Jihad and the Genealogy of Resistance in Tunisia by Michael

Home , Bir El Hafey, Bizerte Governorate, Degache, Gafsa, Gafsa Governorate, Hammam Sousse

Understanding Radicalism: Jihad and the Genealogy of Resistance in Tunisia

By Michael Marcusa

M.A. in Political Science, Brown University 2015

B.A. in Government and Asian/Middle Eastern Studies, Dartmouth College 2011

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of Political Science at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island

May 2018

This dissertation by Michael Marcusa is accepted in its present form by the Department of Political Science as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date______

Ashutosh Varshney, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date______

Melani Cammett, Reader

Date______

Patrick Heller, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date______

Andrew Campbell, Dean of the Graduate School

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Curriculum Vitae

Michael Marcusa obtained a B.A. in Government and Asian/Middle Eastern Studies from

Dartmouth College in 2011 with Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude honors. During the

2012-2013 academic year, he was a recipient of Dartmouth College’s Paul L.'83 and Neil T.

McGorrian Fellowship, which he appropriated towards advanced Arabic Language study in

Cairo, Egypt. During the course of his doctoral study at Brown, his research on radicalization in

Tunisia was awarded several competitive fellowships, including a National Science Foundation

IGERT Fellowship (2013- 2015), a long-term research grant from the American Institute for

Maghrib Studies (2015-2016) and a US Institute of Peace Minerva Peace and Security

Scholarship (2017-2018) for the write-up phase. Articles based on the research were accepted for publication in The Atlantic, Middle East Report, and Comparative Politics (forthcoming,

November 2018.)

Marcusa’s research also has garnered interest outside of academia. As his research progressed, he served as an occasional on-air contributor to BBC 5Live in the UK, the BBC

World Service, and Radio France International where his analysis focused on violent extremism in North Africa. He also conducted numerous briefings with governmental bodies, including: the

UK Foreign Office, UK Department of Foreign and International Development US Embassy in

Tunisia, US Institute of Peace and UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) As part of his collaboration with the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), he contributed evidence to a parliamentary inquiry on political Islam that was widely cited in the resulting report.

Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and guidance of many people who pushed me forward at various stages of my journey. The intellectual seed of the research was planted during my undergraduate years at Dartmouth College, where I encountered incredible mentors who opened me up to the world of political science and Arab Studies.

Jonathan Smolin and Mostafa Ouajjani in the Arabic Language department instilled within me a love of Arab culture, and a confidence in my ability to master the language. During my

Dartmouth-funded post-graduate year, I continued my Arabic studies in Egypt under the tutelage of Mona Labib, Nabil Jabzi, and Yahia Harty - each of whom also brought a special energy to language teaching. At Dartmouth, I also had the privilege of learning from first-rate scholars in the social sciences who were instrumental in the development of my undergraduate thesis, of which this dissertation is a natural extension. These mentors include George Trumbull in

History, Dale Eickelman in Anthropology, and Benjamin Valentino and Brent Strathman in

Government.

During my early years at Brown, as this dissertation began to take shape, I benefited from the advice and tutelage of several mentors who did not ultimately become official “readers” for the project, but influenced my scholarly direction. These include Richard Snyder and Barbara

Stallings from the Watson Institute’s Graduate Program in Development who helped me solidify the interdisciplinary methodological approach the dissertation embraces, and James Morone, who led the department’s thesis-writing workshop. All of these mentors helped me hone my analytical and creative faculties in the run-up to the project.

I am most indebted however to my dissertation committee, all of whom inspired me in different, but complementary ways. My chair, Ashutosh Varshney, was instrumental in helping

v me chart the general scholarly thrust and analytical direction of the project. On the basis of his own prior work with qualitative sub-national comparison and his experience working in politically volatile environments, he gave me excellent advice about how to structure my analysis, where to situate it in the literature, and how to support my argument. His encouragement helped me stay motivated during the more difficult aspects of the writing process. His mentoring style struck a perfect balance between pushing me towards more scholarly rigor, while simultaneously embracing the interdisciplinary perspective that I chose to take

Melani Cammett provided important early direction for the project and invaluable advice on some of the more technical aspects of research design. During my first two years at Brown, she shaped the direction of my exploratory research in Tunisia and pushed me to examine my empirical material through multiple analytical lenses. She also inspired me to immerse myself in fieldwork and shared her hard-earned wisdom about how to handle its complex interpersonal aspects. After moving to Harvard, she was gracious enough to stay involved in the dissertation project and her targeted critiques spurred many intellectual breakthroughs. She constantly challenged me to be the best scholar I could be - and I benefited immensely from having her involved in the project.

Patrick Heller, who joined the project as a reader by way of Brown’s sociology department, was extremely valuable in helping me crystalize my thinking about big picture concepts like culture, identity, and rationality. He is a master at comprehending and teaching abstract social theory concepts, and simultaneously one of the most down-to-earth people I have ever met. The ultimate argument that emerged owes much to our frequent consultations and his critiques. He was also crucial in helping me rework an article based on this dissertation research

vi that netted me my first major peer-reviewed publication. On a personal level, discussions with him were some of the most intellectually stimulating I experienced during my time at Brown.

Beyond my mentors at Brown, I am indebted to the people of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui - as well as other friends across Tunisia - for the hospitality and kindness they showed to me throughout the data collection process. During the course of field research, I benefited from the enormous generosity of ordinary people who welcomed me into their homes and shared their lives with me. I never once stayed in a hotel in either town but rather was aided by a number of wonderful, inspirational families who treated me as a guest of honor over the course of many research trips. In addition to making the research possible, my friends and research contacts in

Tunisia have shaped me and my values as a human being. Their good humor and genuine selflessness will stay with me for the rest of my place.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge my family - particular my parents - as the unsung heroes of this project. The field component of this research was carried out during a very tense time in Tunisia’s history and the history of the Arab World more generally. The sensitive nature of the research topic and the unstable political and security environment caused them to fear terribly for my safety - a fear that never abated, even as research progressed. Despite the fear, they showed constant love and support throughout the research - and supported me emotionally when the psychological strain of fieldwork began to wear on me. They are and always will be my heroes - and there is no way I could have gotten this far without them.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1

CHAPTER 2

Methodology and Theory…...…………………………………………………………....42

CHAPTER 3

The Hamama in the 19th Century and the Roots of Resistance…………………………71

CHAPTER 4

Sedentarization, Resistance and the Emergence of New Repertoires…………………..105

CHAPTER 5

Resistance and Repertoire after Independence…………………………………………137

CHAPTER 6

The Rise of Ben Ali and the Roots of Radicalism………………………………...……163

CHAPTER 7

The Revolution and the Ghost of History………………………………………………193

CHAPTER 8

Jihad, Strikes, and the Great Escape…………………………………………………....228

CHAPTER 9

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...258

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………....278

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Chapter One Introduction

Introduction

In the West, the nearly two decades since the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington have brought striking changes in the way people understand the phenomenon of Islamist political violence. As unceasing counterinsurgency campaigns have raged in Afghanistan and Iraq, the focus in many western academic and policy circles has shifted away from “fighting terrorism” and towards the study of “radicalization” or “combating violent extremism.” Despite this growing interest in radicalization however, one set of questions has consistently eluded scholarly explanation: why do jihadists gain a following in some places but not others? Why do some communities provide fertile recruiting ground for jihadist groups while others successfully resist the jihadist siren song? This study harnesses the logic of qualitative subnational comparison to introduce a new explanation for this variation: state building legacies and local collective memories.

While jihadist salafist movements exist across the Middle East and North Africa, their support and influence is always greatest in particular, geographically delimited regions. In Libya, many of the armed militias that had fought the regime of Muammar Qadhafi under the banner of restoring freedom adopted black jihadist flags after the revolution and pledged their commitment to a mission of religious renewal.1 Nevertheless, with some exceptions, since the beginning of the uprising, jihadist ideological influence and territorial control has consistently been greatest in the Libya’s eastern Cyrennaica region - the same region where the Libyan Islamic Fighting

Group emerged in the 1990’s.2 In Syria, revolutionary brigades that had formed with the initial

1 Varvelli, A., & Soufan, A. H. (2016). Jihadist hotbeds: Understanding local radicalization processes. 93-106. 2 Although the Islamic State ultimately gained control over Sirte in Tripolitania province, the center of jihadism in Libya has historically been eastern Cyrenaica province, particularly the city of Derna. The area was the wellspring

1 goal of protecting peaceful demonstrations calling for political reform defected in droves to organizations like the Islamic State (IS).3 Yet, it was only in Syria’s eastern tribal regions that the

Islamic State successfully consolidated its authority and reliably controlled territory.4 In Tunisia, the largest contributor of foreign fighters to jihadist groups in Syria,5 jihadist street activism and foreign fighter recruitment was concentrated in certain regions with the governorates of

Medenine, Sidi Bouzid, Kairouan, and Bizerte emerging as key centers.6

Tunisia might strike some as an unlikely recruiting ground for jihadists. Although the country launched the Arab uprisings, unlike its Arab Spring peers, Tunisia has not experienced war or state collapse. While there have been occasional setbacks, international observers have generally lauded Tunisia for its steady progress towards consolidated democracy since 2011. On the religious front, Tunisia has historically been among the most secular countries in the Arab

World - a legacy of the militantly laicist “modernization” program of post-Independence

President for Life7 Habib Bourguiba. Before 2011, the contemporary Tunisian state appeared to have effectively prevented the formation of any religious public sphere, let alone a jihadist one.

For these two reasons, the rise of jihadist salafism as an influential social movement in Tunisia after the Arab Spring challenges the intuitions of most analysts. It is for this very reason that

of the Libyan Islamic Fighting group in 1990’s and 2000’s, it quickly became dominated by jihadists after the 2011 Libyan Revolution. After ISIS was chased out of Sirte and jihadist militias lost influence over Libya, the jihadist Mujahidin Shura Council retained territorial control over Derna. See: Cassman, Daniel. "Libyan Islamic Fighting Group." Mapping Militant Organizations. Accessed September 13, 2017. http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/675. 3 Faaris, W. (2016). Homs: Al-Hisaar al-'Adhim: Tawthiq Sab'a Mi'at Yum Min al-Hisaar. Doha: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. 4 "Syria Conflict Map." The Carter Center. Accessed September 13, 2017. https://www.cartercenter.org/syria- conflict-map/. 5 Varvelli, A., & Soufan, A. H. (2016). 20 6 Data compiled from Turess.com - a news aggregation site that syndicates content from 31 Arabic Tunisian newspapers 7 Official title

Tunisia is an excellent case fort theorizing the mechanisms of jihadist mobilization. The absence of the obvious facilitating conditions allows other variables that may be crucial in the radicalization to be seen more clearly.

To discover these crucial, but less easily perceptible variables, this study approaches the question of subnational variation in jihadist mobilization through a systematic comparison of two regions in Tunisia that have taken dramatically different approaches to jihadism in the wake of country’s 2010/2011 revolution. Sidi Bouzid is well-known internationally as the town where the revolution began after street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire after an altercation with police. Metlaoui is the de facto capital of Tunisia’s phosphate mining basin and has been a center of political unrest since 2008, when unemployed youth took to the streets demanding jobs and protesting corruption at the state-owned Gafsa Phosphate Company. Both towns have high levels of unemployment and similar levels of infrastructure development. They also have a common tribal history. The majority of inhabitants in both towns trace their lineage back to the

Hamama, a large nomadic pastoral tribe that controlled much of Tunisia’s arid central steppe region during the 19th century. This history is indicative of a common social and cultural legacy: both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui have populations that are descended from bedouins that had similar social customs, popular mythologies, and norms of land ownership.

Despite the commonalities however, the populations of the two towns have adopted dramatically different postures towards religious radicalism in the contemporary era. In the wake of the Arab Spring, Sidi Bouzid emerged as a major center of jihadist activism: jihadist preachers successfully gained control of most of the town’s mosques, extremist youth frequently organized marches calling for the imposition of Islamic shari’a law, and many young men from Sidi Bouzid traveled to Syria, Iraq, and Libya to wage jihad under the banner of groups like IS and various al-

Qa’ida linked factions. Metlaoui, by contrast, remained immune to the extremist wave. Jihadists did not succeed in gaining control over a single mosque in Metlaoui and only a small number of young men from Metlaoui left Tunisia to fight with jihadist groups abroad. While there were individuals with jihadist leanings present in Metlaoui during this period, they encountered tremendous hostility from the population and were unable to form any kind of viable social movement. This is in contrast to Sidi Bouzid where field informants suggested that jihadists gained the tacit support of a majority of the town’s population.

The empirical materials for this study come from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in

Tunisia, with the bulk of the time spent on the ground in Sidi Bouzid, Metlaoui, and surrounding interior towns. The goal was not simply to conduct formal interviews, but to live amongst the people in each town and participate in their daily lives with them: accordingly, many of the most beneficial interactions occurred outside the framework of strictly-defined interview meetings.

Despite the necessarily unstructured nature of deep ethnographic work however, consent and the protection of research contacts was the study’s first priority. Consent was never assumed to be granted unconditionally but rather was taken as dynamic process that required continuing communication with research contacts about what they were and were not comfortable sharing.8

During the 14 months of the study, 239 individuals gave comments that were recorded in a field journal. The time spent with these research contacts ranged from brief five minute discussions to hundreds of hours of interaction over several years with certain key individuals.

All interviews and ethnographic field observations were undertaken by me personally, the vast majority of which I conducted in the Arabic Language. To supplement the ethnographic data

8 Janine A. Clark, "Field Research Methods in the Middle East," PS: Political Science & Politics, 39 (July 2006): 417-24.; Elisabeth Jean Wood, "The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones," Qualitative Sociology, 29 (September 2006), 373-86.

4 collection, I conducted historical research and archival work at the High Institute for the History of the National Movement housed at the University of Manouba outside of Tunis. In addition to a rich collection of scholarly monographs written by Tunisian historians in Arabic, the institute houses oral history recordings given by veterans of Tunisia’s armed struggle for independence as well as an official registry containing the names of the Tunisians killed during the campaign.

Why did jihadists succeed in Sidi Bouzid but fail in Metlaoui? This study presents two arguments operating at different timescales. The proximate cause of the variance, I argue, stems from a cultural difference in the way resistance in each town is popularly understood. While economic malaise gives youth an impetus to mobilize for social and political change, the actual strategies that they pursue are based on locally-specific repertoires of contention. Because jihadist salafism deploys a set of symbols that are consonant with the local repertoire of contention, the ideology resonates in Sidi Bouzid. Because its symbols are dissonant with the dominant repertoire in Metlaoui, it fails to resonate.

The long-range cause of the variance, I argue, stems from the different ways that the previously nomadic populations of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui were sedentarized and incorporated into the Tunisian state. After France conquered Tunisia, the nomads in the area around present- day Sidi Bouzid gradually transitioned from pastoralism to sedentary farming on agricultural plots dispersed throughout the countryside. Their nomadic cousins who lived near Metlaoui, by contrast, became wage laborers working in the mining sector after French prospectors discovered phosphates in the region in 1896. These divergent social changes led to different sorts of interactions with political authority that I argue conditioned the different repertoires that seem to be behind the differential resonance of jihadist ideology today.

Both arguments have numerous transferable implications that can inform future theorizing in other cases. The proximate causal argument suggests that along with economic grievances and political incentive structures, citizens’ culturally-rooted understandings of contentious politics might have a significant impact on whether jihadist ideas resonate. The long- range causal argument suggests that inquiries into why certain regions become “hot beds” of radicalism may need to delve into local histories – particularly those connected to state penetration. Together, these arguments point to a more nuanced way of thinking about how economic and political factors interact with cultural framing processes to produce jihadist salafist collective action.

Understanding Jihadist Mobilization: Historical Background and Existing Approaches

In the wake of the Arab Spring, a new social movement emerged as a powerful force on the streets of Tunisia’s cities and towns that adopted the moniker “jihadist salafism” or simply

“salafism.”9 While Tunisia’s jihadist salafist activists lacked a well-defined organizational structure, they were united by a common ideological worldview and a common reverence for certain prominent figures in the world of international Islamist militancy. Young jihadist salafist zealots in Tunisia, often sported beards and long Afghan-style robes in emulation of the mujahidin who fought the soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980’s. Jihadist ideologues interviewed for this study cited Osama Bin Laden, ‘Abdallah ‘Azaam and other alleged

“martyrs” of the international jihadist movement as important influences.10

9 Torelli, S. M., Merone, F., & Cavatorta, F. (2012). Salafism in Tunisia: Challenges and Opportunities for Democratization. Middle East Policy,19(4), 140-154. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4967.2012.00566.x Marks, M. (2013). Youth Politics and Tunisian Salafism: Understanding the Jihadi Current. Mediterranean Politics, 18(1), 104-111. doi:10.1080/13629395.2013.764657 10 Personal Interviews with Jihadist Salafist Youth. Sidi Bouzid, June 2013

On a more strategic level, the ideas of the Jordanian jihadist salafist ideologue Abu

Muhammad al-Maqdisi that emphasized preaching and social activism as a precursor to violent takeover of the state strongly influenced the movement. This was particularly the case among the leaders of Ansar al-Shari’a, the movement’s most prominent organizational face.11 From 2011-

2013, jihadist salafist activists erected proselytizing tents on street corners, aggressively tried to install themselves as Imams of neighborhood mosques and began a recruitment campaign that sought to funnel young Tunisians to al-Qai’da and IS-linked groups in Syria, Libya, and Iraq.

The ferocity with which Tunisians in particular seem to have flooded the ranks of international jihadist groups since the outbreak of the Arab Spring was part and parcel of the success of this jihadist salafist proselytism campaign.

Salafism is a highly-contested term, both among Muslim intellectuals and the scholars who study them. The term is a reference to al-Salaf al-Saalih - a word that means “righteous ancestors” and which most Muslims understand as a name for the first generation of Muslims who lived during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims who refer to themselves as salafists are in essence trying to imbue their particular religious doctrines with a legitimacy that comes from alleged primordial authenticity. Nevertheless, even in our present age, there are a whole host of religious movements that adopt the term salafist, many of which have conflicting doctrines.12 Throughout the Muslim World, for example, there are a number of influential religious scholars who identify as salafists, but preach a model of apolitical religious purism.

