Foreign Policy In Focus

(Pictured: Farhat Rajhi, briefly Tunisia's minister of the interior.)

Four months after Zine Ben Ali and his wife, Leila Trabelsi were forced by angry protests to flee Tunisia on January 14, a complex struggle is unfolding over the country’s future, a focus of which is the upcoming election. The election is to vote for a constituent assembly which will be charged with writing a new constitution and deciding the parameters of the political system that will replace the decades of Ben Ali’s single party rule.

Some are asking: Has Tunisia’s march towards democracy 'gone sour'? Is there, as some youth protesters claim, 'a counter revolution' taking place in the run up to the country's July 24 elections with a 'shadow government' made up of members of Ben Ali's old guard, 'the clique of Sahelians', stage managing the process in a bid to retain power? That there is a power struggle shaping up over the country's future and the extent to which the old system might be dismantled is clear enough.

Add to that mounting economic and social challenges. The economy is still in the doldrums; it hasn't recovered from the civil unrest with tourism, a sector that employs nearly half a million people, having been particularly hard hit. The sluggish recovery in Europe continues to hurt Tunisian exports. Unlike Algeria, Tunisia cannot expect income from oil and natural gas. It will have to borrow heavily from international institutions and the global financial sector – with the usual strings attached – to avoid complete financial collapse While it is too much to expect that the interim government could reverse the high levels of unemployment and low wage jobs, very little has been accomplished on this front to date.

To that must be added the growing refugee crisis in the south of the country. Since the civil war in Libya nearly 700,000 people have fled into the neighboring countries. As of May 4, the lion's share of that number – more than 325,000 – have made their way into Tunisia adding dramatically to the country's economic woes. Some of the Libyan armed conflict has also spilled over into Tunisia's southern interior in the areas around Foum Tataouine and Dhibat Remeda. Khadaffi opposed the toppling of Ben Ali – probably because as much as anything he well understood he could be next. His forces' cross boarder raids into Tunisia is both a punishment and a warning to the Tunisians that Khadaffi still has the ability to influence the outcome of the Tunisian events.

True enough, the political map has dramatically changed. There are now at least 64 political parties (some say 70) that span a wide spectrum that come into being since the Ben Alis were forced from power. As one would expect after decades of political repression, few of them have broad constituencies or much political experience in organizing elections.

While the former ruling party, the RCD (Rassemblement Constitutionnel Demcratique) was dissolved, many of its former members that include much of the old economic and political old guard are re-organizing under new banners. There are already widespread rumors of certain parties with ties to different Western countries 'buying votes', with large cash infusions coming from unknown sources coming into the country. Comparisons are being made with recent elections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Ukraine, Georgia) where under the veil of democracy, foreign agendas are being played out.

Rajhi's bombshell

The signs of increased activity by the old guard are multiplying, confirming in the minds of Tunisian democrats, that while Ben Ali and Trabelsi have left, the system that they put in place is still fighting to maintain its privileges and power. This should be no great surprise. Ben Ali had a security force of some 200,000 – and that did not include all of his paid agents. Many of these elements were active in the days just after Ben Ali's flight, sowing violence and terror from 4-by-4 Toyota pickup trucks throughout the country. More recently, the signs of a concerted destabilization campaign are popping up everywhere.

• Last week there were major fires set in five prisons leading to the escape of more than 800 prisoners. Very suspicious
• Of late, the police and army have abstained from protecting demonstrators throughout the country. In the absence of the state's security, more and more demonstrations are being attacked by provocateurs in civilian clothing, using the same disruptive tactics that Ben Ali's (and Mubarek's) thugs employed earlier
• In a number of Tunisian cities, Beja for one, people have been identified providing funds to provocateurs who are willing to disrupt meetings and protests 'pour cash crouttes et ashrah dinars' (for a few crumbs of bread and 10 dinars)
• During the recent four days of demonstrations in Tunis, a lot of damage to property and cars took place. The demonstrators insist it is not they who turned violent, but provocateurs.

A 20 minute interview on May 4 loaded on to Facebook, triggered angry denials from two leaders of Tunisia's transitional government and four days of angry demonstrations in Tunis and elsewhere in the country. The demonstrators, mostly the same Tunisian youth that helped topple Ben Ali in the first place, had slogans calling for the transitional government to resign. The demonstrations are met with 'Ben Ali-era like' repression from the authorities that include many arrests and at least one death.  While demonstrators appear (from various press reports) small in number, their impact created a  political crisis for the interim government, whose grip on power remains tentative. 

What lay behind this latest flare up and loss in confidence?

Although in Tunisia he's emerging as the darling of the democratic movement in this complex 'post-Ben Ali' era, Americans have hardly heard of him. Farhat Rajhi is his name. But he's done it again – shaken the country to its core. In so doing, at the very least he's embarrassed those who would prefer that Tunisia's 'transition to democracy' be held behind closed doors, managed if not smothered. Rajhi's accusations reinforce the suspicions of reactionary plots afoot.

Rajhi is a highly respected judge who, for one brief shining moment in February and March of this year, was Tunisia's Minister of Interior. During his short tenure, Rajhi sacked more than 45 former members of Ben Ali's security police, ordered the dissolution of the former ruling party, the RCD, and was in the process of purging many more when Tunisia's interim president, Beji Caid Essebsi, sacked him. Rajhi's 'mistake' was failing to inform Essebi of the firings beforehand and that he was 'ostracising' Tunisian police officers. Rajhi's dismissal sent a chill through Tunisia's democratic movement, suggesting that behind the scenes, Ben Ali's old security network still was a potent and well connected force of reaction in the country.

