Monday, January 17, 2011 Note on Tunisia's military http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/01/note-on-tunisias-military.html
Tunisia's armed forces are fighting street battles with armed members of Ben Ali's sinister 'internal security' apparatus. Their decision to turn against the dictator was a decisive final blow forcing his resignation. Hamma Hammami, the recently freed leader of the Workers Communist Party of Tunisia (POCT) acknowledges the centrality of the army and calls on them to guarantee the safety of the people. It's not unprecedented for the armed forces in non-imperialist countries to play a progressive role - the Free Officers led the overthrow of British client monarchies Iraq and Egypt, for example. But this has tended to be in the absence of a developed bourgeoisie or working class, which situation gives them a unique degree of autonomy. In the Bourguibist regime, and afterward, it can hardly be said that the army has played a consistently progressive role. It's therefore vital to understand the real social role of the military in Tunisia and its relationship to the contending classes. First of all, as mentioned yesterday, Bourguiba self-consciously eschewed militarism as a realistic option for Tunisia. This is true of all Maghreb states, in fact. Tunisia spends 1.4% of its GDP on the military, which is lower than Morrocco (3.4%), and Algeria (3.9%), but slightly higher than Libya (1.2%). Compare to Israel (7%) or Saudi Arabia (11%), and you see how minute this is. Such spending has fluctuated depending on the perceived security situation - rising after the Yom Kippur war, falling after the end of the Cold War - but such fluctuations are Lilliputian. In absolute terms, Tunisia spends the least amount of dollars on its military than any other North African state. Military projection is just not a realistic goal of any of North Africa's Arab states. The main role of the military in these states is the long-term security of the regime in power, and thus the maintenance of the class relations that the regime embodies, and which sustain its long-term development agenda. Tunisia's military has its origins in the French colonial army, in which Tunisian troops fought both in colonial wars in Indo-china and in WWII. In addition, the Beylical guard, which protected the monarchy until its dissolation, was integrated into the national army that was established with independence in 1956. The army's foreign ventures have been limited to UN operations, such as in the Congo, Cambodia and Rwanda. These services to imperialism are slight, but have been highly regarded by those involved. The military under Bourguiba was carefully integrated into his distinctive state-building project, more so than the working class whose left-wing led the rebellions in 1978 and 1984, and more so again than the rural poor and the petite bourgoisie whe rallied behind the Islamists when the Bourguibist state proved incapable of advancing their promised social and economic advancement. Bourguiba conscientiously set about creating a military establishment supportive of his secular, republican nationalist ideals. The army officers were disenfranchised, enjoyed no freedom of association and played no direct role in decision-making. Their armaments were limited to prevent independent political interventions. And they were not permitted to directly intervene in public conflicts. A separate set of paramilitary organisations was created within the military, and charged with the direct maintenance of public order. Thus, Bourguiba built a gendarme, a Public Order brigade, and a national guard, which today has some 12,000 troops. It is members of the national guard who have been deployed in the streets and killed protesters. The officer corps was thus chiefly a civic institution, a guarantor of Tunisian nationalism, there to act only against direct threats to the Bourguibist state, as such. Its unique social position insulated to some degree from the polarization that resulted from the crisis of the state in the Seventies and Eighties, while its elite pedigree (in terms of social background, the officers tended to come from the same wealthy suburbs in coastal Sahel and Tunis as the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie) ensured that it did not suffer from economic failure. So the armed forces were there to guarantee the Bourguibist project, with the military establishment upholding the state in its civic capacity and the paramilitary brigades upholding public order. Just as the state intervened to build and direct the nation's economy when the bourgeoisie was too weak to do it, so the armed forces protected the class structure before the capitalist class became a viable ruling class in its own right. As such, when the public order brigades, national guard and gendarmes failed to cope with rebellions, the military had to assume a direct role in public life. It was the military that was called in to restore public order during the crises of 1978 and 1984, for example, because the state had no other means of resolving the labour rebellions and food shortages. Similarly, the military was a bulwark against the Islamists when they began to