia has shown.

Of course, it cannot be assumed that political actors will follow Tunisia's lead or the wider region's developments — that of which are considered to be the "right" ones from a Western democracy-orientated perspective.

But particularly for Western (foreign) policy actors, it is important to act in accordance with these fast learning and adaptable processes. In the short-run, the Tunisian way may not be an export hit.

However, if Arab populations, for instance in Egypt, see that democratization in Tunisia continues to progress thanks to the inclusive national dialogue and that such progress leads to substantial European support for the economy, this may in the medium-term act as an incentive to pursue the path of dialogue.

*[This article was originally published by , and translated from German to English by .]

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Over one year ago, Casper Wuite and I became published authors when our book, , was released. An incredible feat for the two of us aside, the revolts that swept the Middle East and North Africa from December 17, 2010, have certainly been the most seismic event of the 21st century so far. Indeed, as we mentioned in the book, the impact of the revolts will continue to be felt for decades.

A Primer

Looking at the uprisings from the other side of the tunnel as 2014 is in full swing, one can see results that have failed to meet the initial optimism that activists and analysts both rightfully envisioned.

Tunisia continues to see political uncertainty with  set to become the new caretaker prime minister. His task will be to form an interim government that will satisfy all parties — a formidable challenge for a country that not too long ago was dubbed the model for Arab nations coming off a political transition.

The National Constituent Assembly in Tunisia has struggled to agree upon a comprehensive draft constitution that is accepted by all actors, while terrorist attacks — once unthinkable in the tiny Maghreb nation — and  have been a reoccurring nightmare. Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Uprisings, is in a state of flux. Beyond civil unrest in  in December 2013, lawmakers have  as the assembly struggles to agree upon a constitution that is deemed satisfactory by Islamist and secular parties.   

In Egypt, the so-called "deep state" has made a comeback as the military is back on the scene after a coup d'état against an Islamist president who forcefully imposed his — and his party's — controversial and authoritarian policies upon resilient Egyptians. Egypt's military rulers, under the face of interim President Adly Mansour, have brought back much-hated and oppressive laws, including a controversial curbing of protests as well as a recent state of emergency. Aside from the mass arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters that have been criticized by , youth activists of the 2011 uprising were recently handed  — the imprisoned blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah was one of them.

The spirit of Tahrir Square, which donned the colors of the Egyptian flag and brought down a long-standing military dictator in Hosni Mubarak, has indeed faded into the abyss. Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were certainly not the right leaders for Egypt as they upheld their own dictatorial and inexperienced policies at the expense of everyday Egyptians.

However, neither is the repressive military under General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — the same military that countless Egyptians stood against on many occasions one year prior. If Tunisia is in a state of flux, Egypt's so-called "revolution" has taken more than two steps back. Should Sisi run for office — as  — all eyes would turn towards revolutionary groups to see if they would accept such an outcome, even if it comes via the ballot box.  

Meanwhile, Libya's government has failed to enforce a solid security strategy, while arms trade and proliferation are a significant concern for Mediterranean countries and sub-Saharan Africa. The vast majority of militias that were involved in the civil war did not disarm and have since sought to challenge the state's security forces. Weapons from Libya have even made their way to West Africa and the Levant. In fact, these same militias managed to destabilize neighboring Mali and drag the country down into its own conflict. Alarmingly, Tripoli's inadequate security policy meant that the country's prime minister, Ali Zeidan, was recently  by extremists.

Tribal militias had even managed to block 80% of Libya's oil exports for months on end, while the country's daily output plummeted severely throughout 2013.

The demise of Libya's security situation has a number of implications not only for the wider region, but also for everyday Libyans as threats of a second civil war are not farfetched.

If the Libyan government fails to curb armed militias — of nearly a few thousand — and secure the abundance of weapons throughout the country, Libya will not progress economically. Libya is in dire need of investment and infrastructure as the country needs to be rebuilt. It is quite clear that foreign companies will think twice about investing in a nation that is severely unstable. The outcome will be a likely increase in unemployment and, as a result, the Libyan people will grow more and more restive. For southern Europe, this will mean an increase in migrants sailing across the Mediterranean.   

Yemen's transition in a post-Saleh era is still marred by corruption, violence and drones. President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi — who was elected in a farcical one-horse race in February 2012 after a GCC-led transition agreement that forced Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down — is overt regarding US drone strikes in Yemen. In fact, when visiting Washington, D.C. in September 2012, Hadi praised and all but welcomed the attacks by stating: "."

Aside from the moral implications of US drone warfare, Yemen's security situation is clearly of core concern to regional states as well as the international community. Any rise in terrorism-related activity in Yemen has the potential to impact upon Western interests in the Gulf but also abroad, as  in 2009 showed. However, a "zero margin of error" is definitely a false assertion by President Hadi when a  can be mistakenly hit by a drone strike. Hadi is simply a new face for an old, corrupted regime.

Bahrain's al-Khalifa family continues to rule with its oppressive hand. The Gulf kingdom's Shi'a majority has a right to stand up against the state when it fails to cater for all its citizens. Indeed, Manama's human rights record is nothing short of atrocious.

With arbitrary arrest and military-style trials of civilians, Bahrain has managed to present its political unrest as a sectarian issue with Iran at the forefront. While Iran does hold its own agenda over the nation's unrest, a sectarian-led explanation for Bahrain's uprising is far from the truth.

The majority Shi'a population are wrongfully discriminated against and treated as third-class citizens. With all moral issues of human rights abuse aside, Bahrain should empower its Shi'a populace to reduce the much-warranted grievances against the Khalifa family. A united population is imperative for economic growth and social cohesion.  

As civil war in the Levant approaches its third anniversary, it is Syria which is perhaps the most heartbreaking story of what Marc Lynch had dubbed the "" — a term which he himself admitted was not an accurate assessment of the region's uprisings. As battles rage on between forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and armed opposition fighters — consisting of Syrians and non-Syrians, including Islamists, Salafists and the drowned-out voices of secularists — it is the innocent bystanders of the war who have to bear the brunt of both sides' brutality, unending violence, and unyielding stance.

While NATO hit the trigger alarmingly fast in Libya without giving diplomacy a thorough try, the international community has failed to diplomatically bring about peace in Syria. As hopes of a ceasefire in the upcoming Geneva conference fade, the civil war sees no end in sight as innocent men, women and children watch their lives being torn apart on a daily basis.

The Fruits of the "Spring"

Indeed, Syria is the tragedy story of the so-called "Arab Spring," with  having been killed by Assad loyalists and armed opposition fighters. However, while the third anniversary of Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation has passed, it is worthwhile to assess the Arab Uprisings in a "then" and "now" fashion.

As each nation's uprising or political unrest differed in terms of its specific causes and outcomes, it is imperative to look upon the countries on an individual basis and evaluate how they have progressed from 2010/11 until now, while also providing suggestions for each nation on a social, political and economic basis.

What will follow as 2014 surges forward is a series of articles which tackle exactly that — on Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, as well as Morocco, Algeria and Jordan. Such a comprehensive analysis of these nations is necessary as the fruits of the "Spring" have not been met — at least not yet.     

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About a year ago, in Los Angeles, I asked Jaco, a Tunisian-Jewish friend, for his thoughts on the post-Ben Ali Tunisian political situation. He thought about it for a second and summed up the Tunisian reality in two sentences. “Things will get worse… and then they’ll get better.” The first part has certainly come true. But right now it’s harder to see the bright future at the end of the tunnel.

Three years ago, on December 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi immolated himself in Sidi Bouzid, an impoverished town in the Tunisian interior. The ensuing social explosion would force dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, from power before expanding to the entire Middle East.

Three years later, the prospects for “a new Tunisia” are somber enough. Talk of Tunisia as “the only successful democratic transition” in the Arab world is, unfortunately, more wishful thinking than fact.

The country is in full crisis. As in the region’s other revolutions, the Tunisian revolt was triggered by economic stagnation, massive corruption, and a repressive dictatorship. The demands of the revolution, which remain largely unaddressed, were essentially secular: far-reaching socioeconomic change and greater democracy. It was not about what variety of Islam the country might embrace.

True enough, Tunisia has not deteriorated to the levels of the civil war in Syria or the large-scale violence in Egypt. But three years after Bouazizi set the country aflame, the path Tunisians have traveled has been a rocky one, involving a fair amount of suffering, much of it self-inflicted. Three years on, Tunisia slides from one crisis to another.

Despite formal progress — credible elections, some regime facelifts — Tunisia is caught in a downward spiral that could easily get much worse. As the economy continues to tank and jobs become even scarcer for youth, more young people are amenable to the Salafist call of Islamic radicalism.

After considerable outside pressure, Tunisia is ushering in a new set of political leaders. But do they also represent a new politics or just more of the same?

The Errors of Ennahda

Outside factors, such as the corroding influence of Qatari and Saudi money, have played a role in Tunisia’s drift toward theocracy. And without foreign economic and political aid from the United States and Europe, the current government would not have a leg to stand on, and Tunisia’s fragile political stability would collapse.

But much of the responsibility for Tunisia’s current plight must be placed at the feet of the three-party ruling coalition, and particularly the Ennahda Party, which is essentially the Tunisian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ennahda and its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, bear a great deal of responsibility for the growing polarization in the country. Like its sister organization in Egypt, Ennahda ruled with a mixture of ineptitude, factionalism, and growing repressiveness. Ennahda gave a free-hand to more radical Islamist elements, permitting Salafists to gain control over the country’s mosques, bully and threaten more secular figures, intimidate women in an effort to undermine women’s rights, and Islamize the country’s educational system. In this process, the moderates of the past have been unceremoniously pushed aside.

The Ennahda-led government has lacked an economic program or vision to address the country’s economic and social ills. It has limped along on IMF handouts, with the usual harsh structural adjustments these entail. Its program was essentially cultural — to advance its own particular version of Islam within Tunisia’s long secular-oriented post-colonial government. A new intolerant religious sectarianism, fueled and funded with Saudi and Qatari money, has produced an even more toxic cocktail.

Shuffling the Deck

Now for the fourth time since the overthrow of the Ben Ali-Trabelsi dictatorship, the Tunisian ruling elite has had to shuffle the deck in response to widespread public outrage. Unending mass protests, combined with pressure from both the Obama administration and the European Union, have forced a leadership change. Past changes have been little more than political musical chairs, with the ruling Troika — in which Ennahda holds most of the power — simply exchanging one Ennahda leader for another.

This time, fearing that it might suffer the same fate as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda reluctantly began a more serious process. The fundamental question is whether the new leadership actually offers the country a way out of the crisis, or whether it is once again an exercise of all the change necessary to maintain the status quo.

A “national dialogue” — somewhat limited in scope — has resulted in the announcement of a new government in which Ennahda has agreed to share power with Beji Caid Essebsi’s , a party made up largely of prominent business and government elements from the Ben Ali period, including Essebsi himself. Nida Tounes is the old guard’s bid to return to power through the back door. 

After several months of political wrangling, Ennahda agreed to a new transitional government of technocrats to replace the current government led by . Under pressure from Paris, Mehdi Jomâa, a Tunisian with ties to the French energy multinational , was chosen to replace him.

Business as Usual

Although Ennahda and Nida Tounes disagree sharply on cultural policies — for instance, on the Islamization of Tunisian society — both parties are firmly committed to the same neo-liberal economic policies that Tunisia has embraced for the past 30 years and that are responsible for the ongoing social crisis facing the country. The new Ennahda-Nida Tounes power-sharing agreement slightly enlarges the social base of those in power while splitting and weakening the broader Tunisian opposition, just as it was meant to do.

Jomâa, a hardly known political figure, is already viewed with mistrust beyond the country’s business community. The Popular Front, the leftist opposition party whose size and influence continues to grow, has opposed the selection of a Jomâa-led government, noting that his support has a narrow base. Two of the leaders of this party, Chokri Belaid and Mohammed Brahmi, have been assassinated within the past year. These assassinations were key elements in  and the narrowing of its base of support.

Both Washington and Paris, wary of a perceived challenge from China in Africa, immediately acknowledged and strongly supported Tunisia’s new political constellation. Curiously, among those expressing most hope for the new Tunisian political pact is US neoconservative  — of Iran-Contra fame — who penned an entry on his Council of Foreign Relations blog deeming Tunisia the “” and expressing support for the Jomâa-led government. He quoted a similar statement issued by the  spin-off, the .

Violence Escalates

After trying to reign in Salafist excesses for three years, the Tunisian government has found that these elements are now out of control. The government is in pitched battles with armed Islamist radicals in the country’s mountainous western region near the Algerian border and elsewhere. As retired Tunisian General Rachid Ammar, “hero” of the events of January 2011, warned: 

Three years later, self-immolation has been replaced by suicide bombing, unknown in Tunisia until recently. In October 2013, one youth managed to blow himself up in Sousse, a lovely seaside fishing town that independence turned into a European tourist Mecca. The second attempt, by Aymen Saadi, a 17-year-old youth, was diffused before its payload could be detonated.

Saadi’s story is worth telling. A promising student, he left high school a year ago along with hundreds of other young Tunisian volunteers and traveled incognito to Libya, where he received military training in Salafist camps in and around Benghazi. From Libya he was flown to Turkey, . Saadi and fellow travelers returned to Tunisia as trained and hardened Islamic guerillas.

Tunisian youths, recruited and radicalized by Salafist elements, are reportedly working with terrorist groups in Mali, Algeria, Iraq, and Libya. They return home to Tunisia and continue their “jihad.” Although there is no exact figure for the number of Salafist-trained youth re-entering the country, the figure thrown around is in the hundreds.

Ennahda has repeatedly denied that it actively recruits Tunisian youth to fight with Islamist rebels in Syria and Mali. But such denials ring false. In line with Muslim Brotherhood policy, the Tunisian government supports the Islamist-dominated Syrian rebels politically and militarily. Ennahda has done little to interfere with Salafist military recruiting taking place in Tunisia’s mosques and religious schools. Now it faces the inevitable blowback.

Complex as the Tunisian situation is, the country remains an island of hope in a sea of increasing cynicism. Preserving what is left of Tunisian democracy is very much in the US interest.

Three years ago, many US policymakers, including Hillary Clinton, urged President Barack Obama to take a more conservative course and continue to support Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Against that advice, the president tilted toward supporting the democratic movements and the changes they demanded. It was one of Obama’s finest moments.

No doubt, US pressure was one element in convincing Ennahda to extend its base and embrace some of the country’s democratic elements. This was done not only to strengthen the government’s position in its struggle against a growing armed radical Islamic insurgency, but also to help save Tunisian democracy from disintegrating into Egyptian- or Syrian-like chaos.

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On December 14, 2013, Tunisia’s ruling Islamists reached an agreement with opposition parties choosing Mehdi Jomaa, the current Tunisian industry minister, to serve as interim prime minister until elections in 2014. Jomaa, a mechanical engineer, has three weeks to form an interim technocratic government.  

His selection came as the moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, stepped down from power after facing significant domestic pressures, such as large-scale protests and increased cohesion amongst opposition parties.  

Ennahda was originally elected with overwhelming support after the upheavals of 2011. While this development appears to be a step forward for democracy in Tunisia, it may bring about considerable instability in the short-term.

On December 17, protests were held in the capital and in Sidi Bouzid to mark three years since a young street vendor set himself on fire in desperation over unemployment and police harassment, unleashing a contagious uprising that would spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East.  

The protesters included ultraconservative Muslims calling for a caliphate as well as activists demanding more jobs. Demonstrations came as a reminder of the frustration that reigns in Tunisian society.

"Far from getting better, the living conditions for the population are deteriorating, and the three governments that followed one after the other have done nothing to turn things around," said protester Youssef Jelili in the .

Strategic Interests

Due to a fragmented political scene, Ennahda had been able to exercise a large amount of power in post-revolution Tunisia. Nevertheless, criticism toward the ruling party has steadily mounted, and disparate factions have now come together to unite in opposition.  

Critics of Ennahda, including various politicalparties and civil society organizations, argue that it has consolidated an undue amount of power into its own hands, all along ignoring the real issues in the country, such as the rising security threat posed by militant Islamist groups and the social and economic duress felt by the population.  

Given the gridlocked political system, anti-government sentiment has increasingly resulted in street violence. As protests escalated, Ennahda agreed to new elections and an immediate transfer of authority to a caretaker prime minister, lest they be ousted as their Egyptian counterparts, the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Jomaa received support on the grounds that many believe he represents an independent, technocratic option.  

Many in Tunisia, however, feel that Jomaa is an Ennahda-aligned politician who has been promoted by the party as an independent to assuage domestic political and social pressures. The Nida Tounes party, Ennahda’s most prominent political opposition, did not support the selection, because, as a spokesman said: "."  

If the public, too, starts viewing Jomaa as merely another manifestation of Ennahda, it is likely that domestic pressures will once again rise and the political standstill will return.

Social Influences

Displeasure with the Ennahda administration is largely tied to the lack of socioeconomic progress made during their time in office. Since the Arab Spring, a constantly shifting cabinet of ministers has been paraded in front of the people, while unemployment has reached nearly a quarter of the population. 

Discontent over post-revolutionary conditions has been taking on an increasingly radical form. Most alarming is the rise of extremist movements, including the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Shariah, which has not shied away from indulging in political assassinations, such as those of Chokri Belaid and Mohammed Brahimi. Many blame Ennahda for this, pointing to their lax attitude towards jihadist violence. 

 also reports on a growing concern that hundreds of young volunteers are being recruited in Tunisia through a widening network of hard-line Salafist mosques to be trained to fight in Syria. Also, the use of suicide attacks, up until now unheard of in Tunisia, is a sign of the spreading radicalization of the young. 

Tunisia now seems to have become a fertile ground for jihadist groups to recruit their faithful among the unsatisfied and unemployed. This is not something that an interim government – one with little trust from the people – can efficiently handle. 

Tunisia, like many other post-revolution Arab countries, is dangerously skirting along a precipice that, once crossed, leads to failed statedom.

