It will not be surprising if in many parts of the developing world that are feeling the pressures of the economic recession emanating from the Western world economies, political protests and riots over unemployment, high food prices and a consequent inability of citizens to purchase food and everyday commodities, proliferate. In the case of Tunisia the surprise is that the government lost control so quickly over the protests, given that the regime of President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali had run it so quietly, for so long, with the strong support of the military. The implication is that the President was undermined by more than just popular support, but by persons in the main governmental support institutions of the country.
We have almost got accustomed to a situation in much of the Arab world where regimes have lasted for scores of years, and Tunisia is no exception in that regard. President Ben Ali had been heir, for twenty-three years, to the post-colonial rule of President Habib Bourguiba whose Neo Destour Party had, up to now, ruled the state for fifty years, for the latter part of which the name of the party was changed to the present one of the Constitutional Democratic Congress – the opposite of what it stood for. In these regimes the ‘partie unique’ as it came to be known, generally encompassed the military, so that the army itself has become not simply a standing institution of the state, but of the particular regime which then has no formalized opposition.
For many years, both in North Africa and the African continent, a mainstay of such governments has been the mother country of the one-time colonies. France, perhaps even more than Britain, maintained large numbers of citizens in these new states, with a heavy French institutional and personnel presence within their main institutions. At the hint of trouble the Government of France, regardless of its political complexion, would intervene, by threat of by a presence, to ensure that the ruling regime was not overthrown. But as has been demonstrated in this present Tunisian case, and indeed in the case of current events in the Ivory Coast, its favourite ex-colony, France has largely given up this practice. Instead successive French governments have tried to diplomatically lean on these regimes, aware of the fact that in recent decades global opinion has become conscious of a rising popular sentiment in such states, increasingly contemptuous of their long-standing regimes. In addition, in Tunisia, as in for example next-door Algeria, the acceptance by these one-party, semi-militarised regimes of pro-capitalist and less state-dominated economic systems has led to some degree of economic growth with the fruits of which the populations could be tempered, and less overt hostility on the part of the Western powers.
Yet tremors periodically continue to come to the surface, if not immediately and surprisingly boiling over as in Tunisia. In Algeria itself, dominated not only by the long-standing rule of the National Liberation Front (FLN) founded by Ahmed Ben Bella as a tool of anti-French rebellion, the army has continued to prop up the regime in the face of periodic uprisings, and the persistent attacks inspired by contemporary radical Islamism. There, President Bouteflika, a long-standing foreign minister under Ben Bella’s military successor, Houari Boumèdiene and highly visible as an advocate of Third World non-alignment, has sought to appease the electorate by his pro-liberalisation policies over the last decade.
Similarly in Egypt, there would appear to be not so much publicly displayed antagonism, but a certain degree of apathy under the long-standing regime of President Mubarak. As in many of the other Middle Eastern states, whether under secular or monarchical regimes, the one party state penetrates every avenue of society, even while the government subscribes to a kind of state capitalism intended to conform to the requirements of the international financial institutions. The main irritant to the regime is the radical Islamism that has developed ideological sympathies and links to groups espousing strategies of self-sacrifice as a form of militant protest. Periodic self-immolation characterizing the current events in Tunisia, has been followed in Egypt, and Egypt, like many of its neighbours is now highly concerned about the practices, so prevalent in Iraq since the American invasion, of mass killing through bomb explosions by persons committed to a version of their faith which legitimates such actions.
In Syria, a traditional one-party regime continues to exist in full control of the military apparatus, and concerned to ensure a form of secularism that outside influences, particularly those in the multi-confessional state of Lebanon, cannot penetrate. Once again, the Lebanon government has come under strain – indeed it has collapsed – as the International Tribunal established by the United Nations seems ready to present its report on the death of the father of the present Prime Minister, Harari. Syria, as with other regimes, now committed to a certain economic liberalization is extremely fearful that blame for that political murder will fall on its Baath Party regime and lead to some destabilization.
In all this rumbling, the North Atlantic powers seem less inclined to readily intervene than they have been in the past. The United States certainly does not wish to extend its physical intervention into these countries. Instead it seeks to undertake a kind of keeping-the-cap-on-the-lid diplomacy, trying to nudge the Middle Eastern regimes from provocative actions, whether domestically (as in Egypt) or externally (as in the case of Syria in relation to both Lebanon and Iraq).
But at the present moment, the one imponderable for the Western powers is the unpredictability of the extent severity of today’s global inflation spreading into developing countries, and which, to their populations, existing governments seem incapable of dealing with. There are really now, no legitimate excuses for external interventions against revolts against governments inspired by economic crises.
