Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Tunisian Winds of Political Change

BLUF: The four prominent groups operating within Tunisian communities and the government include four main groups Hizb an Nahda (Ennahda), Hizb al-Tahrir, Tabligh wa Dawa, and the Tunisian Combatant Group. Under their majority control within the government basic human rights and freedoms continue to shrink as these groups move towards their goal of a caliphate.

The season has changed to autumn. So much for the Arab Spring, recent events make it look more like the Arab Fall. Since these events started in Tunisia we felt it best to start looking at events there.

The Tunisian Constitution has been written to indicate that, nationally, all religions and residents of the country shall have freedom of religion and basic human rights. In practice, this is hardly the case. In August of this year blogger Safiene Chaurabi and two of his friends were arrested one day after blogging their criticism of the government. Chaurabi was calling for protests against the government. One can only assume that a body that came to power by inciting protests first followed by violence that such a call would be seen as a rapidly growing threat.

Any rights during arrest and detention in Tunisia are whatever the police and the Department of State Security (DSS) decides you can have. There have been, and continue to be, violations of human rights in spite of the aforementioned constitutional guarantees. Reports of police torture are regularly printed in papers where there is freedom of the press.

"But, Tunisua is a democracy, they even have elections!" some say in disbelief. A 'democracy' is simply 'majority rules.' Whoever can convince the most people gets the most votes. Without a republic, a society under laws that provide for rules of conduct, a democracy is nothing more than mob rules and might makes right. Who are the majority groups voting and moving society there?

We find four Islamic groups that come in at the top of the list. These groups are Hizb an-Nahda, Hizb al-Tahrir, Tabligh wa Dawa, and the Tunisian Combatant Group.

Hizb an-Nahda, also found as Ennahda, is the praimary (largest) group in Tunisia. It uses the koran and hadith as "an anchor for political thought and practice," according to its founder Rached Ghannouchi. The group has a record of using violent means to achieve its goals. This group is Salafist.

Some reports indicate thqat the group does not operate within Tunisia, but we are not entirely convinced. The Foundry, the blog of The Heritage Foundation, indicates that the group uses its moderate political position to push forward Gannouchi's current moderate voice. Sadly, it seems that in the violence of the Arab Spring this group stepped in with other Salafist groups to gain the majority. We believe that, as the moderate face of political islam in Tunisia the West would have an excuse to turn away and ignore reports and allegations of governmental abuse of prisoners. There are numerous reports regularly about the police and officers of the Tunisian Department of State Security torturing prisoners, failing to quickly alert the judiicary system that a person has been arressted and is awaiting trial. This delay would seem to allow for recovering from some of these alleged injuries.

 Hizb al-Tahrir, the Islamic Liberation Party, is the second largest islamic group to gain political recognition in Tunisia.. This group shares the political view of the Hizbul-Tahrir in Palestine and has until recently been viewed in Tunisia as a hard-line group.  The group has allegedly renounced violence in Tunisia.  This group shares its name with other pro-caliphate groups in 40 other countries.The stated operational plan, simplified, is
1) Establish a community base.
2) Build supportand spread thei political opinion throughout their community base.
3) Once the localities are in line with the group's view, move to take over the country.

Tabligh wa Dawa is a society for spreading the faith. That is what the title means, spreading the faith. This group pops up in nations around the world. Even the State Department reports that many of its members have been caught in terrorist groups world wide and conducting terrorist operations. The group had originated in Pakistan where it gained positions of prominence within that nation's primary  military intelligence group, Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI. Reports over the past several years show that the ISI has been operationally invovled with terrorists in Afghanistan.

That brings us to another salafist group, the Tunisian Combatant Group. The TCG is based upon the Libyan based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, SGPC. SGPC splintered off from the group that overthrew the Alferian government. The TCG was formed in 2000 and has well established connections withn al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). TCG is known to operate regionally, this includes Afghanistan, Italy, and Belgium. The Long War Journal reports that high level political members within the Tunisian Ennahda majority have been recorded conspiring to take full control of Tunisia.

 Are we here at MSMII the only ones to recognize the Barbary Coast membership?

In Tunisia we are seeing several globally operating terrorist groups gaining "legitimate" control through democracy. Remeber your early government classes, please, a democracy without societal safeguarding laws is mob rules; whereas a republic has those laws and is called a democratic republic, which is what the United States is. Based on where Obama has "helped" power has gone steadily into the hands of groups using extreme violence to gain control of the masses.

NOTE: This post was completed via iPod due to technical difficulties. In text citings were not possible. Those sites used are listed below

www.almanac.afpc.org
www.globalsecurity.org
www.blog.heritage.org
www.barenakedislam.com
www.longwarjournal.org
www.wikipedia.org
 

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