The brutal truth about
Monday, 17 January 2011
By Robert Fisk,
The Independent
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.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/the-brutal-truth-about-tunisia-2186287.html
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
young one in Jordan, and presidents - another very old
one in
wasn't meant to happen. Food price riots in
too, and demonstrations against price increases in
whose own despot sought refuge in
same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.
If it can happen in the holiday destination
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
all those Islamists.
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
(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.
For I fear this is going to be the same old story. Yes,
we would like a democracy in
democracy. Remember how we wanted
democracy back in the early Nineties?
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.
No, in the Arab world, we want law and order and
stability. Even in Hosni Mubarak's corrupt and
corrupted
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
stand at around zero per cent.
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
Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton doing last week as
of the Gulf that their job was to support sanctions
against
prepare for another strike against a Muslim state after
the two catastrophes the
already inflicted in the region.
The Muslim world - at least, that bit of it between
mess.
satrap of
of
disaster,
And
government.
- might be a tiny candle, but don't bet on it.
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.
In
they didn't. And in
Doha accord, they didn't. So we sanction them, threaten
them and warn them about
their mouths shut when
land for its colonies on the
There was a fearful irony that the police theft of an
ex-student's fruit produce - and his suicide in
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.
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.
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
with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only
to welcome another with trumpetings again." Mohamed
Ghannouchi, perhaps?
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
the first place?
oil and gas - but it has one of the worst unemployment
rates in the
pensions, nothing for its people because its generals
have salted their country's wealth away in
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
And they will do what we want. Ben Ali has fled. The
search is now on for a more pliable dictator in
- a "benevolent strongman" as the news agencies like to
call these ghastly men.
And the shooting will go on - as it did yesterday in
No, on balance, I don't think the age of the Arab
dictators is over. We will see to that.
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