They are standing up against Pax Americana, resentful of the influence of Washington in their society and the presence of Israel in their region, but they are also young e-Arabs of the North African May '68, sincere in their demand for pluralism and a stake in globalisation, while simultaneously rebels for a more Islamic way of     doing things, inspired by Turkey's charismatic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. No one wish overrides the other. Nor can they really be disentangled. The wave is raw, and might suddenly break against America if the attack on Libya goes wrong. 

"The atmosphere reminds me of Paris in 1968 after the departure of de Gaulle, there is the same feel of the Beirut as it was before the war, something of Morocco after the death of Mohammed V," the bespectacled Abdellatif Abid gently enunciates from the politburo of the leftist faction, the Forum for Democracy, Labour and Liberty. The RCD and ultimately the Ben Ali clan was the state, sucking almost all technocrats and big business into its orbit of favours and rings of corruption. The result is that the political parties of the opposition now jockeying for the adulation of the bazaar and the industrial towns are those that were frozen out when the regime consolidated itself in the late 1980s. Liberals and those with a pro-Western orientation are discredited or lying low, nowhere to be seen. The IMF is a term of abuse. 

"There is no trust in political parties or political leaders now among the young, this could become a problem," says analyst Raoudha Ben Othman from the University of Tunis. "The controlling apparat of the old regime means that none of the parties are more than factions and have yet to develop policy agendas to tackle the economic problems we face." 

The confusion in the air is because the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are actually several revolutions at once. They are workers' rebellions against unemployment and soaring prices, a revolt against Pax Americana and the humiliation of Iraq, an elite shaking off incompetents that have cut them out of globalisation, and the insurrection that pushes the Islamists into the open. Everyone supports the revolution for a different reason and has radically different ideas where it will end up.

The decision to ban the RCD and the political police has created a cohesive group of unemployed, moneyed counter-revolutionaries but has also stripped the system of its managing elite. Many key public services, especially the police, are not running at full capacity. A brute on crutches grabs me on the waterfront. "The RCD beat me up and broke my legs. They offered to pay me a hundred dinars to smash up that shop. They are everywhere." The country is gripped by a fear of saboteurs that in the provinces has turned into witch hunts.