Tunisia's fragile security
While the recent Nobel Peace Prize win for Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet is cause for celebration, the country's security situation has continued to deteriorate in the years since the Arab Spring.
TUNIS, Tunisia — The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, which brokered a political agreement in Tunisia’s toughest challenge since the Jasmine Revolution, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year. However, while winning the prize was the best news in Tunisia this year, the security situation remains fragile.
Just three days after the news of the prize broke, another attack against the Tunisian security forces occurred in the western mountain area of the Chaambi region, close to the Algerian border. Two soldiers were shot dead and four others were wounded in an exchange of fire. According to Long War Journal, a local herder was also kidnapped, whom the group claimed to have “finished off” together with others the group accused of being Tunisian spies.
Katibat Uqba Ibn Nafi (KUIN) is an al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) affiliate, which traces back to the Algerian war in the 1990s. Little is known about the group’s origin, but its leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, is a veteran Algerian militant affiliate, and the group is believed to be composed of Algerian and Tunisian factions. It started to operate in 2012 and has since then primarily operated around the Tunisia-Algeria border region, where it is believed to still be hiding, primarily in the Mount Chaambi area, which has been cordoned off by Tunisian army troops since the end of 2012. The group consists of approximately 50-60 men, estimates security analyst Habib M. Sayah. After the recent attack, which according to the group caused “large injuries in the apostate army,” the group announced through a Twitter account that the group had entered a “new stage in the conflict with Tunisia and their supporters who reported the mujahedeen.”
Since 2012, the group has targeted the Tunisian state, primarily aiming to weaken the security forces. The group’s deadliest attack came in July 2014 when 15 soldiers were killed and 20 were wounded in an attack in the Mount Chaambi region, the worst loss since independence in 1956. Yet, since 2012 the Kasserine region has seen a large number of attacks. The group’s links to larger terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda central were disputed for a long time, but earlier this year the group publicly endorsed AQIM through different media channels, putting an end to rumors suggesting, for example, that KUIN aligned itself with the Islamic State (IS). AQIM has also in return endorsed different attacks perpetrated by the group.