11 Zelin, A. Y. (2012, November 14). Maqdisi's disciples in Libya and Tunisia. Retrieved from http://foreignpolicy.co1m/2012/11/14/maqdisis-disciples-in-libya-and-tunisia/ Gartenstein-Ross, D., & Adaki, O. (2014, June 06). GUEST POST: Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia's Social Media Activity in 2014. Retrieved from http://jihadology.net/2014/06/06/guest-post-ansar-al-sharia-in-tunisias-social- media-activity-in-2014/ 12 Meijer, R. (2009). Global Salafism: Islam's new religious movement. New York: Columbia University Press.

Although these scholars are often ultra-literalist in their interpretive approach to Islam’s sacred scriptures, they disavow any confrontations with established political authority.13 These quietist salafists have been vehement in their criticism of their jihadist counterparts - labeling the militants who call Muslims to a self-consciously “jihadist salafism” as religious deviants.14

In contemporary Tunisia however, most of the influential leaders in the movement popularly known as the “salafist current” had jihadist leanings. The salafist movement that gained widespread street legitimacy in Sidi Bouzid had a profoundly jihadist bent, with most of its key leaders having served time in prison before the revolution on terrorism chargers. On a national level, during the post-revolutionary period, the slogan “Obama! Obama! We are all

Osama!” became an oft-repeated rallying cry at salafist demonstrations - a strong signifier of the movement’s jihadist orientation. Virtually all of the jihadist salafists interviewed for this study embraced three key ideological tenets that seemed to circumscribe the contours of their ideology.

First, they argued for an ultra-literal interpretation of Islam’s sacred scriptures and reject the use of independent philosophical reasoning to resolve theological disputes. Some jihadist salafists research contacts even offered begrudging praise for the literalism of present and past figures in the Saudi religious establishment liked Muhammad al-’Arifi and Nasir al-Din al-

Albani, while lambasting the Saudi regime itself as corrupt and un-Islamic.15

Second, Tunisia’s jihadist salafists advocated for the dissolution of the Tunisian state and all secular regimes in the Muslim World in favor of a system based on the pure application of

Islamic Shari’a law. During the early period of jihadist salafist proselytism during 2012-2013,

13 Wiktorowicz, Q. (2006). Anatomy of the Salafi Movement. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29(3), 207-239. doi:10.1080/10576100500497004 14 Al-Ramadaani, 'Abdelmalek,. Takhlis al-'Abaad min Wahshiyyat Abi Qatada. 15 Personal interviews with Jihadist Salafist Ideologues. June 2013, Sidi Bouzid. July 2014, Kairouan.

8 the ideology’s young zealots described their ideal political system as a decentralized system of

Islamic courts that would solve disputes and enforce the moral edicts that their strict literalist conception of Islam promoted.16 After the Islamic State organization’s declaration of the caliphate in 2014, jihadist salafists whom I remained in touch with disagreed on how closely IS’s nascent state apparatus fulfilled this requirement. Some firmly supported IS’s vision, while others thought the group’s excesses represented a departure from Islam.17

Third, jihadist salafist research contacts invariably embraced an ideology of confrontation with the West. They viewed western powers, particularly the United States, as fundamental impediments to their religio-political project and as baneful entities that must be attacked, without any distinction between soldiers and civilians.18 In a society where the dominant view is that the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington were an American or Israeli intelligence conspiracy, jihadist salafists were the only group I met that consistently credited al-

Qa’ida and Osama Bin Laden with the operation, while also arguing that such a brazen strike against the United States was just and laudable.19

In recent years, scholars from a variety of academic disciplines have sought to understand jihadist salafism and to develop an account of the social processes behind its rise. These previous studies have advanced our collective knowledge of the phenomenon significantly and have all influenced in important ways the methodological and substantive orientation of this inquiry.

Where this study departs from its predecessors however is in its conviction that an understanding of community dynamics must be at the heart of any effort to transcend mere description and

16 Ibid. 17 Personal interviews with Jihadist Salafist Ideologues. Sidi Bouzid, July - August 2014, Sidi Bouzid. Kairouan, July - August 2014.. 18 Personal interviews with Jihadist Salafist Ideologues. June 2013, Sidi Bouzid. July 2014, Kairouan. 19 Ibid.

9 actually explain the jihadist phenomenon. Individuals do not emerge in a vacuum; their motivations and their understandings of the world are conditioned by popular conceptions of right and wrong that they are socialized into, many of which are the product of profound transformations that their societies have undergone over generations. Therefore, this study begins with the view that to understand jihadist salafism, one cannot study only jihadist salafism; before one even begins to delve into the specifics of jihadist recruitment, one must study the intersubjective, intergenerational processes that make would-be jihadists who they are before they even encounter the ideology. If existing studies have a limitation, it is that they do not give enough importance to this social context, at the cost of sacrificing richness of explanation.

One group of scholars approaches the question of jihadist salafism by situating its key theorists within particular intellectual traditions. In recent years, the most prominent studies of this sort have sought to understand salafism, in both its quietist and jihadist forms, as a distinct theological current within Islamic jurisprudence.20 These scholars, many of whom are formally trained as intellectual historians, generally explain jihadist salafism as a kind of intellectual marriage between the revolutionary ideas of important historical Muslim Brotherhood theorists like Sayyid Qutb and the rigid textualism of jurists like Nasir al-Din al-Albani who came of age theologically in the orbit of Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist religious seminaries. They approach their research questions using two primary methods.

First, they focus on how ideas travel across networks of religious notables by studying the intellectual socialization of religious thinkers. Second, they study the texts that jihadist thinkers have written and show how jihadist writings contain elements of the philosophical and

20 See Lauzière, H. (2015). The making of Salafism: Islamic reform in the Twentieth Century. Columbia University Press; Meijer. (2009); Wiktorowicz, Q. (2006)

10 theological logics of these other intellectual traditions.These scholars provide a compelling set of conceptual tools for more sociologically-inclined research efforts. By defining jihadist salafism as a distinct intellectual tradition, they allow future researchers to approach the question of radical Islamist militancy with a certain conceptual specificity.

Nevertheless, these studies do not provide much in the way of explanation of the jihadist phenomenon for two reasons. First, jihadism, in its ability to inspire large masses of followers, is a social movement, not simply an intellectual movement. Explaining where the ideas come from is only half the puzzle; to really explain jihadism, a thorough account of how ordinary people come to accept the ideas is crucial. Second, in the more opaque world of jihadist street activism, the neat internal logic and coherence of the ideology falls apart. Street-level jihadist activists are rarely highly-trained religious jurists and many choose not to concern themselves with abstruse theological debates; some of the young activists interviewed for this study had highly inconsistent ideological worldviews, expressing support for both jihadist organizations and certain secular Tunisian politicians like former President Moncef Marzouki. True explanation thus requires the analyst to go beyond deep understanding of formal ideology and to examine how actors receive ideas and derive their own personal meanings from them. Such an undertaking requires the community-level perspective that this study embraces.

A second group of scholars approaches the jihadist salafism phenomenon by orienting their analysis towards the psychological mechanisms that inspire individual jihadist salafist actors. These studies frequently approach jihadist salafist groups from the standpoint of the psychology of “terrorism.” In contrast to the media-driven discourse that suggests that militant

Islamists are “psychopaths” or “crazy,” these scholars argue that a whole host of familiar psychological mechanisms at play in group dynamics among non-radicalized individuals might

11 help explain the phenomenon. Atran for example has argued that at the heart of the radical mind is a firm commitment to certain, communally-determined sacred values, the protection of which causes people to act in ways that defy the predictions of traditional instrumental rationality.21

According to this position, radicalism is taken to be a type of political expression where “value rationality” reigns supreme.22 Other scholars have suggested that people become socialized into jihadist groups to recover personal significance after humiliation or out of a desire for belonging that these groups effectively exploit.23

In orienting the focus towards individuals and their emotional experiences, these studies move beyond the rich description of jihadist salafist ideology that the intellectual historians provide and reach something approaching explanation. Yet in their appeals to general principles of human psychology and their ambivalent stance towards history and culture, these studies also neglect a crucial dimension that would be necessary for true explanation. It is not clear from their analysis why these social psychological dynamics lead to violent extremism in the cases of interest, given how widespread they are in non-radicalized populations across the globe. The desire for belonging and the privileging of certain values as sacred are relatively common; jihadist salafism and violent extremism are exceptional.

21 Atran, S. (2010). Talking to the enemy: Violent extremism, sacred values, and what it means to be human. London: Allen Lane. 22 Varshney, Ashutosh. "Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Rationality." Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1 (March 01, 2003): 85-99. Accessed September 13, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3687814?ref=search- gateway:2067e4e431adb7c190e937207ee4130d. 23 A. W., & Orehek, E. (2011). The Role of the Quest for Personal Significance in Motivating Terrorism. In J. P. Forgas, A. W. Kruglanski, & K. D. Williams (Authors), The psychology of social conflict and aggression. New York: Psychology Press. McCauley, C. (2002). Psychological Issues in Understanding Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism. In C. E. Stout (Ed.), The psychology of terrorism. Westport, CT: Praeger.; Kruglanski,

The psychological studies therefore imply that there must be some particular characteristics of the communities where jihadist salafism has received significant support that cause people to ascribe a particular meaning to jihadist salafism. Some symbolic system it seems, must exist in the minds of social actors that allow jihadist salafism to fulfill the psychological needs that this group of scholars contend it does. The uncovering of this symbolic system is a major task of this inquiry.

A third group of scholars seeks to understand jihadism through in-depth historical monographs centered on particular jihadist movements. These studies take an integrated approach, often combining impressive fieldwork under difficult conditions with substantial historical process tracing. Although these studies are richly descriptive, there are moments when they are able to transcend mere description and veer into explanation. Hegghammer’s study of jihadism in Saudi Arabia, for example, argues that today’s international salafist jihadist movements emerged out of a radical Saudi pan-Islamist vanguard that promoted transnational calls to arms; in doing so, he challenges the notion that salafist jihadism is a fusion of Saudi-style scriptural salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood’s revolutionary Islam, which the intellectual historical approach champions.24 Drevon argues that the US invasion of Iraq and the coinciding growth of new media technologies gave jihadist salafists a replenished pool of popular anger to tap into and a new means of disseminating their ideology after the Arab Spring.25 Rougier argues that antipathy towards the nationalist leaders of the PLO created an opening for jihadist

24 Hegghammer, T. (2010). Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and pan-Islamism since 1979. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hegghammer, T. (2010). The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad. International Security, 35(3), 53-94. doi:10.1162/isec_a_00023 25 Drevon, J. (2016). Embracing Salafi Jihadism in Egypt and Mobilizing in the Syrian Jihad. Middle East Critique, 1-19. doi:10.1080/19436149.2016.1206272

13 salafists to successfully recruit followers in the Palestinian occupied territory during the

1990’s.26 All of these studies point to specific, historically-contingent factors that conditioned the rise of jihadist salafism in particular places.27

Nevertheless, these scholars’ focus on particular jihadist movements as subjects of analysis is also their biggest weakness and detracts from their ability to fully explain jihadism as a social phenomenon. While the rich histories of the jihadist groups and the deep accounts of their ideological evolutions help the reader understand how jihadism works, these studies still do not explain why the groups arise in the places that they do. At best, they approach explanation of temporal variance, arguing that jihadist movements emerged at particular moments in time when transnational dynamics like the Iraq War had stoked the flames of resentment. To really understand how and why jihadist movements emerged however, one cannot restrict the analysis to the history of the jihadist groups but also must consider the broader social dynamics that set the stage for these groups to emerge. Identifying which contextual dynamics are important requires an understanding not simply of the environments where jihadist ideology found acceptance, but also of the places where it failed to take root.

A fourth and final group of scholars tries to explain jihadist salafism by leveraging the insights of existing social movement theory paradigms. This literature extends the approach

Wiktorowicz advocated for in his study of political Islamism, but is narrowly focused on

Islamisms’ more radical incarnations. Roy argues that jihadist salafism stems from the failure of second generation European Muslim migrants to find a culturally authentic expression of their

26 Rougier, B. (2007). Everyday jihad: The rise of militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 27 For a work that combines several of these monographs see: Kepel, G. (2002). Jihad: The trail of political Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

14 religion.28 Taşpınar, echoing an earlier generation of social movement theorists,29 argues that jihadist salafism is an outgrowth of relative material deprivation.30 Alimi et al. argues that the political opportunity approach to social movements can be adapted to understanding radical movements.31 Nielsen argues that religious scholars adopt positions broadly compatible with the jihadist salafist worldview, not out of deeply-held ideological convictions but rather in response to professional incentives. What all of these analyses have in common is their commitment to explaining jihadist salafism with reference to social factors that transcend variation in individuals and exist independently of the jihadist movements themselves.

When it comes to explanation - as opposed to mere description - the social movement approach is the most sophisticated of the four paradigms that scholars have used to understand jihadist salafism. Nevertheless, in the same way that the psychological literature highlights variables that are common in non-radicalized populations, none of the extant social movement explanations are well-suited to explaining patterns of jihadist mobilization sub-nationally.

Relative deprivation, for example, is ubiquitous throughout Tunisia - and is a common feature of social life in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Political opportunities of the sort Alimi et al. discuss usually reflect national-level structural changes; in the context of the Arab Spring, the political opportunities that allowed jihadist salafism to flourish in certain areas of Tunisia, Libya,

28 Olivier Roy, "France’s Oedipal Islamist Complex," Foreign Policy, March 23, 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/07/frances-oedipal-islamist-complex-charlie-hebdo-islamic-state-isis. 29 Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). 30 Ömer Tapisnar, "You Can't Understand Why People Join ISIS Without Understanding Relative Deprivation," Huffington Post, March 25, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amer-tapaenar-/isis-relative- deprivation_b_6912460.html. 31 Eitan Y. Alimi, Lorenzo Bosi, and Chares Demetriou, The Dynamics of Radicalization: A Relational and Comparative Perspective, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

15 and Syria were available to a far greater number of communities across the societies than the small subset that became jihadist salafist bastions.

This is not to say the social movement approach to jihadist salafism lacks merit. Rather, the intuition is that explaining subnational patterns in jihadist mobilization cannot depend solely on an “off-the-shelf” social movement theory, induced from observations of a different social and political context context. What is needed instead is a new explanation based on theoretically agnostic, direct observation of jihadist salafist mobilization patterns. Once the explanation is developed however, the existing social movement theory canon can serve as a corpus from which to derive alternative explanations to be tested against the empirical reality. In the concluding chapter of this study, such an approach is taken in a sort of qualitative “robustness check” of the theory. The actual development of the explanation however takes an approach that privileges the lived experience of the actors, irrespective of any external theoretical commitments.

The Puzzle: Economic Marginalization and Jihadist Mobilization in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui

In the southwest corner of Tunisia, the oasis city of Gafsa serves as a kind of fulcrum between two worlds. To the northeast, where Sidi Bouzid is located, the greys and beiges of the land are intercut with the greens of olive trees, cactus plantations, and other kinds of farms. The miracles of modern agricultural technology have turned ground that resisted yearly cultivation for centuries into one of Tunisia’s most successful agricultural regions.32 To the southwest however, in the environs of Metlaoui, the landscape becomes barren and empty. One can see the

32 Abaab, A. (1997). L'agriculture familiale en Tunisie centrale face aux nouveaux défis écologiques et économiques. In P. Campagne, A. Abaab, M. Elloumi, A. Fragata, & L. Zagdouni (Eds.), Agricultures familiales et politiques agricoles en Méditerranée : Enjeux et perspectives (Vol. 12, Options Méditerranéennes : Série B. Etudes et Recherches). Montpellier: CIHEAM.

16 horizon in all directions with no farms in sight. The population of this region urbanized a century ago and now resides almost exclusively in various phosphate mining towns.33

During the 19th century, both of these regions were part of the same social, political, and economic world. With the exception of Gafsa and the nearby oases of Ksar, Lalla, and El Guettar

- where a sedentary population has lived since Roman times- the arid steppes that extend from present-day Sidi Bouzid to present-day Metlaoui were a land of pastoral nomadism and kinship- based social organization.34 Although the Ottoman regency of Tunisia made a territorial claim to this area, the land was, in practice, under the control of the Hamama - a powerful tribal confederation that nearly all the clans in the area claimed genealogical, economic and political kinship with.35 While there were modest attempts at crude agriculture, the harshness of the climate forced the Hamama clans in the region to rely chiefly on pastoralism and animal husbandry for subsistence. During the 20th century however, the nomads of the Hamama sedentarized and in some cases, transitioned from an isolated existence on the steppe to life in various frontier towns. The present-day towns of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui emerged from two distinct sedentarization experience that reflect different patterns of incorporation into the global capitalist economy and contemporary Tunisian polity.36

Sidi Bouzid did not develop as a major population center until the 1970’s. After the post- independence Tunisian state proclaimed Sidi Bouzid as the capital of a new governorate to

33 Tababi, Hafayyidh. Min Al-Badaawa Ila Al-Manaajim. Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Tunisiyya Lil-Kutaab, 2012. Print. 34 Tlili, M. (2004). Mintaqat Gafsa wal-Hamama fi 'Ahad Muhammad al-Saadiq Bey: 1859 - 1881. Tunis: Daar Saamid lil-Nashar wal-Tawzi'. 35 Ibid. 36 Statistical discussion in following section based on: Tunisia. National Institute of Statistics. Résultats Du Recensements 2014 Par Gouvernorats Et Délégations. Statistiques Tunisie, 2014. Web. 13 Feb. 2017. . Since the level of analysis for the study is on the level of city, these figures are drawn from the table in each category entitled “Municipal Center, Both Sexes" ("Milieu Communal Total Sexe")

17 encompass the northern half of the Hamama’s territory, families from all over the region flocked to the town in search of economic opportunity. Most present-day inhabitants of Sidi Bouzid were born in more remote agricultural regions and still maintain familial and cultural ties to the surrounding countryside. Today, the dominant economic activity in Sidi Bouzid is public service with 49.64% of the employed population working in public education, health, or other services associated with the local government.37 Significant percentages of the employed population also work in the sale and transport of commercial goods (15.56%), construction (9.93%), and manufacturing (10.89%).38 While not included in the official statistics, ethnographic work in Sidi

Bouzid revealed that many families also own agricultural lands in the rural regions that surround

Sidi Bouzid that provide an additional, seasonal source of income.

Metlaoui, by contrast, was founded at the beginning of the 20th century after prospectors working for France’s nascent colonial administration discovered phosphates near the southern fringe of the Hamama’s territory. Although initially, the French administrators of the mines hired workers from Algeria, Morocco, and Libya, by the 1940’s, a plurality of workers came from the

Hamama clans indigenous to region - a dynamic that seems to have increased after Tunisian independence in 1956. Today, most of the employed population works in either public service

(36.32%) or mining (35.17%) - with another 18.94% working in commerce, transportation, or construction.39 There is virtually no agriculture in the countryside surrounding Metlaoui - the local population seems to have moved directly from pastoral nomadism to work in the phosphate mines and urban life, “skipping” the step of rural sedentarization.

