January 20th, 2011 by Cole

While embarrassed about supporting former President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, the West’s democracies are unlikely to change their overall strategy towards the region, writes Kristina Kausch, a researcher at FRIDE, the Madrid-based think-tank, specializing on EU policies in the Southern Mediterranean, democracy, human rights and political Islam. But the revolt in Tunisia confirms the need to move from a static model of stability-through-containment to sustained inclusive participation and far-reaching reform – before the system implodes.

See also the previous contributions to the Democracy Digest-POMED Tunisia symposium from Amr Hamzawy, Steven Heydemann, Larry Diamond, Arun Kapil, Shadi Hamid, Kamran Bokhari, and Nabila Hamza.

A week after Ben Ali’s escape, the initial outburst of joy over what has been perceived by many hopefuls as the beginning of a new era of Arab ‘flower revolutions’ has toned down considerably. The unexpected, sudden power vacuum at the top has now set the stage for a more complex and lengthy power struggle.

Unfortunately, the focus of international attention on Tunisia will likely be short-lived. Tunisia’s long-standing miseries failed to make the headlines until now and it took people setting themselves on fire and tanks on the streets for the world to take notice of Ben Ali’s Orwellian police state. Once the current peak of attention is over, the entrenched elites will have it much easier to quietly extinguish the revolutionary flame and re-engineer their way back into power by the back door.

The chances of a solid transition will therefore also depend on the sustained interest and support of Tunisia’s international allies, namely the US and EU. Yet, if the Tunisian people were able to oust Ben Ali, it was in spite, not because of, Western governments’ actions.

The Southern European states have been at the forefront of blocking EU attempts to establish a firmer common line vis-à-vis Ben Ali’s autocratic schemes. Until January 14th, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spanish premier José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero made no secret of their friendly relations with Ben Ali and his fellow North African autocrats. Easy deals with Tunisia’s mafia-like business elite have been playing an important role.

More importantly, European and US passivity towards the regime’s increasingly crude authoritarianism was rooted in the preference of secular over democratic rule. The formula of ‘better us than an Islamist theocracy’ – Arab autocrats’ successful PR slogan towards Western counterparts – still works. Whenever free and fair elections means risking Islamist rule, EU and US governments will do what they can to help maintain secular elites in power. This will not change with the Tunisian upheaval, probably to the contrary.

In the meantime, now the dictator has fled, fireworks of shifting loyalties are ablaze over the Mediterranean. Once assured their former ally Ben Ali was gone for good, European politicians have been shaming and blaming each other over their relations and attitudes vis-à-vis the Tunisian despot. An astonishing amount of indignation is suddenly being brought forward across all political factions.

Evidence speaks a different language.

Mainly due to blockages by France and Italy, EU policies towards Tunisia have oscillated between indifference and tacit support of Ben Ali’s repression. Only a few months ago, the outlook of an upgrade of bilateral relations with the EU under the ‘Advanced Status’ framework even led the regime, afraid of civil society lobbying efforts, to adopting a more restrictive Penal Code that effectively penalized human rights organizations’ contact with foreign government representatives.

On a visit to Tunis last year, two leaders of the legal opposition who are now ministers in the new caretaker government – Najib Chebbi and Ahmed Brahim – both emphatically expressed to me their indignation and helplessness in view of the indifference shown by foreign governments and publics vis-à-vis the Tunisian opposition, and complained about foreign embassies’ submission to the regime’s restrictions on them engaging even with legally-registered opposition parties.

Chebbi and Brahim are likely to be more readily received in European embassies today.

Nevertheless, Western governments did not want this revolution. Indeed, they are as afraid as the region’s authoritarian rulers that the Tunisian upheaval will spill over, especially to the presumed regional power hub in Egypt. Western governments such as France or Italy are likely to collude with remnants of the old regime while at the same time providing technical assistance and publicly assuring their support for free and fair elections. The outrageous statements made last week by French government officials offering security cooperation to help crack down on the protesters are only the clumsily revealed tip of an iceberg built up by successive French governments over the last three decades.

Current Western policies in the Arab world rely on a static model of stability-through-containment that has already failed to produce the desired security east of Europe, and is not going to produce it in the south. A perpetuation of the cycle of liberalization and crackdown is likely to keep the region in a permanent state of fragility.

The co-existence of economic insecurity, enhanced expectations and unaccountable governance will widen the gap between ruling elites and society and boost the appeal of radical elements, increasing the risk that the system will implode – via revolution, terrorism or civil war.

In this sense, the case of Algeria, often held up as the definitive case against genuine Arab democracy, to the contrary provides a prime argument for breaking these cycles through sustained inclusive participation and far-reaching reform before the system implodes.

Whether or not the Tunisian revolution will create an actual domino effect in the region or not, continued Western tacit support for Cold War cycles of top-down reform, static governance and containment is likely to steer the region into significant turmoil in the near future.

Posted in Algeria, Democracy Promotion, Foreign Aid, Islamist movements, Tunisia, Tunisia Symposium |