Each Sunday this summer, we’re sharing an essay from the archives that provides a rare first-person account of history as it unfolded. This week, we’re bringing you Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi’s 2016 essay on his decades spent advocating for political freedom in Tunisia, culminating in the first revolution of the Arab Spring—and the country’s brief moment as a blossoming democracy.
After Tunisia won its independence from France in 1956, the country was ruled by Habib Bourguiba, a secular modernizer. But by the early 1980s, the regime had descended into authoritarianism and repression. With the crackdown on political and civil liberties growing worse, Ghannouchi co-founded the moderate Islamic party Ennahda in 1981, inspired by reformist Islamic movements across the Arab world, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Ghannouchi had hoped to open political space, but instead, he and many of his colleagues were imprisoned between 1981 and 1984.
In 1987, Bourguiba was deposed by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, marking a potential political opening. But as Ennahda grew more popular, he moved to crush the party, arresting, imprisoning, and torturing tens of thousands of its members. “Many others, including me, were forced into exile,” Ghannouchi writes. “For the next two decades, Tunisia languished under repression, and Ennahda struggled to survive as a banned underground movement.” Then came 2010, when the self-immolation of a young Tunisian street vendor sparked massive protests around the country, ultimately forcing Ben Ali to flee and prompting a series of revolts across the Arab world. In the country’s first free and fair elections, in October 2011, Ennahda won a plurality of the vote.
Tunisia’s adoption of a liberal-democratic constitution in 2013 enshrined its position as a beacon of hope for the Arab world, much of which had descended into civil war or regressed into authoritarianism in the years following the Arab Spring. By the time Ghannouchi wrote the essay, Ennahda had announced a major change: it was renouncing its label as an Islamist party and embracing “a new identity as a party of Muslim democrats.” Ghannouchi thought this example of a thriving Muslim democracy would have powerful repercussions. “By showing that Muslim democracy can respect individual rights, promote social and economic opportunities, and protect Arab Islamic values and identities, the successful consolidation of democracy in Tunisia will serve as a rebuke to secular tyrants and violent extremists alike.”
In recent years, though, Tunisian democracy has taken a dark turn. In 2021, President Kais Saied suspended the country’s parliament in what amounted to a self-coup. He has since consolidated his autocratic rule by arresting dozens of leading opposition figures—including Ghannouchi, who was apprehended in April on charges of plotting against state security. Hours after the 81-year-old was arrested, authorities raided and closed Ennahda headquarters. Ghannouchi, who had become one of Saied’s fiercest opponents and most ardent critics, was sentenced to a year in prison in May.
