Tunis: Tunisia, a small North African country of 11Â million people, has become the largest source of foreign fighters joining the Islamic State and other extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, say Tunisian government sources.
As many as 3,000 Tunisians, most of them men under 30, have joined the battle, placing this popular Mediterranean tourist destination higher than even Saudi Arabia and Jordan on the list of the homelands of the 15,000 or so foreigners fighting with the Islamic State and other radical militant groups.
The flow of these fighters kept the Arab Spring of 2011 alive and, consequently, saw the overthrow of dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The moderate, Islamist-led government elected after the revolution granted new religious freedom after a half-century of harshly enforced secularism, when the state banned women’s veils and almost all other displays of piety and jailed thousands of people it suspected of holding Islamist beliefs.
That freedom was quickly exploited by Islamist radicals, who killed two politicians and at least 25 police officers and soldiers, and used newly free mosques to incite a rising tide of violence that now reaches as far as Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
Faced with sudden bloodshed in a country that had long been a calm, European-style oasis wedged between chaotic Libya and Algeria, the post-revolution government has struggled to balance religious freedom and public security.
Human rights lawyers say the government has overemphasised security, creating a climate of repression and anger that is fuelling the flow of Tunisian fighters to the Islamic State.