37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid.

Sidi Bouzid is the capital of a large governorate that carries the same name; Metlaoui by contrast is the second largest city in the neighboring governorate of Gafsa. Nevertheless, these official administrative boundaries obscure more fundamental, politically meaningful social boundaries. With the exception of a few small areas at the northern and eastern fringes where inhabitants are descended from the tribes of Majer, Jlas, and Mahadhiba, the entire governorate of Sidi Bouzid is composed of Hamama clans that transitioned from nomadic pastoralism to agriculture and later, in the case of Sidi Bouzid and other towns, from agriculture to work in public administration and other services.40 Gafsa on the other hand is composed of three primary areas that represent distinct socio-historical zones: small isolated mountain villages in the northwest corner of the governorate where Berber-speaking peoples lived up until the second half of the 20th, the central oasis region where Gafsa city is located and where sedentary agriculture and urban life have predominated for millennia, and the arid steppes of the west where Hamama clans encamped in the 19th century and where today, nearly all inhabitants live in the four mining towns of Metlaoui, Mdhilla, Oum Larayes, and Redeyef.

Of these three areas, the western, historically nomadic periphery of Gafsa - today known as the Gafsa Mining Basin - offers the most robust comparison with Sidi Bouzid. The initial conditions of pastoral nomadism and kinship-based social organization approximate those that prevailed in Sidi Bouzid during the 19th century more than any other part of Gafsa; nevertheless, the discovery of phosphates in this region during the 20th century spurred important political and social changes that can be contrasted with those that occurred in Sidi Bouzid. Additionally, there is evidence that this region has developed a political identity that distinguishes it from the rest of

Gafsa governorate. After the revolution, there were significant street mobilizations calling for the

40 Al-Tihami, Hani. Gammouda: Taarikhuha Wa A'laamuha. Sidi Bouzid: Al-Atlasiyya, 1997. Print.

19 declaration of a new governorate to encompass the Gafsa Mining Basin with Metlaoui as its capital.41 Residents of Metlaoui interviewed for the study spoke of the central administration in

Gafsa as an outside, meddling force that was constantly creating problems on Metlaoui’s streets.42 Given these characteristics, it would be most appropriate to think of Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui as the largest and most prominent cities in two distinct geopolitical zones, each of which represents a paradigmatic example of a distinct process of transition from nomadic pastoralism to life in a globalized capitalist economy and territorial nation state.

Although Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui are products of divergent historical legacies, as urban centers, they have a great deal in common. The presence of the mining industry in Metlaoui notwithstanding, the state is the largest employer in each town. The towns have populations of comparable sizes: 48,284 inhabitants in Sidi Bouzid, 38,129 in Metlaoui.43 In terms of household amenities - the only proxy for household wealth - and high school/university graduation rates, both towns hover around the national averages, even exceeding them in certain categories. While these figures seems to belie the images of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui as towns on the economically marginalized periphery, unemployment statistics tell a different story.

In Sidi Bouzid, unemployment stands at 21.72%; in Metlaoui, the problem is even more severe with an unemployment rate of 35.48%.44 In both cases, unemployment significantly exceeds the national average of 14.82%.45 In each town, youth bear a very heavy share of the unemployment burden, relative to their share of the population. In Sidi Bouzid, while persons

41 Al-Mitlawi: Al-Mutasaakinun yutaalibun bi an Takun al-Mu'tamadiyya Wilaaya Manjamiyya. (2015, May 20). Retrieved from http://www.tuniscope.com/article/69717 42 Tunisia. Résultats 2014. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

20 between 20 and 40 years of age make up 34.19% of the population, they represent 80.94% of the unemployed population. In Metlaoui, the figures are 35.02% and 86.2% - an even wider discrepancy. Since no data is available on labor force participation by age group,46 it is not possible to calculate the precise unemployment rate among youth; however, the discrepancy suggests that unemployment among youth dramatically exceeds the already-high general unemployment rate in each town.

These figures also accord with the ethnographic evidence collected during fieldwork in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui; residents of both towns complained of crushing economic stagnation and insisted that their communities were suffering from widespread unemployment. While not a systematically-collected representative sample, the majority of youth that I interacted with during my ethnographic work in both cities were unemployed and suggested that their paltry opportunities were typical of what people in their communities experience. What ultimately emerges from both the qualitative and quantitative data is thus an image of two towns where an economic underclass of unemployed youth has risen to a position of demographic and political importance. The same grievances and frustrations are endemic in both cities.

Despite common grievances however, the youth of each towns assumed dramatically different postures towards jihadist salafism in the aftermath of the revolution. This difference can be seen objectively when one looks at the numbers of street mobilizations that local jihadist

46 There is evidence to suggest that many de facto unemployed persons in each city simply list themselves as “inactive” when responding to official surveys. Labor force participation in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui stands at 51.77% and 42.51% respectively. The low labor force participation rate does not seem to be solely the result of women assuming traditional domestic roles. While female labor force participation is substantially lower than for males in both cities, only 65.31% and 61.35% of men are listed as “active” in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui respectively. Moreover, factoring in retired persons does not seem to account for the low labor force participation either. Since only 8-11% of the population in the two cities exceeds Tunisia’s legal retirement age of 60, there are still a full 20-25% of working age men who are listed as inactive, even if one assumes that every person who has reached retirement age has chosen to cease working. The most logical explanation seems to be that significant numbers of the unemployed population have simply classified themselves as inactive.

21 salafists in the towns have spearheaded in the post-revolutionary period.47 In Sidi Bouzid, national media reported 21 salafist marches in Sidi Bouzid - more than any other governorate in

Tunisia, outside the capital and its immediate environs. Some of these marches turned violent, devolving into clashes between salafist demonstrators and the police. In Metlaoui, by contrast, the only salafist incident reported in national media was a peaceful march by salafist activists in

2012.48

When one analyzes the limited data on Tunisians who have been killed in Syria, the same discrepancy can be seen. A 2015 report based on the identification of the bodies that Syrian regime forces have collected after clashes with jihadist groups reveals 10 individuals from Sidi

Bouzid among the dead, out of a total of 93 individuals with identified places of birth.49 No individuals from Metlaoui were on the list. In February of 2013, dozens of young men from Sidi

Bouzid were reported killed over the course of a single 10-day long battle in Aleppo.50 The list therefore represents only a miniscule sampling of Tunisians killed fighting for jihadist groups in

Syria; nevertheless, it is useful in that it represents the closest thing to an unbiased sampling of

Tunisians who have joined jihadist groups abroad.

In addition to the sample’s supposedly “random” nature, two other kinds of data corroborate its representativeness. First, the governorates identified as being centers of foreign

47 Data compiled from Turess.com - a news aggregation site that syndicates content from 31 Arabic Tunisian newspapers 48 Al-Mitlawi...Masira. (2012, June 14). Retrieved from http://www.turess.com/alchourouk/547944 49 Shaahiduu bil-Asmaa' w al-Suwwar...Qaa'ima Rasmiyya li 159 Tunisiyyaan qutilu fi Suriyaa. (2015, September 7). Retrieved from http://ar.webmanagercenter.com/2015/09/07/102435/%D8%B4%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%A7- %D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A1- %D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D9%88%D8%B1-%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%85%D8%A9- %D8%B1%D8%B3%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%8015/ 50 Syria: 132 Tunisian Insurgents Killed in Aleppo, Tunisia developing into Salafist Hot-Bed - nsnbc international. (2013, February 15). Retrieved from http://nsnbc.me/2013/02/15/syria-132-tunisian-insurgents-killed-in-aleppo- tunisia-developing-into-salafist-hot-bed/

22 fighter casualties overlap with the regions of Tunisia that, according to the “common knowledge” of research contacts, were identified as having the most significant jihadist support.

In addition to Sidi Bouzid, comparatively large numbers of young men from popularly acknowledged bastions of the jihadist movement like Bizerte, Kairouan, and Ben Guerdane appear on the list. Second, there is a strong overlap between the governorates with the highest number of identified foreign fighter deaths and the governorates with the most salafist marches per governorate, as reported by national media. This suggests that both measures reflect the same underlying social reality.

These quantitative indicators of jihadist salafism’s differential success in the two towns is consistent with the qualitative accounts that I collected during my fieldwork. In Sidi Bouzid, shortly after the revolution, a core group of jihadist salafist activists who had been radicalized during the mid-2000’s, imprisoned on suspicion of terrorism, and subsequently released in 2011 as part of a general amnesty began organizing an extensive proselytism campaign on the streets of the town. The leading members of this jihadist salafist braintrust were students of Khatib al-

Idrissi, a reclusive cleric believed by many to be the spiritual leader of jihadist salafism in

Tunisia more generally and based in the small town of Sidi Ali Ben Aoun, located between Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui.51

Within a year, this core group of jihadist salafists had taken control of the major mosques in Sidi Bouzid and had recruited a staggering number of followers from the ranks of the town’s frustrated youth; in February 2013, over 1000 activists participated in a demonstration calling for the release of a major jihadist salafist leader who had been imprisoned earlier that week - an

51 Zelin, A. (2013, October 25). Tunisia Arrests Leading Salafi Cleric. Retrieved from http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/tunisia-arrests-leading-salafi-cleric

23 enormous show of force in a town of less than 50,000.52 Jihadist salafists also reportedly targeted the youth leaders of the 2010 and 2011 protests against Tunisia’s long-time autocratic ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali that launched the Arab spring. Most of these young revolutionaries came to embrace the jihadist salafist ideology.53 Within two years, the street-level coordinators of the first protests of the Arab Spring had become core leaders of the jihadist salafist movement in Sidi

Bouzid. Many ultimately left Tunisia to join jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq, and Libya.

The most striking aspect of the jihadist salafists’ rise in Sidi Bouzid was the extent to which they gained the respect and tacit approval of large numbers of people. During fieldwork, many people said that when the salafists’ appeared on the streets after the revolution, while only a minority of people actually became salafists, a majority of the Sidi Bouzid’s population sympathized with them and gave tacit approval to their efforts to install themselves as imams of the mosques. In 2013 and 2014 - the height of the jihadist salafists’ influence in Sidi Bouzid - I encountered many young men who drank alcohol, listened to American music, and did not pray but proudly exclaimed that they supported the salafists and that they hoped for the imposition of shari’a in Tunisia. Many of these same salafist-sympathizing, non-salafists were effusive in their praise of al-Qa’ida, Osama Bin Laden, and in some cases the Islamic State organization. A significant number of the young men from Sidi Bouzid who left Tunisia to fight with jihadists abroad also came from this non-committed demographic: “I was drinking with him on Sunday, and on Friday, I learned that he had left for Syria” said one young man of a friend.54 Mere

52 Akthar Min Alf Salafi yatadhaahirun bi Sidi Bouzid li Itlaaq Siraah Imaam Masjid. (2013, March 1). Retrieved from http://www.turess.com/almasdar/14942 53 Personal interview, leading revolutionary youth activist. Sidi Bouzid June 2015. 54 Personal interview, revolutionary youth activist. Sidi Bouzid, September 2015.

24 sympathy, rather than full-on radicalization, seems to have been sufficient to push many of Sidi

Bouzid’s young men towards armed militancy abroad.

In the wake of the revolution, the people of Metlaoui adopted a very different posture towards jihadist salafism. While, as in Sidi Bouzid, the jihadist salafists appeared on the streets of the town in the months after the revolution and sought to recruit followers, Metlaoui’s core group of young zealots were met with tremendous hostility. Jihadist salafists failed to gain control over a single mosque in the city. The jihadist salafist presence was so limited that many

Metlaoui residents intimated that salafists did not even successfully gain a foothold in any of the town’s cafes. In both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the neighborhood cafe is the preeminent social institution and a key space for political discussion - particularly for the masses of idle unemployed men in both towns. Sidi Bouzid’s salafists effectively used cafes as gathering spaces and places to disseminate their ideology. The fact that the jihadist salafists were unable to gain influence in cafes in Metlaoui speaks to their widespread rejection.

On a discursive level, most Metlaoui residents described jihadist salafism as a dangerous alien ideology that had no social support in the town. In contrast to Sidi Bouzid, where even many non-salafists loudly proclaimed in an almost boastful manner how much influence the jihadist salafists had gained, in Metlaoui most residents proudly described how Metlaoui had stayed immune from the tide of religious extremism sweeping Tunisia’s youth after the revolution. Illegal immigration, according to many Metlaoui residents, has taken the place of religious extremism.. Every year, scores of young men from Metlaoui make the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean in the hopes of finding jobs as undocumented workers in Italy and other European countries. “People from Metlaoui don’t go to Syria - they go to Italy,” one

25 young activist from the coordinating committee of unemployed university graduates told me.55

During another interview, one prospective illegal immigrant from the town declared proudly “If

ISIS comes to Metlaoui we will kick them out like the dogs they are!”56

The choice of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui as comparative cases thus seeks to harness the logic of the Most Similar Systems Design (MSSD) - a foundational approach in the study of comparative politics. The epistemological premise behind the method is that matching similar cases helps to reduce the number of potential variables that might explain the phenomenon under investigation.57 Before the discovery of phosphates in 1896, the inhabitants of both areas practiced a similar of semi-nomadic pastoralism, held an affiliation to the same tribe and were integrated into the same social structures. Today, a large underclass of unemployed and underemployed youth exists in both towns who, as ethnographic data show, have similar day-today lived experience. Both were flashpoints of political unrest before the emergence of the jihadist salafist movement in Tunisia: Metlaoui during the 2008 mining basin uprising, Sidi

Bouzid during the 2010/2011 revolution.

Nevertheless, the responses of the populations to jihadist salafist recruitment efforts were diametrically opposed. Sidi Bouzid emerged as a bastion of youth support for jihadist salafists after the revolution while Metlaoui experienced active opposition to the movement. It is precisely this counterintuitive quality that gives the comparison its power as a hypothesis-

55 Personal interview, unemployed youth syndicalist. Metlaoui, February 2016. 56 Personal interview, intending Illegal Immigrant. Metlaoui, August 2015. 57 Mill, John Stuart. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Toronto: U of Toronto, 1974. Print. Skocpol, Theda, and Margaret Somers. "The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry." Comparative Studies in Society and History 22.02 (1980): 174. Web. Gerring, John. Social Science Methodology: A Criterial Framework. Cambridge: Cambridge U, 2010. Print. 211- 218

26 generating project. The failure of jihadism to take root in Metlaoui, despite the existence of many of the same enabling connections that exist in Sidi Bouzid, suggests that there are other powerful variables that might explain the resonance of jihadist salafism but which dwell beneath the surface.

The Proximate Causal Argument: Memory, Efficacy, and the Problem of Information

This study presents two arguments: one dealing with the proximate cause of the variance in jihadist salafist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the other dealing with the long-range historical conditions that allowed the proximate cause to take effect. The first argument suggests that the difference in success that jihadist salafists achieved in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui stems from a cultural difference in the way people conceive of resistance in each town. These culturally-rooted understandings of resistance predate the emergence of jihadist salafist ideological entrepreneurs onto the political scene; nevertheless, they are causally significant in explaining the success or failure of jihadist salafists because they conditioned the frames through which people interpreted the ideology.58

The question of why jihadists succeeded in Sidi Bouzid but failed in Metlaoui can be distilled into a question about why jihadist salafist mosque takeovers, jihadist salafist street demonstrations, and jihadist salafist foreign fighter recruitment all occurred at a much higher frequency and intensity in Sidi Bouzid than in Metlaoui. Nevertheless, all three of these outcomes seem to stem from one basic enabling condition: popular ideological sympathy. During field research, most research contacts in Sidi Bouzid, including those who opposed the jihadist salafist program, admitted that the extremists had gained widespread ideological support among

58 Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment." Annual Review of Sociology 26, no. 1 (2000): 611-39. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.611.

27 youth and that it was this support that allowed the movement to flourish in the town. Conversely, most research contacts in Metlaoui suggested that the jihadist salafists had very little popular support and that their attempts to assert influence in 2011 were met with open hostility.

Taking the differential in ideological commitment as the central problem then, this study argues that the difference in popular support for jihadist salafists between Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui stems ultimately from a difference in the ways that people in each town use heuristics to solve common information problems. In the aftermath of the revolution, the legions of disaffected youth in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui were filled with frustration and resentment towards the existing sociopolitical order. During ethnographic fieldwork, even as Tunisia’s transition to democracy progressed, youth in both cities expressed their contempt for the state and their scorn for the “coastal elites” whom they claimed were illegitimately plundering the country’s resources. Youth in both cities thus seemed politically primed to accept the messages of social movements calling for change.

Nevertheless, in Tunisia’s post-revolutionary period, a variety of different ideological movements emerged, all of which were advocating change within different parameters and at different levels of society: from local activists calling for protests to pressure local authorities to grant jobs, to political parties urging electoral mobilization, to jihadist salafists arguing for the imposition of Islamic shari’a law in Tunisia and jihad in Syria, Libya, and Iraq. In this context, this study argues that the problem youth faced in navigating the rapidly emerging marketplace of ideologies was akin to the information problem faced by consumers seeking to evaluate products.

With imperfect information about the efficacy of each movement’s proposals, youth in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui were forced to rely on what Tversky and Kahneman term representativeness heuristics: mental shortcuts people use to classify things by virtue of the

28 characteristics they share with predefined categories.59 Consistent with this mechanism, this study argues that youth in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui evaluated jihadist salafism based on how the rhetoric and practices of the ideology’s adherents comported with their prototypical ideas of what an efficacious political movement looks like. Nevertheless, the application of the heuristic yielded different results in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui because different images of the prototypical efficacious movement held sway. These different images stem from different collective memories and different popular understandings of local history.

In Sidi Bouzid, contacts argued that the resonance of jihadist ideology stemmed from an culturally-rooted ethic of resistance to centralized authority inherited from previous generations.

Many used the Arabic terms ‘asabiyya or ta’assob to describe this tendency; popularized by Ibn

Khaldun in the 14th century, these terms usually connote a fanatical in-group solidarity, up to the point of a willingness to use violence against would-be aggressors and invaders. “People in Sidi

Bouzid possess great ‘asabiyya,” said one only intermittently religious young Sidi Bouzid resident who nonetheless expresses sympathy with jihadist salafists. “They show this ‘asabiyya in their willingness to defend their families, their town, or even their religion. This is why so many youth from Sidi Bouzid are going to Syria.”

