Exactly 10 years on, how should we understand the root causes of the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa? At the time, many commentators and policy-makers answered this question with reference to the simple mantra of ‘political and economic freedom’. While much of the world appeared to move away from authoritarian state structures through the 1990s and 2000s, the Middle East had remained largely mired in autocracy and monarchical rule – ‘the world’s most unfree region’ as the introduction to one prominent study of politics in the Arab world put it.^[2] The problem, according to these frameworks, lay in the stifling effect of authoritarianism over capitalist markets, which prevented the emergence of a vibrant private sector and held back the region’s economic potential. The popular rage expressed on the streets of the Middle East in 2011 could thus be understood as a desire for both ‘free’ political systems and ‘free’ economies.

In this vein, then-US President Obama noted in a major policy speech on the Middle East in May 2011 that the region needed ‘a model in which protectionism gives way to openness, the reins of commerce pass from the few to the many, and the economy generates jobs for the young. America’s support for democracy will therefore be based on ensuring financial stability, promoting reform, and integrating competitive markets with each other and the global economy.’ Likewise, the president of the World Bank at the time, Robert Zoellick, argued that the revolts in Tunisia occurred because of too much ‘red tape’, which prevented people from freely engaging in capitalist markets. Western policy-makers have repeated this basic argument incessantly since 2011 – autocratic states smother economic freedom, and ‘free markets’ are essential for any sustained transition away from authoritarianism. As part of this narrative, Western governments and international financial institutions (IFIs) are recast as benign and benevolent actors – ready to support the ‘transition’ to democracy and willing to provide the necessary technocratic expertise to construct open economic markets.

In what follows, it is argued that this standard framing of the Middle East’s political economy is false. It is certainly true that the region’s political structures were (and remain) highly authoritarian, but this kind of political system is directly reflective of how capitalist development occurred in the region over the last few decades. Central to this development trajectory were the far-reaching economic shifts that began in the 1980s under structural adjustment packages (SAPs) supported by the leading IFIs. Locked into these agreements, Arab governments moved through the 1990s and 2000s to reorient their economies in line with market-driven principles. The policies adopted in the region differed little from those found elsewhere around the globe – the prioritization of private sector growth, fiscal austerity, opening up to foreign capital inflows, privatization, and the deregulation of markets (including labour). There was no essential contradiction between these economic policies and political authoritarianism – indeed, the opening up of markets and the steady creep of neoliberal policies throughout the region depended precisely upon authoritarian rulers (as it still does). Crucially, this process was fully supported by Western governments, who applauded the coming to power of autocratic rulers in the region in the 1980s and continued to laud the direction of economic policy-making in the decades preceding 2011.

Postwar politics and the modern Middle East

Any analysis of the contemporary Middle East needs to begin with the region’s centrality to the world economy. Long a strategic crossroads of trade, the area took on special importance following the discovery of large supplies of hydrocarbons during the early twentieth century. Oil and gas were to become essential commodities underpinning modern industrial production and transport following World War 2 and, in this context, control and influence over the region shaped the balance of global rivalries in the postwar period. The United States, which emerged as the dominant power at this time, placed particular emphasis on building privileged relationships with countries across the region.

The 1950s and 1960s saw both a deepening of the region’s importance to the world economy and, at the same time, the coming to power of Arab nationalist movements in Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Syria and Iraq. These new governments overthrew regimes allied to former colonial powers and attempted to pursue economic models based upon statist forms of development – emphasizing domestic control of industry, support to education and employment for university graduates, subsidies for basic consumer items such as food, and state control of land and other resources. Nonetheless, despite the frequent reference to ‘Arab socialism’ made by these new governments, their economic strategy was still very much capitalist in orientation.[3] These policies led to an improvement in living conditions for much of the region’s population, but they were also characterized by repressive forms of rule aimed at curtailing any independent political action.

Western governments – led by the United States – initially confronted these nationalist struggles through strengthening relations with three key regional allies: Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel. In the Gulf, the Saudi monarch, King Saud, had long been reliant on US political and military support, and was all too willing to undercut Arab nationalism through the corrupting influence of oil revenues. Saudi funding of pro-Western movements in the region enabled these forces to deny any direct link to Western governments. The Saudi government was also encouraged to deploy Islam as a regional counterweight to nationalist and left-wing ideas, organizing ‘Islamic summits’ that asserted Saudi influence and challenged Egypt’s role as the leading Arab state. A vitriolic propaganda war opened up between the Saudi and Egyptian governments. This proxy conflict with Egypt took its most vivid form during the eight-year North Yemen civil war, where Saudi Arabia was the main supporter of the royalist, pro-British forces that had been overthrown in 1962, while Egypt backed the republican movements arrayed against the ousted monarchy.

In the case of Iran, the United States (and Britain’s M16) engineered a coup against the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, bringing to power a pro-Western government that was loyal to the Iranian monarchy, headed by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The US explicitly conceived of Iran as its principal base of control for the Gulf region, with a 1969 report by the RAND Corporation – a prominent think tank closely connected to Washington policy-makers – noting that Iran could ‘help achieve many of the goals we find desirable without the need to intervene in the region’.[4] This role was convincingly demonstrated in 1973 with the dispatch of the Iranian military to Oman to assist British troops in the repression of the Dhofar rebellion – a powerful struggle that was at the heart of left-wing movements in the Arabian Peninsula. The Iranian troops, supplied with US helicopters and other weaponry, succeeded in crushing the rebellion. US military support to Iran skyrocketed from 1973 onwards, amounting to more than $6 billion annually between 1973 and 1975. This close relationship continued up until 1979, when the Iranian revolution ousted the Pahlavi monarchy and removed Iran from the sphere of US influence in the region.

The other major pivot of US power in the broader region was the state of Israel. As a settler-colonial state, Israel had come into being in 1948 through the expulsion of around three-quarters of the original Palestinian population from their homes and lands. Inextricably tied to external support for its continued viability in a hostile environment, Israel could be counted on as a much more reliable ally than any Arab state. During the 1950s, Israel’s main external support had come from Britain and France. But the 1967 war saw the Israeli military destroy the Egyptian and Syrian air forces and occupy the West Bank, Gaza Strip, (Egyptian) Sinai Peninsula, and (Syrian) Golan Heights. Israel’s defeat of the Arab states encouraged the United States to cement itself as the country’s primary patron, supplying it annually with billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware and financial support.

Israel’s victory in 1967 signalled a decisive turning point in the evolution of Arab nationalism. While pro-Western regimes continued to be challenged from below by various radical movements, and new nationalist governments came to power in Southern Yemen (1967), Iraq (1968) and Libya (1969), Israel’s victory dealt a devastating blow to the notions of Arab unity and resistance that had been crystallized most sharply in Nasser’s Egypt. The military defeat was symbolically reinforced by Nasser’s death in 1970 and the coming to power of Anwar Sadat, who subsequently moved to reverse many of Nasser’s more radical policies. The priority given by the United States to its relationship with Israel was further highlighted in 1973, when another war broke out between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. Despite initial Egyptian and Syrian advances in the opening salvos of the war, US airlifts of the latest military equipment led to Israel’s eventual victory.

The emergence of authoritarian neoliberalism

Given this regional political context, the global economic downturn of the early 1970s placed severe pressure on the statist development strategies of various Arab governments. The global recession hit the non-oil exports of many Arab countries, while the cost of food and energy imports increased. Moreover, large military expenditures associated with ongoing conflicts in the region (particularly the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel) placed considerable strain on government budgets. Following the sharp rise in US interest rates that began in 1979 – the so-called Volcker Shock – an acute debt crisis swept through key Arab states, including Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan.

