Tunisia's Government Struggles to Control Salafists

Tunisian rioters and security forces clashed June 19 outside a gendarmerie headquarters in El Hamma du Jerid, a small town in southwestern Tunisia's Tozeur governorate. Rioters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails after security forces used tear gas to disperse them. The incident followed a week of violent protests by radical Salafists across the country sparked June 10 by an art exhibition in La Marsa, Tunisia, that Salafists claim insulted Islam. In response, the Tunisian government launched a security crackdown, deploying riot police in downtown Tunis and arresting 160 people. So far, the riots have led to one death, hundreds of injuries and the firebombing of government offices and police stations — the most serious unrest Tunisia has experienced since the fall of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's regime in January 2011.

Tunisia's October 2011 elections gave the moderate Islamist Ennahda party a majority in the country's National Constituent Assembly. Since then, Ennahda has been trying to balance between its two secular coalition partners — Ettakatol and the Congress for the Republic — and hard-line Salafists, who originally helped the party gain control. If Ennahda responds too strongly to the recent Salafist-generated unrest, it could alienate important Islamist leaders and draw unfavorable comparisons with the Ben Ali regime. If the party responds too passively, however, it could be accused of enabling Tunisia's more extreme Islamists and allowing the country's security situation to deteriorate. Ennahda likely will try to exploit divisions among various Salafist factions in order to prevent them from derailing the government's long-term plans.