Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution · CHAPTER 11 ·
Terrorism in Tunisia
Chapter 11 of Protest and Change: Second-Wave Feminism and Tunisia, 1945–2015: “Terrorism and Fragility”
After 2011 the jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia recruited in poor suburbs and interior towns; its supporters attacked the US embassy in September 2012 and members were linked to the 2013 murders of two left-wing politicians. Libya’s collapse supplied weapons and camps, and attacks in 2015 brought back emergency rule.
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The map above is the world of Tunisia, July 2015 — After Sousse: the state of emergency.
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SHORT EXPLANATION
Tunisia’s revolution opened public life after decades of repression. Salafists, who called for a return to the practices of the earliest Muslims, could now preach openly. Jihadists such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State went further: they sought to impose their version of Islamic rule by violence. In poor suburbs and interior towns, the militant Ansar al-Sharia (“Supporters of Islamic Law”) found recruits. Its supporters attacked the US embassy in September 2012, and its members were linked to the 2013 murders of left-wing politicians Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi. They were also linked to an insurgency, a guerrilla campaign against the state, in the Mount Chaambi range. An ambush there killed eight soldiers in July 2013; a memorial marks the place on the map. Libya’s collapse supplied weapons and camps, and by 2015 the UN estimated that about 5,500 Tunisians had joined jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya. The Arab uprisings’ most successful democracy was also a major source of jihadist recruits.
Tourism gave attackers a way to strike the economy sustaining Tunisia’s transition. Two gunmen killed 21 foreign visitors and a Tunisian police officer at the Bardo Museum on 18 March 2015. On 26 June a gunman killed 38 people, including 30 Britons, on a beach near Sousse. The attackers had trained in Libya; memorials on the map mark both attacks. Receipts from tourism fell by about a third, and a dashed red line shows the barrier the government began building along the Libyan border. On 4 July it declared the emergency shown by hatching on the map. This legal regime, like emergency powers used by some democracies after a disaster, permits bans on strikes and gatherings and confinement without trial. Three months later the Nobel Peace Prize honored the Quartet, four civil-society organizations led by the UGTT union federation, for brokering the 2013 compromise. Seven weeks after the emergency was lifted, a November bomb killed twelve presidential guards, and it returned. Tunisia’s democracy survived, while its defense restored powers the revolution had opposed.
The full story
The fall of Ben Ali’s police state gave Tunisians freedoms that had long been denied. It also changed the conditions in which religious movements could organize. These movements did not all seek the same thing. Ennahda, the Islamist party that led the 2011 government, sought to shape law through elections; Salafists called for a return to the practices of the earliest Muslims; jihadists, a small minority, sought to impose their version of Islamic rule through violence.
An amnesty in early 2011 released hundreds of imprisoned Islamists, including veterans of foreign jihads. Among them was Abu Iyadh, who founded Ansar al-Sharia. The group provided charity, preached in mosques whose imams had fled, and recruited unemployed young men in poor suburbs and interior towns. During protests against a film insulting the Prophet, its supporters stormed the US embassy compound on 14 September 2012; four people were killed. Ennahda’s government designated the group a terrorist organization in August 2013. The leaders of the transition were building new rules at a time when militant organizers had already found room to act.
The danger extended across the border. After Gaddafi fell in 2011, Libyan weapons depots were looted and the border was barely policed. By 2014 rival governments and militias divided Libya, shown in red on the map. The Islamic State trained Tunisian recruits at camps near Sabratha, less than 100 kilometres from the border. The two arrows follow routes from Tunisia to the camps and onward to Syria. An open border tied Tunisian security to events in a neighbor without a functioning state.
In July 2015 the UN estimated that about 5,500 Tunisians were fighting with jihadist groups, most in Syria. Other estimates ranged from the government’s roughly 3,000 to 6,000. Analysts disagree about the reasons for such a large contingent from the only Arab Spring country to become a democracy. They point both to the frustration of educated young men and to the freedom recruiters gained after 2011.
The attacks on the Bardo Museum on 18 March 2015 and at Port El Kantaoui on 26 June, where 38 people were killed, struck tourism and the economy on which the transition depended. Tourism receipts fell by about 35 per cent that year, and about 70 hotels closed. On 4 July the government declared an emergency, allowing it to ban strikes and gatherings and place people under house arrest. A July counter-terrorism law extended the death penalty to terrorist crimes and permitted detention without a lawyer for fifteen days. Work also began on a Libyan border barrier.
Negotiation had helped Tunisia through its political crisis: in October the Nobel Peace Prize went to the National Dialogue Quartet, the four civil-society organizations led by the UGTT union federation that brokered the 2013 compromise. Yet the danger of further violence kept emergency powers in use. The emergency was lifted on 2 October and reinstated after a bomb killed twelve presidential guards on 24 November. Tunisia had ended the revolution-era emergency in 2014; its democracy was again using a decree written for Bourguiba in 1978.
FULL EXPLANATION
Why so many Tunisians joined jihadist groups
Why did Tunisia, the only Arab Spring country to become a democracy, supply one of the largest contingents of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq? The proposed explanations illuminate different parts of the problem. Many recruits were educated, unemployed young men from poor suburbs of Tunis and Bizerte and interior towns such as Kasserine and Ben Guerdane. Jihad could offer them income, status and a sense of purpose. The revolution also changed who could preach and organize: prisoners were released, and bitterness remained over Ben Ali’s policing of public religion, including his ban on headscarves in public offices and surveillance of mosque attendance. Salafism could appeal where the official religious establishment had lost credibility. Friends, prisons and particular mosques supplied recruitment networks, helping explain concentrations in certain neighborhoods. The size of the contingent is itself uncertain. The UN estimated about 5,500 in 2015, the private security-research firm Soufan Group gave 6,000, and government estimates were near 3,000. Some counts included everyone who reached a conflict zone; others counted only fighters confirmed by intelligence services. Grievance, opportunity and networks combined, and no single explanation accounts for the pattern.