As a result of this debt crisis, many Arab governments sought financial support from IFIs, in return for signing SAPs that committed them to a reorientation of economic priorities. Morocco was the first to sign a SAP in 1983, and similar reform programmes were soon adopted in Tunisia (1986), Jordan (1989), Egypt (1991), Algeria (1994) and Yemen (1995). These SAPs sought to strengthen the private sector and achieve closer integration with the world market. The private sector would be, as the World Bank later put it, the ‘engine of strong and sustained growth’ – a necessary requirement of the ‘new global economy’ in which ‘rewards . . . go to the most hospitable environments [for capital investment]’.

From the 1980s onwards, the economic policies of Arab states followed such prescriptions, much like countries elsewhere around the world. Trapped in a cycle of debt and compelled by the conditionalities of multilateral loan packages, Arab governments embraced the standard policy priorities of market-based development: privatization and the prioritization of private sector growth, deregulation of labour and financial markets, a lowering of corporate tax rates, relaxation of barriers to trade and foreign investment, and cutbacks to public spending, including subsidies on food and energy. These new policies were widely unpopular, and their introduction was met with strikes, demonstrations and violent clashes between citizens and security forces – one survey documented 25 outbreaks of major protests between 1977 and 1992 against structural adjustment in nine countries across the region (Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, Sudan, Tunisia and Turkey).[5]

In the face of this widespread opposition to economic change, Arab states took on increasingly authoritarian characteristics through the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, several of the regimes that were overthrown in 2011 first came to power in this period and led the turn towards neoliberal development models. The 1987 coup by Ben Ali in Tunisia, for example, was followed by the country’s decisive orientation towards IFI-led structural adjustment. Likewise, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who became president in 1981 following the assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat, consolidated a system of repressive rule that included the suspension of the constitution, imposition of an Emergency Law, restrictions on the press, detention without charge, and the introduction of military courts to try political opponents. In 1991 Mubarak agreed to an SAP with the IMF and World Bank, and then turned his security forces against the resulting labour strikes and mass demonstrations that occurred throughout the 1990s. Similarly, governments in Jordan, Morocco and Algeria became much more authoritarian in this period. Western governments and IFIs were nonetheless supportive of these governments, viewing their repressive practices as a necessary means to undercut the widespread social discontent around the new neoliberal measures.

These economic measures reversed many of the previous policies embraced by Arab nationalist governments from the 1950s to the 1970s. One indication of this is the large-scale privatization of state-owned firms during this period. According to World Bank figures, total proceeds from privatization in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen reached a little over $8 billion between 1988 and 1999, with more than half of this figure coming from sales in Egypt alone ($4.172 billion).[6] Over the subsequent decade, the scale of privatization expanded considerably, with privatization receipts totalling more than $27 billion between 2000 and 2008. This latter period saw many more countries in the region engage in the selling of assets, as well as a shift away from the privatization of industrial and manufacturing industries and towards the privatization of the telecommunications and financial sectors. Despite the increasing number of countries involved in privatization, Egypt continued to register both the highest number of deals and the largest value of assets sold ($15.7 billion from 1988 to 2008).

A further core priority of structural adjustment in the region was the deregulation of labour markets through reducing (or abolishing) minimum wages and severance pay, and easing laws around hiring and firing.^[7] Arab governments were urged by the World Bank and other IFIs to implement ‘more flexible hiring and dismissal procedures’ as a means of reducing ‘the dominant role of government as employer’ – in this manner, the costs of labour across the board could be reduced. In particular, those firms that were earmarked for privatization would not have to compete with better labour conditions in the public sector and would thus become more attractive to potential investors. Throughout the 2000s, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia all passed significant laws deregulating the labour market.

Another important focus of IFI policy in the region during this period was liberalization of the agricultural sector. Here, policies aimed to develop new agribusiness models that would link production more closely to global markets. Alongside laws that commodified land and dismantled collective ownership rights, other measures lifted price caps on agricultural inputs (such as fertilizers, pesticides and water), and sought to integrate farmers into agribusiness commodity chains. The Egyptian case has been particularly well documented. In 1992, the Mubarak government passed Law 96, which allowed landlords to sell land without informing or negotiating with tenants and lifted longstanding caps on rural rents.[8] As a consequence of this law, rents increased by 300 to 400 per cent in some areas and over a third of all tenant families in Egyptian rural areas (around 1 million households) lost their rights to land. Law 96 was enthusiastically backed by the World Bank and IMF as part of a general policy to establish private property rights in agriculture. A USAID-sponsored study applauded the Egyptian government for passing the law, which it saw as doing away with

‘more than 40 years of an imbalanced relationship between landlords and tenants’.

The logic of these and other policies was further reinforced through international trade and financial agreements signed throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Of particular significance here are the Association Agreements signed with the European Union as part of the European Mediterranean Partnership (which later became the European Neighbourhood Policy). Between 1995 and 1997, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia signed Association Agreements with the EU, while Egypt followed them in 2004. These agreements promised financial aid and greater access to the markets of the EU – the region’s most important trading partner – in return for deepening neoliberal reform. Alongside similar bilateral treaties with the US and accession to the World Trade Organization, these international agreements constituted an important driving force behind the reduction of trade barriers and the opening of new sectors – such as finance, telecommunications, transport, and energy – to foreign ownership.

These economic agreements were also directly tied to the intensification of Western military and political intervention in the region throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Most significantly, this included the decade-long imposition of sanctions on Iraq through the 1990s, culminating in a 2003 US/British-led invasion that overthrew the Iraqi ruler, Saddam Hussein, and that led to a devastating series of social and economic crises from which the country has yet to emerge. At the same time, the United States and European Union sought to normalize Israel’s place in the region – backing the misnamed Oslo Peace Process through the 1990s and advancing a range of regional initiatives aimed at deepening Israel’s ties with Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf states. In relation to both the Iraq War and Israeli–Arab negotiations, US strategic objectives carried an explicit economic dimension (frequently overlooked) that aimed to deepen the region’s integration with global trade and financial flows – war, politics and the region’s economic transformation need to be seen as intimately connected.

Of course, not all states in the Middle East were integrated into the global economy and the Western orbit to the same degree. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, countries such as Libya and Syria largely stood outside the US-dominated system, seeking instead to build relationships with other powers – notably the Soviet Union (up until the early 1990s), and later Russia and China. These two states were headed by tightly centralized, authoritarian regimes – that of Gaddafi in Libya and the Assad family in Syria – in which state power was based on highly patrimonial structures and, in the case of Syria, the deliberate cultivation of sectarian patterns of rule. Due to the way that state control underpinned the power of these regimes, and their relative isolation from Western markets, both Libya and Syria did not see the adoption of IFI-led structural adjustment throughout the 1980s in the same way as other Arab states. Nonetheless, in the wake of the decline of their traditional international backers in the 1990s and early 2000s, both Syria and Libya began to seek a rapprochement with the West. This move was not solely political: it also included an opening to world markets and initial steps towards economic liberalization. In the case of Libya, Gaddafi gave his strong support to the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001 and was later to participate in CIA rendition flights and torture programmes. In 2003, following the lifting of UN sanctions that had been placed on Libya in 1992, key regime figures began lobbying for economic liberalization, with Gaddafi’s son Saif el-Islam insisting that ‘everything should be privatized’ in a speech at the Libya Youth Forum in 2008.^[9] Only tentative steps in this direction were to be adopted, however, due to the highly centralized concentration of state power in the hands of the Gaddafi family. Despite this fact, the IMF was to note on 15 February 2011 – just two days prior to the beginning of an uprising that was to lead to the overthrow of the regime – that ‘An ambitious program to privatize banks and develop the nascent financial sector is under way. Banks have been partially privatized, interest rates decontrolled, and competition encouraged . . . ongoing efforts to restructure and modernize the Central Bank of Libya are under way with assistance from the Fund.’

