Tunisia is on the front lines of an evolving war against Jihadi-Salafism. The ideology espoused by al Qaeda and ISIS, has already drawn thousands of young Tunisians to the battlefields of Syria and Libya. Other adherents have committed numerous terrorist attacks in Tunisia since 2013, killing dozens of people and threatening to derail the country’s progress toward a more representative government after decades of authoritarianism. Now, as the broader fight against ISIS intensifies, Tunisia faces the next phase of its struggle against terrorism: fighters returning from the Jihadi-Salafi battlefields of Syria and Libya.
The problem is especially sensitive for Tunisia as it attempts to balance the need for effective security and counterterrorism with respect for basic rights enshrined in its constitution. While Tunisia’s security capabilities have improved, this next phase of the battle will not be won by military force alone. It will require an effective strategy to address the wide spectrum of grievances that drive radicalism combined with a serious dialogue mechanism to engage those who have returned and delegitimize Jihadi-Salafi ideology. As a state on the front line of the battle against Jihadi-Salafism, Tunisia’s choices and strategy to confront this evolving threat will have widespread ramifications for its own political stability and security as well as the global fight against al Qaeda and ISIS.
Nearly 800 Tunisian fighters returned to the country between 2012 and 2016, according to Tunisia’s Ministry of Interior. Hundreds more now want to return home. Of the 800, close to 200 are currently in prison and another 100 are under house arrest. The rest may have eluded law enforcement or are under limited surveillance.
It is nearly impossible to know the precise number of these returnees who want to commit violence. Some no doubt remain committed to the cause of Jihadi-Salafism and see their home country as a legitimate target. Both al Qaeda and ISIS have urged Tunisians to carry out attacks in their home country. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that many who joined the fight and returned are more likely just homesick, disillusioned, or traumatized by their battlefield experiences. Given the threat, all returnees will be treated as potentially dangerous until they can be properly vetted. The hard part is determining what comes next.
The country is divided over how to respond. Demonstrations for and against allowing the return of fighters by political parties, civil society groups, and even police unions have brought thousands of people onto the streets. Some have called for the government to deny those suspected of fighting abroad entry into the country or stripping them of citizenship – a move that is barred under Tunisian law. The government has vowed to prosecute returning Jihadi-Salafi fighters, though assembling sufficient evidence of crimes committed abroad complicates these efforts.
So far, the government’s instinct is to build more maximum security prisons and incarcerate suspects under the country’s 2015 antiterrorism law, which rights organizations have criticized for its breadth in defining terrorism-related offenses. These measures will provide short-term relief once prisons are built. Rather than isolating radicals, though, they will create a new generation of Jihadi-Salafi leaders who pose a long-term danger to Tunisia and thousands more people who have no prospect of reintegrating into society.
This is not the first time Tunisia has faced the quandary of returning fighters. In the 1990s and 2000s during former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s authoritarian reign, Tunisians who joined al Qaeda and fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and elsewhere were locked up on return. Rather than treating the problem, Tunisia’s prisons have been incubators of radicalization. It was veteran jihadists imprisoned in the 2000s who became the leaders of al Qaeda-inspired movements after they were released in 2011. Some spent nearly a decade behind bars. During their time in prison, they honed their dogma, attracted new recruits, and plotted a course for resuming jihad at the next opportunity.
In Tunisia’s current security environment, incarceration is an obvious priority. Yet, it is not enough, and a strategy narrowly focused on imprisonment could have the wrong consequences. It is critical to address the structural drivers of radicalization, including a widespread sense of humiliation and despair among youth stemming from poor governance and economic inequality. It is also vital to confront the ideological component of Jihadi-Salafism, an approach that many of Tunisia’s neighbors have adopted.
In the late 1990s, Egyptian authorities engaged in dialogue with imprisoned leaders of the Al Jihad organization. During Muammar el-Qaddafi’s rule, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had an internal ideological debate and eventually distanced itself from al Qaeda. Algeria passed a national reconciliation plan after its bloody clash with Jihadi-Salafists in the 1990s, providing amnesty to thousands. Morocco has pardoned prominent Jihadi-Salafi leaders imprisoned after the Casablanca bombings in 2003 in exchange for renouncing violence against the state.
All of these experiments had their limits. But they also allowed governments to separate those militants who continue to cling to violence from those willing to renounce violence and rebellion. What all of these strategies have in common is acknowledgment that incarceration alone cannot address the deep problem of radicalization.
Tunisia is making progress in how it thinks about these problems. In 2016, it developed a strategy to combat extremism and terrorism, although public details of the plan, including its guidelines for dealing with returning fighters, remain scant. It is also developing an action plan to address the issue of returning fighters, largely in coordination with UN agencies and EU institutions. What seems to be missing so far is a mechanism for dialogue with returnees and other imprisoned Jihadi-Salafists, which many of Tunisia’s neighbors have used to confront Jihadi-Salafism. Learning from the experiences of its neighbors should become a part of Tunisia’s strategy.
As the fight against jihadism enters a new phase, the problem of returning fighters will grow beyond Tunisia. The importance of Tunisia’s struggle to the broader fight against Jihadi-Salafism should not be underestimated. Its leadership needs more resources to improve its capacity and coordination with partners including the United States. Tunisia will determine its own path in addressing the threat posed by returning fighters and to the longer-term challenge of uprooting radical ideology. Focusing on building more prisons without a plan for engaging the ideas of the men behind bars will make the streets safer today. But simply locking up thousands of people has been tried before, and has failed. Rather than make Tunisia safe, it will groom the next generation of jihadi leaders.
