Tunisia and al Qaeda Inspired Terrorism

Submitted by K Prabhakar Rao on Sat, 08/25/2007 - 19:16. al qaeda Fanaticism & Terrorism terrorism tunisia

Prof Dr Colonel (Retired) K. Prabhakar Rao

Tunisia (Tūnis) (Al-Jumhuriyah at-Tunisiyah), officially the Tunisian Republic, is a country situated on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa protruding towards Sicily. It is the northernmost African country and the smallest of the nations situated along the Atlas mountain range. Around forty percent of the country on south is composed of the Sahara desert, with much of the remainder consisting of particularly fertile soil, and a 1300-km coastline. Both played a prominent role in ancient times, first with the famous Phoenician city of Carthage, and later, as the Africa Province, which became known as the bread basket of the Roman Empire (1). In modern days it became a French colony. On the right side (east) it has borders with Libya while on left side (west) it has Algeria. In the north it has long Mediterranean coast.

Except for an interval of Vandal conquest in A.D. 439–533, Carthage was part of the Roman Empire until the Arab conquest of 648–669. It was then ruled by various Arab and Berber dynasties, followed by the Turks, who took it in 1570–1574 and made it part of the Ottoman Empire until the 19th century. In the late 16th century, it was a stronghold for the Barbary pirates. French troops occupied the country in 1881, and the bey, the local Tunisian ruler, signed a treaty acknowledging it as a French protectorate. ). In 1942 – 1943 Tunisia was the scene of the first major operations by the Allied Forces (the British Commonwealth and the United States) against the Nazi lead Axis Powers, during World War II. The main body of the British army, advancing from their victory in Battle of el-Alamein under the command of British Field Marshal Montgomery, pushed into Tunisia from the south. The US and other allies, following their invasions of Algeria and Morocco in Operation Torch, invaded from the west. Tunisia was the main battle field between the allied forces and Axis powers that witnessed the most bitterly fought tank battles in World War II. Field Marshall Rommel (German army) and General (Later Field Marshal) Montgomery of El alamein (Royal British army) made their everlasting names here.

Nationalist agitation forced France to recognize Tunisian independence and sovereignty in 1956. The constituent assembly deposed the bey on July 25, 1957, declared Tunisia a republic, and elected Habib Bourguiba as president. Bourguiba maintained a pro-Western foreign policy that earned him enemies. Tunisia refused to break relations with the U.S. during the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967. Concerned with Islamic fundamentalist plots against the state, the government stepped up efforts to eradicate the movement, including censorship and frequent detention of suspects (2

Tunisia like other African nations with Muslim populations has fallen a prey to Islamic fundamentalism inspired by Al Qaeda. A spokesman for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network says the organization was behind a suicide attack at a Tunisian synagogue in April, in which 19 people died. In an audio tape broadcast on the Arabic al-Jazeera television channel, al-Qaeda official Sulaiman Abu Ghaith said the attack was revenge for the deaths of Palestinians. Mr Abu Ghaith praised the 11 September attacks on America and warned of more attacks "in the coming days and months". The Kuwaiti-born cleric said 98% of al-Qaeda leaders - including Bin Laden - were alive and that Bin Laden would make a statement broadcast on television. The blast, which killed 14 German tourists, a French citizen and four Tunisians, happened when a fuel tanker blew up outside the ancient synagogue in April 2002 ( 3).

Stratfor ( Web site on Geo political intelligence) has released a breaking intelligence report indicating that Salafist Group for preaching and combat ( GSPC), which recently swore allegiance to al-Qaeda, has been instructed to form a unified command with Morocco's Islamic Combatant Group, Libya's Islamic Fighting Group and several Tunisian groups, most notably the Tunisian Combatant Group. The new organization reportedly will be called The Union of the Arab Maghreb (consisting of North African countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria). Spanish newspaper El Periodico cited Spanish anti-terrorism intelligence sources in their report of this intelligence, who said the information regarding the creation of the new unified network was derived from a plan Moroccan police discovered in one of several raids over the summer. The Al-Qaeda concept of creating a unified group of "Qaedat al-Jihad in the Arab Maghreb Countries" is not new. Moroccan authorities discovered plans for such a union in late 2005, when raids targeting several suspected militants turned up messages sent by leaders in the region to Osama bin Laden. In those messages, leaders reportedly discussed a plan for the GSPC to officially join Al-Qaeda and then unite jihadists in the Maghreb countries -- in many ways conforming to the pattern established by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ( Now dead having died in Iraq war in US air strike), who united jihadists in Jordan and Iraq. Significantly, the GSPC effort would also strive to unite North African militants living in Europe into a cohesive paramilitary entity (4)

On February 27, 2006, Tunisian President Zine Abidine Ben Ali released over 1,600 prisoners by official pardon—some 70 of them considered to be Islamists from the outlawed al-Nahda (awakening) movement—many of whom had been jailed on terrorism-related charges (http://www.akhbar.tn, February 26). Nearly 1,300 of the prisoners were released unconditionally, while 359 others were released on unspecified conditions. The government statement announcing the release also mentioned that 260 of the freed prisoners were released under special conditions that they report to the government and take other unspecified measures to ensure that they do not re-offend (Radio Tunis, February 26).

