Politically Unbroken

The Tunisian government says that serious fighting took place between security forces and armed Islamists on 23rd December last year and continued until 3rd January. At least twelve Islamists and two police are said to have been killed. The Interior Ministry said the terrorists were planning attacks on American and British facilities. Six of the terrorists had come over the Algerian border, where they joined local Salafists from the "Group for Preaching and Struggle."

Open conflicts between radical Islamist groups and security forces have been rare in the recent history of Tunisia. That is partly because Tunisians fear the chaos which might result if the state should lose control of the security situation.

But it's also a widespread view among members of the Tunisian elite and the country's political class that peaceful methods are a better way of achieving change.

When it began, the national independence movement in Tunisia chose to take the road of reform. Political parties were founded which demanded representation in the country's institutions. They set up a network of civil society and citizens' organisations.

Scarcely any violence

The leader of the national movement, Habib Bourgiba, adopted a tactic of peaceful demonstrations and chose to create alliances with those on the French mainland and in other Western countries who were also opposed to colonialism.

Even when the leadership of the Constitutional Party (Hisb al-Dusturi) decided to set up armed groups, their tasks were precisely defined and limited in their duration. Their actions were simply aimed at applying pressure on the French government to come to the negotiating table.

Since independence fifty years ago, the opposition has only taken up arms against the government on two occasions. One of these was as a result of a bitter dispute between Habib Bourgiba and a challenger from within his own party, Saleh Ben Jussef.

The other occasion was in 1980, when a group of Nasserists tried to take over the southern town of Qafssa with the support of the Algerian President Houari Boumedienne. They declared that they were fighting a revolution against President Bourgiba.

History thus shows not only that political violence is very limited in scope and occurs only under exceptional circumstances in modern Tunisia. It also shows that political violence is accepted neither by the majority of the people in the country nor by the representatives of its various political and ideological tendencies.

The rise of militant Islamism

The attack on the synagogue in Djerba, in which a number of German tourists were killed, was a shock for the Tunisian public. Although it has remained the only such incident, the attack showed the potential danger from the relatively large number of young Tunisians who have been successfully lured to Al Qaeda. Such people are not only important in providing the movement with its grass roots, many of them have also quickly taken on significant leadership positions.

For example, the two supposed journalists who carried out the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud in Afghanistan were both Tunisian citizens. And there were a number of Tunisian fighters among the companions of Osama bin Laden who were in the caves of Tora Bora when US planes bombed the area.

In Europe too, Spanish police examining the bodies of those killed in the Madrid railway bombing found that one of the masterminds was a Tunisian student.

Battleground Iraq

Within the last three years there has also been an increasing number of young Tunisians who have made their way via Algeria and Syria or Jordan to the "Iraq front."

Damascus has handed some of them over to the Tunisian authorities. They have been put in prison and treated under anti-terror regulations, although in many of the cases there is no legal justification for such treatment.

These incidents on the regional and international level are matched within Tunisia with an unparalleled increase in religiosity, involving all generations and social classes.

More people are going to the mosque to pray. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women now wear some kind of headscarf, including the veil.

Insecure elites

All this has led to considerable concern among the ranks of the laicist elites and the political leadership in the country. They used to believe that the policies they had followed since the seventies would prevent any chance of fundamentalist radicalism gaining a foothold in Tunisia.

But instead of analysing the development and its causes, the state has once more turned to the security apparatus for a solution.

The tense climate in the region and the government's own lack of flexibility, has led to government reluctance to talk to the secular political elite, and it has rejected reform and dialogue.

This approach has strengthened those elements which are under the influence of the ideology of the "Salafist jihadis" who support Al Qaeda, and whose aim it is to break through the security which surrounds Tunisian society.

Only a ceasefire?

The Algerian "Salafist Group for Preaching and Struggle" and the "Libyan Group for Struggle" provide the model for such approaches. But the Tunisians are have come rather late in the day to such developments. The Algerian group, for example, is already suffering from a structural crisis, following the decision of some of its members to give up violence and accept an amnesty offered by President Bouteflika.

The Libyan Group for Struggle has gone through a similar process. Following a crisis a few months ago, the organisation accepted an offer by the son of Colonel Ghaddafi, Saif al-Islam, and has entered into a process of dialogue.

Against this background, it was a surprise for both the Tunisian government and society that the Tunisian Islamists were able to make the organisational, ideological and military preparations for the recent attacks.

But thanks to the watchfulness of the Tunisian security forces, the cooperation of other states in the region and the support of the US and European authorities, it was possible to restrict the Islamists' influence.

The security forces may have won a victory in that they prevented Al Qaeda sympathisers from setting up a single organisation, but this does not mean that the danger has been averted and that there may not still be sleeper cells in the country.

The Hydra of radical Islam

Indeed, the fact that the Islamists were able to organise so much in just a few months, in a country which is increasingly relying on its security forces and in which secrecy is almost impossible, is still quite an achievement.

The cultural, political and social climate in Tunisia in the last few years has become favourable for groups preaching religious violence.

In their arguments, they base themselves on the one hand on a rejection of the west and the international system, which they describe as a tool of the Jews and Christians. On the other hand they dismiss the government as unbelievers and deny it any religious legitimacy. The same, they say, applies to Tunisian society if it continues to remain loyal to a state run by "unbelievers" and "tyrants."

This was all unexpected in Tunisia. Now the country will have to fight real terrorism, and the state and the elite both find themselves in a difficult situation.

The government has been in power for a long time and has always held to the Tunisian proverb, "Cut off the head and dry out the arteries." The government has certainly done that, but there have been too many heads growing up to replace those cut off.

The elite for its part has neither the knowledge nor the experience it needs to deal with Islamists. In addition, they themselves are not being given the chance of real participation in the political decision-making process.

Salah ad-Din al-Jourchi

© Qantara.de 2007

Salah ad-Din al-Jourchi is a Tunisian journalist and writer.

Translated from the German by Michael Lawton

Qantara.de

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