For Syria, significant steps towards economic reform began following the accession to power of Bashar al-Assad in 2000, after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad. The younger Assad began to privatize and open up the Syrian economy to foreign direct investment, leading to private control of key industrial sectors such as metallurgy, chemicals and textiles. According to one analyst of the Syrian economy, the size of the private sector had risen to just over 60 per cent of GDP by 2007, up from 52.3 per cent in 2000.^[10] Much like other countries in the Middle East, privatization benefitted a small group of business groups that were closely linked to the Assad regime, and that were enriched through state contracts and joint projects with foreign investors. As these reforms accelerated during the period 2005–10, much of the rest of the Syrian population saw a severe worsening of their living standards.

The cases of Syria and Libya confirm that the core assumptions of market-led development had become widely accepted by state and ruling class elites throughout the region by the end of the first decade of the 2000s. Although Syria and Libya may have sometimes expressed opposition to US policy in the Middle East – an opposition that was, however, typically rhetorical rather than substantive – their ruling regimes sought entry into the world market on the basis of economic programmes that paralleled those found elsewhere in the region. Characterized by a similar intertwining of authoritarian rule and economic power, the embrace of these policies expressed an attempt to strengthen the position of those located at the centre of the political system.

Social inequality and the polarization of wealth

Throughout this period of economic transformation, large and persistent disparities opened up in the ownership and control of wealth, access to resources and markets, and the exercise of political power. Alongside consistently high unemployment, rising poverty, and substantial levels of rural dispossession, a tiny layer of the region’s population benefitted considerably from the new economic policies. Privatization and new market opportunities presented lucrative openings for well-connected business groups involved in areas such as trade, finance and real estate speculation. State elites and militaries also came to wield significant economic power, building a web of highly opaque relationships with private capital groups.^[11] These patterns of inequality were sustained through authoritarian rule and state repression. Indeed, it is impossible to separate the highly autocratic political structures of the region from the policies (and outcomes) of the market-led development models implemented from the 1980s onwards.

One important illustration of these patterns can be seen in jobs and employment statistics. Before the global economic downturn of 2008, the average official unemployment rate across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia was higher than in any other region in the world. Young people and women were most affected by unemployment – with around one-fifth of all Arab women and one-quarter of youth in the region unemployed. These figures hide large regional disparities: in the Mashreq sub-region (Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank and Gaza Strip), over 45 per cent of all young females were unemployed in 2011, more than double the rate for young men. The Middle East also ranked at the bottom of the world for labour market participation rates, with less than half of the region’s population considered part of the labour force. Only about one-third of young people and 26 per cent of women were in work, or actively seeking employment. This profound marginalization of young people and women carried deep social implications in countries where elderly men monopolized political power.

The region’s labour markets were also marked by a widespread prevalence of informal and precarious work. In 2009, the United Nations Development Programme reported that the growth of informal work in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia was among the fastest in the world (reaching between 40 and 50 per cent of all non-agricultural employment). In Egypt, three-quarters of new labour market entrants from 2000 to 2005 joined the informal sector, up from only one-fifth in the early 1970s.[12] Not only did these trends affect the character of employment, they also carried important implications for the way urban space was used, and the kinds of social and political movements that emerged in the Middle East – the residents of densely-packed informal settlements across cities such as Cairo, Casablanca, Algiers and Beirut were viewed by governments with deep mistrust and suspicion.

These highly unequal employment and labour market outcomes contributed to worsening overall poverty levels in the region. The proportion of the population without the means to acquire basic nutrition and essential non-food items (the ‘upper poverty line’) averaged close to 40 per cent across Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Lebanon, Egypt and Yemen in the decade prior to the uprisings.[13] Health and educational outcomes also reflected unequal access to state services and social support. Between 2000 and 2006, around one-fifth of all children in Egypt and Morocco exhibited stunted growth as a result of malnutrition. Across the Mashreq countries, undernourishment increased from 6.4 per cent in 1991 to 10.3 per cent in 2011. In 2010, on the eve of the uprisings, a striking 30 per cent of all adults in the region were illiterate (rising to 40 per cent for females aged 15 and above). Educational access was also marked by clear inequalities. In Egypt, for example, UNESCO noted that ‘one in five of the poorest [children] do not make it into primary school at all, while almost all rich children get through to upper secondary’.

It is essential to stress, however, that alongside this widespread deterioration of social conditions throughout the 1990s and 2000s, many of the region’s leading economies were experiencing very high growth rates and were being lauded as successful cases of economic reform, worthy of emulation by other countries in the Global South. Egypt, for example, was ranked by the World Bank as the ‘world’s top reformer’ in its 2008 Doing Business report, and continued to rate within the top 10 global reformers until the overthrow of Mubarak. Likewise, the World Bank’s 2010 Development Policy Review on Tunisia praised the country for its ‘steady structural reforms and good macroeconomic management’ that had earned Tunisia a place ‘among the leading performers in the group of emerging economies’ and led to ‘enviable achievements’ for the country’s poor. This kind of support to authoritarian governments continues to mark IFI policy in much of the Middle East today (such as the Sisi regime in Egypt) – a fact that it is crucial to remember in the light of attempts by these institutions to rewrite their historical record in the region.

The regional order and the global crisis of 2008

The economic policies imposed by IFIs on the Middle East throughout the 1990s and 2000s did not just reconfigure social structures at the national scale, they also precipitated new economic and political hierarchies at the regional level. A key feature of these emergent hierarchies was the growing weight of the six Gulf Arab states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman) in the regional political economy – and the linkage between capital accumulation in the Gulf and processes of class and state formation elsewhere in the area.

Taken as a whole, the Gulf Arab states are marked by features that set them apart from the rest of the region. All these states are monarchies whose rich and relatively cheap hydrocarbon resources (both oil and natural gas) made the Gulf a critical focus of Western strategy in the Middle East throughout the twentieth century. At the same time, the social structures of the Gulf monarchies differ considerably from those found elsewhere in the Middle East. Most significant is the Gulf’s reliance on a large number of temporary migrant workers, mostly drawn from South Asia and to a lesser degree neighbouring Arab countries, who now make up more than one-half of the Gulf’s total population of 56 million. When considered as a percentage of the labour force, non-nationals make up from 59 to 86 per cent of the employed population in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait, increasing to around 92 to 95 per cent in Qatar and the UAE. Denied labour, political and civil rights, these migrant workers have been fundamental to patterns of urban growth and capital accumulation in the Gulf; they have also underpinned the ‘vertical segmentation’ of Gulf societies, with citizens incorporated into the surveillance and control of migrant populations through the kafala system.^[14]

Over the past several decades, growing international demand for the Gulf’s hydrocarbons – underpinned by a near continuous increase in the price of oil from 2000 to mid-2014 – has massively increased wealth levels in the Gulf.^[15] This has helped nurture the development of large capitalist conglomerates in the Gulf, closely linked to ruling monarchies and the state, whose activities span sectors such as construction and real estate development, industrial processes (particularly steel, aluminium and concrete), retail (including import trade and the ownership of shopping centres and malls) and finance.

While much of the surplus capital held in the Gulf has been invested in North America and Europe, large amounts also flowed into neighbouring Arab countries throughout the 2000s.^[16] Critically, this regional expansion of Gulf capital was predicated upon the SAPs discussed above, and the subsequent liberalization and opening up to foreign direct investment flows throughout many Arab countries in the 1990s and 2000s. As a result, Gulf capital was a prime beneficiary of the neoliberal turn throughout the wider region – becoming intimately involved in the ownership and control of capital across the Middle East as a whole.

These regional hierarchies are crucial to understanding the impact of the 2008–09 global economic crisis on the Middle East. As noted, in the years preceding this crisis the region was already facing very high levels of social and economic inequality. In addition to issues of youth unemployment, social exclusion and poverty, rising costs of food and energy placed considerable pressure on the livelihoods of many families.[17] Growing import bills meant that Arab governments faced enormous difficulties in maintaining already reduced subsidy levels; simultaneously, the cost of living for poorer families also rose. This precipitated a large jump in the number of the region’s poor – one estimate from the African Development Bank calculated that a total of 1.11 million additional people had fallen below the poverty line in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Yemen immediately prior to the 2008 global crisis itself.

