Tunisia faces risks linked to its political transition and a fragile global economy but it will not be a “new Greece,” the International Monetary Fund said today:

In early June, the IMF approved a two-year standby loan for about $1.75 billion to support the government’s economic reforms after the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. The money is to be disbursed in installments depending on the government’s successful implementation of the loan-supported reform program that includes strengthening a fragile banking sector and encouraging business investment.

“The growth outlook could fall short of projections, particularly if the external economic environment deteriorates further, impacting tourism and remittance inflows,” the IMF said in a report. “Also, setbacks in the political transition — such as delays in organizing the elections — could reduce political commitment to economic reforms, and increase investors’ wait-and-see attitude.”

“Two and a half years after kindling a revolution that flamed across the Arab world, Tunisians have moved on to the next chapter, a political struggle between Islamic fundamentalism and the tolerant, Mediterranean-style Islam that has characterized their nation’s 57 years as an independent state,” writes The Washington Post’s Edward Cody,

Although Tunisia is a small country of 11 million people, its looming decisions on national identity, the role of religion and political organization touch on — and are likely to become a beacon for — the main challenges facing reformers across North Africa and the Middle East. …Tunisians, in effect, have reached the point in their democracy where Syria’s opposition wants to be after that country’s civil war, where Libyans want to be after they build a post-Gaddafi state and where secular Egyptians want to be if and when an effective opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood arises.

A draft of the new constitution is behind schedule, with many of its articles hotly contested. Rachid Ghannouchi (left), spiritual leader of the majority ruling Ennahda party, recently told Washington Post editors that his party had made “many concessions” to secular demands, including abandoning an insistence on sharia as the basis of law and accepting equal rights for women.

“But outside the assembly, Ghannouchi’s party over the past two years has allowed the rise of a strong Salafist movement, hard-liners dedicated to imposing a severe form of Islam,” Cody notes.

While judges recently sentenced members of the FEMEN activist group to four months in prison,  he notes, some 20 Salafists who had been charged in connection with the September mob attack on the U.S. Embassy were given suspended sentences and released.

Ennahda bears primary responsibility for the emergence of the radical Salafist threat, says Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.

“By insisting for months that shari’a should be a major source of law, by inviting hard line Wahabi preachers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to preach in what has traditionally been a tolerant country, by failing to bring to justice the authors of most acts of vandalism against Sufi shrines, and by allowing their militia, the Ligues de Défense de la Révolution, to attack the headquarters of the powerful trades union UGTT last December, the Islamist party has opened up deep lines of fracture in Tunisian society,” he wrote in a recent report, Still a Long Way to Go for Tunisian Democracy.

The assassination of labor union organizer and secular activist Chokri Belaid “shocked Tunisian society, becoming something of a turning point for the Ennahda government and, perhaps, for the struggle to redefine Tunisian politics,” notes Cody. Ennahda is also taking an illiberal approach to transitional justice, he argues, by pushing a proposed law to “immunize the revolution” by excluding officials associated with the former regime from holding political office.

“The main target is me,” said Beji Caid Essebsi, 86, who served in key positions under Bourguiba and whose Call for Tunisia party, in alliance with other secular groups, has gained enough strength in recent opinion polls to raise hopes of defeating Ennahda in the upcoming presidential and legislative elections.

Essebsi said his support is swelling because Tunisians feel that the revolution has stalled under Ennahda. He also said that people are upset over the anemic, tourist-scarce economy and that a majority of Tunisians reject the Islam promised by Ennahda and Ansar al-Sharia.

“We are for a secular state, while they are for a religious state,” he said. “The bottom line is that we stand for two different kinds of society.”

RTWT

“The rapid unraveling of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s image at home has spilled into Egypt in what experts say is a warning to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood as they balance the need to meet the demands of both the deeply conservative and the secular communities in the Arab world’s most populous nation,” AP reports:

The Brotherhood’s deputy leader Khairat el-Shater depicted himself as “Egypt’s Erdogan” during his short-lived presidential campaign last year before he was thrown out of the race over a Mubarak-era conviction.

“This is certainly a bad omen for Islamists. Their model is violently shaking as the man they say they want to emulate has been dealt a blow,” said Mohammed Abdel-Kader Khalil, a Cairo-based senior researcher at the East Center for Strategic and Regional Studies

He said the Brotherhood actually “inverted the model” by trying to monopolize power through the infusion of its members in state institutions under the pretext of battling the “deep state,” a term used in Turkey to refer to a network of military and civilian allies accused of trying to destabilize the country during the early years of Erdogan’s rule. The term is repeatedly used by Brotherhood leaders to refer to the legacy of Mubarak’s 29-year regime.

“They wanted to consolidate power, take control of state institutions while the streets are boiling and the economy in shambles,” said Khalil. “They are in a rush and they didn’t really benefit from Turkey’s experience.”

Other experts insist that Taksim Square is no Tahrir.

“Various parties attempt to make a connection between the so-called Turkish model and the Egyptian. They are very mistaken. The two are vastly different,” said Amr Ismail Adly, a Turkish affairs scholar in Cairo. “Portraying this as a struggle between secularism and Islam is also oversimplifying a much more complex issue given the diversity of protesters and motives.”

Members of Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party suggest that such parallels are part of a conspiracy to undermine Islamist regimes.

“What is going on in Turkey has nothing to do with daily or economic needs. It is intended to promote the idea that Islamic regimes, which have made economic achievements and proved to the world that they can stand in the face of all external challenges, have failed,” Murad Aly, the FJP’s media adviser, said in a newspaper interview.

