Tunisian Jihadis

A group of revealing July 13 tweets by Lebanese journalist Jenan Moussa (lightly edited for clarity) on Tunisian jihadis in Syria:

I gained access to ISIS prisoners captured by Kurds in Raqqa. One of them was a Tunisian ISIS member...
I sat for 2 hours with a 34-year-old Tunisian ISIS prisoner. During the interview he never looked me in the eye because I'm a female reporter.
I asked him why he joined ISIS. He said, When the Muslim Brotherhood government was in power*, they encouraged the youth to go to Syria.
He said, In Tunisia the mosques said, Go to Syria for jihad. And we were told there'd be no repercussions when we returned. So I left.
My friend and I flew to Turkey. When the customs officer at Istanbul Airport realized we were going to Syria, he said, Yalla, go fast!
It was just so easy to join ISIS in Syria. Now I look back and I think, Was this all a conspiracy to get us all in one place and kill us all?

[*Presumably a reference to Rached Ghannouchi's Ennahda Movement government of 2011-14. Abdel Bari Atwan has this to say on the subject: "I have observed Tunisians in the ranks in previous jihads, but only in very small numbers... former Tunisian dictator Ben Ali suppressed all jihadist activity and imprisoned even moderate Islamists. The 2011 revolution and the subsequent victory of Islamist parties inspired a revival of hard-line Islamism in that country. Now, groups like Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of the Law, based in Libya) are able to recruit openly and have funded and facilitated the passage of Tunisian jihadists to the frontline." (Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate, 2015, pp 165-66)]

The Summer of Muslim Discontent 5: Tunisia

Continuing an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...

"In the case of Tunisia, Washington and the EU leveraged the Islamic Ennahda Party into power in order to abort the pro-democracy transformation. Subsequently, they heavily subsidized the 'free-market' Moncef Marzouki regime which has totally ignored the basic demands which led to the uprising: mass unemployment, the concentration of wealth, and subservience to US-EU foreign policy with regard to Palestine, Libya and Syria. The Islamic regime and party played the usual double game of condemning 'the film' and smashing the protest, knowing full well that the street protest could ignite a much more significant demonstration against the regime's total neglect of the Tunisian uprising's original democratic socio-economic agenda."

Next post in the series: Somalia, Sudan & Pakistan...

The Tunisian Intifada Rocks!

"Most of the regimes in the Arab world are what I call mukhabarat regimes*. 'Mukhabarat' is the Arabic term for intelligence services, but it is the generic term for the entire apparatus of internal security services. So a mukhabarat regime is a regime run by the internal security forces, largely in its own interests. It does not matter whether the ruler is called a king or a president (who may be elected by 99% of the population); the regime is still a mukhabarat regime, concerned mostly with staying in power." (The Wrong War, Avishai Margalit, nybooks.com, 13/3/03)

"In the words of a Tunisian academic the country is akin to 'un commissariat' (a police station), quintessentially a mukhabarat state. This 'commissariat' has been justified by the exaggerated paranoia and fear of a 'fundamentalist threat'. Bin Ali has used the Islamist threat to justify excessive policing." (The search for citizenship in Bin Ali's Tunisia: Democracy versus unity, Larbi Sadiki, Political Studies: 2002 Vol 50, p 506)

"I noticed on several videos that unlike the poor and hungry masses, the Mukhabarat (state security) men appeared well-fed and portly." (Comment on Ahmed Moor reporting from Cairo: 'I was tired, but no more tired than the people who have waited 30 years for the opportunity to breathe', mondoweiss.net, 27/1/11)

Break out the champagne! This is surely a first in the Arab world: the scrapping of a nation's mukhabarat. The Tunisian intifada rocks!:

"Tunisia's interior ministry has announced it is dissolving the country's secret police service. The agency has been widely accused of committing human rights abuses during the rule of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted on January 14. Interim Prime Minister Caid Essebsi has also announced a new government, which includes no members of the old regime. The interim government is running Tunisia until elections scheduled to take place on 24 July. The interior ministry announced online that it was disbanding the State Security Department, under which the secret police operated, and would respect 'civic freedoms and rights'. The move was a 'definitive break with any form of organisation resembling the political police at the level of structure, mission or practice', it said. 'These practical measures are in harmony with the values of the revolution, in the wish to respect the law, in word and deed, and in consecrating the climate of confidence and transparency in the relationship between the security services and the citizen', the ministry said in a statement. The secret police had played a key role in suppressing the opposition in the country. Human Rights Watch said members of the agency 'hounded dissidents, tortured Islamists, and shook down their compatriots'. The BBC's regional analyst Magdi Abdelhadi says dismantling the agency had been a key demand of the opposition, so the move will be seen as the ultimate victory over the Ben Ali regime." (Tunisia interim leaders dissolve secret police agency, bbc.co.uk, 7/3/11)

How sweet it is.

