No one expected the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet to win the Nobel Peace Prize this year. There are two reasons for this. First, the history of the award indicates that, in similar circumstances, it is granted to the parties of a conflict who succeed in reaching accords that end crises that threaten civil or international peace and security. It is not awarded to mediators, however instrumental they may have been in the realisation of a settlement. The Nobel Peace Prize of 1973 was awarded to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for the agreement intended to end the war in Vietnam. In 1978, it was awarded to Anwar Al-Sadat and Menachem Begin for the Camp David agreements that created a general framework for Palestinian autonomous rule and for the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The Nobel Peace Prize of 1993 was awarded to Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk in recognition of their efforts to reach an agreement that ended the apartheid regime and established the foundations for equality for the black majority in South Africa. In 1994, the prize was awarded to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for reaching the Oslo Accords on the Palestinian question. But mediating parties in those conflicts rarely received the prize, despite having played roles that may have been crucial to producing the agreements. President Jimmy Carter, regardless of his central role, was not made a co-winner of the prize following the success of the Camp David negotiations in 1978. True, Carter would win the Nobel in 2002, but that was in recognition of his efforts to advocate human rights in various parts of the world, rather than for his efforts as a mediator in Camp David. To my knowledge, the only case in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize in which a mediator was granted the prestigious award was in 1906. The recipient was US President Theodore Roosevelt for his successful mediation to end the Russo-Japanese War. That the Tunisian quartet acted as a mediator in ending the crisis that gripped the Jasmine Revolution — as opposed to being a partner in it — makes its win a remarkable exception. Second, the prize was awarded to the quartet a year later than it merited. The national dialogue led by the quartet began in early October 2013 and ended in late January 2014. It enabled the parties to the conflict to agree on a roadmap that would steer Tunisia out of its dangerous crisis. On 26 January, a consensus on the constitution was reached, and on 29 January a consensus was reached on the creation of a nonpartisan government. In other words, the quartet completed the task for which it won the Nobel Peace Prize at the outset of 2014, which means that it was already qualified to become a Nobel laureate that year. It is noteworthy that on 21 November 2014 the well-regarded American Foreign Policy Committee included Houcine Abassi, secretary-general of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and the architect of the quartet, in its list of that year's “100 leading global thinkers.” Why, then, did it take another whole year for the Tunisian quartet to win the Nobel? They say that you know a thing by its opposite. It appears that the real value of the role the quartet played in realising civil peace and security in Tunisia was not fully appreciated in all its dimensions until after the other Arab Spring countries had fallen into bottomless chasms of civil war, sectarian conflict and counterrevolution. Naturally, against such deeply gloomy and depressing scenes, the Tunisian experience seems like a ray of light capable of spreading an element of joy and reviving a glimmer of hope in spite of persistent labour pains. Perhaps, the Nobel Committee wanted to make absolutely sure that the democratisation process in Tunisia was firmly on its feet and that the nascent experience could withstand all challenges before it decided to honour those who engineered this success. We should also note that the Nobel Committee has not always been above suspicion. Its choices have frequently sparked international controversy over the role played by considerations of political balance, accommodation, ingratiation and the like in the selection process. It is sufficient here to recall that the committee did not balk at granting its most prestigious prize to the veteran terrorist and war criminal Menachem Begin and to members of the Israeli ruling establishment such as Peres and Rabin who, in my opinion, hardly merited the award as — like all Israeli officials — they played a part in the death and displacement of millions of Palestinians. In fact, I also believe that some Arab laureates, such as Sadat and Arafat, did not merit the prize either, because they compromised on non-negotiable Arab/Palestinian rights, thereby causing Israel to become more intransigent and obstruct the realisation of a genuine peace, while the Nobel Prize laureates were given the opportunity to pose as peacemakers. This said, the selection of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet as the winners this year was a wise decision untainted by suspicion of bias or flattery. There is virtual global unanimity that the role played by the four Tunisian civil society institutions, led by UGTT, was fundamental to the success of democratic transformation in that country and to enabling it to avert the fate of the other Arab Spring revolutions. True, the civil society institutions were not alone. They were aided by other important institutions, most notably the military establishment and the Ennahda movement. The former remained strictly impartial in the political crisis, without slacking in its duties to safeguard the country's peace and security. Ennahda, which won a majority in the first general elections held after the revolution and headed the Troika government, displayed a considerable degree of political maturity. It was willing to give Tunisia's general welfare priority over its narrow party interests. The movement made substantial and painful concessions in support of the dialogue's success. Still, the dialogue would never have succeeded without the critical role played by the quartet. The civil society body did not merely play postman between the disputants. It served an active and influential role for which it was equipped through its strong grassroots foundations and support from a broad sector of political elites that realised there was no way forward other than through coexistence and development of a political system in which all can participate. Accordingly, all rival parties were ultimately compelled to come to terms. It is beautiful that the letter to the Nobel Committee nominating the National Dialogue Quartet was sent by none other than President Beji Caid Essebsi. In the letter, he wrote that in awarding the prize to the quartet, the Nobel Committee “would pay tribute to Tunisia, a small nation that gave a great lesson in courage and perseverance to the entire world.” Such a tribute, he added, would also “rehabilitate the values of dialogue and consensus in a world dominated by conflict . . . and that, today, is in desperate need of dialogue, consensus, hope and tolerance.” We should congratulate the quartet, and through it, the Tunisian sociopolitical elites and all the Tunisian people, for receiving a prize that they so greatly deserved. We hope that all sociopolitical elites in the Arab world grasp and do their best to benefit from the lessons the Tunisian experience has offered in democratic transformation. The writer is a professor of political science, Cairo University.