But the protests “have sent ripples across the Arab world, unnerving Islamist leaders who have long touted Turkey as a successful model of political Islam, analyst Jailan Zayan reports from Cairo:

Islamist-led Egypt and Tunisia “must be worried about the problems faced by Erdogan’s Turkey, a supposedly successful model” of political Islam, said Antoine Basbous, director of the Paris-based Observatory of Arab countries. Turkey’s protests are reminding the Arab world’s liberals and secularists “that they were the motor of change” during the 2011 uprisings, he said.

Tunisia and Egypt — where unprecedented revolts led to the ouster of longtime dictators in 2011 and propelled Islamists to the forefront of politics– have repeatedly pointed to Turkey as a good example of a moderate Islamist democracy. The Islamist party Ennahda which won post-revolution polls in Tunisia has openly expressed its admiration for the “Turkish model,” while Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who addressed the AKP’s congress in September 2012 lauded Erdogan’s party as a “source of inspiration”.

But both Arab states have been suffering increasing polarisation between Islamists and secularists, with Islamists in power accused of failing to live up to their promise of guaranteeing rights and freedoms.

“At the end of the day, what matters is not the soundness of the analogy, but public perceptions of it and its ability to capture the imagination, which it seems to be doing right now,” said Hesham Sallam, Washington-based political analyst at Georgetown University.

Credit:MEMRI

Tunisia is making progress in its efforts to dismantle “terrorist” cells, Prime Minister Ali Larayedh said today. But he declined to apply the “terrorist” label to the radical Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia (right) that has been linked with Al-Qaeda and has been implicated in a series of violent attacks.

“This is an illegal organization, and some of its leaders are involved in terrorism,” said Larayedh, a member of Ennahda, Tunisia’s majority party. “I have not yet said that Ansar al-Sharia is a terrorist organization… it must quickly issue a statement clearly condemning violence and terrorism,” he added.

“It seems like Ennahda have finally put their foot down, but that shouldn’t be applauded because over the last two years they have tolerated the growth of Salafism and done nothing about it,” said Aaron Zelin, an expert on Tunisia at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“There is likely to be more confrontation in the short to medium term. There could be a cycle of low-level conflict, but neither side has an interest in it becoming larger-scale.”

Ansar al-Sharia is the most radical Islamist group to emerge in what was long one of the most secular Arab countries. It poses a test to the authority of the moderate Islamist-led government and to the stability of Tunisia, a country of 11 million.  Zelin estimated that the movement, which is not officially registered, has at least 20,000 activists and is gaining support fast among young people disenchanted with Ennahda’s failure to anchor Islamic sharia law in the constitution, and alienated by unemployment and lack of economic opportunity.

“Salafists have felt targeted and this has only added to their frustration,” said Alaya Allani, a specialist on Islamist groups. “These events are slowing (Tunisia’s) democratic transition and delaying the recovery from an economic crisis.”

Despite the economic challenges, especially debilitating unemployment, the role of religion in governance has emerged as a major obstacle in preparing a constitution, says a prominent Tunis-based civil society activist,

“Two renowned Tunisian constitutionalists have wisely declined to be part of the panel appointed to review the draft constitution. Both Yadh Ben Achour and Kais Saied realize that the text is rife with impossible contradictions (a state religion and Tunisia as a civil state), severe omissions (the universality of human rights) and that highlighting these deficits could endanger their safety,” writes Radia Hennessey,  president of the Vineeta Foundation, an NGO dedicated to public health, human rights and governance:

Tunisians are calling the text the Constitution of Shame….It is a constitution that paves the way for a Shariah-based theocratic state with no checks and balances — and immune from future change or amendment. The obsession with religion has so derailed the work of the Constitutional Assembly that the nature of government is not even well established in the draft text.

“The separation of mosque and state, as a way to ensure the freedom of religion, is an urgent imperative if this so-called Arab Spring is not to dry up,” she contends.

Some analysts suggest that the Nahda-led government is using radical Islamists as a ‘trump card’ to distract citizens from its failure to address the country’s pressing problems. The ruling Islamists are also being forced to address a problem of their own making, says a leading analyst. “Since they took over the reins of government early last year, Nahda leaders have focused on issues which divide Tunisian society deeply,” writes Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs:

“By insisting for months that shari’a should be a major source of law, by inviting hard line Wahabi preachers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to preach in what has traditionally been a tolerant country, by failing to bring to justice the authors of most acts of vandalism against Sufi shrines, and by allowing their militia, the Ligues de Défense de la Révolution, to attack the headquarters of the powerful trades union UGTT last December, the Islamist party has opened up deep lines of fracture in Tunisian society,” Ghilès contends in a must-read report, Still a Long Way to Go for Tunisian Democracy:

Until recently, the party has tolerated the violence of its Salafi friends, arguing, at least to Tunisia’s foreign partners and to ambassadors in Tunis that it was a small price worth paying to ensure that these often young unemployed men joined the democratic process. The attack of the US embassy in Tunis last 14th September, the lynching soon afterwards of an member of Nidha Tunes, Lotfi Naguedh, the attack by Nahda militias of the trades union headquarters in Tunis last November, the torching of sixty Sufi shrines – zaouias – and the murder of Chokri Belaid cast serious doubts about Nahda’s real intentions, all the more as the culprits are seldom brought to trial.

RTWT

Tunisia’s government, led by the majority Islamist Ennahda party, “was once accused of conciliation to the country’s substantial minority of militants with a violent interpretation of their faith,” notes analyst Alice Fordham. “Now, in a series of statements and actions, the government seems to have decided to crack down on the groups, amid what western and regional officials say are growing security threats.”

