Tag Archives: Tunisia

More Than Democracy

Perhaps America’s climb to world power is due more to the ability of its ordinary citizens to make a decent living than simply because it practices a form of democracy.

Despite racism and other sins, for most of its history the United States has constantly been renewed by immigrants coming to make a new life, start new businesses, and provide their children with a good education. Yes, they became participants in our political processes, but they also took advantage of the ability to thrive economically.

Surely Americans cannot be faulted for encouraging democracy in other nations as a major part of our foreign policy. Yet our push for democratic institutions has worked best where we have also pushed economic incentives, such as the Marshall Plan for Europe following World War II.

In the Middle East and North Africa, democracy has stalled. Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins write: “It appears that the people of the Arab world have internalized one lesson above all from the revolts of the last decades: democratic change does not necessarily produce economic improvement.” ( “Why Democracy Stalled in the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, March-April 2022)

Tunisia, where I lived for a few years, appeared to have perhaps the best chance for an Arab nation to develop a democracy. With a low birth rate, an educated population, and a generally homogenous society, Tunisians appeared set for a democratic awakening when the strong man ruler, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, was overthrown in 2011 in a bloodless coup.

Unfortunately, in July 2021, the current popularly elected Tunisian leader, Kais SAIED, seized exceptional powers, fired the prime minister, and suspended the legislature.

Both Ben Ali’s earlier overthrow, and the powers assumed by the current leader, were occasioned by economic problems, including low job expectations for young people.

Here in the United States, even though our economy is growing, the change in job structure has led to the loss of good jobs for many. Geographically, some areas are thriving while others have suffered.

At the same time, our tax policies favor those who are already wealthy in keeping and growing huge amounts of their wealth, not in encouraging more equitable taxation. Such taxes could be used for programs like child care and education and job training to bring others into the mainstream.

Obviously, the wealthy have more money to invest in political campaigns for keeping the status quo than do the non wealthy. Some of those political campaigns may play on falsehoods about election counts rather than on needed changes to our tax system.

Nevertheless, if the U.S. is to endure as an influential nation, those changes must come. The country must be seen as economically fair as well as politically healthy.

Religion’s Major Role in the New World Order

 

In the late 1970’s, Iranian students, inspired by Islamic leaders, seized the United States embassy in Tehran.

444 DaysThumbing their noses at international law, they held U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. Religion entered as a major actor on the world stage. Over three decades later, the murder of American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, by religious terrorists indicates that the religious script is still in play.

What happened? Though at the time of the Iranian revolution, the Soviet Union would not tumble for a few more years, the Cold War was thawing. The United States and the Soviet Union signed agreements limiting nuclear weapons. Egypt and Israel endorsed the Camp David accords. Optimists saw glimpses of an upward march to worldwide peace, individual freedom, and economic advancement.

Not all were buying in. The money from Iran’s oil industry allowed Western-style consumerism that seemed empty to many Iranians.

Iran hostage crisesThe student revolt was nationalistic, an attempt to root out foreign influence and government brutality, but it included yearnings for a less secular culture. Now recent revolts in Tunisia and Egypt have dethroned secular governments and elected Islamists.

How can the United States, which prizes freedom of religion for all its citizens, deal with states whose laws favor one specific religion?

In recognition of the need for more understanding, the U.S. State Department created the position of an Ambassador for International Religious Freedom in 1998. Its mission is to promote religious freedom as a core objective of U.S. foreign policy. The report for religious freedom in 2011 is now public.

 

After the Revolution Comes the Hard Part

 

Social media played a decisive role in kindling the recent revolutions in the Middle East. Now the hard part begins.  A revolution requires courage, to be sure, but a courage more often based on emotion than on reason.

Today’s revolutions accelerate with the instant communication of Facebook and text messages. Building a new nation requires a quieter courage: a patience to examine complex issues and an ability to find compromise between competing views of a nation’s future.

The revolutionists in Egypt and Tunisia vanquished corrupt dictators. Now can they survive the hard slogging? Compromise on cherished views to include the views of others? Set up impartial courts and rules of law that discourage the same corruption that bedeviled the old regimes?

Thomas L. Friedman, writing in the New York Times (June 9, 2012) compared the different processes as Facebook meeting “brick-and-mortar” politics.

