Libya women wave their new flag during celebrations in the streets of Tripoli following news of Moammar Gaddafi's capture and death on October 20, 2011. (MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]Try to find a book entitled The International Relations of North Africa in the British Library. It does not exist, nor does one entitled The International Politics of North Africa. Until now, North Africa was commonly seen as a suffix of the MENA region. But most of the books that claim to deal with MENA's International Relations merely concentrate on the ‘ME’ part of the acronym. This, however, is slowly changing.
Many reasons explain the long-standing anomaly. To start with, postcolonial North Africa was, before the Arab Spring, a quiet and boring space when compared to the Levant or the Gulf. Apart of the eccentricities of Gaddafi, the interminable Polisario Conflict engulfing Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria, and later the Algerian Civil War and the waves of illegal immigration, the region hardly ever made the headlines. Egypt, a "land of action", was usually linked to the Levant.
Libya was, in fact, partly closed due to its political system. It was restricted—along with Tunisia and Algeria—by tight regulations for international media and scholars researching contemporary politics. This contributed in hiding from the world many social and political movements, and concealing the horrors of repression exercised by the regimes in place.
On the other hand, Francophone North Africa was France's sphere of influence. Hence, most of the scholarship was practiced in French, and followed the French academic system. There was a stress on society, culture, history, but not on International Relations. Is it France's backwardness in this field, or the subconscious consideration of Francophone North Africa as one monolithic area? It remains hard to tell, but even the postcolonial subjects did not fare much better, as the elite were French educated, therefore followed the same academic paths.
North Africa's political systems contributed in taking the region out of the international relations loop. Mauritania is poor and largely desert, with—aside from a brief democratic interlude between 2007-2008—a Putschist army controlling its politics since the overthrow of the first and single civilian President (Ould Daddah, 1960-1978). Morocco has had one political system since its independence in 1956, with only three monarchs. Algeria, with its succession of presidents, is still controlled from behind the scenes by its ageing generals, a structure inaugurated during the country's independence, in 1962. Tunisia has also only had two presidents since 1956. Libya's Gaddafi toppled the British backed King Idriss in 1969 and transformed the state into his own Neverland ranch.
But from 2011 onwards, both the popular uprisings and the rise of terrorism transformed North Africa into a ‘hotspot’ of activity. The lifting and reducing of political restrictions allowed for the introduction of the international media to these countries. Libya's cruel civil war kept everyone's breath. America and Britain doubled their presence through their partnership programs (MEPI and UKAP etc.) in Francophone North Africa, hence ‘democratizing’ the cultural and academic scene previously monopolized by France.
Even Egypt seems more North African now, thanks to its troubling political and social similarities with Tunisia since the overthrow of both of the countries former presidents. The spread of Salafi Jihadism in the Egypt’s Sinai region is mirrored in Tunisia's Chaambi Mountains. And it is likely that this is all related to the Libyan civil war and imbroglio.
"Is Mali Part of the Middle East?" asked Mark Lynch, editor of Foreign Policy magazine’s Middle East Channel, a few months ago. He should have asked: "Is Mali Part of North Africa?" And then also, “What is North Africa?” Is it The Arab League States from Libya to Mauritania, or Egypt and Sudan? And what about Niger? It is a predominantly Muslim country with numbers of Tuaregs and Tubus who claim deep tribal connections with Libya and Algeria.
This is North Africa’s moment on an academic level. Scholars in Terrorism and Security Studies will indeed find guilty pleasure in studying its “mysteries”, but so will researchers in the fields of International Relations and Political Science. New perspectives will emerge and new classifications. Hopefully soon we will find a new book on the shelf, one entitled: The International Relations of North Africa: from Mali to the Sudan (2014).
