Ben Ali’s 1987 coup followed his US-equipped crackdown on Tunisian leftists.

Evidence

As Tunisia abandoned socialism in favor of free-market capitalism starting in the 1970s, leftists and workers responded with a wave of strikes and contentious politics. The army deployed US-supplied helicopters to quell them. Activists reported that the bloody crackdown, which took up to three hundred lives, was led by Director of National Security Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In 1987, the same Ben Ali seized power by declaring Bourguiba medically incapacitated; he then immediately implemented a neoliberal structural adjustment program. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 189

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the familiar pattern from earlier chapters: US-supplied weaponry used to suppress domestic leftists, then the strongman himself taking power.