Courtesy of Gonzalo Lira
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| The Middle East and North Africa. Click to enlarge. |
In 1848, protests and revolutions swept through Europe. The specific causes were different in each country, but the underlying cause was the same everywhere: The middle and upper middle classes—politically powerless in these absolutist monarchies—wanted more control over their lives.
The immediate spark for these revolts has been the rising price of food—but the fuel for this bonfire has been decades of political marginalization for large swathes of the educated population of these Middle Eastern countries.
Autocratic regimes never fare well during economic downturns. The Global Depression that began with the financial crisis in 2008 is slowly but surely picking up a head of inflationary steam, which has been squeezing the middle classes in these countries. A middle class being squeezed economically eventually oozes out political unrest—as we have been seeing throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Now, in early March 2011, with the fate of these various revolts still unclear, it would be wise to go over them, and see where they are in each country. And it would be wise, too, to examine how these various revolts in the Middle East will affect the rest of the world in the short- to medium-term.
So to begin,
Tunisia: One of the things we forget is that, when history decides to move, it can move fast. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had been in power in Tunisia since 1987, winning crooked election after crooked election, all the while supported by the United States and especially France.
All was copacetic for decades—until one morning, December 10, 2010, a 26 year-old vegetable vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi had his cart confiscated by a policewoman in the city of Sidi Bouzid. She insulted him and reportedly spat in his face. When he tried to get redress from the local municipality, he was rebuffed. Out of frustration, humiliation, and likely impulsive foolishness, he doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire, in protest at the unfairness of it all.
The outrage this triggered in the rest of the Tunisian population is remarkable. Protests started in Sidi Bouzid, then quickly spread throughout the rest of the country, even as the government of President Ben Ali tried very seriously to quell it: Tear gas, riot police, the whole shebang.
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