Generalizing Tunisia: Context Overrides Story

When
faced with problems, most authoritarian regimes maintain a policy of
rigidity when the appropriate response would be flexibility, political
wisdom and concessions. This policy gives authoritarian leaders their
ability to control their populations to serve the interests of a few
individuals and political and military elites. It can also, however,
usher their downfall, for populations can only be oppressed, controlled
and punished to a point.

President
Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, who controlled his population with
an iron fist since his arrival to the presidential palace in 1987, must
have crossed that point. He was forced to flee the country amid the
angry chants of thousands of Tunisians, fed up with growing
unemployment, soaring inflation, government corruption, violent
crackdowns and lack of political freedom. These mounting frustrations
led to relentless protests throughout the country. The
government's subsequent crackdowns only stirred emotions beyond any
crowd control strategy, and eventually Ben Ali's plane left to seek
refuge outside his own country.

The
upheaval in Tunisia is certainly worthy of all the headlines, media
commentary and official statements it has generated. But many of these
reactions contain generalizations that hype expectations, worsen an
already terrible situation and provoke misguided policies. Indeed, the
current political storm, dubbed both the "Youth Intifada" and the
"Jasmine Revolution", has inspired many interpretations. Some
commentators wished to see the popular uprising as a prelude to an
essentially anti-Arab regimes phenomenon that will strike elsewhere as
well, while others placed it within a non-Arab context, noting that
popular uprisings are growing in countries that struggle with rising
food prices. Even al-Qaeda had a take on the situation, trying to score
points to find a place in the looming political void.

Many commentators have focused on the Arab identity of Tunisia to find correlations elsewhere. Hadeel
al-Shalchi's Associated Press article "Arab activists hope Tunisia
uprising brings change," presented the uprising within an Arab context.
Reporting from Cairo, she wrote of the growing optimism among those whom
she dubbed "Arab activists" that other Arab leaders will share the fate
of Ben Ali if they don't ease their grip on power. Hossam Bahgat is one
such activist. He told AP, "I feel like we are a giant step closer to
our own liberation... What's significant about Tunisia is that literally
days ago the regime seemed unshakeable, and then eventually democracy
prevailed without a single Western state lifting a finger."

True,
both Tunisia and Egypt are Arab countries with many similarities, but
expecting a repeat of a scenario that was uniquely Tunisian and
implicitly suggesting that Western states serve as harbingers of
democracy is illusory, to stay the least.

Now
that Ben Ali is out of the picture, Western governments are cautiously
lining up behind the Tunisian uprising, but hardly with the same
enthusiasm of their support of the Iranian riots of June 2009. British
Foreign Secretary William Hague merely denounced the unrest, calling for
"restraint from all sides." He stated, "I condemn the violence and call
on the Tunisian authorities to do all they can to resolve the situation
peacefully." US President Barack Obama added, "I urge all parties to
maintain calm and avoid violence, and call on the Tunisian government to
respect human rights, and to hold free and fair elections in the near
future."

Cliched
statements aside, both the US and the UK must fear the repercussions of
a popular uprising in an area so close to the heart of American-British
interests in the Middle East. Both countries are careful not to appear
to oppose democratic reforms, even if they are forced to disown their
friends in the region. Their response is largely representative of
official responses from many Western capitals - the very capitals that
lauded Tunisia as a model for how Arab countries can help win the war on
terror.

One
must not let confusing media headlines sideline the fact that neither
the US nor the UK had Tunisia on their radar for circumventing democracy
or violating human rights. Ben Ali was celebrated as an icon of
moderation, notwithstanding his atypical Arab stance on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ben
Ali's authoritarian regime was not the type that required much
chastising. It was the benign kind that allowed a tiny space for secular
opposition while cracking down on any Islamic opposition group. For 23
years, such practice was barely problematic, for it served the interests
of both Ben Ali and various Western powers. The countless calls for
respect of human rights from international and local organizations were
mostly unheeded. Washington and London rarely found that irksome.

Now
that the Tunisian people's fight for rights has taken a sharp turn,
many of us find it difficult to examine the specific context of this
case without delving into dangerous generalizations. Western governments
now speak of democracy in the region - as if there were ever a genuine
concern; commentators speak of the next regime to fall - as if every
Arab country is a duplication of another; and technology bloggers are
celebrating another 'twitter revolution.'

Perhaps
generalizations make things more interesting. Tunisia, after all, is a
small country, and most people know little about it aside from the fact
that it's a cheap tourist destination - thus the need to place it within
a more gripping context. Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is using
the opportunity to read the Tunisian uprising in a unique way. The AQIM
leader, Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, has called for the overthrowing of the
"corrupt, criminal and tyrannical" regimes in both Tunisia and Algeria
and the instatement of al-Sharia law. This call has promoted American
commentators to warn of the future Islamization of Tunisia and will
likely result in Western intervention to ensure that another "moderate"
regime succeeds the one that just fled.

There
is no harm in expanding a popular experience to understand the world at
large and its conflicts. But in the case of Tunisia, it seems that the
country is largely understood within a multilayer of contexts, thus
becoming devoid of any political, cultural or socio-economic uniqueness.
Understanding Tunisia as just another "Arab regime", another possible
podium for al-Qaeda's violence, is convenient but also unhelpful to any
cohesive understanding of the situation there and the events that are
likely to follow.