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Writer's pictureEunomia Journal

The Tunisia Case: United States Government Engagement Efforts in Northwest Africa Post-9/11

By SSG James Sialeu Tchokogoue




As instability increases in the Maghreb and the Sahel region, Salafist jihadist groups are exporting their extremist ideology from one country in conflict to the next. This is threatening the stability of the region and causing many Western powers to intervene by offering security assistance programs to certain countries. Tunisia, however, is one of those countries where if local political dynamics and socioeconomic issues are not analyzed and addressed before intervening, further complications may arise in delivering security assistance, security force assistance, or other stability programs that require local solutions, such as the implementation of civil-military operations (CMO). These complications can be avoided if Civil Affairs planners at the U.S. Army Southern European Taskforce-Africa (SETAF-AF) in Vicenza, Italy, and the Office of Security Cooperation at embassies throughout the Sahel establish clearer guidance that leads to enhanced partnerships. If not, these complications can slow the U.S. government’s response to asymmetric threats in the region and open up opportunities for other great powers such as Russia and China to intervene as a preferred partner.


2011: NATO Action in Libya and the Arab Spring

The NATO intervention into Libya, the southeastern neighbor to Tunisia, in 2011 caused unintended effects on the North African region’s stability. During the chaos of the intervention, the arms supply of the Libyan army was raided and sold by various rebel militias including the marginalized Tuaregs of southern Libya. This unfortunate chain of events led to instability and chaos in the region, where its effects are still felt today. Consequently, Tunisia suffered due to its proximity, and its security forces had to adopt harsh measures to respond to domestic internal security challenges caused by the unintended ramifications of NATO’s intervention.


Tunisia is currently in a state of political uncertainty stemming from President Kais Saied’s actions to freeze parliament, fire the prime minister, and rule by decree as of July 25, 2021. Despite these recent setbacks, Tunisia has nevertheless emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring as the best example of democratic progress in the region. Tunisia’s transformation started as a youth uprising about socioeconomic woes and corruption, but eventually, a large majority of the citizenry rose up against their government and demanded more human rights and democracy. President Ben Ali, his options now vaporizing, fled the country leading to what is now a country with elections and representative government.


U.S. Government Efforts in Tunisia

In the security sector, the Tunisian Ministry of Interior (MOI) and Defense (MOD) dominate in terms of attention and financial assistance received from the U.S., yet these relationships are complicated by the country’s recent past. Preceding the events of the 2011 Arab Spring, an MOI officer confiscated a shopkeeper’s goods, and the shopkeeper set himself on fire in protest. After this news was shared, protests erupted where MOI officers responded brutally, leading to dozens of deaths around the country. Thus, the relationship between MOI and the population became strained and continues to be as a result. In contrast, security forces under the direction of the MOD also responded to protests, but they refused to adopt repressive tactics as MOI did. This led to an increase in trust and community bonds between MOD and the population.


Roughly ten years later, security assistance programs alongside concurrent CMO in the Tunisian security sectors identified MOD as the primary entity to receive this training, even though MOI-aligned forces are the ones who most need to improve civil-military relations. United States Army Africa headquarters in Europe and the U.S. embassy country team in Tunis pushed for the development of a CMO capability in MOD led by Army Civil Affairs forces, but the legal hurdles and will of the partner were never properly assessed. These legal hurdles, which prevent MOD personnel from engaging with civilians, combined with bureaucratic constraints imposed by the embassy, prevented Civil Affairs forces from engaging with MOI, the primary actor in engaging with the civil populace. This inability to engage with MOI-aligned forces, the primary center of gravity in the 2011 revolution who helped catalyze the fall of the regime due to their harsh response to protesters, doomed the mission from the start.


Not only did the mission miss an opportunity to work with a partner that could benefit the most from CMO assistance, it also redirected those efforts where they were not as useful or necessary. After all, the MOD’s relationship with the Tunisian people was already positive due to their refusal to follow orders from President Ali’s regime to fire upon protesters. This positive civil-military relationship assisted MOD with its summer 2021 Covid-19 vaccination campaign to inoculate hard-to-reach rural Tunisians. There was strong vaccine hesitancy as people did not trust the civilian efforts from the Ministry of Health to vaccinate them against Covid-19, a mistrust also stemming from the 2011 revolution. This misalignment of Civil Affairs elements did not reflect the specific context of Tunisia’s recent political history, leading to lost time and a slowed implementation of U.S. strategy.


These strategic level misalignments were replicated at the operational level in the embassy country team. In one instance, Civil Affairs elements sought to visit a volatile western region of Tunisia near the Algerian border to assess its community’s relationship with the government. The visit was canceled at the last minute due to security concerns. Yet this was the same region where embassy staff had conducted a humanitarian donation a few months prior. This opportunity could have yielded benefits for the community by exploring ways MOI forces could increase support and trust with locals. This trust could in turn lead to information operations or civic action conducted by MOI, which would degrade support to insurgent activity in the area. Unfortunately, mixed signals within the country team about which missions were approved or not prevented the Civil Affairs team from capitalizing on an opportunity to reinforce goodwill, repair the social contract between the MOI and local populations, and make measurable progress toward the overall objective of the deployment.


If agencies of the U.S. government cannot communicate or coordinate effectively amongst themselves, how can they expect to implement the same capability to MOD? U.S. government Agencies within embassies and at SETAF-AF need to understand the local cultural nuances, the importance of unity of effort, and the benefits of facilitating access for units like Civil Affairs to do their jobs where they can achieve the greatest impact. Civil Affairs forces are experts at identifying the root causes of instability, assisting or conducting projects alongside partners to improve quality of life, and therefore reducing hostile actors’ ability to foment unrest among the populace.


Recommendations

Primarily SETAF-AF, through the foreign affairs officers that reside in their G3/5/7 Security Cooperation Directorate, should communicate better with embassy country teams and their Security Cooperation Office (SCO) so that integration of CMO into embassy security cooperation programs and activities are understood fully. This was the most glaring failure in U.S government efforts in Tunisia. That said, the SCO within the embassy should consider sharing information that would allow Civil Affairs teams greater access to the host nation ministries in order to accomplish the mission for which they were sent. Access entails meeting with entities like MOI who control the primary relationship with the population and the subsequent engagement with them on how their version of a CMO capability can best help in their operations. These problems can be avoided if there is a joint concentrated effort to analyze host country issues several months before the start of a mission.


Conclusions

Civil Affairs is uniquely suited for an expanded emphasis on inter-ministerial coordination, socioeconomic development, and governance issues that are plaguing countries in Northwest Africa. This is evidenced by the recent consolidation of power conducted by President Saied of Tunisia. If we continue to identify the wrong partners, we may be unwittingly investing in entities that were yesterday’s hero but tomorrow’s villain. By identifying the right partners, efforts to implement CMO capabilities to entities like MOI can bear much greater fruit when leaders might seek to use force to consolidate power. Instead of responding repressively, these entities can serve as an example of restraint. Further research on interagency cooperation, coordination, unity of command, and employment of Civil Affairs forces at embassies and Army headquarters should be conducted to see where these issues of implementation lie.



About the Author

SSG James Sialeu Tchokogoue is a Civil Affairs and Medical NCO currently assigned to the 404th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne). SSG Tchokogoue has deployed to North and East Africa. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Liberty University and is currently a Masters of Public Health candidate.


Disclaimer: The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied above are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of any organization or any entity of the U.S. government.


END NOTES

6. https://africacenter.org/spotlight/tunisias-evolving-counterterrorism-strategy/


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