The Tunisian government did not provide the identities of all those released. Unnamed sources within the government confirmed that these 260 were mainly from al-Nahda (al-Hayat, February 25). Military and civilian courts had previously sentenced 100 leaders and senior members from the movement to lengthy sentences, many of them life-terms.Al-Nahda was established and is led by Rachid Ghannouchi, a former leader of al-Jamaa'a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), and then the Islamic Tendency Movement, which later became al-Nahda. Ghannouchi serves as the chairman of al-Nahda from London, where he has been living as a political refugee since 1991. He has been sentenced to life in absentia on multiple occasions by Tunisian courts. While using language favorable to supporters of democracy and liberalization, Ghannouchi firmly intends to establish an Islamic republic in Tunisia (5).

Two German terrorism experts, Guido Steinberg and Isabelle Werenfels, in February 2007 published a report about the GSPC, an Algeria based group's increased activities in the Maghreb, a region that includes Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Islamist terrorism is experiencing a dangerous revival in North Africa, the experts concluded. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was trying to expand its attacks beyond Algeria, drawing on a rising number of recruits from all over North Africa, thus threatening regional security, but also security in Iraq and eventually even in Europe. The experts in their study for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, cited several examples:
Late last year in Tunisia, 12 people were killed in gun fights between Islamists and Tunisian security forces. "According to scarcely available official information, the militants had links to the GSPC and apparently were from Tunisia, Algeria, and Mauritania; they entered Tunisia over the Algerian border," they wrote.
In the summer of 2006, the GSPC attacked a Mauritanian border checkpoint with Mali, "killing more than a dozen soldiers." In December of that year, a bus with employees from Halliburton and a local oil firm was attacked, killing one.
In Morocco and Tunisia, the number of volunteers looking to be trained in GSPC camps has steadily grown since 2005, the experts said. Algerian authorities in recent years have arrested more and more terrorists from Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya, showing the increasing interconnection of the Islamist scene in North Africa (6).
According to a new report published Tuesday by EUROPOL (the European Union's law enforcement organization that handles criminal intelligence), the "majority" of the 340 people arrested for terrorism-related activities between October 2005 and December 2006 "came from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia," and many of them had ties to the GSPC.

Thus Tunisian fundamentalists get thoroughly entangled in the AlQaeda net work. The country as a State is not sponsoring terrorism. But the Islamic fundamentalists in the country are being inspired by the AlQaeda net work and thus Tunisia being close to Algeria gets involved in these activities and the Government has to spend substantial part of resources and time in battling the net work (7) (8). It is generally opined that these terrorists from Tunisia along with those from other African countries are of great threat to Europe. Counterterrorism officials on three continents say the trouble in Tunisia is the latest evidence that a brutal Algerian group (GSPC) with a long history of violence is acting on its promise to organize extremists across North Africa and join the remnants of Al Qaeda to become a new international force for jihad. Experts say North Africa, with its vast, thinly governed stretches of mountain and desert, could become an Afghanistan-like terrorist hinterland within easy striking distance of Europe. That is all the more alarming because of the deep roots that North African populations have in Europe and the ease of travel between the two regions. For the United States, the threat is also real because of visa-free travel for most European passport holders to American cities (9).Western nations have to guard against this.

Bibliography

1. Tunisia, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia#Present-day_politics

2. Tunisia, Infoplease, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:kbIG9bS48LUJ:www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108050.html

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3. , Al-Qaeda claims Tunisia attack, BBC News, 23 June, 2002, 14:50 GMT 15:50 UK http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:DfUxBNRdauMJ:news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2061071.stm

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4. Al-Qaeda Aiming Towards Formation of Pan-Meghreb Terror Report Structure, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:8kqPDfiAbGAJ:vitalperspective.typepad.com

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5. Chris Heffelfinger, Jailed Extremists Pardoned in Tunisia, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:8RHhnR46oxsJ:jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php

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6 . Stefen Nicola, Analysis: Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Middle East times, April 13, 2007, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:LRlMpY3_enoJ:www.metimes.com

/storyview.php%3FStoryID%3D20070413-050147-3943r+Tunisia+and+AlQaeda&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10

7. Prof Dr Colonel (retired) K Prabhakar Rao, www.faithcommons.org, Algerians on the path of Terrorism, July 06, 2007, 19:41

8.. Prof Dr Colonel (retired) K Prabhakar Rao, www.faithcommons.org, Sahara the paradise for AlQaeda, July 15, 2007, 18:14

9. Craig S. Smith, Tunisia is feared to be a new base for Islamists, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:5UHVvO7ji-UJ:www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/20/news/tunisia.php

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