Category: Tunisia

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

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

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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The Islamic State’s Third Bayat Campaign

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

Previously, I tracked the bayat campaign for Abu Ibrahim after Abu Bakr’s death and then for Abu al-Hasan after Abu Ibrahim’s death. This post will do the same with the announcement of Abu al-Hasan’s death and Abu al-Husayn al-Husayni al-Qurashi as the new leader of the Islamic State. As I said in the original post:

There are two main reasons for this: 1. pledges are leader-specific rather than group-specific and thus need to be renewed with each succession and 2. it is a way to legitimize al-Qurashi’s rule and create a media event so that the group can promote itself as it transitions to a new phase.

The first reason is also something that IS pointed to when it began to overtly feud with al-Qaeda (AQ) in 2013, by saying that following Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s death, his successor Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir gave baya to the newly created Islamic State of Iraq’s leader Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi and even after Abu ‘Umar was killed, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over in 2010 and then Usamah Bin Laden was killed in 2011, Abu Bakr never publicly gave baya to Ayman al-Zawahiri, even if al-Zawahiri claims he gave it to him privately. Therefore, from the perspective of IS this whole process is not trivial, but important for legitimacy of its leadership and to potentially weed out any insubordination before it manifests into something larger as it already did in the past vis-a-vis AQ.

This post will be updated with the latest official pledges.

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December 1, 2022: 

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyah – Sambisa Region

Wilāyat Khurāsān

Wilāyat al-‘Irāq

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyah – al-Buhayrah Region

December 2:

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyah – al-Faruq Region

Wilāyat al-Shām

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyah – Banki Region

December 3: 

Wilāyat al-Yaman

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyah – Krenoa Region

Wilāyat al-‘Irāq

Wilāyat al-Sāḥil – Azawagh, Tri-Border, and Burkina Faso Regions

December 4: 

Wilāyat al-Ṣūmāl

Wilāyat Wasaṭ Ifrīqīyah

Wilāyat al-Sāḥil – Anderamboukane Village

December 5:

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyah – Central Nigeria

Wilāyat al-Shām

Wilāyat Bākistān

Wilāyat Mūzambīq

Wilāyat Wasaṭ Ifrīqīyah – Beni Region

December 7, 2022:

Tūnis

Wilāyat al-Hind – Kashmir

Wilāyat Mūzambīq – Nangade Region

December 8, 2022:

Lubnān

December 14, 2022:

Wilāyat Saynā’

December 17, 2022:

Wilāyat Sharq Asīā

December 19:

Wilāyat Lībīyā

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

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

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”

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

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 at Jihadica: “Jihadi Schadenfreude Over al-Nahdah in Tunisia”

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

On July 25, President Qays Sa‘id of Tunisia dismissed Prime Minister Hisham al-Mishishi and suspended the activities of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People by invoking emergency powers under Article 80 of the Tunisian Constitution. The rationale was an out-of-control Covid crisis, continuing economic problems, and political dysfunction within the al-Nahdah-led parliament. Some analysts in the West have called Sa‘id’s maneuver an autogolpe, while many Tunisians locally, according to polling data, have backed Sa‘id’s move. It would not be a crisis, however, if the jihadi talking heads did not weigh in.

It is important to note that jihadi activity in Tunisia has been on a decline in recent years due to counterterrorism and military efforts locally against al-Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State (IS), as well as the waning fortunes of foreign fighting endeavors in Iraq, Libya, and Syria as IS lost territory. Nevertheless, it is worth considering the issue given the large-scale mobilization seen in Tunisia over the past decade, and since any form of instability is seen as an opportunity by the jihadi movement. Plus, what initially might appear as rhetoric, as was the case with jihadis speaking on the 2011 Tunisia uprising and having no part in it, could lead to a re-energized mobilization, in the same way that Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) was able to take advantage of new conditions following the overthrow of former president Bin ‘Ali.

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