[* For Israel as a mukhabarat state, see my 28/11/09 post Just Another Middle Eastern Autocracy]

SMH: Relevant & Timely, Not

Utterly clueless and totally irrelevant, in the grand tradition of Sydney Morning Herald editorials on the Middle East:

"Did heavy rain in NSW help bring about the fall of a dictator in North Africa? Those chaos theorists who toyed with the idea of a butterfy's flapping wings setting off a storm halfway round the world might like to play around with the effect of a global grain shortage on Middle East politics." (Downfall shakes the region, 18/1/11)

And here's the concluding sentence: "The longer this stale regime [Egypt] continues, uncriticised and propped up with Western aid, the more unpredictable its political explosion."

Remind you of a certain other stale, uncriticised, propped-up entity?

And BTW, although the Tunisian intifada began on December 17 last year, the Herald's first report on the subject didn't appear until almost a month later, on January 15.

Bonzer Bloke. Shame About His People

Senior American officials just loved President Ben Ali. He made them feel so secure, and he was good for the ladies too:

"Hello. I just finished a really very good and extensive discussion with the president. Tunisia is a good friend of the United States, and has been for decades. It is a deep relationship. We have broad cooperation across a range of issues. We have obviously discussed the circumstances here in the region, in terms of security and counter-terrorism... Tunisia has taken a lead in the Arab Maghreb Union, which we believe is a useful organization for addressing all kinds of issues... We talked about internal matters here in Tunisia, about the course of reform. And I do want to say that the extraordinary role of women in Tunisia was something that I raised, that women have made great progress here." (Condoleezza Rice, Remarks after Meeting with Tunisian President Ben Ali, Tunis, 6/9/08, 2001-2009.state.gov)

The creme de la creme of Western intellectuals were impressed too. There may have been a tad too many portraits of the president for their liking, but hell, Colonel Qaddafi he ain't. And, of course, he was good for the ladies too:

"On the face of it, the country is one of Africa's most outstanding success stories. In the 2006-7 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, it was ranked No. 1 in Africa for economic competitiveness, even, incidentally, outpacing 3 European states (Italy, Greece, and Portugal). Home ownership is 80%. Life expectancy, the highest on the continent, is 72. Less than 4% of the population is below the poverty line, and the alleviation of misery by a 'solidarity fund' has been adopted by the United Nations as a model program... [Tunisia's] Code of Personal Status was the first in the Arab world to abolish polygamy, and the veil and the burka are never seen. More than 40% of the judges and lawyers are female. The country makes delicious wine and even exports it to France... Mr Ben Ali does not make lengthy speeches on TV every night, or appear in gorgeously barbaric uniforms, or live in a different palace for every day of the week. Tunisia has no grandiose armed forces, the curse of the rest of the continent, feeding parasitically off the national income and rewarding their own restlessness with the occasional coup." (Christopher Hitchens, At the desert's edge, Vanity Fair, July 2007)

But his people? What can I say? There's no satisfying the rabble:

"My host introduced me to the gardener... He explained that he was from Jbal Dinar, a small village about 40km from Ain Drahem in NW Tunisia. He told me about an incident in his village. A few weeks ago there was a cold snap in Tunisia and it snowed heavily in some parts of the country, including the area around Ain Drahem. Being a remote area, it lacked facilities. The people there are poor due to the scarcity of resources and lack of jobs. Therefore, they could not endure the cold snap. The authorities promised to help them. The day aid arrived, a TV crew was there to record and preserve the historic moment! According to the gardener, people were handed some old wool blankets and some food. But after the cameras had left, these were taken back!... My only question is: Where is the Solidarity Fund?" (What happened is not an isolated case!, atunisiangirl.blogspot.com, 2/1/11)

