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Ed Webb

Opinion: Tunisia, A Gulf Crisis Battleground | The North Africa Journal - 0 views

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Tunisia opinion authoritarianism analysis Qatar UAE KSA GCC media foreignpolicy

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Since the Arab Spring uprisings shook the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2010/2011, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members have sought to be drivers of political developments in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia—and, to lesser extents, Algeria and Morocco—not only through petrodollar diplomacy, but also through direct military intervention
  • The three-year-old GCC crisis—pitting Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt against Qatar since mid-2017—has significantly regionalized
  • By far, the Gulf crisis has played out more destructively in Libya than anywhere else in the Maghreb. Yet Tunisia is a salient example of how another North African country became an arena for the Gulf rivalry albeit one where far less violence has erupted
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  • From the beginning of the Arabian feud, officials in Tunis stressed their preference for not picking sides while also offering to help with diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the crisis.
  • Qatar gave Tunisia critical financial support in 2012 that helped the government in Tunis maintain domestic stability amid a sensitive period of time following the Jasmine Revolution. While under growing International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressure after President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s fall, Tunisia received USD 500 million from the Qatari National Bank
  • Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Arab Spring protests that shook Tunisia in 2010/2011 secured some greater soft-power influence for Qatar among Tunisian revolutionaries
  • Those leading Ennahda had ties to Doha dating back to the 1990s when Qatar was beginning its escape from the Saudi-led, counter-revolutionary order of the Arabian Peninsula
  • Emirati press often reports on the politics of post-Arab Spring Tunisia in ways that depict the country as having fallen under too much influence of Islamists, who are by definition “terrorists” as Abu Dhabi sees it
  • After Nidaa Tounes took power in 2015, the UAE’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan paid his first visit to Tunisia since 2011. While in Tunis, he met with then-President Beji Caid Essebsi, who founded Nidaa Tounes, and he invited him to the Emirates. Essebsi also paid Egypt’s president a visit in October 2015 and invited Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Tunis. According to Emirati calculations, these developments were supposed to weaken Doha-Tunis relations. By opening up more channels of communication with Ennahda’s domestic opponents, Abu Dhabi wanted to bring Tunisia’s regional foreign policy into closer alignment with the Emirates, and further away from the Qatari-Turkish axis.
  • Just as the Qataris helped Tunisia maintain its stability during the aftermath of its 2010/2011 revolution, the Tunisians paid them back in terms of assistance in the domain of food security after the Saudi- and Emirati-imposed siege began.
  • Qatar is the top Arab investor in Tunisia
  • From 2011 to 2019, Doha’s exports to Tunisia doubled six times while Tunisian exports to Qatar doubled ten times. Qatar and Tunisia’s growing relationship has manifested in the signing of 80 agreements across a range of areas
  • leaders in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have seen the Jasmine Revolution as a threat to their model of “authoritarian stability” which entails support for Arab dictators such as Ben Ali. Both the Saudi and Emirati governments have major concerns about any country in the Maghreb holding free elections that open up the possibility of Islamists being empowered to govern. Furthermore, the growth of Qatari influence in Tunisia following Ben Ali’s fall has irked both Abu Dhabi and Riyadh
  • Certain segments of the population saw Doha’s agenda as geared toward supporting political Islam, not democratic revolutions in the Arab region. Such perceptions of Doha pushing Tunisia under the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence created problems for Qatar among many Tunisians who oppose Islamism.
  • One of the reasons why the UAE has more influence in Tunisia than the Saudis pertains to the Emiratis’ culture and ethos of trade and commerce which Tunisian businessmen easily understand and appreciate.
  • To this point, the majority of Tunisians are indifferent to the ideological underpinnings of the Gulf feud and simply want as much investment from as many Gulf and non-Gulf states as possible. The percentage of Tunisians who are staunchly ‘pro-Qatar’ or ‘pro-UAE’ is below 50, yet their percentage is increasing which underscores how the GCC crisis’ impact on Tunisia has been polarizing
  • Many of these citizens who staunchly welcomed the Jasmine Revolution see Abu Dhabi as a counter-revolutionary force seeking to topple Tunisia’s democratic government. A common narrative is that the Emiratis would like to do to Tunisia what they did to Egypt in 2013 in terms of bankrolling a coup d’état to reverse an Arab Spring revolution.
  • The UAE’s hand in Tunisia is certainly weaker than it is in Egypt or Libya. Tunisia lacks a military or “Deep State” that the Emiratis would be able to coordinate with to stage a popular coup d’état in which the putschists could enjoy a degree of legitimacy among Tunisians comparable to what the Egyptian junta enjoyed among ordinary Egyptians in 2013
  • Ennahda was more humble, moderate, and modest during its time at the helm compared to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). As a result, Ennahda left Tunisians, including those who oppose political Islam, with less reason to favor a coup d’état to end the Islamist party’s role in the country system of governance.
  • UAE seems more set on preventing Tunisia from being pushed into the Qatari-Turkish axis’s orbit, particularly with respect to the conflict in Libya. Ironically, as Hamdi posits, Tunisia’s non-aligned politics vis-à-vis Libya’s civil war, which the UAE seems to accept, “is in line with Tunisian public opinion which predominantly [favors Tunisian] neutrality and a political solution and view Turkey’s military intervention with much suspicion.”
  • there are signs that the UAE and Saudi Arabia are frustrated with Tunisia’s view of the UN-recognized GNA as legitimate and Tunis’s opposition to foreign (including Emirati, Egyptian, and Russian) intervention in the conflict
  • Among secular Tunisians from elite backgrounds, there is a common narrative that Doha has been sponsoring terrorism and radicalism in their country. This message is in lock-step alignment with Abu Dhabi’s narratives about Qatar being a dangerous power in the Arab region. In fact, some opponents of Ennahda have even accused the party of covering for Qatar’s alleged role as a driver of terrorism in post-Ben Ali Tunisia and wished that Tunis would have supported the blockade of Doha in 2017
  • that Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda reached a political compromise has helped Tunisia achieve significant political stability and peace despite all the chaos in the region. Experts agree that this landmark “secularist-Islamist rapprochement” could have been severely undermined by Tunis picking sides in the GCC dispute
Ed Webb