Defending democracy with emergency powers
Tunisia’s leaders had to protect people against attacks while preserving rights won in the revolution. Supporters of strong measures had a serious case: a state unable to protect tourists, soldiers and citizens might lose public support for democracy itself. The powers available, however, reached far beyond the pursuit of armed attackers. The emergency drew on a 1978 decree issued on “Black Thursday”, when the army crushed a UGTT general strike. It let governors ban meetings and strikes, impose curfews, censor publications and order house arrest without judicial approval. The July 2015 counter-terrorism law allowed suspects to be held for up to fifteen days without a lawyer and extended the death penalty to terrorist crimes, although Tunisia had observed a moratorium, a pause in executions, since 1991. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented arbitrary arrests, travel bans and torture in the following months; police unions formed after 2011 sought further powers and immunity. Renewed repeatedly for years after November 2015, the emergency became difficult to end. Measures adopted against violence could themselves endanger the transition.
Key places on the map
Why it happened
Freedom for preachers and recruiters. Ennahda’s members had themselves suffered decades of repression, and the new government hesitated to repress religious activists. With mosque surveillance ended and political prisoners, including jihadist veterans, released, Salafists could preach and organize among young men with few prospects. Some preachers banned under Ben Ali returned to their pulpits; Salafist groups seized other mosques by force.
A security state in transition. Tunisia’s security institutions had been built for a different political order. The police, a backbone of Ben Ali’s rule, were distrusted and partly purged; the small army had little counter-insurgency experience. Intelligence networks that watched dissidents were ill suited to tracking armed groups. Officers who feared prosecution for conduct under Ben Ali were often reluctant to take risks. Effective democratic policing had yet to fill the gap left by the removal of repressive practices.
Libya’s collapse next door. A recruit could reach camps near Sabratha in hours and return almost as easily. That possibility grew from Libya’s collapse after Gaddafi fell in 2011 and its slide into civil war by 2014. Ungoverned space lay within a day’s drive of Tunisian towns, weapons were plentiful, and the Islamic State held territory around Sirte. Smuggling routes, long tolerated because border towns depended on them, carried fighters as well as fuel.
Grievances the revolution had not met. The revolution had raised economic hopes that remained unmet. Unemployment in 2015 was higher than in 2010, especially among young graduates and in the interior. Recruiters could offer unemployed young men pay, belonging and purpose. Many came from towns and suburbs that had protested in 2010–11: grievances shared by protesters could also help draw a minority toward violence.
THE TURNING POINT
Port El Kantaoui, 26 June 2015. Three months after Bardo, the attack near Sousse persuaded foreign governments to advise against travel and tour operators to cancel programs. Tourism, which employed hundreds of thousands, collapsed for the next two years. The government declared an emergency and passed a counter-terrorism law, bringing back powers lifted only sixteen months earlier. The transition now had to reconcile security with liberty, a choice it never fully resolved.
What it changed
Emergency rule returns. The emergency declared on 4 July 2015 was lifted on 2 October, reimposed on 24 November and renewed continuously for years. Powers over movement, strikes and gatherings were available against political opponents as well as armed groups. Adopted to protect democracy, they later became tools for undermining it.
An economy without visitors. When visitors stayed away, coastal resorts emptied; some towns lost most visitors for two years. Tourism receipts fell about 35 per cent in 2015, growth nearly stopped and unemployment remained around 15 per cent. The interior, already short of the revolution’s economic benefits, received even fewer. Economic disappointment later became the most common reason Tunisians gave for losing faith in democratic politics.
A prize for compromise. On 9 October 2015, between the two emergency declarations, the Nobel Peace Prize recognized the National Dialogue Quartet’s compromise. The award brought attention and aid while Tunisia was under attack. It also reinforced the country’s image as the Arab Spring’s one success story, an image that helped and burdened subsequent governments.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Did the terrorist attacks of 2012–2015 threaten Tunisia’s democracy more than the government’s response to them?
The attacks killed soldiers, police, politicians and tourists, sought to provoke conflict between secular and religious Tunisians, and damaged the economy supporting the transition. Tourism receipts fell about a third in 2015. The government had reason to defend the public, and in the short term its response helped democracy survive: elections continued and the Nobel Prize recognized the 2013 compromise. But the emergency and the 2015 counter-terrorism law also restored powers over gatherings, movement and detention resembling those of the old regime. Human-rights groups documented abuses. Renewed for years, emergency rule normalized exceptional powers that a later president would use to dismantle democratic institutions after 2021. Terrorism weakened the economy and public trust; the response eroded habits of liberty, and that danger proved more lasting. How a democracy defends itself can matter as much as the attack it faces.
An interesting fact
The National Dialogue Quartet brought leaders of very different institutions together: Houcine Abassi of the UGTT trade-union federation, Wided Bouchamaoui of the employers’ union UTICA, Abdessattar Ben Moussa of the Tunisian Human Rights League and Mohamed Fadhel Mahfoudh of the Order of Lawyers. Bouchamaoui had become the first woman to lead Tunisia’s employers’ federation when elected in 2011. Thus a business leader sat alongside the trade-union leader in the group awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, the first Nobel Prize ever awarded to Tunisians.
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