challenge not merely the personal rule of Bourguiba but the foundations of his authoritarian, republic. In fact, the military elite strongly resented having to step in and take over public order functions, as this seemed to compromise their outwardly apolitical, nationalist role. The fact that they had to be directly involved in such disputes was part of the crisis of sovereignty that would lead to Bourguiba's overthrow. The military's role was transformed by the IMF structural adjustment programme and the subsequent Ben Ali coup. Under Bourguiba's corporatist, embedded neoliberalism it upheld a Destourian state based on social pacts for the national good. But under neoliberalism, the state increases its authority in national life while withdrawing from the economy. Indeed, in part the state's authority derives from its apparent separation from that sphere of civil society. Justin Rosenberg points out in Empire of Civil Society that sovereignty is a specifically capitalist political form, setting the state over and against civil society. Thus, state sovereignty is to an extent abridged when it is engaged in the widespread public ownership of industry and interventionism. Then industrial struggles, prices, wages, and the appropriation of surplus become explicitly political issues, and the state is dragged into disputes where it must perforce act explicitly for one class or other. When the state withdraws, it acts as a coercive guarantor of existing class relations and as such its authoritarian (as opposed to potentially democratic) capacity is enhanced. So, when the Tunisian state embarked on neoliberalism, it both privatised industries, relaxing trade and market controls, and bolstered its repressive apparatus - such that under Ben Ali, the scale of repression reached levels hitherto unknown in Tunisia since the defeat of the French. The military elite was already losing faith in the Kemalist ideals that Bourguiba had promulgated by the time his regime was ailing in the mid-Eighties. Its French-trained officer corps was more technocratically minded, and it was also less inclined to believe that a properly rationalist state could coordinate uninterrupted, unilinear progress. Its wider assessment was that the nationalist project was falling apart, that economic failure would guarantee long-term social dislocation, and that the threats to the state emerging in the form of communism and, more pressingly, Islamism, would not abate. The idea of a compact between the classes was finished. Moreover, there was the beginnings of a worrying development for this elite - Islamists were beginning to penetrate the lower and middle ranks of the army itself. Under Ben Ali, senior military officials came to have a more important role in policy formation, as they dominated the new, streamlined political bureau created by the dicatorship. Ben Ali was himself a senior officer who had directed the army's response to the 1978 crisis, and had also run internal security arrangements under Bourguiba's instruction when the Islamists started to become a real political force in the 1980s. But his incorporation of the military into policymaking was driven by two needs. The first was to prioritise counterinsurgency, the logic of which unfolded in his dirty wars against the Islamists in the early 1990s. This helped the state suppress demands for democratisation, contain political opposition to its neoliberal reforms and enable a new wave of capital accumulation based on intensified labour productivity and financialisation. The second was to halt the spread of Islamism in the armed forces, by seeming to incorporate the aspirations of those layers. But the overall effect was to make the state a more brutal force, over and against civil society, such that until recently there wasn't much scope for civil society, notably the working class, to organise in opposition. In tandem with this, a new paramilitary force in the form of a bloated internal security guard emerge. Spending on this far outweighed any clear and present danger to the president, but it was a necessary accompaniment to the narrowing of the social base of the regime, and to the new relations of neoliberal class rule and authoritarian government. The current crisis has thus seen: 1) the paramilitary forces fail to keep public order; 2) the military dispatched to assume police functions as the president went into a flap, and started promising concessions; 3) the defection of the military itself, as it no longer believed that Ben Ali could control the country. The army elite is undoubtedly jockeying for position within a new arrangement, but I suspect that there's also real sympathy with the protests among the footsoldiers, which the officer corps would have been wary of. At the moment, it would seem that the Tunisian military elite is reluctant to get dragged into direct conflict with the mobilised masses. There may be a residue of the old Bourguibism operating here, but more likely is that they just don't know if they could take the rank and file with them. This means that the armed forces cannot be counted on as an ally in the struggles which will ensue. Given the obvious crisis of neoliberal class rule, they may