Justice Minister Describes Tunisia’s Battle Against Islamist Takeover

by Richard H. Curtiss

Tunisian Minister of Justice Sadok Chaabane is a man with two missions. This author and former professor of law and political science at the University of Tunis is determined to protect his Muslim country’s moderate and secular political system from what he sees as the three outside extremist ideologies that have swept the Middle East since Tunisia obtained its independence: communism, pan-Arabism, and Islamism. Although communism never took root in any Arab country, pan-Arabism is alive if not particularly well right next door to Tunisia in Libya, and Islamism is the subject of a bloody guerrilla war in Tunisia’s other next door neighbor, Algeria.

The vigorous, prematurely gray government minister’s second mission is to put into perspective charges that Tunisia’s current government has abused the human rights of political opponents. He does this by pointing out the hypocrisy of Western human rights organizations that have criticized Tunisian measures to curb extremists, but then ignored similar measures in Western countries to prevent terrorist acts by those same extremists.

To make his points, Dr. Chaabane cites some key dates in Tunisia’s political history since it obtained its independence from France in 1956. “Before 1987, particularly in 1986, there was a great crisis a true societal crisis,” the justice minister asserts. “The fanatic [Tunisia’s Islamist An Nahda] movement had undertaken serious preparations to seize power, with a special focus on Tunisia.”

Chaabane maintains that Tunisian Islamists drew their funding and political support from competing sources that saw Tunisia as the gateway to its larger neighbors, Algeria and Morocco. These Islamist sources were Iran’s Islamic revolutionary government, representing Shi’i Islam, and wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia, representing Orthodox Sunni Islam. Although Tunisians adhere to Sunni Islam, the minister said, the Islamist leaders accepted help wherever they could find it.

Referring to the assumption of presidential powers on Nov. 7, 1987 from ailing “President for Life” Habib Bourguiba by Tunisia’s former prime minister and current President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Chaabane asserts: “When we say that Ben Ali saved Tunisia, the word has real meaning. On Nov. 8 Islamists were planning to assume power. There was a great challenge to save Tunisia from a current that had infiltrated society and managed to deceive people. The Islamist movement feeds on social deprivation.”

Moving to his second theme, Chaabane continues: “What made matters difficult for us was that the international community was not convinced of the danger. Now that has changed. What we said was that there was coordination of efforts and that the Tunisian Islamists did not want democracy as they claimed, that they wanted power and that they were extremists.

“Therefore we had to take action in the schools, in the mosques which the Islamists had tried to politicize, and even the libraries which were filled with their Islamist books. The newspapers played a role in raising awareness about the danger of extremists, who also had infiltrated the security apparatus, the military and the judiciary. The Tunisian approach has focused on education, job creation and the elimination of poverty through assistance to the underdeveloped regions of the country. Women’s emancipation and promotion have also been an asset in the fight against extremism.”

Chaabane charges that while the Tunisian government was engaged in doing all of these things simultaneously with the transition from Bourguiba’s long and increasingly arbitrary rule, “some foreign support for the Islamists came from the human rights organizations. They provided a door through which the religious movement was able to publicize itself. But we had faith in our progress, determination, and fighting spirit. We had a national consensus that enabled us to stand up to this effort.”

Ironically, after the Ben Ali government released An Nahda leader Rashad Ghannouchi, the Islamists again sought to take over the government, according to Chaabane. In suppressing this attempt, he said, “some abuses took place in 1990 and 1991. But Tunisia’s leadership never tried to hide those abuses. President Ben Ali formed an investigative committee and took steps to punish those responsible and to avoid future violations. The promotion of the values of human rights has become a basic component of school curricula and of the training of law-enforcement cadres.”

Nevertheless, Chaabane says, Tunisia has never passed anti-terrorism legislation and has never declared a state of emergency. “In fact, it deals with terrorism by applying ordinary laws, courts and procedures. Tunisia has honored all of its international commitments. It submits regular reports to the United Nations, we receive questions and we respond to them with sincerity, and this cooperation with the United Nations has borne fruit. All the charges leveled against Tunisia were studied and investigated in the United Nations and the findings showed that there are no abuses. We have nothing to hide.”