Our country formally gained independence from Great Britain in 1783. But the first structure we accepted for the new country, the Articles of Confederation, failed. After a fierce struggle between competing factions, we began again with the creation of the U.S. Constitution, ratified by Rhode Island, the final former colony to do so, in 1790. It’s an amendable document, meaning that the founders of the nation knew it wasn’t perfect and never would be.

As Egyptians pick themselves up from an election that proved less than ideal, can they go to work with what they have so far produced?

Can we Americans survive our own paralyzing politics?

He May Be a Brutal Dictator, But He’s Our Brutal Dictator

 

The Cold War between communist nations led by the Soviet Union and anti-communist nations led by the United States fades into memory, buried during the late twentieth century revolutions in eastern Europe. Yet similarities linger in the more recent revolutions, the ones where citizens are revolting against tyrannical leaders in the Middle East.

In those earlier times, the U.S. was accused of supporting dictatorial regimes in certain African and South American countries because the regimes touted themselves as anti-communist. Now the U.S. is accused of propping up former dictators like Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. These men clamped down on the growth of Islamists in their countries, so we supported them even if they employed brutal methods. Egypt, especially, became a huge recipient of U.S. aid.

Have such policies backfired as newly-freed citizens elect their own governments, seemingly more attuned to the Islamists? Was it better when we supported corrupt leaders who became wealthy by showering their cronies with public largesse? Who didn’t quibble at torturing their own people?

We don’t know if the new Islamists will continue to support democratic elections once in power. We don’t know if they will allow religious freedom. Perhaps if we had been less supportive of the former dictators who tortured them, the new governments now would be more supportive of our policies. In that earlier confrontation with the Soviet Union, at least the eastern Europeans knew we were on their side and became our friends once they gained their freedom.

We should question both the wisdom and the morality of giving support to inhumane governments. (As we now accuse the Russians of doing with Syria.) It can lead to disastrous consequences later.

 

Welcome to Democracy

 

I search news reports for clues about a country’s first encounters with democracy. That country is Tunisia, where I once lived and worked. I scan the recent pictures. When I lived there, few women, and no younger ones, wore the head scarf.  Most of them dressed like counterparts on the streets of Paris. Now the head scarf appears more often. Plenty of women do not wear it, but it still surprises me that some do.

Compared to Egypt or Libya, Tunisia’s change from a dictatorship to free elections last year was remarkably smooth. Not completely so. Small groups of ultra-conservative Islamists occupied universities to call for a more religiously-oriented way of life, including the return of the veil for women. Thousands protested the actions of the ultra-conservatives and called for a continuation of Tunisia’s tolerant society.

The moderate Islamist party that won a majority of the vote in elections last year was embarrassed by the ultra-conservatives and pledged that it would not turn Tunisia into a conservative Islamic state.

Winston Churchill once said, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I wish the Tunisians success as they enter the brave, exasperating world of democracy.

Religion and Government

How much should religion and government interact? This issue plays out in the small North African country of Tunisia, a majority Islamic country where I lived from 1997 to 2000.

Tunisians began the “Arab spring” by ousting their secularist dictator little more than a year ago. In January they held their first fair election in years. A mildly Islamist party won the majority of the vote.

The leader of the new government, Hamadi Jebali, spent years in prison for his opposition to the government of dictator Ben Ali, much of it in harsh solitary confinement. Now he’s the popularly elected head of the Tunisian government.

Tunisia has a large, educated middle class, many of whom have made plain that they do not want repressive religious laws. Jebali has indicated his understanding of their apprehension. His party has formed the current government with two secularist parties.

The results in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya, and other countries of North Africa and the Middle East follow the ouster of regimes which were secular but often brutal against their opponents. Now that more power is assumed by the people, how will democracy and religion play their roles?

Some American Christians desire more religion in their government. How will church and state in this country compare to mosque and state in Tunisia?

A Tale of Two Countries

 

Tahrir Square

Almost a year ago, the small nation of Tunisia began the current spate of revolts against despotic regimes in the Middle East. The country recently held its first elections since the overthrow of the country’s one-party rule. The elections appeared to be free, fair, and relatively unmarred by corruption or violence.

By contrast, violence has flared again in Egypt, where elections are held this week. The violence has included the deaths of demonstrators as well as the burning of Christian churches and the killing of Christians. Much of the protest centers on the Egyptian military, against their perceived unwillingness to relinquish power. The military partnered with the Egyptian people in the earlier revolution to rid the country of the corrupt rule of Mubarak, yet now appears unwilling to allow an unfettered civilian government to rule.

