Rachid Ammar Service leader colonel El Arbi Ghazali). Ammar was a member of the joint chiefs of staff and was received along with other members of the council by Ali at a ceremony during the summer of 2010. There, Ammar was promoted by Ben Ali from the rank of divisional general to that of corps general. On 25 June 2013, Ammar announced his retirement due to harsh criticisms. On 13 January 2011, Ammar refused to follow the orders of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, then president of Tunisia, to shoot protesters participating in the 2010–2011 Tunisian protests. He responded to the Presidential
Qatar–Saudi Arabia diplomatic conflict Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia. Widespread Al Jazeera coverage of the Bahraini uprising of 2011 fueled Saudi suspicions the Qatari government sought to overthrow the Saudi government via soft power. The Saudis then supported a largely successful counterrevolution to the Arab Spring to preserve the monarchy of Bahrain, overthrow the Egyptian democratically-elected president Mohammad Morsi and stymie international support for the post-Gadaffi government in Libya. Since the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, there has been a consistent pattern of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt opposing the designs of