More recently, on May 4, Rajhi did it again, suggesting that elements of the former elite were angling to find a way to maintain their grip on power. In a video circulated on Facebook, he accused the current interim prime minister Beji Caid Essebsi and a small 'clique of Sahelians' close to him of running a shadow government bent on using whatever means possible to win power in the upcoming July 24 elections. 'The Sahel' is the rich coastal region of Sousse and Monastir from where many of the Zine Ben Ali's old guard originate. According to Rajhi, a former Ben Ali intimate, Kamel Ltaief, credited for helping Ben Ali seize power in a 1987 bloodless coup, is the country's 'shadow president' .

Rajhi also accused Essebsi and Ltaief of maintaining close contact with Tunisia's deposed president, Ben Ali. He spoke of a recent meeting between Tunisia's military chief of staff, General Rachid Ammar and Ben Ali in Qatar. Rajhi also warned that should Tunisia's Islamic Movement, al-Nahda, win the elections that the shadow government would ask the military to seize power in a coup d'etat.  

The targets of Rajhi's accusations, Essebsi and Ltaief, have both angrily denied his allegations mostly by attacking Rajhi personally rather than by dealing with the charges. But he has forced them out into the public. Beyond repeating their mantras of support for the revolution, to date, they have done little to dispel the suspicions Rajhi raised. The fact that these accusations are coming from a former minister of interior with a proven track record of supporting the democratic movement (and losing his job as a result) gives added weight to his claims.

IFES – Promoting democracy or something else?

The day after Rajhi gave his 'J'accuse!' speech, the interim government was again embarrassed and found itself on the defensive concerning the new election law. Much of the process leading up to this law has been conducted in secrecy. A sub-committee of the interim government charged with coming up with the process for the July 24^th elections in their few public announcements have insisted that they will put together the election law without 'outside intervention'.

But lately it turns out that a U.S. based NGO – the International Foundation of Election Systems  –  has been heavily involved behind the scenes. Well known for helping to set up election systems in 'transitions to democracy', according to well placed Tunisian sources, the IFES, has been more than marginally involved with Tunisia's election sub-committee: it is alleged that they wrote the election law in its entirety. A number of inquiries to IFES (from Tunisians in the USA) have gone unanswered.

While internationally respected in some circles, IFES has a history of being involved in electoral campaigns that curiously produce U.S. oriented administrations, as were the cases in Ukraine and Georgia. Despite appearances of bipartisanship, its Board of Directors is heavily tilted to the right. Such figures as William Hybl (chair of the El Pomar Foundation from Colorado Springs), Leon Weil (Reagan era U.S. ambassador to Nepal), Ken Blackwell (former Ohio Secretary of State, implicated in voting irregularities in the 2004 presidential election) and Colorado's own former U.S. Senator Hank Brown (with close ties to the lobbying firm Brownstein, Farber, Hyatt and Schreck). All hail from the Republican Party's rightwing. That the name of the most conservative, pro-U.S. Latin American president of Colombia, Andres Pastrana, also appears is more than a curiosity.

Funded in large measure with federal moneys, the organization has created a niche for itself along with organizations like the Freedom House, George Soros' 'Open Society', the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute and National Democratic Institute. A more cynical observer might comment that these foundations today do legally what the C.I.A. used to do under the table and illegally during the Cold War: in the name of 'democracy' – buy elections and overthrow governments.

Rob Prince is the publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

(Pictured: Fathers of Tunisian independence Mohammed Masmoudi, Mongi Slim, and Albert Bessis.)

1.
Writing in his journal on June 7, 1967, in the aftermath of anti-Jewish vandalism in Tunis following the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli Middle East War, Albert Bessis, a Jewish community leader and collaborator with Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia's anti-colonial pro-independence movement, wondered, "What is the future of Tunisia's Jewish Community? The old ones are dying off, our youth is leaving."^{1, 2}

When Bessis was writing in his diary, the Jewish population of Tunisia had already plummeted from perhaps 120,000 on the eve of independence in 1956 to a modest 5,000.³ Today it has shrunk  to 1,500, among an overall population of 10.5 million. Despite the drop in Jewish numbers, the historically relaxed nature of Jewish-Muslim- relations that has characterized Tunisian society before the outbreak of the 1967 war comes through vividly in Ferid Boughedir's film A Summer In La Goulette.

That spirit of tolerance, of a Jewish place in Tunisia's past and present, never died. It remains alive and well in the post Ben Ali era that has just begun to unfold. The youth-led revolution that is sweeping through the Arab world is not driven by Islamic fundamentalist themes. Its referred to by some as 'the third wave' (the first the anti-colonial movement; the second the Islamic wave beginning in the 1980s).

