Foreign Policy In Focus

Despite reservations, both Washington and Paris have decided that, when it comes to Tunisia, the horse they are going to ride is the Ennahda party.

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

Read Part 1.

"I get by with a little help from my friends."
-- Lennon, McCartney

News reports suggest that Tunisia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are 'very close' to coming to terms over a $1.78 billion loan to the North African country to help navigate it through the current stormy economic seas. In the short term, there is no doubt that an accord of such a large amount to such a small country will help the country get through the next few years, and help stabilize what has been an unstable and increasingly unpopular transitional government. But at what price to the country's medium and long term future? Rosy IMF projections that, with the loan's help, the Tunisian economy will grow by 4.5% next year are hardly credible.

There seems to be something of a 'rush to the finish', an effort on both the IMF's and Tunisian government's part to wrap up the negotiations as soon as possible. It is as if they are looking over their shoulders nervous that, as the agreement's terms get out, opposition could grow among the Tunisian people, thus the mutual effort to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. There is  mounting concern within Tunisian civil society about the agreement, both in terms of the process which has been typically secretive and the "structural adjustment conditions" that the country will be forced to submit to in order to fulfill the Tunisian part of the deal.

In traditional IMF fashion,  the negotiations were very much 'under wraps' with virtually no input from anyone other than one member of the Tunisian Central Bank and another from the finance ministry. But in this post-Ben Ali age of Tunisian freedom of speech, it turned out to be difficult to impossible to hide the agreement terms, which several talented Tunisian researchers have been able to unearth.

The Political Significance of the IMF Loan

It is easy to get lost in the somewhat complex economic details of such agreements (although we will look at them shortly) At the same time, sometimes lost is the political significance of the agreement. It is nothing less than a 'green light', 'a seal of approval' – for the current direction of the Tunisian political leadership – most specifically, the Ennahda Party (Islamic Party) which dominates the ruling coalition and the political and economic direction of the country. The two other parties represented in Tunisia's ruling coalition, the Congress for the Republic (President Moncef Marzouki's party) and Ettakotal (Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties) are much weaker, and their political will more or less circumscribed by Ennahdha. [i]

News of an impending agreement comes just at the moment when the Ennahda-led coalition government needs it most. In February, a popular opposition leader, Chedli Belaid, was assassinated at his home in Tunis. Belaid has been a critique of Ennahda's collusion with the country's Salafist elements, and the drift away from Tunisian democracy which has accelerated under Ennahda. The angry demonstrations that followed, which placed responsibility at the door of Ennahda, charging something between neglect and complicity very nearly brought down the coalition government.

While it survived, former Ennahda Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, who attempted to broaden the government's social base, was forced to step down. Jebali was replaced by another Ennahda bureaucrat, Ali Laarayedh, who was moved over from his post as interior minister. Key to forcing Jebali out was Ennahda Party leader Rachid Ghannouchi, who conveniently holds neither formal government nor party post, but is, for all intents and purposes, the gray eminence behind the scenes.

Ennahda survived the crisis, but barely. It managed to scrape by with a little help from its friends…in Washington and Paris. Its popularity tumbling in the polls, the economy stagnant – in worse condition than when Zine Ben Ali fled – Salafist thuggery growing and unimpeded, Ennahda needed something dramatic to reverse or slow its growing unpopularity among the Tunisian populace. Like mana from heaven – or more aptly from Washington – coming just in the nick of time, the IMF delivered the economic and political oxygen Ennahda needed to retain its hold on power.

Ennahda's Mana From Washington

Whatever their hesitations, both Washington and Paris – which together have considerable influence over IMF decisions – have decided that, when it comes to Tunisia, the horse that they are going to ride is Ennahdha.  This is the central political message of the IMF loan. Washington's support for Ennahda comes in spite of unimpeded storming and partial trashing of the U.S. embassy in Tunis last September in which the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior was unable to stop the riot, despite prior warning of danger, including a warning from U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia Jacob Welles that went unheeded.[ii]

Although some may wonder why the Obama Administration would support Ennahda, knowing well its working relationship with the country's radical Islamic militants of Salafist and Wahhabist persuasion, it is not as strange as it might seem at first. When it comes to working in tandem with U.S. regional strategic and economic goals, the Ennahda Party has never wavered. As we say, they know well on what side their bread is buttered. On economic policy, Ennahda continues, and with this IMF loan, even intensifies, Tunisia's commitment to neo-liberal economic policies – i.e., keeping the Tunisian economy open to global finance and corporate penetration.

Ennahda: Partner of the Obama Administration, Strategically and Economically

While Tunisia's strategic role in the region remains modest, still it plays an important role. America's Tunis embassy is a communications center for the Mediterranean and North Africa – a potential 'lily pad' from which U.S. military forces could 'jump' into sub-Sahara Africa (or elsewhere) if the situation presented itself. More importantly is the embassy's role collecting intelligence from throughout the region.

In other ways Ennahdha has made it clear 'which side it is on'. Much of its foreign policy is geared towards cooperation with U.S. strategic goals. The government's posture towards the crises in Libya and Syria suggest the kind of role Tunisia plays. Two examples:

• Recently there have been a spate of news stories of Tunisian youth dying fighting with Islamist rebels in Syria. Some reports suggest that it entails hundreds of Tunisian youth; at the very least, Ennahda has turned the other way and not interfered with Salafist recruitment, transfer to other places in the Middle East and training of these youth.  There are some allegations that Ennahda's role is more active. "Three young men from my village (near Sousse) will be buried today," a Tunisian friend wrote. "They died fighting in Syria," he went on, noting that a forth villager, a 22-year-old fighting with Islamic rebels, had died a few days prior. "They (the Ennahda-led government) promised us training, work, dignity, – in a word – 'a future' but they lied, betrayed us, and trained our youth to become assassins."

• Under Ennahda pressure, an incident which, among other things, revealed the powerlessness of Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki to protect Khadaffi's foreign minister, Baghdadi Al Mahmoudi, who had sought political asylum in Tunisia. In a sop to the U.S. and NATO, Ennahda turned Al Mahmoudi over to the Libya's National Transitional Council. One of Marzouki's closest advisors, Ayoub Massoudi, resigned over the handover, criticizing the Ennahda government as a 'theocratic dictatorship.' As a result, Massoudi was indicted and faces a military trial.

It is true that the new Tunisian government has initiated a new, more hostile posture towards Israel although that seems more for domestic public consumption than a real change in policy, and Israel knows it. Tunisia's Israel policy parallels that of Turkey, i.e., verbal criticisms but strategic cooperation through U.S. CENTCOM and NATO formations.

