ABSTRACT
It all started with a young fruit and vegetable street vendor in Tunisia. His name was Mohamed Bouazizi. On December 17, 2010, while he was quietly attempting to sell fruits and vegetables from his stand in the city of Sidi Bouzid to support his family, Mr. Bouazizi was confronted by a municipal inspector who challenged him on his right to sell his wares because he had not obtained a license from the local government authority to do so. Mr. Bouazizi protested. He thought he was being harassed. His goods were confiscated, and while his goods were being seized, he was allegedly slapped in the face by the city inspector, who was a woman. Having lost his means of economic livelihood and having suffered a public affront to his dignity and sense of masculinity, Mr. Bouazizi purchased a can of petrol, poured it over himself and self-immolated in front of the provincial governor's office police in protest. His self-immolation caused the city of Sidi Bouzid to rise in public demonstrations. Those demonstrations spread throughout rural Tunisia throughout the month of December and eventually reached the capital of Tunis during January 2011. On January 14, 2011, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, an authoritarian ruler who had reigned over Tunisia for 23 years, relinquished his rule and boarded an airplane for Saudi Arabia. The Tunisian revolt and Ben Ali's departure encouraged a chain of revolutions, revolts, and mass demonstrations that would lead to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, the assassination of Leader/Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, constitutional reform in Morocco and Jordan, economic reform in Saudi Arabia, the repression of demonstrations in Algeria and Bahrain, and an ongoing revolt in Syria that at the date of this writing has claimed more than 70,000 lives.
