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

their extortion, the price of which Bouazizi was unable to pay. Accounts of the exact
events vary and in some aspects conflict, but the essence of the incident concerned
unnecessarily aggressive police behavior (Abouzeid, 21 January 2011).
When the ensuing riots escalated and spread across the country, Ben Ali ordered
the police to put them down. They complied and the result was numerous violent clashes
between police and protesters. At the same time, the cyber or political police were
waging an Internet campaign to track and disrupt communications among protest
organizers and activists (Astrubal, 3 January 2011). Facebook and other forms of social
media were indeed critical to the success of the revolution, for their role in facilitating
communication, but also in a more subtle respect. Because the regime was still
monitoring electronic communications and collecting data on those involved in antiregime
activities, those who might have relented to adequate pressure were driven on by
the knowledge that failure would mean serious reprisals from the regime once accounts
were taken. Thus, by attempting to exert control over Internet access, the regime was
ironically contributing to its own demise.
Post-Revolution Security Problems
After the departure of Ben Ali, the installation of the interim government, and a return to
relative peace, the administrative police were perceived as vestiges of the old regime and
its repressive methods. Many police chiefs were removed from office in the following
months and the police personnel were treated with suspicion and contempt after their
return to service. In September, it was announced that Tunisian police would be barred
from forming or joining a union. Members of the police turned out in protest over the
matter, and at what they deemed unfair treatment of incarcerated officers taken as
scapegoats for the Ben Ali regime (Kalboussi, 6 September 2011).
The interim government announced on March 7 the dissolution of the infamous
political police, the first step of a program intended to rehabilitate the country’s tattered
security forces (BBC, 7 March 2011). In an October press conference, Interior Minister
Lazhar Akremi further discussed the prospect of security reforms, most notably the
implementation of new uniforms for the police (Ajmi, 9 November 2011). Before the
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