Brian Whitaker on Tunisia: "Most Important Story" of the Year?

Brian Whitaker of The Guardian, in his weekly Middle East roundup, offer a strong opinion:

The biggest story from the Middle East this week … No, the biggest, most important and most inspiring story from the Middle East this year is one that most readers may only vaguely have heard of, if at all. It's the Tunisian uprising . . .

So, what we have in Tunisia today is the birth of a genuine, national, indigenous, popular movement, not against colonialists or foreign occupiers but against their own repressive regime, and one which is not tainted (as in Iran) by international power games.

This is something new, which is why it's so important. For years, writers have complained about the "Arab malaise" – the way Arabs have become accustomed to playing the role of victims, their passivity in the face of home-grown tyrants, and so on. The need, as I explained in my recent book, is for Arabs to stop being prisoners of their history and start shaping their own destiny. At long last, that is what the people of Tunisia are trying to do.

Is the Tunisian uprising really that transformative? I'll admit to still having doubts. Perhaps I've seen far too many Egyptian protest movements that fizzled with the appearance of the State Security heavies, and also remember Tehran in the summer of 2009. I remember the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, and now Sa‘d Hariri is making nice with Hizbullah to keep the lid on. Ever since walls fell in Eastern Europe 20 years ago, some Arab reformers have hoped for a similar wave in the Middle East. They're still waiting.

Am I too cynical? Is Whitaker too optimistic? I don't know. But even if — and it's a very big if — this wave of demonstrations led to regime change in Tunis (which I doubt it will), could it spread elsewhere? Tunisia is very different from most of its neighbors. Its secular traditions, dating from the Bourguiba era, are not readily transferable elsewhere. Other than the PLO, which got to know Tunis very well as a headquarters, and Arab diplomats during the Arab League's residence there during Egypt's years outside the league, many Arabs don't know the country well. The Gulf Arabs tend to prefer Morocco for their villas: perhaps the comfort of a monarchy. I'm not sure what happens in Tunis can resonate elsewhere, though some Egyptians are taking an interest.

Don't get me wrong; I hope he's right; I'm just not convinced this will really bring change. But I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

Whitaker raises another issue:

You won't find much about it in the western media (or the Arab media, for that matter) though you can piece together much of the story from snippets on Twitter and videos on YouTube.

There have been complaints from bloggers about this silence but in a way it's refreshing not to have the likes of Fox News, Bernard Lewis and Glenn Beck telling us what should be done. In any case, the Tunisians – so far at least – seem to be getting on quite well with their uprising by themselves.

Foreign governments have been similarly quiet and, again, this is something of a blessing: too many activist movements in the region have been killed off by the wrong kind of support from the west.

It's true that the mainstream media have been relatively quiet, though I've seen items in the Washington Post and LA Times. The Tunisian media are of course controlled, and the international media, France excepted, don't follow North Africa closely. It's also the week between Christmas and New Year, and lots of people have it off. And there are exceptions. Whitaker himself has been covering it closely. This is also my sixth post on the subject in four days.

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