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More than two years after President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's ouster, political and social events, including prolonged anti-government protests, have led to a national dialogue among key stakeholders to resolve Tunisia’s current crisis. This dialogue is seen as the panacea to unlock the process of democratic transition.

What is perceived as needed by Tunisia's main political actors is a national consensus, which is usually considered when a country is really threatened by collapse, complete political deadlock, or civil war. Therefore, the consensus among politicians becomes necessary when no one is seen as legitimate enough to run the country.

The national dialogue started two weeks ago, but was suspended on November 5. Through civil society partners, political stakeholders  their intention to return to dialogue during the week of November 18; it is based on a roadmap proposed by a Quartet.

Intended to remove the current government in three weeks, this roadmap is not based on a national consultation which the people should be the main actor of. The quartet, which is playing the role of mediator between the elected Troika in power (Ennahda, Congress for the Republic, and Ettakatol) and the opposition parties, consists of:

• Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT): considered as a stronghold of the leftist movements hostile to the Islamist Ennahda party since its elections victory in October 23, 2011
• Tunisian Union of Industry and Handicrafts (UTICA): an employer corporation, of which some managers are leaders in the opposing party Nida Tounes; very critical of the Troika and Ennahda’s main rival 
• The Organization of Lawyers: its president called for the departure of the Troika two months ago
• The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH): the president, Abdessattar Ben Moussa, well-known for his leftist tendencies, repeatedly criticized the actions of the government in terms of human rights management throughout 2012

The Opposition’s Strategy

Opposition parties – mainly the Popular Front, the Republican Party, Al Massar, and in general the parties that are part of the National Rescue Front –  have used the assassination of , leader of the Popular Front, to question the legitimacy of the Tunisian government. They are directly and indirectly supported by certain groups – for example, the  (IRVA) – media outlets, and foreign personalities like Jean-Pierre Mignard.

The opposition, taking advantage of the weakness of the country and the fragility of state institutions after the revolution, has blamed the government for slow progress with implementing government programs and transitional justice procedures. Despite its poor electoral performance, the opposition is starting to hope to overthrow the current government regardless of the consequences on the transitional process.

Paradoxically, the questioning of the Tunisian government’s legitimacy was accompanied by suggesting non-democratic alternatives — namely the appointment of a new, competent and politically-neutral government, without directly consulting the public. In addition, most opposition parties who have succeeded in bringing about this political change did not, in any way, prove their ability to manage the country. They actually seem unable to attain power by democratic means. 

While the  in 2011 showed their low popularity, opposition parties were able to shape public opinion by claiming the political balance had changed at the expense of the Troika. This was in part achieved by a concerted media strategy, aimed at demonizing the government. In contrast to that, the Tunisian government’s communication strategy was too timid.

To better understand the current situation, it is important to examine the meaning of the following headings — phrases that have been promoted by the opposition for over two years.

A Country on the Wrong Path

Stopping the constitutional process in its final stages would be a great loss for all Tunisians, since this was a popular demand during the protests of Kasbah 1 and Kasbah 2 that led to the resignation of Mohammed Ghannouchi, the former prime minister of Ben Ali. The natural alternative to this constitutional process would be a return to the situation of January 14, 2011, where there was almost no state.

Those who wish to take a step back are not aware of the risks associated with the resignation of the Troika. The Troika leaders have been allied against Ben Ali since October 18, 2009. Indeed, it is possible they are not properly navigating the constitutional process.

However, the risk of a constitutional vacuum, chaos, and the return of opportunistic actors by occupying their previous positions held under Ben Ali would be fatal. The real problem, however, does not lie with individuals but with a culture of corruption, non-compliance with state institutions, and bad governance.

Failure of the Government

It is very difficult to demonstrate the concept of failure. In fact, it means the non-achievement of the objective initially set.

Such an assessment should be done by an impartial third party. However, the failure of Tunisia's government was only assessed by the political opposition. The Tunisian people were once again not consulted.

It is important to note in this context that there is a lack of credibility when it comes to the political class as a whole. Moreover, the opposition which has not offered sufficient and alternative economic and social programs appealing to citizens, has experienced increasing difficulty to mobilize the street for its purposes. An example of that is the Bardo sit-in, calling for the dissolution of the National Constituent Assembly and the government, which no longer attracts the same amount of protesters and media coverage.  

A transition is often characterized by weak and fragile state institutions, poor economic conditions, and the desire to implement ambitious reforms. However, a government during the transition is only expected to lead the country out of high-risk situations.

This objective was partially realized in spite of unfavorable conditions at home and abroad — Tunisia experienced high rates of , the dire economic situation in Europe affected the export market, and international rating agencies downgraded the country’s . In fact, rates of growth and employment would be higher if unjustified strikes paralyzing vital activities had not occurred.

The Loss Of Legitimacy

Legitimacy is a concept used differently in Tunisia in varying circumstances; it changes when the political interests and power relations change. Recall that Mohammed Ghannouchi — referring to the silent majority and based on the legitimacy of a consensus to consolidate his power — managed the country after Ben Ali’s ouster by a team that Tunisians did not know. However, this was to counter the street legitimacy claimed by the opposition who organized the Kasbah 1 and 2 sit-ins.

The same opposition, which at first called for the prevalence of electoral legitimacy, after its defeat in the 2011 elections, now seizes every opportunity to dispute the Troika’s electoral legitimacy. Thus, the opposition is trying to institutionalize the non-recognition of the election's outcome.

The current weakness of the state, and probably international pressure, prompted the present government to follow the opposition’s stance and declare the national dialogue with the legitimacy of consensus to organize its departure.

The Risk of Election Fraud

The Troika’s appointment of many executives in the public sector was regarded by the opposition as a strategy to occupy key positions in the state to falsify future elections results. This argument is stronger in a context of mistrust.

However, this is an exaggeration since it is not the government that will organize the elections. The opposition could impose guarantees, such as the presence of international organizations, strengthening the legal and operational status of the independent electoral commission — Instance Supérieure Indépendante des Elections (ISIE) — and the replacement of regional governors by military officers during elections. Demanding the departure of the government does not have particular meaning in relation to this argument.

For these apparent reasons the opposition, supported by the UGTT, the UTICA, and several media outlets, has demanded to shorten the transition process currently led by the Troika. It seems the opposition did not, and still does not, care about the fact that the current process could be a decisive turning point in its own political history.

The Trapped Government and Opposition

It becomes obvious that the two protagonists are trapped.

The government is torn between making an exit through the "back door" by declaring bankruptcy on the one hand, and withstanding the pressure of the opposition on the other. But it may not be able to handle another possible political assassination.

The opposition, meanwhile, is torn between the acceptance of traditional democratic rules and the risk of being beaten again on the one hand, and to continue its pressure campaign, with no guarantee of achieving its goals on the other. Accordingly, it agreed to ally with the very men who served Ben Ali to avoid the continuity of the constitutional process.

During the dialogue, the opposition has suggested names — including Mohamed Naceur, Kamel Nabli, and other former ministers before and just after the revolution of January 14 — because of their considered competency, further showcasing the government’s supposed incompetence.

However, competence is measured by the results and circumstances. These former ministers of Ben Ali and others should not return to power without the consent of the population. In fact, the result of their economic and social strategies was a structural weakness, currently expressed in the social and regional disparities affecting Tunisia today.

If they are looking for economic competence, there is no reason to go to political parties. Even in this case, if the new caretaker cabinet only rules the country for a short period, what could justify the requirement of particular skills? How can these candidates for the to-be-formed-government agree to be evaluated and then be recruited by political parties, and therefore, lose their independence and neutrality?

Looking Forward?

For its part, the political class must realize that the roadmap proposed by the Quartet carries significant risks which could lead other forces, such as alliances of political parties with security forces and the military, to intervene and end the national agreement on the transitional phase.

In the short-run, the new cabinet will manage the state budget which has already been prepared by the Troika. The same issue concerns the Investment Code, the high investment authority, and the PPP project amongst others — unless the intention to actually run the country for the long-term remains hidden from the observer.

Finally, as with Poland’s transition in and after the Soviet period demonstrated, ensuring a smooth democratic transition is the responsibility of the intellectual, political, and economic elite. This is usually characterized by frictions, but should not run the risk of a reversal. Only democratic tools should be adopted to avoid this risk; a crucial lesson for Tunisia.

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51�Թ�’s Middle East Editor, , speaks to from the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government in Dubai — a renowned expert on political Islam and Islamist movements whose work has been featured in a great variety of media outlets, such as the BBC, the New York Times, Gulf News, and Al-Khaleej.

Langendorf and Biygautane talk about Islamist movements in the post-Arab Spring environment, the situation in Egypt, Sunni and Shi’a tensions, and the compatibility of Islam and democracy.

Manuel Langendorf: In several conflicts across the MENA region, the powerful Sunni states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar support different Islamist movements. Often described as a competition, do you see this as religiously inspired?

Mhamed Biygautane: It is not merely inspired by religious motivations. I think it is more of a political competition and struggle for survival. Saudi Arabia was one of the targets of the Iranian clerics. They wanted to transform the governance system in Saudi Arabia. From 1980 until 1988, Saddam Hussein waged a devastating war against Iran’s newly appointed Islamist Shi’a government because the Iranians wanted a similar revolution to take place in Iraq, where 60 percent of its inhabitants are Shi’a. Saddam responded by trying to destroy the Iranian regime, but couldn’t.

So in an attempt to survive, sustain themselves and evolve, governments tend to believe that “the enemy of their enemy is their friend.” Hence, you see Saudi Arabia supporting any regime that is against the Shi’a. The same scenario takes place in Shi’a-majority governments that support each other in times of crisis as we see between Iran, Hezbollah and the Alawite sect in Syria.

To go back to the question about Qatar, I think it is trying to develop a unique foreign policy agenda that differs substantially from the other Gulf countries. Qatar was the only Gulf state that supported Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood with generous funds. Even bolder was the visit of its Emir to the Hamas leader in Gaza last year and the generous package of $400 million pledged for investment in new projects.

Langendorf: How do you see the much-debated (in-)compatibility between Islam and democracy?

Biygautane: This is a complex and widely debated subject. I think the reason why Western scholars argue that Islam is incompatible with democracy is essentially due to the fact that the vast majority of Arab-Muslim countries are governed by dictatorships. However, we should not disregard the fact that the ultimate purpose of democracy is to achieve the wellbeing and happiness of people. Citizens of a country choose the representatives they think will serve their best interests and govern their countries the way the people choose. However, as long as people are satisfied, happy and content with their political regimes, it does not really matter if the rulers of that country are democratically elected or not.

I will further illustrate what I mean here. I am not saying democracy is not important. What I am saying is the term democracy is not relevant in all political and regional contexts. Let’s take the countries of the Gulf as an example. Since the ultimate objective of democracy is to achieve the happiness and welfare of people, the leaders of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, have exceeded this objective.

UAE ranked as number one in the Arab world in the happiness index. People there have the best welfare system that exists globally, the best health care system, free education systems, and direct access to the rulers. This achieves all the objectives of democracy as it is known in the West.

Currently, the vast majority of people in democratic countries of the West like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece are very unhappy with and disappointed by their governments who they had elected by themselves. These governments failed to deliver their social contract obligations and have made irrational choices that were part of the reasons behind the financial crisis in Europe.

The bottom line here is that democracy is a means — not an end in itself. It is a means to achieve happiness, prosperity and security for the people. In my opinion, as long as this is genuinely the case, it does not matter if it is provided through democratically elected governments, or through a political system that is tribal in its nature. We cannot impose Western democratic practices on other countries with different histories and cultures.

Langendorf: What are the most debated issues in Islamic law at the moment? How do Sunnism and Shiism differ in this regard?

Biygautane: Well, this is a very good question. In fact, there are some Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran that exercise Islamic law as it was in the seventh century. This includes cutting the hands of those who commit the crime of stealing, beheading in public those who commit murder, and so on. However, I am definitely not a supporter of implementing strict Islamic or shari’a law in today’s governments.

Laws evolve along with societal and political changes that take place, and also according to the coercive institutions that exist. Therefore, applying strict Islamic laws in today’s society just seems unreasonable to me. I think this is not a subject in which Sunnis and Shi’a differ, but in some countries that follow an extreme form of Islam.

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Several claimed that the fatwas condoning such acts were issued by well-known religious leaders, including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Mohammad al-Arefe and Yassin al-Ajlouni. The newspapers alleged these leaders, who have large followings in the region, issued another fatwa that allowed for the rape of other Muslim women (who are not Muslim Brotherhood members), if they were kidnapped or taken as prisoners of war, as slaves and victory bounty.

Of course, the religious leaders claimed this was completely justified as they belonged to infidels, the enemy they are at war with. They allegedly added that this was far better than opposition��fighters being forced to have sinful sex (intercourse with “good” women outside of marriage), and was to make sure that they could endure the war.

The same newspapers claimed that young women and girls who agreed to join the movement of Jihad were also tricked by the call of other women��—��who are higher in rank or status within the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious groups��—��brainwashed into thinking that by joining the holy war, they would be guaranteed a place in heaven.

Additionally, by providing their bodies for sex to several fighters, these religious leaders allegedly told them the act was not a sinful crime (as cases of sexual intercourse with multiple partners would usually be regarded in Islam) but a marriage – thus giving it legitimacy.

However, once these girls discovered they had become sex slaves and, in some cases, as the two Egyptian girls reported to the police, had not even been given the choice of whether to join the Jihad, they realized they were being forced to provide sex for several men per day.

To confirm these stories, there are a number of on YouTube which capture live testimonies from women who were raped by Syrian opposition fighters. On one video, a doctor claims that many women who escaped their ordeal were found to have contracted HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Not Mere Rumors

This new call for women to support opposition fighters by providing their bodies for sex is not a mere rumor. The live testimonies on YouTube, the interviews on Egyptian TV and the police reports filed by Muslim Brotherhood girls themselves, all prove that such acts were performed in the name of and justified by Jihad.

This was also confirmed in statements by , the Mufti of the Republic of Tunisia, who stated that 16 Tunisian women had been tricked into going to Syria to provide sexual “services” to the Syrian opposition.

To legitimize sex slavery of brainwashed and tricked women in the name of Islam or any religion or cult should be considered a war crime. The perpetrators of such crimes must be condemned and put to trial.

Such behavior towards women is becoming increasingly common in Syria today, with opposition fighters using such false or deceiving fatwas to rape girls and women.

There are some articles, such as one by��, which claim there has not been any real evidence for this Jihad al-Nikah and that pro-Assad media has used it to paint opposition fighters in negative terms.

Despite the article’s popularity, it makes something out of nothing. It casts doubt on the motivation of the Tunisian minister and the testimonies of the girls, but does not provide any real evidence that what they are saying is untrue.

Far more important than claims by ministers are the testimonies of the women themselves. If these are documented clearly on YouTube, Facebook and other online forums and are backed up by (in some cases in Egypt) police reports, they deserve further investigation by international experts rather than being used as part of political mudslinging between pro- and anti-Assad supporters.

It is of the utmost importance to establish international tribunals and protection for these girls who have been raped and used as sex slaves, to ensure they do not face any retaliation if they speak out. This means that, as in the case of Syria’s chemical weapons, international experts should go to Syria, protect and listen to the stories of these women.

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The business world has also made its entrance in this field. “There is no allegiance except to Tunisia” (La wala’illa litunis), say immense billboards in all of Tunis.��The formula is strange; the basis of the national flag is an implicit echo of the Muslim profession of faith (there is no god but Allah).

Red spots have invaded public space: bus stops and billboards of all sizes, with or without the slogan. This organized and institutionalized form of political posting, outside of an election campaign period, is striking. Also visible are the portraits of martyrs, printed in color, hanging here and there, on storefronts and on walls. Sometimes, a banner is used to commemorate the martyrs on the walls of a building. What strikes the viewer in this campaign is its ubiquity. It has replaced the advertisement in the city. Knowing �ճܲԾ�������’s economic hardships and imagining the cost leads one to wonder: What does this mobilization mean and from where does it originate?

Since last January, the economic sphere has become increasingly present in �ճܲԾ�������’s political landscape. Slim Riahi, leader of the young Free Patriotic Union liberal party (UPL), is known to have facilitated the meeting between Béji Caïd Sebsi��and Rachid Ghannouchi in Paris in mid-August. Amongst the entrepreneurs, the communication experts and the media owners were on the front lines.

There is a legitimate desire to preserve the freedom of expression in the face of Ennahda’s “totalitarian” (although this is undermined by the condemnation of the director of the channel Ettounsia and founder of the production company Cactus, Sami Fehri, or through other accusations targeting journalists). This is part of the explanation. But also of note in this initiative is the presence of a Tunisian liberal lobby close to the opposition in social and regional proximity and even in family ties.

There is an emergence of a generation of “leaders” who want their economic success to benefit political activities in this new democratic context. Most of these entrepreneurs in their forties had started their career under Ben Ali and were then criticizing the corruption of the president’s circle, as well as the breaks that this predation represented for the smooth running of business.

After a period under the radar, those circles are now very much present through their economic control and the organized posting campaigns and through their support of Nida Tounes and its old leader, Béji Caïd Sebsi. The paradox of this new language of political communication is its “youth-oriented” display and its massive support of a leader in his eighties.

Berlusconization?

Four personalities are specifically emerging: Sami Fehri, a 41-year-old director of the channel Ettounsia and founder of the production company Cactus, in jail today; the Karoui brothers (Nabil, 48-years-old and Ghazi, 46-years-old), owners of the Moroccan channel Nessma TV and of Karoui & Karoui world, a communication company; and Slim Riahi, a 39-year-old businessman who has recently entered the communication industry (Essebah), owner of the Tunisian “African Club” football club, and founder of the Free Patriotic Union.

The Karoui brothers were at the center of the news when they aired the film Persepolis. Nabil presented his apologies after he was prosecuted for disturbing the public order. His trial was perceived as the first sentence impeding on the freedom of expression after the Ben Ali era. The two brothers had built their empire in the 1990s, between Algeria and Tunisia, by partnering with Silvio Berlusconi and the producer, Tarak Ben Ammar. They are today somewhat self-effaced, while welcoming the “La wala’illa litunis” campaign on their network.

