Unlike in war-torn Afghanistan or fanatical Saudi Arabia, Tunisian democracy is a real possibility. It’s a bit unlikely as it’s only one possible option of many, but it could happen. Mebazaa himself is now promising, perhaps even sincerely, “a better political life which will include democracy, plurality and active participation for all the children of Tunis.”Read the whole thing.
...But this small North African country is in so many ways the opposite kind of place that gives the United States trouble. It lacks the sectarianism that so poisons Lebanon and Iraq and is blessedly free of the ideological lunacy next door in Libya. The country is far less visibly Islamicized than Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it’s — and I’m not kidding here — a thousand years ahead of Afghanistan, and it lacks utterly the cult of suicide-murder and martyrdom that has plunged Gaza and the Hezbollah-ruled parts of Lebanon into death spirals.
If Tunisia does turn towards Democracy, it will send a more powerful message than developments in Iraq have. After all, the change in Iraq can be attributed to the US and its occupation of Iraq. For a Muslim country on its own to kick out a dictator and then turn towards a democratic form of government would unsettle the Muslim dictators of the Middle East even more than Zine El Abidine Ben Ali being kicked out.
It will be interesting to watch what happens in Tunisia.
(Unless you are a Muslim dictator in the Middle East)
Technorati Tag: Tunisia.
3 comments:
Not likely to happen. Tunisia's secular Arab elite will brook no compromise on admitting the Islamists into the political system. Its the most Europeanized and secular of the Arab states and the Tunisian model is unlikely to take root in the rest of the Arab World. We can expect another authoritarian successor to emerge from the ruling party - or the military there in the foreseeable future.
You're no fun.
No probably not. You can count on the US and the EU to ignore them until some band of glint eyed fanatics comes to power then Obama will mutter something incomprehensible and suggest an open dialog. At the same time the EU will announce it has sold a new batch of tanks or whatnot to them. Any support of a moderate pluaralistic democracy will be met by screeching hoards of street protests in London chanting Death To Israel etc etc etc. And at the end of the day a few hundred thousand Tunisians will try to escape to Sicily, be turned away by the Italian government.
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