A change in discourse by  Ali Larayedh, the prime minister, is a key indicator of the shift, say analysts.

“The government will deal with Ansar Al Sharia as an illegal organisation that has committed acts of violence and has ties to terrorism,” he said this week. “The head of this movement is involved in many affairs, including terrorism, and is wanted by security forces.”

“It is a change of language. Larayedh has never before used this term for Ansar … reserving the word terrorist for the groups” which Tunisia’s army is hunting on the Algerian border, said Michael Ayari from the International Crisis Group think tank.

“The words count, but we still can’t say that the policy has changed, that they mark a point of no return, and that the Ansar al-Shariah activists will now be arrested for belonging to the movement, for their political identity,” he added.

“Ennahda’s dramatically hardened attitude towards Salafists could be an attempt to claw back security credentials,” writes Tunis-based journalist Sherelle Jacobs.

“But Ennahda’s crackdown is missing a trick,” she contends:

Ennahda should instead adopt a shrewder policy, making the distinction between three types of Salafists – scripturalist Salafists who are apolitical and only interested in proselytising; jihadist Salafists who are against using violence domestically (a group that includes some Ansar al-Sharia members); and jihadist Salafists who champion domestic terrorism. Ennahda should tolerate the first lot; pull the second lot into mainstream politics; and come down hard on the third group through targeted anti-terrorism operations.

Ansar al-Sharia “is about as close as one could fear to being an al-Qaeda-front organization operating freely in an Arab country. And it’s on the move,” says analyst Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.

“Salafist groups, including Salafist-Jihadist and takfiri organizations like Ansar al-Sharia, may agree with less extreme Islamists about many things in theory. But in practice, they always find them both a political obstacle and insufficiently ‘Islamic,’” he writes for Now Lebanon:

Since they rely on literalism, militancy, categorical assertions, and extremism virtually unrestrained by almost any pragmatic considerations, such organizations will invariably find the power-oriented political realism of Brotherhood-style parties to be religiously and politically objectionable. More importantly, they will see political benefits in attacking them rhetorically and, eventually, literally. 

A grim set of factors is combining to empower this openly and extremely radical group. Ongoing economic distress has undermined the government, including Ennahda, and strengthened the impact of Ansar al-Sharia’s aggressive social services program. Ennahda’s political compromises with its coalition partners undermine its ability to appeal to Muslim extremists who find conciliation, even in the service of gaining political power, to be distasteful at best. Instability, and the growing power of their Salafist-Jihadist allies in Libya and the Sahel region, have provided Ansar Al-Sharia a new degree of strategic depth. 

Ansar al-Sharia now openly warns of civil war. This is a confrontation Ennahda sought to avoid. Its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, last year asked Salafists, including associates of Ansar al-Sharia, to give his party peace and quiet to secure Islamist control over the police and military. But clearly Ansar al-Sharia is in no mood for patience.

RTWT

Tunisia’s acting president and labor unions have called for dialog and consensus on contentious issues hindering the democratic transition, as the country braces itself for anticipated violent unrest ata planned Salafist gathering this weekend.

“Everyone must make the necessary concessions” to achieve the common goal of building a civil and democratic society rooted in Arab-Islamic values, said caretaker President Moncef Marzouki.

Tunisians have been calling for “less political and social tension, a swift end to transition and security,” he told delegates at a second round of the national dialogue initiated by the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT). Marzouki also called on civil society to contribute to a “more ethical politics” by establishing an “observatory” to monitor the authorities, political parties and the media “before and after the election campaign.”

UGTT Secretary-General Hassine Abassi echoed his sentiments,  stating that the “time has come to reach consensus between political players, civil society and all active forces so as to create a glossary of democratic transition.”

The labor leader called on all parties to “shun all forms of violence and defining a clear roadmap for the rest of the transitional period and until the next presidential and legislative elections.”

The Nahda-led government was treating extremists with impunity and hesitating to apply the law, said Abdelbasset Ben Hssan, president of the Arab Institute for Human Rights.

“Terrorism is a red line, especially during such transitional periods where the state’s institutes are still fragile,” he told Tunisia Live.  “Reforming the security sector and providing it with the efficient tools to prevent terrorism is crucial,” he said, adding that civil society had a role to play in combatting extremism.

Photo: VOA

Salafist militants linked to Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) have launched a series of attacks on secular, liberal and labor union activists and institutions. But the ‘moderate’ majority Islamist party is also culpable, according to independent observers. 

“As political and religious violence has grown, both Ennahda (through the Leagues for the Protection of the Revolution) and AST have been accused of using or encouraging violence as a means of advancing certain goals,” analyst Andrew Lebovich wrote for Foreign Policy this week.

“For Ennahda, vigilante violence likely allows the party to strategically apply pressure on political opponents while also providing a means of keeping more hardline Tunisians within the fold of the organization by giving an outlet for those who seek more aggressive change through violence,” he argued.

The authorities have launched a drive to curb the activities of Ansar al-Sharia although “no policy shift has been officially announced, and Rachid Ghannouchi (above) – the leader of the dominant, moderate Islamist Nahda Party – has continued to advocate dialogue with more radical counterparts,” according to a recent report.

