The Economist Asia - 20.01.2018

40 Middle East and Africa The EconomistJanuary 20th 2018

1

2 Mr Essebsi and Rachid Ghannouchi,

the head of Ennahda, act as a kind of ruling

duo, with support from the powerful trade

unions. Yet beneath those two ageing lead-

ers, the political landscape is increasingly

fractious. Nidaa Tounes lost its plurality in

2016, when about two dozen of itsMPs

broke away to form an anti-Islamist bloc.

Ennahda, for its part, has upset its largely

working-class votersby sitting in a govern-

ment that raised taxes, lowered subsidies

and froze public-sector recruitment. “It lost

us votes,” says Mr Ghannouchi. “We’ve

placed all our bets on an alliance with our

adversaries from yesterday.”

A poorly attended by-election in De-

cember, for Tunisian expatriatesin Ger-

many, saw a blogger with no party affili-

ation win a seat. In polls, the mosttrusted

politician is often neither MrEssebsi nor

Mr Ghannouchi but the young prime min-

ister, YoussefChahed. He was a middling

member of Nidaa Tounes before he was

catapulted to the premiership in 2016. Now

he is working on his own political move-

ment ahead of elections next year.

Until then, though, Mr Chahed will be

the public face of painful economic re-

forms. Public-sector wages chew up al-

most 14% ofGDP; inefficient state-run firms

have too many workers (and not enough

revenue). Both must shrink. The govern-

ment needs to do a better job of selling

these changes. In the short term, handouts

can help to blunt some of the backlash. But

eventually it needs to show progress, or

wider unrest looms. “We’ve had nine gov-

ernments in seven years, and the eco-

nomic results have been the same with

each one,” says Mr Ghannouchi. 7

Israel’s mismanaged capital

Grants and absolution

E

ARLIER this year residents of Jerusa-

lem woke up to find pilesof rubbish

strewn across roads, markets and other

public spaces. Municipal workers strik-

ing against job cutsannounced by the

city had not simply stopped collecting

refuse; they dumped lorry-loads of it.

Jerusalem has attracted a lot of atten-

tion since President Donald Trump an-

nounced in December that America

would recognise it as Israel’s capital and

move its embassy there. Yet for all the

fuss over the holy city’s international

status, its management and finances are a

mess. Its streets are often filthy (even

when city workers are not striking) and

its pavements are crumbling—visible

indicators that it spends a quarter less per

person on services for residents than

Israel’s other large cities.

Over the past four years the central

government has tripled its grants to

Jerusalem. This year it proposes to give

the city 800m shekels ($233m)—14% of its

operating budget. But its mayor, Nir

Barkat, wants 1bn shekels.

The mayor’s critics say that his admin-

istration is bloated by cronyism. He has

failed to put Jerusalem’s finances on a

sound footing. Tax collection, already lax

in ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian neigh-

bourhoods, has not increased in six

years. Although other local authorities in

Israel receive grants to balance their

books, Jerusalem gets four times more

than its share according to a formula

based on population and wealth.

To be sure, Jerusalem has structural

problems that cannot be blamed on the

mayor. It is divided principally between

the Palestinians, who live in cramped

and run-down neighbourhoods in the

east (and get shoddier services), and the

ultra-Orthodox, many of whom live off

benefits and study the Torah instead of

working. These communities make up

two-thirds of the city’s 900,000 resi-

dents, and most of its poor.

The Jerusalem Institute for Policy

Research reckons that 56% of children in

Jerusalem are below the national pover-

ty line, compared with 31% nationally;

among Palestinians in Jerusalem the

figure is 86%.

Israel calls Jerusalem its “eternal and

undivided capital”. But nine years under

Mr Barkat have left it broke and its people

divided, hardly a desirable record for a

politician who wants to stand for leader

of the ruling Likud party.

JERUSALEM

A messy row over the Holy City’s finances

I

N THE spring of 2015 the rebel takeover of

Idlib province in north-western Syria

seemed to signal the beginning of the end

for President Bashar al-Assad. Yet Idlib’s

fall may have saved him. Fearful of losing

his close ally, Russia’s president, Vladimir

Putin, decided to join the fray. Within

months of Idlib’s capture, Russian aircraft

were battering rebel lines.

Russia’sentry into the war proved a

turning-point. Forces loyal to Mr Assad

have since beaten back the rebels on every

front, boxing them into ever-shrinking

pockets of territory. In December Mr As-

sad’s men turned their guns on Idlib, the

last province under complete rebel control.

It may now provide the backdrop for the

end of the uprising.

For a time it had seemed as if Idlib, a

province of 2.6m people, might escape the

fighting. It is dominated by rebels, includ-

ing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group

linked to al-Qaeda. But a ceasefire hashed

out in September between Turkey, which

has backed the rebellion, and the regime’s

allies, Iran and Russia, dampened the vio-

lence. Turkey sent troops to the province in

October to monitor the truce, which ex-

cluded HTS. Russian military police were

supposed to follow. Both countries had

agreed to curb HTS’s power in the province

(see map on nextpage).

As part of the deal, Turkey was to have

forced the rebels it backs to hand over parts

of eastern Idlib to the regime. In return, the

Turks won Russian approval to enter Idlib

and to set up bases around the Kurdish-run

enclave of Afrin, which lies near the Turk-

ish border. Turkey views the Kurds who

rule that area, and who have seized a quar-

ter of the country since the start of the war,

as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party

(PKK), a group it has fought for decades and

calls terrorists. Turkey repeatedly says it

will not allow the Kurds to form a “terror

corridor” on its border.

But the Syrian regime and its Russian

backers have grown frustrated with Tur-

key’s failure to uphold its end of the bar-

gain. HTS fighters refuse to leave eastern

Idlib. So in December Mr Assad’s forces,

with Russian aircover, pushed eastwards

along a railway line, shrinking the rebels’

enclave as they captured a string of vil-

lages. The regime is close to retaking a large

air base and may press on to seize a strate-

gic road running through Idlib and linking

some of Syria’sbiggest cities. More than

200,000 people have fled the violence.

The war in Syria

Rebels on the slide

BEIRUT

The government is closing in on one of

the rebels’ last strongholds