The causes of the Tunisian revolution go well beyond Ben Ali and his party
Interview with Mohamed Hassan, a former Ethiopian ambassador,
and leading expert in the politics of the Middle East and the Arab and Islamic
world generally.
Interview conducted by Grégoire Lalieu
and Michel Collon on 1 February 2011, i.e., after the
Tunisian revolution but before the downfall of Mubarak. – translated from
French original. Reproduced from the Investig’Action website (www.
michelcollon.info), with thanks
_____________________________________________________
The Tunisians have brought down the dictator Ben
Ali. Today they continue to struggle against his people heading the transition
government. In this latest chapter of our series ‘Understanding the Muslim
world’, Mohamed Hassan explains what is at stake in the Tunisian revolution and
its deep causes: how the liberal nationalism espoused by Bourguiba subjected
Tunisia to western interests, plunging the people into poverty; how a
repressive state was created in order to maintain that system; why the
dictators of the Arab world have come to the point of falling; and how Islamism
has become a safety valve for imperialism
____________________________________
In December 2010 revolts
exploded in Tunisia. A month later, President Ben Ali escapes from country
after a 23-year reign. What were the causes of this revolution? And how is it
that this people’s movement managed to bring down the dictator while other
attempts all failed?
In order for there to be a revolution, it is
necessary for the population to refuse to continue to live in the same way as
before, and for the ruling class to be in no position to govern in the same way
as before. On 17 December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young fruit and vegetable
seller, immolated himself after police confiscated his merchandise and the
local authorities had prevented him from working. The conditions existed for a
revolution to break out in Tunisia, and the suicide of Bouazizi was the fuse.
For in fact the Tunisians did not want to live as
they had done up to then. They were no longer prepared to accept corruption,
police repression, lack of freedoms, unemployment, etc. And also, the ruling
class could not govern as it had been doing. The corruption under Ben Ali had
grown to phenomenal levels while the population faced poverty. To maintain
these conditions, police repression had to increase, but it had reached its
limit. The élite in power was completely disconnected from the people because
there was no interlocutor. As a result, when the people’s revolts broke out,
the ruling class had no choice but to resort to violence. But faced with the
people’s determination, repression too had reached its limit. This is one of
the keys to the success of the Tunisian people’s revolution: it managed to
embrace all segments of society, including people in the army and police who
sympathised with the demonstrators. The apparatus of repression could not
function as it had done before either. If a revolt emerges but is not able to
bring together different segments of society, it cannot develop into a real
revolution.
Even
after Ben Ali left the protests continued. The situation rejected by the
Tunisians is not the legacy of a single man?
The placards saying ‘Ben Ali must go’ have been replaced
by placards saying ‘the RCD must go’. Tunisians are opposing the president’s
political party because they fear seeing his men taking power. But the truth
is that the basic causes that have brought the Tunisians to revolt by and large
go beyond Ben Ali and the RCD. It is therefore not enough to get rid of the
president for a people to gain freedom and improve its conditions of existence.
Corruption, unemployment, social inequality … These
are the effects of western imperialist domination over Tunisia. Because Tunisia, since its independence, has become a US project.
What do you understand by imperialism?
Imperialism is the process through which the
capitalist powers politically and economically control foreign countries.
Western multinationals pillage the resources of the countries of Africa, Latin
America and Asia. They find there an outlet for the capital they accumulate
and they exploit cheap labour there. I say that the multinationals are
pillaging because they are not buying these resources at their proper price and
the local populations get no benefit from this wealth. This pillage would not
be possible if in these exploited countries there were not leaders defending
the interests of the multinationals. These leaders enrich themselves on the
way. They are what is called the comprador bourgeoisie. They have no political
vision for their own countries; they produce no wealth and do not develop the
real economy. But they enrich themselves personally by trading their country’s
resources to the multinationals. Obviously, the people are the big victims of
all this.
When you are an anti-imperialist nationalist, on
the other hand, you seek to develop independently. You nationalise the key
sectors of your economy rather than leaving them to be managed by foreign
companies. In this way you create a national economy for the country and you
enable it to grow on an independent basis. That is what I call a democratic
national revolution: it is national because it is independent of imperialist
powers and democratic because it is against feudalism and the country’s
reactionary elements.
Yet Bourguiba, the first Tunisian president,
was considered to be a socialist. Under his rule, the state still played a
very important part in the economy.