Although not anti-religious, this revolution rejects the ideological approaches of the first wave and the narrow religious fundamentalism of the second. The movement instead is profoundly democratic, recognizing the legitimate place of the country's minorities which make up a small percentage of the overall population.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that manifestations of anti-Jewish prejudice are not taken lightly. This past February 11, two months ago, 40 demonstrators,  posing as Islamic fundamentalists, chanted anti-Jewish slogans  in front of the main synagogue in Tunis. They were immediately condemned by the Tunisian government transition Interior Ministry as extremists inciting racial violence.  In the United States, Los Angeles based 'Free Tunisia' joined in the criticism:

What occurred outside the Jewish synagogue in central Tunis last Friday should never happen again. The Quran defends the right of religious expressions and defends religious institutions.(Quran, 5, 69) There should be no tolerance for hatred in the new Tunisian State. The oppression of religious minorities and the language of hatred towards the Jewish community must not be tolerated. It's the Tunisian pride that one of the oldest Jewish Synagogues in the world is located in Tunisia.

Suspicions abounded among Tunisian social activists that this anti-Jewish outburst, so untypical of Tunisia's uprising, was orchestrated by deposed President Ben Ali's security apparatus to sow confusion and discredit the Tunisia revolt as Islamic-fundamentalist driven. There are indications that the crowd included members of 'Tahrir', a small splinter Islamic movement still banned in Tunisia that has barely a few hundred members. Tahrir's goal is the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that unites all Moslem countries. Anti-Jewish and anti-Christian – indeed anti-everything that is not Islamic, it is also  banned in most Arab countries. Movements like 'Tahrir' are often heavily infiltrated by security forces.

While such actions sent a temporary chill through the country's tiny  Jewish community, its message fell flat. As elsewhere throughout the Arab World, the Tunisian protests are youth, labor movement and student driven with a generally secular and democratic orientation. Islamic fundamentalists have played a limited role, if any. Established Islamic groups in Tunisia let it be known that they were not behind the synagogue protest. No public Islamic figure took part, and underneath their traditional Arab garb, protesters wore modern European garb typical of the security personnel.

2.
It appears that through its contacts – Israelis who previously lived in Tunisia – Israel has exerted pressure on Tunisian Jews to emigrate. Given that Tunisia's Jewish population is so small, one would think it is not worthwhile for Israel to engage in such a misguided 'public relations', or more precisely, 'disinformation' campaign.

At least one major American based Jewish organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, also participated in its own way,  embellishing the situation all out of proportion, suggesting Tunisia's Jewish Community is in danger. Without the myth of radical Islamic threat to guide them, the Center seems at sea. Ideological blinders prevent them from appreciating the obvious: that there is very little – no – there is no place in Tunisia's great democratic upsurge for the kind of anti-semitism that the Center argues is lurking  in every Tunisian olive grove.

In Tunisia itself, it turns out, the situation is viewed quite differently. One month into the revolutionary upsurge in Tunisia, one of the country's Jewish leaders, Roger Bismuth, a prosperous developer, was interviewed by JTA (the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is an influential U.S. Jewish source of news and opinion) about the situation. Although a long time advisor to deposed President Zine Ben Ali, Bismuth's comments were not what the Israelis wanted to hear:

"The community is fine," Bismuth told JTA by phone from Tunis. "Up until now we've had no problems. This is not really a matter of religion; it's a popular revolution. The Jewish community is very well taken care of." "He was behaving like a crook," Bismuth commented about his former boss. He went on to reinforce what is now common knowledge.   "He (Ben Ali) and his family stole property from people and the state, and they destroyed everything they could put their hands on."

Tunisian Jewish sources in contact with the author take Bismuth's comments further. They note that to date, Tunisian rabbis have resisted the pressure to discredit the changes unfolding by crying wolf about anti-semitism and setting the stage for a Jewish stampede to Tel Aviv. Precious few have responded to Tel Aviv's siren call. According to press reports only 10 Tunisian Jews – one family – have moved to Israel since the protest movement started on December 17, 2010 when Mohammed Bouazizi immolated himself in Sidi Bou Zid. Reports of vandalism against Jewish property (beyond the Tunis synagogue demonstration cited above) have proven either exaggerated or fabricated. For example:

• There was a report that circulated widely in the Israeli press that a synagogue in the southern Tunisian city of Gabes was burnt down. Not mentioned is that Gabes' small Jewish Community had sold the synagogue to a private party more than 25 years ago.
• Another rumor which proved less than accurate concerned an alleged  burning of a Torah in a synagogue in El Hamma, a conservative Muslim community further south of Gabes. Minor detail: El Hamma hasn't had a synagogue for nine centuries. El Hamma does have a 'Jewish cemetery' consisting of a one room mausoleum which was not vandalized and in any case did not contain a Torah.

3.
It was with surprise and some anger that Tunisians learned that Israel is urging Tunisian Jews to emigrate. Recently the Israeli government approved a funding package to help Tunisian Jews move to Israel citing 'the worsening of the Tunisian authorities' and society's attitude toward the Jewish community; it its offer, Israel also noted the difficult situation that has been created in the country since the revolution. Despite an absence of proof, the Israelis are suspicious that Islamists are somehow driving the Tunisian revolution.

The Tunisian government did not take Israel's call to gather Tunisian Jews lightly.

Tunisia's post Ben Ali foreign ministry condemned Israel's interference in the country's internal affairs by offering Jews financial incentives to emigrate. The ministry "expressed great regret", labeling the Israeli offer "a malicious call to Tunisian citizens to immigrate to Israel in an attempt to damage the image of Tunisia after the revolution and to create suspicion about its security, its economy and its stability." In unusually strong language it continued:

Tunisia is outraged by the statements…(from) a country which still denies the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, shamefully defying international law.

