What are we to make of the tumult in Tunis? Few uprisings in recent memory have materialized as suddenly and produced results as swiftly as Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution. Just one month ago, former President Zine el-Abdine Ben Ali and his clan luxuriated in the kind of outrageous fortune that only two decades of U.S.-backed, kleptocratic rule can buy: beachfront villas, pet tigers, ice cream flown in from St. Tropez. Now they can't even keep their rooms at Euro Disney. The fall of such a corrupt and repressive dictator has set off celebrations among activists throughout the Middle East. Even the White House found itself cheering the ouster of a man it once considered a reliable ally. "Tunisia's future will be brighter," President Obama said, "if it is guided by the voices of its people.
Maybe. But the euphoria in Tunis has been short-lived. The forty-eight hours following Ben Ali's abdication were marked by riots, gun battles, prison breaks and not one, but two, changes of government. The collapse of authority has encouraged the country's security forces to settle scores on their own. It's possible Tunisia may eventually transform itself into a stable, representative democracy. But the country is likely in for a period of chronic upheaval and political strife - the conditions in which militants and strongmen thrive.
And so the Tunisian revolution should give us pause. For a time after 9/11, the U.S.'s foreign policy in the Middle East was guided by the "liberty agenda": a belief that implanting democracy in the Arab world would help combat Islamic radicalism. Historic, free elections have indeed come off in places like Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories - and yet radicalism remains. If anything, democracy has made anti-Western forces more assertive, not less, and exacerbated political tensions rather than resolving them. As a result, foreign-policy realists - including many in the Obama Administration - tend to treat events like the Tunisian revolt with caution. In their eyes, further democratization in the region could destabilize traditional U.S. allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, at a time when Washington needs their help to root out al-Qaeda and contain a rising Iran.
And yet the velocity of the Tunisian revolution suggests that anti-establishment forces in the region may be stronger and more pervasive than many in the West had assumed. Ben-Ali's overthrow also shows that the support of the United States is no longer sufficient to protect Arab strongmen who lack popular legitimacy. Whether the U.S. likes it or not, Tunis-style clashes between young, restless Arab populations and their sclerotic, Western-backed leaders are bound to become more common.
So whose side should we be on? Perhaps the biggest mistake made by advocates of the liberty agenda was their claim that democratization would reduce the threat of terrorism. In fact, allowing people to vote in elections has little impact on whether or not they will become terrorists. The frustration that fuels militancy in the Arab world has less to do with politics than with the region's stagnant growth relative to the rest of the world - the result of outdated education systems, gender inequality and underinvestment in industries other than oil. Finding solutions to those problems is critical to the life prospects of tens of millions of Arabs. But doing so will be impossible so long as decision-making power remains in the hands of the same ruling clans who allowed their societies to fall so far behind in the first place.
The reasons for seeking freer and more democratic Arab societies have less to do with our future than with theirs. At this point, the U.S. can't openly stump for democracy in the Middle East. Our influence is at a low ebb. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Washington's strong support for Israel have tarnished our image in the region. Among Arabs, the most admired world leaders are those who most consistently stand up to the U.S. and Israel. But simply because our name is mud doesn't mean democracy's must be too. Tunisia's revolutionaries, after all, didn't need our endorsement to throw off the yoke of despotism. The experience of the last decade has convinced Americans that we shouldn't be in the business of imposing democracy at the point of a gun. But it's never been in our interests to stand in the way of democracy either.
Lending moral support to activists in Tunis or Cairo or Riyadh won't on its own make the U.S. any more secure. But it would provide an opportunity for us to realign our policies with our ideals and, perhaps, earn some trust with a generation of Arabs yearning to seize control of their destinies. "I can't believe my eyes!" one Bahraini blogger tweeted about Tunisia. "An Arab nation woke up and said enough!!!" It's time that we did too. (Comment on this story.)
Ratnesar, a TIME contributing editor-at-large, is a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech That Ended the Cold War. His column on global affairs appears every Monday on TIME.com.
