Suicide as a Metaphor for the Failed Arab Spring

"I wanted to burn myself because I was burning inside [with anger and desperation expressing his hopelessness]."
"I wanted to die this way."
Adel Dridi, 31, street fruit seller, Tebourba, Tunisia

"This kind of suicide stands more as a dissenting attitude toward the post-revolution society, which deeply changed."
Dr. Mehdi Ben Khelil, forensic pathologist

"Imed used to pour gas on himself as a way to blackmail the police so they would give him back his merchandise."
"He had already done that as a last resort two or three times before and he told me it worked."
Ahmed Ghanmi, brother of Imed, deceased

"With the dictatorship, the state was ubiquitous; we were under a police rule and deviation was less possible."
"There were already suicides with self-immolation or hanging, but it was in the privacy of the home, not in the public sphere like today, and the youth is very exposed to this new phenomenon."
Fatma Charfi, Ministry of Health committee, Tunisia

Clemens Höges/ DER SPIEGEL -- Hosni Kaliya in Kasserine

These types of protests by people who feel themselves victimized by institutionalized abuse have a way of becoming entrenched, popularized and repeated by people who feel their grievances cannot be addressed any other way than by the kind of shock treatment that creates a wave of public awareness and fear, through the ultimate sacrifice of self-harm leading to death. When it seems to those who have been exposed to the personal, psychological violence of an uncaring bureaucracy imperilling their livelihood and survival, violent rejection of life becomes a tool, rejecting that society.

One isolated incident stands out as the symptom of an ailing society and the symbol of desperate rejection of police harassment, the self-immolation seven years ago of the street fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, whose final act of asserting himself defiantly, even if only to claim death by his own agency, saw a spiralling of reaction and events leading to the downfall of the government in Tunis hated for its corruption. Tunisia, in its reinvention of itself as an Islamist-style democracy is pointed to as the first and the sole success of the Arab Spring.

In the days after Kaliya's self-immolation, tens of thousands of Tunisians took to the streets in early 2011, eventually forcing the country's autocratic president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee the country. This image is from Tunis on Jan. 14, 2011. Reuters

The fever of people power challenging the authority of their governments under a system detached from presiding over the fulfillment of people's needs and aspirations in free societies, spread to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and the Gulf States. The revolutionary zeal of those rejecting the status quo nurtured a fervent hope that their nations would undergo a change reflective of some form of democracy. Libya responded with utter, violent chaos, the Gulf States methodically used their military power to squelch any thought of change, Egypt reverted to military rule, while Syria and Iraq imploded.

Mr. Dridi, pre-revolution, made a very good earning in his country. Now, constantly harassed by police just as Mr. Bouazizi before him had been, he is desperate to react in some meaningful way that might help him, but could only find a solution in attempted suicide which he survived. Unemployed teacher Imed Ghanmi, 43, did the same as police confiscated his merchandise when he tried to support himself selling the smuggled goods on the street. He finally succeeded in killing himself when immolation as threat no longer succeeded.

Protests have once again become commonplace in Tunisia. This image is from Kasserine, Hosni Kaliya's hometown. Demonstrators clashed with police during a march protesting the lack of jobs and opportunity. Reuters

But it is not only the middle-aged who resort to these desperate measures to destroy their futures. Young teens in high school have taken to immolation as well in a feverish denial of the lives they no longer wish to live. Like Ramzi Messaoudi, whose repeated disagreements with his English teacher for expelling him from school led him to set himself afire, dying three days later from the burns he sustained. "He just could not take it anymore. When he arrived at the hospital, he was still conscious and he was smiling and kept on repeating the word 'injustice'," said his 19-year old childhood friend, Wissem Hadidi.

Because there are few opportunities for the young, and because job insecurity is so high, with a tough unemployment rate, there is desperation among young people in Tunisia. Thousands have chosen to migrate abroad. Tunisia has the distinction, irrespective of how it alone among the Arab countries touched by the Arab Spring, is considered the only 'successful' Arab Spring revolution, despite which there are more Tunisians who made common cause with Islamic State, joining the jihadist terrorist group than any other country in the region save for Libya.

The Jebel Chaambi mountains near the city of Kasserine are now home to Islamist training camps and considered a hotbed of jihad. AP/dpa

A record 104 burn patients who had chosen self-immolation over life were admitted to the country's main burn hospital in Ben Arous in 2016, representing a tripling of self-immolation following Tunisia's revolution. Driven largely by hardships and a hatred of the authorities. Dr. Mehdi Ben Khelil forensic pathologist, conducted a study to show the increase of the numbers of people who chose to self-immolate rather than resign themselves to a situation whereby no opportunities are available to them to achieve their aspirations.

                                                                                                     

Tunisian Past and Future

"Thus far, there has been no exact empirical record made of the jihadi combat groups operating in Jebal Chaambi, in southern Tunisia, but also in urban zones near the coast. With the exception of the "Uqba Ibn Nafi'-Brigade", little is known about their exact area of operation, their combat strength or the nationalities represented by their members. Apart from their nebulous advocacy of an Islamic state, just as little is known about their concrete objectives. Some of the cells operate autonomously, others have links with AQIM or direct associations with al-Qaida. Since July 2014, a number of individual cells have thrown their weight behind the IS cause."

Cross-border Islamist terrorism: a still from a video released by "al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb" showing militants on the streets of Gao, Mali, in June 2012. "The best-known AQIM combat unit is the 'Uqba ibn Nafi'-Brigade', which operates in western Tunisia and which also carried out the Bardo Museum attack," writes Hanspeter Mattes

If there was one country that represented the very model of modernist Arab civility and secularism, it would have been Tunisia, even as it was under its corrupt, disgraced and removed leader President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, hated for his corruption and replaced through the first rehearsal of the famed and faulted Arab Spring with a coalition government including 'moderate' Islamists which eventually gave way to a more Tunisian-traditional secularist government.

