Chairman: Dr Saeed Shehabi: During today’s meeting of Open Discussions and the Gulf Cultural Club we are going to tackle one of the most difficult contemporary problems and issues that we are facing in the Arab and the Muslim world. The struggle between democracy and despotism and dictatorship continues in the Arab and Muslim world. Four and a half years ago we had big ambitions. We were looking forward to a new future of democracy after the end of despotism and dictatorship. We were looking forward to a change in the Arab world from the situation that had arisen since WWII and left us with nothing but dictatorship and despotism, human rights violations, personal, party or tribal regimes.
We were hoping that when the greatest person of that period, Mohammed Bouazizi sacrificed himself without killing anyone else, his life would start a new era in the Arab and Muslim world. But only a few months later we saw that all those ambitions failed and what we see today is totally different and conflicting with what we had we had hoped for.
Personally I do not think it is going to stay long. I do not think that what we are witnessing today is going to last for decades. I think it is short lived. Usually extremism does not last. Abnormal ideas do not last long. They may be fuelled with money and arms but in the end they will fail. What remains is the basic human intellect and human desires of justice.
Justice and democracy will come to the Middle East but only if our intellectuals and elites wake up from their hibernation and come forward with new ideas.
It is unbelievable that we still live under this absolutism and totalitarianism. Tonight we are going to debate the issue of democracy and violence and terrorism in North Africa.
Rashid Masoodi: The issue of democracy and terrorism has concerned us in the last few decades. As we Muslims have not yet updated our system of governance, to one that is based on our own values and world view we found ourselves in the modern world having to choose between dictatorship and the Western concept of democracy.
Irrespective of the otherwise normal debate that has been ongoing among the Muslims for decades as to whether democracy is compatible with the Muslim worldview, the fact is that democracy is seen in our societies as a means for our peoples to take their destinies into their own hands and shake off the long-imposed dictatorships.
Over 15 years ago, during a phone-in programme on French national radio France-Inter, Francois Burgat replied to a listener who asked why on earth there was no democracy in the Arab world. Brugat said in substance: “If there are democratic elections at least – and I am saying at least – 60 percent of the votes would go to the Islamists and the rulers do not want that.”
The dictators of the post colonial period were against democracy for ideological reasons (Nasser, Boumedienne) or for personal gains and the Islamic revivalist movement was the enemy for them.
But is the West ready to accept that, as per the democratic system, our nations determine their own destinies freely? Considering how the democratic process was aborted with Western complicity in Algeria and how the Arab Spring has been reversed or led into a blind alley through a Western conspiracy of silence at best, unfortunately the answer is ‘no’.
It has been apparent since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and especially since Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations in 1993 that democracy is not good when it brings people the West does not approve of . In fact, for its civilisational and strategic considerations the West’s interests have coincided with those of the dictators in the Arab world to take a stand against Islamic revivalism. And this brings me to the issue of dictatorship, democracy and terrorism in Algeria.
For 132 years, the Algerians fought one of the most ruthless colonialisms of modern times. AEK’s 15 year fight against the French was a jihad. The war of liberation’s soldiers were mujahideen and the slogan of December 1960 independence demonstrators was “L’Algerie Musulmane.”
The imposition by force of a ‘socialist’ dictatorial regime at independence saw a fledging Islamist revivalist movement working culturally and peacefully against the imposition of an alien ideology. This eventually culminated into the 1988 large-scale cultural/economic demonstrations against the socialist regime which were led by the Islamists.
1989 saw the creation of FIS. In the first ever free elections FIS won a landslide victory in the local elections. The Financial Times stated: “ Algeria is preparing to make an A-Bomb.” In 1991, FIS won a second landslide victory in the parliamentary elections.
This was seen as a dangerous turn of events that the French had not expected. So there were several exchange visits between Algerian army leaders and the then French chief of staff and this fledgling democratic process was stopped through a coup in January 1992. Among the 11 leaders of the 1992 coup in Algeria nine were reported to have been in the French Indo China army in the early 1950s.
