There are 13 minutes of empty chairs on the stage, then the conversation begins. This is an excerpt of the transcript, the entirety of which will be posted soon on
CFR.org.
DICKEY:
… What we want to talk about today is a little bit about the Arab Spring, which
was launched in Tunisia, and where things are going now, that the Arab Spring
looks like -- well, looks like Hell in a lot of countries. Sometimes when I look at what happened
in Tunisia, it's a little bit like --
-- I think most of you remember Slovenia in the Balkans, they broke away
from Yugoslavia, came away more or less safe and sound, and everything else
fell apart and went to Hell.
Is
Tunisia going to remain safe and sound, given all the turmoil that exists
now?
MARZOUKI: Of course, this is what I hope. But, you know, Tunisia is not an
island. And when you have -- on
your border, you have a country like Libya, where, you know, the level of
violence is extremely high and when you have what -- the situation in Egypt,
and when you have also the situation in Syria. Syria is becoming an
internal problem, because we have a lot of young people going to Syria,
more than 500 jihadis, Tunisian, 500
Tunisian jihadis are in Syria and we're very afraid that, when they come back
to Tunisia, it will be the same thing that happened with Algeria. You probably know that in the '80s, a
lot of Algerians went to Afghanistan and then they come back to Algeria, and
this was the beginning of Hell in Algeria, too.
So
we are doing in best in Tunisia, you know, to control the situation. We think -- we think that we have -- we
think that we have a wise population.
We think that we have, you know -- of course, we do have disciplined and
professional army. We think that
we are a middle-class society, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, nobody can be sure of what could happen.
Last year, I was here, and I remember that
I was -- I was asked many, many questions about the outcome of the Arab
Spring. I was very optimistic at
that time. I wouldn't say that I
am now pessimistic. I would say
like I said yesterday that I am pessi-optimistic, because...
(LAUGHTER)
...
because (inaudible) the situation is much more complex and much more difficult
than I thought. Yes, we can -- we
will probably -- we can achieve the transition in Tunisia, but, once again, we
are not alone, and when we see what's happening in Libya, in Egypt, in Syria,
we can be a little bit upset.
But,
once again, I have to say, have to repeat that you cannot say, well, it's a
failure or it's a success. We need
time. You know, you cannot say
that the revolution is a success or a failure before, let's say, a decade. When you think that French revolution,
for instance, they had to wait more than 70 years before having the Third
Republic, which was probably the success of the French revolution, so you
cannot accept Arab -- or any country, you know, to achieve the goals of
revolution in just two or three years.
So
we had to be -- we had to be very careful. I'm very careful, but I think that the outcome would be
quite different from a country to another. And that Tunisia -- I
wouldn't say you -- you can bet on Tunisia, but I'm still confident that we
could -- we could succeed. But, of
course, nobody knows.
DICKEY: Wow.