Interestingly enough, spokespeople for Tunisia's Jewish Community have publicly rejected Israel's offer, suggesting that as a community, they too are upset with this pressure. A spokesperson for the Jews of Djerba (where half of Tunisia's Jewish population resides) echoed the foreign ministry's comments:

We are Tunisians above all, and we do not have any problems. We live like everyone else and no Jew is going to leave the country. 

Do Tunisian Jews face problems? Of course, the short-term economic woes that Tunisia is unlikely to avoid will impact Tunisia's Jews as well as the rest of the country, especially on Djerba where tourism to the oldest synagogue in North Africa has been an important source of income. Tunisia's Jews, like the rest of its citizens, are likely in for economic hard times. But it appears those remaining will stick it out – as they have for 2000 years – with their Muslim brothers and sisters.

Footnotes

1. Juliette Bessis. Magreb: La Traversée du Siècle. Harmattan:Paris: 1997. p 361

2. A Peace Corps volunteer in Tunis at the time, I witnessed this disturbing spectacle. Several days prior, the Jewish Community was warned by the Bourguiba government itself to stay away from the synagogue and Jewish owned businesses. The vandalism was well organized. A man with a list was directing his rag-tag mob. I still remember his voice: 'not, that shop, no! no!, the next one .' Juliette Bessis suggests that the vandalism was organized from the Algerian and Iraq embassies at the time. I thought differently, concluding that the Tunisian government itself had orchestrated the disruption as a diversion, to take the attention off of the mounting criticisms of the Bourguiba presidency itself. The vandals themselves were mostly lumpen elements, poor, many homeless, recruited by Tunisia's security forces, trucked to the town's center, paid a few dinars and directed to do property damage. Later some were arrested, tried and given prison sentences. The government reimbursed  the damaged shop owners and the synagogue. But a psychological barrier had been breached and a sense of malaise, already present among Tunisia's Jews, grew deeper.

3. Bessis, p. 283

Rob Prince is the publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

(Pictured: U.S. embassy outside Tunis.)

A bit of disconnected, but not irrelevant, history

Many years ago – 43 to be exact – Phil Jones and I, both Peace Corps volunteers stationed in Tunis at the time, walked into a reception in the garden of the U.S. embassy there where Hubert Humphrey was doing his best to give a pro-Vietnam War pep talk, trying to explain how the February 1968 Tet Offensive wasn't a U.S. military setback despite Walter Cronkite's suggestion on national television that indeed it was.

As Humphrey launched into his remarks, Jones and I, somewhat nervous and uncertain as to our impending fate, took out our anti-war posters from under our sports coats and held them high in the air. Humphrey immediately cancelled the talk and left the embassy as did everyone else. Left alone in the garden we looked at each other, placed our posters in an orange tree there in the embassy garden and casually left.

Much later I learned the purpose of Humphrey's trip was to canvas European and North African allies as to the political advisability of the United States using nuclear weapons against the Vietnamese.

So much for Hubert Humphrey as the "gentle warrior" as some anti-war liberals once described him.

No one, including Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba, supported a U.S. nuclear escalation. Many warned that if the United States proceeded in that direction, that their own political futures might be jeopardized. Soon thereafter, hamstrung on all sides, Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for another term of the presidency.

So much for nuking Vietnam although 'conventional' weapons – napalm, agent orange, phosphorous and cluster proved that with modern weaponry effects as devastating can be achieved without triggering much moral outrage.

At the time, the U.S. embassy, then one of the largest buildings in Tunis, sat on Avenue de la Liberte, close to downtown. We Peace Corps volunteers didn't visit the embassy often, but it had a snack bar/restaurant and especially during the first few months when I was still dreaming of cheeseburgers, I did indulge. As those dreams faded and a taste for Tunisian food grew – still love the stuff – my embassy visits, other than the Jones-Prince foray, pretty much ceased.

During the June 1967 Middle East War, the Tunisian military was out on the streets in force (as were enormous crowds in solidarity with the Arab cause). Soldiers with bayoneted rifles stood every 25 feet or so. I was told – never able to confirm or deny – that their rifles lacked ammunition and that the ammunition was instead stored for safe keeping (from whom?) in the very same U.S. embassy. Rumor for sure, but one that suggested the growing influence of the United States in Tunisian affairs, welcomed to a certain extent by the then President Habib Bourguiba as a counterweight to French diplomatic clout, still strong some ten years after Tunisian independence.

Much later, in 2002, just after 9-11, the U.S. embassy moved from Ave. de la Liberte, not far from the center of the city, to a large complex in La Goulette, a Tunis suburb. A sprawling building with very much of a post 9-11 embassy-bunker appearance, it occupies a vast space that, besides the current ambassador, Gordon Gray, and his staff, also houses the offices of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Middle East Partnership Initiative the latter being little more than a way to entice Middle East nations to accept World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs by offering them a few pennies of aid in return – short term gain, long term crisis.

From this description alone, one gets a sense of its political significance and influence in both the country and the region. If not as extensive as the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad, than, nothing less than a city within the city, the Tunis embassy is imposing enough, a modern version of a crusader castle.

