TUNISIA
From Arab Spring to Daesh springboard
The Star returns to Tunisia to find out why a democratic narrative has been unravelled by thousands of young fighters who have left to join Daesh
TUNIS, TUNISIA— The mere mention of Syria elicits pained expressions among those living in El Mourouj, a densely populated suburb about a 20-minute drive from Tunis.
We came earlier this year to one neighbourhood, where stray cats outnumber cars on the sunny streets, armed with only a few names of young Tunisians who had left for Syria. Within minutes, we were introduced to their families and embarking on a walking tour of the departed.
Fawzai Zeitouni received a call two months before our visit that her teenage son Hamza had been killed. As she showed us the last photo of him, a tear fell onto the phone screen.
“We don’t understand. All the mothers just say, ‘We went to sleep and woke up and our children were gone.’ ”
To some she is lucky — she knows the fate of her son. For others there is only the hope that their loved ones will return, and there is fear that they will return, brainwashed and trained by Daesh.
It is hard for most Westerners to comprehend the number of young people here in this country of about 11 million, who have joined the call to jihad in Syria, Iraq or Libya.
They come from Tunisia’s “Generation 9/11,” those who grew up in the shadow of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but who came of age during the demonstrations of the Arab Spring.
Tunisia was the birthplace of those protests that spread across the Mideast and North Africa, starting with outrage over the self-immolation of a desperate Tunisian fruit dealer. The country is the only Arab Spring “success” story amid unyielding bloodshed in Syria, Yemen, Libya and political upheaval in Egypt and Bahrain.
This is the country whose young people won a Nobel Peace Prize, and it is often called the “democratic model” for the region.
The foreign fighter phenomenon frustrates this tidy narrative.
According to the Soufan Group, a U.S.-based think tank, about 6,000 Tunisians have left for rebel groups, including Daesh (also known as ISIS and ISIL). That’s more than any other country and about 1,000 more than all the Western European recruits combined.
But walk the streets of Tunis as a tourist — of which there are fewer these days — and you would have no idea Tunisia has become the world’s greatest exporter of foreign fighters. The medina hustles and bustles, the cafés and bars along Avenue Habib Bourguiba are full. The first cruise ship to visit Tunisia since 59 tourists were killed in two major terror attacks last year docked earlier this month.
The quiet exodus of a young generation is so common that it is simply part of the daily discourse here. For those who stayed, there are few opportunities and much suspicion.
Next to Zeitouni’s house, a mother closed her shop to accompany us a couple of blocks to where her 30year-old son is under house arrest. His passport was seized and he is forbidden from using the Internet or leaving his parents’ apartment.
Safouan Mahdaoui claimed he never went to Syria, only to Turkey for business, and that put him on the radar of security services. “Once you are suspected, what’s the point? No life here,” he said, alongside his wife and their 3-month-old baby, who sat gurgling, trying to kick off his SpiderMan socks. “If I had known it would be like this, and I’d actually gone to Syria, I would never come back.”
Ask security analysts, community workers, relatives and political commentators here if the main cause of high recruitment of Tunisians are religious, economic, revolutionary, political, or personal and most would answer: “Yes.”
But the external factors that drive young Tunisians to join Daesh or other violent extremist groups are not the same as in Canada, Europe or the Middle East.
Here, in the fading light of the revolution, when change didn’t come fast enough, extremist groups shone bright.
“Democracy as an abstract concept is well and good, but for many Tunisians, the democratic transition hasn’t translated into positive changes on the ground,” writes Shadi Hamid, author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World. “The economy continues to struggle, and those on the fringes — secular revolutionaries and Salafi radicals alike — feel that the political process, moving slowly because of polarization and gridlock, stifles the dramatic change that was necessary.”
For a small country, Tunisia’s fate is exceptionally important for the region. But there is little international attention paid here compared to elsewhere, despite Tunisia’s own pleas for help.
That is typical of foreign policy since 9/11, which is largely crisis-driven.
But working with Tunisia now could stave off disaster in the future. It is always easier to pull a country back from the brink than to put the pieces together when it falls. Post-revolution turmoil We met defence lawyer Ahmed Belguith in his third-floor office, off a street where lawyers sip tea in cafés, leaning against high tables. Files were stacked neatly everywhere, although some piles looked as if they would topple in a slight breeze. His window was closed, curtains drawn; a lawyer’s gown hung on a hook on the wall.
