SBIBA, Tunisia — One of the young men was a high school literature student who helped his father tend the family olive trees in their isolated farming community near the Algerian border. The other lived in the capital Tunis, had a taste for fashion and worked as a travel agent.
Jabeur Khachnaoui and Yassine El-Abidi came from stable, middle-class families and were well educated.
On March 18, they came together to attack Tunisia's Bardo Museum, shooting foreign tourists as they filed off buses outside the museum, and then taking more tourists hostage inside.
Over three hours they killed 22 people in all, including French, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish visitors. Security forces eventually stormed the building and shot and killed the hostage-takers.
To their families, the two young men seemed to lead normal lives. But according to Tunisia's Interior Ministry, they both spent time in militant camps in Libya late last year before returning to Tunisia, their ideologies fine-tuned and basic military training completed.
Their stories show how difficult it will be for Tunisia to stop others making similar journeys. The country and region are full of young men like Khachnaoui and Abidi, and militant groups are increasingly targeting middle-class recruits.
The Bardo massacre has also reopened debate on the country's delicate balance between the need for security, and the rare freedoms enjoyed by both secular Tunisians and conservatives.
Tunisia is one of the Arab world's most secular nations and has won praise for its democratic progress since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, which began there. It has mostly escaped the violence and upheaval afflicting Libya and Egypt. And it has a new constitution, free elections and a political balance that have helped keep the country stable.
At the same time, Tunisia supplies the largest contingent of foreign fighters to extremist group Daesh (the so-called IS), according to the Tunisian government. Tunisians also take a leading role in militant ranks in neighboring Libya, carrying out beheadings and running training camps. In all, more than 3,000 Tunisians now fight for militant groups in Iraq, Syria and Libya, according to Tunisian officials.
A senior Tunisian security source said the two young attackers were the product of profound political shifts in Tunisia since the Arab Spring allowed conservatives to come into the open. “It was like a pressure cooker that was closed and burst open,” he said. Young men go abroad for training or to fight, and return like ticking bombs. “The ones that come back, they can explode at any time.”
Khachnaoui's father Ezzdine said he still cannot fathom why his son embraced such a violent ideology.
“I lost my son, but my son took their lives, and I don't know why,” he said at the family's farmhouse in rural Kasserine province. “Was it extremist recruiters? All I know is I brought him up right.”
Half a dozen other Tunisian families told Reuters similar stories. They all have had family members, including students, recent graduates and professionals, leave to fight abroad. Most of the families are middle class. — Reuters
