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

persons, a huge contingent for such a small country; virtually all of the violence that
occurred during the January 2011 uprising was instigated by these political police.
Therefore, a major but difficult task for the interim government has been to disband the
political police, with the troubling side effect that this has pushed a large number of
individuals trained in the use of violence into the ranks of the unemployed. The
administrative police, the traditional uniformed police force, have largely been retained,
but there remains the daunting task of retraining them and socializing them in the role of
police in a democratic, pluralistic society. At the time of this writing these reforms are
just being put into effect, and the success or failure of the government in implementing
reforms in the entire justice sector will undoubtedly be a major factor affecting the
sustainability of liberal democracy in Tunisia.
Most participants in the SAIS trip would likely agree that, if the transition from
the Arab Spring to a consolidated liberal, democratic regime fails in Tunisia, it is unlikely
to succeed soon anywhere else in the Arab World. Although Tunisians are divided along
political and socio-economic lines, there is a genuinely shared identity as being part of
the Tunisian nation with no significant ethnic divisions. Furthermore, because the
revolution was mostly nonviolent and the transition has been characterized by a focus on
developing institutions to resolve basic conflicts of interest and belief nonviolently, a
firm foundation for a positive outcome in Tunisia has been established. Issues remain,
most notably in the debate between adopting an explicitly Islamic form of governance
versus a secular one. Social and economic divides remain wide between the coastal and
interior regions, exacerbated by an overall economic downturn since the revolution. And
all of the classic post-revolution problems of reforming justice institutions, strengthening
civil society, forming coherent and representative political parties, promoting
reconciliation between those who were associated with the previous regime and those
who support the new government still challenge the new leadership of Tunisia. The
focus in 2012 on drafting a new constitution is itself a herculean task, and yet this focus
also distracts attention from efforts to resolve the longer-term economic and social
problems of the country. In the end, the eventual consolidation of the “Jasmine
213