Despite the Tunisian government’s attempts to underplay and minimize the risks that threaten the country’s borders from the Libyan side, the people of Ben Gardane (600 kilometers south east of Tunis), said that their city has been witnessing heightened security measures in the last two weeks.  They have seen many checkpoints set up in the city as well as heavy military vehicles crossing from the town centre towards the Libyan-Tunisian border.

Despite the Tunisian government’s attempts to underplay and minimize the risks that threaten the country’s borders from the Libyan side, the people of Ben Gardane (600 kilometers south east of Tunis), said that their city has been witnessing heightened security measures in the last two weeks.  They have seen many checkpoints set up in the city as well as heavy military vehicles crossing from the town centre towards the Libyan-Tunisian border.

Last week Tunisian authorities sent military reinforcements to the border crossing of Ras al-Jedir, in addition to reconnaissance aircrafts equipped with aerial bombardment.

Along the long border, there are some 600 policemen, guards and army members who came from the barracks of neighbouring towns to support their colleagues working in the military buffer zone at the level of the joint borders between Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, according to identical media reports.  

The Tunisian Defence Ministry denied news claiming the doubling of the Tunisian military presence near the border and considered that media reports about sending hundreds of troops to the south as exaggerated, and that they have reached the point of becoming rumours.

Brigadier Tawfiq Rahmouni, the spokesman of the defence ministry, told the official Tunisian news agency: “The situation at the Tunisian-Libyan border is stable and does not require extraordinary measures to strengthen the military presence.”  He added that the crossing points of vehicles and people in the Ras al-Jedir from the two sides had not recorded any disturbances.

Admitting to the problem

However, the insistence of the security unions to demand that the government inform the national public opinion about what is going on and about terrorist plots that threaten the safety and security of the country forced Brigadier Tawfiq Rahmouni to admit that the terrorist threat in Tunisia is real.

He explained that the national army is in a state of constant alert and is ready to protect the citizens and to confront terrorism.  He also said that the security situation is unstable because of the deterioration in the security conditions in Libya, which made the Defence Ministry take the necessary measures, and to deploy forces and machines and adopt defensive mechanisms along the Tunisian – Libyan borders.

In this regard, a source, who prefers to remain anonymous, told Correspondents that ”the specialized interests’ office in Ben Guerdane suggested the need for cautious measures on the Tunisian side of the borders through taking security measures in anticipation of any ”recklessness” that may be committed by the Libyan armed groups.”

He confirmed that there is no physical irrefutable evidence to prove the intention of the Libyan militias to attack the Ras Jedir crossing and to enter Tunisian territory. ”Intelligence work requires, in addition to the collection of information, analyzing the situation and instructing and alerting the Ministry of Interior about any emergency situation that may threaten the safety of the state’s security, especially in border cities.”

However, he commented saying that he does not deny that the crossing had been exposed, more than one time, to attacks and shootings, adding that fortunately these attacks did not cause casualties.  ”The motives behind these provocative actions,” the source said ”were not related to terrorist acts, but rather problems related to smuggling and sometimes to demand the release of Libyan nationals who got engaged in issues inside the Tunisian territories.”  

He further warned: “We should not forget the militias that are active 25 kilometers from our borders and classified as outlawed groups. These groups will service any party that pays money— similar to smuggling and drug mafias.”

According to identical security sources, the Ras Jedir crossing and the border strip have witnessed the arrival of a large number of soldiers and police members, but these numbers did not reach the figure circulated by the media. The Tunisian government has resorted to raising the alert level at the border as a proactive measure due to the remoteness of the area from the main army barracks, and the difficulty of sending reinforcements in the event of a strategic analysis resulting from security reports.

These sources considered that statements made by some political analysts about Libyan groups possessing chemical weapons as  irrational and unfounded.  They denied this information based on intelligence reports from western and US intelligence agencies.

Libyan as well as Tunisian security reports indicate that there are military training camps gathering hundreds of Tunisians and other Africans.  The aim behind the camps, built by extremist religious groups, is to send fighters to Syria to participate in the battle for overthrowing Bashar al-Assad’s regime. However, after the regional developments, these camps started to pose a real threat to the Maghreb countries and the mission and strategy of these camps became unclear with regard to training fighters and the tasks they will perform in the future. 

The creation of the Libyan armed groups dates back to the bloody battles that took place between the Libyan rebels and the Gaddafi regime in 2011.

Experts stress that it had played an important role in winning the battle of the Libyan people with the support of NATO, but most of its members refused to integrate into the police and army units after the fall of the former regime. There are various reasons behind this rejection such as the dissatisfaction with the performance of the successive governments that have ruled Libya, in addition to organizational and ideological differences and disagreements with the regular formations.

The Shield of Libya

The Shield of Libya group— mentioned in almost all Tunisian newspaper articles linking Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia and the outlawed rebels in Libya— is one of the most prominent armed groups.  It is for this reason that the Libyan government has assigned to it the mission of guarding vital targets in the General Staff of the Libyan army, before the assassination of its leader Adnan al-Nuwaisri. The group is divided into a number of military battalions deployed in the country and it is difficult to organize or control it.

Talal Zahlouk, a Libyan social activist, said the Libyan Shield was established upon a decision taken by the Libyan National Transitional Council during the period of armed struggle against Muammar Gaddafi, and it is supervised by the Presidency of the Army Staff at the organizational level. On the ground, however, it only takes its orders from the emirs of the squads and some of these emirs have deviated from the goals of the group.

”It is important to separate the supporters of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia and Libya Shield forces, given the fundamental differences in the Islamic jihad concept between the two,” Zahlouk said.  He says he has no doubt that The Shield of Libya is linked to al-Qaeda. 

He justifies it saying that most of the emirs of Libya’s Shield battalions were in the past, members of the Libyan Fighting Group and that they believe in Salafi jihadist ideology. “But I cannot assert the involvement of all of its members in terrorism because many of them adopt the scientific Salafi ideology, which considers the Islamic territory as a land for preaching rather than a land for jihad,” he explained.

He also stressed that its illegal activities are dangerous for the Tunisian-Libyan borders and that the Libyan state, until now, has refused to confront it and to address its interference in the affairs of the country and its control of border crossings.

In Tunisia, the government and the opposition are exchanging accusations of security negligence with regards to terrorism. Security and military measures on the Tunisian – Libyan borders have been taken in part because of intelligence reports revealed by Tayeb Oqaili, an activist whose reseach implicated Ennahda in the assassinations of political opposition members Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.