Sami Fehri is also a media figure. He founded the production company Cactus in 2002 and is now partnered with Ben Ali’s brother-in-law, Belhassen Trabelsi, to fund entertainment shows and Ramadan soap operas (Maktoub). He founded his own television channel, Ettounsia TV, in March 2011. His legal troubles, which explain his imprisonment, were based on the suspicions that he had illegally used resources from the Tunisian national television. The channel he founded, today suspended and hosted on another private channel, al-Hiwar al-Tunisi, is considered to be the most watched channel in the country.

Slim Riahi is probably, among those few forty-somethings, the most politically engaged. He took part in the October 2012 elections as the head of his party, UPL. He developed a campaign to attract voters with a simple and efficient slogan, tied to an immediately recognizable gesture.

Riahi seems to possess a considerable wealth, collected thanks to his Libyan connections in the construction and oil industries. He is the typical businessman engaged in a political spectacle: at the head of a football club, investing in social work and press groups.

These young entrepreneurs and media figures project an image of a Tunisia that seems to be the core of their politics: “their Tunisia” is open to the world, liberal, accepting, and enterprising. “Their Tunisia” also coincides with the rise of the human rights of Tunisian woman, with the desire to maintain an open market, and the containment of the threats to order and security in Tunisia.

The UPL campaign, articulated around the word “Tawwa,” now adds a sense of urgency () — with characters supposed to represent Tunisia in its diversity, demanding the end of a state of servitude, of unemployment, of painfulness. All of this is presented with a brushed up visual aesthetic, contrasting the realities of the country.

The private television channels all together reflect a desire to give a voice to Tunisians, but also to convey a light, free, and modern image. The talk shows are modeled after their European or American counterparts, columnists interrupt the discussions in debates that are too long, comedies are slowly emerging (including a local version of the French program “Guignols de l’info,” today defunct).

The most popular shows (particularly the political ones) are immediately discussed and analyzed on social media and beyond. This combination of private television and social media creates an imagined Tunisia (an imagined community, in the words of Benedict Anderson), which becomes an implicit site of reference for the Tunisian urban elites. This implicit nation is fed by polls, consumer research, and takes little time to understand or analyze what brings, for instance, a great part of the population to support the regime in place or to completely desert political debates.

Epilogue: New Configurations?

In addition to the patriotic display, the Irhal movement��emerged on August 24 at the doorsteps of the National Constituent Assembly of Bardo. It established itself as a movement of national salvation. The elected members claim to be the defenders of legality. Elsewhere, an advisor to the president claims “to preoccupy himself first with the common good.”

This is the political landscape that exists in Tunisia today: almost a staged and scripted landscape. However, beyond those cameras movements, we are waiting to see the emergence of new configurations, as the country seems to be suffocating under those who lay claim to it.

Is there a policy, which can include both an anti-Islamist modern elite — we have to remember that Ben Ali’s elites proclaimed their allegiances under an anti-Islamist pact — and a society that is more Islamicized? Is it the only fracture that needs to be emphasized? Are there not territories that are ignored and more patent inequalities?

In this game of symbolic appropriation (flag, anthem, “Tunisian” Islam vs “Gulf” Islam, language, etc), it is clear that binaries cover once more the essential: the growing poverty, indebtedness, the vulnerability of households, and the absence of a future for the youth. It is thus not surprising to see posters becoming the site of a more subtle and diverted struggle.

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I have the initial report of the Economic, Social, and Environmental Council (CESE) in Morocco, which has been charged to assess the necessary conditions to implement regionalization in the southern provinces and eventually the entire country.

I have detailed its major findings and procedures, discussed the roles of various stakeholders, and probed for likely priorities in preparing Morocco for regionalization. With the anticipated final report due before the end of the year, it is a good time to reflect on what is involved in regionalization, once it is defined in law.

Regionalization and decentralization are terms used to describe the same phenomena – how to share power between the central government and the rest of the country. This is an important consideration at this time because it is also a major issue in determining the structure of the government in Libya, the set up of the provincial authorities in Tunisia, and the separation of powers in Egypt, to name a few countries where decentralization is being seriously considered.

There are at least four intersecting lines of authority involved in the devolution of power from the central government to locally elected officials:

1. The division of political/administrative decision-making among the central government, the regional authorities (currently 16 regions and 61/62 provinces), and local governments;
2. Prioritizing and managing the country’s economic investments, including infrastructure, economic development projects, tourism, agriculture, economic growth, entrepreneurship, and higher education;
3. Coordinating the provision of citizen services, including health, education (at all levels, including technical and vocational training), retirement, disability, and environmental services and monitoring;
4. Supporting all of these lines are mechanisms dealing with taxation, human and natural resources, accounting and reporting, and coordinated monitoring and evaluation of government performance.

Managing the Transition to Regionalization

This brief list gives a flavor of the complexity of moving ahead with regionalization. It is important to recognize that given this complexity, it may take up to a decade before full regionalization in any one area of Morocco is completely implemented.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of international experience that can help Morocco and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) meet the challenges of devolving authority and building the institutional and human capacity needed. For example, a major models has recently been released on Libya.

Another good place to start to gather experience on the road ahead was at the and the 4^th  (UCLG), recently hosted in Rabat. With delegates from more than 100 countries, “the Summit […] envisaged to be a unique opportunity to present and discuss concrete local solutions to world challenges. It [was an] occasion to define policy, shape action and set future strategic goals for the new international development agenda.”

Local governments throughout the world, and in places such as Morocco where the urban population now exceeds 70 percent of the population, are increasingly tasked with spearheading new delivery systems for social services, reducing congestion and pollution, balancing budgets through creating new and more efficient revenue sources, and integrating their initiatives and responsibilities within a larger, national fabric.

King Mohammed VI made Morocco’s commitment to this vision clear. Addressing the UCLG Congress leaders, he acknowledged the “tremendous responsibility incumbent upon local and regional actors” for “building good governance within their territorial boundaries.”

He declared: “It is no longer acceptable today that central governments should have exclusive authority in defining development strategies for local communities.” Ensuring “local authorities have the necessary legal, financial and human resources” to “fulfill their mission,” the king said, “needs to be placed at the heart of local public policy.”

The Rabat meetings will enable local and regional leaders, multilateral partners, analysts and researchers, and specialists in the complexities of urban society to review and make recommendations regarding the next set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) within the framework of , set to begin in 2016. It is a prime opportunity for Moroccans to discuss the opportunities and challenges of moving forward with decentralization, while ensuring quality of life for its citizens.

It is critical that the Maghreb countries learn from the experiences of others and from one another, to rapidly develop roadmaps to power-sharing between the central authorities and locally-elected officials.

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Political Islam is among the most controversially discussed issues in the Middle East and North Africa. While modern Islamist political thought traces its origin back to a rejection of European encroachment into the Muslim world – as the work of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani demonstrates – the most prominent example of Islamist political activism is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna with a strong anti-colonial element, the Sunni movement was outlawed in 1948 and experienced decades of suppression until it rose to power after Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power in 2011.

The Arab Uprisings, starting in December 2010, saw the election of various Islamist parties. As the region’s most powerful movement embracing political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood was successful in subsequent parliamentary and presidential elections in Egypt. Its senior member, Mohammed Morsi, became the first civilian and Islamist president of the Arab world’s most populous nation in 2012.

Debates concerning a revival of political Islam were making the rounds, and many pointed to Islamist movements’ strong organization and community outreach as explanations for their success. However, the idea of a revival of political Islam did not only emerge in the wake of the Arab Spring. Many scholars describe the 1970s as an important period of Islamic revivalism.

A crucial event during this period was Iran’s revolution in 1979, which ousted the Western-backed Shah and brought Shi’a cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini into power, who installed his��velayat-e-faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) as one of the key principles of the newly founded Islamic Republic of Iran. Apart from the implementation of certain areas of Islamic law in the domestic realm, especially immediately after the revolution, one of Iran’s key foreign policy tenets was the promotion of pan-Islamic unity.

These are just a few examples of political Islam’s long history in the Middle East and North Africa. One thing remains clear: As protests in Egypt and Tunisia demonstrate, proponents of political Islam are far from universally accepted as legitimate political players. A fundamental question in every specific context is what role�����󲹰���’a��will play in the realm of governance and law.

51�Թ�’s��Middle East Editor,��, speaks to����from the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government in Dubai — a renowned expert on political Islam and Islamist movements whose work has been featured in a great variety of media outlets, such as the BBC, the��New York Times,��Gulf News,��and��Al-Khaleej.

Langendorf��and Biygautane talk��about Islamist movements in the post-Arab Spring environment, the situation in Egypt, Sunni and Shi’a tensions, and the compatibility of Islam and democracy.

Manuel Langendorf: One of the oldest Islamist movements, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has just been dealt a significant blow with the ousting of Mohammed Morsi and the subsequent campaign against Brotherhood leaders. Do you see this as a crucial turning point in the history of political Islam?

Mhamed Biygautane:��This is a very good question; however, defining political Islam is the first challenge we have to deal with before we judge the performance of the Muslim Brotherhood and their religiosity. There are numerous and important conceptual questions we have to raise just to define the core nature of political Islam.

As a point of departure, the term “Islamic” is vaguely used to denote organizations as fundamentally diverse as al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. The spectrum of Islamist parties can be political, missionary, or jihadi and the differences among these three categories are vast. However, most of people in the West confuse between them and consider any Islamist party as jihadi.

We have seen the Muslim Brotherhood fail in Egypt, and the same will eventually happen in Tunisia. The intervention of the military to oust Morsi on July 3 is unjustifiable, but it is an ultimate result of how deeply-embedded the military is within Egypt’s political scene. This is something that Mohammed Morsi took lightly. He did not rightly estimate the draconian powers of a state that had been ruled by the military since the establishment of the “republic.”

Morsi was overconfident about his capacity as the president to control the army. He failed to consider and be aware of the invisible mechanisms that steer the country’s direction, especially in times of transition during which any surprises can take place. He also didn’t take seriously the immense role of the Egyptian army and its influence either directly or indirectly in the decision-making apparatus.

I think that the failure of the Brotherhood is largely due to the mismanagement, miscalculations, lack of clear strategy, and overconfidence of Morsi and his party members. During the 12 months or so that he ruled in Egypt, Morsi did not govern for all Egyptians, as he had promised before assuming office. He prioritized his party members and privileged them with high posts in the government. In July 2012, Morsi challenged the authority of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, by issuing a decree that called parliament back to session after the Court had dissolved it. These actions were not backed by the constitution and only aggravated the political situation in Egypt.

These are just a few examples and illustrations of the mistakes Morsi made. The failure of his party could have been avoided had he seriously considered the fragile ecosystem in which he operated. He should have prioritized and focused more on triggering economic growth, established effective social welfare programs, and shown some immediate results over the performance of his party — especially in stabilizing Egypt. Yet, Morsi only tried to foster the position of the Brotherhood and secure the rights of its members at the wrong time.

It did not take long before the balance of power returned to its starting point in Egypt. The army is back to controlling the reins; Mubarak is free from all the crimes he had committed before the revolution; and Egypt is heading backwards.

Langendorf: In general, how do you evaluate the situation of Islamist movements in the post-Arab Spring environment?

Biygautane:��I very much like the fact that you used the word “Islamist” and not “Islamic.” This way, you differentiate between an Islamist party or person that represents themselves more than they represent Islam. You hear a lot of statements in the media like “Islamic terrorism,” or “Islamic fundamentalism” and so on. With such language, we blame a religion for the actions of some individuals who represent their political and ideological frames more than the concept and teachings of Islam. When we use the word “Islamist,” we refer to the personal actions of a person or organization and their own interpretation and understanding of Islam.

In fact, the Arab Spring was a difficult test that Islamist parties had to go through in the��Mashriq��(Middle East) and��Maghreb��(North Africa); and as we see today, the vast majority of them have failed it, so badly. Islamist parties were elected not because they were the best, or that people in the region have turned very religious. Islamists were elected by default, in the absence of other alternatives. People have tried the parties of the right, left, socialists, liberals and so on. Yet the economic and social atmosphere had never evolved. Their last choice was to give a chance to Islamist parties, given their religious discourse that always calls for justice, development, and right-doing.

However, as I indicated in a BBC interview in early 2011, the Islamist parties do not have the necessary knowledge, expertise, the know-how and exposure to government administration and management practices. For decades they have been excluded, fragmented and severely marginalized in most of the region. Handing to them the affairs of a nation overnight would not result in anything more than added economic, political, and social chaos.

This is the situation nowadays. Islamist parties have left a negative mark in the history of the region. They have failed dramatically to deliver what they had promised their people, but this is an ultimate result of their lack of expertise and prioritization. When Islamists came to power, they came at the most critical time. The repercussions of the financial crisis are still widely felt in Europe and the Arab world. Unemployment rates have been high in the region for the past two decades, and worst of all, people wanted immediate results. All these factors were against the Islamist governments and not for their benefit.

Langendorf: In the context of the Syrian Civil War, there is increasing talk over an intensified Sunni-Shi’a conflict along religious lines — with Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states on one side, and Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah on the other. Do you share this view, or do you see it as a misinterpretation?

Biygautane:��Well, I do not really see it as a misinterpretation, but politics is a very dangerous and tricky game. In a realpolitik perspective, regimes use all possible ideologies and tools to get what they want regardless of whether they believe in them or not. Theology is a highly influential ideology that has worked out for regimes throughout history.

The differences between a Sunni and Shi’a��are totally different than they were in the 7^th��century. They are now more political than religious. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the differences between these two sects have intensified for political reasons. The repression of the Shi’a in Iraq and other Arab countries where they constitute the minority, is what has fueled and driven the hostilities between the two sects.

Now, Iran tries to provide generous financial and moral support to any Shi’a government. Spiritual leaders in Iran view this as their mission on Earth to protect their Shi’a ideology from the Sunnis’ dominance. The conflict in Syria has revived and intensified these differences among different regimes with varying beliefs.

*[Read the on November 7. This article was produced in partnership with��the .]

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Jihad in Islam is the call to fight and go to war and be ready to die for the victory of Islam against the enemy, who is defined as an infidel. The call for Jihad is seen, by some religious scholars, as a higher spiritual value. To die for your religion is seen as an honor and is defined as martyrdom whereby the martyr is guaranteed heaven and all its privileges, including not being seen as dead but as alive in the kingdom of God.

The concept of dying and sacrificing your life for God is more common in most of the major religions than one might think. However, the problem lies in who is defined as an infidel, by whom, and the reasons behind it. If two Muslim groups go to war against one another, each defining the other as an infidel, we face a dilemma: how can both be right?

The dead from both camps could be considered martyrs. I raise this issue to show that l believe the concept of Jihad and the definition of the infidel has been abused by warlords across history in all religions, where innocent followers have been brainwashed and manipulated.

Recently, following the Arab Uprisings, Jihad has taken another serious and shocking deviation, allegedly started by a who urged Sunni Muslim women in Iraq to enter Jihad in support of those at war against Shi’ites. Jihad has spread like wildfire since the civil war erupted in Syria; but the idea of Jihad for women has been defined as gravely and fundamentally different from that of men.

When were shipped to Syria, they discovered it was for the purpose of sex slavery. that they were forced to have intercourse with the members of the Free Syrian Army, the main Syrian opposition group known to the West as “the rebels.”

Jihad al-Nikah: Sex Jihad

According to the ruling, “Jihad al-Nikah” – literally Jihad of intercourse – opposition fighters to the Assad regime, who are either single men or married but without access to their wives, can create oral contracts (marriages) with virgins, divorced or widowed women for a short period, for the sole purpose of sexual intercourse.

This period might not exceed an hour, in some cases, and is immediately followed by divorce so that other fighters can have the opportunity of intercourse with the same woman. As such, any one of those 16 Tunisian women could have had intercourse up to 10 times per day. The objective – according to the fatwa – is to encourage the fighters and provide them with their religious and natural right to have intercourse, improving their morale and making them better of the battlefield.

This Jihad al-Nikah does not follow Islamic shari’a, as it denies women the customary and obligatory three-month wait between marriages lest she is pregnant; denies her the right of choice; denies her the public announcement which gives oral marriages legitimacy within society; and, of course, denies her any legal rights as the marriage is not registered.

It also contradicts the real objective of marriage in Islam and all the Abrahamic faiths, which is of procreation — meaning the creation of a family.

Whether this fatwa was really issued from a reliable or official source or not, it quickly spread on social media outlets; came back from Syria and the two main Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in Rabaa Adewaya and Nahda Square in Egypt that it was being welcomed and promoted.

One Facebook page with the name “Veiled sisters against secular and unveiled women” stated: “A woman can’t fight like a man and her contribution is thus limited to Jihad al-Nikah.”

Therefore, the directive is that women must help and perform Jihad by serving the needs of male fighters. They added: “” and that no more details could be added on the page.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Jihad al-Nikah

A security source in the Egyptian police revealed that , who were Muslim Brotherhood supporters and who were among those demonstrating in the Rabaa sit-in, had filed reports at the Madinat Nasr police station that they had both been raped under the pretense of Jihad al-Nikah — stating that they had been forced into having sex and had not given their consent. Both were unmarried, aged 26 and 29, and their police report numbers are 1735 and 1736 for the year 2013.

Several weeks later, a new Facebook group called “Ikhwan (MB) without violence” reported that there had been 76 cases of forced sex in the name of Jihad al-Nikah in Rabaa and Nahda in Egypt. This was reported by Hanaa Mohammed, the head of the women’s unit at the new emerging (defecting) group “MB without violence,” in her live on Al Arabiya with Mohamed Warawi in his program, “Egyptian Incident.”

In another interview on the Egyptian channel Sada al Balad, Mohammed confirmed the same story. She stated that Mohamed Badie, the Murshid (spiritual leader) of the Muslim Brotherhood, had issued a fatwa to the pro-Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins to allow Jihad al-Nikah. Badie allegedly stated that they were in a period of Jihad, which thus allowed them to establish Nikah contracts during the sit-ins.

