The following is an edited transcript of the fiftieth in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The meeting was held on September 14, 2007 in the Caucus Room of the Cannon Building with Chas. W. Freeman, Jr., presiding.
CHAS. W. FREEMAN, JR.: president, Middle East Policy Council
This morning, we are talking about a neglected topic, North Africa, where many things are happening and much attention is not being paid in the United States. This is odd because this is strategically a very important area with a close relationship to Europe, and it is a source of Muslim populations in Europe that have become a matter of interest and concern to us.
I. WILLIAM ZARTMAN: Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor of International Organizations and Conflict Resolution, SAIS
I'm going to present an academic's eye view of American policy in North Africa. I have never made that policy, although God knows I've tried. I'd like to talk first of all about the strategic importance of the area in U.S. eyes, then the view of the individual states, and then policy reaction – in fact, response – to that situation.
The region is of strategic importance. It may not be of direct, primary strategic importance in the same way that the Middle East itself is. We don't have commitments as we do to Israel or Lebanon, and it doesn't have the oil concentration that the Middle East does. But it's important. First of all, it's the western-most extension of the Mediterranean, which leads to the Middle East. We usually talk about strategic importance looking at geography, but its importance is geographic and political. North Africa is one of the shores that give access to the Mediterranean and, were it hostile, our ships would be beyond gun range, no doubt, except in the Straits.
It's also Western Europe's backyard. It is Europe's Mexico. Therefore, it is, again, indirectly important, because it's important to people who are of primary importance to us. But third, as the western end of the Mediterranean, it's important because it's been more or less an area of political friendship. The countries of the region are not and – except for Libya at one point – have not been hostile to the United States, though with various degrees of friendship and policy friendship. Second, it's important because it's the western end of the Arab world. That is not its sea importance, but its land importance.
Maghreb means the area where the sun sets, and it is, and Morocco's name is, the extreme western end of where the sun sets. It provides access to a political community that is of importance to us: access to the eastern and the core area of the Arab world as Arab heads of state, the Islamic Conference, and so on meet there. Thus, the United States has developed a free-trade association with Morocco and Jordan, so as to frame an area over which we look to unfurl a free-trade umbrella.
It's also a cap on the African continent. We have the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, which the North African states take part in. It, too, represents countries that are not just geographically close to us, but includes countries that are the closest among the Arab countries to us, countries that cooperate wholeheartedly, officially, in many American policy initiatives, as well as countries that do less, as I will get to. So its strategic importance is great.
With individual states, we have both negative and positive interests. Morocco is an old ally of the United States. Every time you mention Morocco, you have to say that it was the first country to recognize the United States, and it has the oldest friendship treaty still in existence. It's been a steady political supporter of U. S. initiatives, particularly in the Arab world. Morocco has been helpful in the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations and publicly supportive after the 9/11 incident. It is part of a free-trade area, as I mentioned, and it has an increasingly politically liberalizing atmosphere. It just held free and fair elections in a multiparty system, under a monarchy, to be sure, but one in which a moderate Islamic party took part and did quite well. It's also a country focused on economic reform and trying to bring its economy, largely agriculturally based but also developing industry, up to modern standards.
Algeria is, in a sense, the reverse. It's a strategically but it has frequently been a political adversary. It was a leading Arab country in the rejectionist front; it's a friend of Russia and the former Soviet Union and has gone through a heavy-weapons rearmament program with Russia. It does not have free and fair elections, although it has a multiparty system. And it's important to us as a window to the radicals.
Tunisia is an old ally, a long-time moderate friend that also does not hold free and fair elections. It cooperates, as does Algeria, in anti-terrorist activities and follows a kind of Chinese model of economic liberalization and political control.
Our policy aims, I think, are quite simple and broad in this area: economic development, both in our interest and theirs, because economic under-development creates an atmosphere that leads to terrorism; political liberalization, both in our interest and theirs, because it produces stability and a common value system stems from it; and anti-terrorist cooperation, in which all three countries have participated very effectively. The problem in this situation is that Morocco and Algeria are enemy brothers, bitter rivals for a long time, for reasons that I can develop if anyone wants to question it, but it's a fact. Because of their negative and positive interest to the United States, Washington does not want to offend either side. It has ties with Morocco but is wary of the danger of pushing Algeria further into a radical orientation. So American policy is one of balanced relations, presenting a framework of initiatives that are not too strong in any particular direction, but trying to develop close ties, while at the same time expressing our values.
So, we regularly chide Tunisia for its lack of civil rights and restrictive political system, but it doesn't cost us anything. And we sympathize with Algeria's recurrent terrorist problem but chide it because of civil rights, while at the same time congratulating Morocco for its enormous improvement in a previously bad civil rights record. We give a few non-lethal weapons to Algeria, which troubles the Moroccans tremendously. Therefore, we have to look to a balance in regard to both sides. Human-rights embarrassments in Tunisia are also troublesome as we try to maintain positive relations.
The biggest problem is the issue of the Western Sahara, which brings Morocco and Algeria really nose to nose. Algeria is a principally interested party in the Western Sahara conflict. There is no direct U.S. interest in the Western Sahara – we couldn't care less; it's of no value to us. But there's an enormous indirect interest. First of all, as has been noted since Henry Kissinger, it is not in the U.S. interest to see another microstate in this region, another mini-Mauritania. It would be a source of instability. The country has very few resources, and it would be the prey of lots of political attempts at destabilization or control in the region. It's also a threat to Moroccan stability. The Western Sahara is an existential issue for Morocco, not just of one party, the Istiqlal or the king, but of the entire population. Were it to lose in this situation, it would be a destabilizing event.
What's U.S. policy on this? First of all, it's a policy of backing self-determination and finding ways to implement that slogan in reality. Second, it recognizes Moroccan administration but not sovereignty, as the United Nations does, over the territory. Third, after long supporting the UN position of a referendum, it recognizes that a referendum is impossible, given that both parties block it because each of them supports a different list of voters.
Therefore, the United States backs the current UN position on negotiation between the parties, essentially on the basis of the first proposal to come out halfway between the extreme positions: the Moroccan position on autonomy. The United States is impatient to get this monkey off the world's back. It is always in danger of bursting forth in a more violent form and disturbing relations between Morocco and Algeria and between them and the United States. So the Maghreb is an area of strategic interest with some troublesome problems of importance to be resolved [See Zartman article, this issue].
REINHOLD BRENDER: Delegation of the European Commission to the United States
The EU has a keen interest in seeing North Africa enjoy the benefits of political and economic modernization. Reasons for this are geographical proximity, the importance of political, economic and cultural relations, and the risk of the overspill of problems and tensions to Europe itself.
