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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Five Years Ago Today Mohammed Bouazizi Lit a Fire in Tunisia

Five Years Ago Today Mohammed Bouazizi Lit a Fire in Tunisia

by Adam L Silverman|  December 17, 20153:10 pm| 24 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Silverman on Security

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economy-arab-spring*

Five years ago today Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia as a protest against injustice. The specific injustice was being repeatedly hassled by Tunisian law enforcement and other officials over his vegetable cart. Bouazizi’s actions are credited as being the straw that broke the camel’s back in Tunisia, touching off the beginnings of a popular uprising against the Tunisian government. As similar events began to occur in other states across the Middle East and the Maghreb, western (specifically American) media lumped all of these together and declared an Arab Spring. The media did this because doing any real, in depth reporting to try to understand the different grievances and movements and causes in different parts of the Middle East would have required actually expending resources like money and time and it would have also been hard. Also, no one ever paid advertising dollars for nuance, which is why all of Morning Joe glazed over a couple of days ago when an Assad cousin explained that 50% of Syrians are from minority religious sects and that when you include Sunni support for the current government, over a bare majority of Syrians are NOT actually supporting the various rebels and the rebellion. Who could’ve known?

As a result, however, the common (official?) perception is that the Arab Spring was a series of related events throughout the Middle East that has largely ground to a halt, stalled, been rolled back, or been defeated. None of this is true. While there are some similarities; specifically large numbers of disenfranchised and/or disillusioned citizens and subjects in many of the countries lumped together as the Arab Spring rising up, pushing back, or rebelling against the political, economic, religious, and social status quo, there are also many differences. It makes little sense to argue that an act of protest rooted in a very local and localized form of authoritarian pettiness in Tunisia was the driver for the Syrian Civil War or the Egyptian revolution and counter-revolution.**

Regardless of the sound and fury that today’s faux birthday for a faux Arab Spring will bring it is important to remember Mohamed Bouazizi. There are some important reasons for this. One is that it is possible for the actions of one person, even a desperate, unconsolable individual who feels that he/she is at the end of their rope, can inspire others to attempt to and sometimes achieve positive change. Mohamed Bouazizi is an example of such. A second reason is that whether he knew it or not or his self immolation was intended or such, Mohamed Bouazizi provided the world with a real demonstration of what the Islamic understanding of martyrdom (shahadat) is. Jami’at al Tirmidhi, The Reliance of the Traveler, as well as other scholars actually define shahadat as one sacrificing their own life to point injustice out to others***. This is important as Bouazizi’s self sacrifice born of frustration provides a very real and very recent example of what shahadat is as opposed to what al Qaeda or the Islamic State says it is: sacrificing one’s life to kill unbelievers and apostates to cause terror and spread fear and panic. Finally, Mohamed Bouazizi’s actions also demonstrate to us that one person can, in fact, become something bigger than just a person. This last lesson, related to the first, is an important one that we all too often forget or ignore at our own peril.

* Arab Spring image was found here.

** If you really feel the need to subject yourself to it, you can click over to here and watch a presentation I made in January 2012 on the Arab Spring as part of the US Army War College’s Great Decisions Lecture Series. The presentation was given at the Army Heritage and Educational Center (AHEC). In it I fully go through why I don’t think there’s an Arab Spring. Also, the one comment is really funny. I have no doubt that the recommended speaker would have given a great talk. Of course he wasn’t assigned to/working at the US Army War College and this series always features US Army War College personnel. So…

*** Somebody posted my entire article online here, I don’t know who, I really don’t care as I’ve had three actual academic presses rip me off to publish it as a chapter reprint in other people’s edited volumes. The last one actually contacted me, which was nice, for permission. When I said no they did it anyway. And before someone chimes in – I have shared copyright with The Journal of Church and State, so it can’t actually be republished this way without my approval. Not that that does me any good. And while I’m glad each republication gets it more attention, I do like to be paid for my work! Though I was really flattered when, at one time, it was posted on a site devoted to explaining Islamic religious and jurisprudential concepts that was run by actual Muslims.

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Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    Brachiator

    December 17, 2015 at 3:32 pm

    thanks for posting this up. I look forward to reading your article from the Journal of Church and State.

  2. 2.

    catclub

    December 17, 2015 at 3:50 pm

    Speaking of Foreign affairs. Russia in Syria.

    But earlier this month, Moscow deployed an SA-17 advanced air defense system near the area and began “painting” U.S. planes, targeting them with radar in what U.S. officials said was a direct and dangerous provocation. The Pentagon halted all manned flights, although U.S. drones are still flying in the area. Russia then began bombing the rebels the U.S. had been supporting.

    Seems like an argument for expanding drone operations – and dropping piloted ones.

  3. 3.

    p.a.

    December 17, 2015 at 3:53 pm

    Hoping Tunisia, which seemed most viable demos movement at the time, can survive:

    The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advise against all travel to:

    the Chaambi Mountain National Park area
    the Tunisia-Algeria border crossing points at Ghardimaou, Hazoua and Sakiet Sidi Youssef
    the militarized zone south of, but not including, the towns of El Borma and Dhehiba
    within 5km of the Libya border area from north of Dhehiba up to but not including the Ras Ajdir border crossing
    The FCO advise against all but essential travel to the rest of Tunisia.

