The Battle for the Arab Spring

by Lin Noueihed

  Yet on the eve of the uprising, almost two million Tunisians – or 17.6 per cent of the population – were Facebook users, the second-highest level for an Arab country outside of the wealthy and technologically advanced Gulf. E-mails were filtered and hacked, and cybercafés watched by secret police; so pervasive were the restrictions that the Tunisian dissident and technology entrepreneur, Slim Amamou, set @Slim404 as his Twitter name in reference to the ‘404 not found’ message that would appear when internet users tried to access one of the many banned sites.

  Despite these restrictions, vocal Tunisia-based bloggers like Aziz Amami, Lina Ben Mhenni and Sofiane Chourabi were breaking new barriers in terms of what could be reported, what questions could be asked, and what footage and pictures posted. Sites began to collate blogs, news and interviews under one umbrella, establishing themselves as rare one-stop sources for those seeking to find out what was really going on in the country.

  In December 2010, a site called Nawaat began to publish WikiLeaks documents related to Tunisia in its ‘Tunileaks’ campaign, enraging the government and prompting it to block sites carrying US cables that described ‘The Family's’ plummeting popularity. While media coverage of the Gafsa mining strike was banned, bloggers found ways to visit the area and report on the violent police crackdown. This constant battle with the authorities gave birth to a generation of Tunisian bloggers with a wealth of experience in circumventing state controls, who had built ties and swapped advice with a network of online activists in other Arab countries and beyond. That experience would stand them in good stead once the uprising was under way in December 2010.

  By that time, it was not just the rights activists, the Islamists, the unionists and the youth that Ben Ali had alienated, for he may have reasoned that they would never be with him anyway. Perhaps his biggest mistake was to erode the foundations upon which his rule was built. During his twenty-three years in power, former RCD officials later complained, Ben Ali had hollowed out the ruling party to monopolize power within his own family and that of his wife. Former ministers bemoaned how their access to the president was limited by Trabelsi, that they no longer had his ear, that his decisions were driven by his desire to keep his wife and her family happy.25 As described in the first section of this book, major privatizations or sales of state assets such as mobile phone licences went to the first couple's extended clan, causing widespread disgust and anger.

  ‘After 2002–3 there was a sense that these guys were bandits profiting from the reputation and riches of the country. They were not like a monarchy whose fate was tied to the country,’ said Zyed Krichen, editorial director of Le Maghreb newspaper, which was shut down by Ben Ali in the 1990s and restarted in the wake of the uprising. ‘So businessmen and intellectuals gradually became liberated from this wall of fear because of the gossip and rumour around the corruption. There was also a sense that Ben Ali wasn't in control any more, couldn't exert power over the clan, and the cult of personality was weakening.‘26

  Businessmen large and small complained that members of the elite clan would seek to take a cut in any company that was doing well and making profit. If the demand was refused, a rival firm would be set up, while its adversary would suddenly find itself under investigation for tax or other irregularities. This is what happened to Mohammed Bouebdelli, a businessman who ran a chain of private schools and a private university, and fell foul of the president.

  Bouebdelli describes his 2002 conversation with Ben Ali: ‘I told him that I have a lot of demand to set up a pharmacology college and he said, in that case, 50–50. He said it in English not in French. I was sorry inside that a president puts his hand out like that … I am an educator. I am not a businessman with billions of dollars. I said to myself, a person like this could sell the country?…‘27

  Two years later, Bouebdelli clashed with Ben Ali once more when he refused to let a failing pupil from ‘The Family’ graduate from her class. Bouebdelli came under pressure from the education minister to change his mind. Soon after, his school was seized by the authorities. An investigation was launched into his social security and tax payments. Then, in 2007, Leila Trabelsi decided to open a rival private secondary school in Carthage, purchasing cheap state land for the purpose, and Bouebdelli was forced to close the existing Louis Pasteur school he ran. By 2009, the situation had deteriorated so much that he wrote a book entitled The Day I Realised Tunisia is Not a Free Country. Soon after, he was removed from the private university he owned and ran. He left the country, visiting the US State Department, White House and Congress, as well as the European Parliament, to discuss Tunisia's human rights situation. When he returned in April 2010, he was questioned by the police, and on 4 December 2010, thirteen days before the uprising, police demolished a house he had built outside Tunis, saying he did not have a permit.28