"Zine Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's president since Bourguiba's ouster in 1987, has called the hijab 'an imported form of sectarian dress' that 'does not fit with Tunisia's cultural heritage'. At a meeting of the state-dominated National Union of Tunisian Women, officials demanded that women in the audience remove their veils [sic] and in some cases tugged on them, according to a 2006 US State Department human rights report on Tunisia. 'The authorities stepped up harassment of women wearing the hijab', Amnesty International... said in its 2007 report on Tunisia. 'Some were reportedly ordered to remove their hijabs before being allowed into schools, universities or workplaces; and others were forced to remove them in the street', the report said." (Tunisia veil case threatens 'odious rag' struggle, Daniel Williams, bloomberg.com, 3/6/08)

"Meanwhile, the full horror of repression over four weeks of demonstrations is beginning to emerge. Human rights groups estimate at least 150-200 deaths since 17 December. In random roundups in poor, rural areas youths were shot in the head and dumped far from home so bodies could not be identified. Police also raped women in their houses in poor neighbourhoods in and around Kasserine in the rural interior. Sihem Bensedrine, head of the National Council for Civil Liberties, said: 'These were random, a sort of reprisal against the people. In poor areas, women who had nothing to do with anything, were raped in front of their families. Guns held back the men; the women were raped in front of them. A handful of cases were reported in Kasserine and Thala last Monday. Rape was often used as a torture technique under the regime; opposition women report they were raped in the basement of the interior ministry, as were men, too." (Confusion, fear & horror in Tunisia as old regime's militia carries on the fight: Tunisian capital witnesses violent clashes between armed forces and those loyal to former president Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali, Angelique Chrisafis, guardian.co.uk, 16/1/11)

Tunisia's Place in the US Empire

The hypocrisy! Notice how, when one of the US gang gets his backside well and truly whipped by those whose faces he's been grinding in the dust, the US acts as if it had no idea what had gotten into him. If only he'd behaved himself, he wouldn't be in that Saudi guesthouse today:

"The United States has warned its Middle Eastern allies to reform or be overthrown, as youths protesting against Tunisia's 50-year dictatorship clashed with police in the country's capital. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, ended a tour of the Gulf with a warning that leaders who failed to carry out political and economic reform risked being cast aside." (Change or fall, Clinton warns Mid-East leaders, Richard Spencer, Telegraph/Sydney Morning Herald, 15/1/11)

The word ally, with its suggestion of independent, rational choice, masks a grubby reality of winks, nods, bribes, arm-twisting and other unsavoury backroom dealings. Allies, such as Ben Ali's Tunisia, are more correctly described as client states in a US imperial system, subordinate but vital cogs in the machinery of US global domination.

In his book Rulers & Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (2007), James Petras refers to them specifically as Client Collaborator Regimes (CCR), and sums them up thus:

"At the bottom of the imperial hierarchy are the CCRs. These include Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf States, Cental American and Caribbean Island states, the Axis of Sub-Saharan States (ASSS), namely Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Ghana, Columbia, Peru, Paraguay, Mexico, Eastern European states (in and out of the EU), former states of the USSR (Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia etc), the Philippines, Indonesia, North African states and Pakistan. These countries are governed by authoritarian political elites dependent on the imperial or Newly Emerging Imperial Powers (NEIP) states for arms, financing and political support. They provide vast opportunities for exploitation and export of raw materials. Unlike the Semi Autonomous Client Regimes (SACR), exports from client regimes have little value added, as industrial processing of raw materials takes place in the imperial countries, particularly in the NEIP. Predator, rentier, comprador and kleptocratic elites, who lack any entrepreneurial vocation, rule in the CCR. They frequently provide mercenary soldiers to service imperial countries intervening, conquering, occupying and imposing client regimes in imperial-targeted countries. The client regimes are thus subordinate collaborators of the imperial powers in the plunder of wealth, the displacement of peasants, the exploitations of billions of workers and the destruction of the environment." (p 62)*