When it came to the precise origins of this ethic of ‘asabiyya however, accounts diverged substantially. Some related this alleged cultural quality to the ancient past – suggesting that it was a cultural inheritance of Arab nomads from the Arabian peninsula or, in another variant of the story, Berber nomads related to the Almoravids who one informant alleged settled in Sidi

Bouzid nearly a millennium ago. Others referenced more recent tribal history, suggesting that it

59 "Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness". Cognitive Psychology. 3 (3): 430–454. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(72)90016-3.

29 stemmed from the history of the Hamama and their turbulent relationship with the 19th century regency. In all of these cases however, the tribal past, amorphously and contradictorily defined, is described as the source of an ethic of toughness and resistance to centralized authority that the jihadist salafists’ message of confrontation resonated with. Several research contacts suggested as late as 2016 that if the Islamic State were to establish an armed presence in the city, the majority of youth would join them – not out of ideological sympathy but out of a desire to punish the state.

When asked about the socialization process by which the current generation came to hold these ideals, many referenced the armed resistance against the French on the eve of independence in the 1950’s which many people from Sidi Bouzid participated in. Contacts described growing up and listening to grandparents relaying personal stories of the conflict. This, they argued, instilled them with a commitment to responding with force to the excesses of corrupt political authority. “We can tolerate hunger, but we cannot tolerate oppression” is a refrain I frequently heard during field research in Sidi Bouzid.

In Metlaoui, research contacts, paralleling counterparts in Sidi Bouzid, suggested that the town’s collective rejection of the jihadist salafist message was also cultural and the natural outgrowth of historical dynamics. Nevertheless, the way the past was invoked differed starkly between the two cities. Research contacts suggested that the “tribal” character of Metlaoui had served as a bulwark against the penetration of jihadist salafists who, in the discourse, were represented as corrupt, foreign aggressors. One research contact described the “tribal” nature of the opposition to jihadist salafism as rooted in communal self-policing. Tribalism, he argued,

30 instilled in people an ethic of commitment to their clans that enabled them to counter efforts by jihadist salafists to undermine clan solidarity.60

In contrast to Sidi Bouzid, people in Metlaoui described tribalism in terms of solidarity with a specific sub-tribal clan grouping. This was most notable among the Awlad Bouyahia – a

Hamama clan that accounts for 40%-70% of Metlaoui’s population.61 The manifestation of tribalism as clan solidarity also seemed to represent a fundamental social difference between Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui more generally. In Sidi Bouzid, many research contacts did not even know which sub-tribal clan unit they were affiliated with; in Metlaoui, research contacts of all stripes consistently described how the Awlad Bouyahia had exactly 17 branches and could name the relationships between the various subdivision. So the persistence of clan affiliation as a meaningful social category in Metlaoui but not in Sidi Bouzid might hold clues as to why the same tribal history is seen as inspiring different values and political behaviors.

In addition to tribalism, Metlaoui residents cited the town’s history of activism in labor unions and professional syndicates as an important factor in conditioning its rejectionist posture towards jihadist salafism. As a result of the early industrialization and urbanization that Metlaoui experienced with the discovery of phosphates at the end of the 19th century, several research contacts in Metlaoui argued that a “syndicalist mentality” took hold in Metlaoui which still governs how contentious politics in the town plays out. In the discourse, this syndicalist mentality is said to make people predisposed to reject radical ideology in favor of organized street activism with specific demands seeking to secure tangible material concessions. On another level however, research contacts suggested that this syndicalist mentality has turned the

60 Personal interview with youth organizer. Metlaoui, January 2016. 61 Khaas bi-Shurouq: Hadhahi asbaab al-Fitna wa judhuruha fi al-Mitlawi. (2011, June 9). Retrieved from http://www.turess.com/alchourouk/192608

31 attention of impressionable youth away from the rhetoric of values and personal sacrifice that the jihadist Salafists emphasize and towards personal material enrichment. “Youth in Metlaoui don’t go to Syria – they go to Italy!” said one unemployed activist, suggesting that illegal immigration to Europe was a fare more compelling outlet for desperate young men.62

The accounts field informants offer provide a valuable insight into the heuristics they use for assessing the efficacy of the jihadist salafist movements. In most cases, the accounts reflect the efforts of thoughtful field informants who witnessed and/or participated directly in most of the important events that comprise the phenomena under investigation. As concerns the difference in jihadist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, this study argues that the divergent understandings of history and politics attested to in these narratives are the primary proximate cause of the variance. Comparative event analysis in subsequent chapters provides more direct evidence of the causal relationship by showing the role ideas played in conditioning specific mobilizations.

The Long-Range Causal Argument: Political Incorporation and Repertoires of Contentions

This study argues that the long-range cause of the variance in jihadist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui - in other words, the reason for the existence of the different conceptions of resistance - is the different processes of sedentarization that populations in the two regions experienced during the colonial era. When conducting analysis at this timescale, it is necessary to approach the narratives provided by informants with more skepticism. A youth’s testimony that certain aspects of his community’s history caused him to view jihadist salafism in a positive light may be strong evidence that his beliefs about history conditioned his political

62 Personal interview with unemployed syndicalist. Metlaoui, February 2016.

32 posture. Nevertheless, the same cannot be said for the macro-level relationship between history and political culture he is positing: much of the work by scholars studying collective memory takes a more dynamic view of the past and its legacy. Halbwachs, who authored the seminal treatises in this tradition, suggests that a collectivity’s understanding of its history always embodies the concerns of the present age in which the historical understanding emerges:

The past is not preserved but is reconstructed on the basis of the present. It is necessary to show, besides, that the collective frameworks of memory are not constructed after the fact by the combination of individual recollections; nor are they empty forms where recollections coming from elsewhere would insert themselves. Collective frameworks are, to the contrary, precisely the instruments used by the collective memory to reconstruct an image of the past which is in accord, in each epoch, with the predominant thoughts of the society.63 Other scholars adopt a different conceptual vocabulary but echo the notion that representations of the past are largely constructed based on the sensibilities of the present-day collectivities that refer to them as guiding ethoses.64 Under this understanding, the concepts of

‘asabiyya, tribalism, and syndicalism that popular narratives of history in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui employ are not clean remnants of an unbroken historical legacy, but are components of distinctly modern identities that use the imagery of the alleged past to frame political impulses that reflect contemporary concerns.

While these scholars offer a more sophisticated conception of the relationship between history and historical memory than the popular narratives provided by research contacts, as guidelines for empirical research, their work should not be read as a clarion call for a distinctly ahistorical, presentist use of historical memory in empirical research either. Acknowledging the existence of representations of the past, but casting aside the fervently-held truth claims of those

63 Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 40.; 64 Climo, J., & Cattell, M. G. (2002). Social memory and history: Anthropological perspectives. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.; Connerton, P. (2014). How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

33 who present those representations is problematic on both empirical and political grounds.

Empirically, the suggestion that popularly-held ideas about history reflect only an opaque notion of some emergent ethos in the present repeats the mistake of early functionalist anthropologists who viewed culture in terms of needs-fulfillment.65 Politically, dismissing these historical narratives as mere rhetorical justifications for present concerns inadvertently repeats the mistake of orientalist colonial ethnographers who viewed their research subjects as a people without history.66 What is needed is a more dialectical conception of the past and the present that acknowledges the way contemporary memories and identities stand at the their intersection.

While his work departs stylistically from this study in its radically anti-positivist presentation, Michel Foucault provides a useful way to conceptualize the relationship between history and collective memory in his writings on power.67 For Foucault, the history of ideas proceeds through a kind of layering, whereby knowledge schemes (what he terms discursive formations) evolve idiosyncratically but nonetheless retain certain elements of their previous incarnations. His notion of the “history of the present”68 suggests that to fully understand a contemporary discourse, it is necessary to interrogate the previous stages of a discourse’s evolution to uncover the hidden meanings that lie beneath the surface of its present incarnation.

Such an understanding of the evolution of ideas provides a far more useful way to conceptualize the relationship between the past and the understandings of the past that undergird popular narratives of identity in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Although the understandings that people have

65 See critique of functionalism in Levi-Strauss, C. (1963). Structural anthropology (C. Jacobson & B. G. Schoepf, Trans.). New York: Basic Books. 1-41. 66 Wolf, E. R. (2010). Europe and the people without history. Berkeley: University of California Press.; French, B. M. (2012). The Semiotics of Collective Memories. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41(1), 337-353. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145936 67 Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish. New York: Vintage Books. 68 Ibid. 31.

34 of their history in these narratives cannot be taken as authoritative, based on Foucault’s logic, they do contain meanings that reflect the concerns of the periods that they reference, in addition to the concerns of more recent epochs. It is this theoretical intuition that forms the core of this study’s longer-range historical argument.

The populations of both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui are descended from the Hamama, a large pastoral nomadic tribe that lorded over the central Tunisian steppe during the 19th century.

As the popular narratives in Sidi Bouzid suggest, the Hamama launched frequent insurrections against the Ottoman state - often in response to pressures associated with the needs of subsistence in the harsh steppe climate. Insurrections were often carried out at the level of the sub-tribal clan unit - the same unit around which contemporary clan solidarities in Metlaoui coalesce. Nevertheless, the advent of colonialism spurred a different kind of evolution in the ideology and practice of resistance in each region. It is these parallel changes in local notions of resistance in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui that, this study argues, conditioned the different collective memories that stand behind the variance in jihadist mobilization success.

In Sidi Bouzid, the colonial era brought restrictions on nomadic migrations, privatization of tribal lands, and French-sponsored initiatives to develop the region’s sedentary agricultural capacity. Combined with the more uncompromising monopoly of violence that the French had established in the interior, these policies deprived the Hamama of their ability to defy state edicts on a mass scale. They also led to an erosion of clan solidarity, since without collective land, clans had no material resources to bind them together. Nevertheless, the memory of the previous era lived on in poems, songs and stories. In the oppressive colonial context, the notion of armed resistance against state centralization became even more closely linked to the preservation of honor and collective moral respect in the collective imaginary. In the 1950’s, Sidi Bouzid

35 erupted in armed rebellion as bands of resistance fighters called fellaga waged a guerilla campaign against the French in the mountains outside the town. In 1956, the campaign succeeded when France announced its disengagement from the country and Tunisian independence was declared.

In Metlaoui, by contrast, the colonial era spurred a process of sedentarization through employment and industrialization. After phosphates were discovered, the local Hamama nomads in the region entered the mines and began work at the French-owned phosphate company. The growth of the mining industry fundamentally changed the way resistance was practiced and conceptualized. As unions and syndicates emerged as the institutional and normative face of contentious politics, the repertoire of contention fundamentally shifted. Rather than challenge the legitimacy of the state directly, phosphate workers engaged in strategic protest that had highly specific objectives in the realms of wages and work conditions. The growth of unions also had the effect of preserving clan solidarities, since clans would often join particular unions and syndicates as blocs. This increased the effectiveness of strikes by providing an additional level of solidarity through which to coordinate collective action. While some residents of Metlaoui participated in the armed uprising against France, today most remember the independence struggle through the lens of labor unrest since in the mining basin, challenging the French-owned company was tantamount to challenging the colonial state.

It is these different histories, this study argues, that have conditioned the heuristics youth use to evaluate the efficacy of jihadist salafism. In both cases, the anti-colonial resistance has become seared into the collective imaginary as a paradigmatic example of what effective contentious politics looks like. The mechanism through which these memories are transmitted is primarily oral and happens at the level of the family. In Sidi Bouzid, youth described growing up

36 listening to stories of grandparents who fought in the mountains; in Metlaoui, youth described listening to stories of parents and grandparents engaging in strikes at the phosphate company as a means of securing rights. It is the different processes of political socialization that lead to the two different lenses through which youth view jihadist salafism in each city respectively. Both processes of political socialization reflect the local history of political incorporation.

Plan of the Dissertation

The remainder of the dissertation further develops the concepts and arguments introduced in this introductory chapter through an ethnographic and historical analysis of popular politics in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. It endeavors to document both how the conceptions of resistance dominant in each town developed historically, and how their associated heuristics played a causally significant role in the reception that jihadist salafists enjoyed in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui after the revolution. In doing so, it seeks to combine ethnographic community studies, systematic event analysis,

Chapter Two provides a thorough explication of the study’s methodology, epistemological justification and the process of data collection that produced the empirical findings to be presented in subsequent chapters. To accompany the study’s two substantive arguments, the chapter makes two epistemological arguments. First, it contends that a close comparison of historical processes across two cases can help reveal dynamics that may not be as readily apparent from the analysis of either case out of context. Second, it contends that immersion within a community and the cultivation of close relationships with a diverse array of actors through “snowball sampling” can generate insights about the way ideas influence

37 collective behavior in a way that is often more reliable than those provided by representative surveys.

Chapter Three presents a discussion of politics and society in the lands of the Hamama - the large pastoral tribe from whom residents of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui descend. The chapter aims to show how the ancestors of contemporary inhabitants of both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui understood resistance during the late Ottoman period - before the critical juncture that caused the regions to diverge politically. The chapter argues, drawing inspiration from Bourdieu, that while the Hamama’s resistance against centralized authority was governed by the unique material imperatives of subsistence on the steppe, the practice was understood by Hamama tribesmen as an expression of honor and in some cases, piety.

Chapter Four shows how the different processes of sedentarization and political incorporation that colonialism unleashed in the environs of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui caused notions of resistance to evolve from their pre-colonial incarnations, but in different ways. In Sidi

Bouzid, the oral traditions that valorized resistance against the state as the epitome of honor endured. Nevertheless, the loss of tribal lands and the process of sedentarization changed the material context through which these traditions were presented. The result was a grafting of the

Hamama’s pre-colonial discourse of resistance onto a politics of recognition. Armed guerilla campaigns aimed at dislodging the colonizer became objectives in and of themselves. In

Metlaoui, the growth of syndicates and the transformation of the bedouin population into an employee society ensured that resistance would continue to be closely tied to material status.

Nevertheless, the culture of syndicalism that emerged endowed resistance with an even more instrumental logic that saw the discourse of honor-based confrontation with the state superseded by an ethic of negotiation.

Chapter Five provides a discussion of social and political changes in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui after independence - specifically during the thirty year reign of Tunisia’s autocratic

President Habib Bourguiba. The chapter shows how many of the social and political changes that began during the colonial era were accelerated after independence - particularly with respect to sedentarization and the post-nomadic resistance. In this vein, the chapter shows how the repertoires of contention that emerged as organizing principles of politics during the anti-colonial struggle continued to structure the unique ways contention took place in each area. In Sidi

Bouzid, the ideological and political heirs of the armed anti-colonial militants recruited fighters for an armed guerilla attack on the city of Gafsa; in Metlaoui, the town continued to express their grievances against the regime through general strikes and other union-inspired street protests.

Chapter Six provides an overview of politics and resistance in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui during the era of Ben Ali. In particular, it covers the first emergence of the jihadist salafist movement in Sidi Bouzid during the mid-2000’s and provides a discussion of why jihadists gained popular sympathy. At the same time, it shows how an analogous mobilization by jihadist salafists in Metlaoui during the same period failed to attract support. The last part of the chapter covers the 2008 Mining Basin Uprising and suggested that the movement’s success throughout the mining basin was a product of the region’s historically rooted “unionist” repertoire of contention. In this sense, the movement took much of the emotional energy that jihadism would otherwise have channeled.

Chapter Seven provides a discussion of the 2010/2011 Tunisian Revolution in Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui. It begins by showing how because of the different historical memories and repertoires of contention in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui caused civil society leaders in each community to be socialized differently. The chapter then continues by presenting a comparative

39 analysis of the revolutionary protests that followed the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in

Sidi Bouzid and the “non-response” to the self-immolations of Chamseddine Heni and Mosbah

Jawhari that occurred in Metlaoui around the same period. The chapter shows how the same repertoires of contention that impacted the character of mobilization during the colonial and postcolonial era structured the mobilizations during the revolution and the immediate aftermath.

Chapter Eight provides an account of the rise of jihadist salafism in Sidi Bouzid after the

2010/2011 revolution with a focus on the micro-level processes that conditioned its rise. The jihadist salafist takeover of mosques, the use of those mosques as recruiting platforms, and the successful co-optation of the leaders of the 2011 revolution are discussed. Concurrently, the chapter provides a discussion of events in Metlaoui during the same period. Although the analysis shows how jihadist salafist attempts to assert control over mosques were thwarted, it argues that violent street-level mobilizations around clan solidarity or employment channeled youth frustration in analogous ways. For both the jihadist and non-jihadist mobilization, the chapter shows the role that the cultural conceptions of resistance and collective memory played in conditioning the subjectivities of the relevant social actors.

Chapter Nine concludes the dissertation by discussing the broader implications of the

“culturalist” argument that the study uses to explain the variance in jihadist salafist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. It provides an explicit discussion of alternative hypotheses in an effort to show that the cultural argument presented in the dissertation is superior to all other potential explanations for the phenomenon. In line with the social movement theory approach this study takes, four alternative hypotheses are discussed, each of which is derived from a different social movement theory paradigm. While some of the dynamics these four paradigms point to are present in the cases of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, neither is sufficient to explain the

40 variance. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the way a cultural understanding of jihadist salafism can provide a basis for the development of a genuine civic consciousness by elucidating how youth respond to political rhetoric and what the task of mobilizing young people actually entails.

Chapter Two Methodology and Theory

Introduction

The two arguments this study makes to explain the respective emergence and rejection of jihadist salafism in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui operate at different timescales; accordingly, they are borne out of different, complementary methodological approaches each of which reinforces the analysis’s central claims. While the long-range argument is based on a careful reconstruction of local histories using a range of different sources, the proximate causal argument is based on extensive ethnographic research conducted face-to-face with with a range of different actors. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the theoretical justification for these methodological approaches and a thorough account of the process of data collection.

The long-range causal argument suggests that the resonance of jihadist salafism is a function of the historical processes of sedentarization and state formation that the ancestors of contemporary social actors experienced. In this sense, the comparison between Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui can be thought of as a type of counterfactual. The discovery of phosphates in Metlaoui but not Sidi Bouzid led to a branching off of what would have otherwise been common political destinies - and the unique shape that each of these branches took is the distal reason for the difference in jihadist mobilization today. This claim is based on a thorough engagement with pre-colonial and colonial historical sources, as well as a structured approach to analyzing processes of state building that draws inspiration from comparative historical sociology.