The FIS leaders were arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison on fabricated charges. What happened next is very telling: FIS did not order an armed uprising but the GIA soon appeared and started killing and maiming in the name of Islam. There was a large-scale, national media campaign against ‘fanatics’. The French media stepped in heavily in support of the coup leaders and against the fanatics. Army and intelligence deserters to the West gradually showed that the GIA was created by new leaders. Two hundred thousand people were killed.
Afterwards there was a semblance of democracy. Boudaif was brought in and then killed as he was too democratic. Bouteflika was imposed a Western rulers consensus in the fact of six other candidates who quit. He then amended the constitution to get a 4th term mandate. The army chiefs became the economic lords. The country no longer had a middle class. It was a country of huge oil and gas reserves and a poor population.
This situation saw the emergence of Al-Qaida in the Maghreb and the terrorist incident in the oil fields of the Sahara. Today there is a drive to tie Algeria to the French wagon once again: eradicaterus culturels de 2015 after the eredicateurs physiquesd of the 1990s.
Tayeb Ghloofi : Tunisia is the first Arab country to adopt a constitution as early as the middle of the 19th century ( 1861). Democracy in Tunisia has been associated with the fight for independence since the early stage of the Tunisian people’s struggle for emancipation from colonisation. On 9th April 1938 the Tunisian people took to the streets of the captial chanting ‘Tunisian parliament’. The French army fired on the demonstrators killing dozens and imprisoning hundreds.
The leader of the independence Habib Bourguiba in building the new Tunisia did build everything but democracy. He copied ever thing from French model except democracy and free elections. In 1975 the Parliament of Tunisia adopted an amendment to the constitution declaring Bourguiba as a life president of the country.
Ben Ali follow suit and crushed the opposition heavily. His rule was characterised by cruelty . He reduced the state policing and spoiled the education . Bourguiba was a sort of enlightened despot – Ben Ali was the ignorant one.
The democracy demand never died out within the elite during the Bourguiba era and Ben Ali eras. Civil society continued to rally to stop torture which was rife under Ben Ali’s rule . Civil society organisations reorganised themselves for defending human rights , free elections and combating corruption. The BenAli family has been involved in perpetuating the red tape, smuggling and tax avoidance
It was on 17th Dec 2010 that Muhammad Bouazizi, a fruit vendor, set himself on fire to protest about officials who would not let him ply his trade without bribing them. The poor man didn’t know that the fire which burned his body would burn the whole of the Arab world .
After Ben Ali fled from Tunisia a new era of democracy and freedom was within arms reach. Tunisians started practicing freedom sometimes confusing it with anarchy. They started building a democratic system naively without completely eradicating the older regime
Two major factors have contributed to the difficulties and set backs which Tunisia is experiencing today.
1- The first one is the Terrorism. This nasty phenomenon has benefited from the post revolution freedom, at a time when the state institutions: intelligence and police forces, the army and the judiciary system have all been weakened to some extent. They entered into a trauma phase after the departure of their chaperon fearing annihilation during the transitional period.
Terrorism gained a momentum when the Libyan and Syrian Revolution benefited from a wider support locally and internationally. The situation in Libya has given the terrorist organisation a safe haven where it would get armed and trained
Actually the Ben Ali regime is the God father of the salafi organisations since he entered a process of the eradication of political Islam. As a part of the process of this eradication , he encouraged the salafi movement especially the so called salafia school which is obsessed with believes and dress code rather than governance and politics. It is a puritanical ideal disengaged from politics. This kind of salafia is Wahhabi inspired abhors democracy and Islamic political parties. It suited Ben Ali perfectly
After the revolution and the vacillation of the political landscape the majority of those salafies changed camps: they became jihadists, with a political program based on implementing Sharia by force (jihad) and combating the infidel governors and political leaders alike.
