The Islamic State in Tunisia

Abstract

In Tunisia, a country whose local Islamist movement was long integrated into the global jihadist scene, a seemingly viable and eager outfit of Islamic State sympathizers would emerge but, despite efforts, would fail to gain acceptance as an official Islamic State province. With a pro-Islamist tide emerging in the country following the Arab Uprisings in 2011, members of Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia would by 2014 coalesce into the Al-Qaeda-oriented Katibat Uqba Bin Nafi, finding purchase in the newly emerged Islamic State Central’s profile, a nod, yet again, to the ways that the latter's rise would serve to “democratize jihad.” Yet the would-be wilaya in Tunisia would never come to be: despite several high-profile attacks throughout 2015 and 2016, the greatest distinction that Tunisia's Islamic State sympathizers gained was to be called “Jund al-Khilafa,” or “soldiers of the caliphate,” never officially achieving the coveted provincial status to prove their utility to the Islamic State Central. With the process of “affiliate utility validation” remaining unfulfilled, sympathizers of the Islamic State in Tunisia remained essentially sovereign from--rather than in any way meaningfully subordinate to--the Islamic State Central.