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TUNISIA CONTINUES ON SLOW, STEADY PATH OF DEVELOPMENT
WASHINGTON -- The president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, had just arrived here, and before his appointments with President Bush and others, he relaxed for a few minutes in his suite in the Willard Hotel. I found him there, musing about where his small, but increasingly pivotal, Middle Eastern country was going.
"There will be a series of important events in Tunisia this year," began Ben Ali, a husky man with jet-black hair and eyes, and an authoritative but friendly manner. "In particular, the legislative and presidential elections in the fall. I have expressed this same desire to all of my American interlocutors: We are willing to welcome any observers for the elections, and I am sure they will see a process not much different than the one here."
As President Ben Ali visited Washington this week for the first time in 14 years, it would seem that Tunisia has a number of specific developments to boast about. For years, it has achieved total education of its population and a liberation of women that most industrialized countries would boast of; it has virtually eliminated poverty (75 percent of the population is middle class, and 80 percent own their own homes).
Tunisia is an Islamic nation where the moderate, tolerant, traditional Islam is taught and where radical Islamists wanting to overthrow the evolving democratic system are simply not tolerated; the fall elections will see for the first time at least five opposition candidates running for president. With its open market and privatized former state enterprises, it is the first Arab or North African country to sign a marketing agreement with the European Union, which effectively begins the complicated process of joining Europe and its standards.
It would seem that the world would applaud -- and from the top positions of the United Nations to the World Bank to the IMF, developmentalists who understand the fragile process of transforming backward countries DO applaud. While other parts of the world keep looking for an Arab "development model" or "pilot project," Tunisia already IS that model.
But it was particularly revealing of the quagmires of development that two of our major newspapers greeted Ben Ali with unqualified derision.
"Today," The New York Times editorialized Wednesday of the visit, "one of the area's most unbudging autocrats ... will visit the White House. Mr. Ben Ali's record on human rights and democracy is poor even by the standards of the Middle East ..." Two days earlier, The Washington Post prominently displayed a column titled "Our Friend the Autocrat," stating that Ben Ali "runs one of the most repressive police states in the Arab world." (It was striking to me that the author, Neil Hicks, is unknown to me, although I have written critically about human rights abuses for decades, and that I have never heard of the group he is identified with, Human Rights First.)
Given the discontent boiling under the surface across much of the Middle East, given that no other country in the region comes anywhere near Tunisia's economic, social and educational accomplishments, and given that the United States is deeply involved, and perhaps stuck, in Iraq and Afghanistan trying to figure out how to move those countries in a positive direction, it is only fair to ask: "What is going on here?"
First, as the country's polished foreign minister, Habib Ben Yahia, told me before the meetings, "Both the far right (the Islamists) and the far left (the communists) hate us -- they hate us because we've captured the middle, and once you do that, there is nothing they can do." This is true: Tunisia, which gained independence from France in 1957, first got rid of the communists and then, in the turbulent 1980s, exiled the radical Islamists who were plotting to take over the country. Almost all were simply sent into exile; some hundreds were imprisoned.
These cases have been picked up, in turn, by radical leftists and exiled Islamists in Europe and to a lesser degree in America as cause celebres, even though they represent the genuine totalitarian impulse. Together with the American purists who insist upon "Elections, now!" this constitutes the international opposition to the Tunisian model, as in earlier years with the similar Taiwan model.
Second, there ARE real lapses in Tunisia. These include a press that many describe as servile, a propensity to bring anyone who is seen as threatening the regime to show trials, and a slow political process that is only now developing the forms of a multi-party system.
But Ben Ali and his historic party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally, are addressing these problems. This year, for the first time, private ownership of radio and television stations is being permitted (satellite TV, the Internet and foreign papers are available everywhere in Tunisia). The country's human rights record is improving every year, and the autumn elections promise to be wide open. And the E.U. agreement is helping the country reach heightened levels of prosperity, which is leveraged in an egalitarian manner to all of the people.
The discussion about Tunisia has intensified in the context of the feverish debate today over the future of Iraq. How do you "democratize" Iraq, Americans are asking -- can you? Before you indulge in such mechanisms of democracy as open elections, do you not need to build a middle class, an educated electorate, a prosperous and open economy, a liberal culture and correct relations with other countries?
The Tunisians, you see, don't believe in "overnight." Their way is moderation, evolution and gradualism, and their thinking is long-term; they have a specific formula that actually times development on various levels so that the country can move forward and the people can digest the tumults of change. The proof of their intentions is found in the fact that the government is not only allowing, but encouraging, rival power centers to develop on every level.
"Democracy," Foreign Minister Ben Yahia summed up to me, "is not instant coffee."
