Notes on the Tunisian Revolution by Dyab Abou Jahjah http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/jahjah150111.html
>From day one it was clear this was a revolution that was not about bread only, it was also against dictatorship and corruption. The revolution was supported by all segments of society. Poor, middle class, and even upper middle class. Especially the middle class showed its claws in the last days in Tunis. Many friends of mine who live there and who are university students or employed in good positions were in the street, also taking tear gas and bullets. The youth played an important role in all this and cell phones combined with Facebook connected through proxy services was the media of the revolution. The trade union (UGTT) played the role of the momentum regulator and political indicator. It was clear that as long as the trade union kept on declaring strikes the battle was on, and that was the signal to the people to stick to the streets. Yet we cannot say that the trade union led the revolution; it rather synchronized with it, especially the last crucial two days. On the political level there was no single party or current who played a major role. The traditional opposition that is mainly in exile tried to coordinate and even thought of a government in exile. But the momentum of the revolution was too fast for such plans to materialize. The people had no leader but itself. This however posed a problem for the revolution as to how to organize transition of power: who will take over. There were only three options: exile government (but that would be only in the long run); military coup; or some figure from the regime institution will take over. Now it seems that the two last options are still open. Ghanoushi the prime minister is from within the establishment, but it is very likely that he will be in power for few days only, some believe few hours. Rumors about General Ammar taking over and appointing the speaker of the house El Mbazaa as caretaker till elections are organized in 60 days are now circulating within the ranks of the Army and the political scene. As for possible attempts of the regime to regenerate itself, this can maybe done through creating mayhem and chaos in the streets. Reports of violence, looting, and arson are widely spread at this moment. But that is very unlikely to lead to a counter-revolutionary sentiment, because people realize that these are the downsides of any revolution, there is no birth without pain. . . . As for the repercussions on the Arab world and beyond. . . . They are paramount. All Arab dictators are now shaking on their thrones. Especially in the Maghreb countries, but also Mubarak will have a sleepless night. The Arab peoples now saw and know for sure what a people can do. They saw another Arab people bring down the harshest of dictators in less than a month. All that was needed was unity and determination to go all the way. This will certainly lead to the revival of revolutionary dreams among the Arab oppressed classes (middle class and masses) and will start the dawn of democracy. The Americans and the Zionists -- and also France -- are nervous today: their best friend in the area was kicked out. . . . And the people is heading to govern itself in Tunisia with its own agenda with all the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist elements of that. A free democratic Tunisia will not only be a model for democracy for all Arabs, it will also be a safe haven for revolutionary powers and a place of support for the resistance against Israel and the U.S. The international alliance against empire hegemony will have another member. Now finally, Tunisia is a beautiful country that has a very highly educated people, very critical and very vocal. Tunisians are both Maghreb and Mashrek, they look like all Arabs and they talk like all Arabs, they can form the core of the Arab people for liberation. Tunisia can play the role that Egypt is no longer willing or able to play. In the age of democracy and freedom, Tunisia must export its revolution, but, before all, Tunisia must consolidate it and bring it to its happy end by building a system based upon freedom, equality, diversity, and citizenship. A real State of law and a model to follow. I for one believe that Tunisians are the best among all Arabs for this task. We will all watch and learn. Dyab Abou Jahjah is founder and former president of the Arab European League. This article was first published in his blog Abou Jahjah Comments on 14 January 2011; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. ..................................................................... Tunisia: The Force of Disobedience by Sadri Khiari http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/khiari140111.html Sadri Khiari, Tunisian activist exiled in France since early 2003, is one of the founding members of the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic (PIR), of which he is currently one of the key leaders. He has published, among others, Tunisie. Le délitement de la cité : coercition, consentement, résistance, éditions Karthala, Paris, 2003; Pour une politique de la racaille: Immigré-e-s, indigènes et jeunes de banlieue, éditions Textuel, Paris, 2006; and La contre-révolution coloniale en France de de Gaulle à Sarkozy, éditions La Fabrique, Paris, 2009. For many years I have been reading. I