They have been manipulated and used by the old regime’s apparatus in order to destabilise the troika government. The assassination of Shokri Bel Aid has brought down the first troika government t led by Hamadi Jbali. The assassination of Mohammad Elbrahmi did the same to the Ali Al Rayed government and the troika finally gave up and handed over power to the technocratic government agreed upon by national dialogue
In the parliamentary and presidential election held seven months ago the Nida Tunis fought the election on one main slogan: “elect us to save you from terrorism.” The political program of the Nida and the president was bringing back “haibatu a dayla” ( the authority, prestige and prominence of the state. Actually the true meaning of haibatu edawla is a state not governed by law which can do anything to anyone. The scare mongering and intimidation has paid off: they returned to power and the counterrevolution has won in Tunisia using terrorism as a tool and pretext
Through the terrorist strike in Bardo and in Souse the sickening jihadists are driving the country to the square one , just before 14th January – to the political starvation , clawing back the democratic transition
2 -The second factor that alter the democratic transition is the deep state referred to in the Turkish language as derin devlet ( height officials, civil servants, the top hierarchy of the police officers, the judiciary, business networks and the mafia ) .
The deep state has returned: the business lobby, the security and business apparatus have succeeded in gaining back the control of the state affairs. The democratic transition needs a balance of power, a strong opposition , after the second and the third political parties in the election results have signed in to the coalition, significantly weakening the opposition.
The administration , the high offices of the police , the media and the judiciary all formed the wall of resistance to the change. This network operates fully after Ben Ali and contributes to the failure of reforms.
However there is no going back to the absolute rule of the Ben Ali and Bourguiba eras. Civil society in Tunisia is active , the new wall of fear will not stand regardless of the momentum of reversal.
Juma’ Al Gamaty: First of all sincere thanks to my dear friend Dr Saeed Shehabi and to the Gulf Cultural Club for the invitation to be here with you and to share the platform with my friends from Algeria and Tunisia. I wish we had someone from Morocco as well. The Maghreb is very dear to me and I strongly believe in the Maghreb Union which started from Libya all the way to Morocco and Mauritania including Tunisia and Algeria. I think we have a lot in common and strategically we could achieve a lot in the future.
The topic today is democracy and terrorism within the context of North Africa and my part is obviously within the context of Libya. Obviously democracy is a huge topic. This is not the time to go into that. Terrorism is also a huge topic. Somehow there is a link within our context. Those groups who have risen recently in the Arab world, in Iraq and in Syria and now in Libya and Tunisia (ISIS) claim that democracy is a Western secular commodity. It is incompatible with Islam. It contradicts Islam. Muslims in their own countries must have Islamic rule.
Those groups argue that we need to establish Islamic rule. The rule of Allah. The caliphate. Democracy is totally alien and if you talk about democracy and adopt democracy it is as if you are deviating from their understanding of Islam and from the rule of Allah. They see that democracy is the rule of the people.
This simple idea is totally flawed. There are thousands of books, articles and workshops and many scholars who can prove that there is no contradiction between democracy and Islam. Democracy is not a religion, it is not an ideology. It is more of a mechanism. It depends on how you view democracy. What is democracy? What does it mean to you? This is the key link.
When we talk about these revolutions we are talking about installing a genuine democracy in the Arab world for the first time ever. These groups are saying this is a danger. You are bringing us a secular Western commodity that we are going to fight and we are not going to allow.
But when we talk about terrorism unfortunately in the last 15 years subconsciously in the minds of a lot of people around the world they have linked terrorism with Muslims and Islam as if Muslims are the ones who produced terrorism and are responsible for terrorism. This is a total fallacy. Terrorism is a global phenomena which has existed for a long, long time.
Some of you might be old enough to remember that in the 1970s Marxists and leftists were hijacking civilian aeroplanes and blowing them up in airports. That happened in Jordan and in other places. You might remember very recently that prominent terrorist groups in Europe: the IRA in Ireland, ETA in Spain, the Red Brigade in Italy, Bada Meinhoff in Germany, those groups in Japan who released poisonous gas into the underground stations and there is another fact. The first group who introduced suicide bombings into the world were the Tamils of Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka.
So who ever tells you that terrorism is an Islamic thing is n perpetuating a big fallacy. It is true that in recent years the most prominent terrorist groups: Al Qaeda, ISIS and Ansar Al Shariah are Muslims and originated from Islamic countries. But terrorism was never an Islamic thing. That has to be very clear.
