Customer Reviews

Tunisia: A Journey Through a Country That Works

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I received this book as a gift. The book's subtitle is the key: "A country that works". By that is meant a country that functions well. Ms. Geyer reviews the recent history of Tunisia as led first by Habib Bourgiba and now by Ben-Ali, leaders who have carefully set up policies and investments (e.g. investment in girls' education) designed to raise the country from a poor agricultural French colony to a successful independent nation, reaching out to participate as a player in the European economy. The theme of the book is that true democracy - not just elections but stability and human rights - is very difficult to establish, requiring an educated populace, a sizable middle class, and a certain amount of mutual trust across the society - which have to be in place before elections; in this context, Tunisia's leaders have been carefully building these prerequisites and Tunisia stands out as an ongoing success against a background of failed efforts - including, so far, the effort in Iraq - to establish democracy by magic (or other) bullets. The book will reveal that Ms. Geyer has an affection for Tunisia and Tunisians, but I think her assessment is not bad - my daughter, her Tunisian husband, and her two children live in Tunisia (and all of them speak in English and Arabic) and Geyer's assessment is confirmed by our experiences there as well as many discussions about the matters raised in the book.

Authoritarian regimes all over the Third World, including the Arab World, have had their acolytes within Washington-based policy-making circles and among so-called detached 'experts'. Here's an example of the most harrowing kind. Human rights abuses were considered a mere 'dark spot', the absence of democracy not particularly troubling in the broader scheme of things, and neither was the existence of a greedy state elite in Tunisia. As long as they were anti-Islamist then these elites were fine, from such a point of view. And now we see that masses of ordinary people have risen up against these supposedly benign, enlightened regimes that were the favourite of the author and her ilk. The author should feel a sense of great shame, if not the need to explain how absolutely wrong the work was.