This is a recurring theme of newly freed nations. The group which plays the role in ridding the country of tyranny, itself refuses to relinquish power.

What would have happened to our own country if George Washington had followed the usual pattern? He could have used his powers as commander of the American armed forces after he successfully led them to victory over the British to seize power. Instead, he resigned his commission. Later, after two terms as president, he stepped aside, saying two terms was enough. By leaving the office voluntarily and allowing for a peaceful transfer of power, he established a valuable precedent for the country.

The decision of a popular individual to see power as a trust and a refusal to use it for selfish purposes is a rare choice.

Winning the Peace

Tunis Street

Carthage

The small North African country of Tunisia recently held its first free election since leading the Arab world earlier this year in a revolution against regional dictators. My husband and I lived in this progressive Arab country from 1997 until 2000.Nahda, described as a mildly Islamist party, won over forty percent of the vote. Tunisia has a large, educated middle class, some of whom worry that a government controlled by Nahda might weaken the country’s laws dealing with women’s rights. The party’s leaders so far have indicated a willingness to work with the more secular parties and to safeguard Tunisian freedoms.

Nahda was banned during the corrupt, one-party rule of the now deposed Ben Ali. Members risked imprisonment and torture. No wonder they are reveling in the new freedom to compete in an election. They appear to have played by the rules and won their votes fairly. The results of this election will be scrutinized for indications of how the Arab world will shift as other nations take steps toward democracy, including participation by Islamist parties.

Winning the peace can be more difficult than winning the war. In American history, we glorify heroes of our Revolution, but the period after the United States gained its independence was a greater challenge, a time of debilitating partisan struggle. Nation building requires the difficult virtues of servanthood, of putting the country’s welfare above individual or party ambitions.

Perhaps we might reflect on these virtues for our own country in our coming election.

Memories of Tunisia

I lived in Tunisia, the small North African nation now in the news for its civil unrest, from 1997 to 2000. I served at the U.S. embassy in Tunis, the capital city. At that time, a tour there was an enjoyable assignment for U.S Foreign Service officers choosing the sometimes unsettled Middle East.

Young women dressed in the latest Paris fashions. I don’t recall any of them wearing a head scarf. Many were students in Tunisian universities. Our friends and family from the States visited us for trips to the Sahara and to stroll the nearby ancient city of Carthage. We took them to see the desert movie setting for the original Star Wars films. We boarded the train in downtown Tunis for the short ride to Carthage and a visit to the cemetery for American military personnel killed in Tunisia during Second World War campaigns against the Nazis.

The embassy during my assignment was located in downtown Tunis. On weekends, I would drive to the Embassy and park, then walk from there into the old city to worship in a centuries-old Christian church. The walk took me past a Muslim mosque and a Jewish synagogue. The Jewish settlement in Tunisia was ancient; some said it began with refugees from the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 605 B.C.

During the week, work load permitting, I enjoyed riding the bus from my home to work. Once in a while, for exercise, I walked all the way. We ate in local restaurants and visited ancient ruins scattered throughout the country. Tunisia at that time was perceived as a stable, progressive country, its beaches a destination for tourists from Germany and other countries. Golfers played on the links in Tunisia’s mostly sunny weather.

Now the tourists are being evacuated. The U.S. embassy moved to a newer facility in a safer location out from Tunis after the terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in east Africa. I notice from news pictures that some of the women appear to be wearing head scarves. The train station where my friends and I took the train was burned by rioters. The Tunisian president fled to Saudi Arabia.

What happened? Why the sudden changes?

Unemployment and economic needs are cited as reasons. However, more than the economy is involved. Hard economic times can be endured if all perceive the suffering as shared. In Tunisia, for years, as average citizens struggled for decent jobs, the country’s rulers lived in luxury and used their power to grab wealth in corrupt business deals.

In the over half a century since Tunisia gained its independence from France, the country has had only two presidents, the last, Ben Ali, seizing power in a bloodless coup. Only one political party was allowed to rule, jailing and sometimes torturing any perceived opposition. Now the country has need of leaders not tainted by the old regime, but few have had experience in governing a country or understanding the democratic process.

How much better if those in power govern justly, not using their positions for their own gain, but understanding their responsibility to serve. Best if they rule in humility, allowing others to participate, realizing that no single group is all-wise. Both the political system and the economic one should be perceived as fair.