In London when we had terrorist attacks the politicians were very clear and very careful to distinguish between these terrorist attacks and true Islam and Muslims. The response of the two million British Muslims in the UK is very clear about that. So let us just get that out of the way and return to Libya.
I will start with a very quick over view just to put things into perspective. Libya over a 100 years ago was part of the Ottoman Empire. That is why we have a very strong historical and cultural links with Turkey – as do other countries in North Africa as well. And many of the Arab countries.
In 1911 Libya was colonised by Britain during the colonisation of many Muslim countries by Britain and France. Post WWII in 1944 Italy was defeated because it allied itself with Hitler (Germany). So the Italians fled from Libya and it came under British administration from 1944 until 1951 for about seven years. British administration in the north and French administration in the south – what we would call the region of Fezzan. In 1951, even earlier than Algeria, Libya became independent and a new modern state. On 24th December 1951 the UN granted Libya full independence and it became one country, one modern state and adopted a monarchy system and we had a king called Idriss El Senussi. He is the grandson of a great reformer Mohammed El Senussi who is Algerian. The Senussi movement was a reform movement which has been around for many centuries.
With this new monarchy Libya was very poor in 1951. The first budget of the new government was about one million dollars and part of it was borrowed from businessmen and others. This very harsh economic situation went on for about ten years. In the early 1960s oil was discovered and started to be exported in commercial quantities. So in the 1960s we had a huge flow of oil exported and Libya started to enjoy huge revenues from oil. The social and economic situation of Libyans started to improve dramatically.
Although the monarchy was not a constitutional monarchy – it was an absolute monarchy was very tolerant to opposition, criticism and a free press. We had elections, we had a parliament, we had a constitution. We had the beginning of state building and constitution building.
Unfortunately this era of the monarchy only last for 18 years (1951 until 1969). On 1st September 1969 we had a military coup. A young military officer aged only 26 took over power. He was Muammar Qadhafi. And the rest is history. The Qadhafi era lasted for 42 years. Forty two years of absolute despotism, of dictatorship of dissolving the constitution, of banning political parties. The punishment for setting up a political party was death. The free press was banned and demonstrations were banned.
If three people or more held a secret meeting or demonstrated the penalty was death. There was only one ruler, one great leader, one thinker, one philosopher and the Green Book was the way. There was no other way and if you disagreed you would be killed. It was sheer hell. Not only that – Libya enjoyed very huge revenues from oil during those 42 years. These revenues were squandered. If you go to Libya you would not think that this country has been enjoying huge oil revenues for the past 50 years. That is really one of the sad aspects of the legacy of Qadhafi.
Qadhafi always said I do not rule. This is direct democracy, the Green Book. The Libyans are ruling through popular committees. I am only a leader, a philosopher, I am the guide of the revolution but the reality was totally different.
In the last ten years something else happened and that is a change in the role of Qadhafi’s sons. He has seven of them – not just two or three. They started to come on the scene and it became very clear that Qadhafi was going to hand over to one of his sons. So this young man, at 26 years old a socialist military officer who launched a coup against a monarchy because he said royal families are traitors to the West was going to instil his own dynasty and royal family but not in name. He was going to pass power to his son.
So it was inevitable that the Libyans had many many reasons to rise against Qadhafi. We do not claim that it was going to happen. We owe it to Abuazizi and the Tunisians. When the Tunisian revolution happened we started thinking could it really happen in Libya. We are very close to the Tunisians. And then the revolution was successful in Tunisia and it went over to Egypt. It bypassed us. We said there is something wrong here. It is not supposed to go to Egypt it is supposed to go to Libya first. And then Egypt.
We said wait a minute. If it succeeds in Egypt definitely it is going to happen in Libya and we started working for it. I have been away from Libya for 36 years. I haven’t seen Libya for 31 years. If I went back I would be arrested and killed. So a lot of us activists started working and made contact with our networks inside Libya. I remember coming home one day and there was a big flash on Al Jazeera: Mubarak is ousted. The Egyptians won.
