Unrest threatens Arab Spring's 1 "real success story"
KASSARINE, Tunisia -- Tunisia imposed a nationwide overnight curfew Friday in response to growing unrest over unemployment as protests across the country descended into vandalism in several cities, harking back to the upheaval that sparked the Arab Spring almost five years earlier in the same country.
The curfew from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. was to begin Friday because the attacks on public and private property "represent a danger to the country and its citizens," the Interior Ministry said. The previous night, police stations came under attack and security officers used tear gas to repel protesters armed with stones and Molotov cocktails.
In housing projects on the outskirts of the capital, Tunis, roving groups of young people pillaged a bank and looted stores and warehouses.
Tunisia's prime minister, Habib Essid, was cutting short a visit to France to deal with the protests, which were triggered Sunday when a young man who lost out on a government job climbed a transmission tower in protest and was electrocuted. Tunisia's unemployment stands around 15 percent, but is 30 percent among young people.
"Are we not Tunisians too? It's been four years I've been struggling. We're not asking for much, but we're fighting for our youth. We struggled so much for them," said Leila Omri, the mother of an unemployed graduate in Kesserine.
The suicide five years ago of another unemployed youth in the area set off a popular uprising that overthrew Tunisia's longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and eventually gave rise to the "Arab Spring" uprisings across North Africa.
Tunisia's government on Wednesday announced a series of measures for the outlying regions and an investigative commission to look into allegations of corruption.
Tunisia has often been held up as a relative success story from the Arab Spring -- one of the few nations that saw a populist uprising end in relative peace and a new, democratic government.
Since 2011, terrorist attacks have plagued the country, but only last year did Islamic extremists operating in Tunisia turn their attention from targeting security forces, toward attacking the nation's vital tourism industry.
In June, as holiday makers from Europe and across the Arab world packed the famed beaches of the resort town of Sousse, a gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) opened fire on a stretch of sand in front of luxury hotels and cafes, killing almost 40 people.
That attack, and a similar one earlier in 2015 at the world-famous Bardo Museum in Tunis which also appeared to target foreign visitors, dealt a serious blow to Tunisia's image as a stable, democratic nation emerging from its revolution in 2011, said Jonathan Hill, a professor of Defense Studies at King's College in London.
"The terrorists are attacking Tunisia's reputation," he said. "Not just as a safe and welcoming destination for Western holidaymakers, but as the one real success story to emerge out of the Arab Spring."
Nearly half a million Britons visited Tunisia in 2014, but with the attacks last year, Simon Calder, a London-based travel commentator predicted that the U.K. Foreign Office would "declare the summer effectively over for Tunisia, and it will destroy -- besides the lives taken -- the tens of thousands of livelihoods who depend on tourism for a living."