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<h1><font size=4><b>The brutal truth about Tunisia<br>
</b></font></h1><h2><font size=3><b>Bloodshed, tears, but no democracy.
Bloody turmoil wont necessarily presage the dawn of
democracy</b></font></h2><font size=3>By
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/robertfisk">Robert
Fisk</a><br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/the-brutal-truth-about-tunisia-by-robert-fisk" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-brutal-truth-about-tunisia-by-robert-fisk<br>
<br>
</a>Wednesday, January 19, 2011<br><br>
The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are
shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and
emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a
young one in Jordan, and presidents another very old one in Egypt and a
young one in Syria because Tunisia wasn't meant to happen. Food price
riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in
Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot
sought refuge in Riyadh exactly the same city to which a man called Idi
Amin once fled.<br><br>
If it can happen in the holiday destination Tunisia, it can happen
anywhere, can't it? It was feted by the West for its
"stability" when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was in charge. The
French and the Germans and the Brits, dare we mention this, always
praised the dictator for being a "friend" of civilised Europe,
keeping a firm hand on all those Islamists.<br><br>
Tunisians won't forget this little history, even if we would like them
to. The Arabs used to say that two-thirds of the entire Tunisian
population seven million out of 10 million, virtually the whole adult
population worked in one way or another for Mr Ben Ali's secret police.
They must have been on the streets too, then, protesting at the man we
loved until last week. But don't get too excited. Yes, Tunisian youths
have used the internet to rally each other in Algeria, too and the
demographic explosion of youth (born in the Eighties and Nineties with no
jobs to go to after university) is on the streets. But the
"unity" government is to be formed by Mohamed Ghannouchi, a
satrap of Mr Ben Ali's for almost 20 years, a safe pair of hands who will
have our interests rather than his people's interests at
heart.<br><br>
For I fear this is going to be the same old story. Yes, we would like a
democracy in Tunisia but not too much democracy. Remember how we wanted
Algeria to have a democracy back in the early Nineties?<br><br>
Then when it looked like the Islamists might win the second round of
voting, we supported its military-backed government in suspending
elections and crushing the Islamists and initiating a civil war in which
150,000 died.<br><br>
No, in the Arab world, we want law and order and stability. Even in Hosni
Mubarak's corrupt and corrupted Egypt, that's what we want. And we will
get it.<br><br>
The truth, of course, is that the Arab world is so dysfunctional,
sclerotic, corrupt, humiliated and ruthless and remember that Mr Ben
Ali was calling Tunisian protesters "terrorists" only last week
and so totally incapable of any social or political progress, that the
chances of a series of working democracies emerging from the chaos of the
Middle East stand at around zero per cent.<br><br>
The job of the Arab potentates will be what it has always been to
"manage" their people, to control them, to keep the lid on, to
love the West and to hate Iran.<br><br>
Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton doing last week as Tunisia burned? She
was telling the corrupted princes of the Gulf that their job was to
support sanctions against Iran, to confront the Islamic republic, to
prepare for another strike against a Muslim state after the two
catastrophes the United States and the UK have already inflicted in the
region.<br><br>
The Muslim world at least, that bit of it between India and the
Mediterranean is a more than sorry mess. Iraq has a sort-of-government
that is now a satrap of Iran, Hamid Karzai is no more than the mayor of
Kabul, Pakistan stands on the edge of endless disaster, Egypt has just
emerged from another fake election.<br><br>
And Lebanon... Well, poor old Lebanon hasn't even got a government.
Southern Sudan if the elections are fair might be a tiny candle, but
don't bet on it.<br><br>
It's the same old problem for us in the West. We mouth the word
"democracy" and we are all for fair elections providing the
Arabs vote for whom we want them to vote for.<br><br>
In Algeria 20 years ago, they didn't. In "Palestine" they
didn't. And in Lebanon, because of the so-called Doha accord, they
didn't. So we sanction them, threaten them and warn them about Iran and
expect them to keep their mouths shut when Israel steals more Palestinian
land for its colonies on the West Bank.<br><br>
There was a fearful irony that the police theft of an ex-student's fruit
produce and his suicide in Tunis should have started all this off,
not least because Mr Ben Ali made a failed attempt to gather public
support by visiting the dying youth in hospital.<br><br>
For years, this wretched man had been talking about a "slow
liberalising" of his country. But all dictators know they are in
greatest danger when they start freeing their entrapped countrymen from
their chains.<br><br>
And the Arabs behaved accordingly. No sooner had Ben Ali flown off into
exile than Arab newspapers which have been stroking his fur and polishing
his shoes and receiving his money for so many years were vilifying the
man. "Misrule", "corruption", "authoritarian
reign", "a total lack of human rights", their journalists
are saying now. Rarely have the words of the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran
sounded so painfully accurate: "Pity the nation that welcomes its
new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to
welcome another with trumpetings again." Mohamed Ghannouchi,
perhaps?<br><br>
Of course, everyone is lowering their prices now or promising to.
Cooking oil and bread are the staple of the masses. So prices will come
down in Tunisia and Algeria and Egypt. But why should they be so high in
the first place?<br><br>
Algeria should be as rich as Saudi Arabia it has the oil and gas but
it has one of the worst unemployment rates in the Middle East, no social
security, no pensions, nothing for its people because its generals have
salted their country's wealth away in Switzerland.<br><br>
And police brutality. The torture chambers will keep going. We will
maintain our good relations with the dictators. We will continue to arm
their armies and tell them to seek peace with Israel.<br><br>
And they will do what we want. Ben Ali has fled. The search is now on for
a more pliable dictator in Tunisia a "benevolent strongman"
as the news agencies like to call these ghastly men.<br><br>
And the shooting will go on as it did yesterday in Tunisia until
"stability" has been restored.<br><br>
No, on balance, I don't think the age of the Arab dictators is over. We
will see to that.<br><br>
<br><br>
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