First days of the Arab Spring: video of rioting in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, posted on YouTube, December 19, 2010

  
The great dam at Marib (in present-day Yemen) was one of the marvels of ancient Arabia, the centrepiece of a vast irrigation system that watered crops for a desert-dwelling kingdom. Its eventual collapse around the time the Prophet Mohammed was born scattered the population, forcing tens of thousands back into a nomadic existence.

This momentous event is recorded in the Qur’an and legend has it that the dam burst when a mouse dislodged a single stone. Modern historians have a different view: the dam had gradually fallen into disrepair as the community around it suffered economic decline. It would have collapsed anyway sooner or later, with or without the mouse.

I am often reminded of this story when thinking about the Arab Spring. It was on December 17 last year that Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed fruit-seller, set himself on fire after an altercation with the Tunisian police and – as in the legend of the mouse – triggered a chain of events which has so far brought down three Arab dictators, with two more on the brink.

The exact course of events over the last 12 months has taken everyone by surprise, though it was not unforeseen that something of the kind would happen: it was mainly a question of where the initial spark would come from.

Before last December there were already signs that the edifice which Arab regimes had maintained successfully over decades was beginning to crumble. In the face of challenges from a new generation – a generation who were not only more aware of the world beyond their own borders but also armed with new means to communicate and express themselves – the ageing leaders were finding it less easy to maintain their grip.

Meanwhile the mice – thousands of them – were chipping away at the cement. Tunisia itself, despite having one of the most effective police states, had previously witnessed disturbances in some of its more marginalised areas, while in Egypt factory strikes and street demonstrations had become a regular occurrence. Until last year, though, none of them posed a serious threat to the regimes; the authorities – often brutally – still managed to keep the upper hand.

On the night of December 16 – just a few hours before Bouazizi set fire to himself in Tunisia – rioting had broken out in Saudi Arabia. Some 800 men went on the rampage in the holy city of Madinah, hurling stones and smashing windows of cars. The authorities wouldn’t say what the trouble was about but it appeared to be a sectarian attack by Sunni Muslims on members of the Shia community who were taking part in Ashoura commemorations, and I noted it on my blog.

It’s interesting to speculate now different the course of events might have been if the rioting in Saudi Arabia, rather than Tunisia, had turned into something more serious. As expected, though, the Madinah police quickly restored order and 38 people were reportedly arrested.

Meanwhile, reading the first reports of disturbances in Sidi Bouzid, I was unsure what to make of them. Though uncommon in Tunisia, eruptions of public discontent were not unprecedented. I decided to wait a few days before writing anything, and see if they fizzled out. 

A week later, however, far from dying down, the protests were gaining momentum and – even more significantly – the authorities were having difficulty trying to control them. On my blog, I summarised the events so far, together with a predictably dismissive statement from the Tunisian government about “groundless rumours spread by certain sides”.

By December 25, demonstrations had spread to the capital, Tunis, The focus of the protests (mainly economic grievances in the beginning) had also begun to shift, turning into a generalised attack on the regime, including members of the president’s family (some of whom were extremely unpopular). 

As in other Arab countries, direct criticism of the president was a red line, and anyone who dared to cross it could expect to go to jail. The fact that protesters were now breaking that long-established taboo showed that the fear factor which had kept Tunisian citizens in check for so many years was evaporating.

Without wishing to overplay the role of WikiLeaks in this, I do think the release of several documents about Tunisia early in December helped to undermine the taboos surrounding public discussion of the regime and Ben Ali's family. 

In one document, the American ambassador described the regime as "sclerotic" and described growing corruption in the president's inner circle:

"Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, First Lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her; even those close to the government express dismay at her reported behaviour. Meanwhile, anger is growing at Tunisia's high unemployment and regional inequities. As a consequence, the risks to the regime's long-term stability are increasing."

In another leaked document, the ambassador described the extraordinarily lavish lifestyle of the president's son-in-law, Mohamed Sakhr El-Matri – including his pet tiger which consumed four whole chickens every day.

There was probably little in the documents that Tunisians hadn't heard already, but until that point they were things people only talked about in whispers. Having them spelt out so plainly by the American ambassador – and posted on the internet for all to see – brought them out firmly into the public domain. The contrast between Matri's tiger greedily gnawing on chickens and the likes of Bouazizi struggling to eke out a living also highlighted the gulf between the regime and its people.

By the last day of December the situation in Tunisia was very reminiscent of Romania in 1989 and I wrote an article for the Guardian’s website suggesting that Ben Ali was about to suffer the same fate as Ceausescu. 

As far as I'm aware, that was the first time anyone in the western media had pointed to such a drastic outcome. The Tunisian protests were not being reported in much detail at that stage, partly because of restrictions imposed by the regime but also because they were not seen as especially significant. It was a different story a month later when, with Ben Ali having fled to Saudi Arabia, Tahrir Square erupted in Cairo.

Some readers were sceptical of my Guardian article and I must admit that for a few days afterwards I did wonder if I had been a little reckless in my prediction. The more I looked at the evidence, though, the more it seemed that Ben Ali’s overthrow was a real possibility, if not yet a certainty. A fundamental change was under way in Tunisia but how, exactly, did it come about?

Three years earlier, I had been travelling around the Middle East, interviewing Arabs for a book. One thing that struck me then was the high levels of discontent and frustration that I found almost everywhere – especially about corruption and privilege, and a high-handed style of government that had no need to be accountable. Alongside that was a strong sense of despair – that nothing much was going to change and there was little that ordinary folk could do about it.

What happened in Tunisia, in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria was that these frustrations finally reached bursting point. Sufficient numbers of people were deciding they could do something about it after all. All it needed was something to trigger off the revolt – and once that happened they began to lose their fear. Each new development emboldened them further.

In comparison with what has happened since, the Tunisian revolution now seems relatively quick, simple and bloodless – though it didn’t look like that at the time. The number killed is unclear but it probably ran into hundreds.

There is far more to the Arab Spring than simply getting rid of dictators. December 17, 2010, heralded the ending of what had become known as “the Arab malaise” – the atmosphere of despair and powerlessness, the wallowing in victimhood, that descended over Arabs after their military defeat by Israel in 1967.

Tunisia has been inspirational. It has given rise to a new sense of Arab identity unlike the old-style nationalism. It has brought to the fore a new generation who feel more empowered, more confident of their own self-worth and more in command of their own destiny.

Of course, it’s not going as smoothly as many would like – far from it. In Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, the dictators are fighting back. Since Tunisia, the uprisings have become progressively more difficult, prolonged and bloody. In Libya, Gaddafi would still be in power had it not been for Nato’s help. This has led to some gloomy assessments of where the Arab Spring is heading: new dictators replacing old ones, Islamist parties imposing shariah law, and so on.

The problems ahead should not be underestimated but it’s a mistake to imagine that Arab politics will shortly "revert to type". A seismic shift has occurred which Sadek al-Azm, the Syrian professor, highlighted recently by pointing to the famous slogan first heard in Tunisia and quickly adopted by protesters in other Arab countries: "The people want the fall of the regime". 

Since when, al-Azm asked, have such words as “the people want” meant anything at all in the Arab world? Well, they do now. From now on, Arab governments must pay heed to what the people want or ignore it at their peril.