The U.S. Middle East strategy: buying time

Given its array of Crusader-like castle-embassies throughout the Middle East equipped with super duper modern communication systems, stuffed with various intelligence agency personnel both on the ground and in the air, with the inordinate amount of money and energy spent on 'protecting U.S. interests' (code for insuring the security of oil transit routes) it is logical to believe that the United States was well prepared, 'in the know' about the situation on the ground in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan and that they somehow anticipated the uprisings that the world is witnessing.

Add to this the fact that the signs of the political explosion which began in Tunisia a bare six months ago and has now spread region-wide have been long in the making:

• Long before WikiLeaks, 13 years ago, a U.S. ambassador to Tunisia warned of the dangers of spiraling unemployment rates, particularly youth unemployment.
• A series of reports – the Arab Human Development Reports – early in the millennium spoke of the dangers of growing youth unemployment, corruption and political repression. The fifth of these reports, published as recently as 2009, raised the same concerns in more worried and urgent language as does the 2010 version. These voices went essentially unheeded.
• A number of scholars, among them Georgetown's  Stephen Juan King and CCNY's David Harvey, have, in their work documented the erosive effect of World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs on Middle Eastern economies. Others – Chalmers Johnson, Tom Engelhardt, Michael Schwartz, Immanuel Wallerstein – have warned that U.S. Middle East policy, with its support of regional dictators, is unsustainable.

But who in this or former White Houses listens to academics, especially if their knowledge/insights fly in the face of Washington policy?

It happens only during those rare moments when the carefully contrived Washington consensus collapses, as it has now in Tunisia and Egypt, that these more critical voices are, temporarily heard before being unceremoniously shipped back to their former academic anonymity.

Obama administration: couldn't read the political map

Truth of the matter is that the Obama Administration was essentially blind-sided by the protest wave and is in deep trouble. Its main goal in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan and wherever else protests break out is in all cases: buying time:

• buying time to limit damage to U.S. strategic and economic interests (centering mostly around regional oil and gas flows),
• buying time to find suitable replacements for the regional dictators Washington has long backed,
• buying time to find figures who meet those increasing difficult standards – having mass appeal on the one hand, but willing to continue its military ties with Washington and not renege on World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs which have caused so much economic damage throughout the region.

It's not that the Obama Administration is unaware of the underlying socio-economic structural crisis which has plagued the entire region for some time now. Rather, it simply didn't know how to read the map or interpret events.

The Washington Media Group decides late in the game it can no longer put make-up on Ben Ali's political corpse

Instead Washington glossed over the simmering social storm about to break and magnified Tunisa's achievements while systematically playing down its growing failures. There seemed to be a consensus in Washington (and in Paris) not to see what was going on under the surface. In Tunisia's case, this was achieved until recently, with a little help from a Washington public relations firm, the Washington Media Group.

The Washington Media Group, which had to have known about the human rights violations in Tunisia, cancelled its contract with Tunisia on January 6, 2011. A question of principle or just a case of covering their butts?

Tunisia's 'positive p.r.' in Washington gravitated around two themes: Tunisia's women's rights policies (somewhat exaggerated by the way – it is something less than equal rights) impressed U.S. legislators. The more secular nature of the regime (also somewhat overstated) played well to American audiences inoculated since September 11, 2001 (and probably before) with the great fear of radical Islamic fundamentalism.

It never seemed to occur to U.S. policy makers that secular regimes, even one that to a certain degree supports women's rights, can be otherwise pervasively oppressive. But then, that just doesn't fit the State Department's cookie-cutter radical fundamentalist model. So how bad could it be?

Nor has the Washington establishment provided much of anything in the way of offering solutions to the crisis. Pretty impressive ostrich approach all in all. It is scurrying to put together an approach to the changes sweeping the region that in many fundamental ways were triggered or exacerbated by U.S. security and economic policies, to mention two specifically – the war on terrorism and U.S.-encouraged World Bank and IMF structural adjustment policies.

Even as the Obama Administration suddenly tries to distance itself from Mubarak, and nudge him from power, the fact remains: he was the U.S. man in the Middle East par excellence.

It is not only his regime which has been discredited, but 32 years of U.S. support of that regime. Don't think that the people on the streets of cities all over Egypt are unaware of this fact.

3. From Sidi Bouzid to Tunis and Sfax, from Ma'ad to Cairo and Alexandria

As the revolt moved east from the streets of Sidi Bouzid, Sfax and Tunis in Tunisia to Ma'ad, Alexandria and Cairo, its center of gravity shifted to the very edge of the Middle East oil producing region. And now the world's military heavies weigh in:

• NATO's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggests that the current Arab revolt puts both the world economy and the world order 'at stake'. (This is a bit of an overstatement, suggesting the degree to which NATO was 'ambushed' by events.)
• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen related that due to the events in Egypt the U.S. Army has been 'put on alert', "and also that we've got our military ready, should any kind of response or support be required," he said. "That isn't the case right now, but I'm very focused on that."

The stakes for the United States (and Israel) in Egypt are considerably higher than in Tunisia. For Washington Ben Ali is expendable. The Obama Administration did little to help him in 'his moment of need.' Indeed there are some reports (in the French press) that the Tunisian Chief of Staff Ammar was in telephone contact with the head of AFRICOM, U.S. General William Ward, at a rather sensitive moment in the Tunisian crisis.