As the 2008–09 crisis unfolded, these pre-existing patterns of economic development influenced how different parts of the region experienced the global turmoil. Non-oil exporting states were hard hit by the drop in global demand for goods such as agricultural products, textiles and garments, and other manufactured items. Simultaneously, overseas remittance levels fell as the crisis enveloped agriculture, construction and low-skilled manufacturing sectors in Europe, where many Arab migrants (both documented and undocumented) were located. Finally, financial liberalization throughout the neoliberal period had exposed many countries to potential fluctuations in foreign capital inflows, notably of tourist spending and foreign direct investment.

In the Gulf, however, the crisis was experienced differently. Gulf countries were initially shaken by a short-lived drop in oil prices from July to December 2008 (and the associated fall in global demand), as well as a pull-back in foreign capital inflows that led to a collapse of the Gulf’s real estate bubbles (particularly in Dubai). But, in response, the Gulf utilized accumulated financial surpluses to support the large private and state conglomerates threatened by the crisis, launching massive programmes of spending on real estate and infrastructure projects (concentrated in Saudi Arabia and the UAE). Moreover, the Gulf monarchies were able to make use of their structural dependence on temporary migrant workers to shift the burden of the crisis onto neighbouring countries – the hiring of new workers slowed and existing workers could simply be sent home as projects were cancelled. By 2010, oil prices had begun to move upwards once more, further consolidating the Gulf’s path out of the global crisis.

Taken together, these different regional trajectories of the global crisis meant that the Gulf states were able to emerge in a regionally strengthened position in the years following 2008, whilst neighbouring Arab countries faced growing fiscal and social burdens. It was in this context that mass protests first emerged in Tunisia in December 2010, spreading rapidly throughout the entire region. The first phase of these protests in 2011 saw the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia and the Mubarak regime in Egypt. Governments in Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria, Oman, Morocco, Yemen and Libya were also faced with uprisings and protests expressing opposition to autocratic patterns of rule and the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions experienced by much of the population. In this sense, the uprisings targeted both the economic policies that had been so heavily promoted by Western financial institutions over the preceding decades, as well as the political structures with which they were twinned. Not all participants in the uprisings thought about the protests in this manner, of course, but the ubiquitous slogan of aish, hurriyah, ‘adalah ijtima’iyah (bread, freedom, social justice) make this fusion of the economic and political spheres quite evident.

Conclusion

Despite the aspirations of those who took part in the extraordinary struggles of 2011, the extreme polarization of wealth and power in the region has not been fundamentally altered. A recent study has shown that the Middle East is now the most unequal region in the world, with the richest 10 per cent of income earners capturing 64 per cent of total income – compared to 37 per cent in Western Europe, 47 per cent in the United States and 55 per cent in Brazil.[18] The figures are even starker for the ultra-rich population of the region: the income share of the top 1 per cent stands at about 30 per cent in the Middle East, compared to 12 per cent in Western Europe, 20 per cent in the US, 28 per cent in Brazil, 18 per cent in South Africa, 14 per cent in China and 21 per cent in India.[19] These unprecedented levels of inequality are present both at the regional level – between the wealthy countries of the Gulf and the rest of the Middle East – as well as within individual countries.

These high levels of inequality are directly attributable to the market-based development models of recent decades, which have remained essentially unchanged following the uprisings and which continue to be promoted by major IFIs. Such continuities were clearly demonstrated by the IFI-led Deauville Partnership, an initiative launched at the May 2011 G8 summit in France that promised up to $40 billion in loans and other assistance towards Arab countries ‘in transition’. The core premise of the Partnership was a redoubled effort towards market opening in five target countries – Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco and Libya – with goals such as ‘remov[ing] existing structural impediments’, encouraging a ‘vigorous private sector’ as ‘the main engine for job creation’, and pursuing ‘regional and global economic integration [as the] key to economic development’. In this manner, and strikingly reminiscent of how the political and economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s had opened the path to structural adjustment in the region, the post-2011 crises were viewed as an opportunity to extend the policy trajectories of past regimes. As the European Investment Bank noted not long after the overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak, ‘moments of political change can also represent an opportunity to reinforce or improve already existing institutional frameworks’.

Backed by initiatives such as the Deauville Partnership, IFIs have moved since 2011 to expand their position in the region with the offer of new loan agreements and other forms of assistance. Long-established institutions such as the World Bank and IMF have led the way in this process, while working alongside other institutions that have only begun operating in the region during the last decade (such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development). The evolving discussions around post-conflict reconstruction in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq are also marked by the same kind of market-driven logic, and – as history amply illustrates – the aftermath of war, conflict and crisis (including the current global pandemic) is frequently viewed as an opportunity to rework power arrangements and accelerate economic change.

A decade on, the experience of the 2011 uprisings demonstrates that it is not sufficient to focus solely on political demands (such as new elections or governmental corruption) without simultaneously tackling the social and economic power of capital (nationally, regionally and globally). There can be no fundamental break with authoritarian state structures under an economic system that continues to promote unfettered growth and so-called ‘free markets’ at the expense of social justice and equality. One of the major weaknesses of the 2011 revolts was a failure to recognize this strategic lesson. But more recent cycles of political protest – notably the 2018–21 uprisings across Lebanon, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco and Iraq – appear to have learnt from the 2011 experience, explicitly linking the challenge to autocratic political elites with the need to reverse the extreme disparities in the control and distribution of wealth. In this sense – while the aspirations of 2011 remain wholly unfulfilled – the lessons, experiences and hopes of that moment will form an indelible part of struggles to come.

Adam Hanieh is a Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.  His current research focuses on global political economy, development in the Middle East, oil and capitalism. He is the author of three books, most recently Money, Markets, and Monarchies:The Gulf Cooperation Council and Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 International Political Economy Group (IPEG) Book Prize of the British International Studies Association.

Copy-edited by Ashely Inglis

A partnership with Rosa Luxembourg – North Africa & TNI

[1] This article draws on Hanieh, A. (2013) Lineages of Revolt: Issues of contemporary capitalism in the Middle East. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

[2] Schlumberger, O. (2007) Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and durability in nondemocratic regimes. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 5.

[3] Hanieh, A. (2021) ‘Class, nation, and socialism’, International Politics Reviews 9: 50–6-0. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41312-021-00104-2 [Accessed 26 July 2021].

[4] Cited in Stork, J. (1975) ‘US Strategy in the Gulf’, MERIP Reports 36: 19.

[5] Walton, J.K. and Seddon, D. (1994) Free Markets and Food Riots: The politics of global adjustment. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 171.

[6] See Hanieh, A. (2013) Lineages of Revolt, pp. 76–80, for further discussion of the figures in this paragraph.

[7] Ibid.

[8] See Bush, R. (ed.) (2002) Counter-Revolution in Egypt’s Countryside: Land and farmers in the era of economic reform. London: Zed Books.

[9] Prashad, V. Arab Spring, Libyan Winter. Oakland, Baltimore, Edinburgh: AK Press Publishing and Distribution. p. 111.

[10] Haddad, B. (2011) ‘The Political Economy of Syria: Realities and challenges’, Middle East Policy 18(2): 53.

[11] For Egypt’s military–economic links see Marshall, S. and Stacher, J. (2012) ‘Egypt’s generals and transnational capital’, Middle East Report 262(Spring); and Abul-Magd, Z. (2011) ‘The army and the economy in Egypt’, Jadaliyya, 23 December 2011.

[12] Wahba, J. (2010) ‘Labour markets performance and migration flows in Egypt’, in Labour Markets Performance and Migration Flows in Arab Mediterranean Countries: Determinants and Effects, European Commission Occasional Paper 60, Vol. 3. Brussels: European Commission. p. 34.

[13] Achcar, G. (2013). The People Want. London: Saqi Books. p. 31.

