| |||||||
| Capital (and largest city) |
Tunis | ||||||
| Other cities | Sfax, Kairouan, Sousse, Gabès, Bizerte, Gafsa, Houmt Souk, Kebili, Ghadames | ||||||
| Language official |
Arabic | ||||||
| others | French, Tamazight, Italian | ||||||
| Demonym | Tunisians | ||||||
| President | Rached Ghannouchi | ||||||
| Prime Minister | Riadh Bettaieb | ||||||
| Area | 248,420 km² | ||||||
| Population | approx 6,500,000 | ||||||
| Currency | Tunisian dinar | ||||||
| Organizations |  ADC
| ||||||
Tunisia is a country in Northern Africa located along the coast between Tripolitania and Algeria.
History[]
Early history[]
The history of human culture in Tunisia goes back thousands of years. Farmers have inhabited the country for millennia. Phoenician colonists founded the city of Carthage in the 9th century BC, which in time would rise to become the dominant civilization in the Western Mediterranean. Rome conquered Carthage after a series of hard-fought wars in the 2nd century BC. The city served as the capital of the Vandal kingdom in the 5th century AD before Belisarius took it back for Rome.
The Caliphate conquered the entire Maghreb in the 7th and early 8th centuries. The Muslims moved the capital from Carthage to nearby Tunis. A brief period of Norman rule in the 1100s was the only interruption to centuries of Muslim rule. A series of dynasties ruled the country: the Almohads, Hafsids, and Ottomans. Under the Turkish governors, or beys, Tunisia attained virtual independence. The Hussein dynasty of beys ruled from 1705 to 1957.
In 1881, using the pretext of a Tunisian incursion into Algeria, the French invaded and forced the Bey to agree to the terms of the Treaty of Bardo, making Tunisia a French protectorate. In 1942–1943, Tunisia was the scene of the last stand by the Axis Powers in North Africa. The country's independence from France in 1956 ended the protectorate. President Habib Ali Bourguiba, the leader of the independence movement, declared Tunisia a republic in 1957.
Progress toward democracy was slow. Bourguiba won re-election several times without opposition and was named President for Life in 1974 by constitutional amendment. The Neo-Destourian Party became the sole legal party. Opposition parties were banned until 1981.
Doomsday[]
Like most of Africa, Tunisia was not directly attacked on Doomsday. Some Tunisians lost their lives while serving abroad - notably the former head of national security, Zine Ben Ali, who was serving as ambassador to Poland. A moderate amount of fallout and contamination came to Tunisia from across the sea, leading to health problems and reduced birth rates for some years. Some naval combat took place not far from Tunisia as what was left of the Western fleet in the Mediterranean forced the Soviets out of the area. The disruption to global trade caused a severe economic crash, as happened in every part of the world.
In the weeks following the missiles, Tunisia became a major destination for people from impacted nations who could reach boats on the Mediterranean, especially from France and Italy. For the most part they arrived somewhere near the capital and were settled in camps on the outskirts. Conditions were poor, but the people came believing that there was nothing better anywhere else. The crisis only worsened with the years, because over the rest of the 1980s, most of Tunisia's North African neighbors became embroiled in civil conflict. So Tunisia continued to draw not only people from those countries, but Europeans who had tried to escape nuclear fallout by going to Morocco, Algeria or Libya.
All this had a destabilizing effect in Tunisia, as in most other nations of the Third World. Still, the republic managed to hold together despite the great challenges. In fact, it was the only nation in the entire Mediterranean not to succumb to nuclear attack, invasion by a neighbor, or civil war. It would emerge a regional power simply by carrying on when the surrounding countries all collapsed.
Response[]
The military was activated immediately to police both the refugees and the Tunisian people themselves. Emergency measures were put in place to stifle any unrest. When more refugees began arriving by land, troops went to both borders in an attempt to control them. Their freedoms were tightly curtailed, and the army managed to simply turn back many.