The challenges faced by North Africa are enormous. The analysis developed in a series of UNDP Arab Human Development Reports has found widespread recognition, since this analysis reflects reality well. The deficits of the region according to these reports are: (i) a freedom deficit in political and civil liberties, (ii) a knowledge deficit in terms of education and access to information, (iii) a so-called "gender-deficit"; that is to say, Arab women are clearly at a disadvantage in their societies. The EU has long recognized that the way out of the region's current situation must encompass both political and economic reforms.
Starting from these general observations, let me present the two main frameworks of EU interaction with this region, namely the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (Barcelona Process) and the European Neighborhood Policy.
The overall objective of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership is to strengthen relations between the EU and Mediterranean partner countries, in particular by promoting political and economic reforms in these countries. For more than ten years, the Barcelona Process has been a central framework of the relations between the EU and the Southern Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Turkey. It was launched in 1995 in Barcelona in the wake of the Madrid conference (1991) and the Oslo Agreement (1993) in order to create a multilateral framework for dialogue and cooperation. The 1995 Barcelona Declaration marked a turning point by establishing a true partnership in several dimensions: political, security, economic, financial, cultural and human.
Over the years the Barcelona Process has developed into a solid platform for the EU and its partners to discuss and act on a wide range of issues of common interest, including the creation of a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area, transport and energy networks, and environmental issues. In the political sphere and despite negative repercussions from the Middle East conflict, the Barcelona process has helped strengthen confidence and trust. To give just one example: all Euro-Med partners, including Syria and Israel, cooperate on issues of civil protection, and in the 2005 Barcelona Summit all adopted a common code of conduct on countering terrorism that now is being implemented.
Trade liberalization has also made significant progress. Since 1995, we have concluded bilateral Association Agreements with our Mediterranean partners. They provide for free trade in industrial goods. We hope to expand that to free trade in services and agricultural products over the next years. The EU is today the main trading partner for the Mediterranean countries, with more than 50 percent of the region's trade involving the EU. The EU is also the destination for more than 70 percent of some of the Mediterranean partners' exports. Europe is the main source of Foreign Direct Investment in the region (36 percent of total FDI).
I would note also that the EU is the biggest donor in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Today we spend about 800 million euros in grants and 1.5 billion euros in loans from the European Investment Bank per year on institution building, economic reforms and budget support as well as human rights. The EU Financial Perspectives for 2007-13 foresee an increase in funding of almost 32 percent as compared to the previous reference period 2000-6. This reflects that the region remains a top priority for the EU's external action.
This brings me to the European Neighborhood Policy as the second important framework for our interaction with this region. Five years ago, the EU had a vision that led to a further strengthening of our relations with neighbors in the Mediterranean region and other countries. On the eve of the EU enlargement of 2004, which increased the number of EU member states from 15 to 25, the EU dreamed of a zone of stability, prosperity and cooperation shared with all its "new" neighbors-to-be. The idea of a European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) was born. The ENP is a major policy framework through which the EU interacts with its North African neighbors. It is intended to prevent the emergence of new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and its neighbors.
In essence, the ENP is a new and important framework for reform and modernization. I am tempted to say, as regards its immediate neighborhood, that it is Europe's approach to what in the United States has been called "transformational diplomacy" and its underlying rationale of security through economic and political transformation.
The ENP covers the EU's neighbors to the East, inter alia Ukraine and Moldova, and along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. For reasons related to the more general political context of our bilateral relations with these countries, Belarus, Syria and Libya do not participate in the ENP.
This brings me to what I would call the "added value" of the ENP. As compared to the Barcelona Process, the ENP in a highly innovative way aims at projecting genuine European experience beyond the borders of the enlarged EU in support of political and economic reform. Even though the ENP is distinct from enlargement, it builds on the experiences made with enlargement. Deeper economic integration, for example, should go beyond free trade in goods and services to also include "behind the border" issues: addressing non-tariff barriers and progressively achieving comprehensive convergence in trade and regulatory areas.
In addition to "traditional" trade preferences and financial assistance, ENP offer (1) new forms of technical assistance "borrowed" from our proven methodology / "transition toolkit"; (2) concrete benefits such as gradual participation in our agencies and programs in fields such as education, training and youth, research, environment, culture, audio-visual policy, etc. (3) a new, specific and policy-driven financial instrument – the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument – with increased funding and more efficient and streamlined procedures to better support partner countries' reform priorities; and (4) a new emphasis on improved cross-border cooperation along the EU land and maritime borders.
On September 3, 2007, the European Commission in Brussels hosted the first ever ministerial meeting of ministers and representatives from all the countries covered by the ENP with their counterparts from the EU. The meeting provided ample evidence that, despite its short life, the ENP has already achieved a lot. At the same time, a range of new ideas were discussed, all intended to further strengthen the ENP, including economic and trade integration, visa facilitation, scholarships and exchange programs, new regionallevel activities in the East, greater political cooperation (including in addressing regional conflicts) and additional financing mechanisms.
The ENP is not, and never has been, a one-size-fits-all policy. With each of its ENP partners, the EU crafts a specific and unique relationship. That is the spirit that informs what we call the ENP "Action Plans." Each Action Plan focuses on the policies, strategies and instruments that meet the priorities of the individual country concerned. Where countries indicated that they had higher ambitions and wanted to go further in developing their relationship with the EU, we responded, whether with an aviation agreement, a memorandum of understanding on energy or additional assistance for border management. As the policy develops, this differentiation will become more pronounced. When the EU launched the policy, we had to make it clear that the offer on the table was the same for everyone, with no discrimination. But as we get further and further away from the starting line, we expect to see a more and more varied landscape, with as many different types of relationships developing as we have partners, but always within a common framework of the ENP.
The limits of what can be said in general terms about North Africa and also the broader Middle East is nowhere more obvious than in the topic of the relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (or Palestine). This brings me to another important aspect, namely the Middle East conflict and its repercussions on EU relations with Northern Africa. Suffice to say that the EU plays a very active role in the peace process as a member of the Quartet, together with the UN, the United States and Russia. We are not only an important political interlocutor and mediator, but also the most important donor to the Palestinian Authority.
We have to remain realistic. Decades of European interaction with North Africa and the Middle East from a European perspective offer the lesson that reform takes time and patience. Pacing, the sequencing of political and economic reform, taking into account local culture and tradition; these and other factors complicate all efforts to instill democratic ways. From a European perspective, there is no quick answer to the entrenched problems of the region. In my own view, North Africa (as the broader Middle East more generally) in the years to come may well remain a region in which outside actors have only modest impact. Shaping it from the outside will remain extremely difficult. Given the region's strategic importance and our own interests, our efforts in this domain will nevertheless remain key for European and U.S. foreign policy.