[14] Khalaf, A. (2014) ‘The Politics of Migration’, in A. Khalaf et al. (eds.) Transit States: Labour, migration and citizenship in the Gulf. London: Pluto Press. pp. 39–56.

[15] Hanieh, A. (2018) Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the political economy of the contemporary Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 31.

[16] A commonly cited figure throughout the 2000s was that around 50 to 55 per cent of all Gulf Cooperation Council investments went to US markets, 20 per cent went to Europe, 10 to 15 per cent went to Asia and 10 to 15 per cent went to the Middle East and North Africa.

[17] From July 2007 to July 2009, the food consumer price index rose 53 per cent in Tunisia, 47 per cent in Egypt, 42 per cent in Syria, 22 per cent in Morocco, and 20 per cent in Jordan.

[18] Alvaredo, F., Assouad, L. and Picketty, T. (2018) ‘Measuring inequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The world’s most unequal region?’, The Review of Income and Wealth (online). Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/roiw.12385 [Accessed 26 July 2021]

[19] Ibid.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: We remain at the disposal of fellow journalists to explain our approach and its limitations. However, the editorial staff of Barr al Aman Research Media specifies that it does not accuse any moral or physical person. This article gives the floor to the main person quoted. It is  based solely on public data. We call on colleagues not to headline their articles “Barr al Aman accuses” but rather, “traceback”. The editors call on the Middle East Eye media to respond to the elements we present here.

Where did “the document” come from?

This document was placed on the drive in “reading” mode and displayed to anyone with the link. The name of the file is “article_80.pdf”. The owner of the drive account is Mr. Mahmoud Bondok [1], a journalist of Middle East Eye. After downloading the document and analyzing the metadata, we see that this document was written in Word and that the author is Beta methods B(m). It is important to mention here that our article that follows assumes that the metadata of the document has not been modified.

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This company presents itself as follows: “Beta methods B(m). Beta methods is a Financial engineering and consulting firm, which was founded by experienced and internationally trained professionals.”[2]

Where is this company located?

The address of creation is in Borj Baccouche, Ariana as it can be seen on the extract of the “Registre de commerce” that we downloaded from the Registre national des entreprises (RNE).

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However, on google research, it is this address in “Lac 1” that we found: office D 3 2, Dar Maghrebia – Les Berges du Lac – 1053 – Tunis

Who is the representative of this company?

After identifying the company’s page on facebook[3], we were able to find its domain name. This domain is registered to Walid Balti[4]. A name that we also found in the RNE identity sheet available above.

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We are not saying that this person wrote the letter and this is not an accusation against the legal person he represents or his physical person. However, we say that the PDF document posted by Middle East Eye was exported from a Microsoft word program whose author is “Beta methods (m)”.

What is Walid Balti’s background?

A priori, there is no profile of Walid Balti on facebook (with his real name, Editor’s note). However, on linkedin, we find him with a profile picture that reminds us of the press conference room of the Kasbah, the seat of the Tunisian government.

Going back in his professional career, we notice that Walid Balti was an adviser to the Minister of Sports:

“Adviser of Minister of Youth and Sports

Ministry of youth and sports of Tunisia

Dates Employed Mar 2012 – Mar 2014

Employment Duration 2 yrs 1 mo”

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It was therefore under the government of the troika that he was appointed[5] and precisely by Tarak Dhiab. He was dismissed from the board of the public company Promosport on May 13, 2015 by order of the Minister of Sports Maher Ben Dhia.

Balti, the “spokesman” of a sports betting company

We find little about Walid Balti on facebook, except for this video interview on Cap FM[6]. He is there as a representative of the sports betting website www.bountou1x2.com. In the legal notice of this company, we find Beta Methods as one of the “two firms specialized in accounting, auditing, consulting and financial engineering. ” [7].

Although no mention is made of the role of spokesperson, there is an additional link between “bountou1x2” and “Beta Methods”. Indeed, the address of the “commercial department” of “bountou1x2” is office 2, 3rd floor block D dar Maghrebia – Les Berges du Lac – 1053 – Tunis, which is the headquarters of Beta Methods.

On the other hand, Walid Balti’s media outings are relatively rare. One of the most remarkable is undoubtedly this publication in 2018, which resembles a right of reply, published on the site of mtunisia[8] (previously Al Mutawassit, reputedly a conservative channel and close to the Ennahda party). He defended the activity of the company bountou1x2, as a promoter of sports and sports clubs, contrary to the statements of the CEO of the company Promosport where he sat a few years earlier.

Walid Balti, the activist for transparency and against corruption

What caught our attention in this open letter addressed to the CEO of the public company Promosport in 2018, is that Mr. Balti presents himself with his quality of former member of the board of directors of the company but also as a former adviser to the Minister of Sports. However, the speech he holds corresponds much more to his role as spokesman for Bountou1x2.

Although legally, there is no opposition to an individual working in the environment or sector of activity in which he or she was an advisor to the state, the risk of “revolving doors” is quite tangible. Indeed, by advising and amending legislation between 2012 and 2014 as an advisor to the Minister, Mr. Balti was in a privileged position a few years later as a consultant in the same field.

Mr. Balti’s response, reached by Barr al Aman Research Media:

We called the landline number of the company Beta Methods, Mr. Balti identified himself as the manager of the company, he said:

“I have no idea why my company’s name was mentioned in the metadata of this document. I have no relationship with Mr. Bondok. I thank you for warning us, especially since these are very serious matters. The fact that I was an advisor to the Ministry of Sports has nothing to do with it. I will ask our IT people to check, it could be any other company with the same name.”

What we don’t know until publication:

We found no public affiliation of Mr. Balti with any particular political party. He stated that he ‘has no connection with any particular party’.

Some publications about Mr. Balti have come from media outlets not known for their probity, such as Etthawra news, which accuses Mr. Balti of falsifying documents in connection with the president of the Tunis Tennis Club and his former superior Tarak Dhiab. 9

Our article does not incriminate Mr. Balti, nor the company Beta Methods. It questions them. Indeed, Mr. Balti is not alone in this enterprise. We have managed to identify two employees of Beta Methods. First, Mrs. Salhi[10] or Mr. Abdeladhim[11].

A Beta Systemes, behind Beta Methods

Our research through the employees allowed us to identify the latter (Mr. Abdelhadhim) as a “relay” person between Mr. Balti’s first company and the second, whose name resembles the first and which is domiciled at the same address: “Beta-systemes”[12][13] which has a dozen employees/collaborators, some of whom are foreigners.

The latter has several points in common with the former beyond the address. Bountou1x2 is a common customer. One of the employees works for both companies according to his linkedin profile. Another common point is the radio Cap FM which is a client of the second company but which invited the founder of the first to speak. Another element is that the employee who works for the “two betas” also worked for Cap FM and published articles as a journalist under that name[14]. However, the company that we found under this name in the RNE does not a priori correspond to the same company.

When questioned, Mr. Balti indicated that it was a company “domiciled” at this address.

The trade register of the Beta Systemes company that we found

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Références:

[1] Original link to the drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o3e9B-0QeHxduPJvIG-cwOZYr5MALZ1u/ Click on the three dots at the top right of the screen to display the menu and then click on “Details” to see the owner.