be susceptible to demands for a new social compact, but such demands will perforce come from without. What the army does is vital, because the bourgoisie is weak. I suspect this is why the communists are aiming their propaganda partly at the armed forces - not because of illusions in the military establishment, but because winning over the rank and file will decisively change the balance of forces in the country. That's my rough and ready assessment of the role of Tunisia's military in this revolution. .................................................................... Tunisians must dismantle the monster Ben Ali built The people have toppled a dictator. Now they have to forge a coalition of socialists, Islamists and liberals for real change Soumaya Ghannoushi The Guardian, Tuesday 18 January 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/18/tunisia-ben-ali-dictator -coalition Few Tunisians could have imagined that a president who had repressed and stifled them for more than 23 years could be so fragile, so vulnerable. As soon as the uprising that raged around the country for just over four weeks reached its capital, Tunis with waves of protesters besieging the interior ministry, the seat of one of the region's most brutal police machines, chanting "We are free, get out!" he fell apart like a paper tiger. >From the threatening tyrant of the early days of the rebellion, he gradually became a pale, trembling old man begging them in his televised speeches to keep him in the Carthage Palace for a little longer, first for three years, then for a mere six months. Each time Tunisians roared back from their streets "Not a day longer". Terrified, he fled the country in the dead of night. Then, rejected by France, which had clung to him until the last moment, his plane roamed around helplessly before being given permission to land in Jeddah. The phenomenon called "Ben Ali" was in reality an amalgam of internal violence, deception and flagrant foreign support. For years his backers armed him and gave him political cover to suffocate his people. A good student of the IMF, a guarantor of "stability" and a brave warrior against "Islamic fundamentalism", Ben Ali's Tunisia was a shining example of "modernisation" and success. With his demise, a model of stability which is bought at the price of a crushed people can no longer be easily defended or propagated. The Tunisian people's revolution, which expelled Ben Ali from their land, did not stop at their borders. It has swept over the Arab world, reverberating in every town and village. The sense of despair and profound humiliation Arabs felt with the toppling of Saddam's tyrannical regime by the US contrasts sharply with their euphoria at the ousting of Tunisia's dictator. This is the first time an Arab nation has succeeded in uprooting a ruthless despot by popular protest and civil disobedience, and without foreign intervention, coup d'etats or natural death. If Iraq offered the Arab world the ugliest face of regime change, Tunisia shows its best. But by toppling their dictator, Tunisians are only halfway to realising their aspirations for genuine reform. The despot is gone, but the gigantic police state that has grown since the country's independence from French occupation in 1956 is still very much alive. The apparatus of repression laid down by Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's charismatic "founding father", was fine-tuned by the general who inherited it. Dismantling such a monster will not be easy. That is the challenge Tunisians have to meet to complete their revolution. While Arabs have been celebrating in the streets, chanting the poet Abul-Qasim al-Shabbi's words "If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call", their rulers are stunned by the chilling news of their toppled fellow dictator. This is their worst nightmare. They dread nothing more than the Tunisian infection being passed on to their people, particularly as most have either inherited power from their fathers, or are preparing to bequeath it to their sons. Only Muammar Gaddafi of neighbouring Libya has interrupted their death-like silence to speak for all the despots, threatening Tunisians that they would live to regret what they had dared perpetrate. But although Tunisia is a small country with a population of 10 million and scarce natural resources, it is better placed than most Arab countries to undergo democratisation. Its people are socially homogenous, largely urbanised, and highly educated compared with its neighbours. In the aftermath of Ben Ali's era, the Tunisian scene is divided between two strategies. The first involves a recycling of the old regime with a few cosmetic amendments. That is the strategy of the so-called "unity government", announced by Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi today, a man who had served for years under the fallen dictator. It excludes the real forces on the ground, which genuinely reflect the Tunisian political landscape: independent socialists, Islamists and liberals. The unity government seems intent on turning the clock back, behaving as if the revolution had never been, reinstalling the loathed ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), with