Tunisia and the IMF: Ennahda's Mana From Washington (Part Two)

There seems to be something of a 'rush to the finish', an effort on both the IMF's and Tunisian government's part to wrap up the negotiations as soon as possible. It is as if they are looking over their shoulders nervous that, as the agreement's terms get out, opposition could grow among the Tunisian people, thus the mutual effort to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. There is mounting concern within Tunisian civil society about the agreement, both in terms of the process which has been typically secretive and the "structural adjustment conditions" that the country will be forced to submit to in order to fulfill the Tunisian part of the deal. * Recently there have been a spate of news stories of Tunisian youth dying fighting with Islamist rebels in Syria. Some reports suggest that it entails hundreds of Tunisian youth; at the very least, Ennahda has turned the other way and not interfered with Salafist recruitment, transfer to other places in the Middle East and training of these youth. There are some allegations that Ennahda's role is more active. "Three young men from my village (near Sousse) will be buried today," a Tunisian friend wrote. "They died fighting in Syria," he went on, noting that a forth villager, a 22-year-old fighting with Islamic rebels, had died a few days prior. "They (the Ennahda-led government) promised us training, work, dignity, - in a word - 'a future' but they lied, betrayed us, and trained our youth to become assassins." * Under Ennahda pressure, an incident which, among other things, revealed the powerlessness of Tunisian president [Moncef Marzouki] to protect Khadaffi's foreign minister, Baghdadi Al Mahmoudi, who had sought political asylum in Tunisia. In a sop to the U.S. and NATO, Ennahda turned Al Mahmoudi over to the Libya's National Transitional Council. One of Marzouki's closest advisors, Ayoub Massoudi, resigned over the handover, criticizing the Ennahda government as a 'theocratic dictatorship.' As a result, Massoudi was indicted and faces a military trial.