Belguith had spent much of his legal career under dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, watching Muslim clients or political opponents of the regime go to jail on trumped-up charges of terrorism, seeking justice in a system where it was in short supply. “Innocent people used to get 20 years in prison just for having some books at home, without even asking about the context or anything,” he said. “Authorities were just suspicious of people who prayed.”
Habib Bourguiba, after which Tunis’s main street is named, ruled the country for three decades after independence in 1956, believing that Islamic traditions stood in the way of building a modern state. When Ben Ali took control in 1986, his enforcement of secularity extended to mainstream Islamic political movements, his greatest opponents. Mosques were shut down, thousands imprisoned.
But during the revolutionary euphoria that followed Ben Ali’s ousting in 2011, Tunisians were finally free to say what they thought, and the rigid secularity gave way to religious freedom. A 2012 Human Rights Watch report noted, “Tunisians were allowed to demonstrate, express themselves, and form parties and associations to an extent unmatched since independence in 1956.”
The country’s interim government announced an amnesty and thousands of prisoners walked free. “At the time, we all believed there should be amnesty because we know there were injustices done by the former regime,” said Belguith. “We believed that it is better to have a guilty man set free than to have an innocent man behind bars.
“But we were wrong. Those who committed crimes should not have been set free; we saw consequences of that later.”
Into this post-revolutionary void came hardline clerics who had been pushed underground, ready to preach an ultraconservative Islam.
Amosque administrator in El Mourouj said he watched helplessly as he temporarily lost control of his mosque. “Some men came and took over. They just arrived and had men in trucks, like bodyguards. There was no violence but three weeks later they were in charge.” He asked that we don’t use his name, or take his picture. The men he’s talking about — religious leaders from out of town — are long gone, but the fear lingers.
By 2013, Tunisia was in turmoil. A secular political activist was assassinated, followed by the murder of another politician.
Confidence in Ennahdha, a oncebanned moderate Islamist party that won an overwhelming majority in the first post-revolution election, was fading. The pace of progress was excruciatingly slow. The young felt their voices had been lost. The economy remained dire.
Ansar al Sharia, led by some of those who were freed during the amnesty, was declared a terrorist group. The group’s leader fled to Libya.
Belguith saw the return of indiscriminate detentions and house arrests, crackdowns reminiscent of Ben Ali’s days. By 2015, in the wake of terrorist attacks on tourism sites, new anti-terrorism laws allowed suspects to be held incommunicado for 15 days before seeing a lawyer. Many are held much longer, and Belguith said there are “confessions” he knows cannot be true.
Thirty years of autocracy had left weak institutions — police, courts, intelligence — ill-equipped to deal with the crisis without returning to a police state, Belguith said. And Tunisia was under pressure by the West to control any burgeoning terrorist groups or stem the flow of fighters into Syria and Iraq above all else.
“The greatest danger,” he said, “is when you try to convince local and international communities that you are effective . . . in fighting terrorism, the aim is not to arrest as many people as we can. We have to target real players.” When rebels become ‘returnees’ Mohamed Iqbel Ben Rejab arrived at the hotel lobby slightly out of breath, a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. We had to speak quickly as it was starting to get dark and the countrywide curfew was 8 p.m.
Ben Rejab is the president and founder of RATTA Association, the Rescue Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad. He started the group in 2013 to work with the families of youth trapped outside the country, including those who have joined Daesh or Jabhat al Nusra (now known as Jabhat Fatah alSham).
“Those who left, their weakness is their belief,” he said. “They have a religious emptiness in a sense that they believe anything.”
While there is no one profile, Ben Rejab said many of these (mostly) young men are well-educated, with degrees in science or engineering. “Not philosophy,” he said. “To them an equation is either correct or false, black or white; there is heaven and hell. No comma or nothing. ”
He began his organization after his 23-year-old brother, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, shocked the family by leaving for Syria in 2013 with seven friends, to join a Nusra training camp. The family managed to get him back after just 10 days — in part because of the physical challenges he faced in a conflict zone.