    If you choose to travel to or remain in Tunisia then you should check that your insurance policy provides adequate cover. You should be especially vigilant and follow the advice of the Tunisian security authorities.

  4. 4.

    Betty Cracker

    December 17, 2015 at 3:59 pm

    Interesting post — I’d never considered it before, but you’re right: It doesn’t make much sense to look at the so-called Arab Spring as a monolithic event.

  5. 5.

    Anoniminous

    December 17, 2015 at 4:09 pm

    @catclub:

    Reports are filtering out of Syria the Russians are supporting the Kurds in Rojava and have even started talks with the YPG/J leadership of expanding across the bit of northern Syria they don’t already control.

    Erdogan’s government is having a cow, which suits the Russians just fine. In a couple of different ways.

  6. 6.

    boatboy_srq

    December 17, 2015 at 4:18 pm

    @catclub: Makes you wonder whether the US isn’t developing a drone carrier to replace the CVN – especially given what a boondoggle the F-35 has proven to be.

  7. 7.

    The Fat Kate Middleton

    December 17, 2015 at 4:22 pm

    What Betty C. said – I always look forward to reading your posts here, knowing I will come away better informed. Thank you.

  8. 8.

    Roger Moore

    December 17, 2015 at 4:25 pm

    @boatboy_srq:

    Makes you wonder whether the US isn’t developing a drone carrier to replace the CVN

    I don’t think there would be enough difference between a drone carrier and an aircraft carrier to make a whole new class necessary. Our drones are getting heavier and heavier as they’re being asked to take on more of the missions that manned aircraft used to do, and that’s likely to accelerate if we try replacing manned aircraft completely. So a drone carrier would need a flight deck as big as a CVN, and it would also need the kind of magazines and maintenance areas a CVN has. The newer carriers are even being designed to make them more compatible with drones, e.g. electromagnetic catapults are good partly because they work better with a wide range of aircraft weights, including lighter drones that would be damaged by steam catapults. So the biggest step in going from a CVN to a drone carrier would be replacing the air wing.

  9. 9.

    catclub

    December 17, 2015 at 4:58 pm

    @Anoniminous:

    Erdogan’s government is having a cow

    Turkey is in the running with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (and Israel!) for least helpful US ally.

    Turkey has the distinction of being a NATO ally.

  10. 10.

    catclub

    December 17, 2015 at 5:01 pm

    @boatboy_srq: Your comment seems to imply that saving money is one of the goals of the US military services. This assumes facts not in evidence. There was a thread here or at LGM on who is likely to be captain on an aircraft carrier, and the airwing often has its own commander, but Captain is often a pilot. Taking away that route to promotion by installing drones would make some people unhappy.

  11. 11.

    catclub

    December 17, 2015 at 5:08 pm

    @Anoniminous:

    Reports are filtering out of Syria the Russians are supporting the Kurds in Rojava

    I also saw that when Turkey had its armed forces in Iraq – north of Mosul, they were coperating with the Iraqi kurds, and I did a double take. It turns out the Iraqi kurds are much more conservative than the Syrian Kurds, and the Turks want much less to do (i.e. is bombing them) with the Syrian Kurds. So Russia backing the Syrian Kurds makes even more sense.

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 5:11 pm

    @p.a.: This is the untold story of the Arab Springs, and their pre and post cursors, the Color Revolution. Every single one has either stalled out in an early to mid transitional phase, backslid, or there has been in a counter revolution. In a couple of places they’ve simply repeated the revolutionary process multiple times. What no pundit seems willing to talk about and no reporter able to is that transitions to more liberal forms of government and more inclusive societies are very, very difficult. Even in places where the population has greater homogeneity. A lot of this has to do with socialization. It is very, very hard to unlearn all the norms and morays and societal codes and rules that allowed one to survive under some form of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, tyranny, or despotism while at the same time trying to figure out what the new rules, norms, morays, and codes are – let alone how to live under them.

    While we don’t use the terms, there were really four US revolutions or US republics: 1) Articles of Confederation, 2) Constitution and Bill of Rights, 3) Post Civil War and Reconstruction Constitution and Bill of Rights, 4) Post Civil Rights era Constitution and Bill of Rights. And this is before we get into the eleven different regional cultures and how none of this transitioning ever seems complete. There’s some question if, in fact, President Hollande seeks legislative approval to expand, extend, and regularize under French law some of the emergency powers they’ve invoked in the wake of last month’s attacks if France will then have entered the 6th Republic. And if you think about all the advantages that France and the US have in terms of political stability and wealth and infrastructure and education and a bunch of other stuff and we still are moving back and forth a bit on the continuum; how much harder is it for a place like Syria that, as a modern state and society, has never been governed in any but some form of authoritarian manner.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 5:12 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Same with the various Color Revolutions. But having to or trying to drill down into the local context isn’t always easy or quick. So it too often doesn’t happen.

