Another Battle Of Kasserine Pass

In Tunisia a group of fifty or more Islamic terrorists are operating in the Mount Chaambi region near the Algerian border (close to the Kasserine Pass through the Atlas Mountains that stretch across most of the North African coast ). Soldiers and police are searching a hundred square kilometers of sparsely populated forests and mountains without much success. The searchers have found evidence that there is someone up there, but the group has so far managed to avoid detection. This is the first time Tunisia has had to deal with armed Islamic terrorists since 2007.

 

These armed men have been active in the area for at least six months. Soldiers sent to the area have suffered about twenty casualties from booby-traps and handmade landmines left around by the terrorists. A camp found near the top of Mount Chaambi and it contained documents, weapons and equipment indicating the size and origin of the group. This group appears to be well supplied and seems to have enough cash to keep themselves going for a while. Some of these men have recently fled Mali and others are from Algeria. These were joined by a smaller group (a dozen or so) of Tunisian Islamic terrorists who had apparently not been active until joined by all these new men and a few local recruits. Eleven of the 32 terrorists killed nearby in an attack on an Algerian natural gas field in January were Tunisian which provided a hint that there were a lot more Islamic terrorists in Tunisia than the government wanted to admit. 

 

There has been one gun battle near Mount Chaambi so far, in which no one was hurt. Police have arrested twenty suspects in the region, but none of these appear to have much knowledge of the Islamic terrorists in the mountains. There appear to be at least two separate armed groups and police are blocking the few roads in the area to try and prevent the terrorists from moving to another part of the country. 

 

Tunisia was the first country to carry out an Arab Spring uprising and a new government was installed two years ago. Islamic radicals were released from jail and allowed to operate in the open as long as they did not turn to terrorism or anything illegal inside Tunisia. These radicals have tried, so far without success, to get the new government to establish a religious dictatorship that would enforce Islamic (Sharia) law.

The Freaks come out from the Gutter's

Hardliners threaten Arab Spring gains in Tunisia

The boldness of ultraconservative Muslims, known loosely as Salafis, who want to turn Tunisia into a strict Islamic state, may become a crucial threat against democracy in the birthplace of the Arab Spring

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An ultraconservative Muslim is seen demonstrating with a Quran at the Manouba university in Tunis in this file photo.

Thousands of hardcore Muslims chant against Jews. Youths rampage through cities at night in protest of “blasphemous” art. A sit-in by religious students degenerates into fist fights and the desecration of Tunisia’s flag.

In the birthplace of the Arab Spring, the transition from dictatorship to democracy has been, for the most part, smoother than in neighboring countries, with no power-hungry military or armed militias to stifle the process. But as a moderate Islamist party rules with the help of secular forces, an unexpected threat has emerged: the increasing boldness of ultraconservative Muslims, known loosely as Salafis, who want to turn this North African country of 10 million into a strict Islamic state.

Tunisia’s Salafis are estimated to number only in the tens of thousands, but their organized and frequent protests against perceived insults to Islam, especially by artists, have rocked the country.

They have succeeded in mobilizing disaffected and angry youth much more effectively than secular opposition parties. As Salafis thrive in the new atmosphere of freedom of expression, they are aggressively attacking the free expression of those they see to be insulting Islam. Their main target: artists who themselves have used democratic upheaval to raise sharp, often provocative, questions about the relationship between religion and society.

Film lights fire

A film called “Neither Allah nor Master” about secularism by an atheist director, an animated film portraying God as an old man that was broadcast on TV, and most recently an art exhibit dabbling in religious themes have all provoked the wrath of the Salafis. The Spring of the Arts exhibit in the wealthy Tunis suburb of La Marsa triggered June riots that left one dead and 100 injured. Many of the paintings questioned religion’s role in society, including some clearly skewering Salafis. There were images of veiled women hanging from punching bags in a boxing ring, veiled women buried in stones, and paintings of demonic bearded faces.

 The Islamist-led government has tread carefully around Salafi demonstrations, conscious that they themselves were once victims of government oppression and fearful of further radicalizing the Salafis.

