TUNISIA - Co-operating With The West.

There are numerous Tunisians (as well as Moroccans and Algerians) involved in Al Qaida activities worldwide. In dealing with them, the government in Tunis has been highly co-operative with the US and the EU. The country has an excellent intelligence apparatus, which is capable of providing assistance and information for Europe and the US, as North Africa has been a good recruiting ground for the Al Qaida network. Tunisia is a signatory to 10 of the 12 international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism.

After 9/11, the regime went into an even higher level of aggression than it normally maintains against radical groups. Ironically, at the time, Tunisia was the only Arab member of the non-permanent group in the UN Security Council. Although there were no reported acts of terrorism in Tunisia in 2001, the government continued to continued to arrest people suspected of belonging to Islamist groups. On Nov. 29, 2001, a military court in the country convicted a Tunisian, extradited from Italy, on charges of training members of a terrorist cell in that country.

On the military front, the regime joined hands with the Algerian government to protect its borders from what it considered a potentially destabilizing influx of extremists. (Violent militant groups in Algeria have occasionally tended to cross the Tunisian border to get some temporary relief from Algerian military crackdowns). The joint Algerian-Tunisian efforts culminated in the signing in November 2001 of a military co-operation agreement aimed at strengthening border guard units to better control terrorist movements and the illegal trafficking of arms, drugs, and contraband materials.

Such activities, outsiders noted, were targeting more than just Islamists. This briefly sparked off media criticism, suggesting that Tunisia among other countries were trying to use the Bush administration's war against terror to scuttle nascent democracy in much of the Islamic World.

Yet, according to the US State Department's annual report "Patterns of Global Terrorism", for the year 2002, the Tunisian government "has supported the international coalition against terrorism and has responded to requests" from the US "for assistance in blocking financial assets and providing information on extremists". The report further pointed out that in October 2002, the US "blocked the assets of the Tunisian Combatant Group under Executive Order 13224". This coincided with a French proposal to add the group to the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 Sanctions Committee's consolidated list.

The events of 9/11 strengthened the Tunisian Government's active posture against terrorism. In early 2002, the security forces in the country convicted 34 persons, of whom 31 were in absentia, of belonging to Al Jamaa Wal Sunnah, a radical Islamist organisation said to be linked to Al Qaida. The government said at the time that the accused were recruiting Europe-based Tunisians to fight in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Afghanistan.

This was further reinforced on April 11, 2002, following the bombing attack against the El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba, in which more than 20 people were killed. After that attack, according to the State Department report, the government "continued to bring judicial, law enforcement, and military resources to bear against terrorist suspects".

The Ben Ali regime has leveraged its co-operation in the war against terror to its own advantage. Politically, the EU and the Bush administration find it convenient to deal with the leadership currently in place in Tunisia. They prefer a predictable if moderately repressive secular regime that is progressive and committed to economic reform to an unpredictable and repressive Islamic regime that may not have a clue about economic management. (In this sense, the Tunisian model is in many ways similar to the South-East Asian situation where strong military or political leaders have imposed radical social and economic reforms through firm leadership and careful management of the economy).