Tunisia - between instability and renewal | European Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views

www.ecfr.eu/...etween_instability_and_renewal

Tunisia politics parties Ennahdha ennahda corruption UGTT

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jul 19 - Cached
  • Even though the 2011 revolution was motivated in large part by socio-economic concerns, the governments that have held office since then have been unable to improve the situation. Growth has remained low, and unemployment is high: 15 percent of the population is without work, and the rate for those with a university degree is over 30 percent. Inequality between the more prosperous coastal region and the deprived interior of the country remains striking. Around half of all workers are employed in the informal economy. Many young Tunisians lack any prospect of being able to afford a home or a car, or of being secure enough to start a family.
  • Faced with increasing debt and deficit levels and shrinking foreign currency reserves, Tunisia agreed a loan of $2.9 billion with the International Monetary Fund in 2016. The IMF called on Tunisia to cut public spending, overhaul its collection of taxes to raise government revenue, and allow the currency to depreciate. The IMF argues that it has been fairly flexible so far in enforcing public spending cuts, but it is now stepping up its pressure on the Tunisian authorities.
  • Wages in the public sector account for 15 percent of GDP (up from 10 percent in 2010), so it is hardly surprising that the government is now trying to limit spending in this area. Yet it is doing this at a time when inflation (worsened by the deflation of the Tunisian dinar that the IMF has promoted) and subsidy cuts have already had a severe impact on people’s purchasing power.
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  • It is an anomaly of the Tunisian political scene that the UGTT’s anti-austerity position has little representation among elected politicians: the largest political groups (the Islamist Ennahda party and various offshoots of the secular-modernist Nidaa Tounes party) have backed the IMF agreement
  • unemployment and the proliferation of grey-sector jobs are linked to structural biases in the economy that systematically favour a small group of politically connected businesses. Measures that might address this problem include increasing access to credit for would-be entrepreneurs, changing regulations and practices within the public and banking sectors that are tilted to a narrow elite, and reducing corruption. According to Tunisians, corruption has not been reduced but only “democratised” since the revolution. Investment in infrastructure serving disadvantaged parts of the country could also help spur more inclusive growth
  • Since the revolution, the overarching priority of political life in Tunisia has been to seek enough stability to preserve and complete the political transition. Much has been achieved, though a few important steps (notably the establishment of a Constitutional Court) remain unfulfilled. But Tunisia has now reached a point where the greatest threat to stability is no longer political rivalries around religious identity but unmet social and economic aspirations. Until now, the country’s political parties have not organised themselves to offer distinctive and coherent visions of how Tunisia’s socio-economic development can be improved, and they are paying the price in public alienation from the entire political system
Ed Webb

