Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

Introduction: Tunisia Report
I. William Zartman
The world of 2011 was shaken by an extraordinary series of events in the Arab World, a
domino effect of socially integrated and secular mass uprisings against characteristically
corrupt, arrogant and inefficient governments. In a region marked by a disillusioned
populace longing for ideology, these intifadat are neither class conflicts nor religious
revolts, but popular spontaneous disorderly “democratistic” outbursts. Each country has
its own evolution of events, both in the development of the intifada itself and in the play
out of its consequences. But the wave of events that swept the Arab World and has left
neighboring country carefully watching began in Tunisia.
For this reason, the seventh SAIS Conflict Management Program’s Annual
Fieldtrip 1 to a Conflict Area chose Tunisia for its visit, on 22-29 January 2012, not long
after Tunisia’s first free and fair competitive elections and in the midst of the new
Constituent Assembly’s opening debates on a new constitution. The group of 17 students
and two faculty members interviewed close to 50 Tunisians through 27 meetings, from
the Deputy Prime Minister for relations with the Constituent Assembly to youth leaders,
and including sessions with four students groups, including a Nahdha Youth group, and a
group of young workers and professionals, and spent a day of interviews in Kairouan in
addition to the longer stay in Tunis 2 .
The collective event of the Arab Spring is of monumental significance. For long
the Arab populations gave irrefutable evidence to support their critics’ contentions that
“Arabs cannot be democrats,” and that the typical authoritarian Arab ruler could only be
removed by another typically authoritarian Arab ruler. The Arab Spring has the potential
to reverse both judgments. Even if some of the individual cases do not arrive at the
1 Mindanao, January 2011; Kosovo, January 2010; Cyprus, January 2009; Northern Ireland,
January 2008; Haiti, January 2006 and January 2007.
Reports from previous Field Trips are available at http://www.sais-jhu.edu/academics/functionalstudies/conflict-management/index.htm.
2 A list of interviewees is appended.
1