Like many small boys, Ben Ali was always tinkering with things, and his youthful ambition was to grow up to be an electronics engineer. Instead, he recently deposed an Arab nationalist demigod to become, at age 51, Tunisia's second president in 31 years of independence.
Along the way to the top, clean-shaven, darkly handsome Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali scarcely set a foot wrong. Born near Sousse in central Tunisia of middle-class parents, Ben Ali was in his third year of university study for a degree in electronics when Tunisia of middle-class parents, Ben Ali was in his third year of university study for a degree in electronics when Tunisia gained its independence from France in 1956.
Like most Tunisians, Ben Ali was an ardent nationalist who revered the charismatic Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, founder of the Destourian (Constitutional) Socialist Party and one of the Arab world's best-known leaders. Gripped by the euphoria of the moment, Ben Ali put aside his textbooks, joined the Tunisian army, and was posted to St. Cyr (France's West Point), from which he graduated with honors as a lieutenant.
As a young officer, Ben Ali was assigned to security, intelligence, and field artillery schools in both countries. Fluent in French and English--and, of course, in Arabic--Ben Ali served for 16 years (1958-1974) as director of Tunisia's military security, a counter-intelligence post that made him responsible for tracking and destroying subversion within the army.
Ben Ali, who is married and has three children, soon proved himself to be a skillful intelligence operative, and in 1974 was dispatched to Algiers to serve as military attaché in the Tunisian embassy. He returned to Tunis three years later as director general of national security in the Ministry of the Interior, which made him, in effect, his nation's top cop. At the age of 43, he was promoted to the rank of full general.
In 1980, Ben Ali was posted to Warsaw to serve as Tunisia's ambassador to Poland. (While there, he monitored the tumultuous formation of Lech Walesa's free trade union movement, Solidarity, and the subsequent crackdown by the Polish security agencies.)
In 1984, Ben Ali--he no longer uses the title of general--returned to Tunis once again to take up a political post as secretary of state for internal security. By 1986, enjoying a father-son type relationship with Bourguiba, he was minister of the interior, in charge of the entire Tunisian security and intelligence apparatus. From this position it was clear that in contrast to some other Arab Leaders, such as Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Bourguiba, whose first wife was French, was pro-Western. And although Bourguiba had spent five years in French prisons and later allowed the National Liberation Front (FLN) to use Tunisian territory as its base for the liberation of Algeria from France, Tunisia's foreign policy was based on friendship with France and the United States.
Presidential politics
The Tunisia to which the athletic, hardworking Ben Ali returned was a very different country from the land he had known as a young officer. The Bourguiba who set the tone for the North African republic was aging and
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