Mohammed stated that this Jihad was not only linked to young, Syrian female refugees in Egypt being used as sex slaves, but that it also applied to female members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammed finally confirmed that these contracts were not registered — they specified a duration and time for each contract — and that Jihad intercourse took place in the tents of the sit-ins.

Stories were also reported that several apartments around the sit-ins were rented by the hour, to allow for this Jihad. Women were repeatedly used by several men and stories indicate that it was usually without their consent, especially with younger Syrian refugees.

*[Read the on November 2.]

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Tunisia is currently experiencing an intense hyperbolization of political sentiment. The glorification of the flag originates from multiple factors. Since the first demonstrations following the fall of the regime, the use of the flag has been a sign of a sort of national communion. Today, it has become an object of struggle.

Who bears true national legitimacy? Is it the party selected through elections? Is it the opposition party, which claims legitimacy of a different order? Which territories? Which generations? It is difficult to situate and include all its components. Such a comprehensive listing could stretch indefinitely.

One Mission: To Save the Arab Revolutions

Several corresponding factors could explain the current flame of patriotism — all of which could be summarized by a feeling of urgent necessity to “save the Tunisian revolution.” Often described as the “the last hope,” this feeling gives many Tunisians a mission they perceive as quasi-sacred. As François Hollande said during his speech to the Tunisian National Constituent Assembly in July 2013: “You carry a hope that extends beyond the Tunisian people, well beyond the Arab people.”

The responses to this alleged task, which has uncertain contours but is imagined by all as a “national duty,” are diverse. In one sense, it gives rise to a Tunisian particularism, most often expressed with formulas such as “Tunisia is not Egypt” (or not Syria, or not Qatar, or not Europe), or by the absolute: “Tunisia is unique.” 

Depending on its interlocutors, this discourse is constructed on the idea of the peaceful nature of Tunisians, on the legacy of Habib Bourguiba (and his influence on demography, for example), on the education, or even on the climate. Sometimes, it is simply the insignificance of the country that is claimed, ironically, as an opportunity: Tunisia, so little, could not be coveted. Thus, it must be possible to succeed in revolution.

Despite unfurling the flags and proclaiming an ostentatious national pride, the success or failure of this mission is often paradoxically perceived as independent of the will or the action of the Tunisian citizenry. For the enunciation of a national duty to hold firm, it often feeds on the impotence of international conspiracies, geopolitical theories, and suspicions that weigh on the political class in its entirety, among others.

This discourse sometimes even goes so far as to cast the Tunisian Revolution (the same one that it declares necessary to save) as an invention (be it occidental, American, Israeli, Qatari, Saudi) so as to reshuffle the deck of cards in the region. The elections in October 2011 fed this suspicion: they must have been manipulated to give power to the Islamists, who are allied with the United States (or others, depending on the rhetoric).

These arguments must not be taken lightly. They are signs of the installation of a long-lasting regime of uncertainty that has continued to intensify and thus engulf the country in a climate of fear, giving way to the feeling that “anything could happen at any time.”

A final sense in which this national duty is imagined­, invoked more by those in politics, is the “sacred union” that certain “events” may require. These events are disturbing notions that cannot be forcibly characterized as political or economic crises, but rather as a state of enduring global crisis. Nonetheless, the political consensus is proclaimed constantly, like an incantation, especially as tension and opposition is high between the different political paths. 

Additionally, it is based on a voluntary confusion between patriotism and national unity. The latter assumes a state of war and requires the silencing of opposition. The former, if it requires the respect of country and nation, does not necessarily imply the silencing of disagreement and opposition within them.

The Struggle of the Flag

This patriotic exaltation must be placed in its context of the diffusion of fear, which different channels of information and political discourse instill. This fear, which was believed to have fallen like a wall after the 2011 revolts, has taken another form: it is no longer the fear of the regime, of the state, that makes what Béatrice Hibou called “forced obedience.”

It is a more diffused fear, which combines the difficulty in obeying or respecting hierarchy (tainted civic capability, visible dysfunction of public services) with a disorderly panic in the face of real or imagined danger. Certain people invoke the “Egyptian scenario” as an eventuality like a scarecrow or a barely veiled threat — others cite the Salafist peril or a more general insecurity (pedophilia, crime, etc).

All of this has driven political actors to prioritize saving Tunisia and its revolution. However, this unanimous display of patriotism hides a ferocious struggle for national legitimacy. Each actor has his/her own idea of Tunisia. The central question becomes where is the national interest and who is best serving it today? Each then returns to a supposed treason in a new national and widely remarked bipolarity (Ennahda/anti-Ennahda).

One of these groups attests that the Islamists — including Ennahda — have never been in the service of the Tunisian nation. They are but marionettes whose strings are between the hands of some international actor, whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood or the jihadists. The information that is published on Tunisian news sites circulates rumors that suggest, for example, Rachid Ghannouchi’s visit to Istanbul in the middle of July could have been an occasion to participate in a secret meeting held by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The meeting was said to have been for the purpose of electing the president of the political bureau, the number two in power. Meant to offer proof that the meeting was held, videos from an Emirati channel show people moving about in what resembles the hall of a hotel.

Faced with these suspicions of infidelity to the nation, the Ennahda party members countered with a national display differentiating themselves from the Salafists associated with the black flag. The replacement of the national flag with a Salafist flag at Manouba University on March 7, 2012, and the indignation it provoked, marked the national spirit.

The young student, Khaoula Rchidi, who was used as an intermediary, was at the time solemnly thanked and decorated by the president of the republic. 

Since then, the mobilization of politicians in the current government insists on the legitimacy of the Islamist party in power and its national character. The reference to the Turkish example is used to show that the Tunisian Islamists, like their Turkish counterparts, do not seek to export their model, but only to instill it in a national context. 

The latest demonstrations that followed the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi, on July 25, 2013, are of a distinctly red color, while the pro-Ennahda demonstrations following the assassination of Chokri Belaid (February 9, 2013) were composed of the flags of the party: white with a blue logo. At these demonstrations, the Salafist flags were also present en masse. The partisan image of these gatherings was replaced by the centrality of national legitimacy and its color: red. 

*[Note: Read the on October 27. This article was originally published by .]

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Moroccan and Tunisian women’s movements have encountered both institutional and individual level resistance from state and society following the recent Arab Uprisings. The question at hand is how women’s movements in Morocco and Tunisia will utilize the current revolutionary climate captivating the Arab world, in order to leverage their potential political clout in the direction of groundbreaking transformation of gender equality and civil rights.

The Uncertainty of the Arab Spring

It might seem self-evident that participating in popular social movements would advance women’s equality. However, counter intuitively, protesting against the government (in the case of Morocco) and uprooting the government (in Tunisia) may have put the women’s movement at a greater disadvantage than before.

In Tunisia especially, the conservative Islamist political faction has emerged as an influential actor against the secularization of state and society, which has the potential to virtually regress or erase the civil liberties that Tunisian women have enjoyed for the past half-century. This includes the availability of reproductive resources, diminishing the openness of the public sphere to women, and reverting the context of Tunisian sociopolitical culture from "progress" to "tradition."

Tunisian women — Muslim women, in particular — are caught between two utterly dissimilar worlds that are juxtaposed within their own and are simultaneously occupying two identities: the progressive politics of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

Moroccan women must counter a different brand of resistance, one that encompasses state and society alike. Moroccan (male) society has thus far adopted the position of the government. Therefore, the less the state recognizes women as equal citizens, the more likely we are to see women treated the same way in the non-political sphere as well.

However, Moroccan women have proved ingenious at responding to the subtle resistance they face at the state and social levels. The Moroccan  "has repeatedly proven its ability to 'realize' and 'impose' itself whatever the system, and at all cost." Moroccan women have observed that small victories reap longer-term rewards; over time, we have seen policy become more and more inclusive as women place constant pressure on the state to reform.

The issue of uncertainty lies in the future of the Moroccan and Tunisian women’s movements — where do they go from here?

Tunisia: Wavering State as Ideal Setting

In Tunisia, the women’s movement no longer has tight ties with the state. Activists are free to associate with whoever will lend them support. Thus, they have split up between the conservative, right-wing Islamists, the moderate Islamist party in power, and the secular, left-wing radicals.

The most immediate question concerning the newly divided women’s movement in Tunisia, is whether this is a turn away from the Western model of socialization that the Tunisian state pursued before the revolution, or merely a way of asserting their own identities in a newly established state. In reaction to the various demands of the opposing forces, the moderate government pushes vague, easily misinterpreted policies in order to buy time and quell immediate remonstration.

Different strategies for supporting the various struggles of women in Tunisia are important in order to understand that the “is not to erase differences among them[,] or to play down the basic distinction between secular and Islamist visions.” Rather, it is to highlight different forms of identity, so women are not relegated to one identity or one way of life, as they were under the previous regime. 

Using momentum from the 2011 revolution and the wavering state as the ideal setting, Tunisian women’s groups have the resources, education, and training (from the previous regime) to initiate a significant show of force against the government. This time, however, with women in contention with other women over the nature of Tunisian women’s rights.

Just recently, women took to the streets in Tunisia in protest of the  — "the Islamists wanted language in the constitution to say that the roles of men and women are 'complementary.' The secularists, fearful of ceding any ground, insisted that men and women should have the 'same rights and duties.'" With so much at stake, neither side will yield until the government meets their demands; thus a new battle for freedom is arising in Tunisia — this one, amongst women.

Morocco: Continuation on Slow-Moving Path?

Moroccan women, though not quite as divided as Tunisian women, have more immediate concerns about their sociopolitical status. Why do Moroccan women’s movements continue on the slow-moving path to political freedom that the state has created for them?

Moroccan women’s groups remain in the fringes of the political scene because the government begrudgingly hands the women’s movement concessions any time they show signs of political dissent. The movement disappears into the backstage of society, until the next time they foster the momentum to re-air their grievances.

Women’s groups in Morocco are not state-sponsored in the way that they were in pre-revolution Tunisia; they have the freedom to act independently, without the fear of losing government support. With the momentum gained from the February 20 Movement — as well as regional influence from other major shows of civil resistance — Moroccan women have a small time window to leverage the momentum from the Arab Spring as a catalyst for their own social revolution. 

Where to Go from Here?

The Moroccan and Tunisian women’s movements are a work in progress, constantly evolving with new developments in political life as well as with the capricious demands of society. At this moment, just after the second anniversaries of the February 20 Movement and the Tunisian Revolution, Morocco and Tunisia, respectively, have reached a crux — in a broad sense, not enough progress has been made in either case. 

In Morocco, the monarch has passed vague constitutional reforms that essentially reworded his position as absolute authority in a more politically correct manner. The February 20 Movement that was born out of the sandstorm of social media movements in the Middle East and North Africa has dwindled to a few hundred activists, as opposed to the many thousands that originally participated. The women’s movement is in essentially the same position they were prior to the revolution.

This raises the question, should we be looking at the Moroccan women’s movement in the short-term or long-term? The long-term goals are obvious: universality of civil liberties, political rights, and social standing. However, knowing Morocco’s political past and the tendency toward gradual change, we can better predict the short-term. 

Though arguably menial, the 2011 reforms of the Moroccan constitution may be a "foot in the door" for women to nudge their way into the spotlight of the political scene. Over time, Moroccan women have learned to be opportunists. The new constitution granted women equal political and economic rights as well as an adjustment to gender quotas. With these newly gained rights, women have the chance to seize any political opportunities that are available to them.

It is safe to assume that there is a natural progression from achieving some rights to endeavoring to achieve all rights. In this sense, Moroccan women are missing their "moment of drama" — a specific act of protest or activism that launches the debate on gender equality to the forefront of Moroccan sociopolitical discourse.

Just after the second anniversary of the Tunisian revolution, is in quite a different position than Morocco’s. "The political feuds, violence, and attendant narratives of insecurity and mutual exclusion are now derailing the democratic process inaugurated in October 2011. Instead of democratic breakthrough, the birthplace of the Arab Spring is now experiencing temporary breakdown."

Revolutions, historically, create a fresh start for nations to start the democratic process through "ethical, legal… and popular means of self-regeneration." In Tunisia, however, this process has been slow and tumultuous. Shortly after a leader of the secular movement, Shokri Belaid of the Popular Front, was assassinated in an apparent show of force against the secular movement by Islamist advocates — and, some suspect, with involvement by the Tunisian interior ministry — the then-prime minister of the post-revolution government, Hamadi Jebali, resigned.

Following the assassination of Belaid and subsequent resignation of Jebali, the newly appointed prime minister, Ali Laarayedh from the hardline-wing of the Islamist Ennahda party, issued a statement reassuring Tunisians that the primary objective of the revolution would be upheld: "."

Tunisian women are now placed in a position where their future, neither long-term nor short-term, can be predicted. The moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, was the Tunisian women’s movement’s final assurance that despite the contention between the bipolar opposition — composed of far-right Islamist actors and far-left secular activists — the government would remain a neutral force, seeking to maintain stability and carry out the goals of the revolution: equality and freedom for all Tunisian citizens. 

Today, however, "street politics" between opposition forces are taking center stage and major institutions such as the Constituent Assembly are being relegated to the margins. What does this mean for Tunisian women? The Tunisian women’s movement, no longer cohesive nor supported by an external actor, is in a position to take measures to support itself using the momentum from their past prominence in Tunisian political life.

Tunisian women have the resources, education, and training to propel themselves into the political sphere and assert that women’s rights maintain equal importance in "New Tunisia." What is important is that Tunisian women do not forget their place in Tunisian political life pre- and post-revolution. A participant in the Tunisian revolution stated: "Just look at how Tunisian women stood side-by-side with Tunisian men. They came out to the streets to protest in headscarves. They came out in miniskirts. It doesn't matter. They were there."

Much can be learned from the Tunisian and Moroccan women’s movements; not only from their similarities, but from their differences as well. Both movements can act not only as models for other equality movements across the region, but also as incentives for other marginalized groups to take action to gain equal rights. Though neither movement has reached its peak of success, both are in progress to achieve their objectives of gender equality and the creation of a diverse dynamic of discourse concerning women’s rights, freedom, and equality.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Perhaps it is time to review priorities, to shift the paradigm; perhaps it is time for political Islam to cease being intrinsically political. After a century of opposition to the power structure and a few decades of actually wielding power, Islamism has become an ideology of means and of management. It has nothing to offer in terms of broader significance except by way of reaction to “Western aggression” or to the “enemy within.”

Muslim majority societies will never be able to emancipate themselves as long as they are chained to such a restrictive, reactive vision. The peoples’ need for meaning, for dignity and for spirituality, far removed from an ethereal concept of faith, religion and rules, must be heard. The task before us is to rethink the ultimate goals of human action, and to develop the contours of an individual and social ethics as a true alternative to the unjust and inhuman world order.

The need for meaning, for freedom, for justice and dignity has never been greater; today’s Muslims need a holistic philosophy of ends; they need to escape from the chaotic management of means that political Islam has been reduced to. Muslim majority societies are crying out for an intellectual revolution, a revolution that is as radical in its essence as it is courageous in its objectives.

Far from the wielders of power, remote from petty politics and politicians, the time has come to reconcile ourselves with the depth and breadth of the Islamic civilizational tradition and its wealth of meaning that establishes rules in the light of the objectives of dignity, freedom, justice and peace. The Muslim peoples of today urgently need to reassert themselves.

Crucial to the process are spirituality and mysticism: not those of a certain form of Sufism that, not wishing to “take part in politics,” ends up by playing the game of powers (and colonisers), but of the quest for self an authentic Sufism never separated from human, social and political (by way of wise and just government) considerations. It is not enough to affirm that freedom must come before the “���󲹰���’a.”

In Need of a Philosophy of Liberty

What is lacking is a thoroughgoing reflection on freedom in the modern age, and the superior objectives (maqasid) of the Path (ash-���󲹰���’a) that supercede its reduction to a body of regulations presented as God’s intangible laws. What ash-Shatibi provided us with, in his synthesis of the “objectives of the ���󲹰���’a — which is actually a “philosophy of law — must be thought for the notion of freedom: We need a “philosophy of liberty” that cannot be constricting, reactive or dogmatic but must be broad, holistic and liberating, valid for women and men alike.

There is a sore need of young scholars (ulama) of both sexes, of intellectuals who will show a modicum of courage. While respectful of the message and the immutable rules of practice, they must imperatively seek reconciliation with the intellectual audacity of those who have given the age-old Islamic tradition its strength.

Against the institutions that have often shaped them, that are under state control and intellectually enfeebled (such as al-Azhar or Umm al-Qura today), the young Muslim generations must free themselves, make their presence felt and give new meaning to the dynamics of a civil society that is no longer a passive onlooker, or simply complain, and display their indignation, or explore new ways of acting, new and alternative visions. Yet, they must remain faithful to themselves, while resisting the established order.

The challenges are huge, but in freeing itself from the obsession with “politics,” a thought-based movement must elucidate the terms of a counter-power that sees the liberation of peoples through education, social involvement, alternatives to the dominant economy, through cultural and artistic creativity. Internally, I have mentioned the intellectual challenges of propounding general ultimate goals, and of developing a global vision that can guarantee autonomy and justice.

The question of internal divisions, between Sunni and Shi’a and between conflicting schools of thought (even between religious and secular), must take priority. The issues that fuel this division are often serious, but just as often patently ridiculous. It is the obligation of the scholars, of free intellectuals and activists to release themselves from the trap (which today’s Islamists sometimes maintain at the cost of snaring themselves and drowning).

Muslims are not alone in their resistance. Not only is it urgent to establish relations between the North and the Global South, and leave behind the biased “Islam-West” nexus; it is vital that we explore the potential of new educational, scientific and cultural partnerships with the peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Muslim thought, which drew its sustenance from the idea that it should make all wisdom its own, regardless of its source, has become isolated, has turned inward upon itself and has become desiccated by its inability to study, to promote exchange with and to draw profit from other civilizations, cultures and societies.