But Egypt is an entirely different matter. If Tunisia got $20 million in military aid over the course of Ben Ali's time in power, Mubarek has received $2 billion annually since 1979 – most of that for military purposes. Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, now the Brookings Institute Vice President ,is certainly right to underline the many services that Mubarek has provided U.S. strategic interests in the region.

Key elements of the strategic relationship include:

• keeping the Suez Canal open and safe for oil tankers from the Persian Gulf heading for Europe (and the Americas),
• assuring the flow of oil through oil pipelines from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean through Egypt,
• cooperating with Israel on the blockade of Gaza,
• actively supporting the United States in the war on terrorism, participating in extraordinary rendition.

in making peace with Israel at Camp David in 1978, Egypt essentially permitted the Israel's to tighten their grip over the West Bank and Gaza, and concentrate their military ambitions elsewhere – Lebanon, and perhaps sometime in the future, Iran.

Finally, although it is sometimes forgotten, Egypt is not only Israel's neighbor, it is also Saudi Arabia's. Mubarak may not yet have joined Zine Ben Ali in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) but Aqaba, where he seems to be hiding out at the moment, is a five minute walk into Saudi territory. While both the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea separate Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the distances (especially across the Gulf of Aqaba) are minimal, the point here being that the kind of revolt taking place in Egypt will invariably have echoes in Saudi.

Right now, without much of a roadmap, the main U.S. goals are to buy time to insure damage control, to slow the processes of change everywhere in the region, hoping to minimize the damage to U.S. strategic interests (meaning specifically its control of the region's energy resources).

None of the Arab Revolts of 2011 have played themselves out as yet. So it will be a while before the Obama Administration can assess the damage to its interests: a setback or a debacle?

Rob Prince is the publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

(Pictured: Tunisian President Ben Ali and French President Sarkozy.)

1. They Just Don't Stop Protesting
Not even torture, which is rampant, or live bullets, which the Tunisian authorities are using with greater frequency, stop them.

It is more than two weeks since a distraught and unemployed young university graduate, Mohammed Bouazizi, sat down in front of the town hall in the central Tunisian town of  Sidi Bouzid, poured gasoline on himself and lit a match. Bouazizi's act of self-immolation and protest against Tunisia's high unemployment, rampant corruption and decades of repression by the government of Zine Ben Ali triggered a protest movement, first in the country's center and south, but now virtually everywhere, including the capital, Tunis. 

Unwilling to admit how his own regime has contributed to the crisis, Ben Ali, predictably blames the protests on 'radical elements,' 'chaos mongers' ( an interesting and empty phrase) and 'a minority of mercenaries' rather than on the policies Tunisia has implemented during his 23 years in power.

Neither the intervention of the Tunisian security forces and army using live ammunition nor Zine Ben Ali's sacking of 4 members of his cabinet combined with promises of a $5 billion state jobs program has stopped the wave of anger and protest, which at the time of this writing (January 2, 2011) continues and is more and more taking the form of a national uprising. While some property has been destroyed, the overwhelming amount of violence has come from the state and the security forces. Virtually all of the demonstrations have been peaceful to date. That said, the economic grievances which fueled the initial outbursts now have a more political aspect to them as more and more voices within Tunisia outside of the ruling party, the Rassemblement Constitutionelle Democratique (RCD), are calling for Ben Ali and his increasingly influential wife, Leila Trabelsi, to step down and relinquish power. 

Ben Ali is giving no indication of stepping down. He has combined increased repression on the one hand with a media campaign and promises of economic and social reform on the other. Ben Ali is gambling that the protests, which seem to be led mostly by unemployed youth as well as some elements of Tunisian's student and labor movement, are a spontaneous expression of frustration that will fizzle sooner rather than later. While this might be the case, it appears that broad sectors of Tunisian society are more supportive of the protestors than the government and that Ben Ali's promised reforms are too little too late. Even if he is able to maintain his grip on power for the moment, his social base support has narrowed to the military, police and security apparatus, along with the support of a few key European governments, France key among them.

2. The United States Remains Silent
The United States State Department remains silent in face of the Tunisian protests. Since the protests began on December 17, 2010, there has been little media coverage in the mainstream US media, virtually nothing on mainstream television, nothing in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, or for that matter even Democracy Now! This is in sharp contrast with the European, North African and Middle Eastern media where theTunisian protests have become big news. In two articles in the British Guardian, columnist Brian Whitaker calls the Tunisian protests the 'most important and most inspiring story from the Middle East this year'. In another story a  few days earlier, he wrote a scathing critique of the Tunisian government commenting at the end that Ben Ali's days in power are probably numbered.

The Obama Administration's failure to comment on the Tunisian events is another indication of its more general hypocrisy when it comes to supporting human rights in Middle East countries. It is not that the administration is unaware of the situation in the country. The WikiLeaks cables concerning Tunisia, from a former US ambassador to the State Department, contained very explicit and damning information, detailing the repressive environment in the country and the rampant corruption, most especially of the families of President Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi, at one point labeling the regime as a 'kleptocracy'.

So why the measured silence by the Nobel Peace Prize winner? 

A number of factors come into place, central among them, the Obama Administration is wary about opening up another front of social unrest with Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia on its hands. If Washington has no particular love for Ben Ali, still they worry about a replacement, wanting one that would, like Ben Ali and Bourguiba before him, support US strategic policy in the Middle East and Africa, who will cooperate with NATO and AFRICOM as Ben Ali has. It would not be the first time that the Obama Administration has thrown a U.S. commitment to human rights concerns to the winds to maintain strategic support for this or that tyrant.

