Where the Arab Spring began
Tunisia’s uprising began after a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in protest
way to the main regional government building and demanded to speak to the governor.
His request was refused and within an hour of the original confrontation he returned, doused himself in paint thinner and once again demanded to meet the official. It took just the flick of a lighter for Bouazizi to envelop himself in a ball of fire and unwittingly ignite a series of protests and uprisings across the region that became the Arab Spring. In places such as Syria and Libya, the devastating conflicts that followed are still raging today.
Bouazizi’s actions immediately flicked a switch in Sidi Bouzid, and by the time of his death 18 days later on Jan. 4, the protests had spread across the country. Despite the rapid escalation, it took time for the potential implications of what had happened to fully register in the media. The first front-page mention in Arab News of the protests in Tunisia was in a report on food riots in Algeria that ran on Jan. 7. On Jan. 14, the newspaper led with the headline “Rioting spreads in Tunisia” — the same day that the president,
Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country after 23 years in power. On the busy foreign desk of the newspaper where I worked in Abu Dhabi, we were unsure of how much of a challenge the rampant anger would pose to the autocratic rulers. Even with the speed of Ben Ali’s downfall, and as the protests spread beyond Tunisia’s borders, could this really lead to a domino effect, toppling the men who had run much of the Middle East for decades?
Tunisia not only lit the touch paper, it showed to the frustrated and disaffected youth across the region that change was not only real, but could happen quickly. That it was a young man, supposedly well educated, who had been driven to such a desperate act by his hopeless situation only served to present Tunisia’s uprising as a model for others across the Arab world. Within a year, the leaders of Egypt and Libya had been overthrown, and Yemen’s ruler was soon to stand aside. But the bloodshed from these subsequent uprisings and the brutal responses to the protests dwarfed what had unfolded in Tunisia. Nowhere was this more the case than in Syria, where Bashar Assad’s security forces turned their guns on protests and unleashed the horrors of the civil war and the extremist forces that emerged from it.That said, Tunisia suffered its own share of violence, with more than 300 people killed in the protests. The country is held up in the West as the only one to have made progress toward democracy. Two sets of presidential and parliamentary elections have taken place since the uprising, despite some bitter political disputes that at times spilled over into violence.
Many Tunisians question whether they are better off than they were in 2010. The economy has struggled to pick up and the public have carried the burden of tough economic measures attached to a $2.8 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 2018, widespread protests against increased costs took place across the country.
Tunisia has also suffered from a series of extremist attacks, including one near the US Embassy in March and another on a tourist resort in 2015 that killed 38 people and dealt a major blow to a key industry. Much of the social and economic conditions that are so often referenced among the causes of the Arab Spring remain in Tunisia. Unemployment is even higher nationally — 15 percent compared with 12 percent before the uprising and 30 percent in the poorest areas.
Early reporting of Bouazizi’s self-immolation described him as a university graduate, something that was often repeated and fitted neatly with the narrative of the Arab Spring being driven by an overeducated and underemployed youth. The truth was that he had dropped out of school as he became the main breadwinner for his extended family after his father died. His aspiration, his family said, was to own a van to help him grow his business.
That aspiration disappeared in the flames that ended his life, but allowed the anger felt toward Ben Ali’s corrupt and oppressive regime to overspill.
For the Arab world, Bouazizi’s extreme and individual action will forever be remembered as the moment that unleashed the anger of the many.
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