Tunisia: catch all

[Surferbeetle]

Glad to see you back on the board...

Thanks, like what you have done with the place, Prost/Cheers…another Johnny Walker Black Label all around

My guess -- and it is no more than that -- is that most of the Eastern European experience wil not be transferable to North Africa or the ME. Just as Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims differ and both those are quite different than the Arabs of the ME, geography and demographics shape destinies and attitudes.

As you rightly note, paying attention to the nuances of market segmentation often results in benefits for those who do. In pursuit of a key informant from the financial world who can provide us with some more insights regarding Tunisia I cruised on over to the website of the Financial Times in order to see if Dr. Gillian Tett or Mr. Gideon Rachman had posted anything regarding the goings on. Their particular focus during this reporting cycle was on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dr. Tett provides an interesting and quick read regarding the practice of social anthropology while gathering insights into the networking practices of Davos Man. Her article is entitled A Social Network, and is dated 28 Jan 2011. (Site registration provides one access to ten free FT articles per month if memory serves). Mr. Rachman provides an interesting article, dated 28 Jan 11, entitled What’s on the Mind of Davos Man? Unfortunately Davos Man wasn’t speaking on record for these two articles regarding Tunisia. Instead, Egypt seems to be a greater concern as discussed in the 28 Jan 11 article entitled Geopolitical Worries Move up the Agenda.

Both the FT and the BBC have a report regarding the return to Tunisia of Rachid Ghannouchi, of the Nahda (Renaissance) movement from his ~19 year exile in London. The BBC also does an excellent job, as usual, with it’s breakout of key Tunisian politicians and parties (Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party, Nahda, Congress for the Republic, Movement of Socialist Democrats, Party of People's Unity, Unionist Democratic Union, Renewal Movement (Ettajdid), Democratic Initiative Movement, Social Liberal Party and the Green Party for Progress ) as well as some background regarding the Tunisian Army’s Chief of Staff, Gen Rachid Ammar.

For assessments of potential and/or predictions of possibilities and probabilities, great familiarity -- let me emphasize that 'great' -- with a region and its people will enable a reasonably astute prediction when coupled with quantitative and qualitative data whereas the date sets alone will not suffice. Passing familiarity (my two years in the ME or four in Korea for example) do not equip one to make competent judgments. It takes long experience with actually living in a culture to do that -- and all peoples separate into cultures...

With only two years in the ME, and over a decade spent in Europe, I agree with your analysis. I would add that taking the plunge and learning the language(s), (DLI, SOLT, FSI, University, Instituto Cervantes, Goethe Institute – they even have one in Tehran, etc.), is key. Language abilities provide for a day versus night level of understanding. I know that I am preaching to a DLI grad on this point…but I’ll still throw it out there for anyone else who will listen.

That's the difficulty with even phenomenal brainpower as in Sachs and Shreve applied to people problems, they miss the nuances -- and cannot stand the quirks...

Managing/empowering high priced talent is not easy. When being in a position to choose…runners seem to know how to turn things off…but that’s not a hard and fast rule…more of an opinion on my part.