The Islamists are no exception: obsessed by the north, they have lost their bearings, and the South — does the Qibla, which focuses the gaze on the center and gives it meaning, not accord the same value and the same dignity to the entire periphery?

The Islamists of today have developed a conservative message, one that seeks only to adapt. The contemporary Muslim conscience must free itself from this message, and renew its commitment to the reformative and near-revolutionary power of the human and spiritual content of its tradition, which calls equally for reconciliation with self and openness to others.

A cycle is ending; renewal beckons. By becoming better acquainted with our heritage, by determining our priorities, and making better use of the new tools at our disposal, we will be able to attain our goals: freedom, dignity and liberation. The paradox lies in the fact that today’s Muslims, lacking self-confidence, are the wardens who hold in their trembling hands the keys of their own prison.

*[This article was originally published on Tariq Ramadan’s .]

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Quite apart from the current fury in the West over the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Civil War has been the latest chapter in the continual collapse of ersatz national sovereignties in the Middle East since the notion of the nation-state was first imposed upon them a hundred years ago. In a political rendition of "if the right fist don't get you, the left one will," the eminent transnational forces of Islam and Facebook have taken to leap prescribed country borders in a single bound. All this while Big Oil still maintains a series of overweight marionettes in the Gulf to fuel a still ravenous industrial world.

The recent images of US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva deciding the fate of the Assad regime is redolent of the Paris Peace Conference following WWI when Britain and France decided on who got what real estate in the Middle East. One has to wonder how the architects of the Arab Awakening view today's photos. Surely, with great pain. 

So, where does this lead us? Syrians – as Tunisians, Egyptians and Yemenis did earlier – lost their fear of tyranny in March 2011 when the people of Dara'a revolted. Have no doubt, no matter the cost, Syrians will have some shade of participatory governance and that will mean that the Sunni majority will eventually take a leadership role.

It makes little difference to them that the tyrant may have his chemical weapons confiscated, as he kills them just as quickly with his air force and armored divisions. 100,000 dead. Too late now ever to put . Inevitably, Assad will go down at the hands of its citizens. Either that or preside over a much smaller part of Syria.

Chemical weapons or not, the forecast remains: partition in Syria; Syria, in the main, as Sunni; Hezbollah diminished; Lebanon disturbed further by Christian and Shi’a refugees; Saudi and Turkish influence enhanced; the substitution of America's hard power with soft power as a changing paradigm for its foreign relations unless, of course, Israel and the Strait of Hormuz are threatened and then its terrible swift sword gets unsheathed.

And, as for Russia, beyond its continuing grasp on its port in Tartus, even as it struts and touts its inclusion in the photo, it is belittled. It has failed to read the tide in the Arab world and especially of its "generation next." Its photo is and will be remembered as that of a petro state with its own rendition of a caped crusader keeping fast company in the public limelight with a Middle East tyrant of Frankenstein proportions.

America at this time and place will be remembered as almost Hamlet-like in its policy meanderings, but still and all, vaguely and certainly inconsistently, on the side of citizen empowerment.

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“. There are two steps in a revolution: You break it and then you build something new. That’s the hardest.”

Moroccan and Tunisian women’s movements have reached a crossroads following the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. In this historical moment, the slightest spark could initiate substantial change. There has never been a better time for women to take advantage of the current political climate of revolutionary change in the Arab world than at this very moment.

The past two years have shown a long-dormant side of Middle Eastern and North African civil society. Various marginalized civil society groups took the stage and initiated a veritable sandstorm of sociopolitical transformation across the region. Not to be viewed as a single movement, each case was different and complex, implicated different people, and showed no common patterns across cases.

The uprisings that brought down the leadership in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, and instigated landmark structural change in Morocco, demonstrated the capabilities of social movements to take on political clout. However, they also left a lingering tension foreshadowing that there might be more to come.

The “how the globalization of the norms of civic engagement shaped the protesters’ aspirations. Nor [were they] about how activists used technology to share ideas and tactics. Instead, the critical issue is how and why these ambitions and techniques resonated in their various local contexts.”

In this two part series, I will examine the Tunisian and Moroccan women’s movement’s potential for future activism post-Arab Spring.

Women’s Status at the Crux of the Arab Spring

Prior to the monumental displays of civil resistance in early 2011, regimes and political systems in the Arab world were notably constructed around the personalities of individual leaders. This led to the exclusion of nearly all other political actors due to the concentration of state power and the institutionalization of personal power. Authoritarian regimes in Morocco and Tunisia used political parties and state institutions, respectively, as mobilization tools and monitoring mechanisms of the population.

In particular, women’s interest groups in Morocco and Tunisia continued to exist despite increasing marginality because they provided a number of functions for the regimes. Most importantly, they supplied the regimes with a , and created more avenues of contact between power holders and the ordinary population — which allowed the regime to monitor the views and reactions of the population, and either respond to threats or adapt policy to placate the masses.

In Morocco, transitioning monarchies provided for a more open discourse on political life, despite slow-moving change concerning women’s position in sociopolitical culture. Tunisia, on the other hand, boasted progressive civil liberties from the time of independence, and is now at a crucial moment with rapidly changing politics that may have negative effects on the future of women’s rights.

Morocco

Morocco’s transition from authoritarian monarch to the “progressive” king in the early 2000s brought with it the emergence of political dynamism, including the introduction of women’s rights into the national discourse by marginalized women’s activists. Women’s groups in Morocco were perpetually present in the backstage of society, occupying the fringes of the government discourse on citizen rights.

The women’s movement in Morocco thus manifested as a non-state directed initiative, to initiate a revision of the constitution to include universal civil liberties and improve women’s status in the public sphere. In order to keep women’s activism at bay and to gain marginal support from the movement, the Moroccan government handed over strategic concessions to the women’s movement. At the same time, they placed social and legal barriers impeding the full-integration of women in the public sphere, which perpetuated the de-politicization of the women’s movement.

King Mohammed VI’s early constitutional reforms were merely skirting around the primary agenda of the women’s movement: universality, gender equality, full legal rights, and socioeconomic equity. However, with the new generation of leadership, a new generation of women emerged��not simply looking for more rights, but rather for all rights.

The success of mass demonstrations in Morocco proved different from previous popular uprisings, because the February 20��Movement featured members of political parties and organizations on the fringes or formally outside the official political processes.

Therefore, the Arab Spring was a prime opportunity for Moroccan women to assert themselves into the new national discourse. As marginalized groups not financially, politically, or socially supported by the government, women’s activists in Morocco were able to find a place in the wave of mass demonstrations as members of the marginalized political community.

The goal of the February 20��Movement was to bring the monarch under harsh light for his absolute authority and lack of delegation of power, and to promote democratic ideals in the Moroccan political sphere. More importantly, from a micro-institutional perspective, women were not included in the national discourse until this moment — giving women’s groups more initiative to launch a “rogue” or non-state directed initiative in the hopes of gaining momentum from the movement.

For decades, Morocco’s women’s movement made gradual progress towards attaining equal rights in Moroccan state and society; although it often accepted government concessions, failed to “push the envelope” on advocating for change, and “, this battle will come to a close. Morocco’s authoritarian system will irrevocably change, for that is the direction of history.” Therefore, women in Morocco have the opportunity to initiate major changes in the current political atmosphere and continue the momentum of the Arab Spring.

On paper, women gained nearly equal status within the Moroccan family structure (concerning divorce, adoption, nationality, and inheritance, among other topics of contention) as well as legally gained equal economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights in the new constitution of 2011. However, Moroccan women still face social and political resistance in their integration as full citizens into the public sphere.

Having gained legal rights on nearly equal standing with Moroccan men, women are now faced with the task of seamlessly gliding into the public sphere; thus running for political office with men as their equal competitors and navigating the public/social sphere with no resistance or backlash.

In this case, Moroccan women stand in the center of two sides of resistance: reluctance from the top to acknowledge and integrate women into politics as equal competitors to men, and adversity from the bottom to allow women to enter the public sphere as men do.

Where it All Started: Tunisia

Neither the Moroccan February 20��Movement, nor any of the large-scale civil resistance movements across the Arab world would have happened if not for their catalyst: the Tunisian Revolution. Prior to toppling the now-former president, Tunisia was looked upon as the image of modernization in the Arab world. Former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, though quietly corrupt, promoted women’s rights, created the Arab world’s largest middle class, and allowed an impressively organized labor movement.

Despite these virtues, “tightly restricted free expression and political parties… [and] cultivated and manipulated the country’s international image as a modern, technocratic regime.” The autocratic regime’s large elite network consisted primarily of Ben Ali kin, also known as “The Family,” and was widely criticized for its corruption and for “prostituting the country for foreign exchange.”

The protests that eventually led to the Tunisian revolution were an intensive campaign of civil resistance, beginning with street demonstrations in December 2010 and culminating in the collapse of the authoritarian regime in January 2011.

Before the revolution that changed the course of Tunisian political life, women held stable positions in Tunisian public affairs. State initiatives since the 1950s prioritized progressing women’s social, political, and economic status. Tunisian women, through state-sponsored policy, gained political leadership roles, reproductive rights, and financial autonomy, among other benefits.

Ben Ali realized the scope of popular support that women provided for the state, and thus used their status as autonomous political actors as a strategic political tool to maintain support from the female population. Until 2011, women in Tunisia were sure of their place in Tunisian sociopolitical culture. However, with change came uncertainty.

With the new government led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda party that was freely elected into power, the formal political arena opened up to a plethora of new political parties and, as a result, the women’s movement in Tunisia was no longer a cohesive unit with the state sponsorship as a common thread. As a multitude of political parties and interest groups were brought into the political area, the women’s movement was divided — primarily between those holding Islamist views and those holding secular ones.

Whereas nationalism was used��in the previous authoritarian regime��as a mechanism to interact with civil society and was widely inclusive in order to leave no room for opposition to form, the new government is operating in an open playing field and is left to contend with the vast array of opposition groups that have emerged since the revolution.

The primary issue women’s groups now face in Tunisia is the sharp generational, cultural, and ideological divide among opposition groups that are pitting women against one another. On the one hand, women are being influenced by a conservative Islamist movement that is pressuring the government to implement policy in line with Islamic political ideology.

On the other hand, there is a significant faction of secular women who want to see Tunisian legislation completely separated from religious influence. The moderate Islamist government is trying to juggle fulfilling the religious agenda of its supporters with maintaining the support of the masses, who include a significant portion of non-religious advocates.

Women’s status in Tunisia is in the center of a highly contentious debate that spans politics, culture, and ideology — leaving the future of the women’s movement in a very uncertain state.

*[Read the on September 28.]

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Islamism — or “political Islam” — is not dead. Those who have proclaimed its demise, or trumpeted the advent of a “post-Islamist” era, are wrong, as events in Africa, the Middle East and Asia clearly show. Islamism is not about to disappear, or even to fundamentally mutate. My thesis — my ideological stance, my hope — is that we must go beyond political Islam, and develop a critique of Islamism in all its forms.

Before explaining why I am taking this position, there are three points to bear in mind. Such is the confusion today, so tendentious and often so grotesque are the arguments that our first duty is to clarity.

Democracy

First: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Ennadha in Tunisia enjoy popular and electoral legitimacy in their respective countries; all democrats must respect the verdict of the ballot box. One may well disagree with the decisions and positions of the Islamists in power, but nothing can justify a military coup��d’état��as in Egypt — meaning that the non-violent demonstrators who are calling for the military to withdraw are right to reject manipulation by the generals.

The crucial question is not whether democracy is possible with Islamists in power — assuming that democratic norms are respected — but whether even a semblance of democracy can exist under a military establishment that has never once in more than 60 years respected those norms. In Tunisia, internal destabilization, whether through harmful maneuvering by Islamists of the extreme literalist persuasion, or by their fundamentalist secularist counterparts, must not be allowed to undermine the legitimacy of the country’s institutions. The unjustifiable cannot be justified in the name of ideological differences with the people’s elected representatives.

Terminology

Second: the problem of terminology. Confusion is rampant; no one knows exactly who or what “Islamism” means. The term, which has now become powerfully pejorative, can be applied to movements ranging from al-Qaeda (worldwide, and most recently in northern Mali) to the legalists of Ennadha and the Muslim Brotherhood by way of the Justice and Development parties in Turkey and Morocco (with certain reservations), and up to and including the Iranian regime. It is hard to believe that the confusion is being maintained, and the terminology being utilized purely by chance.

Meanwhile the petro-monarchies of the Gulf, those wealthy allies of the West, whose authorities affirm that democracy is un-Islamic, regimes that apply the ���󲹰���’a in its most legalistic and repressive form and that forbid women from social and political participation, are never described as “Islamists” even though their policies and practices form the essence of political Islam.

Furthermore, the various Islamist parties or organizations must be described accurately: some are non-violent, reformist and legalist; others are literalist and dogmatic, while others are still violent and extremist. Without such an understanding, no serious scientific or political analysis is possible. While the focus of this article is on the reformist and legalist movements, it will touch on all Islamist trends (based on the assumption that the proponents of political Islam seek state power).

Finally, it should be perfectly clear that my critique of Islamism is in no way an endorsement of the positions and political programs of its opponents. For more than 60 years, self-styled “liberal,” “progressive,” “secular” or even “leftist” (each term positively connoted) forces have been unable to put forward serious alternatives for extracting their countries from crisis. Opposition to the “retrograde Islamists” is not enough to ensure ideological or practical credibility.

In fact, some of the “liberal” factions have in the past proved friendly to dictators, and enjoyed close contact with the West, all the while unable to understand their own fellow citizens; often they have glossed over their divisions and their lack of political influence by simply claiming to be united against the “Islamists.” These factions lack a mass base, a fact their leaders are all too aware of. Thus, our critique of the former cannot be seen as acceptance of the views of the latter. No, our aim is to describe the deep crisis of political consciousness in Muslim majority societies, spanning all ideological horizons.

Time To Go Beyond Islamism

The time has come go beyond Islamism. When, in the early 20th century, the first manifestations of Islamism took root and organized form in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, most of them shared a triple objective: to free their societies from colonialism; to return to Islam in order to resist cultural Westernization; and to expound theses and principles similar to those of Latin American liberation theology, that is, social justice with priority to the poor and the downtrodden.

They were religiously conservative, socially and economically close to their peoples, and believed as a matter of course that the nation-state was the best vehicle for liberating their countries from the multi-faceted yoke of colonialism. Whether or not one agreed with these movements, it was at least possible to understand their ideological and political orientation.

The world has changed, and everything suggests that Islamist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other legalist and reformist groups, have not kept pace with world-historical developments, with shifts in international relations and, most of all, with the new paradigm of globalization. In addition, state power, which in the beginning was understood as a means to social, political, economic and cultural reform, emerged as an end in itself, perverting both the intentions and the actions of a significant number of Islamist movements.

These factors have combined to create, over time, a disconnect between the oft-repeated claims of the Islamist movements, which have maintained substantial popular support, and their inability to respond to the challenges of the new era. Having become nationalist Islamist movements, their obsession with the state eventually led to them neglecting fundamental economic issues, major cultural concerns, and even failing to address the basic questions of freedom, citizenship and individual autonomy.

Driven into opposition, totally committed to (and imprisoned by) the desire to legitimize their participation in the democratic process as credible, open and dependable in the eyes of the West, the Islamists have become a reactionary force that, in the name of pragmatism, with one compromise after another, have preserved their religious references while voiding them of their potential for social, economic and cultural liberation.

Islamists: No Credible or Viable Economic Alternatives

How remote we are from a new interpretation of our scriptural sources, or from a peoples’ liberation “theology” that would give absolute priority to the poor and the oppressed; that would, finally, see social and political relations in economic and cultural terms. The Islamists, today, have no credible or viable economic alternatives to offer. In the name of their obsession with international recognition, they have bowed down before the imperatives of the dominant capitalist economy.

The religious reference has become a strictly reactive and a strictly protective one, directed primarily against the permissive excesses of the West and Westernizers. It has forfeited its ability to offer an ethical approach to education, social justice, the environment, culture and communication. There have been frequent populist attempts to enlist religion for emotional, identity-related or electoral ends.

It is all well and good to celebrate Turkey’s economic success, not to mention its leaders’ demonstrated competence and pragmatism (while not forgetting to criticize the absence of some basic freedoms, and the tendency to monopolize power). It is fine to hail the development of Islamist thinking in Egypt and Tunisia, or the emergence of a civil state with Islamic references rather than a theocratic “Islamic state.”

But their words remain predominantly slogans, reactions to attacks upon the assumption of power, and not the basis of a clear, original, truly imaginative political project. The programs of the legalist and conservative Islamists have little to show for themselves except by way of proving that they too are capable of doing quite as well — or, as badly — as their opponents with regard to their widespread inability to bring about substantial change.

*[Note: Read the on September 27. This article was originally published on Tariq Ramadan’s .]

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A great deal of hand wringing goes on as bad news continues to drown out progress in the transitions occurring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). From Egypt and Syria, to Libya and Yemen, nay-sayers and pundits readily point out that there are few short term solutions that do not require some pain in the process of moving forward. As national identities crumble under the assault of religious and partisan appeals, it is problematic to come up with short-term remedies that do not have long-term consequences for the political and economic health of the countries.

It seems to me that, aside from Tunisia at the best of times, which is not often enough, there is a failure by governments in transition to sustain effective messaging that people can understand on how the government is going to concretely tackle unemployment and corruption. Blaming the IMF for subsidy reforms is not a credible strategy for laying the groundwork for other steps that must be taken to reduce public debt incurred as a result of inflated bureaucracies, inefficient labor regulations, and insufficient investment capital available for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In Morocco, even the thoughtful proposals on the parliamentary agenda are stalled, as the government negotiates every step of reforms needed to reduce expenditures and stimulate sustainable economic growth.

