In a cafe in the dense and popular neighborhood Ettadhamen, in Tunis, Othman S. nervously crumples and smooths two documents. The first is an article about her sister, Imen, 32, who left for Syria with her husband, a jihadist candidate, and her two children in 2015; the second is a recent police summons.
The daily life of Othman, father and mechanic in his forties, has turned into an agonizing routine since the departure of his sister, whom he is constantly waiting for news on WhatsApp messaging. She is currently detained with her children in the Roj camp in Syrian Kurdistan. According to Othman, her husband is also a prisoner of the Kurdish forces.
Othman is often held accountable to the police who, he says, “Does its job, but not always respectfully”. During the last interrogation, her phone was confiscated, and her Facebook account passwords changed. “I took a lawyer because it is starting to tire me out, he says. I am called in the middle of the day to come to the police station. I have to interrupt my work, stay there sometimes until midnight. “ He explains that his sister was forced to travel to Syria, forced by her husband, who said he wanted to look for his brother, who left in 2013.
Accusations of lax management
Following the 2011 revolution, Ettadhamen has become, like other working-class neighborhoods in the Tunisian capital, a high place for Salafist sermons led by the Ansar Al-Sharia movement, close to Al-Qaida networks and very active until 2015. Many Islamist political prisoners detained by the Ben Ali regime were released from January 2011, including activists from the Salafist-jihadist current who set their sights on mosques in popular neighborhoods and towns, while many imams who officers under the regime were expelled from it. Among the idle youth and in the midst of questioning the identity of these places, many have identified with the‘ideology advocated by these preachers, but also the fate of the Syrians, whose revolution was bloodily suppressed.
The first Tunisian government elected after the fall of Ben Ali, from an Islamist parliamentary majority, has been accused of lax regarding departures, with Islamist deputies even encouraging this new jihad in a tense political context. But this phenomenon of radicalization did not start with the revolution, according to Ali Moez, president of the Union of Independent Tunisians for Freedom (UTIL), which worked on the prevention and fight against violent extremism and the development of public policies on the subject. “We experienced the Ghriba attack in 2002 [une attaque suicide contre la synagogue de Djerba], the attempt to constitute armed groups in 2007, but also young people who went to war in Iraq. The post-revolutionary period allowed propagandist networks to gain new visibility and to structure themselves. “
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