It is not everyday you get off a plane to visit friends and your second night in a country is attending a reception for national human rights activists at the British High Commissioner’s office and later in the week, to privately meet one of the main leaders of the opposition in my friends’ home, an official U.S. embassy residence. But in 2002, I traveled to Tunisia during spring break of graduate school to visit dear friends who were posted to the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia’s capital.  This was not a typical tourist vacation, although visiting the ruins of Carthage and walking through the pristine excavation of a classic Roman-era gladiator stadium was one part of my trip.
I was smitten by Tunisia’s beauty and history that belied the everyday misery of living under autocratic dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose photograph was published every day on the front pages of  Tunisian newspapers, above the fold, by unspoken decree. Opposition political parties barely existed, and in name only because the government went out of its way to ensure that no business would rent a meeting room to them, and by making group meetings nearly impossible organizations outside of the government could not take root, due to oppressive security forces.
Tunisia, a country of less than eleven million people located in the upper-most Northern Arabic Africa, is a former French colony and an outpost of the Roman Empire where its officers retired on the Mediterranean Sea. U.S.-Tunisia ties are deep, forged in U.S. and Tunisian bloodshed during the World War II invasion of North Africa where more than 2,800 of our war dead are buried in consecrated ground.
In recent days, the Tunisian people, dominated by the young, educated and under or unemployed, known as the Middle East and North Africa “youth bulge,” ran its former “president for life”–Ben Ali–out of the country, only to have his political ally, the former Prime Minster Mohamed Ghannouchi, declare he was in charge. But less than 24 hours later, he also stepped away, as 10,000 rioters hit the Tunisian streets, emboldened by their success in sacking Ben Ali, determining  Ghannouchi unacceptable, tarnished by his close alliance to Ben Ali, who wisely turned over Tunisia’s spinning presidency to Fouad Mebazaa, former speaker of the parliament, the constitutionally designated successor to the presidency.
So today, at least for the moment, Ghannouchi has been asked by the new president to form a government. Â Ghannouchi, so lacking in charisma and political backbone, became known as “Monsieur Oui Oui” (“Mr. Yes Yes,” and no, you can’t make this up) during Ben Ali’s 23-year tenure, and has indicated that he will open up the political process to everyone by forming a national unity government expected to be announced today.
He is the only figure who now stands between official Tunisia and a political and social abyss.
What is going on here? Rioters in streets throughout the country, accompanied by outraged masses of young men, who plundered, sacked and burned mansions belonging to Ben Ali’s self-engorged, corrupt family members, reflected a boiling-over on the Arab streets that mustered a massive push-back against Ben Ali’s punitive, coercive, dictatorial leadership and ran him out. Â Ben Ali appealed to France’s Sarkozy for succor and was told “non,” but the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia agreed to take him in. What were they thinking in Riyadh, as the internet piled up with criticism from Saudi citizens of its Royal family?
Yes, the internet played a central role in Tunisia’s uprising, by using Facebook and Twitter, people gathered on the streets throughout the country, even though the government tried to shut it down. But in Tunisia’s case, unlike Tehran, an added weapon in the quills of the opposition was Al Jazzera Television, the “24/7,” all encompassing and ubiquitious Arabic language broadcaster, followed by the entire Arab world.
And Al-Jazzera is a big factor. The Financial Times Middle East Editor wrote an opinion editorial published on Saturday, advising Arab leaders to watch Al-Jazzera if they really want to know what is going on in their respective countries.
A third factor was Wikileak’s release of U.S. State Department cables on Tunisia, which was picked up by cyber activists in Tunisia. State Department officers had extensively reported the extreme government corruption and egregious human rights abuses carried out by the Ben Ali government that galvanized the rioters.
But the fact remains that Tunisia’s young, educated  population has no hope of gaining employment that will provide a decent quality of life; with few resources to bribe corrupt officials, anger boiled over into pure rage on Tunisia’s streets when college graduate and unemployed Mohammed Bouazizi burned himself to death on Dec. 17, in response to security forces who took away his vegetable cart in a Sidi Bouzid market because he did not have a proper license.  Since then at least 60 others have died–many by the sniper rifles shot by security forces.
There have been food riots in Algeria during the past two weeks in response to rocketing prices and unemployment there that has resulted in the deaths of at least three people and many more injured, because a standard food basket for a family of four now costs nearly 60 percent of monthly income.  Last night and earlier today, following Mohamed Bouazizi’s electrifying act of civil disobedience in Tunisia by killing himself, two other men have lit a match in self-sacrifice in Algiers and Cairo. Arab capitals in Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Egypt are nervous for good reasons. It appears that an Arab youth led revolution has been unleashed in the fires of Tunisia.
Their respective leaders should tune their televisions to Al-Jazzera and track Twitter for further developments. But left to their own devices, they are likely to confront primal urges for freedom with thuggery and violence–a cautionary tale.
Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs atColumbia University, who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Instituteaffiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.