Tunisia riots offer warning to Arab governments

8/7/2019 Tunisia riots offer warning to Arab governments

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Tunisia riots offer warning to Arab

governments

By Tom PfeifferReuters

updated 1/14/2011 2:35:41 PM ET

CAIRO Nervous Arab leaders watching young Tunisian demonstrators force an agingstrongman to step aside are wondering if their own old established formula of political

repression will have to change too.

There seems little likelihood that Tunisia's violence will quickly spread and unseat

autocratic governments from Rabat to Riyadh, partly as opposition movements are weakand demoralized.

Few think Tunis is the Arab Gdansk, heralding a toppling of dominos of the kind that

swept communist eastern Europe in 1989. It was not yet even clear whether the departure

of President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali spelled a revolution in favor of democracy or achange of face for the established authority.

Yet some wonder how long the region's other unpopular rulers -- from absolute monarchs

to aging revolutionaries clinging to power -- can rely on the hard, old ways to stay in

power.

The unprecedented riots that have shaken Tunisia have been closely followed on regional

satellite television channels and the Internet across the Middle East where highunemployment, bulging young populations, sky-rocketing inflation and a widening gap

between rich and poor are all grave concerns.

"This could happen anywhere," said Imane, a restaurant owner in Egypt who did

not want to give her full name. "The satellite and Internet images we can see

nowadays mean people who would normally be subdued can now see others getting

what they want."

"We are not used to something like this in this part of the world," said Kamal Mohsen, a

23-year-old Lebanese student. "It is bigger than a dream in a region where people keep

saying 'what can we do.'"

While in recent decades democracy has supplanted despotism in regions once plagued bydictators, governments in the Arab world are almost uniformly autocratic and heavily

policed.


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Yet some think the departure of veteran Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, as

well as efforts in Algeria to appease anger over price increases, have punctured the fear

factor that has long kept discontent in check across the region.

"Perhaps all the Arab governments are monitoring with eyes wide open what is

happening in Tunisia and Algeria," columnist Abdelrahman al-Rashed wrote in Asharqal-Awsat newspaper, after Ben Ali made sweeping concessions, but before he finally

quit.

"Much of what prevents protest and civil disobedience is simply the psychological

barrier," Rashed said.

"Tunisia's president has promised all he can to stop the trouble and Algeria reversed price

decisions, but the psychological barrier is broken."

STRAINED BUDGETS

Tunisia's drama is a warning to Arab governments that still rely on tough policing, tight

control of media and subsidizing basic needs to quash dissent.

Satellite news and Internet social media can sidestep such autocratic tactics and can

quickly fuse frustrations of young people in isolated, deprived regions into a broadmovement.

Rights groups in Tunisia say the government blocks access to much of the Internet, but

that did not stop activists uploading videos of badly wounded demonstrators onto the

Web, sparking more anger and giving the protests momentum.

"The whole story would not have been the same without Facebook and Twitter and othernew media," said Ahmed Mansoor, a UAE-based rights activist and blogger. "It played a

vital role in bringing what's going on there to the world."

The stock response to street protests across the Middle East and North Africa, wherebetween half and two thirds of the population is under the age of 25, is to offer

concessions on jobs and cheap food.

Riots in several Algerian towns subsided last weekend after the government promised to

do whatever was necessary to protect citizens from the rising cost of living.

Libya, Morocco and Jordan have also announced plans to ease prices of basic goods.

But budgets are creaking under the cost of imported food and fuel, especially in those

countries lacking big energy reserves, leaving less leeway to buy off popular discontent.

The International Monetary Fund said that with current unemployment rates already very

high, the region needs to create close to 100 million new jobs by 2020.


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Supporters of the region's governments have tended to blame rioting on a dearth of cheap

food, not bad government. Rights activists said the Tunisia protests spread fast because

freedom of expression and association has been so long suppressed.

"There is a danger in ... getting a bit too comfortable with the 'Arab state will

muddle through' argument," said Stephen Cook of the U.S. Council on ForeignRelations in a blog this week. "It may not be the last days of ... (Egypt's President

Hosni) Mubarak or any other Middle Eastern strongman.

"But there is clearly something going on in the region."

BADLY ORGANISED OPPOSITION

Qatar-based satellite channel Al Jazeera, launched in 1996, has been devoting airtime to

the Tunisia unrest, showing on-air interviews with witnesses to clashes and opposition

figures.

In an apparent recognition that the channel is influencing Tunisian opinion, government

ministers appeared on air to give their views on what was happening. The government

has blamed the riots on a violent minority of extremists.

But opposition parties and civil society in the Arab world still seem too weak tocapitalize on disaffection, as governments lose their grip over the flow of information.

"Whose fault is all of this? The opposition's, which has been focusing on defaming

regimes and not organizing properly," said Larbi Sadiki, Senior Lecturer in Middle East

Politics at Exeter University in Britain.

Anyone expecting a region-wide revolution would do well to look at Egypt, which

imports around half of the food eaten by its 79 million population and is struggling

with inflation of more than 10 percent.

With a massive security apparatus quick to suppress large street protests and the

main opposition Muslim Brotherhood excluded from formal politics, the state's

biggest challenge comes from factory strikes in the Nile Delta industrial belt.

Egypt's Internet based campaign for political change, the country's most critical

voice, has failed to filter down from the chattering middle classes to the poor on the

street.

"There has been such a division between economic struggles and political struggles

in Egypt," said Laleh Khalili, a Middle East Politics expert at the University of

London. "Strikes have been going on, but not spilling into the public domain."

This could however change if rising discontent over food price inflation feeds into

the wider malaise about political and economic stagnation and the lack of


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opportunities and freedom, especially for the armies of young graduates entering

the workforce each year with little prospect of a meaningful job.

Other analysts say the Internet has the power to turn disparate local demands into acohesive political campaign, and point to Web activism in non-Arab Iran that helped

bring millions onto the street in 2009 to contest an election result.

"Young people across the Arab world should go to the streets and do the same." It is time

that we claim our rights," said Mohsen, the Lebanese student.

"Arab leaders should be very scared now because they do not have anything to offer theirpeople but fear and when Tunisians win, the fear will be broken and what happens there

will be contagious. It is only a matter of time," he added.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Tunisia riots offer warning to Arab governments