by Ahmed E. Souaiaia* The leader of al-Nahda movement, Rachid Ghannouchi, made his first visit to a foreign country after the first post-revolution Tunisian elections. His choice was the State of Qatar. Analysts see many messages in this gesture but some Tunisians are troubled by the invitation he had extended to the Emir of Read more
Continue Readingby Ahmed E. Souaiaia* Before January 14, 2011, al-Nahda was the main opposition group in Tunisia. No one, even its most severe critics, could question the fact that it was the most persecuted group in terms of the number of political prisoners, exiles, and disappearances. Its politics aside, al-Nahda did not shy away from challenging Read more
Continue Readingby Ahmed E. Souaiaia* The country that started the Arab Spring made its first step towards pluralistic, representative governance. On October 23, 2011 and before the eyes of hundreds of national and international monitors, observers, and reporters, Tunisians lined up to elect their representatives for the Constituency Council (Assembly). Nearly ten months after the overthrow Read more
Continue ReadingOutside Tunis one afternoon last week I visited the Tunisian American Association for Management Studies, which offers vocational training and literacy courses to working-class women. A sewing class had just ended, and the participants—a dozen girls and women between the ages of fifteen and fifty, most of them wearing headscarves—agreed to talk about the country’s Read more
Continue ReadingIn another sign of nervousness resulting from the mounting pressure put by the Arab revolts on authoritarian rulers, members of the GCC (Cooperative Council for the Arab States of the Gulf) unexpectedly opened the door for considering the admission of Jordan and Morocco to this intergovernmental organization. In doing so, what used to be a Read more
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