all the same faces bar Ben Ali's, of course and the same security machine. That is why protests have erupted again in many cities, with "Ben Ali out" changed to "RCD out". The alternative strategy and the task now facing the Tunisian people is to build a wide coalition of the forces that can dismantle the legacy of the despotic post-colonial state and bring about the change their people have been yearning for decades. This has been the driving force for the alliance being forged between the Communist Workers' Party, led by Hamma al-Hammami, the charismatic Moncef al-Marzouqi's Congress Party for the Republic, and Ennahda, led by my father Rachid Ghannouchi, along with trade unionists, and civil society activists. Their shared bitter experience of prison and exile has made them more pragmatic, and thus more capable of standing up to dictatorship and building a strong alliance around the demand for real change. This politics of partnership and consensus is what Tunisians and Arabs need to dismantle the structures of totalitarianism which have held them in their iron grip for generations. ..................................................................... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/9363808.stm 1659 [GMT] The exiled secular leftist leader Moncef Marzouki has dismissed the new government as a "masquerade". He told French media: "Ninety dead, four weeks of real revolution, only for it to come to this? A unity government in name only because, in reality, it is made up of members of the party of dictatorship, the RCD." .................................................................. Tunisians sceptical of new govt Tunisians have expressed dissatisfaction with inclusion of ruling party members in new 'national unity' government. Last Modified: 18 Jan 2011 04:29 GMT http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/01/2011117224856588521.html The announcement of a new 'unity government' by Mohamed Ghannouchi, the Tunisian prime minister, has been met with anger by some protesters, who say too many members of ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's party remain in power. The PM announced that the former defence, foreign, interior and finance ministers will keep their key posts in the new government formed after the public uprising led to the flight of President Ben Ali. Up to 1,000 protesters gathered mainly near Tunis' Habib Bourguiba Avenue to demonstrate against the announcement. Tanks and troops were deployed, and water cannons and tear gas fired against activists who demanded that members of Ben Ali's Constitutional Democratic Rally (CDR) be excluded from the new government. "Who did the revolt? It's the people, those trade union leaders ... they need to find their aspirations in the government. This government does not answer those aspirations," Masoud Ramadani, a workers union activist, told Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera's correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin said protesters were "rejecting the possibility that any incoming or caretaker or national unity government could possibly have figures or leaders from the previous regime". "They want the CDR party completely abolished, completely removed from any form of government". Members of the interim government have defended its composition, however, saying that the members of the incumbent party who have been retained are not politicians. "Members of the ruling party that are in the government are technocratic, they are not political. And we demanded that people who are dirty in corruption and crimes should be evacuated from this government," Ahmed Bouazzi, a member of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), said. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra identified the lack of a coherent opposition as "one of the biggest problems that Tunisia faces for the time being". He said there were no "charismatic leaders" who could "channel the energy" from the uprising towards the formation of a new government. In part, this is because "Ben Ali tailored the whole state around his persona. The police, the parliament, everything was linked to him", our correspondent said. Furthermore, the opposition has been clamped down on for nearly three decades, with most of its leadership either "driven out of the country, or [spending] many years in jail". "This is the big question. Who is going to take over, who is going to lead Tunisia into the future?" Interim government Ghannouchi announced the country's new interim government on Monday, adding that a number of opposition members will be assigned to ministerial posts. The prime minister named Najib Chebbi, founder of the PDP, which opposed Ben Ali, as minister for regional development. Ahmed Ibrahim, leader of the Ettajdid party, was named minister of higher education and Mustafa Ben Jaafar, head of the Union of Freedom and Labour, got the health portfolio. Significantly, there will be a separation of the state from political parties, meaning that under the coalition government, the collection of parties will not fall under the control of a ruling party. Opposition's limited role One of Tunisia's best known opposition