Tunisia was a country where Western dress presented as the common garb, where social and official disregard and even lack of regard for female head covering so prevalent elsewhere, demonstrated its Western outlook and comfort with European values. Since its revolution the country has been assailed with a flood of Islamist fundamentalist attacks, to the point where the state is threatened. "If such incidents happen again, the state will collapse", stated Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, declaring a state of emergency, on Saturday.

The recent high-profile attack on the Bardo National Museum in Tunis shines a spotlight on the radical Islamist network that has emerged in Tunisia since the fall of the Ben Ali regime. An analysis by Hanspeter Mattes of the GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies

Tunisia has expressed an unwilling social, political and security change in its culture, from a modern Westernized state to a country now under siege. For awhile after its initiating Arab Spring its character as a stable country where violence and Islamic extremism was absent gained it admiration for the way in which Tunisians were able to gather their determination and their social-political resources toward the normalcy of its traditional social contract.

But spillover from the division, the violence and the Islamist extremism expressed in the jihad assailing Libya has had its impact on Tunisia, even as the left in Tunisia remains in contact with its moderate Islamists and it's institutes of civil society through human rights, commerce, law and organized labour continue to set it aside from its neighbours. As does it's ethnic and religious homogeneity.

But the once stable and secure country is beginning to groan under the weighted violence of jihadist forces exploiting Tunisia's reliance on foreign tourism, damaging the state and its reputation among foreigners as a safe and savoury place to visit. Just as Islamists have launched attacks on tourists in Egypt and in Algeria for the deliberate purpose of destabilizing those countries' tourism enterprises, Tunisia has been similarly targeted.

Worse, it would appear, seems yet set to surface.

The Holy Month of Ramadan

"We were in a pool when we heard automatic gunfire. People ran past saying there was an armed man on the beach."
"He was laughing and joking around, like a normal guy. He was choosing who to shoot."

"Some people, he was saying to them, ‘You go away,'. He was choosing tourists, British, French."

British tourist, Tunisia

That was on the beach at the Imperial Harhaba Hotel in Sousse where a gunman dressed as a tourist withdrew a Kalashnikov rifle from an umbrella he had unfurled for the beach, and opened fire on tourists he obviously identified as foreign. Among the dead were tourists from Ireland, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. The gunman was quite particular about who was to be shot.

Bodies are covered on a Tunisian beach, in Sousse, Friday June 26, 2015. A young man unfurled an 

umbrella and pulled out a Kalashnikov, opening fire on European sunbathers in an attack that killed 

at least 28 people. (Jawhara FM via AP)

Sunbathers were seen to be desperately running to safety only to be cut down in death. One man vacationing from Wales with his fiance, deliberately screened her as he himself took the shots meant for them both. "He was covered in blood from the shots but he just told me to run away", she later said. What better way to prove one's love before the nuptials? Of a certainty the marriage will now proceed.

"This is worse than terrible" Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi lamented. Tunisia cannot stand up to the Islamic threat on its own, but "we are determined to take the most painful measures to deal with an even more painful scourge", he said. As a symbolic target, it isn't surprising that Tunisia was chosen, the most cosmopolitan of Muslim countries whose 'Arab Spring' was the first and the only success in changing government for the people by the people.

At the Imam Sadiq Mosque in Kuwait City, another atrocity underlining propaganda from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in its promise that the sacred fasting month of Ramadan would be a calamitous one for the world's non-Muslims. In this instance, the 'non-Muslims' targeted were Shiite Muslims, held by the majority Sunnis not to represent true Islam, their mosques a "temple of the apostates".

As they stood in group prayer at the Imam Sadiz Mosque, a man screamed "Allahu Akbar" repeatedly, tripping an explosive that ripped through the rear of the building. "We couldn't see anything, so we went straight to the wounded and tried to carry them out. We left the dead", said 21-year-old Hassan al-Haddad, among the first rescuers to arrive on the bloody scene. "This is a wake-up call to fight harder" against the terrorists said Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah.

And in France, Prime Minister Manuel Valls stated his despair: "It’s difficult for a society to live for years under the threat of attack. The question is not… if there will be another attack, but when." Which on the face of it is rather puckishly ironic, given France's insistence among others within the European Union that Israel be more accommodating in its defensive responses, a society that has truly lived for decades under threat of attack, and which has had to cope with the reality of those attacks in a way no other country has ever been threatened.

Still reeling from the Charlie Hebdo attack and the succeeding one on the Kosher Supermarket in Paris, France must now deal with its own Islamic State atrocity. Yassin Salhi, 35, beheaded his 54-year-old boss in the operation of a delivery firm. The decapitated head was pinned to a fence. Islamic flags and Arabic inscriptions were scrawled on the body.

Special forces of France’s Research and Intervention Brigades (BRI) leave the building housing the apartment of a man suspected of carrying out an attack in Saint-Priest near Lyon on June 26, 2015. (AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE DESMAZES)

The jihadist is being held by French police for causing an explosion at the U.S.-owned Air Products factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, 25 miles from Lyon. He drove a delivery van into a warehouse full of gas and chemicals. According to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the man had been known for years to security services, but had no criminal record though he had been investigated for links to radical Salafists. 

On the other hand, a co-worker had spoken of him as "a wolf in sheep's clothing", stating that Salhi had discussed Islamic State with him, "not to try to recruit me for anything but simply to ask my opinion." What his own opinion is about ISIL appears obvious enough. France has supplied more would-be jihadis to Islamic State than any other European country. And, despite Tunisia's western face and outlook it too has supplied greater numbers of Tunisian jihadis than any other Muslim country.

The Islamic State released a picture online it says is of the Tunisian gunman who mowed down at least 37 people, most of them tourists, on June 26, 2015 at a beach resort in Sousse, Tunisia. He was named as Seifeddine Yacoubi, 23, from Kairouan, also known as Abu Yahya Qayrawani by IS.

