Tunisia: The Spark That Changed the World

TUNISIA

The Spark that Changed the World

Eight years ago this month, a Tunisian fruit vendor finally had enough of the low wages, corruption and indignities he and his family had suffered for years. A female police officer had slapped him in the face in the marketplace, a humiliation he would not endure.

“What happened next changed the world,” wrote the Independent.

Mohammed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in front of the governor’s office in Sidi Bouzid, a provincial city in the center of the North African country.

His act of self-immolation triggered a wave of protests that morphed into the Arab Spring, an uprising that helped give rise to a revolution and coup d’état in Egypt, the rise of the Islamic State, the Syrian civil war and other convulsions in the Middle East.

On Dec. 17, the eighth anniversary of Bouazizi’s death, Tunisian activists took to the streets wearing red vests – an echo of the yellow vests worn by French protesters who are also disgruntled with the state of things in their country.

“We won’t back down and we won’t go home until our demands are met,” Riad Jrad, a leader of the Red Vest movement, toldBloomberg.

Another activist, Seifeddin El-Ghabri, said that wearing the vests was not necessary. “This is the name of our movement, but the first blow came in Sidi Bouzid, which witnessed the igniting of the spark of revolution in Tunisia in 2011.”

Tunisia is a rare example of a thriving democracy in the Arab world. It has a vibrant civic culture.

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited in November, for example, demonstrators panned him as an autocrat who killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, reported Reuters. Such demonstrations would be crushed in many other countries in the region.

Even so, the country faces big challenges, including a sluggish economy and terrorism.

Teachers, lawyers and civil servants have gone on strike, demanding pay raises after years of stagnant wages.

The protest movement adopted the color red “because the economic situation in Tunisia has hit dangerous levels,” wrote Al Monitor.

In 2015, Islamic State fighters attacked tourist spots in Tunis and on the Mediterranean. Today, analysts say they are less worried about Tunisian militants returning home from Iraq and Syria – a phenomenon that raises fears in European countries – than they are about terrorist groups that continue to operate in the country’s impoverished south, the Washington Post reported.

“Tunisia is the land of recruitment,” International Crisis Group analyst Michael Bechir Ayari said.

Tunisia is in a tricky situation right now. Tyrants and democrats should beware.