The proximate causal argument on the other hand suggests that the micro-sociological process through which people participate in (or at least give tacit approval to) jihadist mobilizations is governed by the use of heuristics. Supporting this claim requires a thorough ethnographic engagement with the lived experiences of social actors and a particular focus on

42 their motivations and the processes through which they receive and react to information. While today, many ethnographers embrace critical or postmodern epistemologies that shy away from making explicit claims about external truths deducible from objective evidence, historically there was a rich tradition of “analytic ethnography” within the larger field of social ethnography that used ethnographic observations to make explicit causal arguments. It is within this analytic ethnography tradition that this study situates itself.

This chapter will proceed in five parts. The first part of the chapter will discuss the theoretical and epistemological basis for the historical analysis; particular focus will be given to the structure of the argument and its evidentiary burden. The second part of the chapter discusses the various historical sources used in the analysis and justifies their selection. The third part of the chapter provides a discussion of the theoretical basis for the ethnographic analysis; in this section, the concept of “analytic ethnography” is delineated further. The fourth part of the chapter provides a detailed overview of the process of ethnographic data collection in both Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui, including a discussion of the political and security challenges involved.

The fifth and final part of the chapter provides a discussion of the ethical issues surrounding the collection of sensitive data based on the forming of close relationships.

Understanding History: Structured Focused Comparison

The historical argument this study presents suggests that the conceptions of resistance that hold sway in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui today emerged from a process that parallels traditional models of punctuated equilibrium.1 The theory of punctuated equilibrium is integrated

1 As a concept, punctuated equilibrium originates in the evolutionary biology literature, but has been reappropriated by social scientists studying policy and institutional change. See:

43 into a model of human decision-making that emphasizes the process of learning and adaptation under uncertain conditions.2 As people gain experience within the constraints of their environment, the model suggests that norms develop that allow them to make optimal decisions without having to constantly weigh costs and benefits. Norms and institutions are closely related in the model, with the latter being simply an aggregated collection of the former.3 Punctuated equilibrium occurs when a sudden and drastic change in the environmental constraints spurs people to discard the extant institutions that guide decision-making and to create new institutions and norms that allow them to navigate the new reality. This creates a sort of path-dependence that structures behavior in subsequent periods.4

This theoretical mechanism accords well with the historical argument this study makes.

Under the argument, the precarious subsistence needs that the Hamama ancestors of people in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui faced on the steppe, coupled with the inability of the state to enforce its edicts, conditioned the resistance posture the Hamama assumed vis a vis state authority. While

Eldredge, Niles, and Steven Gould. "Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism." In Models in Paleobiology, edited by Thomas J. M. Schopf. San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper & Company, 1972. Baumgartner, Frank R., and Bryan D. Jones. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Pierson, Paul. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 2 Denzau, Arthur T., and Douglass C. North. "Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions." Kyklos 47, no. 1 (1994): 3-31. Goertz, Gary. International Norms and Decision Making: A Punctuated Equilibrium Model. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. 3 This relationship is discussed in detail by Greif in: Greif, Avner. Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 4 Pierson, Paul. "Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics." American Political Science Review 94, no. 02 (2000): 251-67. Sewell, William H. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

44 center-periphery relations during the pre-colonial era were not entirely static, the logic of the argument is that as long as the basic condition of limited state control remained in place, the ideology and practice of resistance among the Hamama remained in a kind of equilibrium.

In this context, the argument suggests that the advent of colonialism in the lands of the

Hamama was a critical juncture that irrevocably altered the way the Hamama understood and practiced resistance against the state. The significance of colonialism stems from the fact that

French rule effectively altered the basic condition of limited state control in the interior from which the Hamama’s pre-colonial notions of resistance had emerged. Nevertheless, this process of punctuated equilibrium was experienced differently in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui by virtue of the parallel economic paths the two regions took after the discovery of phosphates in Metlaoui but not Sidi Bouzid. In effect, the discovery of phosphates caused a common equilibrium to be simultaneously punctuated in two different ways by the same external stimulus.

The evidentiary burden of the argument follows from its basic logic. To show that the colonial period spurred divergent changes in the way resistance was practiced and conceived in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, four things must be demonstrated: the similarity in initial conditions between the two regions, the change that followed the advent of colonialism, the mechanism through which colonialism spurred the changes, and the divergent nature of the changes. To meet this evidentiary burden, this study combines the method of historical process tracing5 with the logic of structured focused comparison.6 While Bengtsson and Ruonavaara have delineated

5 Bennett, Andrew. "Process Tracing and Causal Inference." In Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, edited by Henry E. Brady and David Collier. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. Collier, David. "Understanding Process Tracing." PS: Political Science & Politics 44, no. 04 (2011): 823-30. doi:10.1017/s1049096511001429. 6 George, Alexander, and Andrew Bennett. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

Comparative Process Tracing (CPT) as a recent methodological innovation,7 it is at the heart of many foundational works in comparative historical sociology.8

At the core of the approach is a commitment to asking the same questions of each comparative case throughout the analysis so that systematic differences can be elucidated.

Therefore, when this study seeks to understand how the discovery of phosphates changed

Metlaoui’s economy, it also asks how, if at all, the economy in Sidi Bouzid changed during the same period. When it asks what grievances emerged in Metlaoui as a result of the new regime, it asks what corresponding grievances emerged in Sidi Bouzid. When it asks what resistance strategies people in Metlaoui pursued during the independence struggle, it also asks what corresponding strategies emerged in Sidi Bouzid. Analyzing the cases in parallel can help crystallize how they differ, and through a careful analysis of the process that links nodes in the causal sequence, why they differ as well.

Historical Sources

To gather the empirical evidence that the Comparative Process Tracing approach requires, this study makes use of five different kinds of sources to construct its historical narratives: English and French monographs written by western historians, Arabic monographs written by Tunisian historians, the writings of colonial and precolonial European ethnographers

7 Bengtsson, Bo, and Hannu Ruonavaara. "Comparative Process Tracing." Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47, no. 1 (2016): 44-66. 8 Skocpol, Theda, and Margaret Somers. "The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry." Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 02 (1980): 174. Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Tilly, Charles. European Revolutions, 1492-1992. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1993. Moore, Barrington. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.

46 who conducted research on the Hamama, written/transcribed primary sources in Arabic, and oral history interviews. Much of the primary historical research was conducted at the High Institute for the History of the National Movement housed at the University of Manouba just outside of

Tunis which contains a rich collection of Arabic monographs, oral history recordings, and casualty records from Tunisia’s independence struggle. Together, these sources provide two kinds of information. On the one hand, they document the tangible events and practices associated with various historical periods in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. On the other hand, they allow one to draw inferences about the mentalities that prevailed in these regions during these historical periods.

Given the region’s importance in the process of Tunisian state consolidation and anti- colonial resistance, there are a number of studies by western historians and social scientists that engage directly with the history of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Rather than focusing narrowly on the region, they tend to center on some thematic area of Tunisian history and provide substantial examples from the history of the Hamama to buttress their claims. For example, Lucette

Valensi’s classic study of modes of cultivation and social organization,9 Julia Clancy Smith’s work on the role of religious networks in anti-colonial insurgency,10 and Lisa Anderson’s comparative historical analysis of state formation in Libya and Tunisia11 all have profoundly shaped the historiographic and/or social scientific research agenda in North Africa. Each of these studies uses observations of the Hamama and the central Tunisian steppe as a key building block

9 Valensi, Lucette. Tunisian Peasants in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 10 Clancy-Smith, Julia A. Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters: Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 11 Anderson, Lisa. The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.

47 of the respective framework. While these studies are typically based on sources from French colonial archives, they adopt critical approaches towards the analysis of primary source material and manage to avoid the obvious traps of orientalism.

The numerous monographs written in Arabic by Tunisian historians - many of whom hold personal familial connections to the Hamama and the central steppe - have been just as useful to this study.12 These monographs are typically centered around more narrow, granular research questions; as such, they provide an unrivaled level of detail in their descriptions of the history of the Hamama and their descendants. Many of these studies are based on the same colonial archival and ethnographic sources that the western historians use, but they often provide different interpretations, perhaps as a consequence of their upbringing in the communities under investigation. For example, while western historians are quick to discount the genealogical claims that undergird official clan and tribal histories, the Tunisian historians give the local oral traditions greater weight. One such study of the Hamama’s various clans is based on extensive ethnographic data on oral family histories collected in the central steppe region using traditional

Arabic genealogical methods (Arabic: ‘Ilm al-Nasab).13 The use of both Arab and Western historical sources in this study allows for a respectful balance between the two perspectives.

12 Tlili, Mostafa. Mintaqat Gafsa Wal-Hamama Fi 'Ahad Muhammad Al-Saadiq Bey: 1859 - 1881. Tunis: Daar Saamid Lil-Nashar Wal-Tawzi', 2004. Khawaalidiyya, Daawi. Al-Hamama Awlad Buyahiya: Fil-Qarn Al-Taas'a 'Ashar Min Khilaal Makaatib Al- "Gayyaad". Tunis, 1995. Khawaalidiyya, Al-Daawi. Qabilat Al-Hamama Fi Al-Nasf Al-Awwal Min Al-Qarn Al-'Ashrin (1881-1950). Sidi Bouzid: Donia Priny, 2010. Dabusi, Muhammad. Qaadat Al-Muqaawima Al-Musalliha Fil-Bilaad Al-Tunisiyya 'Aam 1881. Tunis: Markaz Al- Nasahr Al-Jaam'ai, 2014. 13 Al-'Azri, 'Ali Saalih Bin 'Amaara. Al-Ilmaam Bi 'Urush Bani Hamaam. Edited by Asmaa' Khawalidiyya. Tunis, 2011.

A third useful corpus comes from the ethnographic accounts that western visitors to

Tunisia produced during the 19th and early 20th centuries.14 Given the orientalist typologies these studies use (i.e. Moors and Bedouins), as well as the involvement of their authors with colonial projects of domination, these studies cannot be used uncritically.15 Nevertheless, in light of the paucity of contemporaneous written sources on the Hamama, these accounts offer some of the only documentation of Hamama society from the colonial and pre-colonial period. It is for this reason that these colonial ethnographies also figure prominently as sources in the monographs that Tunisian historians from the central steppe region have authored.

Although this study makes significant use of the existing work by historians, it also incorporates a number of written primary sources. First, to gain a quantitative picture of the intensity of armed combat in various regions during the independence struggle, this study makes use of the National Registry for Martyrs of the Nation - a database housed at the University of

Manouba. The national registry contains the names, places of birth, and places of death of

Tunisian fighters who lost their lives in the armed insurgency against France during the 1950’s and so helped me place Sidi Bouzid’s role in the conflict in a national context.

Additionally, this study makes use of poems from Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui to support its cultural arguments. These poems, which have been passed down orally across generations, were collected by Tunisian scholars who traveled to isolated communities in Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa governorates and transcribed them for different sourcebooks.16 While it is impossible to

14 Raynaud, E. Pellissier De. Description De La Regence De Tunis. Paris: Impr. Impériale, 1853. Perry, Amos. Carthage and Tunis, past and Present: In Two Parts. Providence, RI: Providence Press, Printers, 1869. 15 Raynaud Pellisier, the most-cited ethnographer of the Hamama’s lands from this period was an agent in the French intelligence services based in Algeria. 16 Al-'Azri, 'Ali Saalih Bin 'Amaara. Al-Ilmaam Bi 'Urush Bani Hamaam. Edited by Asmaa' Khawalidiyya. Tunis, 2011.

49 independently confirm that the dating of the poems is accurate, Tunisian research contacts consulted in the translation of the poems confirmed that they were written in an archaic bedouin

Arabic scarcely understood today, which makes their dating to the colonial and pre-colonial periods plausible. Since these poems are the only direct window into the mentality of long- deceased Hamama tribesmen, they are an invaluable reference for understanding how resistance was conceptualized in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui historically.

Finally, this study uses oral historical accounts to buttress the analysis done with primary and secondary source documents. While the use of popular historical narratives to deduce objective historical facts is problematic when they are given by people who did not witness the events they are recounting, it can be an important supplement when the oral history subjects are recounting experiences in their own lives.17 Accordingly, this study makes use of two kinds of oral historical sources. First, the study benefited from the cassette recordings of interviews with important figures in Tunisia’s anti-colonial movement that were compiled in the early 1990’s as part of the University of Manouba’s oral history project. Many of the figures interviewed for the project were from Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, and so the recordings gave a unique perspective on syndicalist and armed resistance in these two regions during the late colonial era. Second, the study conducted a number of interviews with older residents of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui who provided verbal testimony of previous incidents of political tension in both regions. This included elderly individuals who participated in the armed brigades or their support networks

Khawaalidiyya, Al-Hamama, 1995. Khawaalidiyya, Qabilat al-Hamama, 2010. 17 Lang, W. L., and L. K. Mercier. "Getting It Down Right: Oral History's Reliability in Local History Research." Oral History Review 12, no. 1 (1984): 81-99.

50 during the 1950’s, but also individuals who witnessed and/or participated in mobilizations during the post-independence, pre-revolutionary period.

The combination of these five different classes of sources provides a balanced, multi- faceted view of the history of both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. The sources allow for the creation of comprehensive narratives that provide a window into the way people in the Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui regions lived and thought at various points in their history. As a complement to the ethnographic data, these sources are invaluable in helping to demystify the contemporary variance in jihadist mobilization across the two communities.

Explaining Collective Action Through Analytic Ethnography

In terms of proximate causality, this study explains the variance in jihadist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui by pointing to the different ways that people in the towns use heuristics to assess jihadist salafism as an ideology. This argument is the culmination of a combined 14 months of ethnographic field research undertaken in Tunisia, most of it in Sidi

Bouzid, Metlaoui, and surrounding towns. During the summers of 2013 and 2014, I conducted exploratory research with the goals of setting the parameters of the inquiry and establishing a network of field contacts who later proved invaluable as the study progressed. Exploratory research was supported by the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University as part of a National Science Foundation IGERT Grant. The majority of data was collected in the period between June of 2015 and May of 2016. This primary data collection was made possible by a grant provided by the American Institute of Maghrib Studies.

The formal assertions of causality that this study makes set it apart from many contemporary ethnographic studies of the Middle East and North Africa that embrace

51 poststructuralist epistemologies and eschew affirmative statements about why events happened in the ways they did.18 In this regard, the study endeavors to be an exercise in what some scholars have termed “analytic ethnography” - an approach to social research that is targeted towards systematic understanding of social processes.19 Analytic ethnographers share their post- structualist colleagues’ commitment to immersive qualitative data-collection based on extensive face-to-face engagement with populations of interest. They differ however in their commitment to a broadly positivistic epistemology that accepts the existence of an objective social reality, understandable through carefully-collected evidence.20

From the beginning, this empiricist orientation imposed two primary burdens on the study. First, there was the task of eliciting answers to specific, politically-sensitive research questions about motivations and sympathy for jihadist ideology, as well as the way specific events played out. Second, there was the task of verifying the accuracy of these accounts - or at least their generalizability to Sidi Bouzid or Metlaoui as a whole. These tasks were made significantly more complicated by the tense political conditions that prevailed in the Tunisian interior during the period in which the data was collected.

18 Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012. Mamdani, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA, and the Global War against Terror. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007. Abu-Lughod, Lila. Veiled Sentiments Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. 19 Lofland, J. "Analytic Ethnography: Features, Failings, and Futures." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 24, no. 1 (1995): 30-67. Snow, David A., Calvin Morrill, and Leon Anderson. "Elaborating Analytic Ethnography." Ethnography 4, no. 2 (2003): 181-200. 20 Vaughan, Diane. "Analytic Ethnography." In The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology, edited by Peter Hedström and Peter S. Bearman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

During my preliminary exploratory fieldwork, partisan gridlock, high profile political assassinations, constant violent street unrest, and an ascendant jihadist salafist movement had all contributed to an extraordinarily tense environment in Tunisia. While visiting Sidi Bouzid in

2013 and 2014, I witnessed several violent protests that saw rock-throwing young demonstrators clash with tear gas-wielding police. By the time primary fieldwork commenced in 2015, the situation had become more dangerous. Militant jihadists operating in remote mountains only a few dozen kilometers from Sidi Bouzid were waging a low-level insurgent campaign against

Tunisian security forces; and, in an even more troubling development, jihadists had announced their intentions to specifically target western visitors to the country. Within two weeks of my arrival in Tunisia during the summer of 2015, an Islamic State-aligned gunman massacred 39 foreign tourists on a beach in the coastal city of Sousse. In this context, I was forced to contend with both the logistical challenges of conducting research in a charged environment and maintaining my personal safety at all times.

At the beginning of fieldwork, I intended to conduct my interviews in the most systematic way possible. I would seek to arrange formal meetings with activists and other political notables with a clear understanding that I was the interviewer and they were the interviewee. I would ask specific questions based on a meticulously-devised interview schedule with the goal of conducting the same process with each field informant. After several weeks of exploratory fieldwork in 2013, this approach to research was an abject failure. In the best cases, research subjects would politely sit and give short evasive answers to questions while discomfort enveloped their faces. In the worst cases, they would openly question my intentions and accuse me of links to foreign intelligence services.

As I reached an impasse in my work, trusted Tunisian colleagues provided a perspective that changed the way I thought about research. With the exception of high-level political leaders, they advised, most Tunisians would be extremely uncomfortable with highly formalized interviews. In the marginalized areas where I sought to work, they said, ordinary people still associate the formal questioning about political sympathies with the terrifying experience of police interrogation during the days of the old regime. Moreover, my status as an Arabic- speaking American would raise suspicions and feed the perception that I am an agent of the

American government.

In this context, they advised me that the best way to proceed, given the sensitive nature of my topic, was to meet people in ordinary everyday situations in public places like cafes. I could and should, they advised, be transparent about my work and gain the consent of all field contacts, but the conversations had to be the types of free-flowing, casual cafe conversations field contacts were accustomed to. Additionally, I could not reach out to research contacts on my own; every conversation I entered had to be organized through at least one person who could “vouch” for me and give me credibility. This, they said, would reduce the already strong presumption among most new research contacts that I was a foreign intelligence agent.

