Extended Rant: My Take on the Kaplan Debate About Tunisia

I only rant occasionally, so indulge me a bit.

Last week and this I've been pointing to several cogent, wise, and thoughtful assessments of the Tunisian events, so I guess it's only fair I should point to one that falls on the other side of the divide: Robert Kaplan's weekend piece in The New York Times. Kaplan has written some good books, though his Middle East track record is not all I might wish for. This time, I think he gets it wrong.

Now several others have already expressed their disagreement: notably Brian Whitaker and kal at The Moor Next Door. Read their comments as well as I'm not going to repeat their points overmuch. But bear in mind my doctorate is in history, and I did a bit of work on the early Islamic Maghreb, not to mention having a reasonable knowledge of Classical Antiquity. In other words, don't start arguing about Carthage and Roman Africa unless you want a fight. Or a rant.

First let me quote this line:

Because urbanization in Tunisia started two millenniums ago, tribal identity based on nomadism — which, as the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun says, has always disrupted political stability — is correspondingly weak.

Yes indeed. And Ibn Khaldun is the greatest of Arab historians, arguably a founder of sociology, a brilliant polymath whose insights are always worth reading, and who was born in (are your ready?) in Tunis. No special pleading there. But, actually, he also gets Ibn Khaldun dead wrong. He distinguished between hadara and the ‘asabiyya, the group cohesion that binds tribes but is not present in settle societies. The quote turns Ibn Khaldun, perhaps Tunis' greatest son (his statue sits at the gateway of the Tunis medina) on his head.

And that is only the beginning.

Kaplan's real point seems to be that Arab autocracies may not be so bad for US interests and, um, Israel. He concludes:

Another thing to keep in mind: in terms of American interests and regional peace, there is plenty of peril in democracy. It was not democrats, but Arab autocrats, Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, who made peace with Israel. An autocrat firmly in charge can make concessions more easily than can a weak, elected leader — just witness the fragility of Mahmoud Abbas’s West Bank government. And it was democracy that brought the extremists of Hamas to power in Gaza. In fact, do we really want a relatively enlightened leader like King Abdullah in Jordan undermined by widespread street demonstrations? We should be careful what we wish for in the Middle East.

Well, I think that's clear enough. Should the Tunisians also be careful what they wish for?

The Moor has done the most critical critique (I guess that's redundant) so far. I have a few points to add, but do read him as well.

Let's start:

Start with a map of classical antiquity, which shows a concentration of settlements where Tunisia is today, juxtaposed with the relative emptiness that characterizes modern-day Algeria and Libya. Jutting out into the Mediterranean close to Sicily, Tunisia has been the hub of North Africa not only under the Carthaginians and Romans, but under the Vandals, Byzantines, medieval Arabs and Turks. Whereas Algeria and Libya were but vague geographical expressions until the coming of European colonial map makers, Tunisia is an age-old cluster of civilization.

Algeria and Libya weren't "vague geographical expressions" since in classical antiquity Libya pretty much meant the whole African continent, and "Algeria" is a French invention from Algiers. The "map of classical antiquity" however, would show first a string of Carthaginian colonies, and later and inland, Numidia, the land of Massinissa and Jugurtha, where Algeria is today, and the magnificent Roman ruins at Leptis Magna in Libya suggest it was not "relative emptiness." Read your Sallust.

On the other hand, let's not give the Romans too much credit: Delenda est Cartago. The major urban center of Tunisia was not just destroyed by Rome, but the ground was salted to make it uninhabitable.

Yes, Tunisia was a major urban center of early, Late Roman, Christianity. Augustine, who made a bit of a name for himself, preached at (the reborn Roman version of) Carthage among other places, but he was born in Thagaste (Suq Ahras) in what was then Numidia and is now Algeria, and is best known as the Bishop of Hippo (Annaba, Algeria). In Christian terms, Augustine is, well, kind of major.

None of this is intended to deny the centrality of what is now Tunisia. But Kaplan, save for one throwaway line about its importance under "Medieval Arabs," says little about Tunisia's role in early Islam. In about 670 AD the Arab conquerors, reaching what had been Proconsular Africa under the Romans, decided, as they had in Egypt (Alexandria to Fustat/Cairo) to move the capital inland from the coast, and founded the city of Kairouan ("the camp," but from the same word that gives us "caravan"). The Great Mosque in Kairouan is still one of the two great spiritual centers of Tunisia, along with the Mosque/University of Zeitouna in Tunis, once the greatest Islamic center of education west of al-Azhar.

In the old Moroccan imperial city of Fez, one of the best preserved medieval Arab capital medinas, there are two sides of the city, across a river, They take their names from the two great mosques: the Andalusiyyin (the Andalusians, the Spaniards) and the Qarawaniyyin (the Mosque of the People of Kairouan). It is a reminder of the dominance Kairouan once had in the Islamic Maghreb.

There is no mention of the Aghlabids, who from Tunisia conquered most of North Africa and Sicily, or of the Fatimids, who not only conquered Egypt but also Syria and even held Baghdad for a while. Zeitouna became the great educational center of the Arab West.

Then there's this:Tunisia has a relatively large middle class because of something so obvious it goes unremarked upon: it is a real state, with historical and geographical legitimacy, where political arguments are about budgets and food subsidies, not the extremist ideologies that have plagued its neighbors, Algeria and Libya. It is a state not only because of the legacy of Rome and other empires, but because of human agency, in the person of Habib Bourguiba, one of the lesser-known great men of the 20th century.

Tunisia is "s real state, with historical and geographical legitimacy." I can understand the contrast drawn with Libya and Algeria. But isn't Morocco a "real state?" And surely no one is going to doubt Egypt's pedigree. This is the kind of stereotype I hate.

I could go on. There's no great point, except to note that even Kaplan's modern narrative has some issues:

In 1987, while faced by an Islamic rising, Bourguiba became too infirm to rule, and was replaced by his former interior minister, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, essentially a security boss with little vision, much like the Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. Mr. Ben Ali’s strategy was to keep order, which largely meant killing and torturing Islamists and other dissidents.

There was an "Islamic rising" in 1987? I missed it completely. There was some ferment to be sure, caused in part by the fact that Bourguiba was failing rapidly, but I missed the rising. And what about that "keep order = killing and torturing Islamists and other dissidents" equation, which is dropped in as it it were obvious?

I may add more when I have more time.