How a Tunisian Fruit Vendor's Death Started the Syrian Civil War

Jay Ramesh

It only takes one man to change the world. But unfortunately, as we’ve seen recently in this country, it can also take one man’s death to spark a revolution. This is the story of how a Tunisian Fruit Vendor’s death started the Syrian Civil War, the European Refugee Crisis, and was a beacon of hope for millions that continue to live in darkness to this day.

Let me take you back to December 17, 2010. A day that will live in infamy. 

Mohamed Bouazizi had been selling fruit in the small Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid for years. The local administration was rife with corruption, especially in the police force. They required vendors to have “permits” to sell their goods, even though there was no such law in the town. As a vendor, you would have to bribe the police and inspectors to leave you alone, or you would be beaten, threatened, and extorted for whatever you have.

Bouazizi hated the corruption. He hated paying bribes, as well as the random fines and seizures the police and other administrators would plague him with. He wasn’t even a political man; just an everyday Joe trying to make enough money to put food on the table for his family, with the hopes of one day sending his sisters to get an education. 

On the morning of December 17, 2010, Bouazizi gathered his fruits and went to set up his cart at the market. After an argument with local inspectors over a bribe, they humiliated him, beat him, and “seized two crates of pears, one crate of bananas, three crates of apples, and his electronic scale — worth some $225, the entire capital of his business.” He begged the authorities for his inventory back, but as is usually the outcome in less developed countries rife with corruption and oppressive regimes, nothing happened.

An hour later, he walked up to the government building, covered himself in paint-thinner, and lit himself on fire. The flames of his actions are still burning to this day.

Videos of the self-immolation spread like wildfire across social media, sparking protests all over the country over already rampant unemployment and corruption. Within a month, the Tunisian government had collapsed, and the president, Ben Ali, had fled the country.

By February of 2011, what had started as a Tunisian protest had turned into a movement across the Islamic world, with protests occurring from Morocco to Iraq and from Syria to Sudan. The protests eventually spanned 12 countries and were collectively immortalized as the Arab Spring. By the end of 2011, the authoritarian governments of Egypt, Libya, and Yemen had been toppled.

However, things went wrong in Syria.

Massive protests in Syria led dictator Bashar al-Assad to brutally crackdown on unrest and dissent, leading to hundreds of deaths by July 2011. Protestors took up arms to initially defend themselves, but rebel groups began to form, vowing to rid the country of Assad’s regime. As the violence escalated, Assad mobilized the army and sent troops to try and consolidate power across the nation, leading to open conflict. The Syrian Civil War had begun, and continues to rage on to this day, almost 10 years later.

But why? Why did a Tunisian’s man protest change the world? 

Well, because it wasn’t about politics. Bouazizi wasn’t a political man in any way. He was just an average person who, like millions across the Arab world, was struggling to survive under the crushing boot of corrupt, authoritarian governments. His self-immolation was a symbol of the hopelessness, the despair, the sheer desperation that millions had been driven to. Bouazizi had lost everything in the span of a single morning: his career, his family’s future, and his dignity as a human being, all because of corruption and the oppression he suffered at the hands of people meant to protect him.

The Arab Spring was a manifestation of this feeling, the pure frustration at a shared life that millions still have to endure every single day. Bouazizi will be immortalized as a simple man who didn’t die for what he believed in, but had his life taken away by his own government. It takes one voice to change a nation, but it can take one death to change the world.