On December 17, 2010 a street vendor In Ben Arous, Tunisia set himself on fire in protest over the confiscation of his wares and harassment he was receiving from municipal officials. That set off a series of demonstrations all across the Arab world which culminated in increasing liberalization on the part of government across the Middle East and North Africa. This came to known as the “Arab Spring”. Is the Arab Spring now unravelling? That certainly seems to be the case.
In his Washington Post column Josh Rogin calls for the Biden Adminstration to take more decisive action “stop a coup” in Tunisia:
Events are unfolding rapidly in Tunis, where President Kais Saied has declared a state of emergency, dismissed the prime minister, frozen the parliament for 30 days and deployed the military to bar them from the building. Tunisian police stormed the headquarters of the news organization Al Jazeera. Protesters looted the offices of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, which holds a plurality in the parliamentary assembly. Assembly speaker and Ennahda party head Rachid Ghannouchi led a sit-in outside the parliament building Monday, rejecting the president’s moves as unconstitutional and insisting the assembly was still in session.
“We call on President Saied to stop this attempted coup and ask all our friends inside and outside to support the people of Tunisia in resisting the forces of dictatorship and tyranny,†Ghannouchi told my Post colleagues.
The problem is that it’s not clear which side if either is actually more democratic. The Biden Administration has, prudently I think, demurred from taking sides, e.g. calling for him, speaking up for democratic principles in the abstract, etc.
That’s not enough for Mr. Rogin:
Without a robust U.S.-led diplomatic initiative, pro-democracy leaders in the region such as Ghannouchi will be left to fend for themselves, Graham said. That would send a clear signal to all other would-be coup plotters that they need not fear resistance or reprisal from Washington.
Several administration sources told me they were waiting to see how the very fluid situation plays out and hoping to work with Saied rather than alienate him. The Biden team seems to be following the playbook of the Obama administration, which preferred to deliver tough messages in private and believed that public threats were counterproductive. But that didn’t work in Egypt in 2013, when Abdel Fatah al-Sissi staged a military coup and the United States avoided action until it was too late.
The good news now is that it’s not too late in Tunisia. There is still time for the United States and other Western governments to convince Saied that pressing forward with an authoritarian power grab will not turn out well for him. The United States has significant leverage at its disposal — above all, economic aid, including a recently signed $500 million Millennium Challenge Corporation compact.
It seems to me that Tunisia is a priority (in decreasing order of importance) for
- the African Union
- the United Nations
- the United States
Honestly, it’s unclear to me that a more strenuous response on the part of the U. S. will have a lot of impact. This does present, however, a sort of no-win situation for the Biden Administration. If the Arab Spring unravels under President Biden’s watch, he’s sure to get blamed for it whether he could have stopped it or not.