If its contribution strategically to Washington is somewhat limited, still, the Ennahda government is falling in line. The same goes for economic policy; actually where it concerns economic integration, Tunisia pre-and post-Ben Ali shows little to no signs of change. The Tunisian economy remains open to foreign corporate and financial penetration. The policies that led to the 2010-11 crisis, the cause of which were, in large measure, economic remain in place and intensify. Tunisia's continued vulnerability to the labile whims of structural adjustment will continue.

IMF Agreement Ties Tunisia's Hands Economically to the Neo-Liberal Economic Policies of the Past/La Lutta Continua

The proposed agreement – the details of which I will look at in depth in the third part of this series – essentially commits Tunisia to the neo-liberal economic path it has been on since 1987, when Zine Ben Ali first came to power. Ben Ali might be gone, but a policy of privatization of state resources, open capital markets, de-valued currency, wage repression, lifting of subsidies (already started), and cutting government spending for social programs will continue and with it the continued deepening suffering of the Tunisian people.

The situation I see developing in Tunisia looks something like this: the IMF loan will give Ennahda some 'living space' and in the short term they will be able, probably to cling to power. But in the medium and long run, their hold is untenable for their have failed to provide a vision for the country's future. All the old shortcomings – the economic stagnation, corruption, and not least, repression will once again show their faces and perhaps in an aggravated form.

Unable to deliver economically, but kept in power by the IMF loan in large measure, Ennahda, having all but destroyed the political coalition which came together to drive Ben Ali from power, will find, more and more, that, like Ben Ali, it too will have to resort to heightened repression to keep order; one can see the outlines of their policy –  in part they will continues to use their Salafist allies as brownshirts, to break up possible democratic coalition.

Under the veil of religion, there will be increasingly repressive legislation limiting freedom of speech, action. The labor movement, women's rights movement, the integrity of the country's higher education systems – all institutions, social movements that are already under fire – will be further reined in one way or another. All this will be done while Washington sings its song about human rights, but supports those in Tunisia who undermine them.

And as the history of structural adjustment almost always shows, the polarization, class and democratic struggles will intensify. Like my friend Jaco, a Tunisian Jew, said last summer when I asked him how he saw the situation in Tunisia playing out, "Before it gets better, it will get worse…but it will get better."

La lutta continua.

[i] For example, the position of the Tunisian presidency, held by Marzouki, has lost most of its power in the post Ben Ali era. That power has been transferred largely to the Tunisian prime minister – an Ennahdha member.

[ii] Interview with Abdelfattah Mouru, considered 'the number two' man behind Rachid Ghannouchi in the Ennahdha Party structure – in Denver, September 2012.

Tunisia and the International Monetary Fund.

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

Faced with a deepening socio-economic crisis that has only intensified since the collapse of the Ben Ali government in January, 2011, it appears more than likely that Tunisia is about to enter into a major agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $1.7 billion loan. As is almost always the case, the loan is conditionally based upon Tunisia fulfilling what the IMF calls structural adjustment criteria, a part of which has already been implemented – eliminating the subsidies on fuel which has increased their cost.

All this is being done in the classic IMF fashion with as little public discussion as possible either with the Tunisian government – its Constituent Assembly – or with civil society, which have had no input whatsoever into the process. For an international organization that talks the talk about 'transparency'. its long held traditions of secrecy, especially where it concerns granting sizable loans to semi-peripheral and peripheral countries, is much more the norm.

That said, in this new post-Ben Ali era, confused and directionless as it is economically and politically, one thing that the Tunisian people have won is their freedom of speech. As a result, alas (for IMF, Tunisian Central Bank and Finance Ministry bureacrats), it has been more difficult to hide the details and conditions for this loan than in the past. A growing number of Tunisia's talented political and economic researchers have been able to break through the traditional wall of silence to unearth the details of the loan and press the Tunisian government to do what it really seems to want to avoid – engage in a public, wide-ranging discussion on the loan itself, and more basically, on the direction of the economy itself.

Many of the revelations about the loans have appeared in Arabic, French and English at the Tunisian alternative media website, Nawaat.org, which has broken key elements of the story to the Tunisian public, enough so that government has been pressed to publicly respond. It is precisely this kind of discussion which has been missing from the Tunisian public since the Ennahda-led government came to power in the October, 2011 elections.

During the Ben Ali years in power (1987-2011), Tunisia was often cited as an IMF poster-child, i.e., IMF structural adjustment might have caused 'problems' elsewhere – but in Tunisia, at least according to IMF publicity, it seemed to be working. This particular illusion was blown to bits so to speak by the emergence of the massive social movement that brought down the Ben Ali government. When the mask was ripped off, it turns out that not only had IMF structural adjustment policies not helped Tunisia, they were a major contributor to the country's socio-economic crisis. IMF statistics on Tunisia were, if not entirely fabricated, way off.

The rosy picture the IMF painted of the Tunisian economy was more hype than truth. In fact the policies failed. How interesting and typical that within the IMF there has virtually been no self-criticism for how it contributed to Tunisia's economic crisis, as if structural adjustment had nothing to do with Ben Ali's collapse. Worse – the policies continue. The proposed loan follows closely in the footsteps of those that came before. There is no change in the country's post-Ben Ali economic policies from those that existed prior to his downfall.

If this hypothesis is accurate and, from everything I can tell, it is, there are consequences. As the last uprising was essentially caused by Tunisia's embracing of neoliberal economic policies and nothing, or precisely little, has changed. Another major crisis cannot be that far off.  History strongly suggests the relationship between neoliberal economic policies and political repression 'go together like a horse and carriage' as the lines from an old song go.

Nor has Ben Ali's extensive repressive apparatus been dismantled; it remains largely intact, for awhile in cryonic suspension, but now coming back to life again. Having tasted the wine of freedom and empowerment – the fruit of unprecedented peaceful mass protest – it is unlikely that the Tunisian people will wait this time another quarter century before taking measures into their own hands once again. I do not write these words as some kind of 'threat', simply from my reading of history.

In any case, what follows is the first part of a three- (or maybe four-) part series. This first part looks at the Tunisia's initial uneasy relationship with the IMF in the 1980s, Bourguiba's resistance to the policies, and Ben Ali's embrace of structural adjustment. Part Two will examine the results of Ben Ali's neoliberal policies on Tunisia (1987-2011) and Part Three will take a peek at the current proposal, well on its way to being implemented. RJP)

Tunisia's Baguette Revolution

For 'outsiders' the photo seems admittedly a little odd: a man armed with a 'baguette,' [i] as if it were a machine gun and not simply baked flour, pointing it at a Tunisian security force down the street on Ave. Habib Bourguiba. But Tunisians of any age understand it. The photo is from early January 2011, just before a million person march on Tunis forced the five-star kleptomaniacs, Tunisian President Zine Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi, from power.

