On 17th December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a penniless fruit seller in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid in Southern Tunisia set himself on fire. At the time there was no reason to think this would be anything more than just another largely anonymous chapter in Tunisia`s recent history. After 23 years in power, President Ben Ali had become a master of state repression, adept at controlling the message and crushing dissent but in less than a month he would be gone, starting a wave of revolutions that would fundamentally change the face of the Middle East.
