States and Women's Rights The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco Mounira M. Charrad University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London © 2001 The Regents of the University of California Party, Islam, 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-Arabic Egypt 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.