As ISIS threat grows, a family hurts from within
KASSERINE, Tunisia: One evening last autumn, the Islamic State fi ghters came down from the mountains.
Sayed Ghozlani was visiting his family during a break from the army, and the fi ghters wanted to fi nd him. They stormed his house during dinner and corralled the men. They beat them up, tied their hands behind their backs and forced them all to kneel.
Then one fi ghter pressed a gun against Ghozlani’s head and demanded his name. “Abdul Malik,” he replied. “That’s not the truth,” another militant said in a voice that was familiar, according to two witnesses.
His face bloodied, Ghozlani looked up to see a figure carrying an AK- 47 rifle and smiling triumphantly. It was his cousin, Muntasir. In the mountains of western Tunisia, radical Islamists are spreading their ideology, cowing villagers with brute violence and dividing families. Americantrained Tunisian soldiers are battling them, but the militants are formidable opponents.
The struggle lays bare the Islamic State’s aspirations as it loses territory in Iraq and Syria, security officials and analysts say. The militants are searching for new safe havens and areas to control, as well as sow chaos. They are also fortifying existing footholds to expand their reach and fallback options.
In Egypt, Islamic State militants are staging devastating attacks on minority Christians. In Algeria and the Sahel region, new Islamic State affi liates have emerged.
And after losing its Libyan stronghold of Sirte in December, the Islamic State is trying to regroup in southern Libya, and potentially in Tunisia and other neighbouring countries, US military and intelligence officials say.
“The instability in Libya and North Africa may be the most significant near-term threat to US and allies’ interests on the continent,” General Thomas Waldhauser, head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month.
The return of possibly thousands of fi ghters threatens to further destabilise this moderate Muslim North African nation, the only one to emerge as a functioning democracy after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.
Less than 15 miles from the Algerian border, the mountains have become a crossroads for militants from the region. Caves and bushes provide plenty of cover for training camps and redoubts in an area that is partly ungoverned.
In villages and towns, the forces abetting radicalisation are in full gear: Ignored by successive governments, the region is beset with high unemployment, poverty and weak social services. Resentment toward the government runs deep.
On that November evening, these colluding forces led one cousin to betray another.
“Ever since my brother joined the army, our cousin wanted to kill him,” said Fadha Ghozlani, 35, who was in the house during the attack, along with their younger brother, Mohammed. “He brought the terrorists to our home.”
By UN estimates, at least 5,500 Tunisians have fought for the Islamic State and al- Qaeda in Syria, Iraq and Libya - more than from any other country. Many are from the Kasserine region.
But even as Tunisia became a militant pipeline to the wars in those countries, its secular history and drift toward the West made it a target.
In 2015, Tunisian gunmen believed to have trained in Libya attacked the resort town of Sousse and the Bardo Museum in the capital, Tunis, killing scores, mostly foreign tourists.
Last year, Islamic State fi ghters based in Libya brazenly battled security forces in the southern border town of Ben Guerdane, widely seen as an effort to establish a new foothold in Tunisia.
That foothold seems to be taking shape in these mountains, where the Islamic State is also in
His face bloodied, Ghozlani looked up to see a figure carrying an AK-47 rifle and smiling triumphantly. It was his cousin, Muntasir.
a contest with al- Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, for recruits and territory.
Many AQIM fi ghters have defected to form the Islamic State’s Tunisian branch, Jund-al-Khilafah, which in Arabic means the Soldiers of the Caliphate, security officials and analysts say.
There are no more than a couple hundred militants in the mountains, security officials say, including some from Algeria, Mauritania and West African countries.
But most of the fi ghters are Tunisians from the area, disaffected men such as Muntasir. —WP-Bloomberg