The western governorate of Kasserine, which shares a border with Algeria, is under lock down by government security forces. Checkpoints have proliferated on roads into the capital city, also called Kasserine, and members of the armed forces diligently inspect cars with metal detectors and mirrors, looking for explosive devices and mines that extremists might use against them.

The Tunisian government says that extremists have used roadside bombs to injure and kill over a dozen soldiers.

The western governorate of Kasserine, which shares a border with Algeria, is under lock down by government security forces. Checkpoints have proliferated on roads into the capital city, also called Kasserine, and members of the armed forces diligently inspect cars with metal detectors and mirrors, looking for explosive devices and mines that extremists might use against them.

The Tunisian government says that extremists have used roadside bombs to injure and kill over a dozen soldiers.

Up until recently Islamic extremists have enjoyed a period of relative freedom and openness following the Tunisian revolution. Indeed, many analysts have said they even had a relatively convivial relationship with the new Tunisian government; this is headed by the Ennahda party, which also has an Islamist orientation. However it seems that recently relations between the Ennahda-led government and the more extremist Islamists in Tunisia has been deteriorating – and rapidly. 

As Foreign Policy magazine reported in mid-May: “the immediate spark came when Tunisian security forces began striking homemade landmines in the rugged region around Jebel Chaambi near the country’s western border with Algeria. For more than two weeks, Tunisian security forces have been conducting intensive operations around Jebel Chaambi, Tunisia’s tallest mountain. Security forces have struck four [home made] mines in that time, resulting in 16 wounded Tunisian soldiers, as a result of the explosives.”

As a result of raids in Jebel Chaambi, a senior official said various weapons – including handmade mines – had been found. But it had not been easy going, the senior official, who wished to remain anonymous, said: the extremists know the mountainous terrain better than the army and it was hard to figure out where they were retreating to, even with the use of helicopters and radar.

Local historian and political analyst, Faisal Zaidi, says what’s going on in Jebel Chaambi now is linked to incidents in 2011 in the village of Rouhia and in the town of Bir Ali Ben Khalifa in 2012 – both times this involved fighting between government forces and extremists.

Zaidi says there is a direct link between the Islamic groups who are calling on members to take up arms and groups training in the mountains. Their aim is to take power from the government, he believes.

While the Tunisian government continues to grapple with those it may have considered allies at some stage – going so far as to cancel the annual general meeting of Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia, a group with links to extremists, recently – other Tunisian politicians have said that they believe the whole scenario is fabricated, made up so that the current government can cancel elections and remain in power.

For example, Hamma Hammami, of the Tunisian Worker’s Communist Party, says the Jebel Chaambi affair has been blown out of proportion. It’s being used to scare ordinary Tunisians and the precarious security situation will be used as an excuse not to hold elections, he suggests. The Tunisian government denies this.

The incidents in Jebel Chaambi are because of the extremists’ agenda in fighting what they call “the tyrant”, says Mazen Shareef, the deputy head of the Sufi union in Tunisia and an expert in terrorist groups. The tyrant, Shareef explains, is the government and the group’s aim is to destroy the country and undermine the civil state.

It all started when extremists began to control Tunisia’s mosques, Shareef explains. As a story in respected pan-Arab newspaper, Al Hayat, pointed out: “Following the departure of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, jihadists took control of more than 500 of the 5,000 mosques spread across the country, starting with mosques in the low-income neighborhoods of the capital (al-Tadamon, al-Intilaka) that are home to hundreds of thousands of people, and ending with mosques in Foussana, a town located in the midwest of the country facing the slopes of Jebel Chambi and with a population of 7,000.”

Meanwhile Shareef believes some sort of national pact where all parties agree to do their best to overcome the terrorist threat in Tunisia could help.