Al Jazeera English Interview with Dr. Radwan Masmoudi of CSID

Tunisia indeed has a large middle class, and educated, relatively well-off Tunisians played a key role in toppling the regime. But in Qasserine and several surrounding cities that consider themselves the cradle of the revolution, the story has been more about blood than jasmine.

Human Rights Watch collected the names of 17 residents of Qasserine whom police gunned down during street protests Jan. 8-10. Six died around the same period in the smaller city of Tala, about 25 miles north. These two cities lost more than the official number of 21 dead nationwide that the Ben Ali government gave shortly before collapsing; the exact toll is not yet known. But to the west, five more died in Regueb and two in Menzel Bouzaiane. In the center of this region lies Sidi Bouzid, the city where the peddler Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on Dec. 17, triggering the revolt.  Police also shot protesters in the capital, but this southern region bore the brunt of the casualties.  The provisional government says 78 died nationwide and has declared three days of mourning.

The fatal shootings enraged Tunisians nationwide. It is one thing to know that you live in a police state, another to see the police mow down your countrymen. In the bread riots of 1984, Qasserine residents - now the parents of the youths who revolted this month - took to the streets and paid a heavy price.  Since Ben Ali became president in 1987, Tunisians have had no experience of the police killing demonstrators on this scale - for the simple reason that the police rarely allowed demonstrations to get off the ground.

When police repression did not end the recent unrest, Gen. Rachid Ammar, commander of the army, reportedly refused to order his troops to fire on protesters. Qasserine residents say that on the afternoon of Jan. 10, the army suddenly replaced the anti-riot police in the city. Soldiers have since handled the continuing demonstrations without major incident.

It is not only grieving families who have an interest in accountability. If Tunisia is to erect a rights-respecting security apparatus to replace one based on torture and intimidation, it needs to bring perpetrators to justice and establish a full, public record of the price paid in blood for the "Jasmine Revolution."

Tunisia came to have more police than France, a country with six times more people. With few real threats to the state to combat, Mr Ben Ali's bloated security service specialised in such tactics as planting evidence in order to blackmail suspects. Taxi drivers commonly sought protection by joining the RCD or working as police informants. "Going too often to the mosque could mean a summons to State Security," says one. "They could lift your licence, and put you through hell to get it back."

Benalisme also brought corruption, particularly at the level of the president's own family.  With time the web of influence extended both to the husbands of Mr Ben Ali's four adult daughters and to the many relatives of his second wife, Leila Trabelsi, a former hairdresser whom he married in 1992. Between them, the Trabelsis and Mr Ben Ali's sons-in-law came to control a huge slice of the economy (see diagram). In recent years their tentacles penetrated deep into Tunisia's financial system, extracting sweetheart loans from once-respectable banks. 

In a rambling television address, the president blamed foreign agitators for the troubles. Sacking his feared interior minister, he promised a huge jobs programme, and inquiries into corruption and excessive police force. But this was too little, too late-and it also showed weakness.

  Rioters were now fighting the police in pitched battles, torching police stations and sacking banks and shops, particularly those thought to belong to RCD members.

In some cases the police themselves were accused of looting, either as part of a plan to tarnish the protesters and frighten the middle class, or simply to profit from the collapse of order.

So tarnished was the reputation of the police that Mr Ben Ali belatedly asked Tunisia's army to intervene. Some units did enter the capital, but refused to use force against protesters, who greeted them with cheers.

There is another way in which Tunisia's experience could prove subtly inspiring. "The one constant in revolutions is the primordial role played by the army," said Jean Tulard, a French historian of revolutions, in an interview in Le Monde. So far Tunisia's army, kept small to forestall coup attempts, has won kudos for holding the fort, and not playing politics. Yet it is the army which is believed to have persuaded Mr Ben Ali to leave. Perhaps a few generals elsewhere in the Arab world are thinking that they, too, might better serve their countries by doing something similar.

Unseemly, perhaps, but a lot is at stake. If Tunisia can become the Arab world's Turkey, a functioning democracy where Islamism is part of the electoral mosaic rather than a threat to it, the tired refrain of all the Arab despots that they are the only bulwark against the jihadists will be seen for the self-serving lie it has become.
 

I can't see President Hosni Mubarak, who's headed that regime for three decades, facing less than upheaval if he tries to hand power to his son, Gamal, in the current environment. There's more than a touch of "We're all Tunisians now" among misruled Arabs right now. They're talking Tunisian domino effect.

There will, in coming weeks, be agents provocateurs bent on the worst, and the usual Muslim-hating naysayers. Arab democracy is threatening to a host of vested interests and glib clichés. It is also the only way out of the radicalizing impasse of Arab klepto-gerontocracies and, as such, a vital American interest. 

Protests in Egypt are often quashed swiftly by the police, who prevent marching

So much for Arab strongmen.  Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (left)has fled the country - reportedly to Saudi Arabia - after thousands of demonstrators took to the capital's streets to demand his resignation.

"This is a demonstration of hope," said Moncef Ben Mrad, an independent newspaper editor. "It is the birth of a people who demand more freedom."

"No doubt, every Arab leader has watched Tunisia's revolt in fear while citizens across the Arab world watch in solidarity, elated at that rarity: open revolution," said Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy.

Others were suggesting that a democratic tsunami could wash away the region's ageing autocrats.  "There will be no way for Arab leaders to escape from this," said Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Institution's Doha Center. "Tunisia's reputation was of being the most stable in the Arab regimes. If it can happen in Tunisia, it can happen anywhere."

The elation is merited and understandable, but some democracy advocates will remain cautious, fearful that Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution could yet be a re-run of Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution. One painful lesson of the so-called color revolutions is that regime change does not necessarily lead to democratization. 

"The ruling party will to try maintain its grip on power, but the party is even more discredited than Ben Ali himself," said Radwan Masmoudi, an exiled Tunisian democracy advocate who heads the US-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.

"The only solution is a national unity government, followed by free and fair elections under international monitoring," he told Democracy Digest. "This is very feasible and doable."

"This is a crucial moment. There is a change of regime under way. Now it's the succession," said opposition leader Najib Chebbi."It must lead to profound reforms, to reform the law and let the people choose."

Western diplomats consider Chebbi the opposition's most credible figure, but media censorship means that he is little-known beyond opposition circles.