In the early months of 1984, with Gaddafi's grip on Libya slipping, the colonel asked for help from Tunisia to stabilize his regime. Bourguiba had no desire whatsoever to insert his country into the rapidly-disintegrating state that was Libya - but he did take the opportunity to order some Tunisian columns to punch south and capture the natural gas fields of the Ghadames Basin in western Libya, completely bypassing the unfolding chaos of Tripolitania. For now, those fields were held in trust for the legitimate Libyan government, whoever that might be, and the Tunisians lacked the capacity to develop them right away; but they would provide an important resource in the following years.
The Algerian state was likewise exploding into chaos, and the Hassi Massaoud and Hassi R'Mel oil fields were very tempting targets for the Tunisian government. But things in Algeria never got quite as bad as they did in Libya, and the opportunity to simply march in and take these points never presented itself. Instead, Tunisia sought to arm groups that seemed likely to win in order to claim future concessions on the oil from those fields.
Back in Tunis, the government was sliding toward an unavoidable internal crisis. Habib Bourguiba was 80 years old on Doomsday and the country was already anticipating his death or retirement. He was in no state to lead Tunisia through such a deep crisis, yet in the interest of stability did not want to step down. His prime minister and presumptive successor Mohammed Mzali governed Tunisia during these years, overseeing the resettlement of the refugees and the occupation of the Libyan gas fields. But Mzali became increasingly consumed with his rivalry with Defense Minister Slaheddine Baly. The rivalry took on all the traits of a palace intrigue, with the president's wife Wassila supporting Mzali, while his niece Saïda supported Baly.
The prime minister became convinced that Baly was planning to use the military to depose him, so he struck first. In early 1988, he conspired with Hédi Baccouche - in 1983 the ambassador to Algeria, now serving as Foreign Minister - and with Wassila to have doctors declare Bourguiba to be physically and mentally unfit for the presidency. Mzali then assumed the position himself. Wassila was given a cabinet seat (without portfolio), which lent the legitimacy of Bourguiba's family to the new government. Baccouche became the new prime minister. With the power of the presidency behind him, Mzali had Baly arrested and installed loyalists in the ministry.
Disorder grew over the next year. The Tunisian people had many reasons to be angry, and court politics had served to distract the attention of the nation's leaders. Tunisia might be the last country standing in the Mediterranean, but it was suffering from food shortages and persistent unemployment caused by the collapse of the service sector of the economy. The government had refused to hold elections - no elections to parliament in eight years, and none for the presidency in fifteen. Severe riots broke out in early 1989. In the process of maintaining control much of the heavier equipment possessed by the military was badly damaged, and much of their ammunition for their more modern weaponry was depleted.
Mzali finally called fresh elections for late 1989 - which, if anyone had been around to observe them, would have been called fraudulent. The President won an easy victory and now turned toward a more brute kind of force to make sure that he would not face such a threat again. He began a project to orient Tunisia's industrial capacity toward military production. The country managed to open a few armament factories specialising in bullets and munitions before eventually expanding into parts and wholesale small armaments. Tunisia also had a decent amount of phosphate, something that quickly became very precious too.
Ecological changes[]
Despite these great challeneges, things began to improve for Tunisia. It happened that the country was a major beneficiary of the chagning climate brought on by the nuclear explosions. For four to five years after 1983, Tunisia's average rainfall doubled. This allowed for stronger crop yields, easily feeding the people of the nation. On top of this, Tunisia was uniquely suited as being small enough to avoid food problems but large enough to have a somewhat solid domestic industry. This foundation in turn provided the capacity to build up the Tunisian army to defend its borders. With both Libya and Algeria remaining in a state of collapse, this was crucial for national security.
By this time, the chotts, lakes in southern Tunisia normally filled - and with salt water at that - in the rainy season, began to retain water year-round. Efforts slowly began to settle the area, though it was slow as the country was still poor.
All in all, although Tunisia struggled, the stage was set for it to prosper and become a regional powerhouse.
