Sarah Yerkes
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Foreign assistance has helped the coun-
try in a number o areas, including
counterterrorism, but it bears emphasizing
that the main drive for change came from
within. Before 2011, U.S. ties with
Tunisia were as good as nonexistent. U.S.
President Barack Obama came to power
seeking a new beginning with the Mus-
lim world and made clear that, unlike his
predecessor, he had no intention o
imposing democracy on the Arab world.
But when grassroots-led democratic
movements swept the region, the Obama
administration was determined to protect
them, at least initially. It threw its weight
behind the protests, both rhetorically and
Änancially. U.S. Secretary o State
Hillary Clinton visited Tunisia less than
two months after Ben Ali’s departure to
emphasize U.S. support for the transi-
tion. U.S. bilateral assistance to Tunisia
jumped from $15 million in 2009 to $26
million in 2011. Multilateral programs
provided several hundred million dollars
more, bringing the U.S. total to over
$1.4 billion since 2011. (The Trump
administration has tried to make
dramatic cuts in each o its proposed
budgets, in line with its eort to slash
foreign aid globally, but consistent
congressional support has kept aid for
Tunisia steady.) The European Union
and its member states also upped their
support in the years following the
revolution, providing $2.65 billion
between 2011 and 2017.
Despite that assistance, Tunisia still
faces several major obstacles. Youth
unemployment hovers around 30 percent,
and inÁation is rising. Since the revolu-
tion, the suicide rate has nearly doubled,
and close to 100,000 highly educated and
skilled workers have left the country.
Tunisia recently overtook Eritrea as theSousse, killed a total o 60 people, most
o them European tourists. The attacks
were a signiÄcant blow to Tunisia’s
tourism industry, which makes up around
eight percent o the country’s ³². They
also shed light on the severity o Tuni-
sia’s problem with Islamist fundamental-
ism. The chaos o the early transition
years had made it dicult for the Tuni-
sian government to clamp down on the
recruitment o extremists, particularly in
the country’s traditionally marginalized
interior. And as democracy Áourished
without providing real change to the lives
o Tunisians—the economy remained
stagnant and unemployment high—many
felt they had nothing to lose by joining
the ranks o extremist groups. By 2015,
Tunisia was infamous for being both the
sole democracy in the Arab world and the
top exporter to Iraq and Syria o foreign
Äghters for the Islamic State, or .
To make matters worse, Tunisia
shared a porous border with Libya,
where a chaotic civil war had allowed
to Áourish. Without much hassle,
Tunisian citizens could cross into Libya,
train in camps there, and return to
Tunisia to carry out attacks at home—as
the perpetrators o the Bardo and
Sousse attacks had done. To this day,
extremists also hide out on the other
side o the country, in the mountainous
border area between Tunisia and Alge-
ria, from where they periodically carry
out small-scale attacks against Tunisian
security forces. Thanks largely to
Western assistance, the Tunisian state
has greatly improved its counterterrorism
capabilities. But as the region’s only
democracy, Tunisia has a target painted
on its back. This past summer, both
al Qaeda and called for Äghters to
refocus their attention on the country.