investment in tunisia stabalizing, page-10

Investment is all about risk. But there is nothing predictable or certain about a war zone or events in the aftermath of a revolution. The risks are incalculable. They do tend to the negative though, and the best you can usually hope for is that you survive and do not lose everything you had. I certainly wouldn't put five million bucks into Tunisia right now.

One of the more interesting questions is what will actually follow in Libya if Gaddafi is suddenly exiled or killed. It's impossible to know that either, but what we do know is that Libya is a country of disparate tribes and alliances, where the armouries have been emptied of weapons and the prisons emptied of criminals, and where there is no clear authority to succeed the dictator. So there will probably be a lot of young men running around with weapons, causing absolute mayhem, and nobody clearly in charge to sort out the mess. It could look like a sort of post-Sadam Iraq, but without the coalition forces to keep the lid on.

Another interesting question is where a fully 'liberated' Libya would leave the next domino in the North African stack: Algeria. That country has an equally oppressive regime and six times the population of Libya, and is the world's 12th largest oil exporter. An 'Arab Spring' revolution there would have enormous consequences, not just for tiny Tunisia, which lies sandwiched between it and Libya, but for the other Mediterranean nations as well.

Tunisia rather lies between a rock and a hard place where its neighbours are concerned, and so will remain a high risk investment destination for some time to come.