How Libya’s war is poisoning Tunisia’s politics
The war in neighboring Libya has further polarized Tunisia's political landscape and imperiled the country’s fragile governing coalition.
Tunisian President Kais Saied will be meeting with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee palace on Monday, and the conflict in neighboring Libya will be a top agenda item. Saied’s first visit to France, Tunisian’s former colonizer and a leading economic partner, will be watched closely back home, where the war in neighboring Libya pitting the internationally recognized government of Fayez al-Sarraj against the beleaguered eastern warlord Khalifa Hifter has further polarized the political landscape and imperiled the country’s fragile governing coalition.
Libya is the latest staging ground for the bitter rivalry between Turkey and the UAE-led blocs that is causing toxic spillover in Tunisia, hailed as the sole democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring uprisings.
France — alongside the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia — are the main backers of Hifter. The ruthless former general touts himself as a secular modernist, rescuing the country from the jaws of the Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Sarraj who is backed by like-minded Turkey and Qatar.
Tunisia’s Muslim Brotherhood-oriented Ennahda leader, Rached Ghannouchi, and his Dignity Coalition allies are rooting for Sarraj. The opposition Free Destourian Party (PDL), founded by figures sympathetic to Tunisia’s ousted dictator, the late Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, supports Hifter who is cut from the same authoritarian cloth.
