A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Remembering Bourguiba

Tunisia Live offers some reflections by Ali Ben Mabrouk remembering the career of Habib Bourguiba, 13 years after his death and nearly 26 after his deposition. Many young Tunisians are too young to remember the rather mixed legacy of the country's founding father, "Supreme Combatant," and onetime Presdent-for-Life.

1 comment:

David Mack said...

He was the Arab leader I admired the most as a graduate university student studying the Middle East. The nearest the Arabs had to a genuinely transformational revolutionary, like Mustafa Kemal in Turkey. By the time I saw Bourguiba in the flesh, as Charge at the U.S. Embassy in the early 1980s, he had clearly stayed for too long. While he could show flashes of brilliance for a few minutes, most of the time he was not in touch with reality. How sad.