'Ben Ali could penetrate the French embassy, but as president he simply failed to learn about his own people .. From small kindlings do great fires grow .. Take the first uprising against Bashar al-Assad in Deraa – home to the old steam train station, by the way, in which TE Lawrence was supposedly assaulted by an Ottoman officer in the First World War – .. The fire had been lit. In Tunisia, an unemployed young man who set himself alight. In Syria, a turban.''<blockquote>'The odd thing about all these revolutions, of course, is that the dictators – be they the Ben Alis, the Mubaraks, the Salehs, the Assads, even the al-Sauds – spend more time spying on foreigners and amassing documentation of their people's transgressions than in trying to understand what their own indigenous populations actually want. Eric Rouleau, a Le Monde correspondent in Iran, who subsequently became French ambassador to Tunisia, has recounted how "General" Ben Ali, Tunisian minister of interior between 1985 and 1986, wished to acquire the very latest French communications equipment from Paris. The "pitiless 'superflic'", as Rouleau cruelly called him, trained by American intelligence in the US, had files on "everyone".
At one meeting with Rouleau, Ben Ali outlined the greatest threats to the Tunisian regime: social "unrest", tensions with a certain Colonel Gaddafi of Libya (here, one must admit a certain sympathy for Ben Ali) and – most serious of all – "the Islamist threat", whatever that may be. Rouleau remembered how "in a theatrical gesture, he (Ben Ali) pushed the button of a machine, which in an instant unrolled an unending list of names whom he said were under permanent surveillance. An information engineer, obsessed with technology, Mr Ben Ali did not cease to use this science of information gathering". Rouleau, who was sending back to Paris less than flattering accounts of the regime and its interior minister, was puzzled that his relations with Ben Ali declined steadily – until the day he ended his mission. "On the day of my final departure from Tunisia, when I went to pay my courtesy visit to him," Rouleau was to recall, "he asked me, in a state of white-hot anger, why I regarded him as a CIA agent possessed of unstoppable ambition. And he started quoting from his files, almost word for word, my own confidential telegrams to the Quai d'Orsay... The ambassador had not escaped from the intricate workings of his spy centre."
Ben Ali could penetrate the French embassy, but as president he simply failed to learn about his own people. There is an unforgettable photograph of the soon-to-be-deposed president as he rather tardily visits the young suicider-by-fire, Mohamed Bouazizi, as he lies dying in his hospital bed.
Ben Ali is doing his best to look concerned. The boy clearly unable to communicate. But the doctors and paramedics are watching the president rather than their patient and doing so with a tired impatience, which the president obviously does not comprehend. From small kindlings do great fires grow.
Take the first uprising against Bashar al-Assad in Deraa – home to the old steam train station, by the way, in which TE Lawrence was supposedly assaulted by an Ottoman officer in the First World War – where no amount of sophisticated intelligence could have forewarned the regime of what was to come. A place of historical rebellion, some youths had painted anti-Assad graffiti on a wall. The Syrian security police followed their normal practice of dragging the young men to the cop shop, beating and torturing them. But then their mothers arrived to demand their release. They were verbally abused by the police.
Then – much more seriously – a group of tribal elders went to see the Deraa governor to demand an explanation for the behaviour of the police.
Each placed his turban on the governor's desk, a traditional gesture of negotiation; they would only replace their turbans when the matter had been resolved. But the governor, a crusty old Baathist and regime-loyalist, took the turban of the most prestigious sheikh, threw it on the floor of his office and stamped on it.
The people of Deraa came out in their thousands to protest; the shooting started; Bashar hastily dismissed his governor and replaced him. Too late. The fire had been lit. In Tunisia, an unemployed young man who set himself alight. In Syria, a turban.'
- Robert Fisk,
'The Arab awakening began not in Tunisia this year, but in Lebanon in 2005,' 15 April 2011</blockquote>