Setting aside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where extravagance permits over-the-top bandages such as forgiving private debt, the challenges in the Maghreb are enormous and yet citizens are rarely being mobilized to take part in economic development. Rather, they are pulled in different directions by political forces more concerned with scoring points and securing power than contributing to a way forward that is balanced, equitable, and contributes to necessary long-term changes.  

Considering the Options

Outside organizations working in the MENA are working to provide mechanisms to bridge the messaging gap between governments and citizens. The , in cooperation with the and , recently held a that “brought together business people, academicians, policy planners and other thought leaders for a day and a half discussion on regional economic integration in the Maghreb.” The purpose of the conference was to determine how the action principles behind the success of the Marshall Plan in rebuilding Europe “might best be applied to contemporary situations where economic reconstruction or mass relief is needed.” One of its principal tenets seemed quite relevant to my thinking about the challenge of promoting both top-down and grassroots support for economic reform: “Political leadership and elements of self-sacrifice and determination are essential to the success of aid programs.”

In the US, Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign built around the message “,” illustrated how critical it is to capture the public’s imagination and involvement in a dialogue about progress that had consequences beyond slogans. Similarly, the pressures of trying to reverse decades of economic and political mismanagement have resulted in a credibility barrier especially for the transitional governments in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt. As is evident from the competing demonstrations in those countries, evolving a consensus on key solutions without some parties feeling marginalized is an overwhelming challenge at times.

Reaching the People

A key lesson in “participatory democracy” that seems to have emerged from the trials of the transitional governments is that the process of engaging citizens effectively in participatory and respectful politics is daunting under the best of circumstances. Their previous experiences with the former governments in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt in particular have not given people a sense of national citizenship that transcends more particular allegiances. To help address this “communications gap,” the US-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) has launched a series of in the Maghreb to enable youth, civil society, and advocacy organizations to in the political process.

The (WBI), along with the (MENA), recently “brought together government officials and civil society practitioners from Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia to discuss how citizen engagement can contribute to more informed policies; how to develop codes of practice for public consultations; and how to use online tools to facilitate consultations.” The to enable governments to “make informed decisions while creating public trust” by ensuring that the voices most impacted by the policy have been heard and addressed. Moreover, the program supports an inclusive process to ensure that the right players are involved, recognizing that public consultations can be critical “since the government may not have all the solutions at hand.”

This program complements others in the region, such as the , focusing on how more inclusive and transparent communications between governments and citizens can reduce conflict and promote consensus around key development and governance issues. An essential element is training trainers in both government agencies and NGOs on the principles of public consultations as a tool for civic engagement.

While these efforts may be small steps in terms of bringing governments and citizens together, they are critical for directing “street” energy into advocacy tools using outreach technology and e-government to provide better access for people and greater knowledge and awareness for public officials. For the international donor community, there is a lesson here from the Marshall Foundation’s tenets: “Any successful aid program must be driven by the country and not imposed by outside countries or institutions.” When people speak as part of a respectful dialogue and the government listens and acts to credibly engage its citizens, the street will return to being a thoroughfare rather than an avenue of protest and disorder.

*[Note: This article was produced in collaboration with , and represents the views of the author and not the perspectives of the Moroccan American Trade & Investment Center.]

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As mentioned in my previous  for 51�Թ�, Tunisia's future essentially depends on political stability and security. Thus, a few days after the political assassination of  on February 6, 2013, the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Tunisia's sovereign credit rating from BB to BB-. The agency stated that recovery and investor confidence had been damaged by the pervasive instability, as political parties haggled over the shape of the government, making it harder for Tunisia to borrow on international markets and to rebuild foreign confidence in its economy.

In fact, after Belaid's assassination, the investment intentions have decreased, many hotels’ bookings have been cancelled, and some financing agreements with international organizations have been postponed. However, the Tunisian government succeeded on June 7 to officially obtain an aid package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of $1.7 billion, repayable over five years with an interest rate of 1.08%. The loan is of great importance, as its amount is equivalent to about 10% of the total state budget.   

The IMF’s policymakers seem convinced by the economic reforms presented by the Tunisian authorities in meetings that took place in Washington during April 2013. These reforms are related to the adoption of a new investment code, the rationalization of subsidies distribution, as poor households representing 15.5% of the population receive only 12% of the total amount of the subsidies, which exceeded $3 billion in 2012. The reforms also opted for better management of the exchange rate and monetary policy by introducing more flexibility and deepening transmission channels.

The government program aims to achieve macroeconomic stability through an appropriate mix of fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies, in order to limit inflation and protect the stability of the banking sector. The reforms also target the rebuilding of foreign currency reserves, and the improvement of Tunisia’s market competitiveness — especially since Tunisia was not mentioned in the Word Economic Forum’s ”” due to the gap between the indicators recorded before and after the revolution of January 2011, and because a new bad ranking would harm the image of Tunisia’s business climate during this sensitive transitional phase.

Opposition in Tunisia

However, the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) was mostly against the loan agreement with the IMF, when Finance Minister Elyes Fakhfakh explained the benefits of this loan during the plenary session on May 21.

In fact, 72 members of the NCA signed a petition against the agreement. The signatories’ argument was that the current government is a transitional and temporary one, and therefore, cannot make decisions that engage the country and the people in the long-term. They prefer the use of other sources of funding, without taking on a debt from international financial markets or global financial institutions. They conclude their petition by arguing that the current Tunisian government and the Tunisian central bank are not able to make such decisions, as the NCA has not given its agreement.

Moreover, according to a survey conducted by “,” 66% of Tunisians are against the IMF loan agreement because it is a heavy burden for the coming budgets, 23% are in favor, and 11% are neutral. Politically, some parties reject this agreement because they know that usually the IMF’s conditions for loans threaten borrowing countries’ sovereignty, while the government argues that the reforms are inevitable, internal, and do not mean any change in long-term strategies or the structure of the economy. Objectively, what firstly matters here is debt sustainability. This debt is payable at maturity, according to government experts. In addition, the loan is necessary due to a lack of resources and boom of expenditures, caused by the deterioration of mining production, wage increases, and the cost of planned infrastructure projects and social transfers.

Despite the divergent views about the agreement’s content, the IMF approval in itself demonstrates optimism and confidence in Tunisia’s future. In this context, the international rating agency, Fitch, believes that the IMF loan will enable Tunisia to face another difficult year of political transition and economic pressure, and will also strengthen investor confidence and the resilience of the economy. The loan is a good sign for Tunisia’s partners, since it proves that the country still benefits from international support, which is necessary to overcome the challenges facing the nation before and during the upcoming elections.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Due to a widening disparity between the elitist “haves” and the preponderant disenfranchised “have-nots” in Egypt, the split could transform into a stark class division for decades to come. This will heavily bear on Egypt’s social peace, in a country that is mired with insurmountable socioeconomic challenges and socio-political ills that cannot be overlooked for much longer before the country faces a total collapse. 

Egypt’s endemic, deeply entrenched socioeconomic ills can only be effectively handled by enlisting the collective contributions and efforts of all Egyptians. The country needs to embark on ambitious socioeconomic revival programs with sweeping goals and well defined and well thought out milestones for their attainments to be reached. 

Achievement of these goals can only be acquired through the very willing commitment of a motivated public, right across the board. A truly representative democracy, based on a comprehensive and encompassing consensual constitution that guarantees the separation of power and social justice, is the very first step on the long road for Egypt’s recovery.

For the post-Nasserite era, recovery in Egypt will mean the country regains its once glorious status as the leader of the Arab world and as the region's military, political, and industrial power that its geographical location, depth of cultural heritage, and demographics qualify the nation for.

The Deep State

The recent coup d’ètat by the military has reasserted their control over Egyptian political and economic life, as the elitist “haves” and the privileged armed forces have reinforced the existing class divisions, which has been termed as the “deep state.”

The deep state’s entrenchment was proven by the coup. The closely shared common agendas, deeply intertwined interests, and well-coordinated collaborative capabilities among its constituent and ubiquitously outreaching power groups, left nothing to chance.

The deep state has been forming for nearly four decades. It is the product of a 40-year-old corrupt political system commencing with the so-called open-door policy of President Anwar el-Sadat’s era.

The Egyptian military represents the backbone of the most powerful interest groups in Egypt’s so-called “deep state.” The New York Times syndicate columnist, Ben Hubbard, most succinctly summarized this strong role of the military in his July 3 . Hubbard describes the army's outreaching influence controlling political life in Egypt as the most powerful behind the scenes player:

“Suddenly, Mr. Morsi, like his immediate predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, discovered the enduring fact that the military looks out for itself above all else. It is not ideological, but is intensely politicized… While justifying its intervention in politics as serving the will of the people, the military has never been a force for democracy. It has one primary objective, analysts said: preserving national stability and its untouchable realm of privilege within the Egyptian state… For decades, however, its tens of thousands of elite officers have jealously guarded their privileged station. They live as a class apart, with their own social clubs, hotels, hospitals, parks, and other benefits financed by the state. Many have also grown wealthy through government contracts and business deals facilitated by their positions… It is, in some respects, a hereditary Brahmin caste, in which sons follow their fathers’ careers and they all live inside a closed social circle.

'It is a tightly knit group,' said Robert Springborg, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif, and an expert on the Egyptian military. 'They tend to think alike and they are a force to be reckoned with because, besides the Brotherhood, they are the only really cohesive institution in the country.'"

Hubbard and David Kirkpatrick highlighted the collaborative, symbiotic role played by the other constituent components of the “deep state” – elitist ”haves,” the politicized judiciary,and the security apparatus – in paving the grounds for the military to stage its coup d’état in Egypt. In their the New York Times  on July 11, Hubbard and Kirkpatrick argue the following:

“Working behind the scenes, members of the old establishment, some of them close to Mubarak and the country’s top generals, also helped finance, advise, and organize those determined to topple the Islamist leadership, including Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire and an outspoken foe of the Brotherhood; Tahani El-Gebali, a former judge on the Supreme Constitutional Court who is close to the ruling generals; and Shawki al-Sayed, a legal adviser to Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s last prime minister who lost the presidential race to Morsi.”

Referring to the security apparatus, the writers continue:

“But it is the police returning to the streets that offers the most blatant sign that the institutions once loyal to Mubarak held back while Morsi was in power.Throughout his one-year tenure, Morsi struggled to appease the police, even alienating his own supporters rather than trying to overhaul the Interior Ministry. But as crime increased and traffic clogged roads — undermining not only the quality of life, but the economy — the police refused to deploy fully.”

The “haves,” rather disproportionately rich Egyptians who accumulated the larger part of their wealth during the Mubarak-era, are further explained in the article:

“Sawiris, one of Egypt’s richest men and a titan of the old establishment, said that he had supported an upstart group called “tamarrod,” Arabic for “rebellion,” that led a petition drive seeking Morsi’s ouster. He donated use of the nationwide offices and infrastructure of the political party he built, the Free Egyptians. He provided publicity through his popular television network and his major interest in Egypt’s largest private newspaper. He even commissioned the production of a popular music video that played heavily on his network.”

As to the politicized judiciary, mostly made up of judges during the Mubarak era, Hubbard and Kirkpatrick note:

“Gebali, the former judge, said in a telephone interview that she and other legal experts helped tamarrod create their strategy to appeal directly to the military to oust Morsi and pass the interim presidency to Hazem el-Beblawi, a former chief of the constitutional court.”

The same can be said of the Egyptian media that is largely funded and controlled by Egyptian billionaires, who amassed most of their disproportionate wealth, if not all of it, during Mubarak’s reign. 

Naivety of the Government

In holding singularly onto the reins of state governance, President Morsi and his Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) proved naive and short-sighted. Under the illusion that they were the only organized political party in Egypt, the FJP overlooked the real intentions and greater manoeuvrability of the entrenched “deep state,” while in power. Morsi and the FJP thought that in the four years of the ousted president’s term in office, they could fill many critical government positions with loyal Islamists. Morsi must have thought that with the end of his tenure, the state would be controlled by Islamists and that they would in due course move, very much as in the case of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), to curtail the power and influence of the army in Egyptian politics. 

Had President Morsi followed the Tunisian example of forming a wider coalition government with other popular secular parties and political movements subscribing to a broad national agenda, he could have weathered or even mitigated some of the inherent obstacles posed by the deep state. This way, he would have possibly survived in office, pre-empting the army and its allies from carrying out a coup d’état. 

While reserving judgment on President Morsi’s performance of governing Egypt in the short period since he assumed office, the truth is that the Egyptian “deep state,” the web of well-entrenched interest groups, would always coalesce to forestall any initiative towards genuine and meaningful socioeconomic and socio-political reforms. The “deep state” interest groups would always perceive any profound changes to the status quo as a potential threat to their stronghold on Egyptian political life and their well guarded interests.

With half the Egyptian population, possibly more than 40 million people, looming in abject poverty with a great percentage of them being illiterate, Egypt is deeply divided: the “haves” are ensuring the protection of the “deep state,” and the “have-nots” are ever marginalized and disenfranchised. Under these circumstances, Egypt could never aspire to successfully embark on a truly representative democracy. Egypt of these enduring two sides will maintain the façade of social peace and apparent security and political stability that would only postpone the inevitable day of reckoning for a little longer. Egypt will always be susceptible to a cataclysmic eruption that would only plunge the country in a continuous state of chaos and continuation of a deteriorating economic and security situation.

The current interest groups of the Egyptian "deep state" are incapable of acting in unison to affect the profound socioeconomic and political reforms Egypt needs. All introduced changes would be cosmetically appeasing for the sake of appearance, however, and they would never be profound enough to touch the very deep roots of Egypt’s lingering ills. 

Representative Democracy

The members of the “deep state” are incapable of introducing representative democracy, as they prevent the proper representation of a significant part of Egyptian society, which would be necessary to empower and unleash the creative energies of the masses. This is, by virtue of the conflicting goals of the entrenched interests on both sides, preventing the general welfare of the Egyptian public on the basis of equity and equal opportunities.

Egypt, due to the inevitable abortion of its first experience with a nascent democracy, has proven without the slightest doubt the incompatibility, if not the impossibility, of co-existing forces of change who aspire to put Egypt back on the right track and the entrenched forces of the “deep state.” They appear as mutually exclusive.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As the Obama administration has parried pressures to enmesh the United States more deeply in Syria's murderous civil war, last year's high tide of international insistence on Bashar al-Assad's departure seems to be receding. One sign has been in eroding  in the United Nations. Another is the very public rethinking of a Syria policy one hears here in Tunisia, where the Arab Uprisings began.

Tunisia has particular moral authority in the Arab world as the vanguard of democratic change against the region's encrusted despotisms. It has been navigating its transition more peaceably than any other (and become the darling of international aid donors as a result). Its new government's instinctive sympathy for Syria's democratic protesters made it one of the first to demand that Assad must go.

Rocky Transition

But Tunisia's own transition has been rockier than its quick disappearance from our media radar screen might lead us to think, and Tunisians' experience of Islamist politics has changed the lens through which many here now view Syria.

As the process of writing Tunisia's new constitution nears its end, the conflict over political Islam is in crescendo phase. International organizations supporting democracy, many aided by Western governments, have invested heavily in civil-society institutions they hope can assure an unambiguously democratic system, largely working with secular parties of compatible views. Secular-minded Tunisians express alarm about Saudi and Gulf funding for Islamist forces, whose commitment to genuine democracy in Tunisia — much less Syria — they doubt.

The role of the United Nations Development Program in the process, one European foundation director here avers, has been "crucial" in keeping the process on track at all, thanks to its scrupulous impartiality in working with all the parties. But the United Nations can provide no guarantee about the true intentions of Ennahda ("Renaissance"), the Islamist party that won 41 percent of the vote in Tunisia's first elections two years ago. As Joshua Hammer , there are ample grounds that Tunisians, skeptical of religiosity in public life, have for concern.

Ennahda has billed itself as a model of moderate Islamism, one that the West can embrace. To form a governing majority, it had to enter a coalition with two smaller secular parties, which have been hard pressed to explain to their supporters how their collaboration has moderated the Islamists. Half the members of parliament from the social democratic Ettakatol party have defected in protest at its alliance with Ennaha. Even the country's labor confederation, which has been among the most effective mobilizers of public resistance to Ennahda's conservative agenda, fears infiltration by "the beards" as pious Muslims win elections to local union posts.

Alarm bells have been ringing since Ennahda's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, was recorded in a meeting with Salafist extremists calling them "my sons and daughters" and appealing for their support for Islamization projects in education. But the Salafists have international ambitions too, among which is the jihad against Syria's "infidel" regime. Tunisian Salafists were fighting with the Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra, well before Hezbollah aided Assad at Qusayr, and have been bringing trademark jihadi violence back to Tunisia with them.

A Salafist mob stormed the American embassy September 14 of last year, three days after the Benghazi attack, overrunning most of the compound and burning the American school across the street. Suspicions swirled about government collusion because the Interior Ministry did not send security forces to confront the attackers, till the embassy warned that Marine guards were prepared to shoot attackers approaching the embassy's last redoubt. The assassination five months later of a human rights champion turned opposition party leader was the breaking point, and Ennahda began to distance itself from the Salafists.

Reappraisal of Syrian Crisis

The escalation of Salafist political violence has hit Tunisians when they are already on edge because of jihadist activity in the southern Sahara since the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya next door. The leaching of arms from Libya has also helped supply jihadist rebels in Syria — yet another factor in Tunisians' reappraisal of the Syrian crisis.

"The government was too hasty in taking the position that Assad had to go," says Ahmed Ounaies, a career diplomat who served briefly as foreign minister in the first transitional government after the fall of Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali's rule. Tunisians were eager to show solidarity with demonstrators for democracy in other Arab countries.

But liberal democrats are "not who is fighting in Syria today," Ounaies notes. Sensitized by the upsurge in intolerance and violence by Salafists within Tunisia itself, Tunisians have become more agnostic about the Syrian opposition. An unyielding insistence on Assad's early departure, he suggests, is not likely to produce a settlement, or even slow the killing.

