Situated between Algeria and Libya along the Mediterranean, the tiny North African Republic of Tunisia is not a nation known for making headlines. But its small size betrays its importance in U.S. foreign policy in the Arab world and how that policy is judged by Arabs and Muslims in a time when Washington has been trying (almost without success) to win the “hearts and minds” of the regional people.

In a 2005 speech in Egypt at the American University of Cairo, America’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted quite correctly that the United States had pursued a policy of stability “at the expense of democracy” only to end up with “[achieving] neither.” Dr. Rice certainly was astute in her analysis, America’s historical policy in the Arab world had entrenched repressive dictators who promised stability but whose oppression often invoked destabilizing and occasionally extremist opposition from their people. Very often that extremist opposition took the form of Islamic fundamentalism. This is what is happening in present-day Tunisia.

The single-party government of Tunisian President Ben Ali, in power since November 1986, has clamped down on all-forms of political dissent in the country. Opposition newspapers often are shut down or at a minimum their papers are denied distribution. The mainstream acceptable press, though mostly independent, is pressured into being pro-government and some prominent publications, as one Tunisian dissident journalist uncovered, are being paid by the Interior Ministry. Tunisians feel there is no arena in public from which they can register their discontents. Affiliation with opposition media and parties pose a threat of assault (both legal and physical) from the government secret police.

They only arena that has offered a viable opposition to the government has become the local Mosque. While most pious Tunisians oppose fanaticism and political Islam is a relatively new concept, some radical Islamists, including who are ever keen on increasing their recruitments have seized on the discontents Tunisians have toward their government. These radical and atypical Muslims have shrewdly played on, say, unemployment among youth and have sought to offer a (false) alternative. They have had a degree of success. Though it bears noting that not all recruits to the cause of radical Islam are actuated by opposition to their government, the on-going occupation and repression of the Palestinian people and the American occupation of Iraq are two strong factors for the rise in the appeal of radicalism among Arab youth.

Nonetheless, the repression of all Tunisian opposition has radicalized both the youth and older generation. As The Economist magazine noted in an article written just prior to the second reelection of Ben Ali in 2004, “[w]hat home-grown critics of the government fear is that the country’s stifling political climate may, in the longer term, itself engender such as shift” toward Islamic fundamentalism. Islamists are already making their presence felt: in 2002 they attacked a synagogue in the island of D’Jerba killing 14 German tourists, Islamists engaged in shoot-out with Tunisian police in 2007 killing two of the latter, and, most recently, Islamists have kidnapped two Austrian tourists.

The Ben Ali government of zero-tolerance of any dissident must bear some of the responsibility for the spike in violent radicalism among Tunisian youth. But will the United States, seeing that its own cause against radical Islam is being harmed by the Tunisian government’s oppressive policies, apply pressure on Tunisia to open up its political establishment? Will the Bush administration see beyond the Tunisian government’s rhetoric of justifying its dictatorship on the grounds that it ensures stability in North Africa (which, as this post has noted, ironically increases radicalism)? After all Condoleezza Rice noted the failure of the trade-off that the United States has often pursued between democracy and “stability” in the Arab world.

Unfortunately for Tunisian advocates of democracy, the lack of strong American urgency on their behalf has been deafening. President Bush has uttered very light criticism of the lack of press freedom in Tunisia and has done so, in as much as the author can verify, once. In her September 2008 visit to Tunisia, Condoleezza Rice, though pushed for reform in Tunis, undermined her own stance when she noted the “strong security and business ties” between the United States and Tunisia, according to an A.P. story.

It is that cover that the Tunisian government uses to continue to repress its people, knowing that as long as it cooperates with the United States on matters concerning the latter than America will simply turn a blind eye to internal oppression. As for Congress? Connecticut Senator Joseph Liebermann speaks for the Congressional consensus when he spoke in 2001, according to the Congressional Record, about the “mutual commitment to freedom, democracy” between the United States and Tunisia. Such words evoke laughter among most Tunisians. Apparently the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy can only go so far in Tunisia. The message to Arab dictators is that “we, the United States, are only concerned with spreading democracy in nations hostile to us (Iraq, Syria), but play your cards rights and we’ll let you continue to be autocrats.” This message is not lost on the Arab people who hear hypocrisy when the United States attacks Iraq and then praises Tunisia (not to mention more cruel states such as Saudi Arabia). Not the best way to win “hearts and minds”.

Ben Ali is sought to run for another seven year term in early 2009. Is the United States in for another rude awaking on the costs of “stability” in the Arab world?

- Marco Villa