Relations with Sicily[]
By 1990, the situation had managed to stabilize somewhat, and the republic was no longer in danger of failing. Around this time, trade developed between Sicily and Tunis. During this period the Tunisian Navy and Coast Guard had to fend off attacks by pirates, and the strongest criminal organizations operated in Sicily and mainland Italy, where they enjoyed the support and protection of the Sicilian government. This caused a period tension between Tunis and Palermo.The Tunisian government issued a diplomatic note to Sicily telling them to contribute to preventing piracy or face an embargo. Sicily categorically denied having anything to do with the attacks. Nevertheless, by now it depended on the trade between the two nations and could not afford an embargo, much less a direct armed confrontation. Furthermore Tunisia was too strong to simply extort or intimidate. Sicily at last committed to cracking down on piracy, at least insofar as it affected the Tunisians. The attacks subsided and tensions cooled.
Other factors tended toward good relations between Tunisia and Sicily. The two nations had common interests. Both were interested in exploiting different aspects of the collapse of Libya - Sicily was eyeing coastal Tripolitania as a potential outlet for displaced persons and refugees, while Tunisia wanted to tighten and expand its control over western Libya's petroleum. Both were also poised to play a dominant role in Mediterranean commerce, and between the two of them, they had control over the sea's central choke point. If they could cooperate, they could dominate the entire sea.
Both nations also had similar governing ideologies, being illiberal states dominated by authoritarian parties. While they maintained the outward structures of parliamentary rule, Destour and the Christian Democrats ruled unimpeded in their respective nations. The election of Paolo Di Stefano in 2000 brought an even more hardline government to Sicily and signalled the start of an age of more aggressive expansion, giving further impetus to the alliance.
Hardline government[]
Mzali, a moderate by nature, continued his attempts to govern Tunisia as a multiparty state, despite the violent purges that had accompanied his accession. This left the door open to a number of challenges to the power of the government and of Destour's control. Islamist groups attempted to stage some attacks during the 90s. Mzali made sure that the perpetrators were jailed or executed, but held off banning islamist parties when their leaders distanced themselves from the actions of their supporters.
The bulk of Mzali's cabinet did not share his ideals. Multiparty politics, most of them believed, would form an unnecessary destabilizing factor that would impede Tunisia's economic recovery. Elections in 1999 saw Destour lose its majority in parliament for the first time ever. Discontent grew within the government, both the old guard in the cabinet and younger officers who now ran the army. The election of Stefano in Sicily provided another ally. In 2001, a unanimous cabinet had the doors locked and informed the president that he had been ousted. Mzali and his family were loaded onto a boat and dropped off in Corsica. Hédi Baccouche, after many years exerting power from the background, assumed the presidency and embarked on a much more hardline policy.
The Tunisian government now cracked down on opposition movements - and hard. Political parties other than Destour again were banned, as they had been in the 1970s. Parliament was disbanded, its key leaders rounded up with covert help from Sicilian security forces. Baccouche even targeted people long out of power, relics of Tunisia's past, in order to eliminate any possible focus of opposition. Members of the Hussein family, heirs to the extinct Tunisian monarchy, were arrested or executed. Saïda Sassi, niece of the late president Bourguiba, was confined to the presidential palace, despite suffering from Alzheimer's and in no condition to conspire against the regime.
On May 5th, 2004, the Tunis Accord marked the start of the formal Sicily-Tunisia alliance. The two republics made firm commitments of mutual defense. By now the colonization of Italian Tripolitania was in full swing, and the accord meant that Tunisia and Sicily would support one another's further expansion in the region. Tunisia lost no time in fully incorporating the Libyan oil regions into its own territory.
Opposition activities and foreign involvement[]
Networks of resistance by now were forced to operate underground, consisting of autonomously operating cells of islamists, liberals and leftists working together. On the ground, youthful activists like Slim Amamou led the covert organizing, while exiled elder statesmen provided leadership from abroad. Along with activists among the Tunisian people themselves, the opposition gathered supporters among the large refugee committee, fed up with harsh conditions and second-class citizenship. By 2004, they had begun again to conduct small-scale operations against the government. While accomplishing little, these operations caused annoyance and provoked retaliation against the civilian population.