With the relatively high education levels, substantial middle class, protections for women's equality, and defense of social rights that Tunisia's legendary Habib Bourguiba bequeathed to the country, Tunisia's revolution has always seemed the likeliest to deliver on its promise. Yet, the Islamist divide has been hard to bridge even here, and Tunisians warn Westerners they should harbor no illusions about Syria.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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The quirky Emir of Qatar since the mid-1990s, Sheikh Hamad bin Issa al-Thani, stepped down in favor of his fourth son, Tamim, 33, on Tuesday morning. It is a historical step, insofar as it might form a precedent in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of six Gulf sheikhdoms — heretofore mainly ruled by old men.

Al Jazeera

Sheikh Hamad presided over the growth of Qatari GDP from $8 billion annually in 1996, to $174 billion a year, today. The Qatari citizen population is only about 250,000, making the peninsula the wealthiest per capita in the world (mainly based on natural gas exports). Sheikh Hamad innovated in allowing the Al Jazeera satellite news channel to be founded and to operate relatively independently. It changed Arab television journalism forever, airing multiple points of views on key issues and allowing critics of the various Arab regimes to be heard. Al Jazeera gave a platform to the revolutionaries of 2011, at a time when local Tunisian, Egyptian or Libyan media attempted to downplay the revolutionary youth movements. Qatar also began playing a mediating role in disputes in the region, as when it negotiated a truce in 2008 between the Shiite Hezbollah and its Sunni opposition in Lebanon.

In the past two years, Qatar’s reputation has suffered among many Arab youth because of its backing for the religious Right (Ennahda in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere). Qatar has been a hawk on Syria, seeking the overthrow of the Baathist regime of Bashar al-Assad and being willing to arm even radical Sunni groups who have affiliated with al-Qaeda. On the other hand, its Arabic-language television station has been quiet about the crackdown on Shiite protesters in Bahrain by a Sunni monarchy. Sheikh Hamad once had a reputation for even-handedness, which in recent years he has squandered in pursuit of the spread of Sunni fundamentalism in the region. Likewise, the imprisonment of a Qatari poet for 15 years for insulting the ruling family pointed to a deep hypocrisy, since Al Jazeera had pointedly criticized Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for his crackdown on dissent and criticism of his regime.

Sheikh Hamad explicitly made reference to the creative role of Arab youth in recent years, saying:

“Our young [people] have proven over the past years that they are a people of resolve and fortitude; capable of accommodating the spirit of their time; realising its necessities fully and profoundly; coping with its newest; and above all contributing by their original thinking and creative initiatives. Thanks to all this, I recall the words of the fourth Caliph, Ali bin Abi Taleb, may Allah be pleased with him, who said: ‘Teach your children other than that what you were taught; as they are created for a time other than yours.’”

The absolute ruler of a Gulf sheikhdom urged Generation Y to put their faith in science (al-ulum, and not just "knowledge" as the official translation has it):

“The future lies ahead of you, the children of this homeland, as you usher into a new era where young leadership hoists the banner; bearing in mind the aspirations of future generations; working restlessly and relentlessly to achieve them, seeking guidance and support from God first and from the citizens; deriving force from the experience gained in running the country’s affairs; and the profound knowledge of realities in our region, particularly the Arab World. While I am certain you are up to the responsibility, I urge you to fear God by seeking knowledge and working hard; let [the sciences] be the beacon lighting your path; helping you build the future of the nation to its best; by knowledge emerge able generations, capable of shouldering responsibilities and embracing the straight right path.”

While Sheikh Hamad is among the more interesting political minds in the Middle East, and he has helped shake the region up in ways that are often positive, there are a number of potential steps his successor could take that would be truly revolutionary.

The New Emir

Sheikh Tamim will likely revive the plan to move to an elected consultative assembly. But what would really change the Gulf would be for him to accept becoming a constitutional monarch. Kuwait was, six years ago, the closest of the GCC countries to that form of government, but it has become much more authoritarian. It is a hard sell for Qatar to promote democracy elsewhere in the Arab world, yet to lack it at home in Doha.

Likewise, the GCC countries suffer from a local labor shortage produced by their vast hydrocarbon wealth, which generates the need for workers and for businesses beyond what local populations can supply. Millions of Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Filipinos and others have flooded into the region. Qatar’s population is 1.8 million, but about 1.5 million of that consists of guest workers. Guest workers in the Gulf states most often need an in-country patron or kafeel, whose relationship to them can often be exploitative. Even workers from India or the Philippines who have lived for many years in a Gulf country are limited to relatively short-term visas. They can easily be deported or denied renewal of their visa, which is how any concerted attempt at workplace unionization or strikes are dealt with. There is typically no path to citizenship for these guest workers, even if they live in a GCC country all their lives.

Using Qatar’s natural gas wealth as a platform on which to pursue renewable energy, its export to energy-hungry Pakistan and India would help firm up Qatar’s future in a world where hydrocarbons are likely to decline in value. Qatar is vulnerable to losing coastline if the seas rise three or four feet in this century, as is expected because of climate change.

So another really important innovation Sheikh Tamim could pursue would be to offer citizenship to long-time residents, to regularize immigration laws and establish a path to citizenship for immigrants, and to allow unions, strikes and more justice for the workers who are making Doha run.

This step, in turn, would require a national educational system that could induct the immigrants into a Qatari national identity.

A return of Al Jazeera to more even-handed editorial policies would increase Qatar’s prestige.

Sheikh Tamim would raise his country’s esteem in the eyes of the world if he pardoned poet Muhammad al-Ajami and established genuine freedom of speech in the country. Qatar achieved its current stature by demanding more open societies elsewhere in the Arab world. It risks undermining those achievements by being seen as hypocritical.

And a return of Qatar to its 2008 role of mediator and peace-maker would benefit it and the region. Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt has been a disaster, and the Sunni radicals in Syria are damaging the reputation and prospects of the rebels there. For Doha to pick winners so boldly risks a backlash if they don’t do well. And violent interventions like that in Syria could someday backfire by attracting violence to Doha.

*[This article was originally published by Juan Cole’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Security related issues and natural resources are of core concern for Western nations in the Middle East and North Africa. As uprisings and civil wars have raged on, accusations of double standards have often been lamented upon the US, UK, and France.

While the US has supported the right to peaceful protest in nations such as Egypt and Tunisia, and militarily backed anti-Qaddafi rebels in Libya with NATO, they showed reluctance to support civil political movements in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Strategic geopolitical interests — such as the presence of the US Navy’s 5th fleet in Bahrain and the important shipping lane called the Strait of Hormuz — essentially dictate US foreign policy in the Gulf. It is for this reason that the US continues to support the Bahraini and Saudi Arabian monarchies despite the repression of their populations.

The European Union’s (EU) interests in the region are dominated by concerns over security issues, migration, and natural resources. With southern Europe’s close proximity to North Africa, political unrest and conflict in Libya, Tunisia, and even Morocco was, and continues to be, particularly worrisome for the EU. The unrest in Tunisia, between December 2010 and January 2011, infamously prompted the French foreign minister to  sending French police to Tunisia in order to crush the uprising against long-time ally Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

As the EU continues to struggle with the economic crisis, political unrest in North Africa would likely result in further illegal migration to European states. In addition to migration issues, there are concerns over the smuggling of weapons and drugs from North-West Africa to Europe. Furthermore, any bolstering of extremist groups like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar Al-Sharia threatens the security of natural resources in Algeria and Libya, which would undoubtedly send shockwaves throughout Europe with increased oil and gas prices.

In sum, the EU desires a stable region to ensure strong economic and trade relations with their southern neighbors. It also wants to ensure that security issues do not spill over to Europe or lead to mass migration to its member states.

Beyond the United States’ strategic interests in the Arabian Peninsula with regards to natural resources and counterterrorism, particularly with Yemen’s Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Washington’s other core concern in the Middle East is the security of Israel.

During his first term, US President Barack Obama failed to make any progress with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as talks collapsed in 2010 over a settlement row between Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Throughout his time in office, the president has repeatedly stressed America’s commitment to Israel’s security. With the appointment of Secretary of State John Kerry, the US president is expected to once again try and bring the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

, vice president of the Institute of Peace and Development, speaks to 51�Թ�’s  and  about Western double standards, socioeconomic development in North Africa and the role of the EU, and the future of the US-Israeli relationship.

Abul-Hasanat Siddique: Does the United States hold double standards by backing democratic reform in select nations, while supporting autocratic regimes in countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain? 

Yana Korobko: The politics of double standards is the basis of the American strategy in the Middle East, which works for its own benefits. In what concerns Syria, the American administration is silent because any harsh gesture from the side of the White House will lead to a new splash of violence in the region, which Israel does not wish for; neither does it want the instability, which it might trigger off in the neighborhood.

Washington’s reaction concerning the protests in Yemen was only demonstrated through the prism of what they might mean for the fight against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Saudi Arabia.

Bahrain is the location of the US Navy’s 5th fleet. The loss of control over Bahrain means the loss of control over the Strait of Hormuz. There is no doubt that the US defense base in Bahrain is strategic to American foreign interests.

Concerning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it does not matter whether protests occur there from time to time. The US does not intend to pay any public attention to them as long as Riyadh remains America’s strongest ally in the Gulf. Therefore, Washington adopts individual behavior in each given case and is not reluctant to change the existing status quo in the Gulf if that is in America’s favor.

Manuel Langendorf: Considering the rise to power of Islamist movements in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, how do you think this phenomenon has influenced Arab-Western relations?

Korobko: With the rise to power of Islamist governments, their relations with the West have become, indeed, ambivalent. On the one hand, the region is strategically important for Washington, not only in terms of economic interests, but also taking in account that Israel, a vital US ally, is located there. On the other hand, such US political partners like Egypt and Tunisia are playing a contradictory role now. And Washington has to deal with a religious dictatorship in accordance to a scenario that is different from what the one they expected.

Under these circumstances, the US is developing a new politics in the Middle East with new rules and diplomatic tactics, which would be more precautious, as the dialogue with the Islamist governments is grounded on a strong base of traditional Islam; that is what the majority of the Arab populations voted for. Therefore, if Washington aspires to promote democracy in the Middle East, it should not do so regardless of the religious factor but, first and foremost, by taking it into primary consideration, as it is becoming much more influential in the US-Arab relations than ever before.

Langendorf: Has the rise of Islamist movements, in several cases replacing secular dictatorships, influenced interfaith dialogue between Western states and the region? 

Korobko: The interfaith dialogue has always been a strong tool for developing tolerance between the different continents on the cultural level, as its chief principle is comprehension despite all differences: religious, social, and political. Consequently, the interfaith dialogue will go on regardless of the current policy-making transformations. It’s between people, and not political programs.

Langendorf: In light of energy imports, and legal and illegal immigration from North Africa, what is your view on the EU’s past policies over these issues?

Korobko: For many years, Europe has been interested in the immigrant’s labor, which is beneficial both for the employers and the employees. That is why, until recent times, EU countries have not been actively opposing the flows of immigrant workers coming from outside of Europe. However, with the adoption of the so-called “New Integration Strategy in the Mediterranean” (1992), the immigration policies of European states have become governed by quotas. The quotas reduced the annual number of migrants and due to security reasons, this figure only increased over time.

The threats to security became real at different levels. It is, on the one hand, the protection of the host states and their citizens, and on the other hand, the safety of migrants (low salaries, long working hours, and no health assurances). Nowadays, European migration legislation is facing new realities, which cannot be easily and completely subordinated only to regulation by single states. They need a complex approach within international cooperation.

Siddique: What should the EU do to help encourage socioeconomic reform in North Africa? Will genuine change in the Maghreb help reduce migration to Southern Europe?

Korobko: Probably the only state in North Africa that has been able to offer both stability and introduce some light manifestations of democratic reforms in return for EU aid is Morocco. With its European outlook and close economic and commercial connection with EU states, Rabat highly values its privileged status with Brussels. To ensure this cooperation continues fulfilling the common objectives, it should be adjusted to the most urgent needs of the Moroccan society, notably:

• Development of social policies
• Economic modernization
• Institutional support
• Good governance and the protection of human rights
• Environmental safety

Certainly, the aid given by the EU to Morocco has accelerated the reforms inside the kingdom. So far, however, they have been implemented with extremely small steps, or not implemented at all. Only if a serious attitude is adapted towards democratization will there be a reduction in migration flows coming from the African continent to the EU, and thus the regional situation will stabilize.

Langendorf: Regarding the United States, how do you see the future of US-Israeli relations?

Korobko: The recent visit of President Obama to the Middle East commenced with a reassuring speech concerning the unchanging role of Israel as a firm and solid partner of the US in the region. This means that the previous policy line of US-Israeli relations is likely to continue during Obama’s second term. With help of America’s good services, negotiations between Israel and Palestine have a chance to be renewed. However, the main question is not the reopening of talks, but their effectiveness. Sometimes, the whole negotiation process serves only one aim: the adjournment of the final resolution if it serves the purposes of the involved parties. As history shows, preserving the whole Middle East in suspense gives Washington an uncommon advantage of controlling and dominating every single pulsation of the region.

*[Note: This article was produced in partnership with the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Since December 2010, the Arab revolts have shaken an entire region. Uprisings, initiated by youth activists, have undoubtedly changed the history and makeup of the Middle East and North Africa. Long-standing autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen were overthrown as a consequence. With their causes rooted in a variety of political, social and economic factors, issues such as a demographic youth bulge and widespread unemployment have created restive societies throughout the Arab world.

Having started with peaceful demonstrations, the situation in Syria has turned into one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 21^st century. The ongoing civil war began as genuine calls for reform, but has since turned into a proxy-war with its geopolitical shockwaves being felt in neighboring countries, including Lebanon.

As violent protests in Egypt have escalated, the transition period proves to be turbulent and complicated.

The political upheaval took the United States and the European Union off guard. After decades of cooperation between the West and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Islamist parties have since risen to power.

As Yana Korobko notes: “The fateful events of 2011 brought monumental changes to the politics of the Middle East and its relations with the Western countries.” In September 2012, US President Barack Obama infamously  that Egypt, with its new government, should neither be considered an ally, nor an enemy. After decades of secular dictatorships, how will a new Middle East and North Africa alter centuries-old Arab-Western relations?

, vice-president of the Institute of Peace and Development, speaks to 51�Թ�’s  and  about opportunities for the West in the region, the rise to power of Islamist parties, and the Syrian Civil War.

Manuel Langendorf: What is your evaluation of the responses of key Western states, including the United States, France and the UK, to the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)?

Yana Korobko: The fateful events of 2011 brought monumental changes to the politics of the Middle East and its relations with the Western countries. Even the term “Arab Spring” was “part of a US strategy of controlling the movement’s aims and goals” and directing it towards an American-style . The term first appeared publicly when , an American professor, referred to it in his article published in Foreign Policy. So, the Arab Spring is one of the results of the political activity of the West. 

With the beginning of the Arab revolutions, many people tended to think that justice would triumph over the dictatorships. As soon as any revolution is over, there usually comes a dangerous period. Like with the events in the Middle East, the initial euphoria of the democratization movements was rather exaggerated by the West, which was fully sponsoring them. Referring to the speech of Barack Obama: “Our signal is simple: if you take the risks and commitment to reform, you receive the full support of the United States. We should also start its efforts to expand its influence beyond the social elites to make contact directly with the people who will shape the future with the youth.” Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether the Arab Spring will have a long-lasting and cardinal outcome for the relations of this region with the Western world, taking into consideration the Islamist regimes that came to power.

Abul-Hasanat Siddique: Should the Arab Uprisings and the transitions appearing in (some) countries be deemed an opportunity or a threat to the West?

Korobko: The Arab Spring has rather a positive effect for the West, which opened a new page in their relations that would never be the same after the 2011 revolutions. For example, it revived the hopes of Washington to resurrect the idea of the Greater Middle East, proposed in 2004 at the summit at Sea Island (USA). Then, the American initiative involved extensive political, democratic and economic reforms in the region in exchange for large-scale financial aid from the West. The Arab revolutions have given an unprecedented opportunity for the West to create a new economic and political model for the region, which would reduce instability, radicalism, terrorism and eliminate these threats for the West.

Langendorf: What do you see as the most pressing topics in Arab-Western relations at the moment? Has there been a significant change in recent years?

Korobko: Arab-Western relations are the most controversial ones in world history. First of all, because of the so-called “Islamist threat,” an enemy was fabricated by some Western countries to take full control of world politics. Such an inclination for domination urges a country to realize self-expansion by all possible means, including manipulation, which inevitably increases other countries’ sense of insecurity and provokes the feeling of fear. Since the end of the Cold War, the main enemy of the West, the USSR, has disappeared, and in order to dominate in “real politics,” the Occident had to create another enemy.

In my opinion, the second serious challenge in Arab-Western relations is to fight unfairness concerning the double standards of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which throughout the years has been demonstrated in some of the following cases:

• The non-implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions compelling Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
• No international sanction has ever been adopted against Israel (except the case when the EU banned the import of Israeli production in Palestine).
• Contrary to what happened in other places (i.e. East Timor, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, etc), the Palestinian resistance to occupation doesn’t appear to be legally recognized by the international community.
• The policies of the International Atomic Energy Agency are firmly implemented with regard to the Arab countries and Iran, however, Israel does not fall under the same category.

And many other examples can be cited like these ones. Nevertheless, both parties should learn to overcome this heritage of mistrust. It is true that the Europeans have accumulated many psycho-social traumas in their relations with their Muslim neighbors. For instance: the Spanish conquest by Arabs; the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans; and so on. From their side, the Arabs have their own traumas, like the one created by European colonial policies. The recent invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies has only revived Arab wounds. That war reinforced the feeling that the West wanted to become the authority for the riches that the Arab world possesses, for instance, oil.

Unfortunately, so far, nothing substantial has been done to cure this suffering and, as a result, the anamnesis is only expanding. From the point of view of stability and peaceful coexistence, the solution should be found on the perceptional level in the form of an open dialogue between equals, and the Arab-West relations will become stabilized as a consequence of that.

Siddique: Why is Obama heavily reluctant to become involved in the Syrian Civil War?