US lobbying creates headaches for candidates back home - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...lections-lobbying-tunisia.html

Tunisia Turkey Libya Iraq US USA lobbying elections

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Oct 19 - Cached
  • Lobbying records first disclosed last week by Al-Monitor have played a role in today's presidential runoff in Tunisia, where candidate Nabil Karoui is under fire over a $1 million contract to help boost his chances. The revelations have prompted a Tunis court to open a criminal investigation not only into Karoui’s US activities, but those of two other political actors as well.
  • US lobbying laws, however, do not explicitly ban foreign actors from engaging in lobbying activities that would be illegal back in their home countries.
  • “FARA does not involve enforcing the laws of other countries. It is the responsibility of foreign agents to ensure that they are complying with all laws, both domestic and foreign.”
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  • In the case of Tunisia, it has fallen on the Tunis Court of First Instance to open a criminal investigation into Karoui’s contract with Canada-based Dickens and Madson following a complaint from his rivals. He is alleged to have broken two provisions of Tunisia’s electoral law: Article 80, which bans foreign gifts, including “propaganda,” and Article 81 on campaign contribution limits (the cap for the first round was around $625,000).
  • ensnared the Ennahda party, which has retained Burson-Marsteller (now BCW) for public affairs work in the United States since 2014, as well as parliamentary candidate Olfa Terras-Rambourg, who retained the Washington firm America to Africa Consulting in early September. While the FARA filing on behalf of Karoui openly aims at “attaining the presidency of the Republic of Tunisia,” those for Ennahda and Terras-Rambourg, however, are less incriminating and only aim to boost their image abroad without openly calling for electoral help
  • Two Turkish opposition parties, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Republican People’s Party (CHP), are also registered as foreign agents in the United States. Both have US liaison offices involved in grassroots political organizing and advocating for certain policies while walking on a legal tight rope: Article 69 of the country’s constitution states that “political parties that accept aid from foreign states, international institutions and persons and corporate bodies of non-Turkish nationality shall be dissolved permanently.”
  • a bevy of Iraqi and Libyan political actors, from individual politicians to the Kurdistan Regional Government, also lobby independently of their central governments
  • “In a lot of cases,” she said, “the politicians or campaigns or political parties route the payments for these foreign influence operations targeting the US through shell companies or offshore accounts or other types of opaque financial structures, since it’s either disfavored in their country or in some cases illegal.”
Ed Webb

Tunisia has not 'fallen into hands of Islamists': Marzouki - Region - World - Ahram Online - 0 views

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Tunisia France politics ennahda

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Marzouki was the first foreign leader to address the French assembly since 2006, as part of a three-day visit aimed at rebuilding Tunisia's ties with its former colonial master. Relations were strained by France's slow and confused response to the popular revolt, but in his speech Marzouki nonetheless expressed "gratitude" to France. "A fraction of official France supported the dictatorship," he said. "But the majority, the essential part of France... supported us as much as it could and accompanied us as far as possible until the tyrant fell," he said
Ed Webb

Trump has vowed to eradicate 'radical Islamic terrorism.' But what about 'Islamism'? - ... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...rorism-but-what-about-islamism

Islam religion Islamism Islamists liberalism politics opinion analysis colonialism borders

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • The very notion of Islamism often elicits fear and confusion in the West. Used to describe political action where Islam and Islamic law plays a prominent public role, it includes everyone from the European-educated “progressives” of Tunisia’s Ennahda Party to the fanatics of the Islamic State. Not surprisingly, then, “Islamism” can confuse more than it reveals.
  • The “twin shocks” of the Arab Spring and the rise of the Islamic State have forced mainstream Islamists — Muslim Brotherhood-inspired groups that accept parliamentary politics and seek to work within existing political systems — to better articulate their worldview and where it converges and diverges with the post-World War II liberal order.
  • While the Islamists we talked to unanimously opposed the Islamic State and were disgusted by its brutality, some couldn’t help but look with envy at the group’s ability to shatter “colonial impositions” — the Islamic State’s symbolic razing of the Iraq-Syria border, drawn up by Europeans, is perhaps the most infamous example. It’s not so much the arbitrariness of state borders as much as the fact that they exist.
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  • A general dislike of modern borders has been a feature of Islamist politics for some time now, and not just among the young and zealous. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example, has been candid on how Turkey’s “emotional borders” extend far beyond those drawn on the map.
  • After the Arab Spring, a growing number of Islamists have begun to challenge what they see as uncreative approaches to the state — an overly centralized state, and one which, in its very constitution, is unable to tolerate dissent or alternative approaches to organizing society. There is a sense, as one participant put it to us, that the state actively interferes with everything, including religion.
  • a sort of libertarian streak
  • The Islamic State’s model is actually quite modern, with government control taking precedence over social and religious institutions rising organically from the grass roots.
  • As the scholar Ovamir Anjum has argued, pre-modern Muslim thought was not concerned with “politics” in the traditional sense, but with the welfare of the ummah — what he cleverly calls “ummatics.”
  • What’s discomforting is that many Muslims — and not just the Islamic State or card-carrying Islamists — might prefer, in an ideal world, to be free to pledge their ultimate loyalty to the ummah in the abstract, rather than to a nicely bounded nation-state. And while survey data shows the overwhelming majority of Muslims strongly oppose the group, the Islamic State nonetheless draws strength from ideas that have broader resonance among Muslim-majority populations
  • Maybe the reason Islam hasn’t fallen in line isn’t just the poverty, the lack of education, colonialism or wars. These all play a role, of course. But maybe the ideas Islamism brings to the fore also have a resilience and appeal that we have been reluctant to admit. And maybe the liberal order is not as desired, inevitable or universal as we thought.
  • Ed Webb on 22 Apr 17
     
    Islamists pose intellectual challenge to liberal world order
Ed Webb

Ten Years After the Arab Spring, Tyranny Lingers On | Newlines Magazine - 0 views

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uprisings opinion analysis Tunisia Egypt Bahrain Syria Yemen Iran KSA Saudi Iraq Sudan Algeria Lebanon politics authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 02 May 21 - No Cached
  • The initial impulse behind the uprisings, the very impulse that led Bouazizi to self-immolation, lay in the fact that humiliated peoples, suffering from economic dislocation, political repression, and denial of basic human rights had grown impatient with their status as subjects and had risen, demanding their rights as citizens. Wealth redistribution, social justice, and good governance were as equal for those demonstrating en masse as regaining their lost karama — their dignity
  • Most of the political and intellectual debates that animated the early stages of the uprisings had their roots in the reformist movements and the intellectual ferments and the drive to modernize Arab societies that began in the first half of the 19th century
  • a stagnant economy remains the greatest threat to Tunisia’s stability and a major source of Tunisians’ discontent. Tunisia’s robust civil society made it possible, even during periods of political and security tensions, to conduct executive, legislative, and municipal elections democratically, although elected officials still display some of the discredited habits of the ancien régime. Ennahda, the main Islamist movement, proved adept at political transformation when its founder Rachid Ghannouchi declared the moderate Islamist party was abandoning political Islam. Ten years on, Tunisians are openly critical of their government’s failure to address their economic needs, forcing the youth either to immigrate to Europe or to join radical Islamists abroad. Ten years after Mohamed Bouazizi’s fiery end, disillusionment is the national mood.
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  • the repressive regimes shared one thing in common: All reacted with brute force to peaceful calls for empowerment and accountability.
  • Some of them, particularly those ruling heterogeneous states, brazenly weaponized religion, regionalism, sectarianism, and tribal and ethnic cleavages in their societies to divide and crush the uprisings
  • The Arab uprisings began as spontaneous protest movements led first by middle-class students and professionals who were then joined by workers and other social groups. The Islamists, skeptical at first, joined later. In a political landscape bereft of organized liberal and secular mass movements or political parties, with only defunct old Arab nationalists and leftists, it was a question of time before the Islamists would control the political square and hijack the uprisings.
  • The political, social, and cultural maladies afflicting Arab societies that were supposed to be swept away by the young activists have proven to be immovable
  • That does not mean that the spirit and the yearning for empowerment that animated the early phase of the uprisings have been irrevocably defeated. In recent years we have seen the populations in majority Arab states like Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon erupt in fury over their ossified, repressive, and venal regimes. In Sudan, the protests forced the military to oust Omar al-Bashir, their tormentor for 30 years. In Algeria, the mass protest forced the stagnant regime to end the 20-year reign of the ailing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. In both countries we have seen a glimpse of the hope and enthusiasm that animated those who went to the streets in 2011. So far the positive changes in Sudan and Algeria are not fundamental, but at least the protests have shaken two stagnant and moribund regimes.
  • The protests that rocked Iraq and Lebanon in 2019 also brought to the fore a new, emergent reality. Despite or partly because of the uprisings, the Middle East is less Arab today than at any time in a century. Iran is the dominant force in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Israel owns the skies over Syria, while Iran, Turkey, and Russia carve up zones of control and influence on the ground. In Iraq, Turkey has established military bases, and Iran pulls the strings of many militias. In Libya, Russia and Turkey continue to play their cynical proxy wars. In this “wounded time” many Arabs are living in the shadows of their more powerful neighbors.
  • The uprisings faced not only entrenched ruling classes but also deep-rooted patriarchy and religious and cultural traditions that are not amenable to swift and significant social and cultural change.
Ed Webb