AMB. FREEMAN: Dr. Brender has made the very important observation that North Africa is not at all neglected in Europe, however much it may be on the back burner here. It's useful for Americans to be reminded that the emerging European ecumene casts a widening shadow, not simply in the east, but to the south as well, and is extending habits of cooperation and rule making well beyond its borders. This raises a question: What is the relationship, if any, of the United States to the Barcelona Process? What degree of coordination do the United States and Europe enjoy, or lack, with respect to our efforts to support common interests and assist people in North Africa? This comes in another context, referring to Europe's shadow, if you will. More broadly speaking, in the Mashreq, in the eastern part of the Arab world, there is a process of cultural and political integration underway in which problems that were once regarded as local are now seen as pan-Arab, in a sense and with an intensity that was not the case before. I know that the concept of Asharq Alawsat, the Middle East, which once was limited to the Levant, now embraces the entire Arab east. To what extent, then, is North Africa part of this process of broader integration of political attitudes? And to what extent is it related to Europe?
DAVID S. SORENSON: professor, national security studies, Air War College
If you draw a security map of North Africa, as those of us who work for the military do, we look at internal as well as external threats. If we start with the external threats, we ask the question, is there a prospect for interstate war between the major countries in the region? I think the answer is, it's pretty low. Yes, there are tensions, particularly between Morocco and Algeria, but those tensions have been going on for a long time now. And to expect a return to the famous sand-dunes war back in the 1960s is unlikely. These are countries that have learned to understand that this conflict needs to be below the kinetic level. It's been diplomatic; it's been verbal; and it certainly has been cast in the Western Sahara. But I don't see this as a real potential for violent conflict.
The Western Sahara has certainly become a frozen conflict; it's gone on a long time. There are three different positions upon which nobody will agree, and very little external pressure exists to achieve an agreement. I was in Algeria recently, and the view there is that the United States, France and now Spain are convinced that they must support Morocco; therefore, the Algerians have been frozen out. So, unfortunately, this dispute is going to continue, partly because, as was previously mentioned, the value to the United States is fairly marginal. And the solutions are simply too difficult to achieve because they involve compromises none of the parties are willing to make. That said, the prospects for violent conflict are pretty small. I think this will largely continue to be a diplomatic problem. It'll be a refugee problem. It'll be a money problem. And it will certainly continue to be a strain on the Moroccan military. We don't always appreciate that.
External threats are very low in the region. If I were sitting in the defense ministries of these countries (if they have one, and they don't all), I would look at the outside world and say: The prospects for conflict are small. Could there be a dust-up with Spain over fishing or illegal immigrants or the parts of the island? Sure. But both parties have understood that this needs to be below the violent level. And when there has been a dust-up, both parties have worked pretty quickly to deescalate it.
The real threat is internal. There's no question that the growing violence in Algeria, much of it directed at the Algerian military, is the most troubling of all. How much of this is related to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and how broad that organization has become is something that, if I did know, I wouldn't be able to tell you. It's shadowy. There do appear to be links coming out of Algeria; there do appear to be connections with other militant groups within the Maghreb; and those links also now appear to be growing in the direction of Europe. It is rumored that there are links to France, to Spain. I've even heard rumors of links to Greece. And, as you know, rumors often pass for truth in this part of the region.
The problem for the military is especially keen for civil-military relations, because, when the threats are internal, the military becomes the police. In all four of the countries we study, there is a gendarmerie tradition, and the gendarmerie is awfully close to the military. In Algeria, the gendarmerie work for the Ministry of Defense. When you ask Algerians what the lines are between the professional military and the gendarmerie, they are hard-pressed to tell you. The problem is that, once the military engages in internal policing, it can often become drawn into internal politics. As a consequence, we need to recognize we've had at least three coups in these countries; if you want to count the end of the Bourguiba regime in Tunisia as a semi-military coup, it would be four.
The military have often inserted themselves into politics; in Algeria, in a major way. And they have withdrawn. The problem is that, as internal threats become more severe, they increasingly draw the military into politics. This means that all of the regimes in this region need to find a way to keep them out. One way is to professionalize them. That's been the pattern in Tunisia. I've operated with three of these four militaries as an observer, and while I respect all of the militaries, I view the Tunisian as probably the most professional. It is also the poorest. If we look at military spending on professionalization as well as other things, 5 percent of Morocco's GDP goes to the military; in Libya it's 3.9 percent, in Tunisia it's 1.4 percent. It's a tiny budget for a remarkably professional military.
The other way, of course, is to encourage arms sales, and we are seeing a growth in arms sales. It's not just to keep the military out of the palace, but also to fuel an appetite that all militaries have, including the one I work for, particularly for fast airplanes. We are seeing those sales growing. This raises some interesting questions. We've all heard the stories about Libya and France and the potential for a $400 million initial agreement for French military equipment to go to Libya. There's also Russian interest in selling to Libya. But the Russian interest is particularly directed towards Algeria: 36 MiG-29s. By the way, the MiG-29 is a really sexy-looking airplane. But, as someone who works for the Air Force, I can say that it's not that good. The Russians are desperate to try to sell them, however, and if they sell them to Algeria, along with 28 Su-30 fighters, Algeria will constitute 20 percent of total Russian arms sales. That would be a record. I think it
may have had something to do with Secretary Rumsfeld (remember him?) saying, when he went to Algeria, "We are not opposed to selling the Algerians military equipment." When I showed up in Algeria, the first thing they thought was, we were bringing F-16s along with us. They are interested. The sales are growing.
One other interesting thing is the French offer. This is yet to be thoroughly and officially confirmed, but everybody in Morocco is nodding their heads when you say, "Yes, the first foreign customer for the French Rafale fighter will be Morocco." I'm willing to bet on that. The problem is, this is expensive. And most important, these are not necessarily the weapons that these countries need if the threat is internal. What they are buying are weapons that are sophisticated, expensive and most appropriate for state-to-state conflict, for air force versus air force, rather than for the internal conflicts that really challenge these countries.
JOHN ENTELIS: professor of political science; director, Middle East Studies Program, Fordham University
Often, in the discussion of North Africa, the metaphor of the glass being half empty or half full is used to frame the questions of political change and development. Another way of contextualizing the issues is "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." In the cases of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, there have been a number of significant, positive developments along political as well as social and economic lines.
Some of these positive developments have appeared recently, as in the elections in Morocco and Algeria, the developments in Libya with the weapons of mass destruction and the release of the Bulgarian nurses and so on. So, one could point to a number of so-called positive developments in each of the four countries, including Algeria, where the military has been pushed aside as far as we can tell. Abdelaziz Bouteflika has retired people. Smain Lamari died last month; he was a significant military figure during the period of the civil war. Economically, one can talk about the privatization effort. In the case of Algeria, the high price of oil and gas has produced an incredible infusion of rentier-type wealth that the Algerians are making full use of.
But at the end of the day, it seems to me that all of these positive accomplishments – social, political and economic – are extremely precarious in the absence of democracy. This reflects a more important issue that has much greater impact: the absence of a separation of powers and the absence of the rule of law. In none of these cases does the rule of law emanate from institutions or constitutions. Power is concentrated in the hands of individuals within the executive branch of government. The legislative and judicial branches are fairly meaningless bodies, controlled by executive authority.
