With Libya going down the drain, Egypt daily moving toward an Islamist dictatorship, and Syria in a bloody
civil war between Sunni and Shia Islamists, how is Tunisia—the most
potentially moderate Arab state which had the best chance of achieving
democracy--doing? Not very well.
Anna Mahjar-Barducci is one of the best authors writing about North Africa and she has produced a comprehensive article on Tunisia for MEMRI. She is also author of “Understanding the `Islamist Wave’ in Tunisia" in the MERIA Journal of which I'm the editor.
While
Tunisia is being run by a coalition of the Muslim Brotherhood and two
secular parties, the Brotherhood’s power is growing while Salafist
groups are free to intimidate people. The most vocal opposition leader,
Chokri Belaid, was assassinated with indications that this killing was
backed, even organized, by the ruling Islamists.
President
Moncef Marzouki is being described as weak in the face of this
Brotherhood takeover. A former human rights’ advocate, he is backing
down to the Brotherhood’s al-Nahda Party, which is the largest party in
the government. He has called the opposition “secular extremists” who
are seeking to stage a coup but never criticizes the violent Salafists.
Note
that claiming the opposition seeks to seize power by force
authorizes “regime defenders” to attack them by force. In fact,
Marzouki threatened that opposition members who were trying to overthrow
the government would be hung.
He
has threatened anyone criticizing Qatar—al-Nahda’s financier—with
prison. Unlike other Arab countries, however, the moderate democratic
opposition is well organized and has not been intimidated. Not yet
anyway.
Then,
on March 31, 2013, Marzouki’s own party, the National Council of the
Congress for the Republic,
appointed the president’s chief of staff Imed Daimi as
secretary-general. He was soon forced to resign, however, when it was
pointed out that it was strange to have a “center-left” and “secular”
party by a man with a long record of having been an Islamist militant.
He was also a featured speaker at the Turkish Islamist front group,
Union of the Good, which has connections with terrorist groups.
Whatever
Daimi’s current views, the idea that the president’s party, and one of
the governing coalition’s two “liberal” members, would have been headed
by an Islamist fellow traveler stirred up strong objections.
Like
the Communists historically, Islamist groups have been adept at
creating front groups, fellow travelers, and massive disinformation
campaigns, including creating the “Islamophobia” theme in the West.
Meanwhile, the main Salafist group in Tunisia, the Ansar al-Sharia, which has periodically engaged in low-level violence, has now threatened to launch a war of terrorism against the ruling party, which it says is only pretending to be Islamist. Here's a MEMRI report on this threat. And here's an example of the kind of riot that results.
One columnist in the Guardian is
critical of the Muslim Brotherhood ruling party in Tunisia. Why?
Because it is moving in an anti-democratic direction? No, because it
isn't working hard enough to integrate the "moderate" Salifists. Note
this new invention following that of the "moderate" Islamists and
""moderate"" Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile,
to show the gratitude of Tunisia for the Obama Administration's help to
its turnover of power to the Brotherhood, twenty people were sentenced
for an attack on the U.S. embassy in which four assailants were killed
and many wounded last September. They received a two-year suspended sentence. And
Tunisia is the only Arab country where an
eternal refusal to accept Israel, even if Israel and the Palestinians
agree on a two-state solution, is written into the Constitution.
At
any rate, things do not look good for Tunisia. And if Tunisia can’t
make a real, non-Islamist democracy, there is scant hope for Egypt,
Syria, or any other Arab state to do so.
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