The foreign media, including here in the USA, suggested that Tunisia's January 2011 uprising was a 'Twitter' or 'Facebook' Revolution, but it was much more basic than that – it was about bread and roses ­– about pervasive economic stagnation, high unemployment, low wages and seething repression. At the time, no one was talking about whether women should wear veils or bare their tits, or thought the uprising was about trashing marabouts and trade union headquarters, or desecrating Jewish cemeteries.

Taking their cue from the poor man[ii] facing down Ben Ali's security apparatus, hundreds of Tunisians picked up their baguettes and took to the streets. Symbolizing the failure of the Ben Ali years, the baguette was also reminder of the Bread Riots of 1984 which shook the country to its foundations, leading to a full scale national revolt that very nearly brought down what was then the 18-year rule of the country's first president, Habib Bourguiba.

Tunisia Caught in the Global Crisis of the 1980s

True, the 1984 Tunisian economy was in the doldrums, although the current fashion – to blame the slowdown on the Tunisian economic model of state capitalism, with its strong social contract – misses the point.[iii] The global economy had been in the doldrums for a decade hitting the commodity, low-end manufacturing sector in the semi-periphery and periphery with a special vengeance in the early 1980s. Tunisia was caught up in the storm. In particular, the European economy, had gone through a decade of recession and high unemployment which, in turn, had a profound impact on Tunisia, as so much of the Tunisian economy was geared towards exporting to Europe (France and Italy in particular) and welcoming European tourists.

In the early 1980s, Tunisia's economic situation deteriorated, the state's tax base shrank. With some hesitation, the Bourguiba government was pressured to do what so many other Third World countries had to do at the same time: go begging to the IMF or World Bank for a loan. This Bourguiba did, and the IMF, being accommodating, agreed to offer Tunisia a substantial loan. But there were conditions: the usual structural adjustment conditions which have done so much over the years to widen the gap between poor and rich countries, to undermine and destroy the economic potential of many of the Asian, African and Latin American countries that accepted the deal.

Bourguiba Agrees to End Bread Subsidies; the Nation Rises in Protest; Bourguiba Withdraws the Proposal

These conditions included cutting government spending, reducing or eliminating capital controls and protective tariffs, depreciating the dinar (Tunisia's currency). Part of the deal necessitated the Tunisian government ending its subsidies on wheat and semolina (ingredients in bread). Caught in the vice, Bourguiba agreed.

The price of bread doubled overnight. The price increase triggered two weeks of angry nation-wide protest demonstrations. As they had done once before in 1981, the security forces and military – led by then Interior Minister, Zine Ben Ali – crushed the bread riots. When it was all over, more than 80 Tunisians lay dead, hundreds wounded. Having not yet slipped into approaching senility, Bourguiba had the presence of mind to reinstate the subsidies and fired the ministers responsible for encouraging the loan. The political situation stabilized, but the economic downward spiralm, caught in the global structural crisis, continued.

Such bread riots were not unique to Tunisia. They took place all over the Third World in the 1980s as the world's poorer countries were forced to lift subsidies on food, medicine, and education, to freeze public sector wages and benefits in exchange for World Bank/IMF loans.

For the next three years, until he was overthrown by his interior minister, Bourguiba resisted lifting subsidies. But in 1986, Tunisia ran short on foreign exchange. The crisis was triggered by plunging oil revenues (down 40%), declining tourism receipts, and a serious drought which badly affected the agricultural sector. Bourguiba grudgingly agreed to an IMF loan that required lifting subsidies on bread. With the 1984 bread riots (and a 1978 union initiated national strike) in the back of his mind, Bourguiba permitted wages to simultaneously rise to compensate some for the higher bread prices. Again people took to the streets in protest, but not with the intensity of 1984. [iv]

Enter Zine Ben Ali: 'Our Man In Tunis'; Start of the Tunisian-IMF Love Affair

The government survived the crisis, although it was the beginning of the end of Bourguiba. Bourguiba's successes were based upon a strong state participation in the economy, free public education, democratization of the role of women, and subsidies for basic food stuffs and fuel. As the tax base of the state eroded and the state fiscal crisis deepened, the social contract that Bourguiba had committed to for thirty years weakened and with it, the social base of his government narrowed.

Increased repression, especially against the country's growing Islamicist movement (which itself was able to take advantage of the growing economic crisis) only narrowed Bourguiba's support base that much further. On November 7, 1978, Habib Bourguiba was removed from power in a 'palace coup' on November. There was very little protest. Bourguiba was unceremoniously pushed aside with his former interior minister, the same man who had crushed the 1984 bread riots, Zine Ben Ali, took the helm.

In a matter of weeks, the new government's attitude towards the World Bank and International Monetary Fund shifted from hostility and suspicion to a warm embrace. Using an old basketball trick – faking to the left, while moving with the speed of light to the right. At the beginning of his rule, Ben Ali promised openness and democracy. He gave Tunisia a quarter of a century of IMF structural adjustment and an increasingly repressive government, much crueler and all-embracing than anything Bourguiba had constructed. He went far to deconstruct much of the social edifice that Bourguiba had tried to build and would have done more had he had the opportunity. When finally chased from power in 2011, he left a country economically and socially polarized, half of the economy in the hands of the two ruling families (the Ben Alis and the Trabelsis), a repressive apparatus of more than 200,000 in a country of ten million, and an enormous debt burden. As is virtually universally acknowledged, much of Tunisia's  economic and social decay of the Ben Ali years lays at the door step of the International Monetary Fund.

Even before consolidating his hold on power, as one of his first acts, Ben Ali gave Washington a call and opened negotiations with the IMF for exactly the kind of structural adjustment-based loan Bourguiba had resisted.

Thus wrote Canadian political scientist Michel Chossodovsky:

Barely a few months following Ben Ali's installment as the country's president, a major agreement was signed with the IMF. An agreement had also been reached with Brussels pertaining to the establishment of a free trade regime with the EU. A massive privatization program under the supervision of the IMF-World Bank was also launched. With hourly wages on the order of €.75 an hour, Tunisia had also become a cheap labor haven for the European Union.[v]

In retrospect, the implementation of Ben Ali's economic program was a classic example of what later Naomi's Klein would refer to as the 'Shock Doctrine' to the Tunisian realities. In the Ben Ali case, a political coup – that by the way included the promise of greater democracy – became the pretext for a far-reaching economic restructuring of the economy. It included classic structural adjustment themes: reducing the state sector in the economy, lifting subsidies, 'loosening' the social contract, weakening the country's education and healthcare system, keeping wages low, lifting capital controls, privatization of state resources, etc., etc. – all the policies that have made IMF structural adjustment the antithesis of Third World development over the past thirty years. It all happened quickly before the Tunisian public understood the degree to which their lives were about to be changed.