Korobko: Many American experts consider a possible military intervention in Syria as a strategic mistake. Even if Obama takes such a decision, for Washington, it will turn out to become a layout of power demonstration over the key Russian satellite state since the time of the Cold War and, therefore, gaining new benefits in the region. While awaiting the resolution of the Syrian War, the relations between Russia and the US remain diplomatically polite without direct confrontation. This can be described as a “cold peace” — none of the parties are willing to give up, and no one wants to compromise. Russia assesses the American concern over Syria as an intervention into the zone of Moscow’s vital interests. It’s not surprising, as the history of Russian-American relations reminds us of the effects of a “zigzag” — with its ups and downs. Their consequences in the Syrian case are unpredictable. The situation remains very delicate.

*[Note: Read the final part of “,” on June 12. This article was produced in partnership with the .]

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Background

As we witness a pattern of sexual violence against women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially in Egypt, it is pivotal to assess whether the Arab Spring has brought real change for women in the region. Is the violence a symbol of the region's failure to advance women's rights? Women played a crucial role in uprisings across the region and hoped that their efforts would ultimately improve their social, political, and economic standing.

Tahrir Square, at the height of the 2011 protests, not only symbolized the struggle against autocracy in the MENA region but also a glimmer of hope for a more equitable society, as men and women protested together for weeks.  slept in the square during the Egyptian revolution to preempt a takeover by regime forces.

In Yemen, women were active participants in the protests against former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Female Yemeni journalist and activist, Tawakkol Karman, became one of the faces of the Arab Spring and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

At the start of the Syrian uprising, women actively organized protests, provided basic supplies to affected families, and spoke out against the regime. Women in Tunisia joined male protesters in efforts to oust long-standing ruler Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Equally, women were also victims of the former regime's crackdown.

Apart from the general demands for a more inclusive political society and enhanced socioeconomic justice, female protesters in many Arab countries, where gender inequality was a prevailing feature before the uprisings, hoped to enhance their status in society. Thus, in the words of Yemeni political activist Afrah Nasser: “.”

Why are Women’s Rights Relevant?

As countries across the region rebuild themselves, many women have found their expectations unfulfilled, and they fear that the newly-formed governments will fail to address or will limit women’s rights. Female political participation has improved in some countries, but many women insist that their political and economic status has remained unchanged or has worsened.

Female parliamentary candidates have participated in the region’s post-uprising elections with mixed success. Women won an unprecedented 32% of parliamentary seats in Algeria, 23% in Tunisia, and 17% in Libya. However, in Egypt, women constituted only 1% of the country’s parliament, which was disbanded in June 2012. Women’s rights groups are now calling for a boycott of the upcoming legislative elections. In Yemen, only one woman holds a seat in the 301-member parliament.

For some women’s rights groups, more concerning is the lack of women in powerful decision-making positions. In Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, only two women have been appointed to each country’s cabinet, and three women to Yemen’s. The Syrian National Council, the country's opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, failed to promote any women to its decision-making body last November.

Despite disappointment regarding political representation, few issues have provoked as much outrage as the region’s new constitutions. As each country establishes its legal foundations, many women worry that the rise of Islamist-majority governments will negatively impact their rights. In Tunisia, female protesters demonstrated against a clause in a draft constitution referring to women as “complementary” to men, rather than equal. The clause was ultimately dropped.

Egyptian women’s rights groups continue to oppose the country’s recently-ratified constitution, which fails to establish the minimum age for marriage or ban human trafficking, and guarantees gender equality only if it does not conflict with shari'a (Islamic law). Many also worry that the Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly intentionally worded the document vaguely, which could allow for interpretations that limit women’s rights.

In addition to women’s political standing, concerns remain about their economic and social status. Female workforce participation in the MENA region remains the lowest in the world. In Yemen, four out of five women in a  indicated that their circumstances had worsened since the revolution.

The increase in violence against women in Egypt led the United Nations to issue a statement expressing “.” Rights groups continue to protest the government’s failure to protect women, but so far, the only response has been a from the Shura Council blaming the female victims for the attacks.

Despite the bleak outlook, many women are continuing to fight for their rights by campaigning, protesting, reporting, and forming rights groups. Even in countries that have not experienced revolutions, women are speaking out – including in Saudi Arabia, where women defied the driving ban last year, and Iran where women have joined protests against the regime in 2009. It seems that the region-wide climate of change and reform has given the women's rights movement renewed energy.

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After the Arab Spring erupted in North Africa in the spring of 2011, there was widespread speculation that it would spread to sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the unrest in the Arab world sparked sporadic street protests in Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Sudan and several other African countries. But they quickly fizzled — thanks to brutal crackdowns by security forces. Actually, sub-Saharan Africa’s “Village Revolutions” in the early 1990s pre-dates the Arab Spring. But since the outcomes are strikingly similar, it would be more useful to compare the two and ascertain what lessons can be earned from them.  

During the struggle against colonialism, African nationalist leaders made democracy their rallying cry and demanded its establishment across Africa. But suddenly after independence in the 1960s, the same nationalist leaders rejected democracy as a “Western institution.” Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, for example, dismissed it as “imperialist dogma.” They then proceeded to establish Soviet-style one-party socialist state systems and declare themselves “presidents-for-life.” Statues of Marx and Lenin graced the capitals of Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. In 1990, just 4 of 53 African countries were democratic.

After the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989, Africa’s emperors suddenly found themselves with no clothes. “Village revolutions” swept across Africa, toppling many of them. From 1990, ordinary Africans, including women with babies strapped to their backs, braved bullets and staged street demonstrations, demanding democratic pluralism and resignations of their presidents. Dictators met the protesters with tear gas, stun grenades, arrests, kidnappings, bullets and curfews. But the revolutionary ferment, which began in Benin, spread to Cape Verde Islands, Mali, Malawi, Togo, Zaire, Zambia and eventually ending in South Africa with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994.

In all, Africa’s village revolutions produced six outcomes:

1.      Peaceful,  non-violent transition to democracy: Benin (1991), Cape Verde Islands (1992), Sao Tome & Principe (1992), South Africa (1994) and Zambia (1991);

2.      Ferocious resistance to change, resulting in civil war and carnage: Somalia (1991), Burundi (1993), Rwanda (1994), Zaire (now Congo DR, 1996);

3.      Successful ouster of dictators but subsequent hijacking of revolutions by groups that were not part of the revolution: Ivory Coast (1992), Nigeria (1993), Tanzania (1995);

4.      Reversals of the revolution with dictators replaced by crocodile liberators: Ethiopia (Mengistu Haile Mariam by Meles Zenawi, 1991), Gambia (Dawda Jawara by Yahya Jammeh, 1994), Liberia (Samuel Doe by Charles Taylor, 1990), Niger (Mahamane Ousmane by Gen. Ibrahim Mainassara, 1996), Sierra Leone (Gen. Joseph Momoh by Capt. Valentine Strasser, 1992) and Uganda (Milton Obote by Yoweri Museveni,1986);

5.      Ousted dictators clawed their way back to power: Benin (Mathieu Kerekou, 1996), Congo-Brazzaville (Denis Sassou-Nguesso, 1997), Madagascar (Didier Ratsiraka, 1996);

6.      Dictators learned new tricks to beat back the democratic challenge: Angola, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cameroon, Ghana, Sudan, Togo and Zimbabwe.

Only the first of the six was desirable. The rest produced a serious set-back for the democratic struggle and a descent into chaos and civil wars. Black Africa’s village revolutions were marginally successful. The number of democracies increased from 4 in 1990 to 12 in 2004 and has remains stubbornly stuck at 15 today. Africa is still not free.

Lessons

A few lessons can be drawn from Africa’s Village Revolutions that can be discerned elsewhere. First, not all revolutions succeed. The Iranian 2009 Green Revolution flopped; the 2005 Cedar Revolution of Lebanon self-immolated and the flower revolutions in Eastern Europe wilted. Second, not all revolutions produce desired outcomes. They can be hijacked – as has been the case in Tunisia and Egypt, They were started by the youth but have been hijacked by senile clerics, some in exile for decades. Libya is fractured and in turmoil while the horrific slaughter of civilians by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad continues; over 60,000 dead so far. Elsewhere, a deadly stand-off has settled in Yemen and Bahrain.

Third, toppling a dictator is only the first step in establishing a free society. The next step is dismantling the dictatorship itself. It is analogous to having a bad driver with a defective vehicle. After sacking the driver, the vehicle itself must be fixed; else the new driver would land in a ditch. In far too many countries, the second step was either not attempted, debauched or manhandled, which leads to a reversal or hijacking of the revolution. Sub-Saharan or Black Africa’s village revolutions in the early 1990s, which occurred in over 40 countries, provide a treasure trove of revealing insights as to why some succeed while others fail.

Four factors determined their success or failure: The receptivity of the dictator to change; the body managing the transition; duration of the transition process; and implementation of constitutional and institutional reform.

Much bloodshed was avoided when dictators accepted the need for change and the transition was managed by a broadly representative body. For example, Benin’s 9-day “sovereign national conference” in Feb 1990 convened with 488 delegates, representing  the broad spectrum of Beninois society and elections were held in 1991. South Africa employed the same vehicle – Convention for a Democratic South Africa or CODESA – in July 1991, with 228 delegates andculminated in the election of Nelson Mandela in March 1994. [For the Arab Spring, a Grand Majlis or a Loya Jirga as was the case for Afghanistan in 2003, would be more appropriate.]

Third, a hasty transition period proved counter-productive. It took the US 13 years (1776-1789) to transition from independence to democratic rule. South Africa took three years. A short transition period – say, 6 months – does not give new parties time to organize while giving old opposition parties an edge – as occurred in Tunisia and Egypt.

Finally, after the transition a whole battery of reforms must be implemented.  Dictators manipulated the Constitution and packed all key state institutions with his supporters and cronies.  For a revolution to be sustained, the constitution must be revamped and institutions cleansed of the “nomenklatura.” Sadly, in many countries, real reforms were not implemented, allowing the return of authoritarianism: Ethiopia (under Meles Zenawi), Liberia (under Charles Taylor), Uganda (under Yoweri Museveni), Russia (under Putin), Kyrgyzstan(under Kurmanbek Bakiyev), Georgia (under Mikhail Saakashvili) and Ukraine (under Viktor Yanukovich).

In all cases, however, one lesson stands clear: Wherever the transition was managed by the military or a rebel group, the outcome was disastrous: Military dictators simply manipulated the process, created their own parties (Ghana, Uganda and Myanmar),shooed in their favorite parties (Mali, Nigeria) or “civilianized” themselves by shedding military uniforms and donning civilian clothes (Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Niger). Nigeria’s transition by its military dictators was the most egregious.

General Ibrahim Babangida began the transition in 1985. After frequent interruptions and devious maneuvers, he created exactly two parties for Nigeria in 1992 because the US has two major parties. Then he wrote their manifestoes too: “One a little to the left, the other a little to the right.” And when the June 12, 1993 presidential elections produced a winner  he did not like, he annulled the elections altogether.

Next to manage the transition was General Sani Abacha. He called a Constitutional Conference in 1994 with 396 delegates, who were “guests of the military.” A fourth of their number (96) was selected by himself.  When in 1997 he finally allowed five political parties to be registered, they all immediately chose him as their presidential candidate!

General Abdulsalam Abubakar was the next to attempt constitutional engineering but he played “hide and seek” with the exercise. For Nigeria’s 1999 transition to democracy, he had TWO Constitutions prepared and held them closely to his chest. Which to release depended upon the election results. If the results went one way, Constitution A would be released; if they went the other way, Constitution B  would be released. Thus, Nigerians went to the polls in March 1999 without knowing whether or not there was a Constitution, nor its contents.

The outlandish chicanery was matched by Myanmar’s (Burma’s) military junta of Than Shwe in 2010. The military wrote the Constitution, reserved a quarter of the seats in national and local assemblies for itself, created its own party, Union Solidary and Development Party (USDP), and blocked other parties from participating in the Nov 7, 2010 elections. Then three days before the vote, it declared “victory.” Similarly in Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forced (SCAF) so bungled the transition that street protesters are now demanding its resignation.

It is tough to start a revolution and topple a dictator. Formidable still is managing the transition and implementing reforms. Bungling either allows crocodile liberators and quack revolutionaries to take over. As Africans are wont of lamenting, “We struggle very hard to remove one cockroach from power and the next rat comes to do the same thing. Haba! (Darn!).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy. 

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One is coming to the conclusion that the “objective circumstances,”Al-Zorouf Al-Mawdouieh, are not ripe. The lack of political maturity among Arabs cannot lead to a constructive and orderly transformation or a change in the socio-political structure of the Arab world, at this particular juncture in history. The Arabs’ bid for change, under the rubric of the Arab Spring, is spiraling out of control, becoming chaotic, enduring, and is ultimately prone to hijacking by the better organized Islamic factions under a theocratic dictatorship.

Now the Arab Spring, once seen as the spark for an orderly change in the Arab world for the better, increasingly appears to be drifting towards Bernard Lewis’ theory of “Creative Chaos,” or Al-Fawdah Al-Khallakah. And with it comes all the hegemonic connotation in the imperialists’ designs aimed at causing further split and fragmentation to an already divided Arab world.

The Complexity of the Arab world

Five inherent realities render bids for sweeping socio-political change in the Arab world chaotic, unmanageable and open to exploitation. One can sum up these dominant realities, at the expense of oversimplification, into the following five factors:

• The heterogeneity of the make-up of an Arab world with differing ethnicities and sectarian identities, lacking commonality of national aspirations and common national objectives.
• The total absence of a tradition of democracy; namely the absence of organized opposition into political parties due to the long-rule of absolute dictatorships.
• The relative low level of education; high levels of illiteracy; and spread of poverty that render the trodden masses more prone, through the force of the democratic principle of one-man, one-vote, to favoring one political faction — namely the Islamists who happen to employ more organized charitable networks among the less privileged neighborhoods.  
• The absence of a unifying ideology and consensus over a long-term plan for the shape of an inclusive, future political system.
• The pre-emptive intervention by a long, dominant coalition of imperialist, Zionist and reactionary forces to thwart any attempts of genuine political transformation and Arab revival that could ultimately lead to Arab unity under a single political system.    

The Arab world, unlike the French of the times of la Chute de la Bastille, is comprised of a constellation of ethnicities and sects that were often coerced and lumped together under the umbrellas of succeeding Islamic Caliphates ruling under the banner of religion, relevant to the spirit and mode of ancient times. These ethnicities and followers of varying religious sects were glued into one political entity under the rule of a dictatorial political system: the Caliphate.

In reality, under the single empire rule of the Caliphate, Kurds, Berber, Assyrians, Christians, Sunnis, Druze, Alawites, and so on, were never included under one coherent and homogeneous nationality. As with the example of Jews in the European ghettos, each of these ethnicities and sects kept at the micro-level to their distinct system of values and distinct sub-culture; a separate sense of identity.

Gamal Abdul Nasser’s outcry for Arab nationalism in the middle of the twentieth century, while rallying secularist Arabs under its banner, tended to alienate significant minorities of non-Arabs such as Kurds, Berbers and Assyrians.

Political Islam and Western Imperialist Powers

Today, with political Islam becoming a dominant force in the new emerging Arab Spring Middle East, an Islamic Sunni-sect colored dictatorship, dominating the political landscape of the Arab world, would implicate the disenfranchisement of the Christians, Shiite, Druze, Alawites, and other non-Sunni minorities in the wide religious spectrum of the Arab world. That, in all cases, would become untenable;  it would lead to never-ending communal and social strife.

The Western imperialist powers, ever present under the cloak of a new nomer, similar to a chameleon, have vested interests in the strategically important Middle East; a wide geographic location that commands the gateways to important passages in some of the world’s vital waterways, and whose countries are sitting on much coveted energy reserves. 

Israel, which was purposefully created as an outpost to protect Western imperialist interests and to act as a wedge to foil projects of Arab unity and revival, has since its creation assumed a life of its own with a separate vision and political agenda that often overrules the dictates and ultimate interests of its Western creators. Israel sees an orderly transformation of the Arab world (i.e. socio-economic and socio-political revival of the region),, as a zero-sum game; a mutually exclusive formula negating the Zionist doctrine and the exclusively Jewish character of the state. In addition, indigenous breeds of Arab intelligentsia, whose material interests are inextricably interwoven with foreign interests, are rendered as collaborating partners in aborting any Arab bids for revival.

Dominating Trends

Political transformation in the Arab world is a necessity dictated by the laws of evolution; the abysmal socio-economic state that the Middle East has descended into, cries for the right of self-determination and self-betterment in all aspects of life. It is long overdue, yet, the lack of a common ideology and the inherent ethno-sectarian divisions, aside from the imperialist-Zionist designs to foil genuine indigenous bids for profound reforms in the region, point to the inevitable dominance of one of two trends:

• Theocratic dictatorship, such as the unfolding political projects in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia
• Revival of the non-threatening stand-alone "Single State Model"

The first trend would lead to absolute dictatorship, theocratic and reminiscent of the Middle Ages. However, it runs completely against the spirit of our time, and against the universality and the increasingly open world we are living in.

Nevertheless, given the current objective circumstances and the varied ethno-sectarian makeup of an extended Arab world, and the stronghold that the imperialist –Zionist camp still enjoys over the fate of the region, single Arab states could in the short-term pursue their independent programs of genuine political reforms.

One could term this the “Revival of the Single State Model.” The initial political reforms enacted in Morocco, functioning as a prelude to gradually introduce genuine political reforms until the implementation of a truly functioning democracy, is a case in point.

If each Arab state succeeds in enacting profound socio-political reforms and true democracy is established, at that stage, the Arab world can collectively link together under a more unified political system by virtue of the greater homogeneity of reformed political systems achieved at the state level. Otherwise, the Arabs will continue to spin their wheels, simultaneously attempting a national political reform process as a harbinger for profound socio-economic reforms.

As a state of chaos, internecine strife, mayhem, and enduring instability could prove wasteful and counterproductive.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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