There are also economic considerations. Tunisia has been played up as an IMF-World Bank poster child, an example of how following 'the Washington Consensus', -- i.e., the IMF structural adjustment program -- leads to success. Except it didn't. Take for example Tunisia's rush to privatization, one of the IMF's sacred cows -- you know, that line of reasoning made popular by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,  that somehow the private sector sector can conduct business better than the state. According to the dogma, privatization is supposed to lead to increased competitiveness and greater efficiencies. Perhaps under certain (increasingly rare) circumstances the logic works.

But in Tunisia – as in many other places, privatization became a means of the two ruling families, the Ben Alis and Trabelsis, to buy up state property at bargain basement prices and make a financial killing. It did not lead to a growth of Tunisian entrepreneurship, but simply to a greater concentration of economic power in the hands of the two families, and the corruption involved was so bad that even the U.S. ambassador (in a WikiLeaks cable) was embarrassed. 

Yet despite the current economic crisis, which these structural adjustment programs only exacerbated, the IMF continues to pressure Tunisia to 'stay the course'…cut remaining subsidies on basic food stuffs and fuel, privatize its social security system and open up its financial sector even further. And once again, the IMF is oblivious to how those policies have only deepened the socio-economic crisis in the country and that an entirely different economic strategy is in order.

3. 'Most Inspiring Story Coming Out Of The Middle East This Year'
There is another reason for Washington's hesitancy, call it 'revolutionary contagion' …what starts in one place, as in the strategically not particularly important Tunisia, could spread to…Egypt, Saudi Arabia and who knows where else. Signs abound. Just to the west, Algerians are protesting inadequate housing that they have been promised for years. Although current turmoil in Egypt appears to center around the bombing of a Coptic Church, with accusations of the hand of al Qaeda in the attack, under the surface, for all its differences with Tunisia, Egypt too is facing serious socio-economic problems.

And throughout the Middle East, governments are nervous. The Iranian and Syrian press have commented on Tunisia's unemployment and corruption problems, as if they too don't have to deal with similar drawbacks. Saudi commentators (of all people) are lecturing Ben Ali on the need for democracy, etc. Throughout the region among the ruling elites there is the growing concern that the Tunisian protests could spread to their countries. And they have reason for concern, for despite many differences, unemployment, corruption and dictatorship are by no means limited to Tunisia.

So already, 'the Tunisian example' in two short weeks has spread beyond the country's borders and governments are taking the events seriously. If Ben Ali will not relinquish power (yet), still, he reshuffled his cabinet firing four ministers and promised a $5 billion jobs program. He also was careful to visit Mohammed Bouazizi (the young man who set himself aflame) as well as meet with the families of those killed by the security forces. As the protests grew in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarek, speaking to the ruling political party in Egypt, seemingly 'out of nowhere', announced that Egypt too would launch a $3.5 billion jobs program to deal with Egyptian unemployment. Coincidence? In a gesture to help Ben Ali, Muhammar Khadaffi in nearby Libya announced that Libya would not limit entry to Tunisians seeking jobs. Khadaffi also announced a major government financed housing project not long ago. 

Nesrine Malik, like Brian Whitaker, writing in the Guardian on New Year's Eve, calls the Tunisian protests 'one of the most inspiring episodes of indigenous revolt against a repressive regime.' Referring to the Tunisian protests she comments: 'Change is sometimes more likely to happen when people know what it looks like, when the first person dares to point to the emperor and say that he is naked.' 

And if events continue in Tunisia, what does it mean for the other 'geriatric regimes' of the Middle East, many of which themselves are on the verge of transitions of power? For if the Tunisian people can stand up to power and oppression, why not the others?

Meanwhile the protests in Tunisia continue…La Lutta Continua.

 Rob Prince is the publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

The last part of Nawaat's interview (edited) with Rob Prince.

For my work, I have just finished reading an excellent book -- quite serious and frankly not easy reading -- on the Savings and Loan crisis in the United States in the late 1980s, early 1990s by William Black, a former federal bank regulator here in the USA. Its title is The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One. One could make a slight change to make this relevant to Tunisia: "The Best Way To Rob A Country Is To Be President For Life."

But at some point, the social crises of Redeyef and Sidi Bouzid will spill over onto the beaches of Sousse and Djerba, the villas of Sidi Bou Said. Social unrest and tourism have never been particularly good partners. That is why at Sidi Bouzid, as at Redeyef, the government of Tunisia (GOT) moved so quickly to "localize" the problem, cutting off foreign and press access in both places. That is why the GOT has pursued such a vicious policy against Fahem Boukkadous, only the last of many Tunisian journalists to suffer repression. Thanks to his reporting the events of Redeyef became known beyond Tunisia, in France and then, really worldwide.

I was reading online reports that several journalists from Tunis hoping to report on Sidi Bouzid were arrested, one badly beaten up by the government security forces. Still, in this age of the internet, it will be impossible for the GOT to keep a lid on what is unfolding at Sidi Bouzid, now in its third day of protesting, with reports of a large number of arrests. The word is out.