It was not only that subsidies would be ended and much of the country's state-owned economic structures be privatized, the country's entire economic model that had existed since independence was dismantled in the process. The 'old authoritarian' economic model instituted by Bourguiba that included state involvement in the economy, a social contract that included subsidies on basic needs, free quality education and a somewhat protectionist approach to foreign investment and involvement in the country's affairs, came unglued. In its place 'a new authoritarian' model based upon classic neoliberal economic principles was immediately and aggressively implemented before the Tunisian people could fathom what was going on.[vi]

________________________

[i] A 'baguette' – a French long, thin loaf of bread; although Tunisians use the same term, they have fashioned their baguettes a little differently than the French versions.

[ii] Hard to tell, but from the picture he certainly doesn't look like a Tunisian billionaire or high-tech yuppie, just a 'pauvre type' …like so many others in Tunisia.

[iii] That model was about to be dismantled; the main work was done by Zine Ben Ali once he came to power

[iv] Anwar Alam. "Islam, Bread Riots and Democratic Reform in North Africa"

[v] Professor Michel Chossodovsky. "Tunisian and the IMF Diktats: How Micro-Economic Policy Triggers World Wide Poverty and Unemployment"

[vi] The terms 'old' and 'new' authoritarianism are taken from Stephen J. King's work The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa, Indiana Series in Middle East Studies: 2009

Links:

Tunisian Bloggers Refuse IMF Loan

Fakhfakh Says Tunisia Sees $1.8 Billion IMF Loan

The cultural and religious assault Islamic extremists are mounting in Tunisia recalls the Taliban's demolition of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

1. From Timbuctou to Tunis, marabout desecration

Fueled with Saudi and Qatari money and arms as they are throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Salafist Islamic radicals on the move in Mali hijacked the Tuareg-armed insurrection giving it a decidedly Islamic fundamentalist tinge which the rebellion did not originally have. Among their main targets was the historically vital city of Timbuctou.

In early times Timbuctou was a key transit  point for the trans-Sahara caravan trade. It remains a key center of African Islam with an extraordinarily rich heritage of Sufi (Islamic mystics) shrines and written documents going back a thousand years. Its manuscript collection is acknowledged as one of the richest treasure troves of human culture anywhere.

One of the goals of the Islamic radicals that temporarily seized and held Timbuctou was to destroy as much of that heritage as possible, understood by Salafists with their stone-age concepts of Islam, as heretical. Countering such destructive activity has become a pretext for big power intervention, be it the United States in Afghanistan or France in Mali (although both countries have more significant, ulterior motives).

The Salafist militias radicals sought to snuff out Timbuctou's rich regional Islamic heritage – destroying mausoleums (called marabouts [i]), purging Sufi holy men and destroying as much of the city's precious manuscript collection as possible. In the short time that they ruled Timbuctou, the Islamic militants instituted a typical regime of Wahhabist-like Sharia law with its usual retrograde practices (the subjugation of women, outlawing singing and dancing, stoning women to death for violating Salafist versions of sexual misconduct, i.e. the usual Taliban-like/Saudi-like nonsense).

Fortunately, much of Timbuctou's manuscript heritage was saved, hidden away from the Salafist inquisitors. But much damage was still done. During the months Salafist militias ruled more than 300 of the town's marabout shrines were destroyed. Islamic radicals also were able to burn two buildings to the ground housing extensive leather-bound manuscript collections, some dating back to the 13^th century. Considered not merely an attack on African history and culture, the Salafist purge of Sufi documents has been described as "an assault on world heritage comparable with the demolition of the Buddha's of Bamiyan in by the Taliban in 2001” – not an unfair comparison.

2. At least 40 Tunisian marabouts desecrated; transitional government seems unconcerned.

But then, Salafists and their Saudi Wahhabist allies have long been on a campaign to purge the diversity in Islam worldwide, including in Tunisia where until recently Salafist influence has been weak to nonexistent. While Malian Salafists were doing their best to wreak havoc on indigenous African Islamic traditions, their soul brothers and sisters in Tunisia, in solidarity, were doing likewise and have been since the rise of the Ennahda Party to political prominence in October, 2011. The growing Salafist influence in Tunisia is due largely to the tacit – and often open – support and encouragement they have received from important elements of the current transitional government.

Defended by the Ennahda, their actions suggest that  Tunisia's Salafists are little more than the brownshirts of the Arab Spring. While publicly criticized by the U.S. State Dept and media, still the United States has a long and sordid history of allying itself under certain circumstances with Islamic fundamentalism. During the Cold War the U.S. sought alliances with Islamic fundamentalists to counter secular Arab Nationalism. The policies of Islamic fundamentalism – be it Ennahdha or the Salafists in Tunisia, or the Moslem brotherhood in Egypt – dovetail nicely with U.S. sponsored neoliberal capitalism. In the same veins, Islamic regimes partner with the U.S. military in its strategic goals – be it in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or now it seems, in Tunisia. In Tunisia, the main goal of the Salafists is freeze the radical possibilities of the Arab Spring in its tracks, to help the United States and its regional allies to "manage" the region-wide upsurge and to prevent the establishment of broad-based coalitions, in Tunisian and eleswhere, that could lead the region on a path of sorely needed structural changes.

In Tunisia, besides targeting the country's media, women's rights, trade unions – virtually anything that "reeks of democracy" – desecrating the few remaining Jewish cemeteries and trying to hijack the curriculum of the Tunisian university system with their own medieval versions of Islam, Tunisian Salafists have been especially intolerant to the country's own unique tolerant Islamic heritage which extends back nearly 1,500 years.

In January of this year, a marabout in Sidi Bou Said, one of Tunisia's most famous, was trashed and burned in an arson attack.[ii] Tunisia's president, Moncef Marzouki, condemned the Sidi Bou Said attack as a "criminal act," arsonists as "trying to undermine the country's culture in its historic dimension."  Nor was the Sidi Bou Said arson the first incident of its kind. The Sidi Bou Said marabout trashing was serious enough to draw worldwide attention. But it was hardly the first incident of its kind. Marabouts all over Tunisia – more than 40 of them – had been attacked and destroyed in the months prior to January, 2013. While not on the scale of Mali, Tunisian manuscripts and other cultural jewels, again like Mali, some dating back nearly 1,000 years have been destroyed. Despite Marzouki's outrage, very few of the marabout-trashing perpetrators have been tracked down or arrested by the Tunisian authorities, suggesting that protecting this part of the country's national heritage is a low priority.

Sidi Bou Said is something akin to the "Aspen" of Tunisia – a lovely town north of Tunis sitting on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean and one of the country's primo tourist sites. There is a strong Salafist–Islamic fundamentalist presence in the area, which is also a stronghold for the Ennahda party. The day before, five ultra-conservative Muslims were arrested, charged with having burnt down another marabout in the Tunis region.