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 5:15 pm

    @Anoniminous: Putin’s play is along the following lines:
    1) Vital interest: Needs the warm water port at Latakia that the Syrian government is leasing him.
    2) Strategic interest: doing anything and everything to fracture NATO.

    Playing footsie with Kurdish groups gets to number 2, allows him to subvert and further fragment the Kurdish response to the Syrian Civil War and the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Thereby providing space for Assad who is leasing him the port he needs.

    Putin is a very shrewd apparatchik who, like most of those folks, is alway KGB.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 5:20 pm

    @boatboy_srq: @Roger Moore: @catclub: The only reason we have the F 35 (Strategic Strike Paper Weight) is foreign military sales. There was no plans, I repeat, NO PLANS to develop a second fighter alongside the F 22 until someone started having to worry about the foreign military sales aspect. And the worry was that if we sold them to Israel then they would either sell the plans directly to the Chinese or reverse engineer everything and sell their version to the Chinese. Once either of those happens then it also means that the North Koreans and the Iranians and the Russians would all have access to the tech. So in order to be able to keep the foreign military sales revenue streams going, which also makes the companies building these things happy as a special interest constituency, we had to develop a second platform. And we got the F 35…

  16. 16.

    catclub

    December 17, 2015 at 5:43 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Putin is a very shrewd apparatchik who, like most of those folks, is alway KGB.

    But it is still worth pointing out what Obama pointed out – Russia having to come in and save its ally’s bacon (Syria, Assad) is less impressive than not having to come in and save said bacon. Plus, when he came in, Iran took it as a chance to withdraw to some extent. Putin may be playing a bad hand well, but having to put in resources to maintain that warm water port is costly.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 6:08 pm

    @catclub: without a doubt!

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    December 17, 2015 at 7:00 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The only reason we have the F 35 (Strategic Strike Paper Weight) is foreign military sales.

    I thought it was fairly generic welfare for the MIC. All our military procurement these days has to be understood in terms of providing them long-term welfare.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 7:03 pm

    @Roger Moore: Weaponized Keynesianism. Its the only real jobs program stimulus we allow ourselves. So if we can’t sell the F 22, which we know actually works, because we’re worried about a client screwing us over if we sell it to them, then we had to have something else to sell.

  20. 20.

    J R in WV

    December 17, 2015 at 7:18 pm

    Adam,

    Sorry for your poor treatment by “professional” journals. That’s surprising to me in several ways. Reputation is so important, yet these folks seem to just toss it. Maybe they don’t understand new media?

    The remarks about society not being prepared for a new and open democracy style of government is interesting. I’ve often thought that we were lucky to have so limited a social control by the British government in the late 1700s. They wanted it, and did their best, but it was just too difficult with the limited travel and communications, not to mention being weeks away from “central command”.

  21. 21.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 7:58 pm

    @J R in WV: Well Journal of Church and State treated me wonderfully. Its the academic presses that put together these edited volumes on topics in book form. Either the special editor or someone at the press is supposed to contact you to give you a heads up. The last time, in April 2014, it was Oxford University Press. Their idea of compensation was giving me a 20% discount on the edited volume. I made it clear in my email back that I wanted someone to call me and I was not authorizing them to republish. They never got back to me and did it anyway. They make a lot of money off of these, but the actual authors see nothing. Peer reviewed journals are the same way now in the age of digital. The site licenses that each college or university has to pay for access to journals that include the work done by their own faculty is amazingly high. And, of course, the faculty aren’t receiving a cut. It got so bad that Harvard made a decision a few years ago to try to break the price gouging/profiteering by refusing to buy the digital licenses. I have no idea what actually happened. All I know is some folks are getting rich off this stuff, but its not the people actually doing the research and the writing. And this is just one of the problems I have with the peer review process.

  22. 22.

    Chris

    December 17, 2015 at 8:03 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Huh? Wasn’t the F-35 a merger between several proposed fighter and attacker programs (A-12, N/ATF, A/FX, MRF)? I thought we’d originally planned to have more fifth generation planes, not less.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 8:03 pm

    @J R in WV: And now to the second part of your comment: this is something we spend far too little time talking about or considering when trying to determine policy and strategy. There is nothing inherent (biological, psychological, bio-psychological) within any individuals or ethnic groups that prohibits or prevents them from understanding liberty, self government, elections, religious pluralism, etc. All the stuff that prevents or retards or restricts these things from happening is learned socially. Its at the heart of the oldest and most powerful empirical theory in modern criminology, social learning theory, which is itself a revision of differential association. One of the hallmarks of this concept is that societies, groups, organizations are not socially disorganized or mal-organized, but rather they are differentially socially organized. They develop the socio-cultural, socio-political, socio-religious, socio-economic, socio-gendered, etc, etc dynamics necessary for the individual members to survive, if not thrive, in the conditions that exist for them. Whenever we get involved somewhere it is this, differential social organization, that we never account for and always run afoul of.

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 17, 2015 at 8:22 pm

    @Chris: It was, but my understanding was that it went ahead, even though they’d decided on the F22, because of the military sales aspect.

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