Flowing from that is the incredible gap between state and society, between civil society and the political systems, that continues to manifest itself. I would indicate as positive the legislative elections in Morocco and Algeria in May. Yet, if you look at the turnout figures, they are among the lowest ever recorded: 35 percent in the case of Algeria, and that's the government figure, so you can imagine that they are probably even lower. That is a tell-tale sign of much greater social discontent, not all related to socioeconomic issues, but equally related to political opportunity and choice, of which there is very little. To the extent that Islamism emerges at all and takes hold, both in its moderate as well as its militant manifestation, it can't be detached from this enormous gap between state and society. The degree of malaise is manifested by the number of people who want to leave North Africa and go to Europe, by those who engage in terrorist acts, and by those who try to engage in legitimate political opposition but are often denied the opportunity.
So, not only is the glass half empty; the very structure of the glass itself is in question. In the case of Algeria, we assume that Bouteflika will push through a referendum, either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, to modify the constitution to further empower the executive by eliminating any kind of term limit, allowing him to continue as president. Assuming that his health permits, the attempt is to promote or further empower the executive branch of government. He's got, Prime Minister Belkhadem, a very close ally but also a highly conservative figure who has extremely good ties with the Islamists. For example, when he was the head of the Parliament back in the '80s, he was instrumental in promoting and actually implementing an extremely conservative family code. Even where changes do take place that people consider positive, they tend to be initiated from the top without much discussion with the mass public to try to achieve some kind of consensus. When these laws are then finally implemented, if not imposed, there's a great deal of difficulty making them effective.
I take a fairly critical view of the political processes in North Africa as they have manifested themselves in the last few decades. As much as people tend to look at the more positive elements in human rights, elections or family codes, they still remain at the mercy of individuals and do not reflect the application of the rule of law or separation of powers or institutionalization that will guarantee, regardless of who is in power, that these positive achievements will be maintained.
Algeria does not practice a separation of powers nor operate a system of constitutional checks and balances. The country's judiciary, for example, is not independent from the executive branch. The judiciary's serious deficiencies include its blatant politicization and the weakened rule of law. Public perception of corruption and bribery in the judicial system is widespread. Since the country's legislative bodies are themselves politically subordinated to the executive, there are no effective legislative or judicial checks on presidential authority.
Until the current regime resolves fundamental constitutional questions – the armed forces' political role, presidential prerogatives, judicial independence and the problem of establishing law-bound government – its claim that Algeria's democratic transition is moving forward on a step-by-step basis will remain hollow. The only possible outside actor that can nudge the process forward in a potentially decisive way is the United States, since France has too complex and controversial a relationship with its former colony to act in a democratically meaningful way. Yet, for a range of geostrategic and energy-related reasons, Washington has remained relatively silent regarding Algeria's inchoate democratic status.
As for Tunisia, while the regime has demonstrated a keen ability to sustain its authoritarian stranglehold these many years, an increasingly restless and reanimated civil society is beginning to emerge. Paradoxically, fundamentally a middle-class, in many ways a very advanced, society and economy. Promoting the regime's efforts in advancing the economy and promoting universal education, progressive social policies and gender equality have aroused the political consciousness of a generation of Tunisians who are now at the doorstep of democratic opportunity and insisting on being allowed in. Whether that entrance will be peaceful or violent rests in the hands of the incumbent leadership, many of whose members are extremely enlightened but whose ability to influence an otherwise autocratic president remains highly problematic.
With Morocco, I conclude that the state-society divide remains deep and dangerous. Even the liberalized media and the relative openness of political discourse are vulnerable to state intervention and discontinuation when perceived as jeopardizing state interests. The precarious status of Moroccan journalists, for example, is best expressed by the media-monitoring group Committee to Protect Journalists, which currently ranks Morocco alongside Tunisia as the Arab world's "leading jailer of journalists." Nothing reflects this divide so dramatically as the widening gap separating social classes, in which a small elite conspires with a privileged, state-dependent middle class to maintain its hegemony over an impoverished mass public concentrated primarily in rural areas and urban slums – a society wracked by social, class and economic cleavages confronting a state apparatus protective of its powers, patronage and privileges.
In Libya, Qadhafi's willingness to collaborate with the United States on the latter's war on terror, including participation in intelligence gathering and other sharing of information involving alleged al-Qaeda activities in the Sahara and the Saharan-Sahelian corridor, all speak to the pressure for change forcing itself on the great leader. It is uncertain at this point
whether Islamic radicalism has taken a firm foothold in the country sufficient to undermine Qadhafi's fast-waning charismatic appeal and the coercive apparatus associated with it.
In any case, the absence of legitimate institutional structures, intended to secure the system's longevity, leaves the regime vulnerable too sudden, if not violent, overthrow.
Also uncertain is the status of Qadhafi's son Saif al-Islam, his designated successor, despite his high profile within the country. Whatever economic reforms the regime undertakes, they will have little impact on the manner in which Libya is ruled, with political power still concentrated in the security and intelligence apparatus and the revolutionary committees both still under the control of the colonel.
AMB. FREEMAN: Your discussion of the United States as possibly the crucial factor in democratization efforts in the region reminds me of a conversation I participated in earlier this year in Beirut under the auspices of the European Union, a dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah, at which an Iranian spokesman said something very much like the following: "When you Americans began your drive for democratization in the region and set the spread of democracy as a major objective of your foreign policy, we wondered whether you knew what you were doing. Now we know that you did not, because every election that has been held has turned out to our benefit rather than yours. Therefore, we are not surprised that you have abandoned this objective. But, on reflection, we think you had a very good idea, and we intend to pick up where you left off." It is interesting that the most convincing example of a genuine democratic movement, despite its other blemishes, is Hamas, an Islamist democratic movement that may or may not have relevance to other parts of the region.
WILLIAM LAWRENCE: adjunct assistant professor of North African Politics, Georgetown University; U.S. deputy adviser for Islamic World Science Partnerships
I'd like to underscore everything that's been said about how important North Africa is to everything we do in government, in particular with regard to the global war on terror. I often say within the State Department at sessions like these that we ignore North Africa at our own peril. I encourage all of you to continue to investigate and to learn about North Africa because it's incredibly important for the future of the entire Middle East and Muslim world.
I'm a historian by training, and there's a long and interesting history here to be studied. I'm on my way to the National Archives to pick up a copy of the 1797 Treaty of Friendship with Tunisia, the last of the Barbary States treaties. We're going to have an event next week at Georgetown commemorating 210 years of U.S.-Tunisian friendship and have a discussion about the rise and fall of U.S.-Tunisian development assistance. This is a very interesting case study on the effects of a large engagement with one of these countries by the United States. In the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, U.S. assistance to Tunisia was so great that it was a percentage of GNP of some significance. The growth rate of the Tunisian population is a direct consequence of cooperation in family planning, for example. Then, with the closure of the USAID and the Peace Corps offices in the '90s, and other developmental disengagements subsequently, Tunisia was to some degree left on its own.
