A former Italian diplomat criticized the West's complete silence regarding the current events in Tunisia, following President Kais Saied's monopoly on power in the country.

The former Italian ambassador to Iraq, Marco Carnelos, wrote an article on the British Middle East Eye news site, initiating it by saying that Tunisia may appear to be a country that is not of great importance at the international level, but it was the spark from which the Arab Spring revolutions were launched. She is now taking her last breath, most likely.

The writer says that it is unfortunate that the "relatively peaceful transition" of power in Tunisia was followed by "more bloody" transitions in Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria. In the last three countries, civil wars erupted, resulting in heavy human losses.

However, Carnelos, who previously served as an envoy for the Italian government to coordinate the peace process in Syria and the Middle East, considers that Tunisia, along with Lebanon, "were, and may still be, the most advanced Arab societies."

Perhaps this - in his opinion - may explain its relatively peaceful transition from the "authoritarian" regime of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to governments that took over the reins of power after free elections, in which the Ennahda Movement - "the expression of the Muslim Brotherhood" - played an important role.


Tunisia stands at a crossroads between Europe and North Africa, and between the western and eastern Mediterranean on the other hand, and is in a position to monitor the events taking place in its turbulent neighbor Libya, and is in a good position to assess the "thorny" dynamic between Islam Politics and democracy, according to the former Italian diplomat.

If it seemed that Tunisia represented the only success story in the Arab Spring, that all changed last July when President Kais Saied carried out a "coup" in which he dissolved parliament and assumed exceptional powers, after months of unrest exacerbated by the deteriorating economic and social conditions. He resented the government of then Prime Minister Hisham al-Mashishi, and the performance of the parliament, which was headed by the leader of the Ennahda movement, Rashid Ghannouchi.

Carnelos pointed out that President Saied - who is a university professor of constitutional law - justified his decision by relying on Article (80) of the Tunisian Constitution, which was approved in 2014.

According to the former Italian ambassador in his article, Said's interpretation of that article and its application seem to have greatly exceeded - in the opinion of many Tunisian legal experts - its original meaning.

There are no indications that the internal tension caused by the "coup" - as Carnelos describes it - is waning. Rather, Saeed suggested solutions that have a polarizing nature, such as suspending the constitution and calling for a popular referendum to reform the political system.


The writer stresses that, despite all this, the responses of the international community came "to a large extent, but remained completely silent", especially the West, "which must be loud in such situations, based on the values ​​it utters."

However, developments in Tunisia can be placed in the context of a political deterioration due to the long-standing division in the Arab and Islamic world over the phenomenon of political Islam, according to the MEE article.

In other words, Tunisia may be the last piece in settling scores that was already evident in the broad international acceptance of the "brutal" coup that toppled - in 2013 - the democratically elected government of President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, as the article put it.

"Perhaps we are about to see major changes in politics in the Middle East and North Africa, in light of the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan and the fall of the country into the hands of the Taliban, which caused an earthquake that shook the region."


The author of the article believes that Tunisia deserves - despite all the constitutional controversy taking place there - the attention of the international community, because "we are witnessing another authoritarian chapter in the region" that portends huge crises that are difficult to manage.

He points out that managing the crisis in Libya while ignoring what is happening in its western neighbor (Tunisia), would be counterproductive.

He added that any solution must be comprehensive - and above all - based on a commitment by the European Union to its "badly used" soft power.

The former diplomat concludes that reaching a solution to the Tunisian crisis is a prerequisite for better dealing with the "difficult" situation in Libya, and the dangerous security situation in the entire Sahel region.

Finally, the European Union, with its large Muslim populations, has a vested interest in ensuring that the sensitive dichotomy between political Islam and Western-style democracy reinforces itself through the ballot box, not military coups.

In the end, Tunisia provides - in the eyes of Marco Carnelos - this double opportunity.

For the European Union, what happens in that country is far more important than any Indo-Pacific strategy.