George Packer Talks to Dorothy Wickenden About Tunisia
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2016
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tunisia led its neighbors into the Arab Spring, and it is the only one of those nations that successfully formed a democracy. George Packer, who recently wrote for The New Yorker about young Tunisian jihadis, found that many educated young people are conversant with Western culture and informed on American politics. Yet the country has become a leading exporter of fighters for ISIS. Packer tells The New Yorker’s Dorothy Wickenden how disillusionment and unemployment in Tunisia are taking a toll.
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| 1:12.5 | I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, I talk with New Yorker staff writer George Packer. |
| 1:19.6 | He recently wrote in the magazine about young jihadis in Tunisia. One of the only democracies to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings, the country also has become a leading exporter of ISIS militants. |
| 1:33.3 | George Packer is a staff writer at the magazine and a great reporter about war and diplomacy. |
| 1:39.3 | He goes places where most of us don't ever want to set foot, Iraq during the U.S. invasion, Sierra Leone, |
| 1:45.9 | Afghanistan, and he helps us understand what's going on. He was recently in Tunisia where the Arab |
| 1:51.8 | Spring began five years ago. It was the only country involved that successfully became a democracy, |
| 1:58.7 | or at least it seemed to. Tunisia today is one of the largest exporters |
| 2:03.0 | of the jihadi fighters who are destabilizing the entire region and creating nightmares for so |
| 2:09.0 | many people. George Packer sat down to talk with the New Yorkers, Dorothy Wickenden. George, we all |
| 2:14.6 | think about Tunisia as the heart of the Arab Spring. |
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