I was actually late this morning working on some urgent Libya business. Our engagement with Libya has been a very exciting part of working on the Maghreb at the State Department. Almost every aspect of Libyan society and economy, including the oil industry, is ready for U.S. inputs, but it's been very difficult to get that relationship moving. I'm a big fan, as a past Peace Corps volunteer and an educator, of track-two efforts as well as track-one efforts. I've been working very hard over the years to try to help more Americans go to Libya and get interested in Libya. There's almost no area where the Libyans aren't seeking cooperation, and we haven't done a good enough job.
As for Mauritania, where I served in the early 1990s, I note that the Mauritanian democratic transition is one of the most neglected political events in Africa in the last couple of years. Deputy Secretary John Negroponte traveled to Mauritania for the inauguration of the new president, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, but it's hard to find much news coverage. Mauritania is a member of the Arab Maghreb Union, and I'm happy to take questions on it. Among other things, the new legislative measures designed to eradicate the vestiges of slavery and the return of the exiles from the 1989 conflict are very interesting in terms of the ethnic politics of Mauritania and the wider region. Even more important for the subject today, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, the other Sahel countries and areas to the south of the Maghreb are increasingly important strategically to the Maghreb. The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership is just one aspect of the increasing attention being paid to the Sahel. We ignore the Sahel at our peril, as well.
The North African population is among the youngest in the world. You often hear that 65-70 percent of the population is under the age of 30 in these countries; it's true. The median age in Tunisia is 28, in Algeria 25, Morocco 24, Libya 23. The Western Sahara has the same demographic spread as Mauritania, where the median age is 17. If you look at the next 10 to 15 years, the population trends will continue to get worse before they get better. Even Tunisia laments publicly and privately the problem of finding jobs for all of these young people graduating from Tunisian schools that have been built over the last several decades. The economic growth rates for all of these countries would have to be in the double digits to employ the ever-expanding number of young people who are reaching adulthood and seeking jobs.
The reason for the demographic explosion in North Africa is often misunderstood. It's not high fertility. Fertility rates have been plummeting over the last several decades. Death rates have been falling faster. The reasons have to do with the introduction of modern medicine, modern nutrition, and modern sanitation; it is part of the developmental success in this area. Most of our development programs around Africa have more to do with survival than they do with what Europeans call insertion of people into the workforce. Millions are surviving to adulthood in all of these countries with no prospects for employment, given the current economic capacities of these countries. It gets worse for the next 10 or 15 years or so, depending on the country. I do not want to argue that youth are a threat. Rather, to quote one of the recent articles critical of the youth-bulge concept, I'd like to reframe the youth bulge as arguably the most important challenge facing the region and to promote a view of youth as the most important asset of the North African countries. Youth can be mobilized just as effectively to deal with the problems of youth as any other segment of society.
I would point out the incredible role, from 1995 to 1999 in Algeria, of a youth group known as Rassemblement Actions Jeunesse, the Rally for Youth Action. It did the grassroots reconciliation work in Algeria that was necessary for the civil concords to be effective, working the neighborhoods of Algerian cities and in the countryside from which young Islamists were emanating, and finding new ways of communication and reconciliation that created a critically important grassroots context for successful reconciliation efforts by the government.
I also would be remiss not to point out the high youth unemployment rates in this part of the world. We have 43 percent youth unemployment in Algeria – that's an unofficial statistic produced in one report and unreflective of informal economic activity – in Morocco 17 percent, in Tunisia 31 percent. These statistics are not entirely reliable but are indicative of a serious problem. The region has the highest unemployment rates among youth in the world, higher than sub-Saharan Africa by eight points, 25 percent versus 17 percent. This is due for the most part to developmental success. Unemployment alone should be enough to motivate the international organizations and the governments over the next many years to address this major challenge.
U.S. policy for the region is not only to help with reform and economic growth and to cooperate on counterterrorism, but to seek a more unified group of countries. One thing we've been working on very hard in my office, and in the other functional offices around the State Department, is more cooperation among the Maghreb countries towards solving these problems. Not only among the Maghreb countries, but in the trans-Sahara initiative, north-south cooperation. Only with much greater partnership among these countries could we even begin to address some of the serious issues that need to be addressed.
Ultimately, reconciliation in Algeria will have to finish its course. It needs to continue at the grassroots level; economic development is a big part of solving the problem there. We should have a policy response to the connection between terrorism and smuggling; a lot of youth are involved in black-market or informal-sector activities in areas where the economies are fairly dysfunctional. If we see these demographic, economic, and resulting political-cultural issues of youth as essentially security issues, our response won't be sufficient. We'll have to place a major emphasis on political, economic, judicial, cultural, educational and other kinds of engagement with youth or we'll never be able to succeed.
AMB. FREEMAN: Bill's point about the absence of coverage of important developments is unfortunately not limited to North Africa. I was reminded yesterday, by a very senior American correspondent who remains active in his 80s, that after World War II in the late '40s and early '50s, there were 2,500 American foreign correspondents. There are now 238. So the level of coverage of international events that is available to Americans continues to decrease even as globalization continues to accelerate our involvement with the rest of the world, and the stakes increase. Here again, the contrast with Europe is quite large. You will find in the British, French, German, Italian and Spanish press much coverage of the region we've been discussing. But you won't find it here.
Q & A
Q: I would have liked this program to refer to the reunion of the Maghreb States [the Arab Maghreb Union or UMA], which unites the five countries. What we have seen in the region is a diversion, if not a digression, from the slogans that our policy makers have adopted. Is the only thing we care about getting some interest in the oil fields or strategic help in the war on terror? What is the role of the war on terror in our relationship with moderate Islamists in the area?
DR. ZARTMAN: You mentioned the Arab Maghreb Union, and I think that needs to be mentioned. It was an early and serious one of the spate of regional organizations throughout Africa. It has had a good deal of promise behind it. It has been frozen, for several decades really, by the Western Sahara conflict, and by the fact that economically these countries are competitors in the foreign market, rather than complementary in their economies. Nonetheless, were it to drop its hostile barriers between the countries, and were there to be enthusiastic participation, there would be a good chance of improvement of economic conditions. There would be a chance too for a security community; that is, a community where armies cooperated rather than looking at each other as potential military opponents. So there is promise within UMA to be developed. It is many lifetimes from being a single operating unit. The nationalisms of the countries are still too strong to bring them together into a political unit.