read everything that is written about the political situation in Tunisia. Almost everything, to be honest. I have read analyses about the Tunisian economy that is doing well or that is not doing well, that "is doing well . . . but" or that "is not doing well . . . but." I have read articles about the omnipotence of the police, the attacks on civil liberties, repression, prison, torture, and the action of the defenders of human rights. I have read articles about corruption in the highest echelons of the State, harsh facts, rumors, or simple gossip about the mafia-style nepotism of the ruling "families." I have read articles about the North American influence, the French backing, the European support, the connections with Israel. I have read serious studies on the nature of the State and the Tunisian political system, on the existence of a "civil society" or lack thereof, on the existence of a "public opinion" or lack thereof. I have read essays on the Anthropology of Authority, essays on the deconstruction of the most microscopic mechanisms of power, discourse analyses, culturalist studies exploring the Tunisian soul of the last century or two, in order to uncover the reasons for Ben Ali. What is it that is missing? The people. The people who disobey. The people who resist in the obscurity of everyday life. The people who, when forgotten too long, remind the world of their existence and break into history without prior notice. If there is something I have learned from the struggle of the Black American slaves, which I have studied a bit, it is that there is no voluntary servitude. There is nothing but the impatient waiting that erodes the machinery of oppression. There is nothing but pressure day by day, minute by minute, to overthrow the oppressor. >From afar they seem like unbearable compromises, and such compromises exist because they must survive; but they are almost always mixed with indiscipline, rebellion, molecular resistances that condense and explode into the view of all when the time comes. To the opacity of despotic power corresponds the opacity of resistances; the shameful forms of loyalty and clientelization walk hand in hand with the construction of popular solidarities; the technologies of control and discipline are accompanied by devices for elusion, camouflage, evasion, and transgression that disrupt the established order. There is no oppression without resistance. There is only time stretching more or less slowly before unexpected -- or out of sight -- the collective heroism of a people arises. Make the despot fall! Sadri Khiari, 9 January 2011 The original article "La force de la désobéissance" was published by L'Islam en France on 14 January 2011. French to Spanish Translation by Antonio Giménez; Spanish to English by Roberto D. Hernández. .................................................................... January 14, 2011 Joy as Tunisian President Flees Offers Lesson to Arab Leaders By ANTHONY SHADID http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/world/africa/15region.html?hpw= <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/world/africa/15region.html?hpw=&pagewante d=print> &pagewanted=print BEIRUT, Lebanon Hours after President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia on Friday, a Lebanese broadcaster, in triumphant tones, ended her report on the first instance of an Arab leader to be overthrown in popular protests by quoting a famous Tunisian poet. And the people wanted life, she said, and the chains were broken. The days seismic events in Tunisia, the broadcaster, Abeer Madi al-Halabi, went on, would serve as a lesson for countries where presidents and kings have rusted on their thrones. Tunisias uprising electrified the region. The most enthusiastic suggested it was the Arab worlds Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity in Poland, which heralded the end to Communist rule in Eastern Europe. That seemed premature, particularly because the contours of the government emerging in Tunisia were still unclear and because Tunisia is on the periphery of the Arab world, with a relatively affluent and educated population. Yet the street protests erupted when Arabs seemed more frustrated than ever, whether over rising prices and joblessness or resentment of their leaders support for American policies or ambivalence about Israeli campaigns in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009. Tunisias protests were portrayed as a popular uprising, crossing lines of religion and ideology, offering a new model of dissent in a region where Islamic activists have long been seen as monopolizing opposition. Even if they serve only as inspiration, the protests offer a rare example of success to activists stymied at almost every turn in bringing about change in their own countries. A salute to Tunis, which has opened the road to freedom in an Arab world devastated by years of waiting on the curb, said Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Centre dÉtudes sur lOrient Contemporain in Paris and a political science professor at the Sorbonne. That the events in Tunisia took place far beyond the regions traditional centers of power did little to diminish the enthusiasm they seemed to generate. In fact, the very spectacle of crowds surging into the streets and overwhelming decades of accumulated power in the hands of a highly centralized, American-backed