Leslie A.

Husted

Tunisias Identity Crisis

In the Foreign Service Journal dated May 2012, Victoria Taylor a fellow resident at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, wrote an article titled Tunisias Identity Crisis. The people of Tunisia desiring a better form of government rose up in revolution to overthrow President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and became confronted with the prospect of forming a new government in a divided country. On October 23 they elected a Constituent Assembly that would be responsible for creating a pathway towards new leadership for the country. They discovered rather quickly that the bonds they thought tied them together were actually quite divisive. There were huge differences between rich and poor, religion and secularism, as well as urban and rural. Springing from the Tunisian Revolution the process of free election helped to disclose not only these widespread divisions but the voice of the people chose an Islamist Ennahda Party to lead them into a new system of government. Has the Tunisian Revolution led to relative stability or to increasing disappointment and frustration with the lack of progress on key economic and social issues? Victoria Taylor draws the conclusion that there is increasing frustration and disappointment with lack of progress on key economic and social issues. She begins by making several premises and subpremises to justify her conclusion. The lack of progress in Tunisia rests on three main premises: first, the newly elected Islamist Ennahda Government has a difficult and unenviable challenge, they must govern without any prior experience as they try to build consensus in an increasingly polarized society and they will need to promote both the economic and democratic development of the country. Meanwhile as conflicts between religious and secular elements in society crop up, they find themselves spending valuable time and energy on issues like the niqab instead of the economy. Secondly, they will need to address key economic issues such as growing inflation and unemployment as their economy remains weak, foreign and domestic investors standstill, and the US Obama Administration and Congress debate whether or not the US should consider entering into a Free Trade Agreement with the Tunisian Government. And finally, lack of progress in Tunisia can be attributed to key social issues. These include elections which divide the country into three main factions, the Islamist Ennahda Party, the fractured center-left who prefer the society to reflect moderate Islamic values and when confronted with the possibility of the Sharia Law being included in the new constitution are increasingly riled up, and then the secularist elites who believed they had been the majority ruling party and had a sudden wake up call to how divided the country was from the image portrayed for so many years under President Ben Ali. Another key social issue confronting the new government revolves around whether freedom of the press will be held captive to the religious/secular debate, current media trials which have the potential to set boundaries on press freedoms for many years to come, and whether there could be a return to self-censorship. Finally, the Tunisians will need to confront their growing violence problem, condemning the violence while government and security forces attempt to rein in violent groups. Until these key issues are addressed there will be a lack of progress in Tunisia. Victoria Taylors argument over Tunisias Identity Crisis has provided some valuable insight into the difficulties of trying to restructure a government and divided society following a

Leslie A. Husted

revolution and overthrow of a previous dictator. I believe that her premises are relevant to the issue at hand about whether or not Tunisia has yet obtained stability, and has shown what steps need to be taken in order to help bring that desired economic, political, and social stability into play. She goes even further in her article to expound on what role the United States could play in helping the Tunisians to achieve their economic and democratic goals. While Tunisia is not at present a high priority to the Obama Administration, our support in the process could help our relations and future prospects in the Middle East. To leave them unsupported at such a crucial juncture would be negligible on our part.