The real target of the museum attack: Tunisia’s democracy

What the Arabic language press is saying about the attack in Tunis.

Policemen stand guard outside Tunisia's Bardo National Museum on March 24, 2015. Fadel Senna / AFP

The attack on Tunisia’s Bardo National Museum showed that the country has been targeted because it has achieved what no other Arab country has, Taoufik Bouachrine argued in the Moroccan newspaper Akhbar Al Youm.

The promising democratic progress, the attempts to narrow the gap between secular and Islamist factions, signs of the Arab Spring being ultimately beneficial instead of disruptive and a constitution that laid the foundation for a unique parliamentary system are some of the achievements that have made Tunisia the subject of attack, he wrote.

Terror flourished in the tyranny, corruption and despair that occurred during the decades-long reign of former president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali.

The attackers’ main goal is to destroy the country’s economy and sow mistrust and fear between Islamist and secular factions in an effort to push them to an open conflict, he contended.

ISIL is nothing but a killing machine, an organisation without a future or a platform, but its barbarity benefits those willing to put an end to the Arab democratic dream.

Many forces want for Tunisia a fate similar to that of Libya, Yemen, Iraq and Syria to persuade the public of the futility of the struggle for freedom, dignity and democratic pluralism, he wrote.

Major powers are seeking to instil fear in people who rose up against dictatorship, corruption and subservience to the West. These forces cannot directly oppose democracy so they create instability and sow fear.

It is known that the nucleus of ISIL was formed from former prisoners who the Assad regime deliberately let out of jail to help form extremist, armed groups with the goal of deviating the Syrians’ demands for freedom.

The Syrian regime knew that the extremists would fight the war along sectarian, not political, lines, which would help plunge the wider region into a sectarian, civil war. It did not attack the ISIL-controlled areas and let the group sell oil, which is why ISIL tried from the beginning to seize the areas controlled by the Syrian opposition. Bloody clashes killed many more of them than the regime’s fighters.

As ISIL grew stronger, some powers in the region and beyond used the group to fight president Assad, Iran, Hizbollah and Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al Maliki. This emulated tactics used against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but what they did not anticipate was that ISIL would grow so powerful that it would revolt against everyone including Al Qaeda, its parent organisation. ISIL became a monster many helped create but could not control, he concluded.

Algerian novelist Waciny Laredj, writing for the pan-Arab daily Al Quds Al Arabi, said the real target of the museum attack was Tunisia’s nascent democracy.

Tunisia’s historic feat was to show the Arab world’s democrats it was possible to create a new republic beyond the primitive and hereditary dictatorships that have wrought havoc on Arab countries since independence.

This is why murderers lurk in the shadows to prevent Tunisia becoming a model democracy. A successful role model is easy to inspire and spread, he noted.

“We want this democracy to succeed.”

The bloody scenes unfolding elsewhere in the region makes Tunisia the most relevant example for Arabs of a revolution that avoided mayhem and disintegration.

Thus the Tunisian process must survive as an “existential Arabian necessity”, not just a local, transient experience, he said.

Signs of the successful Tunisian example include a committed civil society, women’s rights, a creative political elite and innovative religious entities.

In the past, France and the UK served as role models for the rest of Europe and helped countries such as Spain and Portugal get out of dictatorship.

In Asia, Japan, India and Korea showed the way, while South America took cues from Brazil and Argentina. The US became a distinguished model and even Africans found a model in post-Apartheid South Africa.

The Arab world has traditionally lacked a positive example that could lead to the entrenching of democracy. All previous models failed the test of separation of powers. Whoever attacked Tunisia was targeting its democratic process and political pluralism to prevent the experience from spreading to other places, he concluded.

Translated by Abdelhafid Ezzouitni