Tunisia's Arab Spring Leaking

"I want the people of Tunisia to understand firstly and lastly that we are in a war with terror, and these savage minority groups will not frighten us."
"The fight against them will continue until they are exterminated."
President Beji Caid Essebsi, Tunis

"After they entered the museum, I saw their faces: They were about ten metres away from me, shooting at anything that moved."
Josep Lluis Cusido, tourist, mayor of Spanish town of Vallmoll

Tunisian security forces stand guard as journalists gather at the visitors entrance of the National Bardo Museum in Tunis on March 19, 2015, in the aftermath of an attack on foreign tourists (AFP Photo/Fethi Belaid)

Foreign tourists exiting a bus at the National Bardo Museum, on an onshore trip off their cruise liner were met by militants wearing military-style uniforms and with assault rifles gunning them down. After shooting eighteen of the tourists and two local Tunisians dead, the attackers charged the interior of the museum to take hostages. Eventually two of the terrorists were killed in a firefight with security forces but not before 50 innocent people were injured.

A hunt was immediately begun for the two or three accomplices who had managed to escape after the attack. The tourists who lost their lives in a country hugely dependent on its income from tourism, were from Poland, Italy, Spain, Germany and Colombia. The cruise ship, with an estimated three thousand tourists aboard, left Tunisian waters and is unlikely to return any time soon.

Islamic State Twitter accounts were rife with congratulatory messages. And urgings that Tunisians take steps to "follow their brothers" in organizing additional such attacks. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, in fact, is taking full credit for the deadly attack at the country's largest museum. Tunisia has appeared as the sole country in the North Africa/Middle East continuum to have emerged from its Arab Spring as an intact democracy.

After unseating its dictatorial ruler, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a country that had always looked to the West to emulate its democratic, civil style in a cosmopolitan atmosphere of tolerance, struggled to find its new place in the world of reformed democratic action. As the harbinger of the Arab Spring phenomenon that trickled through to the Middle East with disastrous outcomes, it is the only country that persevered with the outcome of freeing itself from the shackles of authoritarian rule.

The original protesters who empathized with the self-immolating despair of a fruit vendor harassed over a trade permit were affluent and sophisticated, hoping for their country to fully pattern the Western tradition of liberty and democracy and the tradition of human rights practised in Europe. The country's Islamist parties at all levels of the spectrum from moderate to fanatical made their own visions for the country's future known.

Parliament divided between secularists and Islamists, and each made an effort to get along. But radical Islamism gained the momentum to the extent that secular politicians were harassed and sometimes assassinated, calling for an end to the tolerance from radical religious parties whose aspirations represented a threat to the well-being of the country.

The slums of Tunis saw the rise of the radical Ansar al-Sharia group who saw much in common with al-Qaeda and now Islamic State, with their Libyan counterparts. Banned several years ago when the country cracked down on extremists when two leftist political leaders were killed, the government remains in a struggle to stamp it out altogether, difficult with its contiguous border with Libya now home to Islamic State militants.

Tunisian Islamists, however, have swollen the fighting force of Islamic State to an extent few other countries in the region have. Of eleven million inhabitants, Tunisia has gained the distinction of having contributed a larger number of jihadist fighters to Syria and Iraq, dedicated to the caliphate of Islamic State, than any other country in the region.

Apprehending Jihad

More Islamophobia. What else can one expect from the hysterical West, after all, seeing jihadis lurking everywhere, even around train underpasses or around water purification systems. As though busy professional Muslims studying engineering at Canadian universities have nothing better to do with themselves than plot mass murder in a country that has invited them to study at their institutes of higher learning.

Take Chiheb Esseghaier, a 31-year-old talented medical-science engineer from Tunisia studying for his doctorate with a research arm of the Universite du Quebec. Arrested along with his co-accused Raed Jaser from Toronto, on charges of plotting to conspire in a terrorist attack to target train commuters between New York and Toronto, Mr. Esseghaier spurns Canadian law, deeming it subordinate to the divine law of the Koran.

A Via Rail passenger train pulls into Dorval Station in Montreal. Two men have been charged with a plot to derail a train in Toronto. Photograph: Shaun Best/Reuters

 

He is prepared to defend himself in a court of law when he faces trial in Toronto early in 2015. He will use the divine law of the Koran, Sharia law, to prove to a Canadian court that he has done nothing wrong in conspiring to wreak harm on Canadian soil. After all, he contends, the West was doing just that, in Afghanistan. He does not deny the conspiracy considering it quite legitimate for, as he claimed there is "no shortage of reasons" to launch such an attack in North America.

"We have to liberate Muslim lands and support our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan", he said ever so reasonably adding that NATO intervention was "undressing our women". But he is wrong, actually, rather than 'undressing' Afghan women by freeing them from the confines of the chador and the niqab, most Afghan Muslim women outside Kabul and other urban centres opt to wear full-face covering or burkas as do many in urban centres.

Demonstration of Hijab & modesty in Nishapur- July 12 2013 09CC BY-SA 3.0 Sonia Sevilla - Own work

They know the culture in which they live, and what a misogynistic religious society expects of them.
But while Chihab Esseghaier and his co-conspirator Raed Jaser await trial, another of their number, 27-year-old Tunisian Ahmed Sayed Abassi, who lived in Canada attending Universite Laval as a chemical engineering student, on a study visa who met with Mr. Esseghaier in New York to "discuss[ed] his desire to engage in terrorist acts against targets in the United States and other countries", pleaded guilty to immigration fraud in New York.

