THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 207, August 21, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DISSIDENT WATCH: MOHSEN MARZOUK
By J. Scott Carpenter
THE MISSION OF TUNISIAN POLITICAL DISSIDENT MOHSEN MARZOUK: OPPOSING DICTATORSHIP &
PROMOTING THE DEMOCRATIZATION PROCESS IN TUNISIA & THROUGHOUT NORTH AFRICA AS A WHOLE
FULL STORY:
When Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali extended his term of office, in 2004, for another five years, making
him effectively President-for-Life, Mohsen Marzouk realized that, for change to occur not only in Tunisia, but also in
other North African police states, it would be necessary to mesh internal Tunisian networks with ideas and activists
from outside the country.
Born in July, 1965, and raised in a poor, working-class neighborhood in Sfax, Marzouk has long been politically active.
When he was thirteen, he joined a student movement aimed at challenging the rigid control of the governing party. At
fourteen, authorities expelled him from his high school for his "political activities."
At his parents' urging, Marzouk ultimately reentered and finished high school in Sfax before entering the University of
Tunis. There, he became involved in student politics and ultimately became one of the student movement's national
leaders. In his final year, 1987, Tunisia's secret police arrested him for political activities. He was held for a number of
days somewhere in the Ministry of Interior headquarters complex, where he was interrogated and tortured. Authorities
later transferred him to a forced labor camp in the southern desert of Tunisia, where he spent a year doing "military
service."
Even after his release, Marzouk remained active in student politics, working to reconstitute the long-moribund Tunisian
Students' Union and eventually being elected to its executive bureau. Tolerated as a nuisance by the government,
Marzouk ultimately found some protection by joining the El Taller Foundation, an international nongovernmental
organization affiliated with Nelson Mandela, as Director of its Arab Region Program, focusing primarily on human rights
and civil society development.
Today, Marzouk believes that the sterile opposition in which he has participated is not the answer. "Opposing the
outdated regimes only verbally, while the very structures of civil society are vulnerable and ill-formed, amounts to
nothing," he says. "Tunisian civil society should change its methods and strategies if it is to contribute to starting and
sustaining the democratization process." [1]
To advance political reform beyond Tunisia, Marzouk established the Al-Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center, an
organization to link regional democracy activists with other like-minded people from around the world; its goal is to
professionalize the next generation of democracy activists so that, when change comes, these individuals are ready for it.
"Arab democrats need to learn to read geopolitical maps
and need to stop being naïve and non-strategic. What we
need is a new breed of activists who are, at the same time,
committed and experts." [2]
Marzouk leads that new breed.
NOTES:
[1] Mohsen Marzouk, e-mail interview with author, Dec. 21, 2007.
[2] Ibid.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Tunisia, Islamic North Africa, & the Arab World
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- Constitutional Democracy:
U.S. Promotion of Constitutional Democracy in Foreign Countries
North Africa -- The Arab States of Islamic North Africa
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
J. Scott Carpenter is the Keston Family Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Director of its Project
Fikra, which focuses on empowering Arab moderates and constitutional democrats in their struggles against dictatorship
and Islamic extremism.
The foregoing article by J. Scott Carpenter was originally published in the Middle East Quarterly, Summer, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1973)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
August 21, 2008
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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