The alliance drew the notice of Greece, which was pursuing its own agenda in the region, investing in Cyrenaican petroleum and giving support to the restored government of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Rivalry between Greece/Cyrenaica and Tunisia/Sicily grew over the course of the 2000s. Greek and Cyrenaican spies began to covertly make contact with opposition elements within Tunisia, hoping eventually to destabilize Baccouche's regime and break the Tunis-Palermo alliance.
Using information from exiled leaders acting as informants, a Greek spy made contact with lower-level members of an islamist group, letting them know that they wished to help. This was slowly passed up the chain of command. The spy was abducted several times, and checked out repeatedly, on each occasion making his way closer to the commanders. After meeting with them, he was smuggled out of the area, and across the Algerian border, using the same methods, from which he was then transported to Skyros. The Greek government agreed to supply them with small amounts of supplies, in order to keep it hidden, which would be taken by camel in secret across the Sahara from Cyrenaica. This information was sent to the group he had originally made contact with, and from there upwards, along with a location for supply drops, as well as a coded signal and radio.
The supplies, first received in late 2007, allowed a jump in activity by the organization, causing more deaths on both sides, and a headache for the government, though they never could figure out who was in charge.
Second Sicily War[]
The initiative for the Second Sicily War began with Sicily, hence the name. The formation of the Atlantic Defense Community had seemed to block the ambitions of the military junta that had ruled the republic since 2000, ambitions that included above all an expansion of Italian Tripolitania into the oil-rich lands of Cyrenaica. When an international contingent of ADC forces went off to support Canada in the Saguenay War, it seemed like it might be the last opportunity to wage a war without having to face the might of the alliance. Tunisia joined the war with some reluctance. Baccouche was not disposed toward an aggressive foreign policy, but he was lured by the possibility of expanding gains in Libya. Others in his inner circle were motivated by the rumors - spread enthusiastically by the Sicilians - that Greece was developing a nuclear weapon.
Tunisian forces played an important defensive role, guarding the western flank while Italian troops pushed into Cyrenaica. But some also joined in the attack. Later in the war, when Sicily had to recall more of its forces to defend the Italian peninsula, Tunisian troops would come to comprise the bulk of the ground troops in the invasion.
The war cut off Tunisia's opposition from their sources of foreign supplies, but it also emboldened them and helped increase their popular support. Tunisians were always ambivalent toward the war, so citizens could be found willing to take measures to oppose it. By the start of 2010, foreign supplies were being airdropped into Tunisia to assist the opposition cells, as was literature by key leaders like islamist Rached Ghannouchi and socialist Mohsen Marzouk. The now-strengthened opposition forces made the life of the garrison troops miserable, which did not help the morale of the troops fighting in Cyrenaica, and helped to limit their supplies as well.
These activities sparked an even bigger crackdown, larger than any undertaken before. Several lower-level cells were compromised. The leadership began to switch its strategy from direct action to infiltration: forming links with people within the army and the government itself who had had enough with the authoritarian government, with the war, and with the whole direction of Tunisia in recent years. The country had been enjoying prosperity and was poised to take a position of regional leadership. Why then was it taking on the entire Atlantic alliance?
Opposition leaders were kept informed about Operation Crescent Star, the planned land-air-sea invasion of Italian Tripolitania. They planned a coup timed for just before the attack. Once in control, they would withdraw Tunisian forces from Tripolitania to keep them out of harm's way. On September 15th, the trap was sprung. Leaders on the street had begun staging a massive demonstration days earlier, demanding that the government end the war and step down. Now some of the officers close to the leaders arrested all the members of the cabinet. All Sicilian troops in the city were arrested as well. Allied officers in the field moved to the Tunisian border, to secure it. The underground cells moved to secure key points around Tunis. Similar scenes played out in smaller cities in central Tunisia.
By the 18th, most of the country was under the control of the provisional government: a junta of military officers, opposition politicians, and populist leaders, including a representative of the refugee community. The group established a collective presidency and installed Amamou as provisional Prime Minsiter. That day, the ADC landed in Tripolitania while fresh columns of Greek and Cyrenaican ground troops surged across the border. The provisional government announced its withdrawal from the war, effective immediately. The Sicilian forces still in Tripolitania retreated in disarray. Within two days, Atlantic forces were within sight of Tripoli. Tunisia offered assistance by rounding up any Italian forces inside their zone of Libya. Tripoli fell in early October, and Tunisian troops were on hand to assist in the occupation.
