10 February 2011

It was about 15 years ago that we decided to go to Tunisia. It was not the easiest decision. Various friends had been to Tunisia and Morocco on holiday and had spoken of the interesting things to see, the excellent climate and the welcoming nature of the people there. And of course French is spoken by most Tunisians. However, almost all of the people who had been also knew at least one person who had had to spend a couple of days closeted in their room waiting for their intestinal turbulence to diminish. One of my friends developed the problem as his group was about to leave for the airport - which made the coach journey somewhat trying for him and his fellow passengers. We though had decided that we would brave the foreign microbes. We even had various injections against hepatitis and so on, but then Heather managed to contract glandular fever and so we never went.

The one thing I did not think about very much was whether Tunisia was a free country. As far as I was aware, it was. It may have been poor and inefficiently run, but I was not aware that the entire system of government was corrupt and oppressive. In fact, my lack of knowledge was wider than that. Had I been asked, I would have said something similar about Egypt and Morocco. As far as Egypt was concerned, I knew that there were elections and that there was at the same time an attempt to keep the Muslim Brotherhood down as they were regarded as extremists, a major source of instability, wanting a religious rather than a secular state. Then there was the importance of Egypt to the West as regards the keeping of the peace in the area of Palestine following the conflicts there had been. And these countries, unlike the Yemen and Libya, were places where tourists went in droves, so they can't have been that bad surely... But then Yugoslavia was a very popular holiday destination and that was, we all knew, a dictatorial regime, something which the tourists managed to ignore.

North Africa had never really impressed itself very much on my consciousness. But now, all of a sudden, it's front page news. And now I find that in a ranking of the world's 167 countries by ‘The Economist' Intelligence Unit according to how democratic they are, we find Egypt at number 138, just below China at 136. Tunisia is at 144, just one position above Zimbabwe at 145. Morocco, Jordan and Ethiopia do a little better at 116 - 118 and Kuwait is in at 114, just below Haiti at 111. Oh, and Saudi Arabia the personal fiefdom of the Saud family, with its religious police and laws preventing women from driving is at 160. For comparison, Burma is number 163. North Africa does not look good.

These are all countries from which we buy oil or are seeking to increase the level of our trade, mainly as far as the defense industry is concerned. Having imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe (at number 145), in what way could we justify treating Tunisia (144) as being a normal trading partner? Now clearly, a listing of all the countries in the world which truly reflects the reality of the daily lives of their citizens is going to be difficult to compile. The assessors look at about 60 different factors, bring all of those answers together and then arrive at a number which describes the country. The scope for arbitrariness is considerable. But. But I cannot help thinking, from what we have now heard, that the ranking order is not unreasonable. We see the despots in charge of these countries, enjoying unbounded wealth whilst the ordinary worker in most of them has to get by on a very low salary - if he can find a job at all. And we hear of the sort of repression and torture which would have gladdened the heart of the Stasi.

But we are reliant on their oil and their need for arms. Aren't we? Well, it seems to me that without the sales of oil to us and the rest of the world, a number of the regimes would fail. They need the money we pay to them just as much as we need their oil. Even Iran sells its oil on the open market. Without it, its already weak economy would fall apart. Which is why America is pushing for oil sanctions against it. So it seems that even with the might of the cartel known as Opec, there is only so much pressure that can be put on us by them. Actions tend to have equal and opposite reactions even in the world of trade. As for arms sales, we have already seen the disaster which came from selling arms to Saddam Hussein when he was our blue-eyed boy in the region.

There is no way I or anyone else can reliably predict the outcome of the unrest in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt or Jordan any more than we could predict what would happen after the collapse of communism. But it will undoubtedly mean change in these countries. Whether it will be change which we can welcome or will result in the replacement of one dictator by another is impossible to say. What I can say, however, is that I would prefer that the people have their say for once in their own lives. We cannot demand that the peoples of other countries be kept prisoner for our benefit. Me, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a change for the better.