Saied's measures undermining terrorist groups in Tunisia

Tunisia has been witnessing a marked decline in the activities of terrorist organizations for several months now, thanks to the measures taken by the country's President, Kais Saied.

These measures have tightened the noose around these organizations, which has undermined them to a great extent.

Despite the slight increase in attacks compared to 2020, the total number of attacks in 2021 is still much lower than in the previous decade.

At the same time, all but one of the attacks that took place in 2021 involved elements who used improvised explosive devices against security forces in mountainous areas in the Tunisian countryside.

The only exception to these attacks, a stabbing operation, could not be completed to the end.

There were no large-scale, sophisticated attacks on crowded civilian areas, unlike the series of mass casualty incidents seen in the past.

The sudden rise in prosecutions taking place in Tunisia can be explained in part by the country's judicial system's recovery after the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic subsided for a year now.

The judicial changes made by President Saied have also helped the system become more transparent, even as it still needs to be strengthened, including through additional targeted reforms.

As for the number of detainees, the absence of a radical change indicates that the authorities are working according to the same standards that they used before Saied came to power, most notably in January 2021, the arrest of an unnamed leader of the al-Qaeda branch in Tunisia.

In April of the same year, Tunisian security forces thwarted an attack by ISIS on a security headquarters in Sfax.

In October 2021, the authorities re-arrested Seif el-Din el-Rayes, the former spokesman for the jihadist Ansar al-Sharia group in Tunisia.