[2] https://tn.linkedin.com/company/betamethods

[3] https://www.facebook.com/pg/Beta.methods/

[4] https://who.is/whois/beta-methods.com

[5] الجمهورية التونسية  —  قرار وزير الشباب والرياضة  رقــم 611  لسنة  2012  —   بتاريخ 12 / 6 / 2012

[6] https://www.facebook.com/CapFm.PageOfficielle/videos/1615192038561739

[7] https://www.bountou1x2.com/mentions-legales?system_code=CASUAL-B&language=fr&token=

[8] https://mtunisiatv.com/2018/02/28/%D8%B9%D8%B6%D9%88-%D9%85%D8%AC%D9%84%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%82-%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%AF-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B7%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%B1-%D9%85/

[9] http://athawra-news-tunisie.blogspot.com/2014/05/blog-post_30.html

[10] https://www.linkedin.com/in/amna-salhi-7886ba180/

[11] https://www.linkedin.com/in/elyes-abdeladhim-838033200/

[12] https://www.beta-systemes.com/

[13] https://tn.linkedin.com/company/beta-systems?trk=public_profile_experience-item_result-card_subtitle-click

[14] https://www.cap-fm.tn/ar/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B0%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%88%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%AC%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%82%D8%AA%D8%B1/

The local impact of the initiative is undeniable: the number of employees increased from 6 to 150 fixed and seasonal workers. The NGO did not stop there: it planted 2000 date palms, purchased an ambulance, built teaching rooms at the local school and a sports center for the youth of the village, bought technology equipment for the national guards, gave grants to cultural NGOs… A rich outcome for five years of activity. Yet, the NGO saw its bank account frozen by the State, which claims back its property. An arm wrestling situation which persists for a few months now. 

“The law is against us, but reason proves us right” says Ibrahim Khammar in literary Arabic, as if stating an obvious fact. 

But it is difficult to weigh in the front of Justice, when your opponent is… the State. On September 15th, the tribunal of first instance in Kebili canceled the organization of a public auction to sell the harvest. 

The auction was pushed back several times, but finally took place on October 9th, in presence of the some members of parliament, from opposition and majority blocks. 

PODCAST de l’émission S2EP2 a porté sur l’expérience de Jemna en matière d’économie sociale et solidaire

“We have always been sidelined… There’s no way to come to begging the state for anything…” said Taher Ettahri, president of the association, and retired French professor, a white-bearded man clearly imbued by the left-wing thinking of the 1970s.
“For they should let us work!” For this local Amnesty representative, the land belongs to the ancestors of the people of Jemna. But Taher remains realistic. In the current situation of the association, they should at least allow us to lease the farm!”
The request to normalize the situation of the association has been clearly formulated to the ministries of concern. Since the beginning of October, an exit way from the crisis was mentioned: paying the benefits from the harvest sale – 1.7 million dinars – to the account of deposits, after the settlement of charges for past and current years. The end of the crisis looked close and the optimism at its top. But all of a sudden, the State symbolically quits the negotiation table, without notice, and freezes the accounts of both the buyer and the association.

Frustration and a feeling of injustice

“We should receive distinctions and honors for this achievement” launches Taher Ettahri, outraged. Tunisia should put decentralization in place as stipulated by the 2014 constitution. And we are a laboratory of social and solidarity economy, of decentralized management… it is a unique experience from which lawmakers should draw inspiration.” he added. 

The result was a big frustration in Jemna.  Six years after the revolution, the injustice sentiment felt by the periphery towards the center, inherited from 50 years of dictatorship, remains an open plea.

“The State is afraid to see the experiment in Jemna succeed. If it works here, it can spread all over the country.” Ettahri challenged the Tunisian State, but he knows quite well that what opposes them to the State is not a mere issue of unpaid rent costs, neither of accountability. According to his analysis, Jemna should serve as an example to stop the wishes of autonomy and land reappropriation in other regions. The ministry of agriculture, through the office of state owned land, manages more than 820,000 ha of fallow land, olive and fruit tree groves… Voices come up against the idea of a state private land arguing that “if something belongs to the state, it belongs to the people.

Lenient with the powerful

In Jemna, the state’s posture is felt like an injustice, and a perfect illustration of the double standards. In fact, the parliament voted a law to regularize the illegal situation of marble quarries in Thala- Kasserine, exploited without authorization for 5 years after the revolution. This law did not come to force because it was taken by opposition MPs to the temporary constitutional court. The draft law was submitted to parliament in 2015 by the Ministry of State Properties, the same one who’s suing Jemna’s association.

Frame: ‘The coloniser’s farm’

In Jemna for example, this land is called by the name of its former owners: ‘The coloniser’s farm’ of ‘the farm of STIL’ as if it never was theirs. the appellation embodies a shadowy lapse of the Tunisian history. Under Benali, the farm was leased to two business man, close to the regime, for a annual salary of 80,000 dinars (35,000 Euros), but their turnover was not made public. Before that, the State used to lease the farm to the STIL (Tunisian Company of Milk Industry), a company that rallies a number of elites of the Bourguiba regime. The company ended up by going bankrupt. To be able to lease these lands, the State gave up on the economic model of cooperatives, which consisted in the collectivization of land, a socialist step that was taken in the aftermath of the decision of the agrarian evacuation in 1964. It lasted 10 years.

The new independent state decided to ‘Tunicify’ its land, and they bought it back from colonizers. Before the colonization, the inhabitants of Jemna used these lands for subsistence agriculture. Going back even further in history, at the end of the 19th century, Tunisia was a kingdom that had gained autonomy from the Ottoman Empire. The land belonged to the Bey, while Tunisians were subjects and not citizens. These lands were then ‘given’ to the French who wanted to dislocate and come to Tunisia. This is how far in time we need to go back in order to find the point where the inhabitant of the region could work the land and directly extract benefit from it.

In her exposé titled the Making of the Dinar producing the State in Postcolonial Tunisia, Myriam Amri explores the narratives around the process of the creation of the dinar as well as the first years of the activity of the central bank.

Through the review of archived press articles and first central bank reports in the 1950 post-independence period, Myriam Amri reflected on how the narratives around money are linked to the decision-makers’ imaginaries of what the reality of the economy is and ought to be at that time. She reflects on how visions of what the economy should be produced preemptive talk about presumed but backed future evolutions of the state of the economy. 

Asked about the process which led to the adoption of a national currency (the dinar) in Tunisia unlike other french colonies where the CFA Franc persisted, the speaker answered that the making the dinar was a  historical process of negotiation with the colonial power and transition rather than a single event abrupt event. The transition to the Dinar was also conditioned by the presence and supervision of french experts in the central bank. The transition process was operated very progressively over a period of two years, which unfolded in the introduction of Tunisian banknotes.

She took part in a panel on African Monetary Sovereignty seminar on November 2019 in Tunis:

Who is Myriam Amri?

Myriam Amri is a PhD candidate in the joint degree in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies (Harvard University). Her research focuses on the social life of money in poor neighborhoods in Tunis. She is particularly interested in how money informs local narratives, changing subjectivities and the relation to the natural environment.

• The people of Tunisia invented new ways of a revolution in total respect of the legitimacy of laws and constitution and not against it.
• It is an unprecedented cultural revolution, it is not books of leaflets, it is the explosion of an awareness, that took shape after a long silence. It is the realization of the people that he can reorient his destiny.
• Tunisia transitioned from a Law-based-State to a Law-based Society. And Tunisian people genuinely embodied this spirit.
• It is a historical moment, and a revolution which will shake pr-set political conceptions.
• We thank all Tunisians that contributed their efforts to the campaign. 
• Our administration needs to be independent and impartial, and needs to respect  differences. 
• We will fight the threat of terrorism and a bullet from a terrorist will trigger bursts of bullets from our side. 
• Fighting poverty is a must and responsibility on our shoulders. 
• There is no way for unlawful, informal work.
• No one can steal the freedom that people reclaimed with blood. Not under any banner or circumstance. And those who are nostalgic for a old era are running after a mirage, against the history’s trajectory.
• No way for a setback in women’s rights. We need to expand them, especially social & economic rights, as the dignity of the people is in the dignity of women.
• We need to fulfill the hopes of the people for “Jobs, Freedom, and Dignity”
• The people are in need for a new trust relationship between rulers and citizens. 
• Those who gave their blood to liberate the country are ready to contribute their work and money to push it forward. And contribute to reduce and limit its debt. 