Taking this advice, I opted for a more ethnographic methodology that sought to engage with the social reality in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui on its own terms. The core of my approach was a commitment to developing genuine relationships with research contacts, cultivating networks that enabled me to meet an ideologically diverse range of people, and experiencing daily life in the two towns as ordinary people do. I also developed networks of contacts - some of whom had family ties to Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui - in the cities of Tunis, Kairouan, Gafsa,

Redeyef, Oum Larayes and Sousse. This allowed me to situate my insights about life in Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui within the broader Tunisian social context. During the 14 months of the study, 239 individuals gave comments which I meticulously recorded in a field journal, alongside my observations of daily life. Interactions with these individuals ranged from brief five-minute conversations to hundreds of hours of interaction over several years with certain key individuals. All research contacts consented to participate in the study and consent was never taken as unconditional but rather as a dynamic process of continuous discussion.

The empirical material for this study comes from three different sorts of interactions.

First, I learned a substantial amount from passively watching and listening to conversations that research contacts with had with each other in places like cafes or on the street or during distinct events like political demonstrations. Such experiences were participant observation in the truest sense as I was engaging with subjects as a guest in their normal space of interaction. Second, during the course of the study, I was able to seek out individuals who played crucial roles during the mobilizations I was interested in. These conversations were invaluable as they actually gave me a picture of the motivational basis for these events from the actors who produced them.

Finally, I relied extensively on interactions with a network key informants in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. These carefully chosen individuals often had degrees in social scientific disciplines and provided their own interpretations of the identities, ideas, and culturally- grounded meanings connected with political and social life in the two towns, based on lifetimes of observation.21 In each town, I sought out multiple key informants with different ideological tendencies; no interpretation from any key informant was accepted at face value, but together

21 Use of key informants is an established method within anthropological research, see: Tremblay, Marc-Adelard. "The Key Informant Technique: A Nonethnographic Application." American Anthropologist 59, no. 4 (1957): 688-701. doi:10.1525/aa.1957.59.4.02a00100.

55 and in conjunction with my other observations, they contributed to a cumulative picture of how politics in each town operates.

Given the complexities of the political environment, recording the audio of conversations and interviews was mostly out of the question. While this represented an inherent limitation of this study in terms of data reliability, the limitation was mitigated in two ways. First, while engaged in ethnographic observation or conversations with research contacts, I developed a discreet form of note-taking (with the consent of research contacts) on my phone that allowed me to track the key threads in the conversations using a type of shorthand. Following such interactions, at the earliest opportunity, I would go to my computer and “fill out” my field notes, using the shorthand to recall specific points in the conversation, or events I witnessed.22 This aided the efficient transcription of observations and relieved the otherwise heavy burden on my memory. Second, because in general, I maintained ongoing relationships with research contacts and in many cases, lived alongside them, many of the narratives that they presented I was able to verify in subsequent conversation. The more I interacted with research contacts, the less it mattered whether I “dropped” a key point in the initial interview, since subsequent interviews gave me a more expansive, higher-confidence picture of their perspective.

Given that I was introduced to all of my research contacts through pre-existing relationships - a necessity in light of the political and security challenges of conducting research in this region - this study might appear vulnerable to the criticism that its conclusions are based on an unrepresentative snowball sample and so may be systematically biased. Nevertheless, I contend that this criticism is mitigated by virtue of the fact that I carefully cultivated the most

22 Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Rabinow, Paul. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011.

56 ideologically, professionally, and demographically diverse network of contacts possible in both towns - many of whom fundamentally disagreed with each other on major issues of religion, politics, and culture. Because I remained maintained ongoing relationships with most of these research contacts, whenever I obtained a piece of information or an interpretation that was significant to my narrative, I “tested” the information on a wide range of sources with different perspective. When multiple contacts who had dramatically different backgrounds and were likely to disagree all confirmed a piece information, I had high confidence the information was accurate. When contacts disagreed, I confronted the original source of the information with counternarratives, and shared the revised account with the broader network of accounts. While some level of discretion was required, this approach usually allowed me to converge on a common interpretation that I had confidence in.

Ethnographic Data Collection in Sidi Bouzid

My ethnographic first contact with Sidi Bouzid came several weeks into my first summer of exploratory fieldwork during the summer of 2013. Through activists I had befriended in Tunis from a secular liberal political party, I attended a conference organized by the British Council on civil society development. During the conference, I met Hamza,23 a civil society entrepreneur from Sidi Bouzid who admitted that he had passed through several ideological stages, but was not himself affiliated with any particular ideological current.

At the time, jihadist salafists were operating openly across Tunisia, with some even giving interviews to national television networks. In this context, Hamza confided in me that he had good relations with one of the major leaders of the salafist movement in Sidi Bouzid – he

23 Psuedonym to protect anonymity of source

57 expressed an interest in my research and invited me to Sidi Bouzid, offering to arrange meetings with an ideologically diverse array of civil society activists. On the same day, and through the same network, I also met Waleed,24 a social media activist from Sidi Bouzid who had many childhood friends who adopted the jihadist salafist ideology, including a number who had left

Tunisia to fight in Syria. Over the next few weeks, I met extensively with Waleed to prepare for my trip to Sidi Bouzid where I would be staying with Hamza.

On the louage (Tunisian inter-city taxi) to Sidi Bouzid for my first visit, by coincidence, I met Khalid25 – an English speaking university graduate who was fascinated by my research and almost immediately offered to introduce me to various salafist friends of his. Although Waleed had advised me that salafism was fairly ubiquitous on Sidi Bouzid’s streets, it was only after talking to Khalid that I realized the paradoxical nature of the situation. I had met three people from Sidi Bouzid who were totally unconnected to each other, but who all had friendships with jihadist Salafists. While each of them expressed a base level of sympathy or admiration with the movement, they seemed totally benign in their intentions towards me as an American and at least two of them were hardly practicing Muslims.

It seemed that jihadist salafism, as an ideology that had become prominent in Sidi Bouzid only after the revolution, did not disrupt preexisting social networks. Non-salafists in Sidi

Bouzid all had friends and neighbors who had adopted jihadist salafism– but the conversion to jihadist salafism did not impact the pre-existing friendships and relationships. This was a dynamic that allowed me to interact with jihadist salafists, as a guest of their non-salafist friends, with little fear of security repercussions. At the same time, the onus was on me to be respectful

24 Psuedonym to protect anonymity of source 25 Psuedonym to protect anonymity of source

58 and deferential so as not to endanger this dynamic. Given norms of hospitality and respect for guests that are deeply held in Sidi Bouzid, I felt confident that my status as a guest of non- salafists that nonetheless had good relations with major salafist leaders was enough to guarantee my security – a position that was ultimately vindicated by my ability complete the research unharmed.

Most of my direct contact with committed jihadist salafist ideologues occurred during the summer of 2013 on that initial trip. During the day, I would travel around with Hamza and meet more conventional sorts of civil society activists: leaders of political parties, unionists, and founders of civic associations. In the evenings, I would “café hop” and meet three different groups. Because it was Ramadan, my first group was a set of mostly unemployed childhood friends of Hamza without firm ideological commitments who could give me an “ordinary person’s” vantage point on the rise of salafism in the town. After meeting with Hamza and his friends, I would sit with Khalid and his friends – most of whom sympathized with and had a friendship with the salafists, but who were still not religious enough to attend Salaat al-Tarawih.

While these conversations were wide-ranging, this gave me the chance to see the view of the salafists from close observers who had not fully bought into the ideology’s dictates. Finally, after

Salaat al-Tarawih prayers had ended, I would go with Khalid and his friends to meet with a group of jihadist salafist friends, some of whom subsequently traveled to Syria, one of whom had been convicted of involvement in the Suleiman events before the 2011 general amnesty, and all of whom had fully bought into the ideology. This seemed to be a typical example of several jihadist salafist “cliques” that emerged in Sidi Bouzid after the revolution.

My conversations with the salafists were remarkably candid and warm – they consented to participate in the study and encouraged me to ask questions. They gave me helpful

59 background information about their ideology, their individual socialization, the rise of jihadist salafism in Sidi Bouzid more generally – and being able to observe their social dynamics with each other was very useful. At the same time, there was an underlying tension – I sensed they worried I was a foreign intelligence agent. They also tried repeatedly and ultimately unsuccessfully to convince me to convert to Islam – although we had some wonderful intellectual exchanges about religion and spirituality. Ultimately, I concluded there was a limit to the level of rapport I was going to be able to establish with the salafists themselves. At the end of the summer of 2013, shortly after leaving Tunisia, the jihadist salafist Ansar al-Shari’a organization that had hitherto operated openly was declared a terrorist group by the Tunisian authorities and a campaign of arrests against jihadist Salafists started.

As a result of the changing political situation, and understanding the limits of the rapport

I was able to develop with jihadist salafists given my own positionality, I shifted the terms of my inquiry. Although jihadist salafists of the sort I met would not give a wholly objective picture of the movement, during the summer of 2014 into 2015-2016, I derived a large research benefit from engaging with the much larger circle of only marginally committed jihadist salafist sympathizers. Many of these youth had been active in the revolution and although in their personal habits did not conform to jihadist salafist dictates, expressed varying levels of support for the movement. These informants were remarkably self-reflective - they gave me a sense of why the ideology resonated, what the limits of this resonance was, and why Sidi Bouzid in particular had emerged as a center of the ideology. During the summer of 2014 and the principal fieldwork during the 2015-2016 academic year, this group became my key research population.

At the same time, I interacted with numerous civil society activists and opinion leaders in Sidi

Bouzid who could help me contextualize this ethnographic fieldwork with salafist sympathizers.

During the 2015-2016 academic year, I split my time between Tunis, Metlaoui, Sidi

Bouzid, and Sousse. Given the increased threats against foreigners, despite assurances from contacts in the Tunisian security services and local leaders in Sidi Bouzid that the security situation in the city of Sidi Bouzid (in contrast to the surrounding countryside) was stable, I felt that a strategy of constant, unpredictable movement was necessary for my protection. Therefore,

I broke up my fieldwork into intermittent trips of between one and two weeks. I always stayed at private homes during trips to Sidi Bouzid, often rotating between two very trusted contacts to maintain this unpredictability. Although I was more often than not in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, I maintained a residence in Sousse and later in Tunis where I would go to focus on writing and to recover from the psychological strain of field research between trips to my principal field sites.

Additionally, during the latter part of the field research, I spent significant time in between research trips at the High Institute for the History of the National Movement where I focused on the historical part of my research.

During these week-long trips to Sidi Bouzid, I would engage in a combination of participant observation with groups of unemployed or underemployed young men, many of whom included these base jihadist salafist sympathizers. I also used my existing network to arrange meetings with higher-profile civil society leaders – many of whom agreed to conduct numerous conversations over several days. My network was self-reinforcing, as I met people, they would suggest additional people I should contact and often assisted in setting up those meetings. Towards the end of my research, I reached the point of ethnographic saturation.26 The notion that a particular ideal of resistance, derived from the memory of the past, was the crucial

26 See discussion of saturation in: Gold, Raymond L. "The Ethnographic Method in Sociology." Qualitative Inquiry 3, no. 4 (1997): 388-402

61 factor in conditioning the resonance of jihadist salafism in Sidi Bouzid was a finding reinforced robustly across a variety of different research contacts, salafist and non-salafist alike.

Ethnographic Data Collection in Metlaoui

In Sidi Bouzid, my first ethnographic contact was a stroke of luck. Although as the place where the Arab Spring began, it was a town I had an interest in visiting, my choice of Sidi

Bouzid as a field site was a function of the opportunities that came to me. After I had decided on

Sidi Bouzid as a case that represented a valuable example of a phenomenon that I was interested in, to create ample variance, I deliberated on the selection of a comparative case where the phenomenon was not present but had enough in common with Sidi Bouzid that it represented a viable match for a Most Similar Systems Design (MSSD) comparison. My choice of Metlaoui was based on the correspondence in development indicators and tribal history; it was also made before I had any established network of contacts in Metlaoui.

Upon arriving in Tunisia in June of 2015, one of my immediate objectives was to find a way to make “contact” with Metlaoui. Based on my experience in Sidi Bouzid and advice I had gotten from research contacts in other parts of Tunisia, I knew that for my personal safety and for reasons of ethnographic rapport, I could not simply go to Metlaoui and approach people on the street – I needed to find a way to meet people in Metlaoui through my existing network of contacts. Accordingly, I used two channels to try to cultivate a network of contacts in Metlaoui, both of which ultimately served me in complementary ways.

Through a well-respected journalist friend from Gafsa – the main regional hub of south- central Tunisia that sits between Metlaoui and Sidi Bouzid and the capital of the governorate of which Metlaoui is a part – I was introduced to some of the leaders of the 2008 mining basin

62 uprising in Redeyef as well a number of civil society activists from Gafsa. I met these individuals in Sousse, Tunis, and a on a preliminary research trip to the city of Gafsa itself. From these conversations, I gained an insight into social life in Metlaoui from an outsider’s vantage and also a significant amount of information about politics in the mining basin more generally.

As my network was developing, I briefly considered both Redeyef and Gafsa as alternative field research sites that I would compare to Sidi Bouzid. I decided against each of them however for separate reasons.

Redeyef was a much smaller city than Sidi Bouzid and its people did not have the same tribal origin as those in Sidi Bouzid. While there is a significant minority of Redeyef residents belonging to the Hamama’s Awlad Bouyahia subdivision in Redeyef, the dominant faction is the

Awlad Sidi ‘Abid, a nomadic tribe split between Tunisia and Algeria that was intimately linked to a Sufism and so had, I figured, a less comparable 19th century history. Gafsa on the surface seemed comparable to Sidi Bouzid because like Sidi Bouzid, it was the capital of a governorate.

Yet, I ultimately decided against Gafsa for three reasons. First, as an oasis, a sedentary population has lived in Gafsa since time immemorial so its population is a mix of descendants of peasant farmers and pastoral nomads who have a similar background to those in Sidi Bouzid, so the historical matching was not robust. Second, Gafsa is a much larger city than Sidi Bouzid in terms of population. Third, Gafsa as a city had a more prominent salafist movement after the revolution than the mining cities, so didn’t seem to have enough variance on the outcome of interest. Fourth, during my preliminary fieldwork, I learned that there was a movement in the mining basin to create a new “mining” govenorate with Metlaoui as its capital – so the official governorate lines seemed to obscure more meaningful social boundaries.

As I was learning about Metlaoui indirectly through my emerging network of contacts in

Gafsa and Redeyef, through one of my key contacts in Sidi Bouzid, I met a young man from

Metlaoui whom he had known in university. Through this initial Metlaoui contact, I made contact with a group of young Metlaoui residents who were staying temporarily in the city of

Sousse where I had my residence. After befriending this group and telling them about my research I received an invitation from Maher,27 a young unemployed truck mechanic and day laborer, to visit Metlaoui, stay at his family’s house, and to meet several family friends of his who he believed could help me with research. While this initial contact was not as well-placed in civil society as my initial contacts in Sidi Bouzid, it seemed to provide a great opportunity to immerse myself in the lives and lived experience of unemployed youth in Metlaoui and so I accepted the invitation.

I made my first of several initial trips to Metlaoui in August of 2015 and stayed at

Maher’s house. Although Maher, like most people in Metlaoui, is a member of the Awlad

Bouyahia, he had the advantage of living in one of the few neighborhoods in Metlaoui with a mixed clan composition. Although most of my research contacts from Metlaoui were from the

Awlad Bouyahia, the other friends I met through Maher and his social network from other clans gave me a more unbiased perspective. During my trips to Metlaoui for the remainder of 2015, the daily routine in each visit would follow a familiar rhythm. In the early morning and the evening,

I would usually conduct participant observation with young men from the neighborhood in cafes

– through these conversations, I learned about life in Metlaoui, the preeminence of tribal identity, the constant concern with the phosphate company’s hiring competitions, and the way this impacted views of the state and the political community. I also gained exposure to popular

27 Psuedonym to protect anonymity of source

64 historical narratives about the town through these conversations – something that helped me see the strong difference with the way the past was conceptualized in Sidi Bouzid. On some days,

Maher’s father would – playing the same role Hamza played for me during my trips to Sidi

Bouzid – introduce me to unionists, local historians, and other civil society leaders from his generation.

As my 2015 research in Metlaoui came to a close, the argument I have presented here about historical memory, tribalism, and syndicalism had begun to take shape. Nevertheless, I had not yet had the opportunity to meet the youth activists who led the employment-centered strikes that my contacts from Metlaoui had mentioned and frequently garnered national media attention.

Therefore, when I arrived in Tunisia in January of 2016, one of my goals was to make contact with these more prominent youth activists in Metlaoui. Aided by the journalist who had connected me with my network of contacts in Redeyef and Gafsa, I was able to make contact with Zuhair.28 Zuhair was the head of an emerging association of unemployed university graduates who had developed a reputation throughout the city as one of the few with enough clout on the street to “shut down” the operations of the phosphate company during moments of tension. We developed a warm friendship and through him, not only did I get a fascinating perspective on Metlaoui and political life, but he also introduced me to a variety of other youth civil society leaders, including older individuals, and numerous individuals from Metlaoui who had illegally immigrated to Europe before returning. It was also through Zuhair that I met some more religiously-inclined people, including the Imam of a major mosque that salafists unsuccessfully tried to take over.

28 Psuedonym to protect anonymity of source

During trips to Metlaoui during 2016, I split my time between participant observation with Maher and the youth in his neighborhood, older local leaders whom I met through Maher’s father, and Zuhair’s network of civil society contacts. Through these meetings, my understanding of historical memory and its relationship to contemporary modes of political mobilization crystallized. Since these insights were based on repeated conversations with an ideologically and experientially diverse group, I have confidence that they accurately reflect the particularities of social and political life in Metlaoui

The Ethics of Enculturated Research

In research with human subjects, the protection of research contacts must be a study’s preeminent ethical priority. Institutional Review Boards (IRB), including the one at Brown

University that approved this research, usually focus on the way soliciting consent serves as a safeguard against potential harms to research subjects. This study sought and received the consent of all subjects whose comments and narratives are used as data in this study. This includes those who gave comments in public places where the IRB instructed that comments could be deemed public behavior and consent was not required. Nevertheless, despite the importance of consent, it became clear during fieldwork that sometimes even consensually-given information could harm research subjects.

Given the sensitive nature of the research and the difficult security issues involved,

Numerous times during field research, for example, contacts gave comments, such as expressions of support for armed religious extremist groups, and explicitly gave consent to use their names. Other times, research contacts consensually revealed information about sensitive political negotiations that, if published, could have harmed their standing in the negotiations. In

66 these cases, I chose to go above and beyond the responsibilities of consent and show discretion in terms of which information I was willing to publish. This meant, out of an abundance of caution, preserving anonymity of sources even when they consented to having their names be used, and oftentimes leaving certain pieces of information out of the analysis if I deemed it necessary.