His plea the first from a cross-border counterterrorism investigation that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police disrupted as an Al-Qaeda-linked plan to effect a mass casualty terrorist attack in Canada. Mr. Abassi did not claim guilt to terrorism, though American prosecutors are aware he had met Chiheb Esseghaier, and "acknowledged that he may have radicalized Esseghaier". If so, he was more than ripe for radicalization.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of falsely claiming travel to the U.S. as being involved in a real estate business, making "False representations" applying for a green card. Offences which carry maximum sentences of five years and one year, respectively. His conviction means he faces up to six years of incarceration, given the acceptance of a plea offer from prosecutors in Manhattan after which he will remove himself back to Tunisia, as part of the agreement.

Both Abassi and Esseghaier spoke of the delight to be gained by them in engaging in poisoning a water system and possibly killing up to 100,000 people. They are engineers, after all, and have the requisite knowledge of how to proceed with such a grotesque, but to them entirely appropriate undertaking. Scruples against such a mass atrocity? They simply make a comparison to what they interpret as occurring in countries of southeast Asia and Middle East.

In Canada, RCMP and FBI officers managed to infiltrate the conspiracy at a relatively early stage. Arresting the two men in Montreal and Toronto, while Abassi was taken into custody the same day in New York. The protection of citizenship is absent with all the men concerned, since none hold citizenship, though all three took advantage of Canadian opportunities to advance their futures. Presumably not in the manner which has resulted.

According to police intelligence Mr. Esseghaier had received "direction and guidance" from Al-Qaeda offshoots based in Iran. Very impressive credentials.

Displaying Bigotry -- Paying the Price

"[Cruise staff] were very elusive. They said they got an email from the immigration department in Tunisia stating Israelis were not allowed to get off the ship. They were not given any reason why Israelis were not allowed off the ship -- they indicated that in previous months when they had been to Tunisia, Israelis were allowed to get off -- and that they didn't know why this was happening."
Canadian Ed Glina, Norwegian Jade cruise ship passenger

norwegian cruise lines

Mr. Glina, a Canadian citizen, was incensed enough over the incident that he chose to remain behind, on board the cruise ship in company with the dozen Israelis refused permission to enter the Muslim country. In so doing he was expressing his humanity, and exhibiting in fine fashion the stance his country takes in facing religious bigotry, and in particular that very special bigotry called anti-Semitism, that blights human relations.

Tunisia was, before its 'Arab Spring' revolution -- the North African country that was the first to be subjected to mass protests succeeding in bringing down its former corrupt government -- a socially free and cosmopolitan society. Where a small number of Tunisian Jews still live, but became extremely concerned when the old government fell and the new one entered; 'moderately' Islamist, the media gushes. But one that imposes new 'values' on its society.

It is a country where Jews once lived in abundance, where they had lived for over a thousand years, under Muslim rule and where tolerance evaporated once the State of Israel became a reality, when Tunisian Jews, like those from countries all over North Africa and the Middle East were banished, their properties appropriated by the state without recompense. Jews are accustomed to living on tenterhooks. But, like any other individuals, they too seek out holiday opportunities.

Cruise officials on the Norwegian Jade left voice mails for Israeli passengers giving warning against disembarking at the port in Tunis. When they complained to the captain, they were advised that there was nothing that could be done about the situation. The Norwegian cruise company spoke to Tunisian officials but nothing came of their overtures.

"The singling out of Israeli citizens in this manner is concerning and inconsistent with principles of openness, tolerance and religious freedom that are enshrined in Tunisia's new progressive constitution", Adam Hodge, press secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird wrote, in a statement.

"The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development is working closely with Canada's embassy in Tunisia to determine the reason for this refusal. Canada's ambassador in Tunisia has registered Canada's concerns about this incident to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with the Interior Ministry. Neither ministry was aware of any new Tunisian policy concerning Israeli tourists seeking to enter Tunisia."

Over a dozen Middle East and North African countries will not permit entry to Israeli citizens, while a handful refuse entry to any tourists of any nationality who may have an Israeli stamp on their travel documents. Prior to the Arab Spring event Israelis often went off on holidays to Tunisia. That was the old Tunisia; this is the new, liberated Tunisia.

"For me, it was a surprise because we were coming here because we wanted to be in Tunis", said Yaacov Zacharia, 67, one of the Israeli passengers. He had never before found himself in such a situation. He found the ship's staff polite. The passengers had met with the captain, and he too was kind, but no solutions were to be found.

Mr. Glina gave his opinion that the ship's captain should have chosen a friendlier port. Alternatively the captain could have made a general announcement to the entire passenger list. "We understand that there are a lot of politics involved but our position with the captain was that he was colluding with a selection process that was unacceptable."

Evidently the cruise ship line may think so too.  They have cancelled all visits to Tunis. Norwegian Cruise Lines announced the cancellation of all future visits to the North African port, and have asserted they have no intention of returning. "We want to send a strong message to Tunisia, and ports around the world that we will not tolerate such random acts of discrimination against our guests", announced Kevin Sheehan, Norwegian Cruise Line's CEO.

"We are outraged by this act and the fact that we were not notified in advance of this practise." A day before the ship's scheduled arrival in La Goulette, Tunis on Sunday they were informed that no Israeli passengers would be permitted to disembark.

Bravo, Norwegian Cruise Line.

Tunisian Political Deal Brings an End to Islamist Government

Tunisia's political rivals have agreed on a timetable for the Islamist coalition to quit and be replaced by a government of independents.

By Elad Benari -- ArutzSheva 7

First Publish: 10/6/2013, 6:31 AM

Tunisian leaders on October 5, 2013

Reuters

 

Tunisia's political rivals agreed on Saturday on a timetable for the unpopular Islamist-led ruling coalition to quit and be replaced by a government of independents, aiming to end a festering political crisis, reports AFP.

The Islamist Ennahda party and opposition groups in the country that gave birth to the Arab Spring signed a roadmap aimed at creating a new government within three weeks, said the report.

Saturday's deal, signed in the presence of politicians and media, was brokered to end a simmering two-month crisis sparked by the assassination in July of opposition MP Mohamed Brahmi.

