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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Tunisia and Islamism

While it is clear that Ben Ali and his family wore out his welcome with the Tunisian people it doesn’t necessarily mean what comes after will be an improvement. ~Aaron Goldstein This is always true. Sudden political change often produces worse outcomes than keeping the status quo in place. Goldstein then makes a much less […]

While it is clear that Ben Ali and his family wore out his welcome with the Tunisian people it doesn’t necessarily mean what comes after will be an improvement. ~Aaron Goldstein

This is always true. Sudden political change often produces worse outcomes than keeping the status quo in place. Goldstein then makes a much less plausible argument:

The thing that has caught my attention about the events in Tunisia is the support it has received from al Qaeda. If elections are not held in a timely manner or if the results of said election are not deemed acceptable by the new administration an opportunity could present itself for al Qaeda to assert its influence and impose Sharia law [bold mine-DL]. Should such a development come to pass then it could have grave implications not only in the Middle East but for the United States and the West. We could have an Afghanistan in Africa.

First of all, the main question is not whether the so-called Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb will try to “assert its influence,” which is minimal, and the group is in no position politically or militarily to impose anything on Tunisia. The real question is this: is Ghannouchi’s interim government going to be accepted by the protesters as an acceptable caretaker until new parliamentary elections? If not, and if the protests escalate against the entire regime associated with Ben Ali, there is no telling what might happen next, but a military coup becomes more likely.

AQIM is not a significant force in Tunisia, and according to the CFR profile of the group it is based and operates mainly far to the south in the Sahara along the border of Algeria and Mali:

AQIM’s activities were previously based along Algeria’s Mediterranean coast, but security crackdowns by the Algerian military have forced the group into the largely ungoverned Sahara desert area of Mali, and along Algeria’s northern border. AQIM relies on local communities of the Sahara for sanctuary. At times, local elders of such communities have acted as intermediaries in talks that have led to the release of hostages. However, AQIM’s base in Mali is by no means a safe haven. In June 2009, Malian security forces killed seventeen militants during a raid on an AQIM base near the town of Timetrine.

This doesn’t definitely mean that they couldn’t try to cause some disruptions and launch some attacks inside Tunisia, but they are primarily an Algerian-based group whose focus has been on combating the Algerian government. The group seems to be taking advantage of the upheaval in Tunisia to insert itself into an event that is garnering international attention, and it does not represent Tunisian Islamists. The main Tunisian Islamist movement is the An-Nahda party, and on the whole “Tunisian Islamists have been either imprisoned and tortured, or forced into exile.” Tunisia is one of the countries where we needn’t worry very much about the Islamist nature of opposition to the regime, because the opposition is largely composed of entirely different groups. The remnants of An-Nahda are not very politically significant, and radical jihadist groups from outside the country are even less so.

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