States and Women's Rights

The Making of Postcolonial , Algeria, and Morocco

Mounira M. Charrad

University of California Press

Berkeley Los Angeles London

© 2001 The Regents of the University of California

Party, , and Tribe: Internal Conflicts The nationalist party maintained consensus during most of the nationalist period. Internal conflicts broke out between rival factions, however, at the eve of independence from colonial rule when power in a sovereign state appeared to be a concrete possibility. The outcome of the conflicts looked quite uncertain at the time, as it was unclear which faction would take power and what kind of state would develop in independent Tunisia. Two nationalist leaders symbolized the contending tendencies: the reformist Bourguiba and the pan-Islamist Ben Youssef, his opponent who rallied enough support to pose a serious challenge. Bourguiba and Ben Youssef disagreed on the strategy to gain sovereignty, appealed to different constituencies, offered different visions of a future Tunisia, and had different outside allies. Regardless of the ideological distance separating the two men at the start of the conflict, Bourguiba's and Ben Youssef's positions hardened as each found a different source of support in the course of the nationalist struggle. Bourguiba and Ben Youssef gradually became spokesmen for different sectors of Tunisian society. In general terms, Ben Youssef appealed to those nationalist forces—tribal groups, uprooted rural migrants to cities, and the religious establishment—that perceived national sovereignty as an opportunity to restore a (partly real and partly imagined) Tunisian past, which they felt had been scoffed at by the colonial regime. In particular, Ben Youssef found support among the remaining tribes in the central and southern parts of the country (Map 10), where most Neo-Destour guerrilla groups fought in his name. Support for Ben Youssef was heightened as the result of a drought in the early 1950s. The drought made economic conditions precarious, especially in the arid regions where some form of tribal organization had persisted. The hard-pressed population in tribal regions saw the return to a nostalgic past as the safest shield against a threatening economic situation. In speaking the discourse of tradition, Ben Youssef gained the allegiance of guerrilla forces in tribal areas, which provided him with a rural power base. This rural base combined with a smaller base mostly in the city of Tunis among uprooted rural migrants. In addition, the Zaytuna, the religious university, had endorsed the nationalist party and the majority of its graduates backed Ben Youssef, himself a graduate of the Zaytuna. [14 ] Ben Youssef insisted on three themes in his speeches: pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, and Maghribi unity. Favoring solidarity with other Arab and Islamic countries, he claimed pan-Arabism and pan- Islamism as political anchors for the nationalist struggle and for the future Tunisian nation. Advocating Maghribi unity, he argued for the total liberation of the Maghrib as a whole. He therefore urged Tunisians to continue the fight against the French until Algeria and Morocco achieved independence from French colonial rule. Outside of Tunisia, he received encouragement from the Algerian nationalist movement and Egyptian authorities, who gave him access to radio broadcasting from Cairo. His outside allies also allegedly provided him with arms. [15 ]

Map 10. Tribal territories in central and southern Tunisia (adapted from Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980 . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, 5)

By contrast, Bourguiba had the support of the urban labor union, the professional elites trained at the Collège Sadiqi, and the population of most of the coastal towns. Bourguiba had relatively little following in the areas where tribal organization persisted. Created before colonization, kept in place by the French as a source of educated Tunisians for the administrative apparatus, and training primarily civil servants and members of the professions, the Collège Sadiqi, located in the city of Tunis, became a cradle of nationalism. Sadiqi graduates developed an esprit de corps within an active nationalist network that backed Bourguiba. [16 ] Interested in social welfare and generally progressive policies, the labor union formed ties with Bourguiba's faction rather than Ben Youssef's. In terms of overall tactics, Bourguiba favored a step-by-step approach to independence and argued for negotiations, instead of the sustained armed violence advocated by Ben Youssef. While repeatedly asserting his allegiance to Islam, Bourguiba called for a specifically Tunisian nation and a modern state with multiple international ties. He had little sympathy for the notion of a future Tunisia free from French rule but subsumed to a pan-Arab supranation. Whereas Ben Youssef defended pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism, Bourguiba placed nation building and the development of a distinctive Tunisian nation-state above other considerations. As early as 1932, a statement in the newspaper published by Bourguiba read: “The Tunisia we want to free [from colonial rule] will be a Tunisia for neither Muslims, nor Jews, nor Christians. It will be the Tunisia of all who will want to take it as their mother country without distinction of religion or race.” [17 ] In a similar vein and more than thirty years later, in 1964, Bourguiba reiterated: “Whether one originates from Tunis, the South or the Sahel [coastal region], one can only react as a Tunisian, that is with a strong sense of belonging to the one and same family: the Tunisian nation.” [18 ] The conflict between the two nationalist factions came to a head in 1955, following disagreements on strategy. Ben Youssef was in favor of expanding armed attacks against the French, while Bourguiba preferred to enter into negotiations with them. In October 1955, Ben Youssef made a passionate speech in the highly symbolic setting of the Zaytuna mosque. Calling for the birth of a new Tunisia as an integral part of a broader Arab and Islamic supranation, Ben Youssef exhorted Tunisians to sustain the armed struggle in unity with Algeria and Morocco until the end of French rule in the entire Maghrib. Ben Youssef's discourse found an echo, since a third of the Neo-Destour cells declared themselves in his favor and recognized him as their leader, while the rest declared themselves for Bourguiba. [19 ] There were reports that Ben Youssef was trying to steer party militants into a rival structure. [20 ] Pro-Ben Youssef guerrilla fighters now attacked not only French settlers but also Neo- Destour cells known to support Bourguiba. Whole tribes favoring Ben Youssef enlisted in a guerrilla force and some joined Algerian forces fighting the French at the border. Tunisia was profoundly divided between two camps that were opposed in a bloody confrontation. [21 ] Bourguiba responded to the situation by calling for an extraordinary congress of the Neo-Destour in November 1955 in Sfax , a coastal city where Ben Youssef had little support. It was the backing of the labor union that tilted the balance in favor of Bourguiba. Seriously underrepresented in the 1955 congress, the Ben Youssef forces did not have much of a fighting chance. By contrast, the Tunisian labor union, the UGTT, gave Bourguiba full tactical and political support during the congress. Drawing also on his support among professionals, Bourguiba succeeded in having Ben Youssef's faction expelled from the party by the congress, which reelected Bourguiba as party president. French colonial officials, most of whom at that point accepted the end of colonial rule in Tunisia as inevitable, also gave help to Bourguiba. In their perspective, a sovereign Tunisia would remain important to France for strategic reasons of international security in the Mediterranean Basin. The French government preferred to face an independent Tunisia under Bourguiba than under Ben Youssef, who could be expected to remain allied with pan- and Algeria, where the French were facing an anticolonial war. In line with this policy, French troops quashed Ben Youssef's guerrilla forces in the south in a full-scale military operation. Tunisian independence was proclaimed on 20 March 1956. The achievement of national sovereignty brought down the Tunisian monarchy headed by the bey, who had been kept in place by the French protectorate throughout the nationalist struggle, but with his prestige sapped. In the eyes of most Tunisians, the bey “seemed to perform only one function, namely to justify the exercise of power by the French.” [22 ] Lacking any support among Tunisians, the monarchy was abolished without turmoil. Bourguiba, the leader of the winning reformist faction of the nationalist movement, became prime minister in 1956 and head of state in 1957. The aftermath of independence witnessed the purge of Youssefist sympathizers. Using methods ranging from repression to co-optation, Bourguiba's regime moved to silence the party members and the constituencies that had supported Ben Youssef's faction. Although Ben Youssef fled to exile in January 1956, trouble continued with bloodshed through 1957. Sophie Bessis and Souhayr Belhassen suggest that the conflict within the nationalist movement caused a thousand deaths in Tunisia, more than twice the number caused by the struggle against France. [23 ] The Youssefist threat continued for a while despite the repression, since a Youssefist plot against Bourguiba's government was discovered among members of the army as late as six years after independence, in 1962. The purge continued in the 1960s.

