Latest news with #ZineElAbidineBenAli
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Tunisian 'revolution oasis' palm grove thrives on self-rule
Since the inhabitants of Jemna in southern Tunisia wrested control of their 100-year-old palm grove from the state during the 2011 Revolution, residents say their lives have radically improved. The desert town -- where the palms produce some of the North African country's finest dates -- ejected businessmen tied to the old regime when the uprising toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Jemna, population around 8,000, has since become a unique grassroots experiment in Tunisian agricultural self-management -- a non-profit project run by a local community to reinvest all benefits locally. Residents founded the Association to Protect the Jemna Oasis (ASOJ) which runs the grove where 57-year-old Abdelbasset Abed works full-time, along with some 50 other people. During harvest season, the 12,000 date palms provide work for 160 people -- 10 times more than before. Two-thirds of these are seasonal workers. "The situation is a lot better than before," said Abed as he cleared away dry branches at the foot of a towering date palm. "I have a stable job." - Visible results - The results are visible beyond the grove itself, with production generating nearly 14 million dinars (roughly $4.5 million) over the past 15 years. A covered market, a sports field, computer labs in schools, scholarships and funds for other groups... the association has created more opportunities in a highly indebted Tunisia where little to no government funding reaches NGOs. "They even help students with financial aid," Abed said of the ASOJ. UTAIM, another local association that works with children who have disabilities, has had a constant source of income after ASOJ donated 50 palm trees to it. "They gave us a stable source of revenue," UTAIM director Halima Ben Othman told AFP. The local cemetery has also been revamped using income generated by the town's surrounding palm trees. It now has a separation wall and a seating area for people visiting the graves of those buried there. "Even the dead benefit," smiled Tahar Ettahri, the head of ASOJ. Such gains did not come easily, however, and now locals are saying they have to fight to preserve their economic self-rule. Two days before Ben Ali fled the country in early 2011, locals occupied the palm grove that had been leased cheaply to two well-connected businessmen. - Peaceful sit-in - "The young people of Jemna decided to reclaim their ancestors' land," which Ettahri said had a history of being plundered since French colonial rule. When the regional governor sent armoured vehicles and deployed security forces in an attempt to reclaim the grove, residents staged a three-month peaceful sit-in. Meanwhile, they had to keep producing the dates. So local trade unionists, activists, and ordinary citizens formed a coalition, and a community fundraiser gathered some 34,000 dinars (about $10,000) from more than 800 contributors to fund the project at its onset. "We came together with the goal of improving the well-being of our community," Ettahri said. "We came from different ideological backgrounds, but our shared interest in Jemna united us. Maybe that's why we succeeded." In his book "Jemna, the Revolution Oasis", sociologist Mohamed Kerrou called it a unique legacy of the ideals that sparked the Arab Spring. Ettahri said this stemmed from a sharp sense of social justice and a propensity for the common good. The town has a public space -- the "Jemna Agora" -- where people are handed a microphone and speak freely to discuss a problem or to propose projects for locals to put to a vote. - Sorting plant - Despite being a success, with revenues of 1.8 million dinars (about $592,000) by the fourth year of self-management, Jemna has had to battle post-revolution governments in order to preserve its model. Now, 15 years later, Ettahri said residents were still waiting to "settle the issue legally with the state". The former unionist and teacher said this was not a fight against the authorities -- the residents asked to lease the grove, and were ready to pay 15 years in back rent. To comply with a decree from President Kais Saied establishing "citizen's enterprises", which cited Jemna as an example, the ASOJ has formed a "community company". It has 334 members -- far more than the required 50-member minimum -- and all of them insist on voluntary status, another unique aspect among such enterprises, Ettahri said. "It's a lot of members, but the idea is to sociologically represent everyone," Ettahri said. The group now aims to launch a plant to sort and package dates locally, providing year-round employment for 100 women. Ettahri, 72, is a grandfather of seven and has taken a step back from day-to-day date production. He still heads the ASOJ, but more as a lookout to warn of potential problems ahead. fka/bou/srm/fec
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Tunisian 'revolution oasis' palm grove thrives on self-rule
