Tunisia President: Al-Qaeda Threatens New Arab Democracies
Moncef Marzouki blames the Syrian civil war for a resurgence of Islamist terrorism and warns that Egypt’s banning of the Muslim Brotherhood is “the most dangerous thing for you and probably for us.”
Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said Wednesday [Sept. 25] that al-Qaeda is attempting a comeback in the Middle East, feeding off anger over the rising death toll in Syria and the Egyptian coup against the Muslim Brotherhood.
About 500 Tunisian young people have gone to Syria to fight against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Marzouki said, and he fears they will return as experienced jihadists to target Tunisia’s own transitional government.
“We are doing our best to control the situation,” Marzouki, who is attending the UN General Assembly, told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations. Comparing Tunisia to Algeria when jihadists schooled in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s returned, Marzouki said, “Nobody can be sure what would happen” when these fighters return home.
Tunisia is also at risk, he said, because of rising instability in Algeria, Libya, Mali and Egypt. “Tunisia is not an island,” he said.