Seifallah Ben Hassine, the leader of Ansar al-Sharia, AST has “modeled the group on the Palestinian Hamas movement, devoting itself in part to social welfare initiatives and Islamic education,” writes analyst Jamie Dettmer:

Some security experts caution that the crackdown on the group should be focused more on the vigilantism of Ansar supporters and other Salafists seeking to enforce Islamic dress codes or targeting art exhibitions and restaurants that serve alcohol. A confrontation with the government over protests and gatherings could trigger renewed trouble, regional experts fear. They worry the government’s actions might radicalize Salafists or push them into reacting more violently.

Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argues that the crackdown could force Hassine to call for greater defiance so his authority would not be questioned by even more hardline Ansar members.

“This is why his recent statement about youths rising up to defend Islam is so alarming — it shows that the tipping point may be near,” Zelin said.

Tunisia’s Islamist-majority government has cracked down on the operations of Ansar al-sharia, the hardline Salafist group suspected of involvement in the attack on the US embassy in Tunis last year.

The initiative coincides with expressions of concern by international and domestic rights groups today over the draft Tunisian constitution for failing to protect minority rights, specifically the requirement that the country’s president must be Muslim and the absence of protection of freedom of thought and conscience.

A recent statement by Human Rights Watch (HRW) highlights these concerns, taking issue with articles that specify the country’s president must be Muslim and noting the lack of protection of freedom of thought and conscience.

The constitution stipulates that the state must protect freedom of belief and of religious practice, but there is no provision for freedom of thought and conscience, says the Tunisian Association for the Support of Minorities (ATSM).

Human Rights Watch today called on the National Constituent Assembly to modify key articles in the draft constitution which imperil basic liberties.  

“Among the most worrisome articles or gaps are: a provision recognizing universal human rights only insofar as they comport with ‘cultural specificities of the Tunisia people,’ the failure of the constitution to affirm freedom of thought and conscience, and the overly broad formulation of permissible limitations to freedom of expression,” the group said.

Nor does the draft stipulate that human rights conventions already ratified by Tunisia will bind all of the country’s authorities. “The NCA should close loopholes in the draft constitution that would allow a future government to crush dissent or limit the basic rights that Tunisians fought hard for,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

The authorities have launched a drive to curb the activities of  Ansar al-sharia although “no policy shift has been officially announced, and Rachid Ghannouchi – the leader of the dominant, moderate Islamist Nahda Party – has continued to advocate dialogue with more radical counterparts,” the FT reports:

Analysts say the impetus for the new crackdown appears to have been clashes that erupted in recent days between alleged Islamic militants and Tunisian troops along the country’s desert border with Algeria. …. Police reportedly broke up public proselytizing events in several Tunis suburbs, igniting stone-throwing clashes that drew riot police.

Authorities have vowed also to crack down on the Salafi practice of raising the black flag with Koranic inscription that has become a trademark of groups linked to al-Qaeda.

“We’re not going to allow the raising of any flag other than the Tunisian,” Lotfi Ben Jeddou, interior minister, was quoted as saying in a television interview on the weekend.

Increasingly vocal and politically active Salafis are outraged.

“It is an attempt by the so-called moderate Islamists to reach power without actually having to abide by Islam,” said Abdelmajid Habibi, head of the Tahrir Party, another Salafi group targeted in the crackdown. “They claim that this new project is in favor of human rights, women’s rights and social justice when, in fact, it is an attempt to weed out real Islam and implement western values that have nothing to do in a society like ours.”

The crackdown follows growing concern over the influence of ultra-conservative Salafist groups which have conducted attacks against secularist individuals and institutions. Human rights groups and democracy advocates fear that Ennahda has colluded with extremist elements, facilitated the immigration of foreign imams and taken an ambivalent stance on the issue of political violence.

According to analyst Roula Khalaf, “politicians who deal closely with Nahda say that the party is home to different Islamist trends, with a base that is more radical than its leadership”:

Some analysts say the party, like others in Tunisia, is divided between those who are true believers of democracy and those who are under the illusion that ruling Tunisia is a divine right. Others see differences relating to the extent of the party’s commitment to the project of Islamizing Tunisian society.

While secularists accuse Nahda of being too soft on the puritanical Salafis, who are expanding their base by preaching a socially strict Islam, a wing of the party is closer in its views to the Salafis and considers that the leadership is departing from its Islamist mission.

“There’s a lot of disenchantment among Nahda supporters because the pace of change has been very slow,” said Shadi Hamid, an expert on Islamist movements at the Brookings Doha Centre.

The latest draft constitution upholds key civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, and contains improvements over previous drafts, said Human Rights Watch.

“However, it also contains several articles that are incompatible with Tunisia’s international treaty obligations on human rights and that would undermine rights protections, the group said:

Article 21, which states that “International conventions duly ratified by the parliament have a status superior to the laws and inferior to the constitution,” creates a risk that the constitution will be used to override or reduce the protection offered by some fundamental human rights, set out in treaties to which Tunisia is party.

Other provisions that cause concern are:

The preamble, which lays the foundation of the constitution on “principles of universal human rights in line with the cultural specificities of the Tunisian people.” This sentence offers wiggle-room for legislators and judges to depart from the global standards of fundamental rights;

Article 5, which says that, “The state guarantees freedom of belief and religious practice,” but does not mention freedom of thought and of conscience, including the right to replace one’s religion with another or to embrace atheism. Human rights would be best protected by an explicit guarantee of freedom of thought and of conscience;

Insufficient definition of the permissible limitations on freedom of expression, assembly, and association: several articles in the third draft constitution define the scope of freedom of expression, assembly, and association by permitting the legislature to pass laws that restrict the rights, without setting out clearly the limits on the restrictions; and

A discriminatory provision that only a Muslim can become president of the republic. The provision contradicts Article 6, which states, “All citizens are equal in rights and obligations before the law, without discrimination.” In addition, the draft constitution still limits equal protection of the law to citizens of Tunisia.

“The assembly should address the troubling provisions now, before the constitution is set in stone,” Goldstein said. “Tunisians led the entire region in demanding their basic rights, and they shouldn’t let them slip away now.”

The ruling Ennahda party has facilitated the rise of Salafists, say rights groups. Photo: France24

Tunisia’s major parties may have ended a months-old stalemate by negotiating a provisional agreement on the country’s future constitution, but the country’s democratic transition faces an overlapping threat from violent jihadists and ultra-conservative Salafists, say analysts.  

“We have overcome the impasse, we are heading towards a mixed regime where neither the head of state nor the head of the government will have supreme control over the executive power,” said Ennahda’s Rached Ghannouchi, the de facto head of the majority Islamist party.

Yet the transition process may be threatened by the emergence of violent jihadist groups.

“The hunt for al-Qaida-linked militants in a mountainous region near Tunisia’s borders with Algeria in recent days has raised alarm that the birthplace of the Arab Spring has become the latest battleground for violent jihadis,” AP reports:

With neighboring Algeria and Libya full of weapons and violent movements of their own, Tunisia is struggling to prevent the growth of armed groups while making its own tentative transition to democracy.

“We have discovered a terrorist plan targeting Tunisians and the state,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui, citing the presence of some 20 militants encamped in Jebel Chaambi, near the southern city of Kasserine.

Prime Minister Ali Larayedh yesterday insisted that Tunisia’s security situation was improving and that jihadist groups would be defeated, Middle East Online reports.

“We will pursue our confrontation with the violent terrorist groups… dismantle their structures and bring them to justice,” said the former interior minister and Ennahda stalwart.

But opposition MPs criticized Larayedh for failing to crack down on radical Islamist groups when he was interior minister between December 2011 and March 2013, when there was a spike in Salafist violence.

“We are heading towards civil war,” said Hichem Hosni, an independent MP.

The attacks on the US embassy in Tunis last September, on the UGTT labor union HQ last December, the torching of 60 Sufi shrines – zaouias– and the assassination of leftwing lawyer Chokri Belaid (left)have forced the authorities to act, “yet most of the perpetrators of such acts have gone unpunished,” says a leading analyst.

“It has taken the Nahda-dominated government quite some time to take off the kid gloves it wore when treating its Salafi brothers,” writes Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona-based CIDOB think-tank.

“As long as this impunity lasts, even speaking of “free and fair” elections makes little sense,” he writes. “The sense of fear and foreboding that stalks Tunisia, not least among its womenfolk, will last as long as many ordinary people remain unconvinced that the government truly believes in the rule of law and democracy.”

French-language daily Le Temps raised fears of “a spiral of deadly violence similar to the one that ravaged Algeria” during its so-called black decade of civil war in the 1990s.

Le Temps blamed the “policy of impunity and the complacency of the authorities, who encouraged the terrorists to continue,” accusing the government of doing nothing to curb the rise of Salafist groups since the revolution in January 2011.

Le Quotidien called on Tunisia’s leaders to “take the bull by the horns,” saying “the moment is very grave, and the fight against terrorism has inevitably become a collective responsibility.”

The Salafist violence “sent the country’s delicate political transition into turmoil, prompting then-Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali to resign in February and raising fears that the Ennahda-led government was failing not only at the economy but security as well,” AP reports:

“The terrorist threat has moved to a higher level,” Jebali said in a recent interview with the French-language daily La Presse. “The top priority is to launch a decisive campaign to recover all the weapons circulating in the country.”

He added that the country is still in the delicate process of writing a new constitution and holding elections for a new legislature and president, by the end of the year. The process has been riven by angry disputes between Ennahda and the opposition parties, partly over Ennahda’s alleged laxity towards salafis.

“Please don’t add political and social landmines to those already on Jebel Chaambi,” said Jebali, calling for national unity in face of the threat.

The security threat coincides with growing concern over the influence of ultra-conservative Salafist groups which have conducted attacks against secularist individuals and institutions. While not all Salafists are violent, human rights groups and democracy advocates fear that Ennahda, the majority Islamist party, has colluded with extremist elements, facilitated the immigration of foreign imams and taken an ambivalent stance on the issue of political violence.

“Even though some of them have extremist views, these foreign imams often come to Tunisia with the blessing of the government or the Islamist party Ennahda, the party in power, which accommodate and welcome them,” said Messaoud Romdhani (right), the vice president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights.

 “The authorities have not reacted to our warnings, and no concrete measure has been taken to stop these practices,” he told France 24, adding that “civil society organizations also have a duty to act.”

“People need to be aware of the dangers of this type of preaching and understand that they have the right to challenge the preachers’ presence. It’s every citizen’s role to ensure public spaces are protected,” he said. “Unfortunately, civil society organizations don’t have the same presence on the ground as the imams.”

A parliamentarian from the centrist Democratic Group this week criticized the authorities’ failure to wrest control of mosques from the hardline Salafists.

“There is a lack of policy for controlling mosques… The Chaambi terrorists can take refuge there,” he said, said Samir Bettaieb,

Some observers contend that Ennahda leaders have been conspicuous in their double talk on the question of political violence.

Ghannouchi, the party’s spiritual and de facto leader, this week urged “young Tunisians” not to join the “so-called jihad which has no place here… The jihad is in Palestine, not on Mount Chaambi,” he told the radio station Mosaique FM.

“Salafist jihadists pose a threat to Tunisia. The Tunisian government ought to tighten the screws, following the attack on the American Embassy,” he told Agence France Presse. “These people pose a threat not only to Ennahda but to the country’s civil liberties and security,” he added.

The UGTT labor union has been the target of violent Salafist attacks

Responding to criticism that Tunisian authorities have yet to arrest anybody for the attack on the US Embassy, the Ennahda leader compared Abu Iyad, the leader of Tunisia’s Salafist jihadist movement, to Osama Bin Laden. “Bin Laden remained free for several years. The international secret services spent a long time chasing him before finally being able to stop him,” he said.

But less than 24 hours later, he asked to “slightly modify” his accusation that Salafist jihadists, “pose a threat.” He said on national TV that “his statements were distorted and reported imprecisely,” adding that “those who attacked the US Embassy in Tunis do not belong to the Salafist movement. They are criminals and terrorists.”

Ghannouchi (right) told local media that he lacked “any desire to fight a religious group,” stating that “Salafist jihadists constitute an integral part of Tunisian society.”

Ennahda’s need to maintain party unity and appease a membership base sympathetic to Salafi ideology lies behind this “double discourse,” say analysts.

“The double talk of Ghannouchi can be explained based on electioneering purposes. Ennahda includes a quasi-Salafist radical wing, which is part of the party’s leadership, represented by Sadok Habib Ellouze and Sadok Chourou,” said Naji Jalloul, an expert on Islamist movements.

“Ghannouchi cannot ignore these two figures in his electoral strategy, especially given that the results of the Troika government are not terribly impressive at the socio-economic level,” he said. ‘The leader of Ennahda is, therefore, caught between a desire to sell his moderate Islam to the West and the requirements of his radical group. This explains the double talk strategy.”

Political violence is the major threat to Tunisia’s transition, according to a new report from Human Rights First. The introduction of blasphemy laws would undermine freedom of expression and provide a pretext for political violence against rights and democracy advocates, as in Pakistan, the report suggests.

“Whether and how blasphemy and other speech deemed offensive to religion or religious symbols is regulated in Tunisian law is a contentious issue in the transition process,” says Human Rights First’s Neil Hicks. “Rights and freedoms would be threatened by any broadening or strengthening of laws criminalizing allegedly blasphemous or offensive speech, and several such proposals have been made since the revolution that ousted former President Ben Ali.”

The threats to freedom of expression partly a legacy of authoritarian rule, but also a reflection of Salafist influence, said rights activist Romdhani.

“People here have been so deprived of freedom for so many years that they have a poor understanding of freedom of expression and how to express this, sometimes confusing it with anarchy,” he said. “These practices are being encouraged by the wave of preachers visiting Tunisia from the Gulf or the Middle East.”

The jihadist Salafist movement has been able to expand its influence for two principal reasons, said analyst Ghassan Ben Khalifa:

First, it appears that the Salafists are attracting a lot more young people from the slums that surround large cities (specifically, Tunis, Sousse and Sfax) than from the cities or the rural areas. The second phenomenon is that despite the “limited” numbers of jihadist Salafists, they have proved their ability to persist and remain active…not only in violent protests but also in proselytizing and charitable work.

Alarm over the recent attacks has been overblown when taken in a broader regional context, said Riccardo Fabiani, the North Africa analyst of the London-based Eurasia group.

“If we compare the situation in Tunisia to the rest of the region, particularly Libya and Algeria, it is pretty much under control,” he told AP, adding that state and foreign interests were not under any significant threat.

He said that part of the problem is how demoralized security forces have been since the fall of Ben Ali, sapping their ability to maintain border security as well as in the past.

“They are countering the problem with limited resources and security forces are downbeat,” he said. “They feel powerless.”

Can democracy take root in the Arab world? asks Michael Wahid Hanna. How long will it take? Ten years, 20…50?  The ultimate success of the Arab uprisings will depend heavily on the development of seven core areas, he writes for the Democracy journal: economic growth and equality; education policy; security-sector reform; transitional justice; decentralization; the development of regional norms on democratization; and—in many ways, the linchpin for everything—the flourishing of a more pluralistic politics.

In an important sense, all the preceding factors depend to varying degrees on these societies becoming more pluralistic—allowing more democracy, more dissent, more breathing room for secularism. The ongoing transitions, however, have made clear that the future of open, pluralistic politics is far from assured.

In fact, key political actors in the region have made it their goal to support notions of religious supremacy and to restrict rights and freedoms based on regressive interpretations of Islam and Islamic law. Coupled with the region’s zero-sum politics, the challenge of pluralism can be seen in terms of preserving space for dissenting political opinions and protecting equal citizenship for religious and ethnic minorities.

At root, much of this discussion is grounded in the approach of Islamist political parties to constitutional construction and ideas of citizenship.

The slow glide toward repression is a key concern, as the region’s Islamist parties have a highly majoritarian definition of democratic politics. This emphasis on the mandate of the ballot box at the expense of rights protection is further aggravated by the rightward pull of more rigid Salafi parties.

In both Tunisia and Egypt, Ennahdha and the Muslim Brotherhood have been loath to alienate these actors, seeing them as both allies against non-Islamists and rivals in the electoral setting. The region’s mainline Islamists would also have to make clear that violence has no place in democratic politics. While these groups have long abandoned violence as a tool, cynically allowing other actors to intimidate and coerce political opponents will fuel cycles of violence.