Specifically:

a) "The Tunisian Government is an important ally for the US in its resource-driven colonial wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. A United Nations report on secret detention practices lists Tunisia as having secret detention facilities where prisoners are held without International Red Cross access. Intelligence services in Tunisia are coordinated with US efforts in the War on Terror and have participated in interrogating prisoners at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and in Tunisia. Recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cables reveal that the US not long ago was concerned about the growing anger on the streets and the corruption of Ben Ali and the Trabelsi family (his wife's family) who treat everything in the country as theirs. A list of WikiLeaks cables from the US Embassy in Tunisia posted on The Guardian newspaper website indicate that the US considers Tunisia as a police state 'with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems', and the Ben Ali family as 'quasi mafia'. Nevertheless, the State Department boasts about the active support the Tunisian security forces receive from the US in spite of Ben Ali's government record of serious human rights violations. According to the State Department website: 'The US and Tunisia have an active schedule of joint military exercises. US security assistance historically has played an important role in cementing relations. The US-Tunisian Joint Military Commission meets annually to discuss military cooperation, Tunisia's defense modernization program, and other security matters'." (Tunisia: IMF 'Economic Medicine' has resulted in mass poverty & unemployment, Basel Saleh, globalresearch.ca, 31/12/10)

b) "[T]he Obama administration tried last year to give [Ben Ali] what would amount to a parting gift: $282 million worth of upgrades to Ben Ali's helicopter fleet. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency - which handles military hardware sales to US allies - informed Congress on June 30 [last] that it wanted to send 'equipment, parts, training and logistical support' to Tunisia for 12 SH-60F Sikorsky-made multimission helicopters. It's a twin-engine 'copter used - as the name suggests - for attacking targets as well as airlift. The navy uses them as the Seahawk. Tunisia's military supposedly was to use the SH-60s for 'over-water search and rescue capabilities'. It's unclear if the deal ever went through. The DSCA didn't return a request for clarification. But our pals at War Is Business report that since Ben Ali came to power in 1987, US military assistance to him has totaled $349 million - meaning the SH-60 sale represented a massive escalation in aid." (US had helo deal with ousted Tunisian dictator, Spencer Ackerman, wired.com, 14/1/11)

The Tunisian Intifada 2

Paris-based Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi* interviewed on the Tunisian intifada:

What news have you had from Tunisia over the last few days? Between 20 and 40 deaths following the most recent actions by the police. Demonstrations have broken out across the country, especially in the universities and schools, so lessons have been suspended until further notice, and Facebook is being partially censored. They have also fired the head of the army.

How did this clash between the government and the people begin? The suicide of Mohamed Bou'azizi in Sidi Bouzid sparked everything. On 17 December, he set himself on fire out of pure despair. He was a young, unemployed graduate who sold vegetables on the street just to make ends meet, but the authorities confiscated them because he didn't have a permit. He didn't know where to turn. His was not the only case of self-immolation, several others did the same thing. One person electrocuted himself, another threw himself off a bridge. Since then, the people of the centre-west and south have risen up because those are the most economically neglected regions.

What do the people want? They're demanding the right to work, freedom of expression, and free elections. We want to move on to something new, to breath the fresh air of hope, to freely express ourselves. This is not just demagoguery. People are now saying, 'The morphine we've been injected with for the last 23** years is no longer enough to dull our pain'.

You were in Tunisia over the New Year, did you feel something was about to happen? Things were happening when I was there doing concerts, but we didn't really understand what was going on. We didn't think it was going to get this bad. I don't think anyone could have known. We were all taken by surprise.

From the outside, it seems to be a movement of young people. Is that the case? Yes, it's only logical because 48% of the population is under 35. But it's not only young people. Older people, men and women are also on the streets, expressing their anger.

The demonstrators have the support of the public? The movement is widespread, all over Tunisia, from the coast to the inland regions. Everyone is together in this. The solidarity took a long time coming, but I'm happy about this.

Is any opposition power structure emerging? There are a few opposition parties who've never really been able to do much because of the situation. Now, I think they've been overtaken by events. We hope that they'll take a position soon and present it to the people. We're counting on them.

Can an Islamist movement take advantage of the situation? I think that's always been the lie and the excuse that the government has used, with the support of the West. Tunisia is capable of changing from within without an Islamist movement taking advantage of the situation. We've had the proof since December 17. Long live a free and secular Tunisia!

