WASHINGTON -- Things being what they are in Washington, with everyone focused on the deteriorating situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, one is hard put to come up with positive international reporting -- particularly any that sheds light upon those two crises.

GEORGIE ANN GEYER Universal Press Syndicate
Tulsa World (Final Home Edition), Page A17 of Syndicated

WASHINGTON -- Things being what they are in Washington, with everyone focused on the deteriorating situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, one is hard put to come up with positive international reporting -- particularly any that sheds light upon those two crises.
But last week, a small part of the international and American diplomatic community got together here to celebrate one of the true victories of modernization in the 20th century: the 50th anniversary of women's emancipation in the small, but exemplary, North African Muslim country of Tunisia. This historic event could tutor the United States in how development, along with justice, really comes about -- if we would let it.

The celebration at the Library of Congress was joyful and humorous, in reflection of that special Tunisian spirit. "Today is a day of celebration," said Tunisian-born sociology professor Mounira Charrad of the University of Texas, "but more than that, it is a commemoration of the legacy of our Code of Personal Status, the first code for the women of the Islamic world."

Hayet Laouani, a remarkable woman who is president of a port and stevedore business, joked: "You never have freedom without the pocketbook," she said, smiling as she patted her pocket. "Otherwise, your husband is always saying, 'You're always asking for money for the hairdresser -- once a year is enough.' " With a charmingly wicked look, she then added, "And then he goes after the woman who goes to the hairdresser every week!"

Tunisia, a country of 10 million of the mixed bloods of Arabs, Phoenicians, Byzantines, Italians, Moors, Africans and French, was always ahead of its time. But it was never more so than when its first independent president, Habib Bourguiba, declared the code in 1956. With one wave of his authoritarian hand, he proclaimed the code, which forbade polygamy, afforded judicial divorce to women as well as men, set a minimum age for marriage, and gave women the right to vote and run for political office. Education was made free and compulsory. Soon it was assumed that a woman working was a gift to the family.

Europeans who are struggling with the veil and the hejab today should remember how Bourguiba, one of the greatest modernizing leaders of Middle East history, also outlawed women wearing the veil. Seeing a young woman wearing a veil on the street, he would deride her as "rigged out in a dishcloth."

Today, women make up a quarter of the Tunisian working population. A thousand of them are heads of businesses; 32 percent of the judges are women, along with 72 percent of pharmacists, 48 percent of teachers and 34 percent of journalists. But in tune with Bourguiba's idea that a stable, creative democratic state must constantly be building upon its principles, the code is constantly being expanded.

In the early '90s, for instance, a clause was dropped calling for women to obey their husbands. The right to custody and guardianship of children was given to women equally, and women can now pass their Tunisian citizenship on to children even if they married abroad and the father was not Tunisian or Muslim.

"Actually, this is making a sea change in what the definition of a citizen is -- and how women become citizens in nation states," Charrad said. "Before, citizenship was given by blood, but only the blood of the father. To me, what has happened in Tunisia is a historical phenomenon of great significance."

Also embedded in the "Tunisian way" -- stressing gradual, evolutionary change over revolutionary change -- is the position of a national ombudsman. Today, this important feedback position (one of 130 among the nations of the world) is held by an impressive woman, Alifa Chaabane Farouk, who spoke at the celebration. She takes complaints from any citizen and sees the process as a primary way of "deepening our democracy." Between 3,000 and 4,000 cases are heard by her and her staff each year, then negotiated with the government, and, she says, 97 percent are resolved.

Tunisia, with its history of solving and negotiating problems rather than fighting them out, is, of course, a special place. In contrast to the United States, where women's rights tend to mean reproductive rights and access to work, the Tunisians focus on marriage, divorce, custodial and inheritance rights. The only country to have such a code in earlier years was Turkey. But the Turkish code, promulgated by the Turkish leader Ataturk in the 1920s, was based upon a rejection of Islamic laws, which was not the case in Tunisia, and so it has not worked so well. Morocco and Algeria are working on similar codes to Tunisia's, which still stands as cutting edge in the Muslim world.

America, too, could learn from the Tunisian experience, which good American diplomacy has deftly supported over the years. Today, America could look at Tunisia, with its great success in evolving and refining and real change, in the context of Iraq, and see the differences in trying disastrously to impose ersatz change from outside.