government seemed an antidote to the despair of past years carnage in Iraq, divisions among Palestinians and Israeli intransigence and the yawning divide between ruler and ruled on almost every question of foreign policy. The protests success gripped a region whose residents have increasingly complained of governments that seem incapable of meeting their demands and are bereft of any ideology except perpetuating power. The combustible mix that inspired them economic woes and revulsion at corruption and repression seemed to echo in so many other countries in the Middle East, American allies like Egypt foremost among them. Al Jazeera headlined its broadcasts: Tunisia ... the street creates change. Mohammed al-Maskati, a blogger in Bahrain, put it more bluntly on Twitter. It actually happened in my lifetime! he wrote. An Arab nation woke up and said enough. Through the eight years of the Bush administration, democratization was at least a rhetorical priority of American policy in the Middle East, even as the United States maintained its support for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian governments in the region. On Thursday, as the protests in Tunisia were escalating, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a scathing critique of Arab leadership and the regions political and economic stagnation. Her comments seemed one attempt to reposition the United States, which backed Tunisias dictatorial leader as a partner against terrorism. In the end, the most dramatic change in the old Arab order in years was inspired by Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old university graduate who could find work only as a fruit and vegetable vendor. He set himself on fire in a city square in December when the police seized his cart and mistreated him. A Facebook page called Tunisians hailed him as the symbol of the Tunisian revolution. God have mercy on you, Tunisias martyr, and on the all free martyrs of Tunisia, it read. One candle burns to create light and one candle beats all oppression. In Egypt, his name came up at a small solidarity protest. Egypt needs a man like Mohamed Bouazizi, said Abdel-Halim Qandil, a journalist and opposition leader who joined dozens of others at the Tunisian Embassy. The momentum of Tunisias street protests overshadowed other instances of dissent in the Arab world. In Egypt, protesters, often lacking in numbers, are occasionally beset by divisions between secular and religious activists. The mass protests in Lebanon that followed the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister, in February 2005 ended up deepening divisions in a country almost evenly split over questions of ideology, sectarian loyalty and foreign patrons. Tunisians grievances were as specific as universal: rising food prices, corruption, unemployment and the repression of a state that viewed almost all dissent as subversion. Smaller protests, many of them over rising prices, have already taken place in countries like Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan. Egypt, in particular, seems to bear at least a passing resemblance to Tunisia a heavy-handed security state with diminishing popular support and growing demands from an educated, yet frustrated, population. In Jordan, hundreds protested the cost of food in several cities, even after the government hastily announced measures to bring the prices down. Libya abolished taxes and customs duties on food products, and Morocco tried to offset a surge in grain prices. Its the creeping realization that more and more people are being marginalized and pauperized and that, increasingly, life is more difficult, said Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. You need little events that capture the spirit of the time. Tunisia best captures that in the Arab world. Despite the enthusiasm, the scene Friday night in Cairo might serve as caution. The protesters who gathered at the Tunisian Embassy in the upscale neighborhood of Zamalek chanted slogans into a megaphone and waved red Tunisian flags. They went through a litany of the regions strongmen from Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya to Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and warned each that his day of reckoning was coming. Down, down with Hosni Mubarak! some chanted. Ben Ali, you fraud! Mubarak, you fraud! Qaddafi, you fraud! others shouted. They were ringed by police officers in black berets, and outnumbered by them, as well. They had little room to maneuver. And an hour later, the protesters went their way, a Tunisian flag flying from one of the cars, as it ventured down a largely empty street. Nada Bakri contributed reporting from Beirut, and Liam Stack from Cairo. .................................................................. Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution By Mona Eltahawy Saturday, January 15, 2011; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/14/AR2011011405 084.