  Ben Ali and his wife hailed from neither Tunisia's old moneyed classes nor its educated middle classes. The president himself had risen through the ranks of the security services and interior ministry, helped by his first marriage to Naima al-Kefy, the daughter of a general. Ben Ali had subsequently attempted to cement alliances with business elites, strategically marrying his daughters, three of them from his first marriage, to the scions of wealthy families. But by keeping the riches in this narrow circle, the first couple undermined their support among business elites.

  Ben Ali's mismanagement of the security forces would prove to be the final straw. Tunisia's army, which numbers about 35,000 active members, had always been small and largely separate from politics. Both Bourguiba and Ben Ali had enforced their rule through the interior security forces that were estimated to number some 150,000 on the eve of revolution.29 Yet, as a police protest held soon after Ben Ali fled would show, many of these employees were poorly paid and in some cases open to legendary levels of corruption: traffic police, for instance, would regularly stop motorists for no other reason than to elicit a small bribe. Among these interior security forces, the Presidential Guard was the elite, a highly trained, well-paid, competitively selected group of about 5,000 that was trusted by the president. It was called in to restore order around the country once the uprising was under way, causing tension with local police, while its high-handed behaviour was also resented by the military and other security units who could find fewer and fewer reasons to protect Ben Ali in the face of unarmed popular protest.30

  Once the uprising reached a critical momentum, Ben Ali would have few loyalists left to turn to. He had undermined his own ruling party's political power, made life harder for big business, and alienated both the army and a large section of the police. As cracks in his regime began to show, civil society had rushed in to fill the space. Human rights activists, the courageous lawyers of the Bar Association, the active teachers’ syndicate, trade unionists, political party members and dissident bloggers had become increasingly active and increasingly resilient, often putting aside Islamist, leftist or nationalist persuasions. They were mostly leaderless, a network working around and in spite of the docile union and political chiefs. And when the time came, they were able to rally together and focus on the big prize – the fall of the regime.

  The Slap That Was Heard Around the World

  Residents of Sidi Bouzid, a town where weeds grow in the dust that covers the streets, said anger had been building for years before Mohammed Bouazizi set fire to himself. Frustration at widespread joblessness and anger at local officials had reached tipping point. The crumbling infrastructure and stretched health facilities, a world apart from the upmarket coastal suburbs that are home to Tunisia's elite, fed resentment.

  Local authorities had confiscated Bouazizi's unlicenced cart several times before, but the turning point for the twenty-six-year-old, and for his country and ultimately the entire region, came on 17 December 2010. The breadwinner in a family of eight, Bouazizi had argued with a policewoman who took away his goods and scales, then slapped him in the face and insulted his father, who had died when he was three.31 Bouazizi bo
ught a can of petrol and set himself on fire outside the provincial headquarters. ‘What kind of repression do you imagine it takes for a young man to do this? A man who has to feed his family by buying goods on credit when they fine him … and take his goods,’ his sister Leila said. ‘In Sidi Bouzid, those with no connections and no money for bribes are humiliated and insulted and not allowed to live.‘32

  In the absence of clear leaders in Tunisia's uprising, Bouazizi came to symbolize the hopelessness and frustration of a generation of Arabs. His grim death captured the imagination of millions and inspired copycat burnings in Egypt, Algeria, Mauritania and even Saudi Arabia.33 But it was Bouazizi's friends and family, and the union leaders and political activists in his home town, who mobilized his anger into a national revolution. Locals had already begun to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian uprising a decade earlier, and had demonstrated against the Iraq war. They had learned from the Gafsa mining strike that solidarity protests could quickly be mobilized in neighbouring towns. ‘The fear had begun to melt away and we were a volcano that was going to explode. And when Bouazizi burnt himself, we were ready,’ said Attia Athmouni, a union leader and official of the PDP in Sidi Bouzid. ‘Protesters demanded payback for the blood of Bouazizi and this developed into economic, social and political demands. We started calling for an end to corruption.‘34

