y***@yahoo.com
2005-01-30 02:24:30 UTC
One Arab nation where democracy works well
Published January 23, 2005
TUNISIA: A JOURNEY THROUGH A COUNTRY THAT WORKS
By Georgie Anne Geyer
Stacey International, $27.95, 206 pages
REVIEWED BY MARTIN SIEFF
Tunisia is the invisible nation of the Arab world in American eyes,
and there is a very good reason why this is so: It confounds so many
people's hostile stereotypes of the Arab world.
Here, after all, is an Arab nation long colonized by a Western
imperial power, France, with which it has been on excellent terms for
decades. It is stable, it is prosperous, even though it has no oil
deposits to fall back upon and, it has been reliably pro-Western for
generations and, most important of all, it is a successful, functioning
democracy.
Tunisia is -- or, rather, should be -- a textbook case for Bush
administration policymakers wrestling with the dilemma of how to "drain
the swamp" of Middle East poverty, extremism and religious fanaticism
that produced the menace of al Qaeda and other implacable networks of
international terrorism. Yet the vast herds of op-ed and editorial page
writers who endlessly opine either about the need for the United States
to impose democracy by fiat on Arab nations or about the impossibility
of Arab countries producing successful democratic institutions
themselves (and in reality, many Arab nations have, to a significant
degree) never acknowledged Tunisia's existence.
The most likely reason for this is sheer ignorance of the country
and lack of any knowledge about it. But of course, Tunisia's continued
existence and success also for many people makes it what the late
Charles Fort called a "damned" fact: A fact that is "damned" to be
ignored because it flies in the face of so many popular prejudices.
With the publication of this timely and extremely important book,
however, ignorance of the facts can no longer be cited as a plausible
alibi for such sweeping and plain wrong generalizations.
Georgie Anne Geyer, author of "Guerrilla Prince," the definitive
biography of Fidel Castro, is one of the great American foreign
correspondents and a leading foreign affairs columnist for The
Washington Times. In "Tunisia: A Country That Works," she has produced
an indispensable text for everyone who seeks lasting solutions for the
supposedly intractable dilemmas of the modern Middle East.
This book is in part a travelogue -- a colorful and insightful
encounter with the successful Tunisia of the beginning of the 21st
century, a vibrant success story profiting from the rise of a stable
and prosperous Europe on the other side of the Mediterranean lake it
shares. But the key to its importance lies in the lucid, concise
history of modern Tunisia that Ms. Geyer includes. I know of no better
introduction to the subject in modern American publishing.
Ms. Geyer explores in detail the career of Tunisia's founding
father, President Habib Bourguiba, who created an independent nation
but then fell prey to the same kinds of authoritarian delusions that
unmade so many would-be nation builders around the world in the post
colonial period. Fortunately for the Tunisian people, as Ms. Geyer
relates, Tunisia had its own Deng Xiaoping, an experienced veteran
minister and lieutenant of Bourguiba's who looked with horror on the
incipient chaos his old master was inflicting upon their country and
who, was able to win power and turn the nation back to a far more
stable and hopeful course.
If there is one key above all others to Tunisia's success in making
the successful transition from the one party state it was after
independence from France in 1957 to the multi-party democracy it is
today, Ms. Geyer argues, it is that this process was fostered
deliberately but gradually, and implemented in an evolutionary manner.
Here, the insight of Abdelbaki Hermassi, Tunisia's Minister of Culture
and a sociologist by profession is of the greatest importance. "Either
you are born into a democracy or you have to make it happen," Ms. Geyer
quotes him as saying. "And if you have to make it happen, you have to
go step by step -- and you only have so many years to do it.
Ms. Geyer does not cite the influential Russian political analyst
and sociologist Andranik Migranian who warned even before the Soviet
Union disintegrated at the end of 1991 that Russia would have to go
through an era of autocratic stability and the cautious, slow creation
of a genuine free market before it could successfully embrace
Western-style democracy. But her book could be a textbook confirmation
of Migranian's deeply researched and wide-ranging theories. Today,
Tunisia is a nation where 80 percent of the population is recognizably
middle class.
Ms. Geyer is no Pollyanna and she explores in depth the social
contradictions and controversies that preoccupy Tunisian society. But
as the United States wrestles with the massive military commitment and
ongoing toll of casualties it has experienced from an Iraq insurgency
in which democracy has somehow stubbornly refused to spring
instantaneously into being at our command, there is much to ponder in
her considered conclusion:
"The question was not whether other countries had to go through a
Tunisian-style process, but whether there was really any other way to
do it. The indisputable fact is that, wherever development has taken
place in the modern age, it has adopted certain quantities of the
Tunisian way, and wherever it is seriously contemplated, it will have
to consider the Tunisian lessons. it is not that the Tunisian
experiment is perfect, but that it actually works, when so many others
do not."
Visitors to Tunisia today flock to the archaeological marvels of
Carthage, one of the greatest seafaring and global trading nations of
ancient history whose sailors appear to have explored south of the
equator even in the time of the Classical Greeks. Today, however,
Tunisia's most valuable export is not raw metals or goods, but its own
shining example of political, economic and social evolution. Like
Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia in southern and Southeast Asia, it
is a Muslim democracy that works. Ms. Geyer's book offers a most
welcome explanation as to why it does, and how other nations can profit
from its example.