Targeting marabouts has emerged as an integral part of the Salafist revival in Tunisia, one tolerated by, if not coordinated with the goals of, Tunisia's ruling Ennahha Party.[iii] Salafist elements in Tunisia, with their stone-aged, factional vision of Islam, consider such shrines, the veneration of holy shrines and ascetics as "un-Islamic."

Present-day Tunisian Salafist opposition (much of it emanating from Saudi-trained Wahhabist imams) to the marabouts is based upon their narrow vision of the Islamic religion that charges the marabout system as being polytheistic. The more mystical Sufi tendency, which helped spread Islam, not only to Africa, but to as far east as Indonesia, is seen as nothing short of heresy, as is all of Shi'ite Islam and it is mercilessly attacked.

3. Rich history of Tunisian (and North African) marabouts

It is something of a half truth to claim that Islam came to North Africa "by the sword" alone. Military conquest only began the process of conversion. If Christianity has its Jesuits, Franciscans and the like who tried to compensate for Spanish (and other European) military colonial brutality with "good works," Islam has its Sufi mystics, those wandering aesthetics whose connection to local populations was much stronger than the generals'. Hermits, scholars, their example was critical in the eventual conversion of many in North Africa. To honor them, locals built what the media calls "mausoleums" but what are better known through North Africa as "marabouts."

The Sufi mystics so-honored with marabout shrines were ultimately much more effective than the Christian missionaries that preceded them in North Africa in the 3^rd to 7^th centuries. The latter's  influence rarely extended beyond the Magreb's urban trading centers on the Mediterranean. To the contrary, Sufi influence, overtime – it took several centuries – struck deep into the North African countryside and desert in a way that the Christianity of earlier centuries was never was able to penetrate. It is through them in large measure, that Islam spread first to North Africa and then across the Sahara to Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Chad and Northern Nigeria.

While many marabouts are distinctly Moslem holy places dedicated to the memory of Islamic Sufi mystics (like the one in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, that was just firebombed), marabouts honoring women are not unknown. Jewish holy men, highly respected local rabbis, have also been so venerated. In gratitude for their kindness and wisdom, in areas where the Sufis lived and worked, locals built simple but enduring structures over their teachers' graves that have come to be called "marabouts."

Marabouts are found everywhere in North Africa from Senegal to Libya. Not the sites of formal pilgrimages (reserved for Mecca and Jerusalem), they are more places of reflection, of inspiration. Distinctly local sacred sites, marabouts commemorate the memory of people who led, according to a particular vicinity, exemplary lives. People come with offerings, to pray, ask for the safety, success of loved ones, etc. While over the years there have been different attempts in all North Africa countries to discredit if not purge the marabout societies that have been organized to maintain the marabouts, they have been tenaciously preserved by their supporters.

Although such shrines – or something similar – are found elsewhere in the Moslem world (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh), the marabout tradition remains an integral part of North African Islam and has a distinct regional cultural touch. Marabouts are classic examples of what might be called "religious syncretism", the tendency of new proselytizing religions to integrate former (in this case) pre-Islamic  themes into their theological fold. By way of example, in the same way that North African Islam merged with some aspects of pre-Islamic regions, Mexican/Central American Catholicism embraces many aspects of Aztec-Mayan religious practices.

Marabouts are also an example of both the flexibility of Islam to embrace and absorb other religious traditions and the general tolerant manner in which North African Islam has often been practiced, with respect for and acknowledgement of people living "sacred lives," regardless of gender or even religious background!

North African Islam acknowledges, as do all Muslims, that there is only one God and that is Allah, but maintains tradition of respect, if not veneration for people who have led exemplary lives. Historically, at different times in the past, when more Sunni-Salafist, fundamentalist elements have come to power, as at the time of the 13^th century Almohads,  marabouts and marabout societies have been the target of fierce purges (along with the Jews), as nasty as the Catholic Inquisition, which they managed to survive.

The ones in Tunisia tend to be small whitewashed cubical structures with topped with a dome. Inside are graves, perhaps a lamp, very simple. Most often they are no bigger than an American tool shed, although they can be larger. Locals have given loving, tender care to these graves, uninterrupted, for centuries.

While not treated as "saints" – which would violate Islamic belief in the oneness of God, Allah, still the holy people buried in marabouts are revered, the graves themselves the sites of local pilgrimages where people come frequently to pray and give offerings, visit in times of crisis. Curiously in North Africa, while most marabouts honor Sufi mystics, there are others that honor rabbis, some holy women.

The care and concern that Tunisians have for their marabouts should not be under-estimated. Many of these sacred tombs have been cared for by extended families for centuries. One friend, whose family hails from Beja in the Tunisian northwest, related how his family had cared for a marabout for more than 800 years. The psychic damage done by destroying such sites cannot be measured in monetary terms.

[i] Actually It is not fair to call Salafist goals"medieval." Medieval Islam in Tunisia was far more theologically flexible, even "modern looking" in its day than Salafist thinking today.

[ii] In English, marabouts are usually described as "mausoleums." Marabouts are tombs of venerated holy people, mostly it seems, Islamic Sufi teachers, mystics, but they can commemorate others as well.

[iii] While Ennahda is, technically one of three parties in the ruling three-party coalition, the other two parties are much weaker, almost paper parties. To a very great degree it is Ennahda that runs the show.

When President Zine Ben Ali was deposed, a new era of modern Tunisian history -- one filled with hope and frustration -- unfolded.

Cross-posted from theColorado Progressive Jewish News.

The signs are everywhere 'Place Janvier 14,' 'Ave. Janvier 14,' etc. More often than not they replaced 'Place Ben Ali' and did so within hours after the announcement that his rule had ended.

On January 14, 2011 – a mere two years ago –  Tunisian President Zine Ben Ali, his wife Leila Trabelsi and other family members boarded a jet plane that, after being refused landing rights in Paris and Rome, eventually landed in Saudi Arabia. The Ben Ali's only found refuge in conservative Saudi Arabia, which, over the years, has housed an odd assortment of other political detritus, deposed corrupt and repressive overthrown African leaders from Idi Amin to Mengistu Haili Mariam.

Considerable debate continues as to the nature of Ben Ali's flight, and perhaps more importantly, where the two extended family clans squirreled away some $17 billion – we'll never know the exact sum – of the country's wealth in Swiss, Finnish, Austrian, Channel Islands, the UAE and Canadian banks. Some speculate that Ben Ali planned only to accompany his family to safety and to return to Tunis that night. Others suggest he knew he would never return and that he was lucky to escape with his life and a hefty bank account.