  Among the first to join were members of the Bar Association, which boasted a history of activism against extrajudicial detentions and the mistreatment of prisoners of conscience. ‘The unions got involved, teachers, lawyers, doctors, all sections of civil society, and set up a Popular Resistance Committee to back the people of Sidi Bouzid and back the uprising. The efforts meant the uprising continued for 10 days in Sidi Bouzid with no support,’ said Lazhar Gharbi, a head teacher and union member. ‘As the protests spread, the headlines changed from bread to call for the removal of the head of state.‘35 Demonstrations spread across the province of Sidi Bouzid as groups of youths clashed with police who fired tear gas at the crowds. Protests were turning into riots.

  The community of cyber-activists formed over the preceding decade also rolled into action. A Facebook group called ‘The Tunisian People Are Burning Themselves, Mr President’ began to publish pictures and footage from Sidi Bouzid, and raise awareness of events there. According to the information section on the page itself, the group was repeatedly closed down and hacked, forcing the activists to set up different groups. Within ten days, online activists had begun to tweet news on the Tunisian protests under the hashtag #sidibouzid. Across Facebook, activists and sympathizers replaced their profile photograph with the red and white Tunisian flag.

  Protests and riots began to spread from town to town, engulfing the centre of Tunisia. Before the end of December, they had reached the capital. Mid-level and rank-and-file trade unionists held small protests. Using Facebook, blogger and journalist Sofiane Chourabi called for the first independent, citizen-led political protest in Tunis on 28 December. It was the same day Ben Ali delivered his first speech, saying the protests were ‘unacceptable’. More and more activists began to independently organize protests online, spreading the message using mobile phones and fliers.

  ‘When I saw some young people I would never have imagined would stand against Ben Ali, young people who have nothing to do with politics, shouting slogans against the regime and facing the police and overcoming their fears, even then I was not thinking we would get rid of Ben Ali. But perhaps I was convinced that we had broken the barrier of fear,’ said Chourabi.36

  It was no longer a call for jobs and freedom, nor for an end to corruption and police brutality. ‘Dégage!???’, or ‘Get out!’, had become the rallying cry of the Tunisian revolution, while The Will to Live, a rousing liberation poem written by Tunisia's Abu Qasim al-Chebbi when the country was still a French colony, became the anthem of a revolution, sung by hundreds during peaceful protests. On New Year's Eve, riot police tried to break up a protest held by lawyers in Tunis. Five days later thousands turned out for the funeral of Bouazizi, who had finally succumbed to his burns.

  Alarmed by the powerful role of the internet, police arrested Slim Amamou and Aziz Amami on 6 January 2011. The arrests backfired. Both, it turned out, were well known, and an internet campaign was launched for their release, which came days later. Ben Ali made another mistake by arresting the twenty-two-year-old rapper Hamada Ben Amor, whose song ‘Mr President, Your People are Dying’ was widely circulated online. The move made the song even more popular and provoked disgust that Tunisians could be arrested for singing. Ben Amor, better known as ‘El Generale’, was released three days later.37

  By 10 January, at least twenty-three protesters were dead, most of them killed by police and interior security forces in a single weekend of rioting in the central provinces. Images of those killed in Kasserine, Tala and Rgeb spread on the internet.38 The police response galvanized Tunisians in the coastal areas and in the capital, and drew sympathy from people who were not normally politically active. Ben Ali appeared on television to give his second speech, promising to create 300,000 jobs over two years but still denouncing the riots as ‘terrorist acts’. After the death toll of the previous weekend, the speech fell flat.

