Qatar- Tunisia: Five years after Arab Spring hopes dashed for change
Date
1/12/2016 2:32:51 AM
Tunis:On January 14 2011 Tunisians packed the streets of their capital and shocked the world by overthrowing longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The revolution shook the Middle East setting off the hopeful uprisings that came to be known as the Arab Spring.
But five years later the countries that followed Tunisia's example could hardly be worse off the hopes of their people dashed by new autocrats strife civil war and the rise of the virulent jihadism exemplified by the Islamic State group.
"Those were exciting days. The democracy fever spread" Hafez Ghanem the vice president of the World Bank wrote in a recent book to mark the start of the Arab Spring.
"But can a country with no democratic tradition and with weak institutions become a well-functioning democracy and improve the lives of its citizens overnight? The answer is obviously no."
Only weeks before Ben Ali stepped down after 23 years in power few could have expected the wave of change to come.
A month earlier a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi had set himself on fire in the town of Sidi Bouzid triggering the mass protests that eventually brought Ben Ali down.
Tunisia was not only the first Arab Spring country but also its only partial success story.
There has been a rise in jihadist violence since Ben Ali's overthrow most dramatically in the attacks on the Bardo museum and on a Mediterranean resort that killed 60 people most of them foreign tourists.
But the country has elected a new government and its National Dialogue Quartet -- a group of four civil society organisations -- was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for helping to save its transition to democracy.
Elsewhere in the region popular uprisings were less the beginnings of a new spring than preludes of harsh winters.
AFP