International criticism of Tunisia centered on two cases. The first involves Tunisian accusations that its principal Islamist leader, Ghannouchi, was behind a planned terrorist bombing campaign aimed at crippling Tunisia’s tourist industry. A bomb that exploded in a tourist hotel in the resort city of Monastir nine years ago severely maimed a British woman guest. Ironically, Ghannouchi now has been granted political asylum in Britain, from which he continues to campaign against the Tunisian government, a paradox that has raised questions in the British press.

A second case was that of Ahmed Kahlaoui, who issued a pamphlet denouncing PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. The Tunisian government charged the pamphlet also called for the killing of Jews. A Tunisian court convicted Kalaoui of inciting hatred, and he has served a three-year prison sentence.

“In 1993 we proposed a law against dissemination of fanatic ideology and defining the incitement of hatred as a crime.” Chaabane explains.

“This attracted criticism by several human rights organizations, which considered it interference with freedom of opinion and opposition. But then the G-7 summit in Lyon adopted nearly the same approach. The G-7 outlawed organizations fomenting hatred and the raising of funds for such organizations.”

Similarly, Chaabane said, “when we asked some Western governments not to accept Ghannouchi, they said we must prove that he was directly involved in terrorist actions. It was not enough that he should foment hatred, or recruit partisans, or seek funding. All this was not enough. But France today is considering legislation that is almost a duplicate of the Tunisian legislation.”

Discussing the Ghannouchi case, Chaabane charged that as leader of An Nahda Ghannouchi supervised three branches of the organization. “The first was in charge of Dawa [propagation of the faith], the second the political branch that tries to accomplish its goals through peaceful discussion, and the third was a clandestine security-military branch. But the leadership of the three branches is a common one, and coordination is complete between them,” the justice minister charges.

“As leader, Ghannouchi only gives orders, he doesn’t actually participate in military actions. But the perpetrator of the bombing in Monastir confessed that his instructions had come from the hierarchy, meaning that the leader gave the authorization for this act. The judge found that there were many circumstances indicating that the leadership was advocating damage to tourists to damage the economy and to incite the anger of religious leaders against tourists. Therefore the judgment was not only against the operatives, but also those who gave the orders.

“But the British judiciary decided differently,” the Tunisian minister explains. “We have nothing to do with that, just as we do not want them to interfere with our judiciary. We believe, however, that European countries which host extremists should rethink their policies. Fundamentalists have no present and no future in our midst. Their double-talk and demagoguery can mislead no one anymore.”

The Tunisian government’s program to make Tunisian youth more resistant to outside ideologies like Islamism is to cultivate a wider awareness of Tunisia’s own unique history. The area, which the Greeks and Romans called Afriquiya, a name that eventually was applied to the entire continent, has a written history covering more than 3,000 years. In that period Carthage, just north of the present-day Tunis, became a major power in the Mediterranean world. That power continued from the era of the Phoenicians, to whom the Tunisians attribute part of their ancestry, through the Greek, Roman and Byzantine eras. Even after the Arabs brought Islam to North Africa, the Fatimids launched their conquest of Egypt from Tunisia.

To increase consciousness among Tunisia’s youth of the country’s illustrious history, Dr. Chaabane is the president of the Hannibal Society, named after the Carthagenian general who lived from 246 to 183 B.C. and who is best known for the years his army, which used elephants to transport equipment, campaigned against Roman forces in Spain, France and Italy itself.

“Hannibal is a symbol of the fact that Tunisians need not look abroad for ideologies,” Chaabane explains. “The greatest accomplishment of President Ben Ali has been to break links with existing movements and allegiances with foreign forces and organizations which also provide funding and organizational capabilities with ensuing destruction of the national interest. The Hannibal Society represents the education of our children and instilling them with the love of Tunisia, not just as observers but as participants. We want to establish democratic parties on the Western model where the parties are competing with concrete projects to serve the interests of all Tunisians.”

Dr. Chaabane, who speaks English as well as French, was born in 1950 and studied public law and political science in Tunisia. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975. After teaching at the University of Tunis he accepted a government appointment in 1988 as an adviser to President Ben Ali. In that capacity he dealt with political affairs, human rights, higher education and science before his appointment as minister of justice in 1992. He is married and has a son and two daughters.

His book Ben Ali et la Voie Pluraliste en Tunisie was published by Ceres Editions in Tunis in 1996. An English-language edition of the book is scheduled for publication in the coming months.