“For many Tunisians, the democratic transition hasn’t translated into positive changes on the ground.” SHADI HAMID AUTHOR
Now Ben Rejab tries to help the hundreds of “returnees,” offering counselling, or help in navigating the legal system. But there is little support for his work and for most who return, the only options are jail or house arrest — even though the jails are overcrowded and risk of prison radicalization is well documented. He said there is no real effort to sort the returnees who “are really regretful for what they did,” from “others who have plans of launching attacks.”
This situation is bound to get worse as Daesh loses territory in Syria and Iraq, and Libya pushes Tunisians back to the border.
“One of the ministers said we don’t have any (terrorists) here, he insisted that they are all jailed,” said Ben Rejab. “The truth is completely different. We should face the truth and say things as they are. It is the only way to fix our problems.” ‘Employment, freedom, dignity’ For every story of someone who left for Syria believing it was a religious duty, there are those who went on humanitarian missions. Then there were those who just went to get a job.
Financial gain is not what drives most Western recruits to Syria and Iraq, but it is a critical factor here. A bleak economy and corrupt government drove the revolution in 2011, but the economy did not improve; in many ways it got worse.
“Democracy is not about just drafting a new constitution and having elections,” said Lina Ben Mhenni. “Let’s remember the cause that pushed people to take to the streets in 2010 and 2011. It can be summarized with the main slogan of the revolution: employment, freedom and dignity.”
Ben Mhenni, a 32-year-old blogger and former teacher, was one of the loudest voices of the revolution, sometimes a one-person news bureau for the international press. She is still an avid writer. “Five years later, the situation didn’t change for the people who started it, people in the remote areas who were feeling that they were marginalized, discriminated against. And of course there were other problems like corruption, nepotism.”
As we sat in a smoke-filled Tunis café, protesters in the western province of Kasserine were demanding jobs. Earlier in the day, their peaceful demonstrations had been quelled with tear gas. Kasserine was in the headlines in the last few years not because of its crushing unemployment, but because of the many young local men who had left for Syria.
Ben Mhenni lamented that terrorism is the only issue that draws international attention, when Tunisia’s greatest need is help with the economy and building a system free from corruption.
Besides, she noted, the issues are not unrelated. The view from Ottawa In May, Canada’s global affairs minister, Stéphane Dion, travelled to Tunis. “The Tunisians weren’t shy about pleading for assistance,” said one official who knew details of the meetings. The economy was the main topic of discussion. Canada pledged support and announced a three-year, $4 million security partnership for “battling terrorism.”
According to Global Affairs spokesperson Jocelyn Sweet, Canada has also allocated $5.3 million to aid Tunisian women in “taking up leadership roles.”
Marie-Claude Bibeau, minister of international development and la Francophonie, is reviewing Canada’s international assistance, which Sweet said “will establish Canada’s priorities for development assistance in the coming years.”
“With this in mind, Canada is looking at options for its support to Tunisia in the future.”
A Canadian diplomat based in Tunis, who spoke on the condition of not being named, believes there is opportunity here for Canada and that money is not enough. “We need to provide real support for democratic transition. It’s not about giving money to a government that doesn’t uphold the spirit of resolution. Parliament is weak, the constitutional court not implemented, justice institutes need reform.
“There’s a demand for assistance for capacity building and technical expertise and I don’t think Canada is regarded as imperialist in offering this. We don’t have the colonial background, and we’re also a young, dynamic nation with common language.
“This is a critical period now to make sure transition works because the geopolitical fallout is huge,” said the diplomat. “I’m quite concerned how things may dissolve here.” About the series: The Atkinson Fellowship awards a seasoned Canadian journalist with the opportunity to pursue a year-long investigation into a current policy issue. This award is a collaborative project of the Atkinson Foundation, the Honderich family and Toronto Star. Michelle Shephard, the Star’s national security correspondent and author, travelled to a half-dozen countries and interviewed foreign fighters, security experts, policy makers and religious leaders for this year’s series. Her stories about “Generation 9/11” explore the issues of Daesh’s foreign fighters and how Canada and the world should respond. The series concludes this weekend.