Regardless, 'it' was over and a new era of modern Tunisian history – one filled with hope and frustration was about to unfold. As for the stolen money, two years on, less than 5% has been returned. Given the secrecy, complexity of international banking rules and greed of their managers, it is highly unlikely that beyond symbolic amounts, the money will ever be either returned, most of it forever unaccounted for. It is claimed that before leaving, in one last symbolic effort to rob the country she had milked for billions, Leila Trabelsi robbed the national treasury of as much gold and jewels as she and her assistants could carry to the departing plane, some several hundred million dollars  worth.

The Tunisian Revolution Has Lost Some of Its Gloss

The 'Tunisian Revolution' has lost a good deal of its gloss. The rhetoric remains 'radical,' the reality much less so. That it was a genuine national uprising engaging virtually the entire population is beyond doubt – and as such, nothing short of a regional inspiration. That it can be characterized as 'a revolution' is open to question. What has changed? How many of the institutions of the old order remain in place, run in many places by the same people who have simply changed political affiliations to be a part of the new wave How many elements of the old ruling class have been integrated into the new system? And some of what has changed, has changed for the worse, not the better.

Some of the headlines of the past few days are almost surrealistic, others just downright depressing. "Headquarters of Tunisian Association in Support of Minorities Attacked" one reads – this after the association sponsored an event in which a speaker spoke of the fate of Tunisian Jews, some of whom, with the collusion of the French Vichy authorities at the time, were rounded up and sent to extermination camps in Europe. Another article, appearing at the award-winning online Tunisian investigative website, Nawaat.org, exposes a plot on the part of one the Tunisia's ruling parties (the one that really runs the show), Ennahda, to establish some kind of armed paramilitary wing. A third piece relates how a young couple, no more than twenty years of age, have been sentenced to two months in prison for having kissed in public. Tunisian youth responded by declaring January 13, as "National Kissing Day," a day of a national 'kiss in.'

In themselves these articles don't necessary mean much. Taken together, however, they suggest a deteriorating national consensus, a nation that has been in crisis since Ben Ali's departure. True, Tunisia has not collapsed to the point of civil war as in Syria and Libya. Still, the crisis isx deepening and dangerously so.

Rolling Back Bourguiba's Accomplishments

The country has been on a rocky road these past two years. Besides consolidating its own power for as long as possible, the goal of the transitional government in power since October 2011 is to roll back the achievements of the country's first president, Habib Bourguiba, where it concerns education, women's rights and the separation of church (or in this case 'mosque') and state while maintaining essentially the same IMF-friendly open economy that contributed so much to the country's recent crisis in the first place.

Not particularly important to the United States from an economic point of view, Tunisia still has strategic value. The U.S. embassy there is a major communications gathering center, a kind of information 'lily pad' in an otherwise unstable and unfriendly neighborhood. Tunisia's transitional government enjoys strong support, despite its many blemishes, from the United States.

Washington considers the Tunisian political changes something of a model for what it hopes to see develop throughout the region: weak states, more easily penetrated and run by foreign capital. That they might have an 'Islamic flavor' (run by Islamic parties) is of no concern to Washington as long as two golden rules are followed: 1. the country remains economically open and exploitable to international capital, which it does. 2. That the country fall in line with the broader U.S. strategic goals of dominating the region (i.e., cooperating with Israel openly or covertly, maintaining the pressure on Iran, helping bring down the Assad regime in Syria by supporting the Saudi and Qatari-backed rebels).

Salafist Offensive

These past two years have been rough on the country economically, socially and politically. A hitherto virtually unknown Salafist (militant Islamic fundamentalist) movement has emerged. It has enjoyed financial and political support from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and there are suggestions that many of those formally involved in Ben Ali's security force are involved. While not formally a part of the government it enjoys encouragement and has very close ties with the country's leading moderate Islamic party, Ennahda, which had, up to the September storming of the U.S. Embassy, offered the Salafists shelter and support.

Tunisia's Salafists have openly and increasingly engaged in brown-shirt tactics to impose their skewed version of Islam on the population. Their actions have increasingly and unnecessarily polarized the country's cultural landscape. Self-appointed religious goon squads, similar to those that exist in Saudi Arabia, abound, encouraged and protected by those currently in power. They have been wreaking havoc for more than a year now, attacking cultural events (art exhibits), TV stations, journalists, movies with which they disagree. These elements have also rampaged historic Sufi monuments, attacked trade unions and Tunisian universities, with hardly a peek of criticism or police response from the authorities.

With Ennahda's acquiescence, the Salafists have overtaken many of the country's historically moderate mosques and turned them into bastions of religious extremism. Attacks on women's rights abound; attempts to hijack the country's higher education system and turn it into little more than fundamentalist madrasas  have not been challenged by the authorities; growing verbal threats to the country's tiny – but historically significant – Jewish community take place almost daily.

There is opposition to these trends but it remains generally weak and divided. But it is growing.

Frozen Economy

Two years on, Tunisia' economy remains frozen in crisis.

The biggest failure of the past two years has been the new government's failure to address the economic crisis. The country's post-Ben Ali economic program is no different than the prescriptions followed in the last two decades of the dictator's rule. Instead, the ruling coalition, little more than a cover for an Ennahda-dominated government, has been more concerned with consolidating its political power and assuring its long-term control of the country.

It is often forgotten that the conditions which triggered the national revolt two years past had very little to do with religion. That the 2010 revolt was triggered by religious considerations is a Salafist-fabricated fantasy. They were a non-factor. Instead, it was a socio-economic crisis par excellence: high rates of unemployment (ridiculously high among youth and in the rural areas); low, virtually unlivable wages for those working; a deterioration of the country's social fabric as a result of IMF insistence on cutting government spending; the continued erosion of subsidies on basic food stuffs, medical possibilities and energy.

These factors combined with a breathtaking level of corruption – the two ruling Ben Ali and Trabelsi families controlling more than 50% of the economy – and a pervasive system of repression are what brought down Ben Ali, a favorite in Paris and Washington for his adherence to the Washington Consensus and his opposition to Islamic militantism.

And so the crisis continues.

A recent IMF report on the economic situation clearly states that the country's current stagnant growth will do nothing to stem the country's 17.6% unemployment rate – 40% for youth – nor address the great social imbalances between the urban and more rural areas. Typically, in exchange for offering Tunisia aid, the IMF, frozen in its structural adjustment mode of the past 30 years, prescribes 'more of the same' – low wages, open capital markets, greater opening of the financial sector, etc.

As these are the same prescriptions that triggered the 2010 uprising in the first place, it is highly unlikely that such policies will turn the economic situation around.

It is true that Tunisia's economy – so heavily based upon exporting to France and Italy – is adversely affected by the global economic slowdown that has hit Europe especially hard and that there is no easy immediate solution to the country's economic woes. Still, the lack of virtually any new economic vision is worrisome. It suggests that rather being on some kind of new economic path, the country will remain mired in the old ways.

