When radicalisation is successful

The Tunisian government clearly did not learn the lesson delivered in March by Daesh at the Bardo Museum in the country’s capital.

The attack by two gunmen left 24 dead, 20 of them tourists on a shore visit from cruise ships.

Last Friday’s attack by a lone gunman at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel in the coastal resort of Sousse left 38 dead, up to 30 of the fatalities British.

Port El Kantaoui, the location of the hotel, should have been secured as it is a high-profile tourist destination.

Tunis promptly announced the closure of 80 mosques not controlled by the government. This will not counter the preachers and groups that brainwash vulnerable young men like Saif Rezgui, who perpetrated the massacre.

According to a report by Paul Bently and James Slack in Britain’s Daily Mail, Rezgui was radicalised by the jihadist faction Ansar Al Sharia, led by Saifallah Ben Hassine.

The group, regarded as the Tunisian branch of Daesh, mounted a suicide attack at another Sousse beach resort two years ago.

A fugitive, Ben Hassine is held responsible for directing the 2012 attack on the US embassy in Tunis.

The Libyan branch of Ansar Al Sharia, which coordinates with other country branches, is held responsible for the 2012 assault on the US consulate that killed the ambassador.

Rezgui may also have had contacts with jihadists in Libya and trained in a Libyan camp. He was, however, not on the books of Tunisian intelligence as a threat.

In the wake of the attack, the authorities said they arrested three suspects for alleged involvement in planning the operation.

On Tuesday, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said that a strengthened security plan designed for heightened risks of attacks during Ramadan was due to be put in place on July 1.

Why July 1? Ramadan began on June 18th, nine days before the massacre at Sousse. 

The Tunisian government is not alone in failing to tackle jihadists who are now all the more threatening because of their ties to Daesh, which has taken over from Al Qaeda as the most popular jihadist brand.

From the late 1990s, Ben Hassine lived in London and used Britain’s capital as his base for organising and running Al Qaeda-linked “Tunisian Fighting Group”.

Its objective was to recruit Tunisians and send them to Afghanistan for military training. After leaving Britain, Ben Hassine founded Ansar Al Sharia.

Ben Hassine was not the sole radical to dwell in London. Syrian Brotherhood members and ultra-religious Salafists have lived there and in other European capitals for decades. Some of them made up the most influential grouping in the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), formed under Turkish auspices in 2011, and are still decision makers in the SNC’s successor, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC, again), based in Istanbul.

Ruled by the Turkish version of the Brotherhood, Ankara is eager to promote the SNC as a successor to the secular Syrian government under President Bashar Assad.

Turkey, along with Qatar, strongly backed the Brotherhood’s failed bid for power in Egypt. Both Ankara and Doha have protested the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood veteran, two years ago and the harsh crackdown on the movement’s leadership and members.

His removal led to a stepped up campaign against the government and security forces by northern Sinai-based Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, which has declared allegiance to Daesh and mounted attacks in Sinai and other places in Egypt, killing and maiming hundreds of people.

Under pressure from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Qatar has gradually and without fanfare deported several Brotherhood members who took refuge in the country.

One Muslim activist who spent many years in exile has assumed a positive, moderating role in his country’s democratic politics since the Arab Spring ousted Tunisian dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

This is Rachid Ghannouchi who heads Annahda party, Tunisia’s branch of the Brotherhood.

He lived in London from 1989 until 2011. Ghannouchi, an intellectual and author who in 1981 founded the Tunisian “Islamic Tendency Movement”, which called for peaceful action to improve the economy, has, unfortunately, not been a role model for angry young Tunisians or angry young Arabs elsewhere. 

They seem to prefer brutal Daesh, Jabhat Al Nusra and their partners in crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Radicalisation is neither a recent nor a Muslim phenomenon.

A century ago, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip who belonged to the Black Hand society, a group fighting for the secession of Slav provinces from the empire. This killing precipitated World War I.

On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a former member of the right-wing Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Godse accused Gandhi of supporting the division of India and favouring India’s Muslims over Hindus during the brutal partition process that gave birth to Pakistan.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a Norwegian right-wing extremist self-radicalised with some input from neo-Nazi websites, mounted attacks on government buildings in Oslo, his country’s capital, and at a leftist Labour Party summer camp on an island, killing 69 and wounding 110.

Breivik protested the presence of Muslims in Europe.

Finally, on June 17, Dylann Roof, 21, allegedly killed nine Afro-Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Roof said he was fighting against “black domination” in the US. He had studied at least one white supremacist website.

These days, radicalisation is achieved not only through “brainwashing” by direct contact with individuals with radical agendas, but also by highly professional recruiters on the Internet on behalf of racist hate groups, fundamentalist factions and a wide range of political causes.

Whether radicalisation is successful or not depends on the receptiveness of targets who are likely to be alienated young men and women who seek meaning in lives they consider to be meaningless and identity in societies where they are invisible.