Tunisia is paying the price for the political collapse of neighbor Libya and the emergence of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) in the power vacuum created by warring militias. Like their forerunners, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Daesh terrorists who have turned Muammar Gaddafi’s old hometown of Sirte into their North African Raqqah recognize no borders, either to countries or to the vicious brutality of their violence.
Last year Tunisia was hit by three terror attacks. Two, in the capital’s Bardo museum and the beach resort at Sousse, targeted tourists and effectively destroyed the greater part of a sector of immense importance to the economy. The third murderous attack was the bombing of a bus carrying members of the presidential guard.
Now the terrorists have struck again, once more at a so-called “hard target”. They attacked an army base and a police station in the Tunisian border town of Ben Guerdane. Nine members of the security forces and seven civilians, including a young girl, were killed in several hours of fighting. But the Tunisian army said they killed 28 of the terrorists and captured several others.
The incident is probably more complex than a mere cross-border raid. First of all the Tunisians claim to have completed a ditch and sand barrier along their entire border with Libya. This is now being reinforced with monitoring equipment supplied by the Germans and monitored with the help of a small force of British troops. Therefore, it has to be asked how the terrorists managed to sneak across.
Then there is the long-standing issue of smuggling of which the town of Ben Guerdane is a center. Berber families split by the frontier have long worked to run cheap fuel and foodstuffs from Libya to Tunisia. When the Tunisian government announced its border barrier, there were violent protests in the town, prompted by the smugglers, who blocked the route to Libya on several occasions for days at a time.
But it is more complex still. Tunisians make up the largest number of recruits to Daesh ranks - more than 7,000 by some estimates. Even though Tunisia is the only country to have hung on to the changes brought about by its Arab Spring, it remains politically fragile. Unemployment is soaring, not least because of the collapse of tourist numbers. Prosperous and bustling Tunis is by no means representative of the rest of the country. Daesh, therefore, has a vested interest in expanding its savage mayhem, even as it prepares for an aerial onslaught by the multinational partners in a US-led coalition. Effectively the terrorists will be diffusing the target they represent as well as opening a new front in their bloody campaign.
Monday’s Ben Guerdane attack is most unlikely to be the last to be launched from Libya. But properly protecting the 400-kilometer frontier, even with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, will be a big challenge for the 27,000-strong Tunisian army with its significant component of conscripts.
Although many Daesh killers in Libya are Tunisians, it is the selfish criminal rivalries of the Libyan militias that have allowed the terrorists to flourish. Time and again militia leaders protest that they are acting in the best interests of Libya, when in reality they only care about what they can do for themselves and the idiots who follow them.
