Just a little over five years ago, on December 17, 2010, a courageous Tunisian man of 26 years set himself ablaze in the town of Sidi Bouzid. Mohammad Bouazizi, a vegetable vendor, took this deadly step after his cart was confiscated by a local policeman who slapped him and spat on his face. Bouazizi’s tragic story has ever since been vastly engraved in the minds of many millions over the Arab world and beyond. Remembering his death now is an appropriate moment to quickly scan the series of events that have followed over the last five years.
The sad incident clearly reflected the wide-ranging unprecedented oppression in the region for many decades. It also caused long-simmering frustration over injustice, deprivation, poverty and the greedy politics of the elites to turn into various types of protests and different forms of violence, which eventually spread all across the Middle east.
What Bouazizi’s act of self-immolation had done to the region was unique and historically unprecedented. The “Arab Spring” was born and within a few months, sweeping waves of anger, popular uprisings and revolutions eventually led to the removal of four dictators — in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia itself. The fifth dictator in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, would have been out by now had it not been for the help received by his regime from Iran and the successive deployment of thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen, followed lately by Russia’s military power.
History is so unpredictable that a single action by a single man, who was perhaps considered just a day earlier as ‘insignificant’, has led to such a remarkable process of change. Events that followed in Tunisia and other countries of the region in the following weeks and months, went beyond anyone’s ability to imagine or comprehend. These incidents reveal how little we knew of the dynamics of this region.
Throughout history, dictators inform their population, day in and day out, that they are there to stay. Listening to the dictator and seeing his image daily and continuously, become the norm. Syria, for instance, simply provides us with an obvious case. The “[Al] Assad forever” slogan would welcome people arriving at Damascus airport. It would be painted on the walls in the capital and across the country. Even civil servants, army generals and senior officers would compete to have the slogan fancifully engraved on specially designed woodcuts, ornamenting their desks, or have it hung on the walls behind them in their offices.
As 2016 dawns on the Middle East, five years after Bouazizi’s tragic death, reflecting on events that shaped the so-called Arab Spring is only appropriate. As the protests continued in Tunisia, public anger was mounting at the shameful and violent response of the security forces. After nearly one month of uninterrupted protests, Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali, the Tunisian ruler for 24 years, was the first dictator to flee the country after his senior generals advised him that his position was no longer tenable. His much-despised wife, Leila Trabelsi, fled too, apparently taking with her large chunks of the country’s central bank’s gold reserves. Historians agree in the aftermath of what is known as the “Jasmine Revolution” that even in the 21st century, history can be changed by a single act of a man.
In the wake of Tunisia’s revolution, Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, became the second dictator to be forced out of office on February 11, 2011, after 30 years in power. Despite the heavy hands of the security services in dealing with the protesters, resulting in the deaths of hundreds, Cairo’s Tahreer Square was believed to have become the place that would determine the future of Egypt.
Just a few days later, on February 15, protests erupted in Libya after the arrest of human rights lawyers and quickly turned violent when the Muammar Gaddafi regime responded with massive force. Three days later, opposition supporters were in control of the second city, Benghazi, and eventually the massive defection began, marking the end of the Gaddafi-era that had lasted for more than four decades. But sadly, it took Libyan rebels until October 20, 2011, to capture and kill him at his birthplace — the Libyan town of Sirte.
Meanwhile, on March 18, 2011, Syrian government forces were busy shooting dead five young protesters in the southern city of Dera’a, that marked the beginning of a national uprising against the Al Assad dynasty’s rule that began in November 1970. By the end of October, 2011, more than 3,000 civilians were killed by security forces, marking the beginning of tragically continuous local and proxy wars, that have cost the country up till now an estimated 270,000 lives and 11 million displaced persons and refugees.
In Yemen, for the greater part of 2011 and after months of widespread popular protests on the national level that saw the killings of hundreds of demonstrators, violent confrontation between army loyalists and defectors spread out over major cities. On June 3, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was wounded in a bombing attack on his palace in capital Sana’a. He was rapidly evacuated to Riyadh for treatment, but unfortunately, he somehow managed to return to Yemen against all expectations, only to join forces with Al Houthi rebels, backed and funded by Iran, causing havoc in the country.
The key lesson we learned over the last five years is that there are thousands upon thousands more Bouazizis out there, legally seeking much-awaited changes by peaceful means. But once their aspirations are brutally thwarted, as Syria has repeatedly illustrated, some will go astray and desperately turn towards extremism.
Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London.
