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Day Before Terrorist Attack, Tunisian Government Insisted There Was ‘No Security Problem In Tunisia’

Escorted by security forces, rescue workers pull an empty stretcher outside the Bardo museum Wednesday, March 18, 2015 in Tunis, Tunisia. Authorities say scores of people are dead after an attack on a major museum in the Tunisian capital, and some of the gunmen may have escaped. CREDIT: AP
Escorted by security forces, rescue workers pull an empty stretcher outside the Bardo museum Wednesday, March 18, 2015 in Tunis, Tunisia. Authorities say scores of people are dead after an attack on a major museum in the Tunisian capital, and some of the gunmen may have escaped. CREDIT: AP

On Tuesday, Tunisia’s Tourism Minister refuted the credibility of reports that the country faced an eminent terrorist threat. On Wednesday, 19 people, including 17 foreigners, were killed after gunmen besieged one of the country’s most popular tourist sites.

“Of course the situation in Libya does not help, as is always the case when there are problems in neighboring countries,” Selma Elluni Rekik told an Italian news agency a day before the bloody rampage. “However, our borders are absolutely impermeable to any infiltration attempt. There is no security problem in Tunisia. Everything is under control.’’

The problem is that everything is not under control in Tunisia — and it hasn’t been for some time. Rekik and other Tunisian officials have tried to portray the threat of terrorism as one that stems from outside of its borders, but there is evidence of a growing terrorist militancy within the country.

Tunisian authorities estimate that at least 3,000 Tunisians have joined ISIS or the Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra — more than from any other country. Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou has said that the country has successfully thwarted 9,000 others from following suit, but as Jessie Karam of the Aspen Institute Italia recently pointed out, “[T]hey have not been further monitored by government or youth counselors and therefore pose a threat in the spread of extremism and radicalism.”

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According to Karam’s report, at least 400 ISIS sleeper cells exist in the country, and the two brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris are believed to have received terrorist training in Tunisia.

This might seem surprising for not only the birthplace of the Arab Spring — but the sole country to overthrow an autocratic ruler and replace him with a stable democracy.

“The attack does not come as a surprise,” Nouri Gana of the University of California, Los Angeles told ThinkProgress in an email. “Tunisia has been combating terrorism before the revolution. Attacks have multiplied after the revolution though and the army and police forces were able to keep terrorism out of urban Tunisia.”

Indeed, toppling an autocratic ruler and running fair elections have not stemmed some of the most pernicious issues in the country: unemployment, police brutality, and rampant corruption.

Take the story of a young man named Mahmoud, for example. GlobalPost’s Laura Dean reported his story back in November. He was arrested several times for minor infractions, and questioned about going to Syria — an idea he toyed with at the time. He was then taken by the police and questioned about a terrorist attack — and brutally tortured. He was subject to electric shocks, hung upside down, and deprived of sleep for days. Just before he was released, a policeman told him, “[T]ell your mother to go to a human rights organization, it won’t do any good.”

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Studies have shown that it’s just these sorts of experiences of injustice that push people to join terrorist networks.

“We trust we will improve further. We are neither optimists nor pessimists. We are only determined,” Tunisia’s Tourism Minister said — but she was talking about boosting the flow tourists to the country — not combating the threat of terrorist attacks, which will be necessary to do in order to make tourists feel safe enough to visit.