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 For 23 years, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali presided over the most tightly run ship in the Arab world. So perfect a police state was his Tunisia, with its ubiquitous informers and portraits of the president, that no one predicted Ben Ali's ship could capsize. But capsize it did Friday, after a 29-day popular uprising against unemployment, police brutality and the regime's corruption. It was the worst unrest since Ben Ali took over. Not once in my 43 years have I thought that I'd see an Arab leader toppled by his people. It is nothing short of poetic justice that it was neither Islamists nor invasion-in-the-name-of-democracy that sent the waters rushing onto Ben Ali's ship but, rather, the youth of his country. Their rage at political and economic disenfranchisement spilled over last month with the desperate act of an unemployed man. Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, distraught when police confiscated his unlicensed produce stand, set himself on fire on Dec. 17 and died on Jan. 3. Soon, several other unemployed youth tried to commit suicide, and at least one of them did. Is there a more poignant portrayal of what ails the Arab world than images of its young people killing themselves as their leaders get older and richer? Human rights groups say more than 60 people have died in clashes with Ben Ali's security forces since Dec. 17, but Bouazizi's self-immolation has come to symbolize what many are calling the Jasmine Revolution. Tunisia is a typical Middle East country in that its population is composed largely of young people. Half the population is under 25 years of age and so have known no leader other than Ben Ali, who was only Tunisia's second president since it gained independence from France in 1956. For decades, a host of Arab dictators have justified their endless terms in office by pointing to Islamists waiting in the wings. Having both inflated the egos and power of Islamists and scared Western allies into accepting stability over democracy, those leaders were left to comfortably sweep "elections." Ben Ali was elected to a fifth term with 89.62 percent of the vote in 2009. All around him is a depressingly familiar pattern. Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi (68 years old) has been in power since 1969; Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh (64) has ruled since 1978 and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (82) since 1981. Algeria's Abdelaziz Bouteflika (73) is a relative newcomer, having been in power only since 1999. Not so much fathers as grandfathers of their nations, these autocrats cling to office - and are increasingly out of touch with their young populaces. No doubt, every Arab leader has watched Tunisia's revolt in fear while citizens across the Arab world watch in solidarity, elated at that rarity: open revolution. "Goosebumps all over. I can't believe I lived through an Arab revolution!! Thank you, Tunisia!" tweeted Gigi Ibrahim, a young Egyptian woman whose handle is Gsquare86. "The power of the masses is capable of toppling any dictatorship. Today was Tunisia. Tomorrow is Egypt, Jordan. LONG LIVE REVOLUTION!" Social media, where young Arabs organize and speak out against their respective regimes, have given the world a clear view of the thoughts, hopes and videos of Tunisians. For days, I have been glued to Twitter, on which events in Tunisia are discussed much faster than mainstream media could report them. "Tunis now: the chants continue 'No to Ben Ali even if we die,' " tweeted a Tunisian who joined the 6,000 to 7,000 protesting outside the Interior Ministry hours before Ben Ali fled. Tunisia is not a major U.S. ally. On Jan. 7, the State Department said it was concerned about the regime's online and real-life crackdown. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Jan. 12 that Washington would not take sides, infuriating those who saw a double standard in the vocal U.S. position on Iran. But others saw encouragement from Washington's reticence. U.S. leaders are "supporting us with their silence," a Tunisian told me on Twitter. "If they say anything, we will lose." As Arabs everywhere marvel, those in Tunis still seem grounded. Even as Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannoushi announced on state television Friday that he had taken over, people noted online that the acting president was part of Ben Ali's despised inner circle. Surely Ghannoushi is aware that Tunisians who have faced down live ammunition, curfews and tanks on the street the past month have little appetite for more of the same leadership. Indeed, one Tunisian tweeted me: "What is unfolding is another dictatorship, we must continue the battle!" Tunisians were fed up with not just Ben Ali but the "quasi mafia" surrounding him, as the family and cronies were described in a WikiLeaks cable, because of their "organized corruption." President Obama issued a statement on Friday in support of the Tunisian people and calling for free and fair elections. Ben Ali imprisoned or chased into exile viable alternatives to his rule, so what comes next politically is not clear. But the world is watching this small Arab country and wondering if this is the first step in ridding the region of its granddaddies. Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born writer and lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues. Her e-mail address is i...@monaeltahawy.com <mailto:info%40monaeltahawy.com> . [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-os...@yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor biso...@intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscr...@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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