The Tunisia Effect: Will Its "Hunger Revolution" Spread?
By Angela Shah / Dubai Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011
No group is watching the events unfold in Tunisia more closely than fellow Arabs, most of whom live under autocratic governments and are feeling the same economic pinches of bleak job prospects and high food prices. Ali Dahmash, an activist who runs a social media agency in Amman, called it a "hunger revolution." Says Dahmash, "This is not just about politics and having a kind of freedom of speech or religion. This came out of despair. It was because of the economy."
Mishaal Al Gergawi, an Emirati commentator and businessman, agrees. "Tunisians and Algerians are hungry. The Egyptians and Yemenis are right behind them," he wrote Sunday in a Dubai newspaper column. He referred to the young Tunisian vegetable seller who immolated himself in the town of Sidi Bouzid several weeks ago to protest police preventing him from doing business, thus setting off the revolt. "Mohamed Bouazizi didn't set himself on fire because he couldn't blog or vote. People set themselves on fire because they can't stand seeing their family wither away slowly, not of sorrow, but of cold stark hunger."
Over the weekend, the social networking site Twitter exploded with posts from both the Arab world and its disapora in English, French and Arabic. They cheered on the Tunisian protesters and speculated which Arab leader might be the next to go. Posts quite openly called for the ouster of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak or Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. "Algeria is even worse than in Tunis. The police will actually go ... well, it's very vicious," Dahmash says. "In Egypt, the president has been there for 27 years in a [perpetual] state of emergency. With that, they can do anything in the country."
Like Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt have economies plagued by high food prices and a lack of jobs. On Sunday, protests broke out in Libya despite a speech by Gadhafi that rebuked Tunisian protesters for impatience, saying they should have waited for Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down in three years, as he had said he would. At the Tunisian embassies in Amman and Cairo, protesters gathered to express their frustrations while supporting the movement in Tunisia. One twitter poster even advised Queen Rania of Jordan that she should go palace-hunting in Jeddah — the coastal Saudi city is where Ben Ali fled Friday night after fleeing the country.
Still, for all the demonstrating in Arab capitals and candor on social websites, some Arabs are still reluctant to speak publicly of regime change in the Arab world. "The leaders are all genuinely paying close attention to this," says a Syrian executive who lives in Dubai. "They're thinking, 'Holy moley, how are we going to manage this?'"
Dahmash agrees. Ben Ali fled Tunis on Friday, and by Saturday morning, Dahmash says, food prices in the Jordanian capital had decreased by about 5% — probably upon orders of the government. More than the number, the reduction "is a sign of fear, in my opinion," he says.
Expatriate Tunisians like Walid Cherif are watching events unfold at home with a mixture of excitement and disbelief. "If you had asked me a week ago, none of us would've even imagined this happening," he says. "I'm very proud of it." He's not sure, however, that events in Tunisia will lead to revolt in the rest of the Arab world. Tunisia has always been different from its Arab siblings, he says. "Tunisia is known as one of the most progressive Arab countries in the world," We're the only country where polygamy is illegal in the Muslim world. Did that happen in other Arab countries? No.
In the meantime, Tunisia is still searching for a new person to lead it. Since gaining independence from France in 1962, the country has had only two leaders. During the past weekend, it had three. The army has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and there have been reports of violence. Fires in two prisons have killed dozens. Despite the current chaos, Dahmash says he thinks the revolt will lead to a stable, legitimate government. Unlike much of the Arab world, Tunisia, he says, "has well-developed institutions. The people are mature and well-informed.
That should help what's being called the "Jasmine Revolution" to flower, compared to the unrest and violence that has plagued Iraq since U.S. soldiers forced Saddam Hussein from power. Cherif, who grew up in Tunis and left North Africa in 1996 to study for an M.B.A. at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., says he believes the events of the weekend are the start of a peaceful, more inclusive future for his country. "We're sure we're never going to have a dictator in the future, because whoever is going to come as president knows the power of the people," he says. "If they want to be a regime in total control like before, they'll have to think about it twice."
Source - Time (UK)
