The Arab Gdansk
LONDON — Is Tunis the Arab Gdansk? Big things start small. In Poland, the firing in 1980 of Anna Walentynowicz, a shipyard worker, led to strikes and the formation of the grassroots Solidarity movement that set in motion the unraveling of the Soviet empire. Walentynowicz, who was killed in a plane crash last year, once told me all they sought at the outset was “better money, improved work safety, a free trade union and my job back.”
All Mohamed Bouazizi wanted was a job, some means to eke out a living. Like many of Tunisia’s university graduates, he found himself unemployed while the coterie of the now-ousted president binged on the nation’s riches and titillated themselves with large felines. When police shut down Bouazizi’s informal vegetable stall in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, he killed himself. His self-immolation a month ago ignited an Arab uprising.
Now, the Tunisian dictator of 23 years, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has fled to the mother lode of regional absolutism, Saudi Arabia, driven out by new social media and old-fashioned rage. Protesters communicating on Facebook and irked by what WikiLeaks had revealed of the Ben Ali family’s Caligula-like indulgence were roused to shatter the security state of yet another Arab despot.
The unseating through popular revolt of an Arab strongman is something new: It has already caused ripples from Amman to Cairo, from the Gulf to Tripoli — and it will cause more. Unseating through U.S. invasion — Iraq — did not work; it could [...]
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