I picked up the phone and called a friend of mine. His name is Hassan. I said Hassan we are going to work now. We will push the button and the Libyan revolution should start very soon. A lot of activists set a date and that date was 17th February. Just one week after Mubarak was ousted we were going to start demonstrations inside Libya. And the Libyans were on time. Not on the 17th – actually on the 15th February in the city of Benghazi. The demonstrations were peaceful and civilian but within hours Qadhafi ordered his people to fire against those demonstrators. Straight to the chest. Not even in the air. And kill as many as possible.
And again I say the rest is history. The Libyans did not fear the bullets. They went on and on and on. The demonstrations grew and spread to other towns and cities and then unfortunately the Libyan revolution became very very bloody. The Libyans had no choice but to take up arms against the Qadhafi death machine and we had to appeal to the international community to come and protect the civilians. Qadhafi was shelling cities with aeroplanes indiscriminately and he was going to kill hundreds of thousands. So we had to have this resolution and this intervention to protect civilians in Libya. The revolution took six months. It was successful. By August 20th Qadhafi fled to his own town Sirte and on October 20th he was captured and killed on the way to the city of Misrata.
A lot of people asked me questions during the 2011 revolution when I was very active in London as the representative of the National Transitional Council and dealing with the media and politicians. I remember one diplomat from the foreign ministry here asked me a question. He said Giuma now Qadhafi has united all the Libyans. All the Libyans are united because we have this goal to get rid of him. After Qadhafi is gone what is going to unite you.
I have to admit that at that time I was very naive. I said it is obvious. What is going to unite us after Qadhafi is that we are going to set up a beautiful fantastic, democracy in Libya. We have all the resources and all the money. We have all the oil and gas, we have a small population. We are going to embark on massive development and very quickly we will improve the lives of Libyans and set up a very good model in North Africa. We used to call Libya either the Singapore or the Norway of North Africa.
I visited Norway during that summer. I said we have a lot in common. Norway has five million people, we have five million people. You have oil and gas, we have oil and gas. You have a sovereign wealth fund, we have a sovereign wealth fund. There is only a small difference. You have a democracy, we do not have a democracy but hopefully after the revolution is successful we too will have a democracy.
I have to admit now that I was very naive. Things are not as simple as that. And that brings me to the difficulties and problems. Why are we suffering? Why are we having it so difficult? It is basically because of the legacy of 42 years. Forty-two years of very poor education, 42 years of no civil society whatsoever. Unlike the Tunisians. The Tunisians had a very strong education system. And they should thank Bourgiba for that. I told Mr Ranoushi you were a very strong opponent of Bourgiba but he had one major plus: he gave you a very strong education which you all benefitted from. Ben Ali tried to destroy that education but still you benefitted from.
I remember I used to visit my friend Moncef Marzog in France and we used to have chats and he said the difference between the Tunisians and the Libyans is that we in Tunisia have a thriving civil society. You never had the chance to develop civil society in Libya – very poor education. We never experienced political parties, a free press, debating, arguing and respecting different opinions and pluralism. Seventy-two percent of the Libyan population is under 30 years old. They were all born after Qafhafi. It is a bit like North Korea now. They don’t know any different. They only know this system.
So this is the legacy that has made it very difficult for us to succeed post revolution. Also the lack of institutions. Qadhafi wiped out any form of institutions. No government, parliament, no press, no civil society, no judiciary – nothing. There was only one institution and that is Qadhafi and his tent. Wherever Qadhafi went and set up his tent that is the only institution in the country.
The other thing is the oil curse. We have a lot of oil, a lot of gas and a lot of wealth. That made people very selfish and grabbing and everybody wants to grab as much as possible of the wealth from the oil. And fighting over wealth became the norm in a country which is totally open and free with over 20 million arms spread everywhere. The borders are open and it is just free for all. So everybody grabbed arms and wanted to grab their share of the wealth by any means. And that is also a very bad aspect of what happened. It is also part of the legacy of the Qadhafi era.