figures, Moncef Marzouki, on Monday branded his country's new government a "masquerade" still dominated by supporters of ousted strongman Ben Ali. "Tunisia deserved much more," the secular leftist declared. "Ninety dead, four weeks of real revolution, only for it to come to this? A unity government in name only because, in reality, it is made up of members of the party of dictatorship, the CRD,"said Marzouki on France's I-Tele. According to Ahmed Friaa, Tunisia's interior minister, 78 people have been killed in the country during the recent turmoil, almost quadrupling the official death toll. He also estimated that the unrest had cost the country's economy $2.2 bn as a result of disruption of economic activity and lost export revenues. Rachid al-Ghannouchi (no relation to Mohamed Ghannouchi), the exiled leader of the Nahdha Movement party, told London-based Asharq Alawsat newspaper that leaders of his party had not been invited to participate in the negotiations in forming the new unity government. He expressed anger at the exclusion, but said his party would consider joining the government if asked to do so. Meanwhile Ban Ki-Moon, UN secretary general, called for the establishment of the rule of law in Tunisia, while the Arab League said Arab states should consider what lessons could be learnt from the crisis. Reforms announced Ghannouchi also announced on Monday that the Tunisian government will investigate anyone suspected of corruption or of having amassed huge wealth under the country's deposed leader. "Anyone who accumulated enormous wealth or is suspected of corruption will be put before a committee of investigators," said Ghannouchi. He also said that there will be "total freedom" for the media in the country, which experienced especially tough crackdowns during the recent weeks of unrest. Additionally, the prime minister said that a ban on the activities of human rights groups in Tunisia will be lifted and that all political prisoners would be freed. "We have decided to free all the people imprisoned for their ideas, their beliefs or for having expressed dissenting opinions," said Ghannouchi. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies .................................................................... The Tunisian job: How president's wife 'fled with $60m in gold bullion' Anger is growing on the streets as astonishing greed of former ruling dynasty is exposed, reports Kim Sengupta in Tunis Tuesday, 18 January 2011 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-tunisian-job-how-presiden ts-wife-fled-with-60m-in-gold-bullion-2187035.html The final act of the kleptocracy by the Ben Ali family was to steal one and a half tonnes of gold, with the president's wife personally collecting the bullion from an initially reluctant but eventually browbeaten president of the country's central bank. Within hours the allegations denied by the central bank had been turned into slogans on the streets of Tunis in another demonstration, as protesters vented their fury at the former first family. "Hang them all, but let's get our gold back first," shouted a group marching along Avenue Bourguiba. This may not be easy. Whereas Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali is now a guest of Saudi Arabia, supposedly in the same neighbourhood of Jeddah which once hosted another fallen African strongman, Idi Amin, the whereabouts of his spouse, Leila Trabelsi, is unclear. Some Tunisians say that Dubai, where she would go on shopping expeditions, is the destination, others say it is one of the central Asian republics. The account of 53-year-old Ms Trabelsi's great bank robbery, which netted an estimated £37.5m ($60m), came from the French secret service after the Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde, announced in Paris that movement of money from the former colony was under surveillance. Ms Trabelsi, according to French security officials, went to the Bank of Tunisia on Friday with a small group of her staff and demanded that the gold be handed over to her office for safekeeping. When the bank president refused, a telephone call was said to have come from the president ordering that the handover should take place. A few hours later the couple flew out of the country, with Mr Ben Ali deciding against delivering a valedictory speech. The jet initially headed for France, but, it is claimed, was diverted to Saudi Arabia after President Nicolas Sarkozy refused permission to land. The account was yesterday denied by the central bank, which said that the former first leader had never set foot in the bank. The official in charge of payments "had never received verbal or written orders to take out gold or currency," the bank spokesman Zied Mouhli told the BBC. "The gold reserves have not moved for years." Meanwhile, two of the former president's daughters arrived in Disneyland, near Paris, to seek asylum. Nesrine, who, with her husband, Sakhr, had kept a pet tiger, moved with her sister Halima into a series of suites at the Castle Club hotel with a retinue of servants and bodyguards. According to reports they left after being told by the French government that their presence was not welcome. One of the first acts