Debriefing Memo: Tunisia #1

ADRIAN	Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to their queen.
GONZALO	Not since widow Dido's time.
ANTONIO	Widow! a pox o' that! How came that widow in? widow Dido!
SEBASTIAN	What if he had said 'widower AEneas' too? Good Lord, how you take it!
ADRIAN	'Widow Dido' said you? you make me study of that: she was of Carthage, not of Tunis.
GONZALO	This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.
ADRIAN	Carthage?
GONZALO	I assure you, Carthage.

--Shakespeare, The Tempest, II, i

Tunisia, by my count, enters world history on just three occasions. One, when the "widow Dido" leapt onto a funeral pyre to console herself for the loss of her lover. Two,when it served as incubator for a sect of dissident Muslims who became the Fatimid dynasty and founded Cairo. And three, when it served as the venue for the making of Star Wars. For Tunisia, this paucity of history can only be a blessing.

Put the point the other way around, modern Tunisia enjoys one of the greatest of possible advantages for anyone who wants to construct a functioning state: no oil. Take a look at Fielding's The World's Most Dangerous Places and you will find way more than you will want to know about oil-rich Lybia (just east of Tunis) and resource-rich Algeria (just west). And there is little Tunisia, thinly disguised as a prostate gland, tucked snugly between--a vale of modesty (as they say) between two mountains of conceit.

I don't want to glamorize here: Tunis' quality-of-life statistics are nowhere near what you'd get from Denmark or Japan. And there are way too many 20-foot-tall pictures of the Darth Vader wannabee who holds the life-tenure post of leader. But walk the streets of Tunis, or Sfax or Sousse--or smaller places, like the farm towns in the north--and you get the feel of a polity tht is mostly stable, tolerant, and determined to keep on keepin' on. You could do better, but you could do a whole lot worse.