  Meanwhile Ali Seriati, the head of the elite Presidential Guard, had called in the army chiefs, as well as top commanders of the interior security forces, to coordinate a response. Army Chief of Staff Rachid Ammar refused to take orders to use the army in the crackdown. It was a pivotal moment; Ben Ali had now lost the army as well as the people.39

  On 12 January, Ben Ali fired his interior minister over the handling of the protests, freed jailed protesters, and called a night-time curfew in the capital as riots spread. Protesters burned tyres and threw stones at police. Five more had been killed.40 ‘I understand you, I understand you,’ Ben Ali pleaded in his final speech on state television, just a day before he fled, breaking for the first time from formal Arabic into the colloquial language of the people. They were the same fateful words Charles de Gaulle had uttered on his visit to Algeria in 1958, not long before France was forced to grant it independence.

  Yet even after demonstrations had engulfed the capital, Ben Ali could not muster a single pro-regime demonstration. The greed of ‘The Family’, its reluctance to share the spoils of power even among trusted party loyalists, its battles not just with the Islamist but also the nationalist and leftist opposition, not only with human rights activists but also with the business elite, had cost it dearly.

  A call went out for a general strike and mass protests across the country on 13 January 2011. It was successful. Finally, as it risked losing both its relevance in the struggle and its rank and file, the UGTT leadership made its own call for a nationwide general strike on 14 January. Thousands filled Bourguiba Avenue, a tree-lined boulevard of street cafés and hotels that leads to the old medina in the heart of Tunis.

  Unknown to Tunisians, Trabelsi was already making plans to escape. That same night, thirty-three members of ‘The Family’ were arrested at the airport waiting to board a flight out. Seriati, who is rumoured to have encouraged Ben Ali to leave in a possible ploy to take over, was also detained. Later, it emerged that Samir Tarhouni, head of Tunisia's anti-terrorism unit, had decided that the game was up and had instructed his wife, who worked at airport control, not to allow them to fly.41

  By the time Ben Ali landed in Saudi Arabia on 14 January, at least 147 people had been killed in the revolt.42 But no sooner had their president beaten a hasty retreat than Tunisians began to worry that their revolution would be lost to the remnants of his ruling party. Some immediately feared that loyalists would continue to hold positions of power and were working behind the scenes to curtail dramatic change in the economic, social and bureaucratic structure.

  It may have appeared like a tiny detail in the avalanche of revolutionary change, but the decision for the speaker rather than the prime minister to take over was crucial. Ben Ali had not officially resigned and it
later transpired that he had been planning a comeback. Ghannouchi had announced a new government that kept the interior, defence and foreign ministers unchanged and added three UGTT representatives plus the three legal opposition party leaders – Chebbi, Ibrahim and Ben Jaafar – to the line-up.

  Demonstrators could still have gone home at this point, but their demand was never the fall of the president. Indeed, it was Tunisian protesters who coined the chant ‘The people want the fall of the regime,’ which would soon echo from the squares of Cairo to the streets of Sana'a. From the very first day after they had unseated Ben Ali, protesters spoke soberly of the fear that they had decapitated the regime but left its structure in place, ready for a new dictator. Realizing their credibility was again at risk, the UGTT members quit the cabinet along with Ben Jaafar. The new government freed political prisoners, lifted a ban on parties, and closed down the media censor. The RCD ministers all resigned from their party, but this too was rejected by the demonstrators. The executive committee of the RCD was dissolved, but again, this was not enough to persuade protesters off the streets.

  Finally, Ghannouchi reshuffled the cabinet once again to bring in ministers untainted by RCD membership. The move satisfied the UGTT and some opposition parties, but not for long. Less than three weeks after Ben Ali had fled, the RCD's activities were suspended. Senior police officials and provincial governors accused of corruption, brutality or close links to the old regime were replaced. On 27 February, with protests still ongoing, Ghannouchi stepped down and a new interim government was appointed, containing no former regime members. The first phase of the Tunisian revolution was complete.

  By the time of the constituent assembly elections in October 2011, Tunisians had cleared every hurdle that had come their way, but the challenges that lie ahead are no less significant than those they leave behind them. If all goes to plan, at least two years will have passed between Ben Ali's departure and the approval of a new empowered parliament with a new president and constitution. It is a long time for a country to be in transition, with all the uncertainties that this carries.