The document, drawn up by four mediators, foresees the nomination of an independent prime minister by the end of next week, who would then have two weeks to form a cabinet.

It says that after the first day of national dialogue, "the government will resign with a delay not exceeding three weeks."

One of the leaders of Ennahda, Abdelhamid Jlassi, told AFP the national dialogue proper is not expected to start on Monday, however.

"First there will be preparatory meetings, and the date of the government's resignation will not be determined until the start of the real national dialogue," he told the news agency.

"Ennahda's signature today is a major concession made in the interests of the country," he added.

Saturday's ceremony got under way after a delay of several hours that underscored the mutual distrust between the rival camps.

By signing the roadmap, the Ennahda-led coalition, which has been rocked by the murder of two political opponents, economic woes and prolonged political disputes, has agreed to step down two years after winning a general election.

Its victory at the polls on October 23, 2011, was the first free vote in Tunisian history, and followed the overthrow of long-ruling strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the first revolt of the Arab Spring.

Earlier this week, Ennahda and the secular opposition agreed on a blueprint for talks.

Tunisian opposition activists had expressed hope of replicating Egypt’s second ouster – the overthrow of democratically elected Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi by the army, and the subsequent re-criminalization of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ennahda has been more moderate than the Muslim Brotherhood in agreeing to a power-sharing agreement, and not mentioning Sharia (Islamic law) in the constitution, but opposition groups have accused it of turning a blind eye to the activities of more radical Islamist groups.

Tags: Tunisia ,Jasmine Revolution ,Arab Spring ,islamists ,Ennahda

Tunisian girls return home pregnant after ‘sexual jihad’ in Syria

Friday, 20 September 2013 -- Al Aribaya

A number of Tunisian girls who had travelled to Syria for "sexual jihad" have returned home pregnant, the government says. (Photo courtesy of www.febrayer.com)

• 
  

Al Arabiya

 

A number of Tunisian girls who had travelled to Syria to perform “sexual jihad” there have returned back home pregnant, Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Bin Jeddo said on Thursday.

The Tunisian girls “are (sexually) swapped between 20, 30, and 100 rebels and they come back bearing the fruit of sexual contacts in the name of sexual jihad and we are silent doing nothing and standing idle,” the non-partisan minister said during an address to the National Constituent Assembly.

Bin Jeddo said the interior ministry has banned 6,000 Tunisians from travelling to Syria since March 2013 and arrested 86 individuals suspected of forming “networks” that send Tunisian youth for “jihad” to Syria.

The minister hit back at human rights groups criticizing the government’s decision to ban suspected “jihadists” from travel. Most of those slapped with travel bans were less than 35 years old, he said.

“Our youths are positioned in the frontlines and are taught how to steal and raid (Syrian) villages,” Bin Jeddo said.

Former Mufti of Tunisia Sheikh Othman Battikh said in April that 13 Tunisian girls “were fooled” into travelling to Syria to offer their sexual services to rebels fighting to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The mufti, who was dismissed from his post days afterwards, described the so-called “sexual Jihad” as a form of “prostitution.”

“For Jihad in Syria, they are now pushing girls to go there. 13 young girls have been sent for sexual jihad. What is this? This is called prostitution. It is moral educational corruption,” the mufti told reporters.

In August, general director of the public security service Mostafa Bin Omar said a “sexual jihad cell” was broken up in an area west of the country where al-Qaead fighters holed up.

Bin Omar told reporters that al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Shariah was using minor girls, dressed in the full face cover to offer sexual services for jihadist male fighters.

Tags

sexual jihad

Tunisian politician Mohamed Brahmi assassinated

BBC News online -- 25 July 2013

Mohamed Brahmi's daughter, Belkis, was joined by angry protesters outside the hospital where the politician died

Tunisian opposition politician Mohamed Brahmi has been shot dead outside his home in the capital, Tunis, officials say.

Mr Brahmi, 58, led the nationalist Movement of the People party.
It is the second time an opposition party leader has been killed this year.

Protesters have gathered in Tunis and in Mr Brahmi's hometown, Sidi Bouzid, calling for the government to resign. Tunisia largest labour union has announced a general strike for Friday.

In February, prominent secular politician Chokri Belaid was also shot outside his house in Tunis.
His murder sparked nationwide mass protests and forced Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali to resign.
An uprising in Tunisia in late 2010 kick-started a series of revolutions that spread through the Middle East and became known as the Arab Spring.

But there has been deep division between Islamists and secular opponents since the revolution, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Robbins reports.

The opposition leader was gunned down in his car outside his home in Tunis

 

Many Tunisians, particularly the young, complain that their quest for secular democracy has been hijacked by intolerant Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood which forms part of the current government, our correspondent says.

Gunmen on a motorbike shot Mr Brahmi in his car in front of his wife and daughter on Thursday morning, Movement of the People party officials said.

Local media reported the assailants fired 11 bullets at the politician. It is not known yet who was behind the attack.

The family of Mr Brahmi has accused the governing Islamist Ennahda party of being behind the killing.

The party has not responded to the claim, but released a statement expressing "sadness and shock" at the "cowardly and despicable crime".

Mr Brahmi's wife, Mbarka, and her daughter Belkis were joined by angry Tunisians outside the hospital in Tunis where the politician died.

Large crowds also gathered in front of the Ministry of Interior in the capital in protest at the killing.
There were also reports of demonstrators converging in the city of Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

Large crowds also gathered outside the Ministry of Interior in Tunis in protest at the killing

 

"People have blocked roads and set tyres alight," a local resident told the Reuters news agency.
The killing came as Tunisia celebrated the 56th anniversary of becoming a republic after gaining independence from France.

French President Francois Hollande condemned Mr Brahmi's murder and called on Tunisians to unite behind the democratic transition.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International said the killing was a "blow to the rule of law in Tunisia", which was experiencing a "worrying tide of political violence".