If this is the case, it seems highly likely that another social explosion cannot be that far off.

Reference:

Christopher de Bellaigue. "Did We Make The Revolution For This?"

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

Siliana and the Farhat Hached Legacy

Sixty years ago on this date, December 5, 1952, Farhat Hached, legitimately considered the key founder and father of the independent Tunisian trade union movement, was assassinated by agents of French colonialism. But the movement that he was so instrumental in creating and shaping, the Union General des Travailleurs Tunisien (UGTT), remains vibrant, fighting for workers’ rights, fair wages and social justice today as it did in those now long gone, last dark and painful days of French colonial rule. Nationwide commemorative activities were planned to mark the occasion.

But it is not for nothing that 60 years later, through all of Tunisia’s years as an independent country, through the Bourguiba and Ben Ali’s years, that it has been impossible to snuff out the memory of Farhat Hached. He’s too much a part of his country’s history. Farhat Hached was the son of a fisherman from the Kerkennah islands, 12 miles off the coast of Sfax, a poor island chain, 'the periphery of the periphery'. He made history. Sixty years after his death, he’s still making it.

There was no better way to celebrate Hached’s heritage than the way it was done in Siliana, Tunisia, a town ninety miles southwest of the capitol Tunis. There, for five days, classically militant Tunisian youth – those same folks whose righteous wrath overthrew the Ben Ali dictatorship two years ago – took to the streets with the local members of the UGTT. For five days tens of thousands of them stood strong in the streets of Siliana, facing down units of the Tunisian military sent by the Ennahda-led government to crush their moment. The military open fired with bird shot, wounding 200 and if the reports are accurate, permanently blinding at least 17 youth.

But when physical confrontation ended and the UGTT called off the demonstrations, it was the government, shaken to its core, that was forced to concede, and not the workers. A few days before the sixtieth anniversary of Hached’s assassination, and with the shadow of the self-immolated Sidi Bouzid youth Mohammed Bouazizi also haunting them, the three-party coalition transition Tunisian government blinked first, backed off and agreed to the UGTT demands that the district's governor be sacked and that a state jobs program be implemented to address the nagging socio-economic crisis facing not only Siliana, but the whole country.

The labor-led Siliana uprising was more than just a spontaneous expression of anger and frustration. It was much more. It was a reminder that massive youth unemployment, low wages combined with classic 'structural adjustment take-aways' were among the key contributing factors to the revolt which brought down Ben Ali and forced him and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, to flee the country on January 14, 2011.  It was a protest against the government’s dilly-dallying, its fixation with shifting Tunisian society in a more religious direction while coming up empty (or almost so) in efforts to address the country’s appalling poverty and unemployment. It was a protest against the social polarization between rich and poor, between the urban centers and the more rural areas, which again has hardly been addressed since Ben Ali fled the country. At Siliana, the Ennahda-led transition government, one that has continued in the tradition of the neoliberal economic policies of the Ben Ali administration in its main lines, took a sharp blow.

And make no mistake – Siliana was a warning to the transition government – nothing less: get serious about dealing with the country’s genuine problems, or face the consequences – that, failing that 'the people' will sweep you from power as they did Ben Ali. The message was unambiguous: time to get back to the basics – to resolving the socioeconomic crisis, the crisis in democracy which had triggered the 2010-2011 social explosion in the first place. Siliana sent another message to the Tunisia’s government: that the UGTT, as it was when Farhat Hached was using his extraordinary talent as a labor organizer, remains a force with which to be reckoned.

Farhat Hached, watching all this, from his vantage point above, must be smiling. Looking down from above, he raises his fist in solidarity with the youth and trade unionists of Silliana.

La Main Rouge Assassinates Farhat Hached

On December 5, 1952, on the road to Rades, Farhad Hached was gunned down by a French para-military hit squad called La Main Rouge (The Red Hand) in an operation which all signs suggest was run by the French résident général, Jean de Hautecloque, a hard-line colonial administrator sent to Tunisia to break the back of the growing pro-independence movement. The murder took place in two stages. First, a car pulled up alongside of Hached's; two gunmen on the passenger side opened fire, severely wounding him and drove off. Hached was still able to get out of his car alive. But then a second car stopped; gunmen got out and finished Hached off with bullets to the brain. Hached left a devastated 22-year-old wife and four young children: the oldest Nour-eddine, who would become Tunisia’s ambassador to the United States and Japan, was eight years old; his youngest Samira, who would never know her father,  only eight months old.

According to an account in a recently published biography of Mahmoud El Materi, one of the founders of Tunisia’s Neo-Destour – 'New Constitutional' Party, (Mahmoud El Materi: Pionnier de la Tunisie Moderne by Anissa El Materi Hached. Sud Editions, Tunis: 2011), Hached’s assassination provoked angry demonstrations far and wide throughout the Arab World and Europe at the time. Trade unionists in Casablanca, in a number of Algerian cities and elsewhere throughout the world demonstrated for over a week following the assassination. A street in Casablanca bears his name as do numerous schools, hospitals and streets throughout Tunisia. Other 'Red Hand' assassinations of Tunisian nationalist leaders followed: Hedi Chaker, head of the Neo-Destourian Party in Sfax was also killed as was Chadly Kastalli, vice president of the Tunis Municipality and close to the pro-nationalist Moncef Bey. But none of these assassinations achieved their goal of derailing the nationalist movement and utterly destroying the Union General des Travailleurs Tunisiens – the UGTT as it was already commonly referred to and still is today. To the contrary, in the aftermath of Hached’s death, the movement for national independence from French colonial domination stiffened and would lead a mere four years later to Tunisian independence, in which Hached himself had been a major player.

The Man From Kerkennah

Sixty years after his murder, Farhat Hached remains nothing short of a much-loved national Tunisian hero of the anti-colonial movement. Hached was one of the least factional figures of his day during a period when factionalism was rife. His eyes were always 'on the prize' – independence from France, although he never lived to see the end of the French Protectorate in Tunisia that he helped to discredit and ultimately defeat. While time – and historical revelations – have tended to puncture the halos atop the heads of many of the country’s nationalist icons, Hached’s contribution and reputation remain intact. Hached’s family along with several French human rights groups are suing the French government both for an apology and for the release of classified government documents related to the case.

Farhad Hached was born on Kerkennah, a small chain of fishing village islands off the coast of Sfax in 1914. In 1929, forced to leave school at the age of 15 and seek employment because of his father’s death, Hached found work in Sousse, some miles up the coast halfway between Sfax and Tunis with la Société du transport du Sahel (the Sahel Transportation Company) as a mail courier (convoyeur). Almost immediately some of his other talents surfaced. He wasted no time in organizing a union of transport workers, which affiliated with the France-based Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT). Hached’s union activities continued and soon he became active beyond the transport workers and involved in regional and national union organizing drives, for which, eventually in 1939 he was fired.