The region’s lack of experience with practical politics, inclusion, and democratic discourse has led to a zero-sum understanding of political power and an abiding allergy to direct criticism. The difficult art of compromise is not a self-evident practice and will be dependent on robust representation of non-Islamists in elected positions, the rise of effective civil-society groups, and the slow acculturation to a more dynamic political life.

Lessons for U.S. Policy: Conditional Engagement

The uneven performance of the region’s democratically elected Islamist leaders also suggests a policy approach toward states that have suppressed the forces for change—namely, encouragement of bottom-up democratization. Doing this would include taking steps such as pressing for municipal and provincial elections as a precursor to broader reforms. In pushing such a course on countries that have avoided regime change, the United States can explore anew the feasibility of more gradual reform, which has often been employed rhetorically by authoritarians to avoid actual reform. Further, an approach that seeks to impart governing responsibilities upon opposition groups will ease their potential transition to national leadership.

Michael Wahid Hanna is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where he focuses on international security, human rights, and U.S. foreign policy in the broader Middle East and South Asia.

This extract is taken from a longer article for Democracy. RTWT

Credit: Sada Journal

Dozens of shoe-waving demonstrators today called for a Tunisian minister to quit, accusing her of a failure to defend women’s rights, a day after the verdict in the trial of a university dean accused of harassing a veiled female student was delayed, as hundreds protested outside the court.

“The repeatedly adjourned trial has come to symbolize bristling tensions between Islamists and secularists in Tunisia, where the Islamist Ennahda party was voted to power in elections that followed the January 2011 uprising,” AFP reports:

Habib Kazdoghli faces a possible five-year jail term if convicted of “violence committed by a public employee while performing his duties,” in a trial that has gripped Tunisia for months. It has been widely criticized by the teaching establishment, civil society groups and leftist opposition parties, who accuse the Ennahda-led government of seeking to Islamize society.

“I stand with the judges striking for their independence, it is proof that they are also suffering from interference by the political establishment,” Kazdoghli told AFP.

Human Rights Watch called on the national assembly to establish an independent judiciary when it debates a draft law to establish a temporary judicial council.

“Tunisia desperately needs an independent judiciary after so many years in which the political authorities manipulated the courts, denying justice to so many,” said HRW’s Eric Goldstein.

Secular and liberal Tunisians are keen to establish clear constitutional constraints on the majority Ennahda party as a means of countering its authoritarian and illiberal impulses.  

“Democracy demands a liberal disposition; a tolerance for minority rights and views; and a willingness to negotiate, compromise, and when necessary make concessions for the political process to proceed, according to Adeed Dawisha, author of The Second Arab Awakening: Revolution, Democracy, and the Islamist Challenge from Tunis to Damascus (April 2013). 

“In Egypt’s case, the odds against this happening are pretty long. In Tunisia, the odds are better, but to a large extent that is because Ennahda had to enter a post-election coalition partnership with secular parties,” he notes, “and consequently had little alternative but to follow a moderate version of Islamic politics.” 

Tunisia’s transition is also threatened by hard-line Salafi militants responsible for violent attacks on seculars, obstruction of justice and threats to freedom of expression, the Project for Middle East Democracy observes. 

“Vigilantism has spread far and wide, affecting a broad spectrum of Tunisian society: artists, liberal clerics, Sufis, religious minorities, educators, secularists, foreigners, and civil society activists have all been its victims,” analyst David Gartenstein-Ross writes for Foreign Policy, adding that “alarmingly, there are several documented instances in which those who carried out the attacks were able to intimidate the security services, thus resulting in police inaction following acts of violence.”

Ennahda has been accused of sympathizing with Salafists or at least turning a blind eye to their activities.

“If the government looks the other way, or if police are too intimidated to make arrests, then the extremists will have won an important battle in the struggle for Tunisia’s future,” Gartenstein-Ross writes.

Recent polls place Nidaa Tounes—a self-proclaimed “modernist” party founded in the summer of 2012—nearly neck and neck with Ennahda, Tunisia’s ruling Islamist party, Monica Marks and Omar Belhaj Salah write for the Sada Journal. Yet, many Tunisians— particularly those living in smaller towns outside the capital—argue that top figures in their local Nidaa Tounes offices were well-known RCD members before the revolution.

Like Egyptians, who fear a return of the felool, or old regime forces, Tunisians talk openly about the threat of tejemaa—former members of Ben Ali’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (French acronym, RCD) staging a counterrevolution. For its part, Nidaa Tounes has diligently attempted to dismiss such charges, pointing out that Ennahda itself has allowed many RCD-era bureaucrats to stay in its administration. Whether or not Nidaa Tounes will be able to seriously challenge Ennahda in Tunisia’s next elections depends largely on its ability to address these suspicions and appeal more dynamically to the country’s center-left—a key, unclaimed voter demographic.

“Look—you cannot create a party from scratch,” said [former dissident] Mohsen Marzouk (left)—widely recognized as one of Nidaa Tounes’s most powerful leaders.

“Ennahda was here for forty years [sic]. We’ve been here for seven months…There were two million people in the RCD. It’s been dismantled, so these people are now in the nature. It’s only natural that a lot of people who were in the RCD will join our party.”

Some of Tunisia’s leading progressive parties agree that defeating Ennahda is a goal that justifies major sacrifices.