Mr Brahmi was a vocal critic of the governing Islamist Ennahda party

 

Mr Brahmi founded the Movement of the People party after the 2011 revolution.
He was also a member of the National Constituent Assembly, which is drafting a new constitution.
The assembly announced Friday would be a day of mourning.

Mr Brahmi was not as big a political figure as Mr Belaid, but he too was a leftist critical of Ennahda.
Ennahda came to power following the overthrow of long-term ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 201.

The party has faced growing popular unrest over a faltering economy and a rising extremist Islamist movement.

After Mr Belaid's assassination in February, many Tunisians accused Ennahda of not doing enough to stamp out a rise in Islamist violence, with some critics saying the party was actively fomenting it, correspondents say.

The party denied the accusations.

Tunisia sparks fears from seculars over growing Islamist insurgency

Monday, 1 April 2013 -- Al Aribaya

 

• Al Arabiya 

Secular and western societies are becoming increasingly concerned over developments in Tunisia following the noticeable post-revolution surge in the number of citizens participating in Islamist movements, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

The developed situation is raising concerns from counter-terrorism organizations as more Tunisian militants are seen to take the frontlines fighting in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Mali.
Tunisia had been viewed as a secular state prior to the 2010 revolution.

In January, Tunisians formed the biggest group among the militants who participated in the attack on the In Amenas natural gas plant in Algeria, and in February, suspected Islamist militants shot dead a leading secular politician in Tunis, triggering further political instability.

Tunisia has recently been embroiled in controversy following reports that members of Islamist Tunisian parties are involved in the fighting in Syria. The country said the presence of insurgents abroad and the increased access to weapons has left the government concerned about its foreign and domestic policies, the newspaper reported.

Tunisian Prime Minister Ali Larayedh said last week in a statement made to the press that his country cannot legally prevent its citizens from travelling to Syria to fight.

Larayedh revealed that Tunisians travel to Libya and Turkey under the pretext of tourism or work and later go to Syria.

Tunisian security forces said late March that there are a number of disbanded networks that were working on recruiting young Tunisians to send them to Syria.

Government officials reported to have on many occasions caught weapons being smuggled into the country. Earlier in February, Tunisian security forces were reported to have clashed with militants smuggling weapons into the country and killed three.

Experts say the Tunisian uprising resulted in a sizable number of young Tunisian civilians recruited by extremists to participate in violent battles inside and outside the country.

Jihadis' Exploitation of Muslim Girls

by Khaled Abu Toameh
March 31, 2013 at 2:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3652/exploitation-muslim-girls

What is disturbing is that many Arab and Islamic human rights organizations have remained silent about the crimes committed against Muslim women throughout the Arab and Muslim world. By contrast, these organizations are often quick to denounce Westerners for "insulting" Islam by depicting the Prophet Mohammed. If anyone is really insulting Islam, it is the Muslim fundamentalists and jihadis who show no respect for Muslim girls and treat them as sex slaves.

What are the Muslim jihadis in Syria doing when they are not fighting against Bashar Assad's army?

According to reports in a number of Arab media outlets, the jihadis are importing Muslim girls to satisfy their sexual needs.

The sexual exploitation of girls was revealed after several Tunisian families reported that their teenage daughters had gone missing in recent months.

It later transpired that the girls had been dispatched to serve to Syria on "jihad marriages." In other words, the girls had been sent to Syria to satisfy the sexual needs of the anti-Assad jihadis.

The jihadis, some of whom are affiliated with Al-Qaeda, are probably not getting enough weapons from Arabs and Westerners to fight against Assad's forces. But what is evident is that they are in the meantime getting enough supplies of young girls to satisfy their sexual needs.

The phenomenon apparently began after a Saudi religious scholar, Mohamed al-Arifi, reportedly issued a fatwa [religious decree] allowing Muslim girls to go on "jihad marriages" in Syria. Al-Arifi has since denied issuing the fatwa.

The fatwa purportedly allows the jihadis, who abandoned their wives to fight against Assad's regime, to marry girls for a few hours to satisfy their sexual needs.

But even if there never were such a fatwa, as the Saudi scholar says, what is evident is that Tunisian girls are being sexually exploited by the jihadis in Syria.

Tunisian Minister for Religious Affairs, Noor Eddin al-Khadimi, said that Tunisians should not abide by the fatwa.

Salma al-Raqiq, a Tunisian opposition figure, said that the "jihad marriages" were a disgrace for the Tunisians.

She also called on the authorities to start dealing with the increasing phenomenon of Tunisian jihadis heading to Syria to join radical Islamist groups.

Al-Raqiq told United Press International that the phenomenon was a dangerous one. She said that young girls, including minors, have been sent to Syria to "marry" jihadis for a few hours.
The reports about "jihad marriages" follow charges that Muslim men have been exploiting the plight of Syrian refugees by "marrying" their young daughters.

Reports in the Jordanian media revealed that Muslim men from various countries have been converging on Jordan to pick young Syrian girls residing in a temporary refugee camp near the border with Syria. Nearly one million Syrians have fled to Jordan since the beginning of the crisis in their country two years ago.

A report on Channel 4 revealed this week that Syrian girls in Jordan were being kidnapped, sexually harassed and raped.

What is disturbing is that many Arab and Islamic human rights organizations have remained silent about the crimes committed against Muslim women throughout the Arab and Muslim world. By contrast, these organizations are often quick to denounce Westerners for "insulting" Islam by publishing photos depicting the Prophet Mohamed.

If anyone is really insulting Islam, it those the Muslim fundamentalists and jihadis who show no respect for Muslim girls and treat them as sex slaves.

