Daesh pushes at building base in southern Tunisia

The mounting fears that Daesh’s growth in Libya will spill over on to Tunisia are rising as a group of militants belonging to the group crossed the border in an attempt to cease the southern Tunisian city of Ben Gardane yesterday morning.

The attack started just after 5am in what the defence and interior ministries say were coordinated attacks against the city’s military, a National Guard station and the police 40 kilometres from the Libyan border. Clashes between the security forces and the assailants erupted on the village’s streets. Last night, the Ministry of Interior announced that 35 Daesh members had been killed and seven captured. In addition, 11 security force personnel were reportedly killed in the attack and 12 were wounded while an estimated seven civilians were also reported dead and three injured.

The attack on Monday morning was not the first assault on the southern Tunisian village. Last week an exchange of fire broke out between alleged militants and Tunisian security forces, in which five suspected militants were killed and large collections of weapons were seized.

Libya’s internal conflict and power vacuum since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 has given the militant group an opportunity to gain a foothold in the oil rich North African state. The assailants behind both the terrorist attack at Bardo National Museum in Tunis on 18 March and the attack on a beach at the tourist hotspot Sousse on 26 June last year are both believed to have received training in Libya.

Tunisian-Libyan relations have recently grown increasingly intense and the Ben Gardane attack comes as no surprise as tensions have been rising along the border. On 23 February 23 a US drone attack hit a Daesh training facility close to Sabratah about 70 kilometres west of Tripoli and 100 kilometres from the Tunisian border. At least 43 people were killed in the attack, according to the mayor of Sabratah, most of them Tunisian nationals, including its main target Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian accused of involvement in both the Bardo and Sousse attacks. After the attack a video of one of the captured Tunisian militants circulated where he confirmed Daesh’s intention to launch an attack on Ben Gardane.

To political analyst Youssef Cherif there is a connection between the US attack on Sabratah and yesterday’s assault on Ben Gardane. The fighters are looking for a new safe heaven and “Ben Gardane, where many of them are from and which is located in a rather peaceful area, looked like the perfect spot,” argued Cherif. The city is home to many disgruntled people, explained Cherif; many of the city’s citizens are angry at the central state and feel disadvantaged. In addition, a base on Tunisian soil would stir international reactions. “Taking over any Tunisian town will make global headlines,” said Cherif, “A Wilayat in the heart of the Arab world’s only democracy.”

The international community has grown increasingly worried about the militant group’s influence in war-torn Libya. The Pentagon has increased its estimate of the number of Libyan Daesh fighters from about 3,000 to 5,000-6,000, many of whom are believed to originate from Tunisia, which has one of the largest number of foreign fighters. As of October 2015, approximately 6,000 Tunisian fighters are believed to have travelled to Syria, according to a recent report by The Soufan Group. According to the same report 15.2 per cent of the Tunisian fighters are from Ben Gardane.

“In their relative isolation, comfort with cross-border travel and antagonism towards outsiders, families in Ben Gardane have proved susceptible to the call of violent extremism,” the report stated.

In an attempt to protect the country’s border with Libya, a 200-kilometre-long earth wall, along with a trench, have been built. The Tunisian forces will also receive training in electronic surveillance including handling equipment such as cameras and radars, Defence Minister Farhat Hachani explained.

Cherif is sceptical that these preventative measures will be sufficient. “The assailants had some local support,” he said, which may explain how the large group could reach Ben Gardane. Whilst the wall may help in decreasing the likelihood of these events, it will not stop them, he argued. Informal and illegal trade in southern Tunisia will always lead people to attempt to cross the border.

“Not only terrorists, but also civilians,” explains Cherif. “And there will always be corrupt officers who close their eyes.” Another obstacle is the border’s length. “It is very long, almost impossible to control completely by an army like Tunisia’s,” Cherif concluded.

There were some unconfirmed reports of renewed clashes on a traffic police station in Oued Fessi, about 12 kilometres from Ben Gardane, yesterday evening. In an attempt to control the situation the Tunisian government imposed a curfew on the city between 7pm and 5am