Bourguiba’s political party was socialist in name
only. If the state played an important part, it was only for the benefit of the
elite. It was what is called state capitalism. Moreover, Bourguiba
systematically eliminated all progressive and anti-imperialist elements from
his party. As a result, this party became a one-man party, completely subject
to US imperialism.
Why was Tunisia important for the US?
In order to understand properly the importance of
this country for US strategy, we must analyse the political context of the Arab
world in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1952 army officers overthrew the monarchy of
King Farouk in Egypt and proclaimed a republic. With Nasser in command, Egypt became a base for Arab nationalism influenced by revolutionary ideas inspired by socialism.
As shown by the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, Nasser’s seizure of power
was hard for the West because the politics of the Egyptian president was
totally opposed to the hegemonic aspirations of the western powers in the near
and middle East. Worse still: Nasser’s anti-imperialist ideas were being
emulated in the region, in Yemen, for example, where in 1962 a revolution
divided the country, with the south becoming a bastion of the Arab
revolutionary movement. That same year, the independence of Algeria sent a strong signal to Africa and the Third World, putting the imperialist powers on
alert. We should also take note of Gadaffi’s coup d’état in Libya in 1969. The colonel took power and nationalised major sectors of the economy, to
the great disadvantage of the West. 10 years later the Islamic revolution in Iran brought down the Shah, one of the most important pillars of US strategy in the Middle East.
In short, at that time, a very strong
anti-imperialist movement was challenging US strategic interests in the Arab
world. Happily for Washington, not every country in the region followed in Nasser’s footsteps. This was the case with Tunisia. In 1957, a year after Tunisian
independence, Bourguiba became one of the first Arab leaders to write in the
prestigious US journal, Foreign Affairs. The title of his article? ‘In
matters that concern her, Tunisia has unequivocally chosen to make its way in
the free world of the West’. This was at the height of the cold war. The
Soviets were supporting Nasser whose influence in the region was spreading.
And the US needed pro-imperialist agents like Bourguiba in order not to lose
its strategic control of the Arab world.
Can one be a nationalist
and a pro-imperialist at the same time?
Bourguiba was a liberal nationalist with
anti-communist ideas which drove him into the western imperialist camp. In fact
I consider Bourguiba to be the George Padmore of the Arab world. Padmore was a
Pan-African leader who originated from the Caribbean. In 1956 he wrote a book
called Panafricanism or communism: the coming struggle in Africa. Just
like Bourguiba, he held anti-communist ideas even though he claimed to be a
nationalist; but his political outlook was to a large extent subservient to the
interests of imperialist powers. Nationalism was just a cover because their
politics were far from independent. Padmore was a major influence on the first
President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, one of the instigators of the African
Union. His pro-imperialist ideas were also to spread all over the continent
with the results that today one can see celebrations more or less everywhere of
the 50th anniversaries of independence, but many Africans know that they never
did become independent. President Nkrumah himself later regretted having
followed Padmore’s advice.
In Tunisia too, its subjection to imperialist
interests was soon resented and it became clear that the nationalism preached
by Bourguiba was just a façade. During the 1970s, for example, the President
promulgated a whole host of measures designed to attract foreign investment:
freedom from taxation of company profits for 10 years, freedom from all
obligations and taxes for 20 years, freedom from taxation on income from real
property, etc. Tunisia in this way became a vast workshop for western
multinationals which repatriated the profits that they made.
Hasn’t Tunisia all the same made significant
progress under Bourguiba?
Yes there have been positive advances: in
education, in the position of women, etc. This is above all because the
Tunisian elite did include certain progressives – though they were quickly
sidelined. Also, Tunisia needs to dress in its prettiest clothes. After all,
this country was playing a major role in the US strategy to counter communist
influence in the Arab world. But what did you have on the other side:
progressive revolutionary movements which had overthrown backward monarchies
and which enjoyed the support of the masses. You cannot oppose this movement
by supporting a feudal system. Saudi Arabia managed to do that because it
could use its petrol money for the purpose. But Tunisia had no such resources
at its disposal, and therefore had to present a somewhat progressive image. In
the fight against communism, its role was to present itself as a Third World country that had achieved success by following the path of liberal nationalism.
But under the window dressing the reality was less
flattering. As I said, Bourguiba had systematically eliminated the progressive
elements who didn’t follow him. The anti-imperialist elements who wanted Tunisia to be economically as well as politically independent, those who wanted to operate
independently in the Third World and on the question of the Israel-Palestine
conflict, all of them were fought. And what was intended to become a success
of liberal nationalism became a dictatorship.