I would just mention, on the Islamic front, that all of the countries, particularly Morocco and Algeria, have experimented with the notion of encouraging a moderate Islamist party and trying to give the opportunity for such a group to participate within the political system. There are those for whom a moderate Islamist party is not an Islamist party, that working within the political system is a betrayal of their notions for change of the political system. There's a quiet political battle going on about where people who see themselves as political Islamists are going to go. Will they operate within the moderate option? But you throw democracy at the United States and say, why aren't we democratizing the North African countries? That's a contradiction in terms; you can't democratize from the outside. The countries themselves democratize themselves through the existence of participating political parties within a system that allows full participation of political parties. That's an evolutionary kind of action. It encourages an attitude of arrogance from the outside to say that democratization is our business and our responsibility. We can help it and encourage it, but it has to come from home. There are plenty of programs by NDI and IRI and others to help political parties develop within these countries.
DR. ENTELIS: It's been acknowledged that UMA has been in a prolonged hibernation for a number of years, but not because Maghrebis do not want to unite at the level of civil society. I think North Africans very much identify with each other and would love to be able to concretize this. It's the nature of the leaderships that the various personal and political disputes obstruct the ability of this organization to become viable. It's so logical for it to exist, and its impetus was economic initially, on the model of the European Union.
But conflicts, whether it is the Western Sahara, whether it's Qadhafi's unpredictable behavior and so on, have made this almost a meaningless organization. Evidence of this meaninglessness is found in the Economist Intelligence Unit country reports. At the end of those reports they identify the various regional organizations that these countries belong to. They talk about the League of Arab States and the African Union, but they don't even mention the UMA, not because the desire isn't there, but because the leaderships are so much at odds with each other.
The Islamist phenomenon is extremely important because of what it says about politics, not what it says about religion. As a result, what I see is an incomplete process of inclusion that seems to be taking place when the PJD or the MSP and other such organizations are permitted to participate. It's again a process of top-down political manipulation to try to co-opt and prevent the real opposition from challenging the regime. Most of the electorate understands that and, as a result, does not even go to vote, as the recent voter-turnout figures indicate.
We in the West are looking so closely at the role of the PJD, comparing it with the case in Turkey and elsewhere, failing to appreciate the fact that from the point of view of the electorate itself, it wasn't the inclusion of the PJD that mattered; it was whether or not real opposition parties that represented a significant segment of the electorate were allowed to participate, like, for example, the Justice and Welfare Association. Not that it wanted to necessarily, but at least to provide it with a certain amount of legal cover. The Islamist movement is, first and foremost, a political movement, a representation of opposition that is not permitted to be expressed. Secondly, that which is allowed to be expressed and is permitted to be organized is essentially co-opted by the regime. In so doing, the very co-optation process de-legitimizes the movement in the eyes of the populace. So not only are they back to square one, but they've discredited the democratization process further by demonstrating the manipulative way it's being used.
DR. LAWRENCE: The U.S. government is very much in favor of the Arab Maghreb Union's succeeding. Almost all of the programs in the region that have to do with reform are regional, and they're very much trying to encourage cooperation among the states at every opportunity and venue. There has been some success in the educational sphere, in the scientific sphere. If the AMU has succeeded anywhere, it's been in those areas, and we are trying to engage even more. But, as the other speakers said, until you have a solution to the Western Sahara issue, you won't be able to go very much further. The U.S. interest in regional integration is one of the major drivers encouraging negotiations over the Western Sahara. So it's all connected.
DR. BRENDER: Two quick comments: First, five countries of Southern Europe conduct a dialogue in the five-plus-five format. It involves Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Malta on the European side and the five UMA members, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia and Libya, on the other. Discussions focus on issues such as maritime security, counterterrorism and crisis management. The purpose is to bring modest but increased improvements to regional security. While not an EU initiative, this five-plus-five dialogue is fully complementary to the Euro-Med Partnership.
On the Islamic movements, there is no European Commission line or European line specifically. My own sense is that much depends on how these movements position themselves, ultimately, on issues which now appear to be in gray zones. How will they deal with Sharia law, religious minorities, political pluralism and rights of women once they are in power? Hence, the question is whether these movements will ensure the protection of fundamental rights and provide for genuine democratic change.
Q: How does the Barcelona process differ, if at all, from the Euro-Med dialogue? And what is the status of the EU-GCC dialogue pursuant to a free-trade agreement? Lastly, where does the EU come out in terms of the strong euro and the weak American dollar, in a growing discussion about the positive potential aspects of switching to the euro or a basket of currencies from the dollar as the primary financial medium for international commerce, trade and investment?
DR. BRENDER: The Barcelona process is referred to also as the Euro-Med partnership; it's the same thing. The key question is, what is the complementarily between the Euro-Med Barcelona process, on the one hand, and the new European neighborhood policy? The added value of the European Neighborhood Policy is that it brings elements of intra-European cooperation into our cooperation with our neighbors. That is the new element: the effort to project genuinely European cooperation mechanisms into our cooperation with our neighbors.
As to the second question on the Gulf Cooperation Council, there was the challenge to take the Gulf region seriously in terms of our interaction with the Arab world, because the Barcelona process initially did not foresee the direct involvement of these countries. Therefore, it is another component of our cooperation with the Arab world in the broader sense. The GCC countries are not integrated into the Barcelona process, and they are not in the European Neighborhood Policy, but cooperation with the GCC is another process of interacting with key countries of the Arab world.
AMB. FREEMAN: When the United States uses the dollar and its central role as a reserve currency and major trading
medium to extend extraterritorial controls on trade – for example, as is currently being discussed with respect to the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, a central pillar of the Iranian state – we risk enormous friction with our European allies, who are generally not prepared to accept that kind of extraterritoriality from us, and we drive others away from the dollar into the euro. But it is, in the end, economic reactions of these sorts, not policies by governments, which push things in the manner that they do.
Q: I'd like a few comments on the educational systems in these countries and how they're dealing with the youth bulge in terms of designing curricula that do a little better than has been done in the Mashreq in terms of co-opting youth into the state mentality rather than creating opponents to the state.
DR. LAWRENCE: While I'm not an expert on North African education, I did serve in the education system in Morocco for three years. I taught at the university and high school levels and have visited and engaged with universities in all five of the countries. What's remarkable about North Africa vis-à-vis the Middle East is the huge number of people in the educational system. The core Maghrebi countries have long spent over 20 percent of their revenues on education. What are they teaching? I think there's a history of certain disciplines not being covered in some of the countries. There's a lot of discussion about methodologies and pedagogies and inquiry-driven methods and this type of thing. Also, the methodologies they're trying to implement haven't been fully implemented yet. There's a bit of an educational revolution going on, in many ways, that hasn't fully trickled through the systems.
The major issue, though, is keeping the kids in the system and then deciding what to do with them when they come out. These kids are highly Internet-savvy. They come out with computer skills; there are ubiquitous Internet cafes in most of these countries.
The youth have technical skills and appetites for learning that exceed the educational system. They're learning on their own in many ways. But the economies of these countries are not absorbing all of that wasted talent. One symbolic expression of it is the hunger strikes of university graduates in Morocco. It's what to do with the graduates that is the major neglected problem of the international community, caused in part by decades of international developmental largesse and to a greater degree by the developmental successes of the Maghreb countries.
