Tunisia

1. For 23 years, a combination of harsh repression and impressive socio-economic development in Tunisia ensured a certain level of stability of Ben Ali’s regime. However, on 14 January 2011, after several weeks of anti-government protests, the President fled the country, revealing the fallacy of the ‘Tunisian model’. While the departure of Ben Ali is an important step towards Tunisia’s political change, the fate of its democratic transition remains uncertain. In light of these changes and challenges, this paper first assesses the factors underpinning the former stability of Ben Ali’s regime; it then investigates the causes of its underlying unsustainability, culminating in the anti-government popular uprising in December 2010-January 2011 and the removal of Ben Ali; finally the paper evaluates the prospects for a real democratic transition in Tunisia, by highlighting the main political and socio-economic challenges that confront the country. Tunisia

2. In May 2012, the government announced that the ruling party had strengthened its rule in parliamentary elections, a result that met with widespread skepticism. In fact, most Algerians. Anywhere from 60 percent to 80 percent boycotted the vote. In January 2013, Algeria was drawn into the conflict in Mali, its neighbor to the south, when militants seized dozens of hostages from an internationally managed gas field in Algeria, saying the act was in retaliation for a French military assault on the Islamist extremists who had taken control of northern Mali. The next day, Algerian forces launched a raid that led to days of fighting in the maze-like complex. The following week, the prime minister said that 37 hostages had been killed, including three Americans, and that 29 of the kidnappers had been killed and three had been captured. The kidnapping was said by officials to be the work of Al Mulathameen, a group that broke away in 2012 from the Al Qaeda branch, and which is led by a militant and smuggler named MoktharBelmokthar who has been active in politics, moneymaking and fighting for decades in the Sahel. Algeria

3. Egypt On Wednesday, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the law governing the elections should be referred to the Supreme Constitutional Court, putting on hold all preparations until after it had been reviewed. Nominations were due to open at the weekend. With government coffers running out of money, and police and the army staging regular battles with street protesters in cities across the country, the latest, highly technical, ruling has already led commentators to fear Egypt is becoming a "failed state".

4. Libya The United Nations Security Council passed an initial resolution on 26 February, freezing the assets of Gaddafi and his inner circle and restricting their travel, and referred the matter to the International Criminal Court for investigation. In early March, Gaddafi's forces rallied, pushed eastwards and re-took several coastal cities before reaching Benghazi. A further U.N. resolution authorized member states to establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, and to use "all necessary measures" to prevent attacks on civilians. The Gaddafi government then announced a ceasefire, but failed to uphold it though it then accused rebels of violating the ceasefire when they continued to fight as well. Throughout the conflict, rebels rejected government offers of a ceasefire and efforts by the African Union to end the fighting because the plans set forth did not include the removal of Gaddafi.

5. Saudi Arabia In the wake of the tumult, the Saudi ruling family has had to reassess a very different world. King Abdullah began wielding his checkbook right after leaders in Tunisia and Egypt fell, seeking to placate the public and reward a loyal religious establishment. The king’s reserves, swollen by more than $214 billion in oil revenue in 2011, have insulated the royal family from widespread demands for change even while some discontent simmers.

6. Jordan On Feb. 1, the king dismissed his cabinet and prime minister in a surprise effort to calm street protests that had also been fueled by the country’s worst economic crisis in years. In June, he announced that the government would in the future be elected, not appointed, responding to a demand of protesters calling for democratic change. That fall, the king fired his government yet again. But in September 2012, angry protests erupted over a planned 10 percent increase in gas prices, part of an effort to reduce the subsidy burden on the state budget and fill a $3 billion deficit caused largely by a decrease in aid from Persian Gulf states. King Abdullah quickly cancelled the increase after a weekend of demonstrations and after 89 of Parliament’s 120 members signed a statement of no confidence in the prime minister over the hikes.

7. In February 2012, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the country’s former vice president, was elected president. But the reality is that Mr. Saleh still wields considerable influence in Yemen. His relatives control most of the military and government security agencies. Mr. Hadi has been slowly shedding his government of officials from the old administration who are either members of the Saleh family or staunch Saleh loyalists. But this has not always gone smoothly, and the extent of Mr. Hadi’s authority to remake Yemen remains in doubt. And while Mr. Hadi has been fending off Saleh loyalists, his fledgling government has found itself overwhelmed by a set of dangerous new challenges to the country’s stability, including a series of bold attacks by a resurgent militant movement in the south, where many are eager for secession and a security breach has allowed an Al Qaeda affiliate to grow strong. In addition, he has faced open defiance from the old guard, after he tried to dismiss or reassign officials loyal to his predecessor, Mr. Saleh. Yemen

8. Syria President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained doctor who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April 2011, just days after lifting the country’s decades-old state of emergency, he set off the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators. In retrospect, the attacks appeared calculated to turn peaceful protests violent, to justify an escalation of force. By the end of February 2013, more than 70,000 people, mostly civilians, were thought to have been killed and tens of thousands of others had been arrested. More than two million had been displaced and more than four million needed assistance, according to the United Nations

9. Tunisia • In order to help Tunisia we would have to find a new political leader. If we were institute a new leader the people may reject it and riot against it. We could offer political advice and then have them implement this advice in there own way.