Related Topics: Syria | Khaled Abu Toameh

Tunisia’s PM unveils new government led by Islamists

Friday, 8 March 2013  - Al Arabiya

Tunisia’s Prime Minister-designate Ali Larayedh speaks during a news conference after his meeting with Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki (not seen) in Tunis March 7, 2013. (Reuters)

Al Arabiya With Agencies 

Tunisia’s Prime Minister-designate Ali Larayedh unveiled a proposed new coalition government on Friday, just hours ahead of his deadline, composed of people from the parties of the outgoing alliance and independents.

“I presented to the president the dossier containing the list of the new government and a summary of the government program,” Larayedh announced on television, just hours before a midnight deadline.
The new government is led by the Islamist Ennahda party, backed by two secular parties, the centre-left Ettakatol and thesecular Congress for the Republic led by President Moncef Marzouki - the same parties that were in the previous cabinet.

Ennahda’s coalition partners - the centre-left Ettakatol and President Moncef Marzouki’s secular Congress for the Republic(CPR) - are the same parties as in the previous government.

“Our country needs national unity,” Larayedh told a news conference, saying his government would not last beyond this year, with elections likely to be held in October or November.

“You must be patient. The road to democracy is long,” said Larayedh, interior minister in the outgoing cabinet, which had struggled with Islamist-secular tensions as well as frequent popular unrest over unemployment and rising living costs.

Ennahda has ceded control of several key ministries to independents in the new cabinet, with career diplomat Othman Jarandi named as foreign minister, Lotfi Ben Jedou interior minister and Rachid Sabbagh defense minister.

Elyess Fakhfakh of Ettakatol, an economist, keeps the finance portfolio.

Jarandi, a former ambassador to the United Nations, has strong ties with international bodies and the West.

Ben Jedou and Sabbagh are both judges. Ben Jedou took part in an investigation into the killing of dozens of young men during the “Jasmine Revolution” that toppled Ben Ali and inspired revolts against autocrats around the Arab world.

Twelve members of Jebali’s Cabinet stay on, including Agriculture Minister Mohamed Ben Salem and Human Rights Minister Samir Dilou, who are both members of Ennahda, as well as Culture Minister Mehdi Mabrouk, an independent.

Larayedh tried but failed to induce other secular parties to join the coalition, one of whose main tasks will be to oversee polls in a transition process jolted by Belaid’s assassination.

His killing, which the authorities blame on strict Salafi Muslim militants, provoked three days of sometimes violent protests and exposed deep rifts between ruling Islamists elected to power and liberals who fear the loss of hard-won freedoms.

Ennahda’s leader Rached Ghannouchi told Reuters last month that any stable government in Tunisia must be a coalition between moderate Islamists and moderate secularists.

Ennahda, Ettakatol and CPR have governed in coalition since December 2011, following Tunisia’s first free election for a217-seat National Constituent Assembly, which is supposed to draft a new constitution for the post-Ben Ali era.

Disputes over the role of Islam in politics and society have delayed a document which must be approved before the election.

Political turmoil in recent weeks has set back talks with the International Monetary Fund on a $1.78 billion loan and has prompted Standard and Poor’s lower its long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit rating of Tunisia.

The government raised most fuel prices this week as part of a drive to cut subsidies and reduce a forecast 2013 budget deficit of 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

The central bank warned last week that continuing political crisis would harm the economy, which relies heavily on tourism.

Tunisia’s transition has been calmer than those in Egypt and Libya, but the struggle over Islam’s place in government and society has emerged as a particularly divisive political issue.

Salafis, not all of whom espouse violence, want a broader role for religion in Tunisia, alarming secular elites who fear they will seek to impose their strict views at the expense of individual freedoms, women’s rights and democracy.

Salafis prevented several concerts and plays from taking place in Tunisian cities last year, saying they violated Islamic principles. Salafis also ransacked the U.S. Embassy in September during worldwide Muslim protests over an Internet video.

Secular groups have accused the Ennahda-led government of a lax response to such attacks.

After Belaid’s death, Jebali tried to restore calm by proposing an apolitical cabinet of technocrats to organize parliamentary election, but resigned after opposition from within his own Ennahda party scuppered the plan.

There's more to the Arab world's malaise than dictators

The ongoing 'Arab Winter' is showing that there was always more than dictatorships to blame for the Arab world's malaise

Mubarak, Gaddafi et al. are gone, but the Arab world's problems remain

Ghaffar Hussain

On 10 February 2013 22:38- the commentator

Popular protests across the Arab world in early 2011, which led to the overthrow of deeply entrenched authoritarian dictatorships, were warmly welcomed around the world. The term 'Arab Spring' was coined, in homage to the 'Prague Spring', and many spoke excitedly of a fourth wave of democratisation.


In hindsight, Prague Spring comparisons were very apt since Czechoslovakia's brief period of liberalisation and reform in early 1969 was abruptly bought to an end by the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw Pact later that year. The Prague Spring became a harsh winter, and the Arab Spring seems to be heading the same way.

The overthrow of Saddam's regime in 2003, by a US-led coalition, led to an outbreak of chaos, criminality, sectarian strife and political in-fighting that has yet to subside. It was easy to blame it all on the US-led intervention and a lack of workable post-war plans, and to an extent that was true.

But the removal of a brutal dictator in Iraq was always going to unleash tensions that had been simmering under the surface for decades and open up new fractures in a society that was once termed 'a prison camp above ground and a mass grave below it'.

The mistake many made was to view events in Iraq as an exception rather than a harbinger of what was yet to come. The removal of dictatorships in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt seems to be having the same effect it did in Iraq, except it is much harder to blame the US this time, though many will try.

Talk of an Arab Spring is starting to sound increasingly absurd. Well-armed militias still control parts of Libya; leading liberal opposition politicians are being assassinated in Tunisia; al-Qaeda remains an existential threat in Yemen; and Egypt faces fresh protests every week. Beyond political stability, very little has improved in these countries and many things have got a lot worse. Onlookers are waking up to the realisation that dictatorships were never the root cause of the malaise affecting the Arab world.