For Tunisian authorities, grappling with the Salafis is made all the harder because of the fact that they have not coalesced into an articulate, united movement, but are comprised of different groups, some which may even be under the manipulation of secular remnants of the old regime. That contrasts with Egypt, where Salafis have formed political parties and participate in politics.

“They were influenced by the Salafi discourse coming out of the Gulf countries and diffused by the Salafi satellite channels all through the 1990s,” explained Slaheddine Jourchi, a Tunisian writer and human rights activist who has closely studied Islamist movements. “They saw the Salafi discourse as the most pure in Islam.” With the fall of the dictatorship, Salafis are now free to spread their message to the rest of the country.

Sami Brahim, an expert on Islamist movements in Tunisia who runs a cultural center near the art gallery in La Marsa, expects the whole Salafi movement to subside with time because it is a cultural import funded by the Gulf States.

“Salafism doesn’t yet have the courage to take part in politics since from the beginning it hasn’t been an organized movement and it doesn’t have a very well elaborated discourse,” said Brahim. “It would just need a healthy atmosphere, real freedoms and a relatively successful economy for the Tunisian Salafi movement to be marginalized.”

Police fire warning shots at protesters in Tunisia

Riot police chase after protesters in the Ettadhamen district of the capital Tunis in this June 12, 2012 file photo.

Police fired warning shots and tear gas yesterday to disperse protesters who attacked provincial government headquarters in the town where Tunisia’s revolution was born.

Demonstrators also tried to torch the local headquarters of the ruling Islamist party Ennahda, after some of them broke down the door and sacked the offices. Dozens of people, angry over their living conditions, converged on the government building in Sidi Bouzid and set fire to a tyre, which they threw inside.

Police responded with warning shots and tear gas, as demonstrators shouted “Ben Ali’s police are back,” in reference to the long-time dictator driven from office last year by a popular revolt.

The ministry said about 150 people, day workers demanding to be paid, were involved. Union sources said more than 1,000 people took part. Calm was eventually restored, the interior ministry said, and no was one hurt.

Gadhafi’s former PM rattles Tunisia alliance

Deposed Libyan leader Gadhafi’s former Prime Minister al-Mahmoudi is escorted in the office of his prison guard in Tripoli after being extradited from Tunis.

A row inside Tunisia’s ruling alliance over the extradition of Libya’s former prime minister took a fresh turn late June 25 after reports that he had suffered a beating in a Libyan jail.

Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who served as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s last prime minister, had been beaten up on arriving back in Libya and hospitalized with a hemorrhage, his French lawyer Marcel Ceccaldi said. But Libyan officials were quick to dismiss the allegation.

“I completely deny reports that Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi was assaulted,” Deputy Justice Minister Khalifa Ashur told Agence France-Presse.

“He is being treated well in line with international standards and it is impossible for such an act to occur. He is in a safe place and his guards were carefully selected,” he added. Ceccaldi described how his client had been rushed out of Tunisia in the early hours of June 24 in what he described as a “kidnapping.”

Tunisia’s post-revolution political alliance had already been plunged into crisis over the affair. President Moncef Marzouki is furious that Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali ordered al-Mahmoudi’s transfer to Libya without his consent. Marzouki had always opposed the extradition, arguing that Libya’s new regime offered insufficient guarantees of a fair trial. But when Jebali approved the move, the president was in southern Tunisia for an official ceremony. Marzouki, a veteran human rights activist did not sign the extradition order and, according to his adviser, he only found out about al-Mahmoudi’s transfer through the media.

Nothing illegal: Marzouki

The presidency “considers this decision is illegal, all the more so because it has been done unilaterally and without consulting the president of the republic,” a statement from Marzouki’s office said late June 24.

But the government hit back immediately. There was nothing illegal with the extradition procedure, it insisted, adding Marzouki had been kept informed. The virulence of Marzouki’s statement has exposed the uneasy nature of his alliance with Jebali’s Ennahda (Renaissance) party, which won Tunisia’s post-uprising polls in October 2011. Marzouki has tried to retain control of Tunisia’s foreign policy in recent months, but the row over Mahmudi’s extradition illustrates how little sway he really holds for Tunisia’s three-way power deal is not an even split.