Since the inhabitants of Jemna in southern Tunisia wrested control of their 100-year-old palm grove from the state during the 2011 Revolution, residents say their lives have radically improved. The desert town -- where the palms produce some of the North African country's finest dates -- ejected businessmen tied to the old regime when the uprising toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Jemna, population around 8,000, has since become a unique grassroots experiment in Tunisian agricultural self-management -- a non-profit project run by a local community to reinvest all benefits locally. Residents founded the Association to Protect the Jemna Oasis (ASOJ) which runs the grove where 57-year-old Abdelbasset Abed works full-time, along with some 50 other people. During harvest season, the 12,000 date palms provide work for 160 people -- 10 times more than before. Two-thirds of these are seasonal workers. "The situation is a lot better than before," said Abed as he cleared away dry branches at the foot of a towering date palm. "I have a stable job." - Visible results - The results are visible beyond the grove itself, with production generating nearly 14 million dinars (roughly $4.5 million) over the past 15 years. A covered market, a sports field, computer labs in schools, scholarships and funds for other groups... the association has created more opportunities in a highly indebted Tunisia where little to no government funding reaches NGOs. "They even help students with financial aid," Abed said of the ASOJ. UTAIM, another local association that works with children who have disabilities, has had a constant source of income after ASOJ donated 50 palm trees to it. "They gave us a stable source of revenue," UTAIM director Halima Ben Othman told AFP. The local cemetery has also been revamped using income generated by the town's surrounding palm trees. It now has a separation wall and a seating area for people visiting the graves of those buried there. "Even the dead benefit," smiled Tahar Ettahri, the head of ASOJ. Such gains did not come easily, however, and now locals are saying they have to fight to preserve their economic self-rule. Two days before Ben Ali fled the country in early 2011, locals occupied the palm grove that had been leased cheaply to two well-connected businessmen. - Peaceful sit-in - "The young people of Jemna decided to reclaim their ancestors' land," which Ettahri said had a history of being plundered since French colonial rule. When the regional governor sent armoured vehicles and deployed security forces in an attempt to reclaim the grove, residents staged a three-month peaceful sit-in. Meanwhile, they had to keep producing the dates. So local trade unionists, activists, and ordinary citizens formed a coalition, and a community fundraiser gathered some 34,000 dinars (about $10,000) from more than 800 contributors to fund the project at its onset. "We came together with the goal of improving the well-being of our community," Ettahri said. "We came from different ideological backgrounds, but our shared interest in Jemna united us. Maybe that's why we succeeded." In his book "Jemna, the Revolution Oasis", sociologist Mohamed Kerrou called it a unique legacy of the ideals that sparked the Arab Spring. Ettahri said this stemmed from a sharp sense of social justice and a propensity for the common good. The town has a public space -- the "Jemna Agora" -- where people are handed a microphone and speak freely to discuss a problem or to propose projects for locals to put to a vote. - Sorting plant - Despite being a success, with revenues of 1.8 million dinars (about $592,000) by the fourth year of self-management, Jemna has had to battle post-revolution governments in order to preserve its model. Now, 15 years later, Ettahri said residents were still waiting to "settle the issue legally with the state". The former unionist and teacher said this was not a fight against the authorities -- the residents asked to lease the grove, and were ready to pay 15 years in back rent. To comply with a decree from President Kais Saied establishing "citizen's enterprises", which cited Jemna as an example, the ASOJ has formed a "community company". It has 334 members -- far more than the required 50-member minimum -- and all of them insist on voluntary status, another unique aspect among such enterprises, Ettahri said. "It's a lot of members, but the idea is to sociologically represent everyone," Ettahri said. The group now aims to launch a plant to sort and package dates locally, providing year-round employment for 100 women. Ettahri, 72, is a grandfather of seven and has taken a step back from day-to-day date production. He still heads the ASOJ, but more as a lookout to warn of potential problems ahead. fka/bou/srm/fec
Al Arabiya
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
The ‘Arab Spring' belongs to another era
The 'Arab Spring' truly belongs to another era. But a more cautious approach alone is not enough by itself to keep ghosts of trouble forever at bay. To avoid renewed unrest, many of the regimes of North Africa and the Middle East have, in varying degrees, learned to adjust their mores. For all the latest headlines follow, our Google News channel online or via the app. As protests erupted in south-central Tunisia earlier this month, some wondered if we were witnessing a remake of the December 2010 events which sparked the Arab Spring. Hundreds of inhabitants took to the streets of Mazzouna, a small city in the same province of Sidi Bouzid where a street vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire unleashing a wave of unrest which led to the fall of the Zine El Abidine Ben Ali regime, more than 14 years ago. The catalyst for the protests, this time, was the death of teenagers who were crushed under the weight of the debris of a decaying school wall, which local authorities neglected to repair. Another similarity were the protests by angry crowds which for a few days set tires on fire and blocked city roads to voice their anger. But similarities stopped there; as Tunisia of 2025 was not the Tunisia of 2010. In fact, all the Arab countries, which had witnessed the watershed upheaval of 2011 and even those which did not, have in many ways changed great deal. All across the region, there was a rude awakening the day after the Arab Spring. Ensuing experiences of civil war, chaos or just stalled transitions offered unappealing models. In Libya, the