Published January 23, 2005
TUNISIA: A JOURNEY THROUGH A COUNTRY THAT WORKS
By Georgie Anne Geyer
Stacey International, $27.95, 206 pages
REVIEWED BY MARTIN SIEFF
Tunisia is the invisible nation of the Arab world in American eyes,
and there is a very good reason why this is so: It confounds so many
people's hostile stereotypes of the Arab world.
Here, after all, is an Arab nation long colonized by a Western
imperial power, France, with which it has been on excellent terms for
decades. It is stable, it is prosperous, even though it has no oil
deposits to fall back upon and, it has been reliably pro-Western for
generations and, most important of all, it is a successful, functioning
democracy.
Tunisia is -- or, rather, should be -- a textbook case for Bush
administration policymakers wrestling with the dilemma of how to "drain
the swamp" of Middle East poverty, extremism and religious fanaticism
that produced the menace of al Qaeda and other implacable networks of
international terrorism. Yet the vast herds of op-ed and editorial page
writers who endlessly opine either about the need for the United States
to impose democracy by fiat on Arab nations or about the impossibility
of Arab countries producing successful democratic institutions
themselves (and in reality, many Arab nations have, to a significant
degree) never acknowledged Tunisia's existence.
The most likely reason for this is sheer ignorance of the country
and lack of any knowledge about it. But of course, Tunisia's continued
existence and success also for many people makes it what the late
Charles Fort called a "damned" fact: A fact that is "damned" to be
ignored because it flies in the face of so many popular prejudices.
With the publication of this timely and extremely important book,
however, ignorance of the facts can no longer be cited as a plausible
alibi for such sweeping and plain wrong generalizations.
Georgie Anne Geyer, author of "Guerrilla Prince," the definitive
biography of Fidel Castro, is one of the great American foreign
correspondents and a leading foreign affairs columnist for The
Washington Times. In "Tunisia: A Country That Works," she has produced
an indispensable text for everyone who seeks lasting solutions for the
supposedly intractable dilemmas of the modern Middle East.
This book is in part a travelogue -- a colorful and insightful
encounter with the successful Tunisia of the beginning of the 21st
century, a vibrant success story profiting from the rise of a stable
and prosperous Europe on the other side of the Mediterranean lake it
shares. But the key to its importance lies in the lucid, concise
history of modern Tunisia that Ms. Geyer includes. I know of no better
introduction to the subject in modern American publishing.
Ms. Geyer explores in detail the career of Tunisia's founding
father, President Habib Bourguiba, who created an independent nation
but then fell prey to the same kinds of authoritarian delusions that
unmade so many would-be nation builders around the world in the post
colonial period. Fortunately for the Tunisian people, as Ms. Geyer
relates, Tunisia had its own Deng Xiaoping, an experienced veteran
minister and lieutenant of Bourguiba's who looked with horror on the
incipient chaos his old master was inflicting upon their country and
who, was able to win power and turn the nation back to a far more
stable and hopeful course.
If there is one key above all others to Tunisia's success in making
the successful transition from the one party state it was after
independence from France in 1957 to the multi-party democracy it is
today, Ms. Geyer argues, it is that this process was fostered
deliberately but gradually, and implemented in an evolutionary manner.
Here, the insight of Abdelbaki Hermassi, Tunisia's Minister of Culture
and a sociologist by profession is of the greatest importance. "Either
you are born into a democracy or you have to make it happen," Ms. Geyer
quotes him as saying. "And if you have to make it happen, you have to
go step by step -- and you only have so many years to do it.
Ms. Geyer does not cite the influential Russian political analyst
and sociologist Andranik Migranian who warned even before the Soviet
Union disintegrated at the end of 1991 that Russia would have to go
through an era of autocratic stability and the cautious, slow creation
of a genuine free market before it could successfully embrace
Western-style democracy. But her book could be a textbook confirmation
of Migranian's deeply researched and wide-ranging theories. Today,
Tunisia is a nation where 80 percent of the population is recognizably
middle class.
Ms. Geyer is no Pollyanna and she explores in depth the social
contradictions and controversies that preoccupy Tunisian society. But
as the United States wrestles with the massive military commitment and
ongoing toll of casualties it has experienced from an Iraq insurgency
in which democracy has somehow stubbornly refused to spring
instantaneously into being at our command, there is much to ponder in
her considered conclusion:
"The question was not whether other countries had to go through a
Tunisian-style process, but whether there was really any other way to
do it. The indisputable fact is that, wherever development has taken
place in the modern age, it has adopted certain quantities of the
Tunisian way, and wherever it is seriously contemplated, it will have
to consider the Tunisian lessons. it is not that the Tunisian
experiment is perfect, but that it actually works, when so many others
do not."
Visitors to Tunisia today flock to the archaeological marvels of
Carthage, one of the greatest seafaring and global trading nations of
ancient history whose sailors appear to have explored south of the
equator even in the time of the Classical Greeks. Today, however,
Tunisia's most valuable export is not raw metals or goods, but its own
shining example of political, economic and social evolution. Like
Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia in southern and Southeast Asia, it
is a Muslim democracy that works. Ms. Geyer's book offers a most
welcome explanation as to why it does, and how other nations can profit
from its example.