The point here is that sooner or later these events will affect tourism, both from Europe and from Arab countries (particularly Libya). And the social unrest could have more far-reaching impacts as, at least in principle (and we know unfortunately how little that can sometimes mean), Tunisia's economic ties with the European Union are based upon improving its human rights situation.

France seems to have a president who cares a lot more about economic contracts with French companies than he does about young Tunisians burning themselves to death. But even here, there is even a limit to how much longer Sarkozy can turn his back on Tunisia's economic crisis, especially given the strong movement of support for Tunisian democracy in countries like France, with its large Magrebian community, still strong trade unions and generally active social movements.

Nawaat: To what degree will the endemic corruption of the Ben Ali and Trabelsi families, their tendency to use the Tunisian economy as their own personal cash cow, affect foreign investment, foreign economic relations?

Prince: Here, the cables were interesting. They suggest that it is Tunisian investors who have pulled back their capital from investing in the country, while to date, the foreign investors have not yet withdrawn much. This is interesting, but not so surprising. What sectors are we talking about where foreign investment is strong? Mostly tourism and now, offshore oil and gas exploration. At least not yet. 

At some point, all the shenanigans taking place in the banking sector will have an impact. Tunisian banks are, it is well known, not in good shape. When the only profitable and well-run private bank in the country, Banque de Tunisie, is taken over by the current foreign minister and Mme Ben Ali’s brother, Belgassem Trabelsi, this is taking events a bit too far. The cables express a great deal of concern about this takeover, and some of the other machinations in Tunisia's banking industry. What will the U.S. State Department recommend to US investors and business concerns? The cable strongly suggest they will urge caution in investment as long as Ben Ali remains in power.

There is something else, though, concerning the corruption and economic developments which is related to the current social crisis gripping Tunisia that deserves mention and thought.

Since the early 1980s, Tunisia has been one of the most faithful pupils to World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs, and has frequently been praised by the Bretton Woods institutions for their fiscal discipline and market economic policies which is supposed to result in making the country attractive to foreign investment.  

As a part of this economic approach, Tunisia has been encouraged, if not pressured to privatize different state holdings and to lift subsidies on food and other basic needs as is typical of loans given with structural adjustment provisions. What is the result?

• In Tunisia as elsewhere where capital controls have been lifted, investment flows into non-productive activities, bubble creating activities, real estate and finance, rather than into less profitable (at least in the short run) infrastructural grown and agro-industrial modernization.
• The lifting of subsidies has gone on for more than 25 years, beginning with the lifting of subsidies on the price of bread in 1984 which triggered what are referred to as "bread riots," not only in Tunisia, but many places. As salaries have remained stagnant and prices have increased, combined with the growing crisis in unemployment, the lives of the majority of Tunisians have suffered. We are now more than a quarter of a century into such trends
• But most interesting of all has been Tunisia's process of privatization and joint ventures which has exacerbated the gulf between rich and poor in the country in an interesting fashion.
• Foreign investment itself, although it exists, has been lackluster, especially from Europe and the USA. After the collapse of communism some of the foreign investment Tunisia hoped to win more or less went to Eastern Europe restructuring. There is some from Arab oil producing countries, true…but necessarily in strategic economic sectors that would lead to growth long term. 

It is impressive the degree to which unrestrained and unregulated privatization has been a failure in so many Third World and former Communist countries. Look at the privatization impact in Russia, Central Asia, Latin American countries like Bolivia, Argentina and Chile… and in Tunisia.

It is not that privatization and joint ventures under certain circumstances, are not viable economic responses, but not the way it has happened in Tunisia. There the processes have been dominated by the two ruling families, the Ben Alis and the Trabelsis, who more and more monopolize all the contracts and are first in line when the Tunisian government sells off state resources at bargain basement prices.

As long as the families have control of the process, be it in the banking sector, the media or in education, privatization and joint ventures with foreign capital are supported.

As a result, these two families have become extraordinarily wealthy. But there has been another consequence: independent Tunisian entrepreneurs, small, medium sized and even some big investors have been driven from the field, either by hook or crook, by the crude methods of the first lady's brother, or by more refined but equally self-serving approaches.

Not even Habib Bourguiba -- in the end, no great democrat -- was so crude. Yes, he seemed to like his palaces and that did represent a certain level of corruption, but Bourguiba's corruption was pocket change compared to that of the Ben Ali and Trabelsi families today. And if Bourguiba wasn't a great democrat, nor was he a cleptomaniac, robbing the country blind. For Bourguiba "wealth" was simply the trappings of power. He understood the importance of Tunisia's economy "delivering" for certain key social milieus and while not immune to nepotism, kept something of a lid on it.

But these past 20 years, nepotism (giving special favors to close family members) in Tunisia's economy has grown to rampant proportions, icing out of the possibilities for success many elements who did not fair badly in the Bourguiba years. This trend is so developed that a whole strata of businesspeople and entrepreneurs has been adversely affected or ruined. They now find themselves, along with the country's intellectuals, trade unions and students, in the country's burgeoning political opposition, narrowing Ben Ali's political base to a considerable degree.

The TuniLeaks cables suggest that the U.S. State Department has, at long last, caught up with the rest of the world. The cables acknowledge as much. If the cables are accurate, they suggest that the State Department is beginning, however dimly, to understand the political consequences of these economic policies, many of which, while applied in Tunisia are "made in America"…and referred to as "The Washington Consensus."

The more fundamental question: why did it take so long?