Pope Francis, Secretary of State John Kerry, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among those said to be likely to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Few prognosticators could have heard of the civil-society groups that make up the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, let alone have imagined that they would be awarded the prize.
The Nobel committee praised the quartet—composed of the Human Rights League, the General Labor Union, the Order of Lawyers, and the Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts—for its “decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy . . . in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution in 2011.” Since its foundation two years ago, the quartet has been “instrumental in enabling Tunisia . . . to establish a constitutional system of government guaranteeing fundamental rights for the entire population, irrespective of gender, political conviction or religious belief,” the committee said. By offering a functional alternative to political violence and social unrest the quartet had helped Tunisians to avoid a civil war.
The Nobel committee’s decision is inspired and also timely. It offers a momentary break from the avalanche of verdicts, assumptions, disappointments, and regrets that have come to overwhelm discussions about the Arab Spring, and it allows us to consider what actually occurred in 2011 in the Middle East. It has not been possible to think clearly about what has taken place, and is continuing to unfold today, partly because the conversation about the Arab revolutions has become indulgent. It is obsessed with regret. The ideological transformation has been striking, and dizzying to those who witness and suffer from it: The same voices that once spoke with passion and force for democracy are now whispering remorse for ever having stood up to tyranny.
Mass migration and loss of life, and the destruction of entire cities, is horrific. Civil war is a national crisis, and also a private trauma: We suffer it collectively, and in isolation. Seeing your own kill and be killed by one another is a daily tragedy. Watching your compatriots run across foreign lands to reach a place of safety and dignity darkens the hours. The despair can break you, and make you long for the savage stability that a boot on the neck once provided. But that is a failure of imagination and a failure of reason. We mustn’t let despair and bewilderment make us doubt the authenticity of our revolutions. Our people did not rise out of indulgence or because they were manipulated by outside forces, but exactly to end the indulgences of dictatorship and the interferences of foreign powers.
A thunder struck when the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria were overrun with pro-democracy marches. Those demonstrations did not just shake the Arab world; they nudged every nation. They interfered with the order of the day, where an authoritarian pragmatism cloaks every human argument, until all we have left to believe in is brute force and the economy—“taking refuge,” as Marilynne Robinson puts it, “by hiding our head in the ledger.” The Arab Spring, with all of its failings and failures, exposed the lie that if we are to live then we must live as slaves. It was an attempt to undermine not only the orthodoxy of dictatorship but also an international political orthodoxy where every activity must be approved by the profit logic of the “ledger.”
The success of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet to facilitate compromise between opposing political, religious, and economic camps demonstrates that—despite the challenges and the tragedies that surround us—close coördination, patient dialogue, and civil organization can not only work but work best. The quartet reaffirms the authentic spirit of the Arab Spring and is a testament to Tunisia’s freedoms and robust civil society as well. Cairo used to be the preferred base of human-rights organizations working in the region. Now most such N.G.O.s have moved to Tunisia. Tunis, the capital, has become the Mecca of the Arab world’s best human-rights workers and lawyers. And even though the political situation in Tunisia remains fragile, international recognition of this collaboration between trade unions, human-rights campaigners, and lawyers can only bolster civil society in the nation and the region. The prize is a bright spot in a dark time.