• He thank persons in the Tunisian diaspora abroad who said they were ready to donate one day of work to alleviate Tunisian public debt.
• We stand for just causes, and Palestine in the first place. It is not a position against Jews, we protected them and are ready to do it again, but it’s a position against racism and colonization. Our position is not negotiable under any deal.
• We carry the same commitment for our international obligations, but the cooperation between Peoples is the most important.
• We are looking to build a new history in which Humanism is the core value.
• Coming challenges and responsibilities are big. But the will of the people will help new rulers leave a better country for future generations. 
• The president is the symbol of unity and national independence. And no one is better than anyone, only in the love of the country. He shall rise beyond all conflicts. He invites everyone to rally together around national unity, for the benefit of Tunisia.

Find below the video of the full speech.

MH: What was your background? And how did you get to Carthage in 2015?

I spent 20 years as Commander on a military ship. I passed the competition to take a Master’s degree in National Security with a focus on counter-terrorism in the United States. At the end of this training, I was called to return to work in the office of the Minister of Defence at the end of 2010 in the middle of the Arab spring.

I prepared the files, i.e. I provided him with the synopsis of the situation before the meetings. The Minister was also provided with an update of the information. Appreciating the work I was doing, he appointed me to head this military intelligence department with the agreement of the late Beji Caïd Essebsi, who was then Prime Minister.

After 2012 and the arrival of Mr. Moncef Marzouki in Carthage, we had conflicts that I do not wish to discuss and that affect the interests of Tunisia and the army. As a result, I was not kept in my position. He offered me the opportunity to be a military attaché at our embassy in Tripoli (Libya) and I refused. I was sent to the United Arab Emirates, where I spent a year and two months. Shortly before his departure at the end of 2014, he retired me.

In 2015, while I was still in the United Arab Emirates, I was contacted by Mohsen Marzouk (Chief of Staff at the Presidential Palace) and he told me that the newly elected President Essebsi would like to give me a mission concerning security. I proposed to take over the architecture of the National Security Council.

MH: The constitution has largely specified the composition of this council. What was your room for manœuvre?

According to the Constitution, the National Security Council (NSC) is chaired by the President of the Republic who summons the Council members, which can only meet in the presence of the Head of Government and the Parliament Speaker.

The Tunisian National Security Council has this particularity: the presence of the President of the Assembly of People’s Representatives. However, such councils are generally operational and their membership is often limited to representatives of the Executive. We have also planned to include the head of the national intelligence agency and the adviser in charge of the NSC.

MH: What was the architecture of the previous council?

Before the publication of the CNS decree in 2017, we worked based on the council set up by Ben Ali in 1990, which was then called the “National Security Council”. There was the Head of State, but also the Ministers of Defence, the Interior, Foreign Affairs, the Head of the Armed Forces, the Secretary of State for Security and the Director of Military Security.

Why was this composition a problem? First, the head of the three armies in Tunisia only played a logistical and not an operational role, this stems from a political decision taken in 1979 during the reorganization of the army in Tunisia. The objective was to avoid concentrating all power in the hands of one man. Regarding the presence of the head of military security, it was to flatter the ego of Ben Ali who held this position. Indeed, he should not have the impression of being in a trivial position.

I remember talking to General Kateb, the head of the three armies in 1987, he explained to me that the council met weekly. Ben Ali considered that the military was too involved, so he decided to gradually dismiss them.

MH: What were your reserves about this institution in its 1990 version?

In my opinion, the CNS has a “politico-strategic” vocation. However, the composition in 1990 is more of a “strategic operational” nature, considering the presence of technicians. Thus, some people present at the meetings of the “National Security Council” of 1990 were in the presence of their superiors, they would not take the floor.

Therefore, I think that the operational needs a vision from the political. The connection point between the two is the ministers, the head of the NSC and the director of the intelligence agency. After the establishment of the NSC under the new constitution, now, there is more freedom of speech thanks to a hierarchical harmony of stakeholders.

Our way of working is that of working groups. Commissions function as think tanks. It is a strategic think tank and not a parallel government. Contrary to the criticisms made at the time of the decree’s publication in 2017, I propose to the President of the Republic who submits it to the Council. If there is an equal vote, the group where the president is has the final say.

MH: Why has the national intelligence agency not yet been established?

I have been working on it since 2011. There was a lot of resistance within the Ministries of the Interior and Defence for this joint agency project. Each party would like to have the lead. The politician would like to have this machine, the head of state would like to dispose of it, and the head of government too.

We found that our services within the Ministries of the Interior and Defence did not coordinate. We need space for exchange. That is the role of this agency. An agent is now obliged to share the information he holds with other departments, otherwise, he is punished. Common databases are also planned.

The President of the National Intelligence Agency chairs a council with the various heads of services. However, it has no decision-making power, everything is transmitted to the National Security Council. It proposes but does not decide.

It seems appropriate to me that the President of this agency should be appointed at the ministerial level, in the same way as Serbia. The president of the agency is appointed by the president, obtains the confidence of the parliament, and operates under the supervision of the head of government. It can, therefore, address the Ministers of Defence or the Interior and have the legitimacy to request information from these ministers. Head of State Essebsi did not want this, so he delayed by proposing to reopen this case later.

MH: Two intelligence officials within the Ministry of the Interior were arrested during this legislature for meeting people who were not very appropriate to meet, yet this is the nature of intelligence officers.

Indeed, there is no law governing intelligence. The Organic Intelligence Law is an essential link in national security, it was prepared by the Presidency of the Republic in Carthage with the contribution of the Ministries of Defence, Interior, and Foreign Affairs. But it is dragging at the Kasbah (seat of the Head of government). There are some negotiations about, but they are dragging on and it is not the political tensions between the two heads of the executive that are the cause.

Concerning the state of emergency, unfortunately, we have an unconstitutional decree governing this state of exception, which was not enacted by the Assembly in time.

MH: The Minister of the Interior recently stated that self-detection devices have been set up via surveillance cameras. What exactly can they recognize? License plates or faces?

I can’t comment on that. But I know that in China, for example, there is a powerful system of cameras that allows us to have the identity of a citizen as soon as he is seen by a camera. The camera is there to protect the citizens and not the thief, I don’t see what the problem is.

MH: We have the same system as in China?

I cannot answer your question.

MH: The fact that there are new actors, such as justice, subject to new political power relations. What difference does that make to you?

Our justice system is independent, that is the basic principle, but sometimes some judges are not independent. However, whether for the media or the judiciary, everything will be regulated over time. Even as an intelligence specialist, I would rather have freedom of expression and free speech than silence as we know it in a dictatorship.

Nada Trigui translated the interview from Arabic.

-Hello. Is this madam Jeannine B Scott? 

-Speaking! 

-Hello, I am Mohamed Haddad, a journalist based in Tunis. I would like to ask you some questions if you don’t mind. 

-Okay

-I have been reading the contract between your company and Mrs Olfa Terras Rambourg and the first question I wanted to ask is, did you know that she is a candidate for the parliamentary elections?

-Now I know, yeah. She wasn’t then. 

-When did you know that? 

-I guess she declared a few weeks back but we had already finished almost all what we were working on.

-But the contract’s registration was done on September 3rd. 

-Yes, because I have asked for a legal opinion so they allowed me to file late, which was when we were already finishing what we were working up. 

-In the 8th point, there is a question about the relationship of your client with political parties or government, saying “Is this foreign principal owned, controlled, directed, financed or subsidized by a foreign political party or government”. And your answer to all the questions was “no”. However, by the contract’s registration date, Olfa Rambourg was already a candidate and she was running at the head of a movement of lists contending for the parliamentary elections. Isn’t there any contradictions in there? 

-No, because, the information apply to the time when she was here. 

-But there is an extension in the end of the contract mentioning that the contract will be valid until the end of October. 

-By the time we filled the document there was not a conflict.

When I do my supplemental filing, then I will have to make an adjustment. But not for that filing. 

-Why was there any extension when the contract was contracted far before that date? 

-Because there were one or two other things that I wanted to do, and I wanted to make sure that everything was covered. 