Tunisia's revolution had relied heavily on military and foreign support, yet to casual observers inside the country and out, it gave the appearance of a purely popular uprising; and this is how the new regime presented itself. Some ADC forces did in fact enter Tunisia to assure that the stability of the new regime and help mop up pockets of regime loyalists, which undermined somewhat the revolutionaries' claims. Still, the revolution's leaders achieved their goal of preventing the war from reaching Tunisia's borders. It had "pulled an Italy on Italy," as commentators put it. But they differed greatly among themselves over the country's next steps.
Democracy[]
With the end of the war in December, Tunisia's provisional government began to transition toward a more stable state. Work was begun planning for parliamentary elections. It also continued talks to make the country's cooperation with the ADC into a permanent partnership. Tunisia would join as a full member in 2012. On December 21st, 2011, the ADC fulfilled its promise and its members withdrew all forces from Tunisia.
Activist and theorist Rached Ghannouchi emerged as Tunisia's most prominent political leader at this time. He had been one of the leaders jailed in 2001. Released to an exile in Egypt, he had soon been forced to seek refuge in Cyrenaica; during the war he had helped funnel supplies to his supporters still in Tunisia and continued to actively manage Islamic Tendency from outside the country. Describing himself as a democratic islamist, Ghannouchi's writings had emphasized the compatibility of Islamic law with multiparty politics, free elections and pluralism. His Islamic Tendency party attracted support from islamists, exerting a moderating influence, and from religiously-inclined liberals.
The first elections were held on July 24th, 2012. As expected, Ghannouchi's Islamic Tendency won a majority, gaining 85 seats in the 114 member National Assembly. Ghannouchi himself assumed the presidency. Slim Amamou's party Swords for Tunisia, a center-left party led by fellow resistance fighters, also made a strong showing. Three of the remaining seats were won by independents, with the remainder being split between socialist, Arab nationalist, and more hardline islamist parties. The Assembly undertook the writing of a new constitution.
In the 2010s, the state undertook economic reforms to produce and export mechanical and electromechanical equipment.
Tunisia's next elections occurred on July 25th, 2016. Ghannouchi continued as president; Islamic Tendency remained in government as part of a centrist coalition. Ghannouchi, now 79 years old, competed again 2020 elections, winning a third term but exposing himself to criticism that he was hampering the nation's progress: to date, Tunisia has never transferred power peacefully. The most prominent opposition leaders by this time were Chokri Belaid, leader of a left-leaning Arab nationalist coalition of parties, and Amamou, the former resistance leader and now a member of parliament.
Government and Politics[]
Tunisia is a semipresidential republic. An elected president is head of state. The government is headed by a Prime Minister. The legislature is the National Assembly.
Economy[]
Tunisia has largely enjoyed stability since 1990 and has benefited from the changes to Earth's climate that elsewhere have been so destructive. These factors have positioned it very well as a regional economic leader. It is one of the very small set of countries to have a higher population today than in 1983.
Primary activities include farming and fishing. Tunisia's acquisition of oilfields in southwestern Libya, confirmed by international recognition since the end of the Sicily War, have turned it into a petroleum exporting country. The country also makes and exports textiles and in recent years has invested in the production of electronics.
International Relations[]
Before 2012, Tunisia's main international partner was Sicily. Tunisia's betrayal during the war remains a very sore point between the two states, especially at the popular level.
Since the war, Tunisia has engaged much more with neighbors in the wider region comprising Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Arab World. Many nations have re-established diplomatic offices in Tunisia, whose government has likewise established offices in several nearby nations.
The republic is a member of the Atlantic Defense Community. Tunisia is the largest member of the ADC that had no prior connection to its predecessor NATO (the Nordic and Celtic confederations contain both NATO and non-NATO member nations). This defensive alignment with Western Europe shapes much of Tunisia's foreign policy. Tunisia is also a member of the League of Nations.