Can Bin Ali counter bin Laden?
How Tunisia stemmed the tide of Islamic extremism

Atmane Tazaghart
Special to The Daily Star

TUNIS: North Africa has seen a big controversy over the past few weeks, both in political circles and the mass media, following the publication of a remarkable editorial in the French magazine L’Express under the headline: “Bin Ali versus bin Laden.” Denis Jeambar, managing director of the weekly, signed the article. It was such a sudden declaration of repentance for a series of French media campaigns, sustained over the past two years, against the regime of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine bin Ali in which L’Express had played a major role.

“For years,” wrote Jeambar, “we treated Tunisia unjustly and cruelly, despite the fact that it is the country closest to us and the most advanced in the Arab world in terms of individual freedoms, where the state is separated from religion and women enjoy rights unparalleled elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds.”

Ultimately, Jeambar reaches the conclusion that “despite the facts that political freedoms in Tunisia have not matured yet and that Islamists there are severely suppressed, the authoritarian regime of bin Ali has to continue, because democracy is not born overnight. Since the devastation of the World Trade Center, it has become clear to us that Osama bin Laden should be confronted with bin Ali!”

The article was received with a lot of jubilation in official circles in Tunisia. It was the first such recognition from a prominent French establishment that the attacks orchestrated by the French media against the Tunisian regime were to a large extent unfair. But the courage of the managing director of L’Express in holding himself to account so harshly did not prevent him from committing yet another mistake. He reduced the Tunisian experience in dealing with fundamentalist extremism to the security dimension alone, namely, the use of an iron fist to curb religious groups under the slogan of “no freedom to enemies of freedom.”

The article has re-ignited the political controversy, which first broke out in the mid-1980s in North Africa, over the ideal way of tackling the phenomenon of religious extremism. Should a firm approach and the curbing of freedom deal with it? Or does laying down the foundations of a pluralistic democracy, which would in itself be the safest fortress against any ambitions to usurp power, undermine extremism best?
After the emergence of fundamentalist extremism, Morocco tried to tackle the Islamist movements by wielding the stick of the Mekhzan ­ the omnipotent state security establishment developed over more than two decades by former Interior Minister Driss Basri. But this failed in either breaking their back or in limiting their appeal.

During the mid-1990s, the late King Hassan II embarked upon the experiment of “rotational governance” to allow for one of his erstwhile opponents, Abderahmane Youssoufi, leader of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), to become prime minister, after an election in which moderate Islamists took part. But there are still widely diverging views over the results of this experiment, especially in the face of fundamentalist challenges, which are already casting their shadow over the forthcoming parliamentary elections in September, and after the removal of restrictions on Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine, leader of the Islamist movement Al-Adl wal-Ihsan (Justice and Charity).

In Algeria, the approach was the opposite. There was a radical liberalization that brought Islamist movements to the threshold of power after the January 1991 elections. This was an experiment that was followed by a wave of political repression, which has since plunged Algeria into an explosion of terrorism and political violence.
But if the Moroccan experiment ­ liberalization after repression ­ and the Algerian one ­ repression after liberalization ­ have both failed, how did the Tunisian experiment manage to eliminate the roots of extremism, if what distinguishes the Tunisian experience, as L’Express’ editorial claims, consists merely of the success of the police and the security services in suppressing religious extremism?

I believe that what distinguishes the Tunisian experiment in dealing with extremist fundamentalism is primarily the Tunisian government’s ability to learn from the Algerian example. There it was not very difficult for religious extremism to ignite the spark of revolt in popular districts where “pockets of poverty” made available “ammunition dumps.” The Tunisian authorities realized at an early stage the importance of economic development as a means of closing the gap between classes in order to prevent a repeat of what happened in Algeria, where “belts” or “rings” of poverty became a fertile soil for the growth of the most extreme and violent of religious groups.

Creation of The Tunisian National Solidarity Fund was an embodiment of that approach. The Fund was given the responsibility of developing remote regions in the countryside and other pockets of poverty. In Tunisian political parlance these are known as “shaded regions.” They lack necessary public services and amenities, such as water, electricity, healthcare and job opportunities. The Fund sought to enable these regions to catch up with development elsewhere in the country.

In the early 1990s there were 1,114 of these so called “shaded regions,” which were in need of this special development program. These areas lacked the qualifications that would have enabled them to catch up and merge with the economic dynamics in the rest of the country on their own. This was either due to their remoteness or lack of necessary resources for economic activity. A development program aimed at gradually removing the gaps between these poor areas (home to some 181,000 families) and the rest of the country, which enjoyed growth rates close to six percent, was put in place. The program ­ which was carried out between 1993 and 2000 ­ cost an estimated $500 million.

The uniqueness of this experiment is that its budget was not a burden on state finances. And if it were, it would have negatively affected the country’s economic growth in that it would have disturbed the fine balance between economic growth, inflation and budget deficit. Instead, solely contributions from individuals as well as commercial and financial establishments in return for tax brakes in proportion to the size of the contribution financed The Tunisian National Solidarity Fund.
The sum of contributions collected under this development program until 1998 totted up to $366 million. This was enough to improve the standard of living of 151,000 poor families, spread over 928 “shaded regions.” These efforts to develop deprived areas were not confined to only providing essential services, such as water, electricity, schools and healthcare, but also to the financing of commercial and other business projects. Some $43.2 million were invested in such projects to create more lasting sources of income for the residents of poor regions.

This development policy yielded outstanding economic and social returns. The number of those living under the poverty line has receded to six percent of Tunisia’s total population. The number of people enjoying healthcare has shot up to 81 percent. The middle classes now make up three-quarters of the Tunisian population.
Seen from this perspective, the Tunisian experience served as a “spearhead” in confronting fundamentalist extremism. President bin Ali could be a strategic alternative in the confrontation with bin Laden. The United Nations has only to give a positive response to the project he submitted of setting up “an international solidarity fund” aimed at eliminating the gaps between countries of the North and those of the South, along the lines of the Tunisian experiment over the past 10 years.

A “fund” like this would undoubtedly contribute a great deal to defuse the bomb of deprivation, which is one of the primary sources of growing extremism, violence and wars in the southern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere, which has been recently hit by the “burning fires” of the South, should consider eliminating the gaps between rich and poor countries, fighting poverty and alleviating the suffering of deprived peoples, before it considers installing or buttressing authoritarian regimes, or imposing them by force on their peoples for no other reason than the hope that such regimes might fend off the dangers of terrorism.

Atmane Tazaghart is an Algerian specialist on Islamism and Maghreb affairs