DR. ENTELIS: There's an absolute need for a fundamental transformation of the North African educational system, which is still very much a reflection of the French influence. As much as young people in North Africa want to learn English, and realize English as an absolutely essential source for business and commerce and so on, it's not easy. Often what they do is turn to these commercial establishments of questionable educational credibility because they realize how much they need this qualification, and they can't find it elsewhere. By the way, the French have worked really hard to undermine American style institutions. When you compare what's going on in the Gulf, with the large number of American-type institutions or relationships that now exist, that doesn't exist in North Africa, even though my sense is that they want this to exist. In the places where English is taught, there's an excessive demand for it. So the systems absorb too many students, the quality of education is nowhere near what is necessary for providing the jobs, and the result is a huge bulge of frustrated though technically certified young people who can find jobs neither in the public sector nor in the private sector. The private sector is increasingly competitive and requires people with all kinds of skills. This again explains one of the reasons they still want to go to Europe, where the possibility of work exists.
Q: After the Oslo agreements, there was a major conference in Casablanca to discuss the economic backup to a possible peace in the Middle East. One of the proposals put forward was to create a Middle East development bank, which would provide loan guarantees for major infrastructural projects: water, desalinization and the like. As the process moved on, the development bank became more of a merchant bank and was operating on normal profit-motive principles. Therefore, very little came out of that.
However, it was a vision that represented a tremendous boon, not only for the Arab-Israeli situation, but also for all of North Africa.
DR. BRENDER: From a European perspective, it is critical to leverage funding of development banks into projects of the region. The question is how to do it. I'm not an expert myself; I can only say that the need has been clearly recognized, and there are ways and means for the European Union to leverage funding – for example, from the European Investment Bank and also the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – in cooperating with this region. That is one of the elements of the European naval policy, one practical strand of cooperation, to try to get funding from these major institutions. The European Commission money is frequently used as seed funding to leverage the bigger projects of these development banks.
DR. ENTELIS: The whole economic purpose of the Arab Maghreb Union, at least initially, was functional: trying to integrate the region. It was supposed to serve as a stronger economic foundation in its relation with the European Union and the global economy as a whole. Instead of that happening, trade among the countries in the Mahgreb has lessened, and bilateral trade agreements between Europe and the individual North African states have increased. So the very assumption of why UMA should exist along functional lines has been undermined. For example, when Algeria and Morocco built those natural-gas pipelines through Tunisia to Sicily and Italy, and the other one through Morocco to Spain, the demand was such that there was a need for additional pipelines along both lines. In the west, Algeria is avoiding Morocco altogether and building a pipeline directly to Spain. This is testimony to the fact that so many of these decisionsare politically motivated. However advantageous the economic cooperation might be that outsiders continuously encourage, the reality is that very little has changed. If anything, it's gone backwards. That has hindered the possibility of not only economic integration but political unity to make the UMA at all meaningful.
DR. ZARTMAN: They are members of the African Development Bank, which I believe moved to Tunis after the collapse of the system in Ivory Coast.
Q: There's a lot of skepticism up here on Capitol Hill about the much-anticipated rollout of the Africa Command. There are a lot of questions about whether it's going to be located in Tampa, Florida, or whether there'll be some location in Africa where we'll actually be invited to be headquartered. In particular, two areas of concern have been voiced in congressional hearings: uncertainly about the nature of how the global war on terrorism is going to be conducted throughout Africa and concern that we're getting into a new geopolitics of energy and strategic raw materials. There's a lot of talk about whether recent Chinese moves into Africa represent the real target for this restructuring of the military command. Similar concerns exist about some of the major European stakes in places like Libya and other parts of the Mahgreb. The French are talking about building nuclear-energy farms to export electrical power to Europe, and there are recent deals with Libya over uranium. So I'm wondering if someone could illuminate the underlying policy intention of this fairly dramatic shift in the structure of our military deployments there.
DR. SORENSON: I won't defend the creation of the Africa Command. There's not a lot of careful thinking going into it; it's done by compromise. The problem for Africa is that it's divided between the Central Command and the European Command, neither of which cared a lot about it. Those in the administration who really believed that Africa needed more attention created this command. The problem is that it takes North Africa, which the European Command is paying more attention to recently, and puts it into a command where it's going to become subsumed into all the rest of Africa. I think what we need to do is create broader divisions within the European Command to pay more attention to North Africa, because North Africa is in many ways integrated in with Europe, as we've heard.
I can't tell you exactly why all this happened, and why Egypt got spun out Egypt clearly didn't want to be a part of this. But in terms of how much influence it will have, who will be the combatant commander over the long term, and whether or not this is a symbolic role for domestic politics, which I think has something to do with it as well, it's probably going to weaken U.S. policy towards North Africa. Therefore, I would disagree with the formation.
AMB. FREEMAN: It's a done deal, except in the sense that it doesn't have roots in any region. Note that CENTCOM has part of Africa – the Horn – and PACCOM washes up against it; so it's even more confused than you suggested, David.
Q [Gordon Brown, former U.S. ambassador to Qatar]: What you're going to see, if an African command is set up, quite rapidly is that the combatant commander is going to have more resources than the ambassadors in the area. And that tends to skew our policy in many ways. All of a sudden, the programs we're running in those countries are not necessarily developmental or political programs; they're military-cooperation programs.
This has a long-term and rather insidious effect on our policy, although in the short term, it's always useful, and ambassadors usually are more than happy to have these extra assets. But the assets come from a different pocket in our government. What we really need is a national security policy.
DR. ZARTMAN: I think the danger that Gordon points out is even more complicated, because these plans – all very nebulous at the moment, as I understand them don't just want to be military. They want to work also on the development of sound economies and on the political aspects. So not only do they have more money than the ambassador, they are actually in competition with other programs that would come from the non-military side. This poses an interagency question of rivalry in our own government that we'll be working on.
DR. ENTELIS: Across the board, in the press and elsewhere, people are vehemently opposed to having AFRICOM located in either Libya, Morocco, Tunisia or Algeria. It is exceptional, given the amount of military and intelligence cooperation taking place between these governments and the United States, that the reaction was so negative.
AMB. FREEMAN: The question was raised about the Chinese entry into the African resource-development game. This is highly objectionable to the traditional sponsors of things African in the United States and to some extent in Europe, who have tended to treat Africa as a humanitarian theme park from which capitalists and other strange beings should be excluded. Now we actually have people turning up and putting money into development projects because of the demand for resources in China. For example, China now produces 46 percent of the world's steel, 44 percent of the world's cement, 60 percent of the world's furniture and so forth. These drive huge intake requirements for resources, and we actually have the Chinese participating in investment on a fairly large scale. They've become the largest investors in Africa.
