BEYOND SYRIA IRAQ

AARON Y. ZELIN
toward a bus carrying members of Tunisia’s presidential guard in the capital
and killed twelve people in a suicide attack. 7
IS also targeted a few smaller-scale attacks on the security establishment in
the interior. On June 15, 2015, an attack in Bir El Hafey (Sidi Bouzid governorate)
killed three police officers; 8 on August 21, a staff sergeant and a corporal
in the engineering division were killed and two others were wounded
by an improvised explosive device in Jabal al-Meghila; 9 and on May 16, 2016,
an IED attack in Jabal al-Meghila injured some soldiers. 10 Notably, however,
the pace has dropped off significantly since the spring and summer of 2015,
indicating that, over time, Tunisia has degraded IS’s ability to conduct such
insurgent-type attacks.
TERRORIST ATTACKS AND THE LIBYAN CONNECTION
Unlike its smaller attacks on the security infrastructure of Tunisia, IS has
been better known for its spectacular, larger-scale attacks in the country, the
purpose of which has been to destroy Tunisia’s tourism industry and thereby
bankrupt its economy. The first happened on March 15, 2015, when IS
operatives Yassine Labidi and Jaber Khachnaoui attacked the Bardo National
Museum in Tunis, killing twenty tourists and two Tunisians and injuring
fifty other individuals. A second occurred on June 26, 2015, when lone IS
operative Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi began shooting individuals on the beach
of the Riu Imperial Marhaba hotel in Sousse, killing thirty-eight beachgoers
and injuring thirty-nine others.
Both large-scale attacks were connected with the Islamic State’s infrastructure
in Libya, in particular the town of Sabratha, which is about sixtytwo
miles east of the Tunisian border. 11 While it is true that Tunisian foreign
fighters have been going to Libya since the beginning of the uprising
against Qadhafi in 2011, once IS established itself in Libya in a more concrete
manner between the spring and fall of 2014, the infrastructure to export terrorism
back into Tunisia became more sophisticated and formalized. Before
then, most Tunisians who went to Libya were more involved in facilitation
and logistics activities for the Syrian jihad, primarily engaged in providing
training to Tunisians and other foreign fighters headed to Syria, as well as
assisting in the trafficking of weapons there. 12
While Tunisian leaders and foot soldiers certainly took part in IS’s operation
in Darnah, Benghazi, and Sirte, much of the Tunisian contingent had
its own network of activities based in Sabratha and, to a lesser extent, in
Zuwarah, Libya, both of which are close to the Tunisian border. Those
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