This could not have seemed more scripted, but it’s real in all of its breaking consequences.
Just as we’ve been studying the ways that authoritarian leaders hold power in the Middle East and Northern Africa, along comes the student-led revolt in Tunisia, now called the Jasmine Revolution, to force out longtime President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and to offer a surprising case entirely worthy of our careful attention.
Remember the concept of stability? Well, here is the opposite as sudden change has led the country’s people into at least temporary chaos. Actions like this can seem politically grand, but they also cause ugly outcomes. People die. Groups fight groups. The most humane policies and promises do not immediately trump the dangers on the street.
On Monday, those in the government and some opposition leaders agreed to set up a so-called caretaker government — a term we’ve also noted lately in Lebanon — that reportedly will run the country until later elections. Caretaking is easy to say; hard to do. Meanwhile, some protests continue with a goal to force a complete ejection of top officials who are aligned with the Ben Ali government.
Media in the Middle
What sort of media forms did the protesters use? Try the latest digital form, Twitter, for starters. This was a medium the government couldn’t co-opt or control. Too decentralized. Too spontaneous. And it was this capacity to build a spontaneous and sustained push that forced change.
We can study how the world’s elite media covered the event by examining stories Monday by the Wall Street Journal on the political situation, the BBC on the European Union’s involvement. Here is a thoughtful commentary from the Indian Express, noting the significance of the event in its lead:
This should be marked carefully: it is the first successful Arab overthrow of an authoritarian government, many of which are still ruling countries in Middle East and North Africa.
The author of that line is Shadan Farasat, a lawyer from Delhi who worked in Tunis, the capital city of Tunisia, with an international organization the African Development Bank, an organization we mentioned briefly (along with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) on Friday.
Shock Waves
We might also hope to explore how the regional media has dealt with the tumult. Here is a piece Monday from UAE-based Al-Arabiya TV, with video, capturing a promise for “total freedom of information” in a new Tunisia.
Al-Jazeera’s English-language website is carrying a real-time Twitter feed that is constantly moving on the screen, thanks to the deluge of messages. Take a look, if you can keep up with it.
As we’ve noted, Al-Jazeera loves to spar with power and rarely shies from taking on U.S. policy-makers. Take a look at this commentary by Mark LeVine, an American professor and Middle East expert who usually stakes out a position concerned with the welfare of the local residents, a kind of thinking that fits AJ’s approach. He makes a point we’ve been considering:
Indeed, the problem with most post-colonial nationalisms – whether that of the first generation of independence leaders or of the leaders who replaced (often by overthrowing) them – is precisely that they have always remained infected with the virus of greed, corruption and violence so entrenched by decades of European colonial rule. Tunisia’s nascent revolution will only succeed if it can finally repair the damage caused by French rule and the post-independence regime that in so many ways continued to serve European and American – rather than Tunisian – interests.
Keep reading and thinking. In a global story like this, the information just keeps coming.
Global Media Studies 