Street demonstrations force Tunisia's leader to flee

TUNIS, Tunisia — Tunisia's president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, fled his country Friday night, capitulating after a month of mounting protests calling for an end to his 23 years of authoritarian rule. The official Saudi Arabian news agency said he arrived in that country early Saturday.

Ben Ali's fall marked the first time that widespread street demonstrations have overthrown an Arab leader. Before the last clouds of tear gas had drifted away from the cafe-lined Bourguiba Boulevard in Tunis, the capital, people throughout the Arab world had begun debating whether Tunisia's uprising could prove to be a model, threatening other autocratic rulers in the region.

"What happened here is going to affect the whole Arab world," said Zied Mhirsi, 33, a doctor protesting outside the Interior Ministry on Friday.

He carried a sign highlighting how he believed Tunisia's protests could embolden the swelling numbers of young people around the Arab world to emulate the so-called Jasmine revolution.

Because the protests came together largely through informal online networks, their success has also raised questions about whether a new opposition movement has formed that could challenge whatever government takes shape.

Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, a close ally from the president's hometown, said on state television that he was taking power as interim president. But that step violated the Tunisian Constitution, which provides for a succession by the head of Parliament, something that Ghannouchi tried to gloss over by describing Ben Ali as "temporarily" unable to serve.

By late Friday, Tunisian Facebook pages previously emblazoned with the revolt's slogan, "Ben Ali, Out," had made way for the name of the interim president. "Ghannouchi Out," they declared.

European tour companies, meanwhile, moved thousands of tourists out of the country. Foreign airlines halted service to Tunisia, and said the country's airspace had been temporarily shut down.

The office of Saudi King Abdullah confirmed early Saturday that ousted Ben Ali and his family had landed in Saudi Arabia, after several hours of mystery over his whereabouts. "As a result of the Saudi kingdom's respect for the exceptional circumstances the Tunisian people are going through ... we have welcomed" him, the statement said.

Ben Ali's downfall sent a potentially frightening message to autocratic leaders across the Arab world, especially because he did not seem especially vulnerable until very recently.

He managed the economy of his small country of 10.6 million better than many other Middle Eastern nations. He turned Tunisia into a beach haven for tourists, helping create an area of stability in volatile North Africa. There was a lack of civil rights and little or no freedom of speech, but a better quality of life for many than in neighboring Algeria and Libya.

News of the president's departure followed, by just hours, the biggest battle yet between the protesters and security forces. Emboldened by a last-minute pledge from Ben Ali to stop shooting demonstrators, up to 10,000 people poured into the streets.

But when they paraded the body of a person said to have been shot elsewhere in the city, the waiting rows of police officers stormed the crowd, filling the streets with a thick cloud of tear gas and hammering fleeing demonstrators with clubs.

In a final bid to placate the protesters, Ben Ali had pledged to hold parliamentary elections in six months. Those elections are now expected to include a presidential contest.

But fair and open elections would be a first for Tunisia. Ben Ali, a former prime minister who took power in a bloodless coup, was only the second president of the country, which won independence from France in 1956.

Tunis remained under a tight curfew late Friday. Groups of more than two people were forbidden on the streets after 5 p.m., and no one was allowed out after 8 p.m. State media warned that police would shoot curfew violators on sight. Tanks and other security forces were deployed around the city, and the airport was shut down.

As night fell, gangs of security forces armed with machine guns and clubs could be seen chasing stragglers. Dozens have died in clashes with the police in the past week, and continued gun shots were reported well after curfew Friday.

The U.S. had counted Tunisia under Ben Ali as an important ally in battling terrorism. But Friday, President Obama said he applauded "the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people."

The anti-government protests began a month ago when a college-educated street vendor in the town of Sidi Bouzid named Mohamed Bouaziz, 26, burned himself to death in despair at the frustration and joblessness confronting many educated young Tunisians.

Unemployment, officially measured at 13.3 percent, is far higher — 52 percent — among the young. Despair among job-seeking young graduates is widespread.

The protests Bouaziz inspired quickly evolved from bread-and-butter issues to demands for an assault on the perceived corruption and self-enrichment of the ruling family.

The protesters, led at first by unemployed college graduates like Bouaziz and later joined by workers and young professionals, found grist for the complaints in leaked cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia, released by WikiLeaks, that detailed the self-dealing and excess of the president's family. And the protesters relied heavily on social-media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to circulate videos of each demonstration and issue calls for the next one.

By midday Friday, hours before news of the president's departure, demonstrators had gathered outside the Interior Ministry and were celebrating their anticipated victory and debating its significance.

"Thank you Al-Jazeera," read one sign, commending the Arab news channel for its nightly coverage of the unrest, long before the Western media took serious notice.

Some in the crowd were eager to emphasize the education and relative affluence they said distinguished them from other people in the region. "Please don't say we are the same as Algeria," one woman said in fluent English.

"We are the Bourguiba generation," she said, referring to Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president and the father of its broad middle class.

He poured resources into Tunisia's educational system and made higher education effectively free. He also pushed a social agenda of secularization, women's rights, birth control and family planning that, in contrast to most countries in the region, slowed population growth, keeping the job of public education and social welfare manageable.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.