When Ben Ali succeeded Bourguiba in 1987,
did he follow the same path?
Absolutely. One can even say that submission to
western interests was accentuated. Ben Ali was a straightforward US agent. In 1980, when he was ambassador in Poland, he even acted as a conduit for communications
between the CIA and Lech Walesa, the trade union leader who was fighting
against the Soviet Union.
In 1987, when Ben Ali took over the presidency of Tunisia, the country was heavily indebted as a result of the capitalist crisis of 1973.
Moreover, at that time, the ideas of Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys were
very much in fashion. These ultra-liberal economists thought that the market
is an entity capable of self-regulation and that the state should under no
circumstances involve itself in the economy. The Tunisian technical elite,
having for the most part studied in the US, were heavily influenced by
Friedman’s theories. Ben Ali abandoned the state capitalism that had prevailed
in the Bourguiba era. Under the supervision of the IMF and the World Bank, it
embarked on a programme of privatisation which was far broader than the one his
predecessor had already undertaken since the 1970’s.
What were the effects of this new political
economy?
First of all, the privatisation of the Tunisian
economy allowed Ben Ali and his in-laws, the Trabelsi, to enrich themselves
personally. Corruption reached a very high level and Tunisia became a country that had completely surrendered to imperialism, led by a comprador
bourgeoisie. Of course, Ben Ali and his clan did not have much in the way of
raw materials to sell to the western multinationals. But they did take
advantage of the education system that Bourguiba had put in place to develop a
service economy. The fact is that Tunisian labour is both well qualified and
very cheap. It therefore attracts foreign investment.
Tourism too was strongly developed to the point
that it became the pillar of the Tunisian economy. One can see the elite’s
lack of political vision. In fact no country can develop its economy on the
basis of tourism if it has not first developed a national economic base. The
tourism industry consumes an enormous amount but brings very little to the
Tunisian people. Just imagine: while western tourists consume gallons of water
in order to relax in swimming pools, jacuzzis or for watering golf courses, the
poor peasants in the south have to cope with arid farmland.
But it is not just the peasants who suffered as a
result of this policy. Generally, the social conditions of the Tunisian people
deteriorated while the entourage of the president amassed a colossal fortune.
Everybody knew the regime was corrupt. Therefore, to keep the system going, the
regime had to suppress all dissent. The repression became even more brutal
under Ben Ali: the merest criticism, or even a desire for modernity and opening
up, was no longer allowed. Such a situation could only lead to a popular
uprising. Moreover, by wanting to grab for his family alone the wealth of the
country, Ben Ali enraged part of the traditional Tunisian bourgeoisie.
You say that political repression was very
strong. Are there in spite of this still opposition forces around today who
are capable of leading the people’s revolution now that Ben Ali has
fallen ?
Real opposition parties were banned under Ben Ali.
Nevertheless some parties continued to exist underground. For example the
first Tunisian communist party could not emerge in the light of day and
organise as if it were just any political party in a democracy. But it
continued to function secretly through organisations of civil society
(teachers, farmers, doctors, prisoners, etc.) The PTPD was thus able to build
up a social base and gain solid experience during this period. That is
exceptional in the Arab world.
I think that two major challenges face the
opposition parties at the moment. First of all, they need to come out from the
shadows and make themselves known to the broad public in Tunisia. Then they need to organise a front of resistance to imperialism. Of course the
imperialist powers are seeking to keep the Ben Ali system going without Ben
Ali. We can see this at the moment with the government of national unity that
the Tunisians reject, which is very positive. But the imperialist powers
aren’t going to stop there. They will certainly seek to impose an
international electoral commission to support the candidates who will best
defend their interests. It is therefore necessary to resist such interference
by creating a united front for the purpose of building a real democracy.
Are the opposition parties capable of
overcoming their differences sufficiently to create such a front?
I know that there are certain political organisations
which are reluctant to associate themselves with the Islamo-nationalist Ennahda
movement. This movement appeared in the 1980’s. It promoted an
anti-imperialist line and has in fact been subjected to political repression.
Why not include Ennahda in a front to resist the interference of foreign
powers? Tunisia is a Muslim country. It is therefore normal that a political
force should emerge with an islamo-nationalist tendency. You can’t prevent
that.