yesterday of Mohammed Ghannouchi, the Prime Minister, who is charged with forming a coalition government, was to declare that anyone displaying ostentatious wealth would face investigation. A marked feature of the protests which swept the president from power after 23 years of autocratic rule was the depth of hatred displayed against the relations of Ben Ali and his wife who, in their eyes, had stolen billions from the country. Theirs were the first homes and businesses to be ransacked, and those who failed to get away paid a lethal price. The most prominent of these victims had been Imed Trabelsi, the ex-first lady's nephew, who was hunted down and hacked to death. A number of other, lesser members of the clan were placed under arrest. US diplomatic cables released through WikiLeaks charted the venality of the Ben Alis and their entourage, with chapter headings like, "All in the Family", "Mob Rule" and "The Sky's The Limit" describing how "Imed and Moaz Trabelsi [cousins] are reported to have stolen the yacht of a French businessman, Bruno Roger, chairman of Lazard Paris [a bank]". They went on to describe how "Ben Ali's wife, Leila Ben Ali, and her extended family the Trabelsis provoke the greatest ire". Diplomats recorded how Leila Trabelsi's brother, Belhassen, was "rumoured to have been involved in a wide range of corrupt schemes with holdings involving an airline, several hotels, one of Tunisia's two private radio stations, car assembly plants, a Ford distribution and a real estate development company." Copycat immolations spread across region Five people have set themselves on fire in Egypt and Algeria in the past week, apparently inspired by a young Tunisian whose drastic protest against economic hardship sparked the month of rioting which toppled president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Authoritarian regimes in neighbouring Arab countries have kept a nervous eye on events on Tunisia, fearing a domino effect as rising food prices, poverty and corruption stoke discontent. In Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak has ruled for nearly 30 years, a 48-year-old restaurateur doused himself in fuel and set himself ablaze yesterday near Cairo's parliament building in protest at the high price of bread. Police and passing motorists quickly doused the flames, and health officials said they expect Abdou Abdel Moneim to live. An Algerian man who set himself on fire in village near the Tunisian border last week is in a more serious condition. Mohsen Bouterfif was unhappy at the lack of housing, and Reuters news agency reported that about 100 people took to the streets in protest after the attempted suicide. Algerian newspapers have reported three other recent cases of self-immolation in provincial towns. ..................................................................... Monde 18/01/2011 à 00h00 Leila Trabelsi, la cleptodame Ecartant les clans rivaux, l'omnipotente épouse de Ben Ali a pillé le pays au profit de sa famille. CHRISTOPHE AYAD http://www.liberation.fr/monde/01012314285-leila-trabelsi-la-cleptodame C'est l'histoire d'une Du Barry qui s'est prise pour la Pompadour et aurait pu finir comme Marie-Antoinette. L'histoire d'une «coiffeuse», qui a failli être la Régente de Carthage (1) avant de partir sous les huées de son peuple. L'influence de Leila Trabelsi, la deuxième épouse de Zine al-Abidine ben Ali, et de son clan familial était telle sur l'économie et le pouvoir tunisien que c'est à se demander qui a entraîné qui dans sa chute. Avant de quitter la Tunisie, pendant que son mari pensait encore pouvoir sauver son siège, elle aurait embarqué 1,5 tonne d'or, selon le Monde, citant des sources à l'Elysée. Tout comme son mari, Leila Trabelsi est née, en 1957, dans une famille pauvre de 11 enfants, dont elle serait la seule fille. Elle grandit dans la médina de Tunis, devient coiffeuse et se marie jeune pour divorcer trois ans plus tard. Elle entame une liaison avec le général Ben Ali, chef de la Sûreté générale dans les années 80 et lui donne rapidement une fille, Nasrine, en 1986. Ben Ali dépose Bourguiba, le père de l'indépendance l'année suivante et, un an plus tard, divorce de sa première femme, Naïma Kefi, fille du général qui a parrainé toute sa carrière. Une deuxième fille, Halima, naît en 1992, l'année où le Président se remarie avec Leila Trabelsi. Une fois légitime, la Première Dame s'attache à combattre les clans concurrents qui gravitent autour du chef de l'Etat. Avec une efficacité certaine. Les frères et surs de Ben Ali, qui prospèrent surtout dans la contrebande, le trafic et l'import-export, perdent leur chef de file avec la mort de «Moncef» Ben Ali dans un accident de voiture : il avait été condamné en France à de la prison dans le procès de la «couscous connexion» pour trafic de drogue, mais jamais extradé. Depuis, les Ben Ali se sont repliés sur Sousse, leur ville d'origine pour exercer leur prédation. Vorace. C'est ensuite au tour des Chiboub de passer sous le joug de «Madame». Ce clan, dont le leader, Slim, un ancien joueur de hand-ball, a épousé la deuxième fille issue du premier mariage du Président, Dorsaf. Rapidement, les Chiboub, qui percevaient des commissions sur les marchés