Hussain Khshaira began smuggling goods across the Libyan-Tunisian border when he was a child, after he had dropped out of school. He came from a family of smugglers who made their living this way, in their underdeveloped community near Ben Gardane, (in southern Tunisia), where unemployment is high.
On Friday September 3, Khshaira was stopped by border guards and fatally shot by the Tunisian army in the military buffer zone.
Protests
Hussain Khshaira began smuggling goods across the Libyan-Tunisian border when he was a child, after he had dropped out of school. He came from a family of smugglers who made their living this way, in their underdeveloped community near Ben Gardane, (in southern Tunisia), where unemployment is high.
On Friday September 3, Khshaira was stopped by border guards and fatally shot by the Tunisian army in the military buffer zone.
Protests
Hussain’s family, which has appointed a lawyer to prosecute, refuses to accept the reasons behind firing on him by the border army units, an incident that triggered off some protests in his hometown.
The local workers’ union in Ben Gardane City, southeast of the capital strongly condemned Hussain’s shooting and the killing of other traffickers at the military zone in the past years. The union denied their link to terrorism and attributed their smuggling activities to the absence of livelihood and employment.
“The sole aim of these young men is to provide sustenance for their families due to the lack of employment and development in their city, which forces its youth into joining the black market,” says Mohsen Chhaib, the union’s secretary general.
Chhaib adds: “The soldiers could have avoided that tragic incident by firing on the car wheels to prevent the smuggler from crossing the border.”
MoD justifications
The Tunisian Defense Ministry refuses the accusations that the army units deliberately killed the youth smugglers at the Libyan border’s southern region.
“Protecting our border with a turbulent country does not mean that we intend to deliberately eliminate people’s livelihoods,” says a border guard officer in Ben Gardane.
The officer explained that protecting the borders with Libya was indisputable to prevent any sudden infiltration by militants aiming to carry out terrorist actions, similar to those that happened at Ben Gardane this past March.
He added that the repeated attempts to cross the closed military zone by unidentified elements who fail to obey the soldiers’ orders “leaves the army with no other chance except confronting them with all affordable means.”
Skirmishes
A few weeks ago, units from the Tunisian army monitored many attempts to infiltrate the military zone by cars arriving from Libya, which were protected by armed elements, according to the defense ministry sources.
The MOD said that on several occasions its units intercepted vehicles traveling through the earthen berm (an earth barrier on the borders with Libya) into Tunisian territory and they refused to stop.
Inhabitants of Ben Gardane and Tataouine state that petrol smugglers and their families often stage protest demonstrations before the military barracks against the army’s use of live bullets to stop smugglers’ activities.
Army stance
“The army guards stand at the buffer zone to prevent illegal crossings, including trafficking or terrorism,” says Belhssan Oueslati, the MOD spokesman.
“We have cautioned on several occasions against violating the law and against failure to comply with orders or to produce permits to enter this military zone,” he adds in a tough tone.
He stressed that failure to stop despite the warning “obliges the soldiers to fire at the car wheels to force a stop, because noncompliance suggests of suspected terrorists or smuggled weapons.”
The MOD cites confessions by seized terrorists that their incursion into the Tunisian territory happened through trafficking routes and with the help of smugglers.
Oueslati says that the army is obliged to use live bullets because militants arriving from Libya use guns against the army units, like what happened when Hussain Khshaira was killed.
He adds that “firing happens if these persons refuse to comply with the soldiers’ orders to stop. The army units measure off their use of fire by firing on the wheels at first.”
Gangs
Security reports state that some trafficking networks seek the support of armed Libyan elements who offer them protection while smuggling goods into Tunisia, even if that involved exchanging fire with the Tunisian border guards.
The Tunisian authorities fear that terrorist groups could cooperate with armed gangs to move their elements from the Libyan city of Sabratah into Tunisia or to smuggle weapons across the borders.
The authorities are keeping an eye on the situations in Libya so as to address any security or political impact of these situations on the country. They are determined not to show any leniency for any incidents across the borders.
In the past two months, the Libyan side of Ras Ajdir border crossing witnessed several incidents where the area was used as a corridor for smuggling goods into Tunisia, driven by the struggle over the control of that border point by militias belonging to different Libyan cities.