It is not military involvement by China; it is economic. It is free of politics explicitly because the Chinese do not export a model of any kind and are assiduously respectful of sovereignty, even when it is extremely badly managed, as it is in many African countries.
But the net effect of all this is very clear: the era when either the United States or Europe or the two of us combined could set agendas for Africans is over. They now have alternatives in China and India, in particular, because the Indians are also very involved. And we do not have the level of influence or ability to direct events that we once did. This is part of a reduction of Western power and a sort of a recession of the explosion of the Atlantic world that took place over the last 500 years. It's a historic development, and it's very difficult for people to accept. But it cannot be answered by military means.
Q: As counsel of the embassy of Tunisia, I would like to join Bill Lawrence in saying that the most important security challenge in North Africa is unemployment and giving young, educated people a sense of hope and perspective. This can be achieved nationally, bilaterally, sub-regionally and internationally. The United States and the European Union have an instrumental role in helping countries of North Africa meet this challenge.
Regarding the process of reform in North Africa, democratization is not perfect in any country. Tunisia has its own model of development, which has been inspired by a tradition of reform that goes back to the nineteenth century. It is ranked as the most competitive country in Africa, thanks to good governance, an inclusive and transparent process, and the planning of its development project. I respectfully disagree with Professor Entelis in describing Tunisia as the leading jailer in North Africa. No journalist in Tunisia is imprisoned for his opinion, and there are no political prisoners in Tunisia. The civil society is vibrant.
MR. LAWRENCE: I hope I made it clear in my talk that the data indicate that this youth problem has got to be considered a primordial problem. Employment and economics aren't the only way you deal with the youth issue. There are many other aspects – political, cultural and others – of giving youth ways to be engaged. Tunisia has been a real model for social and economic development. Its transparency has been praised on the economic side. Its growth rates have been astounding. And yet, even Tunisia can't meet the needs of what we're talking about. The solution has got to be holistic, just as the problems need to be viewed holistically.
DR. ENTELIS: I was just quoting data from the Committee to Protect Journalists regarding the status of journalists in Morocco and Tunisia in support of my position. The irony of your comment is that it derives from the very fact of Tunisia's exceptional accomplishments along all these lines of gender equality, education, social improvement and economic development. Everyone concurs about the impressiveness of these accomplishments over a long period of time. It is exactly those accomplishments that compel not only outsiders, but many Tunisians, to want civil liberties to be commensurate with these incredible achievements, without necessarily undermining the stability of the state or threatening the regime. Academics phrase it in terms of the "puzzle" of Tunisia. It seems that the regime has an incredible amount of excess political capital that it can use without going all the way to some absolutist definition of democracy. But it's not even close to that. This excess political capital is not being used to provide more legitimacy and diminish the amount of discontent that people are increasingly expressing. Some of that may ultimately become militant, if not terroristic. So there are significant implications for the regime itself, if it maintains the status quo at all costs.
DR. BRENDER: From a European perspective, Tunisia certainly in the domain of economy performs very well. But, as has just been said in a very eloquent way, there are human-rights issues that are serious. For example, there was a range of incidents surrounding the World Information Summit in November 2005 that highlighted issues of human rights and democratic development. We are very glad that we can discuss these matters with Tunisia; that is the important issue. There are opportunities for discussion with Tunisia in the framework of our bilateral relations, and we are taking our relationship forward. Therefore, it's a constructive relationship. It is by recognizing difficulties that we can move forward.
DR. SORENSON: I've heard the argument in several places that it is partly a function of economic progress that the demand for democratization has been very high in places like Yemen and the Palestinian Authority because people are so poor. In Tunisia, the demand is less because people are doing so well. Some have argued the success of the Tunisian economy has, in a sense, dampened the demand for more political openness and transparency.
AMB. FREEMAN: Maybe that's the Chinese model that was referred to. If living standards go up, as they have in China, at the rate of 17 percent a year, and if the GDP is 58 times what it was 29 years ago, then people are reasonably content and don't demand new management when the current management is doing so well.
DR. ZARTMAN: I think that we've brought out the subtlety and strength at the same time of the importance of the region. It's not a region of catastrophe and disasters; it's a region that is making slow progress with bumps along the way. It's a region, therefore, that is of great interest to the United States in doing what it can to encourage stability and development and participation and liberalization within the societies themselves. The cost of too-rapid change is known as revolution, and the cost of revolution can be great, because instability can be great. So we want to see a development of stability at the same time as we see a development of progress. We hear, on the Moroccan elections or some of the others, comments by what I would call the democratic absolutists who say that not everybody can participate – even those who don't want to, like some of the Islamists. But the fact is that both in human rights and – in the Moroccan case, since it had the most recent elections – in electoral choice enormous progress has been made.
MR. BRENDER: There are two points that I wanted to see mentioned in this discussion from the European perspective at least. The first is that the war on terror has not facilitated our cooperation with North Africa. In particular, the war in Iraq clearly is in the back of the minds of many people in the region, and it is complicating our interaction with them, since frequently they associate democracy promotion with military action. As regards democracy promotion, there are many commonalities between us and the United States, but also important differences.
The second point that I want to mention is that we need a settlement of the Middle East conflict. It is very clear that the Middle East conflict overshadows the relations that we, the European Union, like the United States, have with North Africa. As long as this very important conflict has not found a solution, our relations will not reach the level we want them to reach.
AMB. FREEMAN: In the American context, it's a very radical suggestion to consider that we try to understand the motivations of those who are displeased with us, angry and capable of striking us. It's not foreign to our military thought, however.
DR. SORENSON: Those of us in the security business who look at threats security in military terms are often shortsighted. I include my own organization among those. Yes, security issues in North Africa do require partly a military solution. But they are much bigger than that. It's about education. It's about continuing economic development. It's about opening closed or only partly open systems to more inclusion.
Ultimately, there will be security when the military budgets in these countries go down to the level of that of Tunisia, about 1.3 percent of the total GDP. The military spending binge that we're beginning to see in the region may ultimately be counterproductive to some of these other goals.
DR. ENTELIS: There is a serious misperception on the part of the political leaderships of North Africa about the degree to which their own societies are predisposed to a much greater political maturity than they acknowledge. North African civil societies are extremely dynamic. These are progressive societies in tune and networked with what's going on in the world. They're highly informed; they travel; the Internet is fully accessible, legally or illegally. North African civil society has been at the doorstep of political opportunity for a number of years. And the regimes, however much they've been incrementally opening up, have moved nowhere nearly as rapidly as society itself is demanding. And the longer they wait and the greater the manipulation of the political system, the greater the frustrations, especially in light of the economic hardships and the issues of the youth and unemployment that we've been talking about. To the extent policy is being made or encouraged along these lines, it's for the United States to put more pressure on these regimes to open up in a much deeper and more comprehensive way, even if it doesn't necessarily satisfy short-term American national interests. But it might serve much more beneficial long-term national-security interests.
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