Beyond the protection of research subjects, other ethical issues arose surrounding my relationships with people in the communities that I undertook research in. In general, I conducted my research independently; I did not use research assistants, fixers, or survey companies.

Instead, I developed numerous close friendships with research contacts, many of whom became key informants. These friendships came about as a result of spending large amounts of time with people and groups I sought out who had important perspectives to share that were relevant to my research; they also stemmed from the nature of my living conditions in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui. In both towns, generosity and kindness towards guests are sacred responsibilities.

During my fieldwork in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, I resided in family homes and was invariably considered a member of whatever family I stayed with. “You’re not a guest - you’re one of the boys of the house” was a refrain I almost always heard.

While these relationships were and are one of the greatest gifts of the fieldwork experience, they also raised some complex ethical issues. How could I justify entering into these friendships in the first place? Within these friendships, what were my responsibilities as a friend?

If the friendships actually existed beyond the research relationship, how was I supposed to relate to these people when they were not directly assisting with research? In what way were these relationships similar or different to my friendships with people in the United States? To answer these questions, there was no clear external regulation to comply with; I had to follow my own

67 moral conscience. Although I had a motivation to establish relationships with key individuals in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui who were important figures in each town’s street politics, I decided that I was not ethically comfortable feigning friendships for professional gain.

Therefore, I saw it as my moral responsibility to find meaning in each relationship and to cultivate an attitude of positivity, care, and compassion with each research contact. Tangibly, I sought to express this mindset in two ways.

First, I tried my best to ensure that each friendship was as balanced as possible, given the professional imperatives I had. On a basic level, this often involved helping research contacts improve their English, letting them use my personal electronic devices, or doing other small favors for them. On a deeper level, it involved an effort share as much of myself and my own experiences with research contacts as possible, given the deeply personal information they were sharing with me. For most research contacts, I was the first American they had ever formed any kind of relationship with and they were extremely curious about by my background growing up in the United States and how I came to learn Arabic. This aspect of my positionality gave me a privileged position and undoubtedly helped me secure interviews with people and invitations to stay at houses – people were often intrigued and curious about my background. As a result, conversations with research subjects were almost never interviews in the sense of knowledge flowing in one direction. They were lively discussions that involved exchanges of life histories, personal convictions, and real emotions.

Second, I sometimes offered research contacts discreet financial assistance. At the beginning, in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, I had tried to hire formal research assistants and fixers; these offers were invariably refused. The stated reason was that I was a “friend” or a

“brother’ of the research contacts and so the idea of accepting payment would have been an

68 insulting commodification of our relationship. Others also presented their refusal to accept payment as a matter of personal honor. Nonetheless, there were several circumstances where I was able to discreetly give financial assistance to some of the people who helped me most. In all circumstances where contacts in the field accepted money from me, I was sworn to secrecy about the arrangement, a commitment I intend to honor here. In the context of the friendships, this financial assistance was not presented as, requested as, or understood as payment but merely as a kind gesture stemming from an authentic personal connection. Since this was the basis on which the exchange was agreed to, I do not seek to dispute that understanding.

Third, I felt that it was important to invest in the friendships as friendships in and of themselves, outside of any research imperative. There were numerous contacts I met who helped me with research, but who I kept visiting regularly even after they had given me all the information I was interested in. I felt that it was important that I made a concerted effort to maintain these friendships and to acknowledge the reverence I had for these people and the difference they had made in my life. To this day, I am still in contact with many of the people who contributed comments to this study and hope that many of them will remain close friends for years to come.

Conclusion

The theories, methods, and sources that this study uses have all been selected with the goal of systematically studying the process through which the political past impacts the political present. Throughout the period of ethnographic data collection, research contacts in both Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui suggested that their particular political practices were derivative of deeply- held identities that had been passed down from previous generations. Nevertheless, as

Halbwachs and other scholars argue persuasively, historical memory narratives are not solely products of the past; they derive from the present as well. In this sense, the combination of ethnographic and comparative historical analysis that this study embraces is necessary to understand the interplay between past and present. How do narratives about the past impact contemporary behavior? What aspects of the divergent narratives in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui actually derive from real historical differences? Which aspects simply reflect differences in the present?

The first step towards understanding these dynamics is to demystify the common initial conditions that prevailed in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui during the 19th century, before the discovery of phosphates in the latter. Today, in both towns, contemporary political actors make reference to the pre-colonial nomadic era as an important period that has conditioned the contemporary political ethos. Yet, the meanings that people in each city ascribe to the 19th century diverge, with Sidi Bouzid residents emphasizing the way bedouin ancestors resisted centralized authority and Metlaoui residents emphasizing tribal solidarity and collective rights to material resources. Understanding the actual conditions that prevailed during this period can offer preliminary clues to understanding where the ideas came from in a way that allows the ethnographic analysis to be seen in a new light. Therefore, the next part of the analysis analyzes the history of the 19th century Hamama bedouins from whom contemporary residents of Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui descend.

Chapter Three The Hamama in the 19th Century and the Roots of Resistance

Introduction

In Sidi Bouzid, residents frequently reference the adversarial posture that the Hamama of the 19th century took towards the state as the defining element of their history and a key factor in conditioning people to accept jihadist salafism. In Metlaoui, by contrast, residents view the history of the 19th century through the lens of narrow clan history and argue that the strength of

“tribalism” as a social feature prevented jihadist salafists from making inroads. The simultaneous existence of these two narratives is paradoxical. In each town, people see the same history as imbuing contemporary society with different social features that have had diametrically opposite effects on jihadist salafist recruitment efforts. To understand where these ideas about the past from, it is necessary to understand social and political life among the Hamama bedouins during the pre-colonial era more objective.

The goal of this chapter is therefore to provide a different perspective on the 19th century through direct engagement with primary and secondary sources, rather than popular historical narratives. In doing so, the chapter draws a conceptual distinction between the analysis of historical memory and the more systematic analysis of tribal history. While the popular understandings of history may explain why people are motivated to mobilize in the ways that they do during the present era, understanding the origins of these motivations requires a more systematic approach to understanding the past.

Among scholars of the Middle East and North Africa, few subjects have aroused more scholarly interest - and more scholarly controversy - than tribalism. Within Arab social thought, scholars have sought to understand social and political problems with reference to kinship-based

71 social formations since Ibn Khaldun’s seminal Muqaddimah.1 In the same vein, early Western ethnographic work on the Arab World attributed many of the region’s particularities to its kinship-based social structure, with Gellner’s Muslim Society being the most prominent example of this paradigm.2 This approach has been heavily critiqued by postcolonial scholars. Asad argues that Gellner’s approach imposes frozen dramaturgical categories on the communities being studied without adequately delving into their lived experiences.3 Abu Lughod goes even further, suggesting that anthropological studies of the Middle East emphasizing tribalism do not simply lack nuance but reflect the inequitable positionality of western scholars in the field of power relations.4

This scholarly dispute points to a dilemma in the study of tribalism that this analysis of

19th century central Tunisian history must overcome. On the one hand, kinship-based social organization was a central feature of life for the Tunisian steppe inhabitants from whom contemporary residents of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui descend. On the other hand however, the critiques that postcolonial scholars offer are valid. Existing studies of tribalism often interpret the phenomenon through theoretically and politically problematic ideological lenses that obscure an objective understanding of how people actually lived. The way out of this impasse is to study tribalism on its own terms.

Using a combination of primary and secondary sources, this study seeks to examine tribalism among the Hamama from two complementary perspectives. Consistent with Asad’s

1 Khaldūn, Ibn, Franz Rosenthal, N. J. Dawood, and Bruce B. Lawrence. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. 2 Gellner, Ernest. Muslim Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 3 Asad, Talal. "The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam." Qui Parle 17, no. 2 (2009): 1-30. 4 Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Zones Of Theory In The Anthropology Of The Arab World." Annual Review of Anthropology 18, no. 1 (1989): 267-306.

72 guidelines, we will examine the material practices of subsistence and structures of land ownership in which tribalism was embedded. We will also examine however the way tribalism was represented discursively among the Hamama in an effort to determine how the material and ideational bases of tribalism intersected. Through this two-pronged approach, it becomes possible to recover the social meaning of tribalism during the pre-colonial period, which contemporary residents of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui contradictorily cite as the chief inspiration for their contemporary political practices.

The central argument of this chapter is that the Hamama of the 19th century did have a penchant for resisting centralized authority, but the impulse was tied to the material subsistence needs of life on the steppe. The inconsistent rainfall meant that in years of meager harvests, the

Hamama were forced to resort to raiding caravans and other tribes for subsistence, a practice that frequently brought them into conflict with the state. Raiding and resistance usually happened at the level of the sub-tribal clan units that are today valorized in Metlaoui as preeminent social affiliations. Despite this pragmatic orientation however, the cultural production of the Hamama during the 19th century suggests that resistance also had an important ideational dimension.

Poetry from this era valorizes confrontation with authority as the epitome of honor using language that parallels the descriptions of ‘asabiyya that contemporary residents of Sidi Bouzid presented during fieldwork. Such language masks the interest-based calculations that were at the heart of resistance. In this sense, the argument follows the same basic logic of Bourdieu’s analysis of gift-giving as fundamentally transactional but enmeshed in symbols that simultaneously construct it in the minds of social actors as an expression of honor.5

5 Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

The implication for the broader study is that both the tradition of resistance to centralized authority that people in Sidi Bouzid argue encourages jihadism and the materially-rooted clan solidarity that people in Metlaoui argue prevents jihadism are part of the shared 19th century history of the two towns. Therefore, while the study of the 19th century alone cannot explain the contemporary resonance of jihadist salafism, it does reorient the terms of the inquiry. To explain the present-day variance in jihadist recruitment success across the two cities, it becomes necessary to understand how different aspects of the 19th century ethos became salient in each location - which ultimately requires a historical analysis of later periods.

The chapter will proceed in five parts. The first part will analyze the governance structure and exercise of state authority in Tunisia during the 19th century and argue that the central steppe region where the Hamama dwelled was effectively an ungoverned periphery. The second part examines the ideology and practice of tribalism among the Hamama and shows how collective property and access to grazing land circumscribed the boundaries of tribal solidarity.

The third part demonstrates how the material imperatives of subsistence led to the emergence of both raiding and resistance as rational responses to the environmental conditions on the steppe.

The fourth part explores oral poetry and other cultural production from the 19th century in an effort to sketch the contours of the honor-based heroic discourse that governed the way agents understood their materially-conditioned resistance. The concluding section discusses the implications of this survey of 19th century history for understanding the popular historical narratives that residents of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui present today

Tribe and State in Pre-Colonial Tunisia: The Steppes as Ungoverned Periphery

In English, the small North African country where Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui are located is called Tunisia while its capital city is called Tunis. In Arabic however, there is no such distinction. The name Tunis is used to refer to both the capital city of Tunisia and to the country as a whole. This equivalence is emblematic of a contentious history of state formation during which various centralizing authorities based in the city of Tunis sought to forcefully bring the tribes in the county’s interior under their control as tribute-paying vassals. While the ancient wars in North Africa between the Roman Empire and the Numidian Berbers foreshadowed this dynamic, the governance structures and territorial boundaries that comprise the modern Tunisian state have their origins in the roughly three-century period of Ottoman rule in the country.

The initial Ottoman expansion into Tunisia during the 16th century had a relatively simple objective. At the time, the Ottoman Empire was locked in a bitter power struggle in the

Mediterranean with Habsburg Spain - the dominant naval power of the era.6 In an effort to secure ports in the western Mediterranean from which to counter Habsburg influence, the Ottomans formed an alliance with North African corsairs and with the help of the Ottoman Navy, conquered the cities of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis.7 In the immediate aftermath of the conquest of Tunis, the new rulers of the province did not concern themselves with subduing the vast interior region to the south and west of the city.8 As a corsair state, the political elite relied on piracy and raids against European shipping for personal enrichment. Soon however, the financial pressures of maintaining a regular army and funding a nascent bureaucracy created a need for an

6 Hess, Andrew C. "The Evolution of the Ottoman Seaborne Empire in the Age of the Oceanic Discoveries, 1453- 1525." The American Historical Review 75, no. 7 (1970): 1892. 7 Gurkan, Emrah Safa. "The Centre and the Frontier: Ottoman Cooperation with the North African Corsairs in the Sixteenth Century." Turkish Historical Review 1, no. 2 (2010): 125-63. 8 Abun-Nasr, Jamil. "The Beylicate in Seventeenth-Century Tunisia." International Journal of Middle East Studies 6, no. 01 (1975): 70-93.

75 additional source of revenue. Accordingly, under the leadership of the “Beys” - a Turkish word with a meaning akin to viceroy - the new state set about building a tax collection apparatus in the interior. This process gave Tunisia’s Beylical rulers a modicum of independence from the

Ottoman authorities based in Istanbul.9

The political logic behind the campaign to subdue the interior echoes aspects of the process of state formation described by by Tilly.10 The naval conflict with Habsburg Spain and the need to maintain an armed force in Tunis spurred the fledgling city state to broaden its tax base; this required an expansion of territorial control.11 In contrast to Europe however, where sedentary agriculture predominated across most of the continent and populations were physically concentrated and comparatively easy to subdue, the area that the Beylical authorities in Tunis sought to control consisted of three distinct climatological zones that presented governance challenges of varying difficulty levels. As a result, the project had uneven success across these three regions.

The northern region of Tunisia lies along the country’s Mediterranean coast and is bounded by the far eastern fringe of the Atlas mountains. The increased rainfall that came with this region’s geographic features has allowed inhabitants to practice sedentary farming for millenia; in antiquity, this northern part of Tunisia was known as Ifriqiyya - the bread basket of

Rome. As a consequence of the advanced agriculture, Tunisian and western scholars alike describe political control across the fertile north during the Ottoman era as strong.12 Two factors

9 Ibid. 10 Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992. Cambridge: Blackwell, 2015. 11 Abun-Nasser Jamil, “The Beylicate.” 12 Anderson, Lisa. The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. 39-46

76 account for this. First, the deep trade links that the tribes of the region had with Tunis, as well as the comparatively small sizes of the tribal units, made state hegemony easier to impose. Second, the sedentary nature of social organization rendered the basic task of revenue collection logistically easier. Fewer tribes maintained large stocks of horses and other technologies necessary for the protection of collective property in large, ungoverned spaces. Taxes were collected at the level of the individual family unit which was also the level at which land was held.13 This points to the existence of a well-developed bureaucracy with a strong record-keeping capacity - an important indicator of state capacity.

The far south of Tunisia overlaps with the northern edge of the Sahara desert - a landscape that is dry and flat, with occasional fields of rolling sand dunes. Because most areas of the desert cannot be inhabited for long, uninterrupted periods of time, social life in this region was concentrated around the cultivation of date palms in scattered clusters of oases that form an archipelago called the Jarid. On one level, the geographic isolation of the Jarid oasis region and its distance from Tunis gave its people a modicum of political independence. Local notables, many with religious legitimacy rooted in connections with prominent Sufi orders, oversaw most of the oases’ day-to-day affairs, including the crucially important management of water resources.14 On the other hand however, the geographic concentration of inhabitants made the region a prime target for the Tunis-based Beylical state during the annual mahalla or tax collection expedition. 19th century records show that the Jarid region paid more in tax than even

Charrad, M. States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 13 Valensi, Lucette. Tunisian Peasants in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 229-241. 14 Clancy-Smith, Julia A. Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters: Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

77 the fertile north - evidence of an inequity made possible only by the strength of the state’s coercive apparatus and the comparative ease of controlling the sedentary oasis inhabitants.15 In the sense of paying tribute, the Jarid was firmly incorporated into the Tunis-based state.

Between Tunisia’s fertile north and southern oases lies a vast, semi-arid steppe. It is this region where Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui are located and with which this study is most concerned.

In contrast to other parts of Tunisia, the steppe region proved remarkably difficult to subdue.

During the Ottoman period, the inhabitants of the steppe were nomads who maintained their livelihoods through a primarily pastoral existence. Parallel to this mode of subsistence, the region’s inhabitants were organized into large tribal confederations that maintained lordship over large swaths of territory - a marked contrast to the fragmented patterns of land ownership at the nuclear family level that prevailed in the northern region.16 The Hamama - from whom contemporary residents of both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui claim descent - were the largest of these tribes and developed a particular reputation for their rejection of political control by outsiders.17 Nevertheless, the penchant for resistance to centralization was a common feature that the Hamama’s neighbors like the Frechich, Majer, and Bani Zid also shared.18

While the motivations these tribes had for resistance require further investigation, their ability to defy state edicts stemmed from from three unique properties of the steppe way of life.19

15 Valensi. Tunisian Peasants, 1985. 229-241. 16 Ibid. 61-110. 17 Perry, Amos. Carthage and Tunis, past and Present: In Two Parts. Providence, RI: Providence Press, Printers, 1869. Raynaud, E. Pellissier De. Description De La Regence De Tunis. Paris: Impr. Impériale, 1853. 18 Henia, Abdelhamid. Tūnis Al-ʻUthmānīyah, 2012.36-40 19 While not a theorist of Tunisia, the anthropologist Phillip Carl Salzman outlines a number of facets of pastoral nomadic life that give such tribes an advantage in resisting state centralization. See: Salzman, Philip Carl. Pastoralists: Equality, Hierarchy, and the State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004.

First, the large tribal units gave the region’s inhabitants an ability to coordinate collective action that the more atomistic societies of the north lacked. Second, the constant mobility of the region’s people and the isolated existence of the tribes’ many subdivisions complicated the physical task of extracting revenue and punishing tax evaders. Third, the pastoral existence led the tribes of the steppe to maintain large stocks of horses and to develop abilities in combat. The initial impetus for this militaristic posture was a desire to protect herds from the raids of other tribes in the large ungoverned spaces where tribesmen grazed their flocks. During tax collection season however, the skills in horsemanship proved an asset for those who sought to defy the state’s extractive apparatus.

