Civil resisters open up and occupy political space - opportunities for persuasion and organization - on a scale their armed cousins cannot.
Members of resistance movements from Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia come together on Gezi Radyo to compare experiences, discuss ways to cooperate and debate how to build a better future.
Rachid Ghannouchi was in need of both political reassurance (and indeed financial backing) from the Obama Administration that the Ennahdha Party would not go the way of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
Mutual fear may prevail and the use of force be felt necessary. Exactly this plays into the hands of the parasites inside the apparatus who are busy transforming themselves into a self-governing body within the state (especially the Interior Ministry) that can exploit, if not directly manipulate,
In addition to the transitional process falling into paralysis, there is also a palpable sense of insecurity. The political assassinations, once relatively unknown in Tunisia, are now picking up their own deadly momentum.
Everywhere the Arab uprisings have been confronted by the entrenched vested interests of old regimes, the so-called ‘deep state’ in Egypt, and by Islamist populism. The alignment of regional powers, following geopolitical interests, has sharpened the sectarian lines. But these alignments are not s
Tunisia’s second high-profile political assassination highlights the gravest shortcoming of the nascent Islamist government: the inability to contain the violence that increasingly threatens Tunisia’s fragile transition - a violence set to divide loyalties and destroy social cohesion, foreclosing
Two years after the revolution, Tunisians have reclaimed public spaces in the city. But failing municipalities, a lack of law enforcement, and scant engagement with urban planners are a cause for concern.
It is a commonplace that since the 1970s, capitalism has left the western working class as roadkill on the road to globalization. What is new about our contemporary moment is that the same is increasingly true for the Euro-American middle class.
Almost by default, the swelling numbers of young Arabs, especially in the culturally vibrant centres of the Arab world (Cairo, Tunis, Beirut, Damascus, Casablanca, Kuwait, Manama), will create plurality - in social views, political positions, economic approaches, and in social identities and frame
Ennahda's attempts to institutionalise its power and silence its opposition cannot be condoned. Nevertheless, Tunisia’s stymied liberalisation process must be understood within the broader context of domestic power dynamics, rather than solely through the lens of an ‘anti-democratic’ Islamist regi
Civil society in Tunisia is embroiled in a struggle for political power now raging in the transitional period which is divided along secular and Islamist lines.