institutional vacuum created by four decades of Gadhafi rule, combined with outside interventions and domestic strife, hurled the country into a chaotic situation from which it is yet to recover. Revolts in Yemen and Syria evolved into full-fledged civil wars brought about by short-sighted and sectarian rulers and unbridled interference of foreign powers, wrecked the two countries. Tunisia, the poster child of the 'Arab spring,' did for a while offer the semblance of an exception. But, as its inept governments engaged in political feuding at the expense of economic reform, the country quickly joined the ranks of failed experiences providing cautionary tales about the consequences of regime change under street pressure. In most non-oil producing Arab countries, the lack of meaningful reform continued to fuel poverty and unemployment, breeding new contingents of despair. Populations learned not to believe in the politicians' promises nor to expect their salvation through elusive democratic change. They ended up pinning more hope on individual solutions, mainly emigration, than on street protests. To avoid renewed unrest, many of the regimes of North Africa and the Middle East have, in varying degrees, learned to adjust their mores. In dealing with occasional eruptions of protest, more cohesive and disciplined security forces have mostly abandoned recourse to lethal means while the protesters themselves learned to eschew violence in expressing their grievances. Drawing the lessons of the slippery path of extreme violence which ended up sealing the fate of 'Arab spring' regimes, such policies went a long way towards preventing protests from spinning out of control in more recent years, even if keeping a lid on vicious cycles of violence remained an uphill task in places awash with weapons, such as Libya or Iraq. The North African countries, which were not engulfed by the 2011 turmoil, were in fact those which had the wisdom to avoid using excessive force in dealing with demonstrators. Morocco escaped the maelstrom by managing to keep protests peaceful while pointing to the reforms and political overtures it had introduced in the nineties as well as by capitalising on the king's legitimacy. Despite mass protests, from December 2010 to January 2012, Algeria, too, avoided bloodshed. It had been immunized by the memory of its bloody decade and was helped by oil revenues it used to cushion social woes. On the political level, the post-2011 governments of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt learned the hard way that the fallen regimes' practices of dynastic rule, combined with corruption, were key to eruptions of anger, and hence should be a red-line for all not to cross. A more cautious form of authoritarianism was born; as rulers realized they should not take their tenure for granted. They were now convinced they had to appease social discontent by introducing reforms or at least taking token measures in the face of looming unrest; even if such palliatives could take their toll on the budgets. Not all regimes seemed to realize that the freedom of expression genie could not be put back in the bottle but no ruler could ignore the fact that social media have widened their reach and were proving, every day, that they were a step ahead of the authorities and of traditional media. The aftermath of the Arab Spring also led the West to modify its approach to countries of the region. Desire for stability trumped all cards. Regional governments were now meeting the West half-way: while Europe and the US showed a willingness to refrain from democratic proselytism and the advocacy of regime change, the countries south of the Mediterranean accommodated Western calls to fight illegal emigration and curtail cross-border security threats. In the battle for the hearts and minds, authorities in the Maghreb, in particular, stayed vigilant about the early signs of re-emergence of the 'Hogra' mindset among the disenfranchised. Such a mindset, long associated with the feeling by the poor and the marginalized of being disrespected by authorities, had always proven to be a mobilizing battle cry and a harbinger of incoming turbulence. The Arab Spring truly belongs to another era. But a more cautious approach alone is not enough, by itself, to keep ghosts of trouble forever at bay. There remains the need for meaningful reform in order to revive hope in the future and make sure constituencies of despair start shrinking. Till that happens, too many cadres and underprivileged youth will continue to set their sights on Europe instead of seeking better lives at home.
Jordan News
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Jordan News
Death of Tunisia's First President After Ben Ali's Regime Collapse in 2011 - Jordan News
Former Tunisian President Foued Mebazaa passed away on Wednesday at the age of 91, according to local media reports. Mebazaa served as the interim president of Tunisia after the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, following a popular uprising that overthrew his regime in 2011. اضافة اعلان Mebazaa held several ministerial positions, including Minister of Youth and Sports, Minister of Public Health, and Minister of Culture and Information. In late 2011, protests erupted in the Sidi Bouzid governorate following the self-immolation of young vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in protest against police treatment. The protests spread across the country, leading to Ben Ali fleeing the country. Mebazaa also presided over the Tunisian Chamber of Deputies from 1997 to 2011. He held various ministerial positions, moving between foreign affairs, youth and sports, and health during the presidencies of Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