But each one of these movements needs to be studied
separately, with its own specific features. This is what was done by
communists in the PTPD. They scientifically studied the objective conditions
applying in Tunisia. Their conclusion is that communist and
islamo-nationalists alike have been victims of political repression and that,
even if their programmes differ, they share a common base: they want to see the
end of the dictatorship and independence for Tunisia. Therefore the communists
proposed an alliance with the Islamo-nationalists a long time ago now. Of
course, the PTPD does not want to turn Tunisia into an Islamic state. Its
political programme differs from that of Ennahda. But it is the Tunisian
people who will have to decide democratically on these differences. Elections
should be a competition open to all. That is real democracy.
In fact, the opposition parties got together
in the 14 January front to struggle against the interim government of Mohamed
Ghannouchi, a close associate of former president Ben Ali. Is this an
encouraging sign?
Absolutely, Tunisia is on a good track: all the
banned opposition parties have up to now created a united front to prevent Ben
Ali’s system carrying on without Ben Ali. Let us also underline the role
played by the grassroots of the UGTT trade union. The leadership of this
union, which was legal under Ben Ali, was corrupt and collaborated with the
police state. But then the union grassroots put pressure on its leaders, UGTT
members who formed part of the interim government resigned. Even if there is
still a long way to go, democracy is taking over Tunisian institutions under
pressure from the people.
The western powers are opposed to this. They want
to impose on Tunisia a low level democracy in which only ‘good’ candidates
would be able to stand in elections. If you look at the kind of democracy that
the US appreciates, you will come to Ethiopia. The US government provided $983
million to this country in the Horn of Africa for the year 2010. That same
year, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who has been in post for 16 years, was
re-elected with 99.5% of the votes! It’s even better than Ben Ali. The truth
is there to see: behind their beautiful speeches supporting the Tunisian
people, the western powers continue actively to support a lot of other Ben Alis
all over the world.
Could the US not back other pro-imperialist
candidates who would not be associated, in the minds of Tunisians, with the Ben
Ali era?
That would be difficult. There is a part of the
comprador bourgeoisie that was disadvantaged under Ben Ali’s corrupt system.
But this elite is not strong enough to control the popular movement and doesn’t
have enough influence in the establishment to be able to take over.
The US had also considered another strategy: a few
months ago, when Ben Ali was still in power, the US ambassador went to visit a
communist leader in prison. Officially, it was a simple visit of inspection in
the context of respect for human rights. Unofficially, the US was anticipating Ben Ali’s demise and wanted to test the ground. Their objective was to set up
the communists against the Islamo-nationalists, to divide the resistance to
imperialism with a view to weakening it. But the communists did not fall into
the trap. They are very familiar with this strategy developed by Henry
Kissinger in the 1980s for the Middle East. They published a very good study
on the subject and they know that they must not receive orders from abroad or
to adopt ideologies made up by foreign powers.
Why
did the US abandon Ben Ali? Had he gone too far in his personal enrichment?
According to a WikiLeaks cable, the US ambassador was very critical of the
Tunisian president’s quasi Mafia system, since organised corruption was an
obstacle to investment by foreign enterprises.
That wasn’t the problem. The US weren’t worried about corruption. On the contrary, it is a key element in the US system of domination over countries of the South. In reality, Washington was aware of Tunisia’s internal situation and knew that Ben Ali was no longer in a position to rule.
The western powers need now to ensure that whoever replaces Ben Ali will
continue to defend their interests. The stakes are high. The capitalist
crisis is causing serious problems in the west. Side by side with this is the
fact that China is growing in strength and is nowadays lending more than the
World Bank and the imperialist powers together. It even wants to buy a
significant part of the eurozone debt, partly because it has economic interests
in European countries, and partly to divide the imperialist powers, the
European Union being historically allied to the US.
In this context, the Tunisian people’s movement,
under the guidance of a revolutionary leadership, could set up an independent
government taking advantage of the situation of multipolarity in the world.
The imperialist powers fear that countries which were traditionally under their
domination will become economically independent by turning to China. Tunisia could build relations with the Asiatic giant developing its commercial ports.
This would be a serious challenge for the concept of Mediterranean dialogue,
that extension of NATO to the countries of the Mediterranean, which is not a
dialogue at all but a simple instrument of western domination.
Another country that seems to fear democracy
in Tunisia and in the region is Israel. Its deputy prime minister, Silvan
Shalom, said shortly after Ben Ali’s demission that the development of
democracy in Arab countries was a threat to Israel’s security. Is this
country, often called the only democracy in the Middle East, afraid of
competition?