UAE offers to mediate Nile dam dispute in name of Red Sea security - Al-Monitor: The Pu... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...-dispute-name-red-sea-security

nilebasin Egypt Sudan Ethiopia water GERD UAE diplomacy analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 16 May 21 - Cached
  • On March 26, the UAE formally offered to mediate the dam dispute and on March 31, the UAE invited the foreign ministers of Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt for talks on the dam in Abu Dhabi. The UAE wishes to facilitate a deal that would allow Ethiopia to fill the dam and simultaneously ensure that the downstream countries, Egypt and Sudan, maintain sufficient access to Nile River water.
  • The UAE’s offer to mediate between conflicting parties in the dam dispute reflects its commitment to Red Sea security and a growing reliance on crisis diplomacy as a tool of power projection
  • the Saudi Arabia-led Red Sea security coalition that was inaugurated in January 2020.
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  • As the UAE officially ended its involvement in the Yemen conflict in October 2019 and its military intervention on Khalifa Haftar’s behalf in Libya failed, Abu Dhabi has relied increasingly on crisis diplomacy to expand its international influence
  • Although the US envoy to the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, is currently discussing the dam on a regional tour, President Joe Biden has not committed the United States to a mediation role and recently consulted with the UAE on the Tigray crisis. The European Union has confined its role in the dam dispute to consultations with regional actors, such as Egypt, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, while Russia insists that the African Union should resolve disagreements over the dam. Saudi Arabia’s support for Egypt and Sudan’s position weakens the credibility of the Saudi mediation offer, while Egypt is wary of Turkish mediation, as it believes that Turkey provided technical assistance to Ethiopia on constructing the dam.
  • In addition to the positive precedent set by its successful facilitation of peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea in August 2018, the UAE views its close relationships with all of the conflicting parties in the dam dispute to be a major asset
  • an anti-UAE backlash that was caused by its initial opposition to Sudan’s democratic transition, recruitment of Sudanese mercenaries in Yemen and Libya and Eritrea’s alleged use of Emirati drones in Tigray.
  • udan and Egypt are much more likely than Ethiopia to accept Emirati mediation
  • A former senior US official who is familiar with the dam negotiations told Al-Monitor that Egypt was “forum-shopping” on the dam dispute as it fears a military escalation that could cause Ethiopia to retaliate by attacking Egypt's Aswan High Dam.
  • On March 3, Dina Mufti, a spokesperson for the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, said inviting external mediators would demean the African Union’s efforts
  • Although Qatar’s recent mediation of the Somalia-Kenya maritime dispute underscores the arbitration potential of Gulf countries in the Horn of Africa, the UAE faces an uphill struggle to achieve a major diplomatic breakthrough on the dam.
Ed Webb

Tunisia sentences opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi to year in prison | Middle East Eye - 0 views

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Tunisia dictatorship saied ennahda Ghannouchi authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 16 May 23 - No Cached
  • The Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi has been sentenced in absentia to a year in prison, marking the most high-profile escalation in an authoritarian crackdown by President Kais Saied.
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