Difficult years followed during World War II, when Tunisia was ruled by Vichy French and temporarily occupied by the Nazis until British and US armies liberated it in May of 1943. After the liberation, Hached was rehired by the Free French colonial government to direct its Public Works Department in the Sfax region. He immediately went back to union organizing, and now, employed, took the hand of a Kerkennah cousin, Emma Hached. Soon thereafter, Hached broke with the CGT for which he had organized for 15 years. He, and other Tunisian trade unionists were critical of the positions taken within the French union by socialists and communists who ignored – and did not support – the Tunisian call for independence from France. Now the Tunisian trade union movement would be then and forever, standing on its own Tunisian feet, finding its own way.

The split was significant as it marks the beginning of an independent Tunisian trade union movement with its own leadership and a cadre split off from the colonial center in Paris. Hached’s experience, having 'grown up' politically and as a union organizer within the CGT (as either a member or supporter of the French Communist Party – I do not know the exact details here) was by no means unique. Another North African, whose evolution paralleled Hached’s is the Algerian trade unionist and anti-colonial militant Messali Hadj.

Soon after the split from the CGT, Hached, in concert with other Tunisian trade unionists began the process of bringing together an independent Tunisian national trade union movement. His first effort was to create what was referred to as the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of the South – meaning the south of Tunisia (l’union des syndicats libres du Sud) based upon a three point program: 1. Social Justice 2. Equality between Tunisian and French workers (working in Tunisia) and 3. Support for national independence and an end to French colonial rule. Not long afterwards, he organized, or was involved in organizing, a similar federation in the north of the country which came together in Tunis and shortly thereafter, logically, the two federations merged, in 1946, to form the General Union of Tunisian Workers (l’union generale tunisienne de travail – UGTT).

Hached becomes secretary general of the UGTT at the age of 30

In 1947, at the tender age of 30, Farhat Hached was unanimously elected as secretary general of Tunisia’s independent trade union movement. From the outset, Hached directed the energies of the UGTT ending colonialism and winning independence for Tunisia. Autonomous of French influence and completely independent politically, the trade union movement became one of the main bases for support for the broader nationalist movement led by Habib Bourguiba and his pro-independence Neo-Destour Party. The strikes, demonstrations and agitation for independence from 1946 onward intensified as did the calls by the UGTT to improve the standard of living of Tunisian workers under colonial conditions with all the indignities involved.

As a result of this focused, controlled militant activity, the mood of the country as a whole radicalized. Then in 1949, the UGTT became the Tunisian branch of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which gave Hached international connections and influence far beyond Tunisia’s borders, including in the United States and Western Europe. At the time there were two main international trade union federations. Besides the ICFTU there existed the Moscow-leaning World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). During much of the Cold War the two confederations were in competition with each other, splitting the international working class movement down the middle and weakening the impact of both.

In a few short years Hached had become an international personality, and as such was able to present the cause of Tunisian independence internationally. That the radical Hached would choose to lead the Tunisian trade union movement into the U.S.-dominated ICFTU rather than the WFTU is interesting. Part of his reasoning most probably was that he wanted to steer the Tunisian trade unions away from the WFTU, where the CGT retained considerable influence and in so doing limiting the influence of French colonialism on the Tunisian labor movement. Along similar lines, the leadership of the Tunisian nationalist movement, and Habib Bourguiba in particular, tried to develop good relations with the United States, both because the Tunisians understood that the United States was the emerging global hegemonic power that could nudge the French to grant Tunisia independence. They were right about that.

Five years later – and a year before he was assassinated – Hached was able to report to a national congress of the UGTT, the progress the movement had made which included:

• The UGTT had grown to embrace 120,000 workers throughout the country.

• It had led an organized and disciplined grass roots movement against the French Occupation.

• The Union had won for Tunisian society as a whole a number of civil rights and constitutional guarantees from the French colonial administration.

•  The UGTT had achieved international recognition by its adhesion to the ICFTU of which Hached had been elected to its executive board.

•  The creation of the UGTT had encouraged, with Hached’s personal participation, other North African nations under colonial domination (Morocco and Algeria under French domination, Libya ruled by the Italians) to create their own trade union movements independent of their colonial overseers.

•  The UGTT had developed its own economic and social vision, civil rights goals that were embraced by the nationalist movement that could provide direction to the nation after independence.

The French Repress the Tunisian Independence Movement

In 1952, hoping to gain a quick independence, the Tunisian national movement opened negotiations with the French government. The negotiations failed and were almost immediately followed by a harsh wave of repression against the movement. The French colonial government in Tunis engaged in a full-scale press to break the back of the independence movement in one fell swoop. Most of the leadership of the independence movement, including Habib Bourguiba, were arrested. A curfew was imposed; all political activity was banned; mass arrests were carried out by the French Foreign Legion.

It was at this moment of full crisis, with the nationalist movement reeling from the repression, that the UGTT stepped forward, picked up the pieces and assumed the leadership of both the political and armed resistance (there was some) against the French authorities. In so doing, it was the trade union movement in general, and its talented leader Farhat Hached that saved the independence movement from collapse. In the face of the wave of repression, and French Colonialism could, when it felt obliged, reveal its fangs in the nastiest of fashions, it was Tunisian trade unionists – its working class – that stood fast, held their ground and continued the struggle for independence as they say 'on all fronts'.

And for that they paid a price, a terrible price, one hardly acknowledged outside the country. 20,000 trade unionists were arrested and placed in prison and concentration camps, knowing they would face what the French in North Africa excelled at: abuse, torture of an exceedingly refined kind, possible death. Of the 20,000 arrested, 9 were condemned to death and executed, 12 condemned to life imprisonment of forced labor, with many others receiving heavy jail sentences. In protest demonstrations hundreds were killed and wounded.

In a letter that Hached wrote just before his own assassination to secretary general Oldenbroek of the ICFTU, the Tunisia trade union leader comments, "Let us add (to the repression noted above) the 50 assassination attempts against Tunisian militants organized by Le Main Rouge (The Red Hand), French colonial paramilitary terrorist group. " Others, when released from concentration camps (imagine – only seven years after the defeat of Hitler the French were establishing concentration camps in Tunisia!) were denied employment.

The resistance largely organized by Hached and the UGTT in that crucial year of 1952, in many ways broke the back of French colonialism and set the stage for talks between France and the Tunisian national movement that would, four short years later, result in independence, an independence that Farhat Hached never lived to see but to which he made a considerable contribution. His heritage lives on, in his children and in all Tunisians.