Ten years after the uprisings that swept the Arab world in 2011, beginning with Tunisia in December 2010, and dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’, commentators continue to debate their causes, the reasons for their widespread territorial spread, and the implications for regional politics. The Arab Spring has been described as belonging ‘to the genuine surprises in human history’ owing to the fact that no scholar or diplomat appears to have predicted it. The first uprising occurred in a historically marginalised and developmentally suppressed province of the country, Sidi Bouzid in south-central Tunisia. Since the 1980s, this province has used regular protests to express its dissatisfaction with its exclusion from state politics and the economy. Workers, students, and taxi drivers went on strike across the country in 2000. These were followed in 2008 by mining strikes that began in the neighbouring Gafsa province and spread across the country. This was the context in which the first Arab Spring protest occurred.

On December 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, an unlicensed fruit vendor in Sidi Bouzid village, was confronted with the might and indifference of his authoritarian state when police officers broke his cart and slapped him for conducting an ‘illegal’ business. He then set himself on fire after the local governor's office ignored his complaint. Local protests erupted in response to Bouazizi's self-immolation, igniting a fire that quickly spread across the country. The country appeared to be perched on a tinder box. By the time Bouazizi died on January 4, 2011, the entire country had been rocked by protests calling for the ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben-Ali, who had ruled for twenty-four years. Unprepared for such an outpouring of national outrage, the president promised free elections, liberty and human rights, and job creation. The public, on the other hand, remained fixated on their primary demand. On the 12th of January, he ordered the army to open fire, but the generals refused and returned the soldiers to their barracks. On 14 January, President Zine al Abedine Ben-Ali fled Tunisia, gaining notoriety as the first Arab authoritarian ruler to be deposed by a popular resistance in the post- World War II era.