Nobel to the Tunisian Quartet

If it is surprising that Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the reasons is that the award is a couple of years late. The four - the Tunisian General Labor Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers - helped establish a political process when the country was on the brink of civil war amid a deepening political and economic crisis, but that was in 2013. The quartet has since lost some of its significance. Still, its importance cannot be underestimated. The quartet is credited with creating a national dialogue between the country's Islamist and secular coalition parties in 2013, two years after the revolution, when security in the country was threatened following the assassination of key politicians and deadly clashes between Islamists and secular parts of society. It was a time when Tunisia was grappling with striking a balance between the rise of political Islam in the country and the traditional secular politics it had been accustomed to for decades. The quartet was created after the high-profile assassination of the leftist politician Mohamed Al-Brahmi in 2013, which sparked protests across the country and came a few months after the first political assassination of Chokri Belaid. The government was paralyzed, the constitution unfinished and the country on the verge of war. And, just as Egyptians wanted to do the same as Tunisians when they overthrew their government, it was Tunisia’s turn to want to follow Egypt when the latter overthrew its Islamist government. But in Tunisia, the Islamist-led government and the opposition had to sit down together and agree on a new government to end the crisis. Several times talks broke down but in the end, with the help of the quartet, the two sides were brought together and agreed on a caretaker prime minister and government. The quartet in essence, got the Islamists to agree to resign, which was no mean feat. Thus, Tunisians held their first freely contested democratic presidential election last December, which was won by Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi of the secular-leaning Nidaa Tounes Party who said the award recognized the country's decision to choose the "path of consensus". Had the quartet been involved in another Arab Spring country, it might not have met with the same success. Tunisia's uprising was not only the first in the Arab world but was its most successful. Whether because Tunisia’s population is relatively small and highly educated, or because its police are not as aggressive, Tunisia managed a relatively successful transition to democracy. But the country is still facing some very serious security problems, particularly from Islamists over the border in Libya. Despite its small size, Tunisia provides the most foreign recruits to Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS), with estimates of more than 3,000 having left to fight in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Some return to Tunisia, as evidenced by the two major terror attacks this year alone, on Tunis's renowned Bardo Museum in March in which 22 people were killed, and on the resort of Sousse in June in which 38 tourists were killed. The quartet did not figure in the favorites for the Nobel Prize. The focus was on Pope Francis for his calls for economic fairness in the world, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel after she welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to Europe - in large part because of the chaos created by the Arab Spring. But the Nobel judges saw that tearing down the old order in the Middle East was always going to be much easier than building the new.