““Tunisia settled into its modern, secular identity in the 1990s under Bourguiba’s successor, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Appalled by Bourguiba’s decision to execute a group of Islamist rebels, he had ousted the by then senile leader in 1987 in a nonviolent coup. Ben Ali thus kept Tunisia free of bloodshed (the rebels were not in the end executed), something the country had managed to do since independence from France was achieved through negotiations, and therefore bloodlessly as well. He””
