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Brown described MENA’s “implosion of the state-based order” following the 2011 “Arab Spring” outbreak of popular revolts against undemocratic regimes across the region.  Washington Institute for Near East Policy expert Sarah Feuer particularly cited “how to cauterize Libya,” a failed state riven by sectarian fighting, as a key North African stability issue.  As Tadros noted, one million Libyan refugees in neighboring Tunisia, about ten percent of the country’s population, have seriously strained housing and education resources there.

The “Arab Spring,” by contrast, “was relatively tame” in Morocco, Feuer stated, a country that has pursued under its monarchy a “tried and true preference for a very gradual type of reform.”  She cited the expanded parliamentary powers and human rights provisions of the 2011 constitution, while Brown credited Morocco with MENA’s most “comprehensive Countering Violent Extremism strategy.”  Morocco’s security sector, anti-corruption, and rule of law reforms demonstrate that the government has attempted to “find chinks in its armor” and “close the doors that predatory groups in the region have managed to use,” he stated.  “The monarchy in Morocco has managed to stay ahead of the curve” of political unrest, Tadros concurred.

The panel focused on the problems confronting what others have previously described as Tunisia’s unique post-2011 “fragile success” in creating Arab democracy, described by Feuer as “tiny Tunisia hanging in there.”  Despite Tunisian organizations having won a Nobel Peace Prize for their success in guiding the country’s democratic transition, “Tunisia is facing real trouble” and “serious divides within society,” Tadros stated.  Tunisia’s coastal region, for example, is far more developed than the interior long neglected by Tunisia’s deposed dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Tadros and the other panelists particularly noted Tunisia’s conflict between secularists and Islamists like the Ennahda Party.  Comparing Tunisia’s dictatorship with Iraq and Egypt, Brown analogized that Ben Ali “was much more of a Saddam Hussein than a [Hosni] Mubarak” and brutally tyrannized Tunisians, leaving behind deep societal distrust.  During Brown’s recent visits to Tunisia, secularists referred to Ennahda members as “animals,” while they reciprocated by suspecting trade unionists of being French defense ministry agents.

Tadros noted improved cooperation between Tunisian secularists and Islamists while Feuer credited Ennahda with a stabilizing role by having “swallowed some very difficult decisions along the way” during Tunisia’s democratization.  Yet he wondered whether the youth would follow the moderate path taken by aging party leaders like Ennahda’s Rashid Ghannouchi and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, head of the secular Nidaa Tounes party.  He had attended Ennahda’s 2016 congress where Ghannouchi announced a party of “Muslim democrats.”

Feuer additionally noted that Tunisia has a “jihadism problem at home,” as indicated by the March attack on the Tunisian town of Ben Guerdane by jihadists, many of them natives.  The emergence of such jihadists in Tunisia during its democratization process surprised many in Tunisia and the West who had overestimated Tunisia’s degree of liberalized modernity.  Panel moderator and Hudson Institute expertLee Smith noted that small Tunisia was a leading supplier of jihadists both to the Islamic State and previously to the fight against the American-led regime change in Iraq.

Nonetheless, Tadros noted that an emphasis on Tunisian political issues overlooked the serious economic issues that drove the Tunisia’s “Arab Spring” popular unrest.  The “Ben Ali regime was a mafia that divided the economy into various monopolies” for individual family members, Tadros noted, a legacy that still hinders Tunisia.  Young Tunisians overwhelmingly want to leave the country and “are committing suicide, either by the boat and drowning in the Mediterranean or by joining the Islamic State.”

While Tunisia’s educational system often receives praise, Tadros noted that advanced degrees can become a “curse” when graduates find no jobs in Tunisia’s poor economy and simply languish by smoking in cafes.  Tunisia also suffers from deficiencies in vocational and English training, skills needed, among other places, in Gulf state markets.  By contrast, many Tunisian university students study less remunerative humanities like philosophy.

Among other needed reforms, Tadros mentioned the police sector, plagued by corruption and divided commands fostered by Ben Ali among the security services in order to hinder overthrow attempts.  Smith noted that such deficiencies indicate that Tunisia has not addressed the very issue that sparked the “Arab Spring” when a corrupt police officer seized a street merchant’s cart.  More positively, Feuer noted that American training had developed a new restraint among Tunisian police during political protests.

American aid in general to the North Africa region drew criticism for various inadequacies from Tadros, who recalled seeing with Brown American-funded Trotskyite activists in Morocco spouting anti-Israel conspiracy theories.  By contrast, the Iranian cultural attaché in Tunisia appears for many as the most well-connected person in the country whose cultural center hosts daily events while the Iranian government sponsors Iran trips for Tunisian scholars.  “There is a serious ground game and engagement” in the region by Iran and other American adversaries, Tadros notes.

Yet “it is very difficult to explain to a Washington audience on the Hill and in other places why we should care about North Africa, particularly at a time when our core interests are threatened in other parts of the Middle East,” Brown noted.  “Historically the United States has outsourced our North Africa policy to Paris and to Brussels and to other European capitals,” although this has not always benefited North Africa.  While Europe is now consumed with domestic challenges, the United States may have to give more attention to North Africa, a region that “exists on a security continuum with Europe” and the wider world.