Legacy of the Youssefist Crisis: The Defeat of Tribal Power The elimination of the Ben Youssef faction from the nationalist party had several important consequences for the formation of the independent Tunisian state. First, Bourguiba's faction remained essentially unchallenged in its position of power for several years. This gave it leeway to shape Tunisian institutions in accordance with its program to build a modern state in the aftermath of independence. Although disagreements surfaced later within Bourguiba's government regarding economic policy, they did not jeopardize the basic commitment to create a modern state. After the purge of the Ben Youssef faction, the victorious reformist, urban-based, political leadership emerged from the turmoil of the nationalist struggle as a cohesive elite committed to the national project of consolidating a strong sovereign state. This was an elite that saw the state as the primary agent of social transformation. The Neo-Destour of the independence period in effect reasserted the earlier Young Tunisian conception of the state as shaping society. Second, the remaining tribes in Tunisia and the religious establishment no longer had a voice in politics after independence. This was the price they paid for having backed Ben Youssef and having played the losing card in the nationalist conflict. Furthermore, the crisis had shown the danger of religious and pan-Arab ideologies for the stability of the Tunisian regime that came to power after independence. The crisis had made clear that such ideologies could enflame part of the population, especially tribal areas and the religious establishment. Determined to thwart potential challengers and ready to implement its vision of the new nation-state, the Tunisian political leadership banished the pan-Arab and pan-Islamic discourse from politics, a discourse that evoked the specter of the Youssefist threat. Third, the crisis left a fear of political chaos and an obsession with national unity. The leadership had measured the cost of division. As a result, leaders of newly independent Tunisia made the unifying project the paramount objective and defined national unity as the goal transcending all others. Commenting on the emphasis on national unity in the mass media and in political speeches in Tunisia after independence, Jean Lacouture appropriately refers to an “endless ceremony of collective identification.” [24 ] After the bloodshed of the anticolonial battle, most Tunisians were looking forward to enjoying a period of peace, now that their country was finally free of the colonial yoke. In a general mood of national reconciliation and postcolonial enthusiasm, most people were willing to give Bourguiba's government a chance to build the new nation-state. A word of caution should be introduced at this point about the nature of Tunisian politics in the decade following the achievement of national sovereignty. Neither national reconciliation nor the building of a nation-state means democracy. They therefore should not be confused with the development of a democratic polity. The objective of the postindependence eadership was to unify the party on the broadest base possible, to secure a virtual monopoly for it, and to make it an instrument of social transformation. [25 ] Single-party rule characterized Tunisian politics in the decade following independence, resulting in political authoritarianism ranging from mild to rigid, depending on the circumstances. With limited powers, the National Assembly often discussed proposals made by members of the government rather than by elected deputies. When the assembly was not in session, laws were made by presidential decree and later ratified by the assembly which, in any case, was overwhelmingly composed of members of the winning faction. [26 ] The executive branch of the government and the party usually had more impact on policy than did the assembly. This combined with single-party rule to make the new Tunisian state centralized, at the same time that it made it fall short of what we would expect from a democratic system. http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft05800335&chunk.id=d0e5746&toc.depth=100&toc.id=d0e5746&bran d=ucpress;query=sfax#1