How far do you think all of this could go? It can go a long way, and I hope it does! 'Akahaw/yezzi' (That's enough) as we say. It's time for Tunisia to change, and change radically. We need to move forward into a new era. We need transparent leaders who care about the people and can allow Tunisia to to regain its spirit and its freedom. (Tunisia. Emel Mathlouthi: 'The morphine we've been injected with for 23 years is no longer enough to dull our pain', mondomix.com, 12/1/11)

[* Emel/ Amel who? Check her out on YouTube (I recommend Amel Mathlouthi live a Bastille) and be blown away as I was; ** 1987, when the current dictator Ben Ali took over in a bloodless coup]

The Tunisian Intifada

Nothing at all has appeared in the Australian ms media about the intifada underway in Tunisia.* If this were Iran, on the other hand...

Sudanese-born Briton, Nesrine Malik, writes eloquently in The Guardian 0f 31 December about Tunisia's inspiring rebellion:

"There are few moments in the political atmosphere of the Middle East that fill me with genuine pride. While eyes have long been fixed on opposition movements in Iran and Egypt, suddenly Tunisia has provided one of the most inspiring episodes of indigenous revolt against a repressive regime. Following the self-immolation of an unemployed man, riots and demonstrations have swept through the country. Lebanese journalist Octavia Nasr wrote on Thursday: 'I never thought this day would come. Certainly not in Tunisia. To be quite honest, out of the Middle East region, I thought such a rebellious act would come from Egypt where the opposition to President Mubarak's regime is so fierce and vocal that public demonstrations of anger and dismay have become a routine'.

"Despite the depressing reports of security forces shooting demonstrators dead, the events are heartening, not necessarily as a harbinger of transformation in the region, but as an indication that it is possible. 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.

"I am generally wary of lumping Arab countries together in terms of political climate, but in this case it is more or less valid. From the monarchies of the Gulf, to the hereditary presidencies of the Levant and North Africa, bar the odd military coup, there has been little evidence of potential regime change. Those who espouse slow, gradual and incremental progress argue that the attrition of globalisation will eventually lead to an organic transformation. But in my own lifetime I have seen regression in places, and globalisation either selectively sampled, or co-opted in the effort to subjugate citizens.

"The complication in many parts of the Arab world is that it is never really simple brute oppression; it is a sophisticated system of stick and carrot, of fear and incentive, to maintain the status quo. In Tunisia itself, there existed a system of subsidies of strategic commodities which granted the state some legitimacy and political allegiance, but even that has crumbled. Whether it is the laudanum of oil-wealth in Saudi Arabia, the parallel systems of bribery in Egypt which subsidise income, the alliances of patronage with powerful tribal leaders in Jordan which underwrite the monarchy's legitimacy, or the pact with the military in Algeria, there are several factors, underscored by support from the state's security forces, which douse the flame of rebellion.

"In addition, there is a tendency to downwardly compare miseries with other Arab countries. Those in oil-rich states comfort themselves that at least they are safe from the relative poverty of North Africans, who in turn seek solace in that they enjoy relative freedom of dress and intermingling of the sexes. And all can take comfort that at least they are not Sudan.

"Although Tunisia is relatively remote from mainstream Arab culture and popular media, which is dominated by Levantine and Gulf elements, the events on Tunisia's streets are being watched on satellite TV throughout the Arab world.

"Not that outpourings of passion are rare on Arab streets, but they are usually related to the latest events in Palestine, some random perceived insult from the West - or football. It's the rage of an easily slighted dignity, and it's rarely directed against the primary local culprit: the government itself.

"In a detailed analysis, the Moor Next Door blog says: These riots are important because they challenge the dominant discourse on Tunisia's politics (or lack thereof) in Western writing and reporting. Tunisia is by far the most politically stable country in North Africa, and arguably the one with the healthiest economy. But this is all relative to its neighbours and must be considered in the regional context. If things are going the way they are in Tunisia, what does this mean for other geriatric regimes on the verge of power transitions?'

"Even if nothing comes of the Tunisian revolt, it is proof that resignation is not an inevitability, that it is not hardwired into our DNA, that the 'Arab malaise' is not terminal."

To feel the rage of the Tunisian intifada, view the video Inspiration from Tunis at pulsemedia.org.

[PS (13/1/11)* The first reports on Tunisia (AFP) have finally appeared - in The Australian of January 11 & 13.]