African securityTunisia’s security nightmare long predates the Arab Spring
Until now, Tunisia seemed to have escaped the worst of the violence that has beset the countries of the Arab Spring. Instead, this small nation, whose revolution for democracy and dignity sparked a wave of protest across the Arab world four years ago, looked like the only success story left. But the shocking attack at the Bardo museum in Tunis which left at least twenty dead, including seventeen foreign tourists, marks a profound setback to this rare democratic transition — and it may herald a new wave of violence and political crisis. Tunisia’s new government, which won elections in October 2014 by promising security, will now be under pressure to launch a tough crackdown. The challenge of Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi will be to provide the Tunisians with the security they deserve without resorting to the authoritarianism that is so rapidly re-emerging across the countries of the Arab Spring.
Until now, Tunisia seemed to have escaped the worst of the violence that has beset the countries of the Arab Spring. Instead, this small nation, whose revolution for democracy and dignity sparked a wave of protest across the Arab world four years ago, looked like the only success story left.
But the shocking attack at the Bardo museum in Tunis which left at least twenty dead, including seventeen foreign tourists, marks a profound setback to this rare democratic transition — and it may herald a new wave of violence and political crisis.
Jihadi Salafist groups have emerged in force in Tunisia since the Arab Spring, staging small-scale attacks on the military in a mountainous region near the Algerian border, a violent assault on the U.S. embassy in Tunis in 2012, and then the high-profile assassinations of two opposition politicians, Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, in 2013. Most worryingly, up to 3,000 young Tunisians have left to fight against the Assad regime in Syria, the largest contingents from any single country. Many joined Islamic State, while others went to the ally of al-Qaeda, Jabaht al-Nusra.
It was easy to explain all this as a side effect of the fall of the Ben Ali regime, often described as an island of secularism in the Middle East. In the chaos that followed Ben Ali’s flight, so these groups rapidly took ground and flourished.
In truth, however, radical Salafism had been re-emerging in Tunisia ever since the early 2000s.
Filling the void
For many young Tunisians, Salafism often began as a personal spiritual search, fuelled by readings they found on the internet and religious programs on Gulf satellite television channels. In some cases, the Ben Ali regime encouraged this quietist Salafism, even as it continued a two-decade crackdown on the main Islamist movement, Ennahdha.
Ben Ali’s rule was never secular: rather than trying to separate religion and state, he instead sought to monopolize control of all things religious, from dictating Friday sermons in the mosques to articulating what Islam should mean to Tunisians. Yet even then, there were signs of an emerging jihadi threat. A 2002 attack on a synagogue on the island of Djerba killed nineteen people, mostly tourists, and was claimed by al-Qaeda. Then in 2006-7, hundreds of young men were jailed after a failed armed assault in Suleiman.
