Check out my new ‘Policy Watch’ for the Washington Institute: “Saied’s Tunisia Is Politicizing Counterterrorism Again”

Ever since President Kais Saied’s July 2021 coup, the professionalized Tunisian counterterrorism apparatus that emerged after the 2011 revolution has become increasingly politicized, auguring a return to the methodologies of former leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. If this trajectory continues, it will undermine efforts to keep a lid on Tunisia’s jihadist movement, which continues to pose threats today even though they are far less acute than those seen from 2012 to 2019.

Beyond its moral and human aspects, this descent holds sobering implications for U.S. assistance. From 2013 to 2021, Washington sank at least $30 million into reforming Tunisia’s counterterrorism system, much of this coming after the country was hit by large-scale attacks in 2015-16. Another $20 million was provided for military education and training, along with around $100 million for law enforcement reform. Tunisian counterterrorism may not be the top-line issue it once was, but the scope of U.S. expenditures lends extra urgency to addressing Saied’s backslide.

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Check out my new ‘Policy Watch’ for the Washington Institute: “Tunisian Jihadism in the Shadow of a Coup”

As the threat of jihadist attacks in Tunisia faded to a manageable issue in recent years, reforms related to professionalization, transparency, and rule of law became central to moving the country’s counterterrorism architecture forward. Yet last year’s coup by President Kais Saied raised new questions about this progress, with observers wondering whether his authoritarian instincts would lead counterterrorism to be politicized as it was prior to the 2011 revolution.

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Check out my new ‘Policy Watch’ for the Washington Institute: “When Tunisians Fired the Start Gun for 9/11”

Twenty years ago today, Tunisians helped carry out the assassination of Afghan Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before the 9/11 attacks. In the late 1990s, Massoud had been a key U.S. ally against the Taliban’s advances, and although his fortunes had changed significantly by 2001, Washington would no doubt have relied on him heavily during the post-9/11 invasion were he still alive. Flash forward to this week, and the Taliban has just declared victory over resistance forces led by Massoud’s son Ahmad in the Panjshir Valley—a sobering bookend to a battle the group has been waging against the Northern Alliance for two decades.

Yet the heavy Tunisian involvement and other circumstances of the 2001 assassination merit a closer look, not only for their impact on subsequent developments in the global jihadist movement, but also because of the implications they hold now that Afghanistan is once again under Taliban control. Massoud’s death served multiple purposes, some of which were not entirely evident until after the fact: his killing was a gift that the Tunisian Combat Group (TCG) and al-Qaeda gave the Taliban for fighting their local enemy, as well as a public signal to launch the 9/11 attacks and an important part of al-Qaeda’s preparations for the eventual coalition invasion of Afghanistan. This is the story of the assassination, who was behind it, and why it still matters for individuals attempting to understand how jihadist networks change over time—and what types of operatives may now return to Afghanistan.

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Check out my new article for the ISIS Reader website: “Tunisians of the Iraq Jihad and How That Set the Stage for the Syrian Jihad”

Nestled into the ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement is a brief mention of a Tunisian that went by kunya Abu Usamah al-Tunisi. Based on primary source research for my own book, Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad, Abu Usamah came to Iraq at the latest in early 2004 and fought in the Battles of Fallujah where his close relationship with both Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir led to his rise in the organization: first as the military leader of Baghdad’s southern belt and later as the leader of Majlis Shura al-Mujahidin (MSM)/the Islamic State of Iraq’s (ISI) entire foreign fighter operation. His closeness to al-Zarqawi and al-Muhajir might also help explain why Abu Usamah appeared as one of the masked individuals in the video that showed the beheading of the American Nicholas Berg in May 2004. More importantly, the fact that Tunisians held high-level positions, especially ones related to foreign fighting, helps explain why so many Tunisians would later become connected to these networks that helped recruit people to fight in Iraq, Libya, and Syria after 2011. Abu Usamah would eventually be killed in a U.S. airstrike in the city of Musayyib, in Babil Province, on September 25, 2007, along with a number of other senior ISI leaders.

Although many Tunisians partook in jihadism prior to the Iraq war, the war inspired a new generation and cadre of individuals. For example, Hasan al-Brik, who would become Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s (AST) head of dawa after the 2011 Tunisian revolution, traveled to Iraq in 2003. Like many others, he did not actually make it into Iraq, but rather took charge of a safe house in Syria where individuals were vetted before travelling to Iraq. For the Tunisians who survived, many, including al-Brik, would be arrested in Syria (and elsewhere) and rendered back to Tunisia to be placed into its prison system. Tunisia’s prisons in the seven to eight years before the revolution would be crucial for bringing together the first generation of Tunisian jihadis associated with Afghanistan and Europe-based networks and the second generation more associated with Iraq and the GSPC/AQIM networks. This prison exchange between the first and second generations of Tunisian jihadis would provide AST’s base for activities after the 2011 revolution and later the foreign fighter mobilization to Iraq, Libya, and Syria to either join Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, Jabhat al-Nusrah, or the Islamic State.

My book provides a lot of details on the Tunisians that joined the Iraq jihad, around 5,000 words in all. Due to that length and the focus of the ISIS Reader on primary sources, this post will highlight some details based strictly on research derived on this network from primary sources. However, if you want the entire picture, chapter four of my book gets into the entire history and story in full.

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Check out my new article for the Global Network on Extremism & Technology: “How Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s Message Framing Primed Its Members To Become Recruits For The Islamic State”

There are a number of reasons why Tunisians joined the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. One underappreciated aspect of this is the way Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s (AST) messaging primed members of the group and others in society that were exposed to, attended, or followed online AST activities and events. In my new book, Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad, I describe this process, which I will examine in brief here. In particular, I will explore AST’s motivational framing, which “functions as prods to action.” The major themes AST crafted in its narrative was related to brotherhood, the defense of Islam, the creation of an Islamic state, and remaining as an entity.

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New video message from al-Qā’idah in the Islamic Maghrib’s Abū Muṣ’ab ‘Abd al-Wadūd (‘Abd al-Malik Drūkdīl): ” The Martyrdom of Our Leaders and Our Brothers … Proof of the Sincerity of Our Call”

Check out my new ‘Policy Watch’ for the Washington Institute: “Tunisia Keeps Calm and Carries On After Latest Terrorist Attack”

On June 27, four years and a day after the Sousse Beach attack, Tunisia suffered twin suicide bombings against security services at two different locations in the capital’s downtown district. Within hours, however, life returned to normal in the city. The government soon highlighted that tourism was unaffected—a far different outcome than the 2015 Sousse attack, which saw mass cancellations by would-be visitors and spurred President Beji Caid Essebsi to claim that “if similar attacks occur again, the state will collapse.”

The North African republic is now far more mature in dealing with security threats related to jihadism; no longer do officials express existential angst, whether legitimate or fear mongering. Compared to 2015, the state and the people were far better prepared to deal with the aftermath of the latest attacks. Yet the growing lack of transparency regarding terrorism arrests and the apparent links to past jihadist mobilizations should draw concern about Tunisia’s broader transition from authoritarian tendencies to democracy and rule of law.

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Also, if you haven’t seen, I did three detailed blog posts about this attack on my website that promotes my forthcoming book:

June 28, 2019: Details on the Two Attacks in Tunis

July 3, 2019: Mastermind of Last Week’s Attack, Ayman al-Samiri, Killed in Hay al-Intilaka

July 3, 2019: Ansar al-Sharia in Hay al-Intilaka

If you like this article and these posts please consider pre-ordering my forthcoming book Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad.