As the death toll grows from the terrorist attack on an iconic Tunisian museum, so do the questions.
The biggest among them: Who did it?
No group has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in the heart of the North African nation, one viewed as a rare democratic success story of the Arab Spring uprisings but sporting a track record of having its citizens join extremist groups like ISIS. Prime Minister Habib Essid, however, did identify two men — Yassine Labidi and Saber Khachnaou — he said were behind the attacks.
Labidi was “known to the security services, he was flagged and monitored,” Essid told French radio station RTL. But he added that the man wasn’t known or being followed for anything special.
“We are in the process of further investigation. We cannot say which organization they belong to,” Essid said.
It was not immediately known if these men were the two terrorists that Essid previously said Tunisian security forces had killed, or if they’re among the three suspects he’s said authorities are still looking for.
What is clearer is the carnage this attack left behind, including grieving families around the world and a rattled Tunisian tourism industry.
Health Minister Said Aidi said Thursday that 23 people are believed to have been killed, including at least one who died of wounds overnight. The victims came from at least eight countries: Japan, Italy, Colombia, France, Poland, Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom.
Another 36 people remain hospitalized, while eight others were treated and released.
While foreigners suffered most directly, Essid said the attackers also sought to undermine Tunisia itself.
“It’s a cowardly attack mainly targeting the economy of Tunisia,” he said Wednesday. “We should unite to defend our country.”
Taxi driver: ‘They hit … our livelihood’
Nine of those killed had been aboard the MSC Splendida, a cruise ship with more than 3,700 passengers and nearly 1,300 crew that docked in Tunis hours before the bloodshed. A similar vessel, the Costa Fascinosa, was at port in the Tunisian capital at the same time.
The Bardo Museum had been a logical stop for these tourists, housed next to Tunisia’s parliament in a 19th century palace and cast as a “jewel of Tunisian heritage,” with its exhibits showcasing the country’s art, culture and history.
Its prominent place in Tunisia’s economy — which banks heavily on tourism, with millions visiting the country each year — also made it a logical target for terrorists.
That’s why CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank called the attack “the biggest crisis faced by Tunisia since the (2011) revolution,” given how any impact on tourism may rock an already teetering economy.
“They hit the heart of our livelihood,” said Mohammed Ali Troudi, a taxi driver in Tunis.
It’s too early to tell how tourists will react to the attack. The MSC Splendida left Tunis at 6 a.m. Thursday, but other cruise could return soon.
But at least some of those foreigners caught up in the attack can head home.
They include Juan Carlos Sanchez and Cristina Rubio. The two Spanish nationals spent the night hiding in the Bardo Museum and were found safe and alive, a Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Earlier, a cruise ship company, MSC Cruises, said that two Spanish nationals who were guests on a cruise that docked in Tunis were among six of its passengers missing after the attack; it wasn’t immediately clear if Sanchez and Rubio were the two Spaniards.
Was ISIS involved?
Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui told national radio that the attackers were Islamists, but authorities haven’t been more specific than that.
The siege took place just days after a Tunisian jihadist tweeted that a pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was coming soon, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors terrorist propaganda.
In his message, the jihadist claimed to belong to Jund al-Khilafah in Tunisia, a group that in December pledged allegiance to ISIS, even though that vow hadn’t seemed to have fully registered with the Islamist extremist group. His post comes after an ISIS fighter in the extremist group’s stronghold of Raqqa in Syria recently appeared in a video questioning why militants in Tunisia had not pledged fealty.
“This raises the possibility that the museum attack could be ISIS’ debut on the Tunisian stage, timed to precede a pledge of allegiance from Tunisian jihadis for maximum impact,” CNN’s Cruickshank said.
The attack was celebrated by ISIS supporters online, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility from the group, which refers to itself as the Islamic State.
“It appears likely that this was an attack by the Islamic State, but we have to remember that there are also other possibilities,” said Christopher Chivvis, a security expert at the RAND Corporation. “It could have been Ansar al Shariah in Tunisia, which is a local group. It could have been al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”
Arab Spring success story
Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, has managed to avoid the chaos that engulfed Libya or the military seizure of power that derailed Egypt’s democratic experiment.
“Tunisia is the sole country to have emerged from an Arab Spring revolution with its political process intact,” Jon Marks, a North Africa expert at the London-based think tank Chatham House, said in a commentary for CNN.
While some more moderate Islamists have participated in the process, extremists have made threats against “Tunisia’s outward-looking, investment-friendly majority,” Marks wrote.
The government has been battling a jihadist presence in the Chaambi Mountains. There have been several apparent political assassinations.
And in February, the country’s Interior Ministry announced the arrests of about 100 alleged extremists and published a video allegedly showing that the group possessed a formula for making explosives and a photograph of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Fears for tourism industry after attack
It will take time for the effects of the museum attack on Tunisia’s delicate transition to become clear.
“I am really very sorry for our next tourist season, and also for those who have tried to attack a symbol of sovereignty in Tunisia,” Tunisian lawmaker Sabrine Ghoubantini told CNN on Thursday from Tunis. “It’s really sad, and I hope that it won’t really affect our economy.”
The country has had to navigate challenges like high youth unemployment after emerging from decades of dictatorship. That atmosphere may have contributed to the fact that up to 3,000 Tunisians are believed to have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight as jihadists, more than any other country, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization in London.
Mehrezia Labidi, another parliamentarian, says many more young Tunisians have been stopped from going abroad to fight. Still, that doesn’t take away from the fears about those who do go and come back home, nor from the root causes of why they leave to join Islamist militant groups.
“Life in Tunisia, life in democracy is better than what some people try to sell them and tell them you have to be a jihadist,” she told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. In addition to addressing lack of good economic opportunities, “We have really to work on the culture, the level of ideas.”
Cruickshank said there is concern that “Tunisian security forces, traumatized by the attack on the capital, could once again embrace repression in their struggle to contain the jihadi threat.”
One challenge is to properly combat terrorism being proactive, not reactive, according to Emna Ben Mustapha Ben Arab, a Tunisian professor and former legislator. Another is to wage this fight without undermining the country’s fledgling democracy — though Tunisians inside the country are united on this front.
“They are trying to terrify us. But the whole Tunisian people is unified — all the parties, all the civil society organizations, all the countries are unified,” Ghoubantini said. “… I’m sure that we will fight terrorism and that we will really eradicate it from our country.”
