Tunis - Last November, dozens of young Arabs lined up for
the chance to meet him. When he spoke of his struggles and triumphs, they hung
on his every word. And when only one of the 50 attendees was chosen for
training, some of the young Arabs grew frustrated and complained of being
excluded.
A jihadist back from battling Americans in Afghanistan? A
recruiter for al Qaeda's North African affiliate? A Hamas member looking for
volunteers to attack Israel?
No, the visitor was a Tunisian-American eBay executive who
has worked for Apple and Oracle, and founded two Silicon Valley startups. His
audience? Young Tunisian entrepreneurs and programmers who dream of turning
this city into the Arab world's Silicon Valley.
"There is a lot of potential," Sami Ben Romdhane,
the eBay executive, told me in a telephone interview this week. "I don't
see any difference between students who are graduating there and students who
are graduating here and in Europe."
Fourteen months after a Facebook-facilitated popular
uprising here sparked the Arab Spring, the appeal of American technology
remains overwhelming.
But a sputtering economy, the emergence of hardline Islamic
Salafist groups and the failure of the United States and its European allies to
deliver on promises of assistance are prompting growing frustration and
instability.
Tunisia's revolution and its aftermath show how rapid
technological change has altered economic, diplomatic and political dynamics
worldwide. But outdated American notions of power - particularly in Congress -
are preventing the United States from keeping pace.
A decades-long American practice of spending vastly more on
military efforts than civilian ones is handicapping a vital attempt here to
create a democratic, free market country that is a model for the Arab world.
The United States' strongest weapons against Islamic
militancy are not CIA operatives, drones or infantry battalions. They are the
modern, new high-tech office buildings that Hewlett-Packard, Fidelity, SunGard,
Microsoft and Cisco have opened here in recent years.
In the wake of the revolution, Tunisians dream of their
country becoming a hub for cloud, big-data and open government computing in the
region.
"The revolution was through the internet," said
Leila Charfi, a Tunisian who runs the Microsoft Innovation Centre here.
"People are hungry to use new technology and develop a new country with
IT."
To be sure, the fate of Tunisia rests in the hands of
Tunisians. The country's first democratically elected government since
independence from France in 1956 is being criticised for indecisiveness. The
economy is slowing in many areas for local reasons, not foreign ones.
And the United States is providing $300m in assistance to
Tunisia, including $100m announced on Thursday.
And while Washington is influential here, Europe is and will
be the dominant foreign player. France, the former colonial power, is the
country's largest foreign investor. European countries provide the bulk of aid.
And traditional exports to Europe are vital to Tunisia's economy, particularly
agricultural products, clothing and auto parts.
But Tunisians - justly proud of their revolution - insist
they are eager to serve as a model for the region. With little oil, they
realise that economic innovation is the only way ahead. And they are looking to
America's high-tech industry for inspiration and training.
A closer look at the Silicon Valley executive's visit
revealed a well-designed State Department programme with too few resources. Ben
Romdhane, the executive, travelled to Tunisia under Partners for a New
Beginning, an initiative launched by the Obama administration after the
president's 2009 address in Cairo.
The programme is designed to increase business, cultural and
educational exchanges between the United States and the Arab world.
In conversations, Tunisians generally praised Obama's
approach. They clamoured for American business investment, tourists and
exchange programmes but said they opposed unilateral US military interventions
or American meddling in their domestic politics.
At the same time, they disparaged radical Islam and said
they yearned for prosperity, modernity and a place in a high-tech global
economy.
Yet the programme that brought Ben Romdhane and 19 other
American technology entrepreneurs and angel investors here is so small that the
delegation members had to pay their own airfare and hotel bills.
The prize for the one Tunisian entrepreneur chosen for
mentoring was three months in the TechTown Incubator in Detroit, Michigan. The
US government did not pay for the prize; the American Arab Chamber of Commerce
in Detroit, Wayne State University and TechTown did.
Such a tepid effort shows how the US and its European allies
risk losing the post-Arab Spring peace. Since the ouster of dictator Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, economic growth has dropped to near zero,
foreign investment is down 30% and local businesses are desperate for a strong
summer tourist season.
The prospects of Libya and Egypt are even bleaker, according
to American officials. Tunisia holds by far the most promise of the Arab Spring
countries. It has a population of only 10 million, a long history of
moderation, universities that produce 6 000 engineers a year, millions of
bilingual Arabic and French speakers, and centuries of interacting with Europe.
"We can have centres for excellence for IBM, Apple and
Google for the region," said Khalil Zahouani, a 34-year-old,
Microsoft-trained and Swiss-educated Tunisian entrepreneur who runs a 70-person
startup that provides computing services to European and Arab phone
conglomerates. "It could be an outsourcing hub."
To be fair, the State Department is mounting some innovative
efforts. A $20m enterprise fund has been created for Tunisia. Modelled after
funds created for post-Communist Eastern Europe that made money for the US
government, the fund will invest in promising Tunisian businesses.
A separate $8m USAID programme to train high-tech Tunisian
entrepreneurs is planned as well. But those numbers are a tiny fraction of the
$1.2 trillion the US spent on the American military efforts in Iraq and
Afghanistan since 2001.
In Tunisia's impoverished interior today, there is little
sense of change. In the town of Gafsa, unemployed people demanding jobs have
blocked roads to the town's phosphate mine, the fifth-largest in the world.
Production is down 40%. And a Japanese company recently shut down its local
factory after wildcat strikes.
In Sidi Bouzid, the farming town where Tunisia's uprising
began, the lustre of the revolution is fading. At 85, Ahmad Kadachi is the dean
of the town's street vendors. Fifteen months ago, he was astonished when a
fellow vendor - 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi - doused himself in gasoline, set
himself on fire and sparked the Arab Spring.
As he sold tea from his ramshackle wooden cart, Kadachi
called Bouazizi a hothead, while thanking him for the freedom he had brought.
But he said Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans were being denied a primary goal
of their revolutions: prosperity.
"Everybody is talking and talking," Kadachi told
me. "No one is doing anything."
Tunisians say they do not want handouts, loans or
traditional aid. They want investment, exchange and a chance to be part of the
world economy. So far, Washington's antiquated focus on military might has let
them down.
*David Rohde is a Reuters columnist and former reporter for the New York Times. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Opinions expressed are his own.