Under its democratic façade, Israel is a fascist state, an apartheid state. In the region it cannot therefore ally
itself with anybody except repressive dictatorial states, led by the same
comprador bourgeoisies who weaken the body of the Arab nation. Currently,
these Arab states are rich countries inhabited by poor people. But if a
government which was truly democratic, in the full meaning of the word,
emerged, it would strengthen economically the Arab nation as a whole. Such a
development would lead to an alliance of Arab states being formed against the
racist state that oppresses the Palestinians. Of course Israel is afraid of that.
Moreover, there is a deep gulf between the official
positions of the Arab dictators and popular feelings towards the
Israel-Palestine conflict. Since the Egyptian president Sadat surrendered to Israel in 1977, Egypt’s position is that “we want peace”. But this is a position imposed on the
population by force. The current Egyptian government is not content with
merely maintaining peaceful relations with Tel Aviv, but is participating
actively in the strangulation of Gaza, while the majority of Egyptians support
the Palestinians.
It’s the same as far as the alignment of the Arab
dictators behind Washington’s policies is concerned. Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are allies of the US, while the populations of these countries are
anti-imperialist. I was in Egypt at the time when Mountazer al-Zaïdi, the
Iraqi journalist, threw his shoes at George W Bush. The Egyptian people held
him up as a hero. I heard fathers wanting to marry their daughters to the
journalist. And yet the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was one of Washington’s most faithful allies.
Do you think that the Tunisian revolution,
through a domino effect, could bring about the fall of other dictatorships in
the Arab World?
70% of the population of the Arab countries is
under 30 and has only ever known unemployment, police repression and
corruption. But all these young people want to live. And to live they
need change. That’s the reality in all these countries. There is therefore no
need of a domino effect: objective conditions already exist for other
revolutions to break out.
The peoples do not want to live as they did
previously. But are the ruling classes, for their part, incapable of ruling as
they did previously?
Obviously. You can see this in Egypt today. There are police everywhere in the country. But it is impossible to control
everything. A police state has its limits and those of the Arab world have
reached them.
Moreover, information plays a very important role
today. Tunisians, Egyptians and the people of the third world are better
informed thanks to Al-Jazeera, on the one hand, and the internet and its social
networks, on the other. The development of information technology has lifted
people’s levels of education and consciousness. The people are no longer a
mass of illiterate peasants. You have a lot of very canny young people of a certain
practical bent, who are capable of dodging censorship and mobilising on the
internet.
Are there in these countries opposition
forces capable of leading people’s revolutions?
Why would repression be so important if these
dictators were in no danger: Why would this comprador bourgeoisie, which is so
greedy, spend so much money on the apparatus of repression if it did not fear
being overthrown? If there were no opposition, all that would be unnecessary.
Many
western observers fear that the fall of these Arab regimes will facilitate the
rise of Islamism. As Christophe Barbier, the editor of l’Express, has
summed it up so nicely: “Better Ben Ali than the bearded lot”. Is there any
basis for this fear of the rise of Islamism?
Islamism has become an imperialist excuse. The
western powers justify their strategy of domination over the Muslim Arab world
on the pretext of combating Islamism. You find Islamists everywhere today.
Soon we would find traces of Al Qaeda on Mars if that was useful to the imperialists!
In fact, the West has always needed to invent an
enemy to justify its hegemonic ambitions and its incredible military expenses
(paid for by taxes). After the fall of the Soviet Union and the disappearance
of the communist enemy, it was Islamism and al-Qaeda that were given the role
of the wicked villains.
But the West has no problem with Islamism. It can accommodate itself to this phenomenon in a country like Saudi Arabia. Furthermore it has itself in its time assisted the rise of Islamic movements
as a means of controlling nationalism. That is why it tries to discredit all
and any popular movement in the Arab world that opposes its interests by
appending to it the label ‘Islamist’.
Finally,
you would have to be very naive to believe that the Arab dictatorships are
bastions against the rise of religious fanaticism. On the contrary, these
repressive regimes have caused part of the population to be radicalised. Who
has the right to say that this or that people has no right to democracy? In a
truly democratic country, different forces can emerge. But the comprador
bourgeoisie that is in power in the Arab dictatorships cannot win over the
population. It cannot even face up to it. In order to defend imperialist
interests, therefore, they have to prevent other political forces from emerging
since they are liable to influence people against the corrupt elite. The West
has always sought to maintain dictatorships serving its interests by holding up
the bogy of Islamism. But the Arab peoples need democracy. They are demanding
it today and nobody can go against these demands.