Arab Regimes' Nepotism Problem

Their rulers are learning that modernity brings the demand that people have a chance to succeed on their merits

Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi and second son Saif Qaddafi

By Romesh Ratnesar

On June 23, 2008, a cable arrived at the U.S. State Dept. from the American ambassador to Tunisia, Robert F. Godec. Its subject was corruption, cronyism, and graft in the North African nation, as practiced by relatives of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. "Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or, yes, even your yacht, President Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants," Godec wrote. The cable documented the luxuries amassed at public expense by what Tunisians called "the Family"—from airlines and hotels to radio stations and beachfront mansions. Family members used connections to secure board positions at the country's biggest banks. Land obtained for free by the President's wife, Leila, a former hairdresser, was used to build a for-profit international school, which she then sold to Belgian investors for a "huge, but undisclosed sum." Two of the President's nephews, Imed and Moaz Trabelsi, stole a yacht from a French businessman, Godec reported, sailed it into Tunis, and gave it a new paint job to conceal the crime. Although the government arranged to have the yacht returned, the men were never prosecuted. "It is the excesses of President Ben Ali's family that inspire outrage among Tunisians," Godec wrote. "The conspicuous displays of wealth … have added fuel to the fire."

Godec's cable was supposed to remain classified until 2018, but last fall it surfaced in the cache of State Dept. documents made public by WikiLeaks. To Tunisians, the revelations of nepotism were hardly shocking, but never before had they been so publicly detailed by a credible source. ("The Family's corruption remains a red line that the press cross at their peril," Godec wrote.) Antigovernment protests erupted in late December as Tunisians took to the streets for the first time in decades to denounce the ruling family's profligacy. By mid-January, Ben Ali had fled to Saudi Arabia. Looters stripped the Family's palaces bare. What followed is a still unfolding, regionwide democratic revolution unlike any the Arab world has ever known.

Autocratic societies are like Tolstoy's families; each is unhappy in its own way. Yet there is one feature common to all embattled regimes in the Arab world today: chronic nepotism. It is manifested in the garish homes and pet tigers owned by Ben Ali's extended family members in Tunisia; the billion-dollar bank accounts of Hosni Mubarak's sons Gamal and Alaa; and the delusional ruthlessness of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the Western-educated mouthpiece for his father's assault on Libya's citizenry.

Nepotism exists all over the world, of course, but nowhere does it dominate political, economic, and social life as comprehensively as it does in the greater Middle East. "It's evident in Libya, in Tunisia, in Syria, in Yemen, you name it," says Ibrahim Sharqieh, deputy director of the Brookings Institution's Doha Center. "In every country in the region, you hear the same complaints from people, about the nepotism of the people around the President. It's hard to think of a country where this problem doesn't exist. And it's not limited to the nature of political systems themselves—whether it's a republic or a kingdom or a military leadership. The problem exists in all of these regimes."