I have to admit that that is where we did not organise ourselves. We did not have strong leaders who took the initiative. We did not prioritise things. We do not embark straight away on institution building and to have a constitution quickly. Things just got out of hand and for the last four years we have been suffering from infighting, divisions, everybody wants to impose their own idea and their own vision of Libya.
Just over a year ago we had ISIS coming. (I do not think you should call it ISIS because ISIS is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). This new terrible cancerous organisation came into Libya because it is open to all. We have many young Libyans who were fighting in Iraq and in Syria and they came back to Libya. (Tunisia is the largest exporter of Islamic fighters – over 3,000 and we probably have 2,000 of them in Libya.)
We have hundreds who come back and they want to propagate this idea that democracy is contradictory to Islam and we want to set up an Islamic state with the rule of Allah and not the rule of the people and caliphate and shaira. So we had Ansar Al Sharia, we had ISIS, we had Al Qaeda. They have arms and they could move easily in Libya. A group of them is now in Sirte and they stole $53m in euros. And when they convert them to dinars it is over 100 million dinars. Imagine what you can do with that in terms of arms and ammunition. They probably stole a lot more money from different parts.
So now we have this challenge. It is another obstacle. But the obstacles are still a lack of consensus, a lack of institutions, a weak civil society, a weak political and democratic culture but added to it the challenge of these so-called Islamic terrorist groups which want to take over Libya and destroy any other form of rule.
Yet the threat of ISIS in Libya is not as strong as what they have achieved in Iraq and in Syria. It is still limited. It is still in just two or three towns: Derna in the east, Benghazi and Sirte. And In Derna the people almost eliminated them. In Benghazi they became very small, probably just a couple of hundred and in Sirte it is still manageable to actually keep the situation under control and destroy them.
There is a strong will now among Libyans from all sides to actually unite against this danger of ISIS. It is not just against secularists or liberals. They are against everybody in Libya who is different from their own vision and their ideas.
A political dialogue has been going on for the past six months. It took place in Geneva, in Morocco in Algeria. I took part in some of it: three times in Algeria and last week in Geneva. The United Nations is trying to bring all the factions together and achieve a unity government and get Libya back on track to draft a constitution and have proper final elections like Tunisia had over a year ago.
The element of Haftar and the premise that he is fighting terrorism is wrong. He is not fighting terrorism. He is part of the counter revolution to destroy what the Libyans achieved in 2011 and instil military rule because he is being sponsored mainly by Egypt especially after Sisi took over. Egypt and the UAE and others do not want places like Libya and Tunisia and so on to succeed and set up and instil a genuine democracy and allow the Libyans and Tunisians to achieve very high levels of development not just economic and social but also political and democratic development as well.
But we will defeat them. I am known as the optimist and I am still hopeful and optimistic that Libya will make it in sha Allah.
* Rashid Messoudi is Graduate in Translation and studies political sciences. He worked initially as conference interpreter then as journalist in French for a few years. After postgraduate studies in literary translation, he worked as journalist in English in late 1970s, 1980s until the mid-1990s. He also worked as editor from 1987-1995 and contributed to book-writing in the 1990s. In 2000, he resumed university studies and graduated in medical phytotherapy. since 2005, He has been practising medical herbalism, medical aromatherapy, nutrition correction and other natural therapies while specialising in the treatment of chronic degenerative diseases. Since last Ramadhan, he has been running a weekly TV health show.
** Dr Jum’a Al Qamaty is a Senior official of Al Taghyeer |(Change, Transformation) Party in Libya and a former anti-Gaddafi activist. He obtained his PhD degree in Political Science from University of Westminster. During the Revolution he acted as the representative of the Transitional National Council in UK. After 36 years in exile he returned to Libya after the collapse of the Gaddafi regime. He worked with others to form the Taghyeer Party of which he is now a senior official. He takes an active role in the current Libyan political life.
***Tayeb Ghloofi is a Tunisian writer and commentator. He works closely with Al Nahda Party. He is the Director of the London-based AlMandoor Al Siyasi for Studies and Consultancy. He often appears on TV screens and his articles are published by newspapers and websites.