publics, se cantonnent au sport-business. Slim prend la tête de l'Espérance de Tunis, le grand club de football local. Les deux autres filles issues du mariage avec Naïma Kefi, Ghazoua et Cyrine, épousent des hommes d'affaires, respectivement Slim Zarrouk et Marouan Mabrouk, qui bénéficient d'un sérieux coup de pouce. Mabrouk, issu d'une vieille fortune tunisienne, met ainsi la main sur les concessions Fiat et Mercedes ainsi que sur la Banque internationale arabe de Tunisie (Biat) et la grande distribution (Géant et Monoprix). Zarrouk, lui, crée sa propre banque et s'approprie la société de services qui dessert l'aéroport de Tunis. Sa femme, Cyrine, possède la licence téléphonique d'Orange et le fournisseur Internet Planet Tunisie. Mais rien de comparable avec le nombreux et vorace clan des frères de Leila Trabelsi, dont le chef est incontestablement Belhassen. Il est le «Sonny Corleone» de la famille, le plus violent, le plus avide. Dans les restaurants de Tunis, où l'on n'osait pas lui présenter la note, il avait pour habitude de poser son pistolet sur la table racontent les diplomates américains dans leurs télégrammes révélés par Wikileaks. Il a débuté de la manière la plus fruste, en achetant à bas prix des terrains inconstructibles qu'il faisait ensuite reclasser pour les lotir et les revendre à prix d'or. Difficile de faire la liste exhaustive de tous les business dans lesquels était Belhassen : les transports aériens (Karthago Airlines, aux dépens de la compagnie nationale Tunisair), les télécoms (Global Telecom Networkings), l'assemblage de camions et de tracteurs (Alpha Ford International), les licences d'importation d'automobiles (Ford, mais aussi Range Rover, Jaguar et Hyundai), le tourisme, les médias (Mosaïque FM et Carthage TV, ainsi que la société de production Cactus TV). Il avait aussi mis la main sur la Banque de Tunisie, dont il a confié la direction à la femme du conseiller et âme damnée du Président, Abdelwahab Abdallah. Il épouse une des filles de Hedi Jilani, le patron des patrons tunisiens, qui avait «placé» une autre de ses filles comme épouse de Sofiane Ben Ali, fils de «Moncef», le frère décédé du Président. Vol de yacht. Un autre Moncef, frère de Leila, fait fortune dans la construction. Certains rejetons du clan Trabelsi sont carrément des malfrats. A l'instar de Moez et Imed (assassiné samedi par un de ses gardes du corps), des neveux de la Première Dame, commanditaires du vol du yacht de luxe du banquier français Bruno Roger dans le port de Bonifacio. Imed s'était aussi attribué Bricorama et la distribution d'alcool. Mourad Trabelsi trustait la pêche au thon. Najet, une cousine infirmière, devient directrice de l'hôpital Kheireddine de Tunis. La mère de Leila, Hajja Nana, veille aux intérêts de la famille. Son décès, durant la visite de Nicolas Sarkozy, au printemps 2008, expliquera son absence durant les cérémonies officielles. Les avoirs du clan se compteraient en milliards de dollars, sans compter les résidences de luxe à Paris, Courchevel et Saint-Tropez. Leila Ben Ali, elle, fait dans le caritatif et les bonnes uvres, à la tête de son ONG Basma. Et s'active pour truster les postes honorifiques, comme la présidence de l'Organisation de la femme arabe. Elle ne néglige pas les affaires pour autant, et quand elle lance un lycée international privé, en association avec Souha Arafat (avec qui elle s'est brouillée et qui a dû s'exiler à Malte), la veuve du président palestinien, elle fait fermer un établissement concurrent. Mais ce qui intéresse Leila Ben Ali, c'est plus le pouvoir que les affaires. Au point qu'elle nomme et démet hauts fonctionnaires, conseillers présidentiels et ministres. De plus en plus présente sur la scène publique, animant des meetings électoraux, on lui prêtait l'ambition de succéder à son mari, malade, semble-t-il, d'un cancer de la prostate. Son frère Belhassen intègre le comité central du Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique (RCD), le parti quasi unique au pouvoir. Et, miracle de la science, elle aurait donné naissance, le 20 février 2005, à 47 ans, à un héritier mâle, Mohamed, le premier fils de Ben Ali. Holding. Elle favorise aussi la montée en puissance de Sakher el-Materi, le rejeton d'un général putschiste qui avait failli renverser Bourguiba dans les années 70 et que Ben Ali a réhabilité. Le jeune el-Materi a épousé Nesrine, l'une des deux filles de Leila et de Ben Ali. Son ascension est fulgurante : élu député, il devient plus riche encore que Belhassen, à la tête d'une holding tentaculaire. Il était le visage moderne, boursier et légèrement islamique (la radio coranique Zitouna FM lui appartient et il s'était lancé dans la finance islamique) du régime. L'ambassadeur américain, qui a dîné dans sa villa de Hammamet, raconte y avoir vu un lion en cage à qui l'on servait quatre poulets par jour. Cela lui a rappelé Oudaï, le fils de Saddam Hussein (1) Titre du livre de Nicolas Beau et Catherine Graciet consacré au clan Trabelsi et à son influence (La Découverte, 2009) [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. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: osint-dig...@yahoogroups.com osint-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
