Tunisia: Untold Story From the Arab World

Tunis spruced itself up for a gala event at the end of last month, the triumphant celebration of what Zine Abidine ben Ali has done since he deposed Habib Bourguiba last November. Tunisia has changed more in months than in the previous 30 years, and this is one of the most encouraging developments in the Arab world. But because no one has died and the jails are being emptied, the story has gone relatively unreported.

A friendly country has been saved from probable chaos and set on the road to pluralism and economic openness. President Ben Ali had called an extraordinary congress of the ruling party for the last three days of July. Hundreds of reporters were invited. Then the Iran-Iraq War suddenly lurched toward an end, and King Hussein of Jordan cut loose the West Bank. Only one American writer showed up in Tunis.

Tunisia is a key Western friend in North Africa and the Arab world generally, perhaps the most westernized of Arab countries. Its prominent position projecting into the Mediterranean just west of Libya gives it a strategic value far beyond size. It is a relatively prosperous country, faced this year with the drought plaguing most of the world and the locusts plaguing North Africa. And it has long been assertively pro-Western.

But from independence in 1956, and in fact for a generation or more before that, Tunisia was almost synonymous with Bourguiba. As the leader of the independence fight from France, and as the nationalist who staked out a special role in the Arab and Mediterranean worlds, Bourguiba made himself the symbol of Tunisia from the ‘50s into the ‘80s. But as he grew older, he grew more erratic: He forgot his longtime rival and model Charles de Gaulle’s warning that “old age is a naufrage ,” a shipwreck.

Each successive heir apparent was purged when he showed signs of becoming too eager to succeed. Bourguiba cut off his powerful second wife and his son. In his last two years, he showed no tolerance of any rivals. Political opponents were sent to prison; so was the head of the powerful trades-union congress.

No challenge riled Bourguiba more than Islamic revivalism. The Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI), Tunisia’s fundamentalists, were moderate by most standards, as their name implies. But Bourguiba, the secular modernizer who had once urged Tunisians not to fast during Ramadan, tried to destroy the MTI. Last fall, a court decided to execute four clearly guilty saboteurs and to sentence the MTI’s more moderate leadership to long terms or life at hard labor. That wasn’t enough for Bourguiba; he decided to retry them and execute the leaders. It was a dangerous moment. All sides were being alienated--the political opposition, Bourguiba’s own allies, the powerful unions and the religious opposition.

But Bourguiba then made a mistake that would help correct many other mistakes. Last October, he scrapped yet another prime minister, Rashid Sfar, and named Ben Ali to the post. Ben Ali, 51, was trained as a soldier in France and as a military intelligence officer in the United States; he had made a name as a tough security officer. He must have seemed the ideal man to prosecute the MTI. But within a month Ben Ali went on television with a document, signed by several doctors, declaring Bourguiba senile. The sycophantic bureaucrats around the old man were quietly removed from their posts. The Second Tunisian Republic, as people were soon calling it, was born.

The events of last November caught world attention. What happened since has been largely ignored. But it has been more dramatic than the most optimistic observers would have predicted. Ben Ali, the security man, opened the prison doors: Virtually every political prisoner is now out of jail, even some accused of plotting coups. The MTI leaders are free. The labor leaders and the opposition parties are operating openly again. At the July congress, leaders of three legal opposition parties spoke, something unheard of in Tunisian history. The most prominent exiled figure, Ahmed ben Salah, whose party remains illegal, was pardoned and allowed to return; a new parties law will probably make his party legal.

Late last year, in municipal elections, independent candidates for the first time defeated the ruling party at grass-roots levels. The ruling party itself, which had been called the Destourian Socialist Party for years, changed its name to Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) in January. Although “constitutional” and “destourian” have the same meaning, the official English and French names of the party no longer use the Arabic word.

Yet Ben Ali has emphasized Tunisia’s Arab and Islamic identity as never before. Although Tunisia has been the headquarters of the Arab League since Egypt’s peace with Israel, it often seemed in but not quite of the Arab world. Now, Ben Ali prefers to use Arabic, not French, and is seeking good relations with all Arab countries. His prompt restoration of relations with Libya caused a few jitters in the West, but he followed by restoring ties with Egypt. While maintaining good relations with France, he has continued to enhance U.S. links. The longtime ambassador to Washington has just been given the No. 2 job in the Foreign Ministry.

Ben Ali’s economic policies would warm the hearts of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. After a quarter-century of experimentation in statism, the party has dropped “socialist” from its name and pledged to privatize hundreds of state companies. Inefficient prestige projects have been dropped, including the assembly of automobiles in Tunisia. The private sector, languishing under Bourguiba, is being revitalized. Foreign investment is encouraged and a dormant stock exchange revived. Yet the state is intervening to balance the distribution of economic benefits, away from the privileged coastal plain to the western and southern desert regions. Development is a priority and Ben Ali, while promising more jobs, has warned that in the short-term employment may suffer.

The party itself has democratized; the July congress created a much broader-based organization with a more regionally balanced Central Committee. But Ben Ali has not carried democratization to the extremes some might like. He has remained head of the RCD, while the opposition urged him to quit the party and rule as “president of all Tunisians.” He insists he is that, anyway. Still, the RCD remains his main instrument of rule, thus the main source of patronage and the vehicle for grass-roots control.

While Ben Ali enlarged the party Central Committee, his real leadership style may be more evident in a decision to reduce the Political Bureau to six men. (It had been more than 20 under Bourguiba.) Of these six, two rule alongside Ben Ali as a sort of unofficial triumvirate: Prime Minister Hedi Baccouche and Interior Minister Habib Ammar. Baccouche, a key party figure, and Ammar, the National Guard commander, covered Ben Ali’s political and military flanks when he seized power in November. As the party broadened membership, it narrowed the core leadership cadre.

The party congress had a typically Mideastern propaganda flair. The official logo was a hand, reaching down to save another hand--the republic?--from the waves. The meeting was officially termed the “salvation” congress.

Bourguiba’s era has passed but he is not an unperson. Bourguiba statues have come down and streets have been renamed in some provincial towns, but Ben Ali has said that the very real contributions of the former leader’s younger years will not be forgotten.

The main street of Tunis is still Habib Bourguiba Avenue. Whether the improbable equestrian statue of Bourguiba in central Tunis will remain is an interesting question. The old man sits in his villa, his feelings unknown. What would have seemed impossible a year ago is that so few seem to care. Only one of Bourguiba’s cohorts is on trial, and he for outright corruption; others placed in temporary custody last November are free now, or have gone abroad.

Ben Ali has made changes at his pace and within his limits, yet he is encouraging discussion of those limits--unusual for the Arab world, and revolutionary for Tunis. The security man turned democrat, the general turned civilian leader, is a short, stocky, boxer-like figure with a clear vision of where he is going. He has already built an impressive record, but so quietly that no one seems aware.