Tunisia’s transition in peril, but don’t give up on the revolution yet

The images of grief and riot that followed the assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaïd on 6 February highlight the extent to which the first, and so far most successful, of the Arab Spring revolutions has been put in jeopardy by ideological and factional divisions among the country’s new leaders. The killing was quickly interpreted as marking a violent new phase in a region-wide struggle between democratic modernisers – who include secular politicians like Belaïd and President Moncef Marzouki, but also mainstream figures in the Islamist Ennahda party such as prime minister Hamadi Jebali – and ultra-radical Salafists.