In truth, this idea was being discussed long before the recent wave of revolutions in the Arab world. Back in 2002, for example, a team of Arab scholars, led by the Egyptian Nader Fergany, compiled a report entitled the 'Arab Human Development Report 2002'. This report, which was published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and caused a huge stir, identified attitudes towards three key things that were holding Arab societies back: freedom, knowledge, and women's status.

I can remember giving a speech in Cairo back in 2010 and being struck by just how restricted and narrow the scope for self-expression was. Intellectual and artistic freedom is simply not able to thrive. Freedom as we know it simply does not exist. Tribal patriarchy, religious obscurantism, and political authoritarianism often combine to create an intolerant and suffocating social atmosphere that can only lead to sudden outbursts of misdirected anger and rage.

As for knowledge, in the last 1000 years, Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in a single year. Education systems are woefully inadequate, spending on research and development is a fraction of the world average, and adult illiteracy rates are still very high. Knowledge is simply not valued and certainly not disseminated en mass.

Finally, societies in which half of the citizens are treated as second class citizens can never hope to prosper.  The participation of women in political and economic life in Arab societies is the lowest in the world. At the same time sexual harassment rates, certainly in Egypt, are amongst the highest in the world. 

There is little reason to believe that progress has been made on these three key issues since the report’s publication in 2002. In fact, the opposite case can be made.

Now that nationalist and secular dictatorships have been overthrown, Saudi-funded Salafist groups roam the streets of Tunisia and Egypt trying to enforce their own twisted interpretation of morality. Post-revolution, life for women has been made that little bit worse. Personal freedoms seem as distant as ever.

Democracy has never been simply about holding a set of elections. A democratic political culture needs to be matched by appropriate social, cultural and economic changes too. Eastern European states had their western counterparts to look up to and imitate; Arab states lack such role models and instead are at the receiving end of Saudi and Qatari-funded initiatives that favour more regressive forces.

What was termed the 'Arab Spring' was simply the start of a long period of chaos and uncertainty in which anything could happen. The region is being pulled in different directions with very little consensus on the best way to move forward. Western powers have not come out in support of liberal and secular forces in the region, instead preferring to watch from the side-lines and focus on realpolitik.

There was no Arab Spring; there was a harsh winter that could be followed by a spring. Whether it will or not remains to be seen. If the past two years are anything to go by, the winter will last for quite a while yet.

Ghaffar Hussain is a counter terrorism expert and Contributing Editor to The Commentator. Follow him on Twitter @GhaffarH

Read more on: Islamists and the Arab Spring, Democracy and the Arab Spring, Egypt Arab Spring, Libya Arab Spring, the Arab Spring, Will the Arab Spring turn in the West's favour?, Islamism and the Arab Spring, Is the Arab spring turning into an Arab winter?, Arab Spring, arab winter, and Ghaffar Hussain

Game Plan

Come now, the combined forces of Russian military advice and trainers, that of the Iranian Quds Republican Guard doing likewise, and trained and battle-ready Hezbollah at their service, and the Syrian Baath regime's military is unable to roust the rag-tag militias that have inspired a popular revolt for which Syrian civilians have paid so dearly? Of course there is the jihadi Sunni quotient that has upped the ante, as it were.

And just to complicate matters somewhat, there is Turkey on the cusp between East and West, latterly yearning to be more West than East, suddenly returned to its origins. But yet quite conflicted; its close association with Iran, supporting Syria, has not deflected Turkey from appealing to NATO for missiles defence from Syrian regime incursions. Both Egypt and Turkey denounce President Assad, while sidelining the Arab League and currying favour with Iran.

It is, to be certain, a classic. It can be seen, that vile and virulent struggle within Islam between Shia and Sunni in so many other countries of the civil and civilized Middle East. The once-Sunni minority under another Baathist tyrant oppressing the Shia majority in Iraq. Now the Iraqi Sunnis shudder at the collaboration between the Islamist Republic of Iran and their country's new government. And Iraqi Christians flee, while Kurds hope their geographic sector will remain immune.

In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Sunni dictators quell any unrest exhibited by their cowering Shiite minority. And in Syria the Alawite minority quiver in their thoughts at the very real prospect of the revolution-inspired Sunni majority succeeding in conquering the heroic champion of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. Revenge will be swift and bloody.

The UN and international sanctions have had little impact. Much as has been experienced with its great mentor, Iran whose own denunciation by the UN, the IAEA and the Western powers has done nothing to apprehend its march toward nuclear self-sufficiency. The better to cow and threaten those Sunni-led regimes by the fears nuclear-tipped bombs will succeed with.

The intricate, bedevilling details of the Middle East, its contrivances, its conspiracies and blandly sinister threats to world stability confounds reasonable minds. Sunni-majority Egypt now in the thrall of the Muslim Brotherhood finding common cause with Iran's theocracy, preparing for the inevitability of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists joining ranks in Syria post-Assad.

And Jordan, finally falling to the full influence of their majority Palestinian population, welcoming the Muslim Brotherhood taking the ship of state from the monarchy, vanquished. Logic should have it that Jordan is the state that Palestinians have long sought for their own, with the Hashemite Kingdom vanishing. And Lebanon finally surrendering to Hezbollah, an acolyte of Iran.

With Libya and Tunisia surrendering finally to fanatical Islam, what is left? Oh, of course, Saudi Arabia which with its oil wealth funded all those madrases in Pakistan and other Islamic states, even going as far as the West, to tutor and influence the Wahhabi way of Islamic life, will find its descendants returning to vanquish the House of Saud.

And finally, the fundamentals of authentic Islam will have returned to its hallowed roots. And those roots will spread as they once did, becoming the scourge of the West, of Africa and India, and they will seek to reimpose and to gather and to spread, like a metastasizing canker of one true religion over the face of this place we call our home.

Speaking lightly of nightmare scenarios.