The recently revealed emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shed light on a cast of key characters and their roles in informing the decisions, diplomatic phone calls, and initiatives that constitute US response to what was unfolding in Tunisia at the time of revolution.
The agitation that a democratic model allows represents a prompt for open, substantial discussion, create space for questions to form and answers to be formulated, for awareness to shift and public opinion to fluctuate and controversy to take its course … For over a decade, Nawaat has been a platform many of whose contributors are quick to question, criticize, and call out the Tunisian and foreign governments for hypocrisy, complicity, exploit, corruption…the very symptoms of defective governance that were renounced by youth and activists and journalists of the so-called Arab Spring, the same individuals whom Western democracies and international agencies have so effusively commended for their courage and commitment to changing the status quo. And so inevitably it feels like something of a betrayal when requests for more specific information and questions regarding political motives are consistently held at bay, excluded from discussions, or, most conveniently, ignored.