-Which kind of things? 

-I wanted her to have one other meeting that I was not able to get. 

–When did that meeting take place? 

-It did not take place.

-But you said that the extension was done to allow for another meeting that you did not manage to have in May/June. 

-Exactly, the meeting that I expected to have during the earlier time frame, and I was not able to achieve it. So I extended to cover myself in case I was able to achieve it. 

-And do you know that if you organize meetings or activities for her, or even if you only try, this plays a role in influencing the parliamentary elections that are supposed to take place on October 6th?

-It was supposed to be something achieved before she declared that she is going to be a candidate. And I was never able to get the meeting. so…

-Meanwhile, Mrs Rambourg and her colleagues did not seem to see a limit between the associative and political activities. Did she tell you about any separation or limit between both? 

-Well, it was not a political party. It was a movement. So there is a separation, at the time when she was here. 

-Yes it was not a political party but she was having political activities and running for elections. 

She wasn’t running for elections then. 

-And do you know about the political structure under which she is running for elections? 

-Actually I don’t. I know the movement is called Aich Tounsi and don’t know if it magnified into another thing or not, or that it was doing a political party stuff. 

-Mrs Rambourg totally recognizes that she is doing a political activity and that she is doing that with an association. So legally, it is not a political party, but genuinely, she was doing political activities and it is proved as she is a candidate. So there is a blurry zone here. Did she tell you about this confusion before? 

-No. I don’t think so, for me, there was no confusion. 

-And did you work before with other Tunisian people? 

-No

-And how did you get in touch with Mrs Rambourg? or how did she contact you? 

…

-If you knew she was a political candidate, would it have changed the contract with her? 

-Possibly. 

What would have changed?

I don’t know. It is hypothetical, so I don’t know. 

-Because by answering “possibly”, I thought I understood that there were other things that you would have done differently had you knew about her intentions. What are these things? 

-I am not really sure. I never really thought about it. Because she was never a candidate when we were doing what we had to do together. So out of my mind, I don’t know, I will have to think about it.  

-After fact checking, Mrs Rambourg was talking publicly about becoming a presidential candidate for the Republic of Tunisia, since December 2018. 

-I don’t have anything on record for that. We never have said anything about her becoming a political candidate. 

-That’s a bit interesting. She applied for these election In July 2019. By that time you already agreed together on the contract, since May. And she had to prepare her application during the period of execution of the contract.
–We had fulfilled everything I was going to do in the US at that time. And like I said, there was only one other meeting left.

-With whom was this meeting?
–That’s between me and my client.

-And what was the purpose of this mission?
–Which mission?

-Of this consulting contract. The mission that she asked for.
-She wanted to have an education and exchange campaign. Mostly with civil society organisations in the US to know about their take on Tunisia and Africa. Because, a lot of the work I do is on Africa policies in general, on the whole continent.

-What are the points that would have changed If you knew that she was a candidate?
–My answer was possibly because she wasn’t a candidate it never occurred to me. I don’t know what I would have changed, maybe I would have changed the terms of reference.

-How did you understand the point of the contract 8.B where political activity was clearly mentioned but you did not answer by yes? You just ticked the ‘no’ boxes saying she has no political activity, not financing any political activity. And her movement “Aich Tounsi” is an association. And she had been funding her political activity through the foundation as well. (waiting time)

It Is in the second page on the registration statement.

I had a legal opinion

you asked a lawyer if it is right to run a contract with her?

No, the legal opinion was about whether or not what I am doing with her requires registration. I was looking If I was allowed to file after the fact. That’s what I did in September.

-And when did you sign the extension please?
–I was supposed to get a meeting for her even now, after everything is finished, and now (she’s completely damned up ?)
I think it’s by the end of September I don’t have the file in from of me.

-How can the Tunisian authorities or other candidates be sure that there is no interference between the work that you are doing with Olfa Rambourg as a private person and the work you are doing with her as a candidate. Especially that now, we are in an electoral campaign and the contract was extended and is currently going on?
–I mean, it’s extended, because there was one meeting that I wanted to have for her, that I have not been able to secure. Other than that, there is nothing going on.

-Actually the extension is of two months. Were you charging two months for a meeting that did not take place ?
–I had a discussion with her about amending that contract. Now I am not charging for the two months. By the time I will submit my supplemental file it will be different. But my supplemental is only due in 6 months.

-Is there anything you would like to add or clarify or comment on this case?
–Not particularly.

“Can we sell more olive oil in Europe? Can we mention that it is a product coming from Tunisia? Would it be possible to postpone the next negotiation meeting? What guarantees do we have that our business owners and investors will be allowed on the European territory?” 

These few questions may seem simplistic, and obviously caricatural… but they eventually sum up, in a nutshell, the Tunisian negotiators discourse. 

Swapping dates, oranges and olive oil for Euros, but what is the counterpart? Where will the thousand tons of wheat consumed by Tunisian households in the form of subsidized baguettes and flour come from? What should the agricultural sector serve for? feed the local population or increase the foreign currency reserves? Should the right to healthcare take precedence over the intellectual property rights and the profits they generate for pharmaceutical companies?
These fundamental questions do not seem to be part of the Tunisian negotiators’ preoccupations. Is this an exaggerated statement? Perhaps. 

At the risk of recalling the obvious, the European Union is Tunisia’s first trade partner. But the EU is by no means a charity organization. It is an economic and political entity, one of the most powerful in the world, which position is being threatened by the USA and China. 

It is both predictable and legitimate that the EU defends its economic interests and its sphere of political influence in the region. And it should be the same for Tunisia. Interests of these actors can converge… but they can diverge as well.

It is not a question of discussing the modalities and extent of deeper free trade with the EU, but of assessing the balance of power and the impact of each article, each paragraph of this agreement on the lives of citizens, but also of the Tunisian State. As Ignacio Garcio Bercero, chief negotiator of the EU, states, Tunisia represents only 0.5% of the European market, while the European market represents more than 70% of Tunisian exports.

Why taking as much interest in Tunisia, then? Why didn’t the negotiation take place at a the Maghreb scale in order to reduce the lack of proportion between the negotiating parties? Indeed, Tunisia is in a relationship of economic and political dependence on the EU. Would Tunisia be able to re-balance or even… better negotiate its dependence? 

The EU and Tunisia are bound by an association agreement since 1995. What conclusion can we draw from it? The evaluation on Tunisia’s part is dragging. The terms of reference used to choose a consulting cabinet were published in January 2017. Selected at the end of 2018, it is barely starting its work just as this article is being written. Our requests to access information about the final interim reports remain unanswered. 

In this series of article about DCFTA, we will first address the ongoing negotiations, happening in the dark. They are the fruit of an investigation led by Fadil Aliriza after a conference by the Tunisian Forum on Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) held in October 2018.

Thereafter, we will concentrate on the topics of food security and sovereignty. The third article will focus on the fragile balance between the right to life and health and the right to intellectual property, a balance which might be challenged by the DCFTA. 

Our demands since October 2018 to meet the Tunisian chief negotiator, Hichem Ben Ahmed, currently Minister of Transport remained fruitless. His European counterpart, Ignacio Garcio Bercero, chose to answer our questions by email. 

Finally, the critical perspective is raised to us by Maha Ben Gadha, head of the economic programs at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – North Africa. Beyond these articles, our media, Barr al Aman, will produce meetings and Facebook lives to assess these embryonic public policies.  

Let us imagine a private, parallel and transnational justice to defend the interests of investors considered “not enough protected” by Tunisian laws. Let us imagine medicines whose production and marketing were prohibited because of extensions in protection periods, additional to those originally planned by the patent. 

Let us imagine calibrated, certified, imported and European-norm-compliant potatoes in our supermarkets. Let us imagine an adaptation of our job market to European expectations…

The Deep Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) proposed to Tunisia by the EU certainly has an advantage: it questions us about who we are, and what we want to be.

Translated by An Hoang-Xuan