Right now, Ennahda is the only Tunisian party that commands a stable support base. Nidaa Tounes has patched together a motley crew of leftists, liberal progressives, Destourians, and former RCD partisans who oppose Ennahda’s rule. Even groups with nominally conflicting agendas— such as many members of the country’s principal labor union, UGTT, and the national employers’ union, UTICA—tend to support Nidaa Tounes. For the party to succeed in the next elections, it must meaningfully address perceptions of RCD linkage, build support based on more than just Beji Caid Essebsi’s personality, and articulate a strong socio-economic vision that goes beyond defeating Ennahda.

The success of Tunisia’s transition depends, in part, on whether Nidaa Tounes can meet these challenges in the coming months. If not, Ennahda may grow increasingly authoritarian in coming decades—less because of Islamism and more because of the creeping over-confidence that comes with winning successive elections.

This brief extract is taken from a longer article published by the Carnegie Endowment’s Sada Journal.

Monica Marks is a Tunisia-based Rhodes Scholar and doctoral candidate at St Antony’s College, Oxford. Omar Belhaj Salah is a Tunisian civil society activist and postgraduate student at Manouba University.

The Project for Middle East Democracy is a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Analyst Shadi Hamid compares Islamism in Egypt and Tunisia

Tunisia’s ruling Islamist party has selected its hardline interior minister to form a government. The move appears to be at odds with the recommendation of a recent report which calls on the Nahda party (also known as Ennahda or Al-Nahda or Renaissance) to adopt a more moderate stance and “promote a version of Islam rooted in Tunisia’s reformist movement and adapted to contemporary challenges.”

“Ali Larayedh, who has been widely criticized by the opposition for failing to ensure stability in Tunisia, hails from Ennahda Party’s hardline wing,” the Associated Press reports. “His nomination is expected to make the task of finding consensus and building a coalition with Tunisia’s other political parties more difficult.”

“The party chose Larayedh in an overnight meeting and he will be presented to President Moncef Marzouki later Friday, Moadh Ghannouchi, the son of Ennahda’s leader,” told AP:

Tunisia was plunged into a political crisis after the assassination of a leftist politician two weeks ago. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned after his own party rejected his proposal to form an apolitical government of technocrats. The split between the party and Jebali was seen as a deep disagreement between the party’s hardline and moderate wings.

Mahmoud Baroudi, a leader of the secular Democratic Alliance opposition party, said Larayedh’s appointment would aggravate tensions and increase anger in the streets.

“He was responsible for leniency with Islamist violence against human rights activists,” he said, blaming Islamists for disrupting opposition meetings and assassinating Belaid.

This morning, President Moncef Marzouki reportedly asked Larayadh to form a government.

Pro-democracy and rights advocates have criticized Larayedh for deploying rather than reforming the security forces inherited from the Ben Ali regime.

“Before the revolution, the ministry was very much an opponent of Ennahda,” said Ali Zeddini, vice president of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights. “Now the tables have turned, and the ministry is working in Ennahda’s interests.”

Tunisian liberals and secular democrats are almost uniformly hostile to Larayedh’s nomination.

“The decision deepens the crisis because Larayedh headed the ministry responsible for the killing of Belaid and violence that has spread throughout the country,” said Zied Lakhdar, a leader in the Popular Front.

Jebali, who remains Ennahda’s secretary-general, refused to head the next government after his own party rejected his plan for an apolitical technocrat cabinet to prepare for elections, Reuters notes. He was seen as a moderate overruled by Ghannouchi, who says the last election gave Ennahda a popular mandate to rule in a power-sharing deal with moderate secular parties.

“Larayedh is not a man of consensus,” said Nejib Chebbi, leader of the secular Republican party. “He failed during his work as head of the Interior Ministry.”

“It’s the wrong message,” said Noaman Fehry, leader of the secular opposition Gomhurry Party. “Ennahda has missed a historic opportunity to evolve and put the country back on track,” he told the Wall Street Journal:

Ennahda itself has struggled to agree on a strategy for confronting some of the most violent groups in Tunisia, particularly the hard-line Islamist Salafis. Ennahda’s hard-liners are sympathetic to Salafist ideology and were hesitant to crack down too hard on a movement seen as an important pillar of Ennahda’s political support in the country, according to several government officials close to Mr. Jebali, the outgoing prime minister.

But a veteran journalist and human rights activist welcomed the appointment.

“He has a lot of flexibility and understanding,” said Neziha Rjiba, who worked with Mr. Larayedh on an opposition campaign against dictatorship before the uprising two years ago. “He knows you can’t take away women’s rights and you can’t impose Shariah law.”

The split between Mr. Jebali’s moderate wing within the party and hard-liners was emblematic of the dilemma facing newly empowered Islamic movements in the region as they struggle to adapt their secretive religious ideology to the practical demands of daily governance.

“There is a lot of confusion in the minds of Ennahda right now about what it means to govern a country,” said a Western diplomat in Tunis.

The Islamist party’s split between relative moderates like Jebali and hardliners headed by Ghannouchi is jeopardizing its ability to emerge as a credible party of government, a recent report suggests.

“An-Nahda itself is divided: between religious preachers and pragmatic politicians as well as between its leadership’s more flexible positions and the core beliefs of its militant base,” says an analysis from the International Crisis Group.

“Politically, such tensions give rise to an acute dilemma: the more the party highlights its religious identity, the more it worries non-Islamists; the more it follows a pragmatic line, the more it alienates its constituency and creates an opening for the Salafis,” it notes.

The report recommends “a charter to guide religious teaching at the grand mosque that would promote a version of Islam rooted in Tunisia’s reformist movement and adapted to contemporary challenges,” and calls on An-Nahda to “promote this concept of Islam in its publications and encourage associations with close ties to the party to spread it to its rank and file.”