Given this capacity for resistance, the Beys in Tunis adopted a political strategy in their dealings with the central steppe tribes that sought to balance coercion and cooption. Officially, they claimed the tribal lands as an integral part of the regency and sent a yearly tax collection expedition into the steppe to extract tribute. To aid this process, the authorities gave tribal notables formal positions in the government bureaucracy and charged them with collecting taxes.20 On the other hand however, they gave the tribes in this region special privileges. First, the people of the steppe bore a significantly lower tax burden than their counterparts in the fertile north and southern oasis regions - particularly with respect to the tithe or annual head tax.21

Second, the Beylical authorities often enlisted the help of the steppe tribes - particularly the

Hamama - in the tax collection expedition into the southern oasis region.22 This had the effect of giving these tribes an important source of income and cementing their ties with the Ottoman

20 Dabusi, Muhammad. Qaadat Al-Muqaawima Al-Musalliha Fil-Bilaad Al-Tunisiyya 'Aam 1881. Tunis: Markaz Al-Nasahr Al-Jaam'ai, 2014. 21 Tlili, Mostafa. Mintaqat Gafsa Wal-Hamama Fi 'Ahad Muhammad Al-Saadiq Bey: 1859 - 1881. Tunis: Daar Saamid Lil-Nashar Wal-Tawzi', 2004. 185-208. 22 Ibid. 212-220.

79 regency. The state’s interest in asserting authority over the central steppe tribes was largely linked to commercial interests. Beyond the revenue that could be extracted from the nomads, the roads linking the southern oases to the capital and Mediterranean ports passed through their territory. Maintaining a relationship with the nomads was necessary to keep the roads open and ensure the flow of commerce through the regency.

Consistent with the narrative of a “history of resistance” that contacts in Sidi Bouzid proclaimed during field research, the central steppe did serve as the wellspring of numerous tribal uprisings against the state during the Ottoman period - the two most prominent being at the dawn and dusk of Ottoman rule. In 1535, the year after the initial Ottoman conquest of Tunis

(and the same year Tunis was wrested back from the Ottomans for a time by Hapsburg Spain), an alliance of central steppe tribes and religious brotherhoods proclaimed a short-lived independent state with its capital in the central steppe city of Kairouan.23 In 1864, less than two decades before the establishment of the French protectorate in Tunis in 1881, an uprising of central steppe tribes angry over taxes imposed by the 1861 constitution brought the Beylical state to its knees. In addition to these large-scale tribal revolts, there were many instances of smaller-scale resistance to the annual tax collection expedition.24

Despite this correspondence between collective memory and historical events however, the popular historical claims that contemporary residents in Sidi Bouzid offer need to be read with skepticism. Sidi Bouzid residents did not simply assert that rebellions in the 19th century occurred; they asserted that their ancestors had an essential cultural quality that made them unable to tolerate oppression and thus more likely to support jihadist ideology. Some even

23 Henia, Abdelhamid. Tūnis Al-ʻUthmānīyah, 2012. 86-92 24 Tlili, Mintaqat Gafsa, 2004. 224-268.

80 expressed the idea that the penchant for resisting authority was a racial characteristic embedded in their genetic inheritance from the Arab Bani Hilal nomads who swept across North Africa in the 11th century. In the popular narratives, the 19th century rebellions are only important insofar as they serve as evidence of an essential anti-centralization sensibility that the ancestors bequeathed them with - either genetically or culturally. Evaluating this more ambitious cultural claim requires us to delve into the lived experience of the Hamama nomads whom people in Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui claim descent from. How did they conceptualize their relationships with each other and with the state? What were their day-to-day concerns? And how did they view their own motivations for resisting authority? The remainder of this chapter seeks to engage with these questions.

Tribal Solidarity in the Lands of the Hamama: Between Collective Property and Kinship

Most of our collective knowledge of the Hamama’s pre-colonial history comes from three kinds of sources: 1) records from the Ottoman authorities based in Tunis that document the tribe’s dealings with the beylical state during the 19th century 2) the accounts of colonial ethnographers dispatched to Tunisia around the time of the conquests that recorded the oral traditions through which the Hamama understood their own history and 3) oral poetry recorded by Tunisian ethnographers in the years after independence but dated to the pre-colonial era.

While none of these types of sources alone can give a comprehensive picture, together they provide a means for drawing inferences about how the ancestors of contemporary inhabitants of

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui lived and what motivated the different sorts of political action they engaged in. This provides a basis for assessing the narratives that citizens offer about the historical basis for the resonance of jihadism today.

The early history of the Hamama belongs to the realm of myth; the only information we have about the tribe’s founding comes from the orally-transmitted legends that colonial ethnographers collected during the late 19th century. These accounts have several points of agreement. The narrations generally agree that the Hamama are descendants of Arab nomads from Western Asia who came to North Africa as part of the Bani Hilal migrations of the 11th century.25 Most describe a two-way migration, whereby the Hamama initially migrated to the far west of North Africa before returning eastward to settle in the central Tunisian steppe. All narrations assert the existence of an eponymous ancestor named Hamam from whom all

Hamama descend.

Elements of the narrative may have a basis in history. Most historians agree that the Bani

Hilal migration did occur and was the key force behind the cultural and linguistic Arabization of

North Africa. While the Hamama are not mentioned as a branch of the Bani Hilal in Ibn

Khaldun’s seminal study of the tribe, the central Tunisian steppe region where the Hamama encamped is also the area that the Bani Hilal-affiliated Riyah tribe inhabited in the years after the migration, causing some to speculate that Hamama are an offshoot of the Riyah.26 Even more strikingly, recent scientific research seems to confirm that the Hamama’s descendants do have

Middle Eastern ancestry. A 2012 genetic survey of Tunisia found that inhabitants of Sidi Bouzid and the neighboring steppe governorate of Kasserine have a higher concentration of genetic

25 Khawaalidiyya, Daawi. Al-Hamama Awlad Bouyahiya: Fil-Qarn Al-Taas'a 'Ashar Min Khilaal Makaatib Al- "Gayyaad". Tunis, 1995. 26-27 Valensi. Tunisian Peasants, 1985, 29-37. Pellissier, Description De La Regence, 1853. 26 Khawaalidiyya, Al-Hamama, 26-26.

82 mutations common to the Arabian peninsula compared to their counterparts in other regions of

Tunisia.27 These results suggest that the legends possess a kernel of historicity.

In other respects however, the mythological accounts are problematic. While as a political entity, the Hamama as a whole were nominally under the control of the same gayyid or tribal chief, in practice, the most important social unit for lay tribesmen was the sub-tribal clan unit. From the ethnographic accounts, it appears that different clans embraced different narratives about the tribe’s founding and the relations between its various branches. A narrative attributed to the Awlad Salaama clan for example, relays that the Hamama tribe originated in

Greater Syria and is comprised of six principal subdivisions, all of which are named for different great grandsons of Hamam; the Awlad Salaama are presented as one of these six principal branches. By contrast, the Awlad Redhouan clan presented a narrative to colonial ethnographers that traces the tribe’s origins to the Arabian Peninsula’s Hejaz region.28 In this account, the

Hamama have only three principal subdivisions: the Awlad Redhouan, the Awlad Mu’ammar, and the Awlad ‘Aziz - all of whom are cast as grandsons of Hamam. In this narration, the Awlad

Salaama are cast as a mere subdivision of the Awlad Radhouan.

Incidentally, the three main subdivisions that the Awlad Redhouan describe are the same three divisions that the Beylical state acknowledged in their efforts to appoint tribal notables to positions in the state bureaucracy.29 This “canonization” of the tribal narrative by the state seems to reflect the clan’s preeminent political position: the Awlad Redhouan inhabited the most fertile lands of the Hamama’s territory during the nineteenth century and monopolized the position of

27 Romdhane, Lilia, Rym Kefi, Hela Azaiez, Nizar Ben Halim, Koussay Dellagi, and Sonia Abdelhak. "Founder Mutations in Tunisia: Implications for Diagnosis in North Africa and Middle East." Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases 7, no. 1 (2012): 52. doi:10.1186/1750-1172-7-52. 28 Valensi. Tunisian Peasants, 1985. 20-25 29 Khawaalidiyya, Al-Hamama, 87-98

83 gayyid or tribal chief. Because of the way the Awlad Redhouan’s narrative conflicts with those of other clans however, the historian Lucette Valensi infers that the narratives provided to ethnographers in the 19th century are not objective historical accounts but rather cultural artifacts that reflect the interests of the various sub-tribal clan units.30 If this is true however, the notion of shared lineage as the primary basis for tribal solidarity becomes difficult to sustain. To understand why tribal and clan distinctions in the lands of the Hamama carried the weight they did, it is necessary to transcend the mythological discourse of tribalism and to examine the tangible social and economic roles that kinship-based units actually played.

Among the Hamama, tribalism was intimately linked to the imperative of subsistence.

Given the inconsistent rainfall on the steppe, inhabitants of the region generally sustained their livelihood using a combination of agriculture and pastoralism - the latter being the dominant practice.31 During the rainy winter months, the Hamama would plant and harvest grain, often in an ad-hoc disorganized fashion. During the dry summer months, they would move with their herds to higher-elevation areas that could support the grasses their animals subsisted on year round. The maintenance of this lifestyle required consistent access to large swaths of topographically diverse land and the means to secure the land against predation from hostile actors. In this context, tribalism provided the principles of coordination and governance that made the use of the land possible.

For Hamama tribesmen, individual land ownership was comparatively rare. Instead, the large swaths of territory that the Hamama controlled were divided among the various sub-tribal clan units, each of which made traditional claims to their respective territories that were widely

30 Valensi. Tunisian Peasants, 1985. 18-20. 31 Ibid. 66.

84 acknowledged.32 In this sense, access to land was generally not a function of one’s personal wealth but rather of his membership in a clan. For example, the Awlad Bouyahia - the dominant clan in Metlaoui - encamped in a high-elevation region near the present-day town of Redeyef during the summer, only to return to the Metlaoui region during the winter.33 The historical claim of the Awlad Bouyahia to the stretch of land that includes Metlaoui and Redeyef and the way other clans acknowledged this claim was what made the migrations possible. Because the basic practices of subsistence were integrated into the tribal structure, one’s very survival depended on his relationship to his clan and tribal companions.

In light of the preceding genealogical discussion, the integration of tribalism and subsistence suggests that one of two possibilities is true. It is indeed possible that clans had pre- existing solidarities tied to literal common ancestry that provided the basis for cooperation on subsistence practices. It is also possible however that unrelated families living in geographic proximity to each other first cooperated on subsistence practices and then later created a mythology to justify that cooperation based on a claim of common descent. A closer look at the genealogical accounts different clans give strongly augers in favor of this second possibility.

In discussions with 19th century ethnographers, clans acknowledged the existence of two types of constituent groups: “authentic” sub-clans said to be biologically related to the Hamama and “affiliated” sub-clans who did not possess Hamami blood but still enjoyed the economic and political privileges of membership in the clan. Interestingly, there seems to have been a lack of consistency in the narratives about which groups were genealogically Hamami and which ones were simply affiliated.34 In her study of 19th century Hamama genealogical narratives for

32 Ibid. 33 Personal Interviews. Metlaoui and Redeyef, August 2015. 34 Valensi. Tunisian Peasants, 1985. 20-37/

85 example, Valensi shows that the Awlad Slijan, Awlad ‘Akrim, and Awlad Farhan clans are listed in some narratives as immediate descendants of Hamam but in other narratives as associated groups with no blood ties to the Hamama apart from their political relationship with the tribe.35

To complicate the picture even more, the 20th century Hamami genealogist Ali al-Saalih bin

'Amaara al-'Azri provides a totally different narrative of the connections between various clans on the basis of oral interviews carried out with clan elders across Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa.36 In al-

’Azri’s narrative, many of the clans identified as being blood descendants of Hamam in the 19th century narratives that Valensi presents are cast as merely associated clans with no authentic genealogical connection.

Given these inconsistencies - it seems most likely that clans coalesced for reasons other than shared genetic heritage and only later developed a mythology centered around purported common descent to define the political and economic relationship that had developed spontaneously. We can see how this arrangement might have come about through the example of the Zawaari’a - a branch of a clan called the ‘Akarima that oral histories acknowledge as

Hamama-associated rather than of Hamama blood.37 As early as the 19th century, the ‘Akarima have been associated with the Awlad Mu’ammar clan and during fieldwork residents of Metlaoui insisted that the ‘Akarima - largely concentrated in the nearby mining city of Mdhilla - were a branch of the Awlad Mu’ammar.38 Despite this connection, one of the branches of the ‘Akaarima

35 Ibid. 36 Al-'Azri, 'Ali Saalih Bin 'Amaara. Al-Ilmaam Bi 'Urush Bani Hamaam. Edited by Asmaa' Khawalidiyya. Tunis, 2011. 37 Ibid. 38 Al'Akrami, Al-'Arabi. Min Dhaakirat Mujaahid Al-'Arabi Bin Ahmed 'Akrami. Tunis: Dar Aqwaas Lil-Nashar, 1997. Personal Interview, Metlaoui. February 2016.

86 called the Zawaari’a has been settled in the area of Meknassi in the southern part of Sidi Bouzid since pre-colonial times - the historical homeland of the Awlad ‘Aziz clan.39

Members of the the Zawaari’a interviewed for this study in Sidi Bouzid acknowledged their ancestry with the ‘Akaarima, but proudly proclaimed that they were part of the Awlad

‘Aziz. The feeling seems to be mutual. During a spontaneous meeting witnessed during fieldwork between an older member of the Awlad ‘Aziz and a young Sidi Bouzid resident from the Zawaari’, the former repeatedly referred to the latter as a “cousin” and emphasized their supposed genealogical connection.40 The example of the Zawaari’a therefore illustrates how a relationship of economic cooperation that emerges out of residence in close physical proximity becomes expressed after several generations as a literal kinship relationship that influences the way people relate to each other in their daily lives.

Ultimately, this discussion of tribal genealogy and its relationship to subsistence practices helps us to see the relationship between the material imperatives behind survival and the ideology of tribalism. In the lands of the Hamama, tribalism was an ideology of economic and political cooperation first and foremost that seems to have brought genealogically disparate groups together. The mythology that emerged to define this relationship was not an objective representation of the historical reality; nonetheless, it served the function of reinforcing the underlying social reality that gave rise to it.

This does not mean however that the claims of literal kinship that undergirded the tribal discourse were understood by individual social actors as convenient fictions. Given the extent to which the ideology, once established, actually caused clans to participate in collective practices

39 Al-’Azri, al-Ilmaam, 2011. 40 Ethnographic Participant Observation. Sidi Bouzid, January 2016

87 together and the highly detailed - if contradictory - oral traditions that tribesmen seem to have committed to memory, what seems most plausible is a phenomenology of tribalism analogous to what Bourdieu describes as “transfiguration.”41 In Bourdieu’s formulation, the instrumentally rational, transactional nature of gift-giving is hidden even from the very people who engage in the practice. Instead, social actors promote an honor-based understanding of the process that they seem to sincerely believe. Similarly, the material and economic imperatives that spurred large extended families living in the central Tunisan steppe to band together with their neighbors seem to have been hidden from the social actors - replaced with an ideology of literal kinship. In this way - material needs spurred the emergence of a symbolic system that, once established, could motivate the practices that fulfilled those needs without making reference to them. As the remainder of this chapter will show, the same relationship between material subsistence needs and the symbolism of tribal solidarity was at work in the Hamama’s resistance to the centralization and tax-collection projects of the pre-colonial Beylical state.

Nomadic Subsistence and the Material Basis of Resistance

The combination of crude agriculture and pastoral nomadism that the Hamama practiced afforded them maximal flexibility in adapting to the varying degrees of harshness that defined life on the steppe. Nevertheless, even this multi-faceted subsistence system could not sustain life for the Hamama during years of little rainfall. During dryer years, yields of wheat and barley were dramatically reduced and in the higher elevation areas of the Hamama’s territory, the grasses that animals subsisted on did not grow in significant enough numbers to sustain the

41 Bourdieu, Outline, 2015.

88 herds.42 During such years, the decreased agricultural output pushed the Hamama to the brink of starvation and towards a search for an alternative mode of subsistence.

For wealthier members of the Hamama, many traveled to the fertile regions of northern

Tunisia, purchased land, and settled there.43 The existence of the surname “Hamami” in the contemporary governorate of Siliana due north of Sidi Bouzid is a testament to this history.

Other less wealthy members of the Hamama would travel north to work as khamaasa - landless, contracted peasants who would harvest lands on behalf of their owners in exchange for 20% of the yields.44 Nevertheless, most inhabitants of rural Tunisia viewed khamaasa work as a last- resort engagement that should only be undertaken when there was no other alternative - difficult and undesirable, if not dishonorable.45 In this context, many Hamama sought to procure resources through different raiding practices - all of which were typically carried out at the level of the sub-tribal clan unit.

First, Hamama clans frequently conducted raids against the more economically prosperous but far less well-armed sedentary peoples who lived in their vicinity - particularly the archipelagos of oases near the southern fringe of the Hamama’s territory.46 In this context, the attempts by the Beylical state to enlist the Hamama in the annual tax collection expedition in the oasis region can be read as an attempt by the state to reap economic benefits and place an official veneer on raids that would have occurred anyway Second, the Hamama frequently plundered the caravans of neighboring tribes - particularly the Bani Zid, Frechich, and Maajer. These raids

42 Tlili, Mintaqat Gafsa, 2004. 18-25. 89-96 43 Ibid. 96-101. 44 Timoumi, Hadi. Al-Isti'maar Al-Ra'smaali Wal-Tashkilat Al-Ijtimaa'ia Ma Qabla Al-Ra'smaaliyya: Al-Kaadihun Al-Khamaasa Fi Al-Aryaaf Al-Tunisiyya. Sfax: Dar Muhammad 'Ali Al-Haami, 1999. 45 Ibid. 46 Tlili, Mintaqat Gafsa, 2004. 235-237.

89 were typically aimed at taking possession of livestock but had the effect of disrupting commerce in the regency.47 Finally, their common tribal identity notwithstanding, Hamama clans often engaged in raids against each other that had the similar goal of capturing livestock. The existence of this practice highlights the way the sub-tribal clan unit, rather than the broader tribe, was the dominant affiliation.

Although the Hamama’s raids did not usually target the state’s institutions or representatives directly, their behavior nonetheless brought them into conflict with the Beylical authorities. Maintaining the free flow of commerce throughout the regency was vitally important to the state, as the taxation of that trade provided an important source of revenue. To the extent that the Hamama’s raids threatened the stability of these trade routes, they undermined the state’s authority and threatened its economic interests in the interior. Accordingly, the Beylical authorities frequently launched punitive military excursions in the interior with the goal of punishing the individuals and clans responsible. These punitive expeditions often provoked full scale uprisings against Beylical power among the Hamama clans whose members had been most implicated in the raids as tribesmen supported their kin whose actions had put them in the state’s crosshairs.48 Presumed kinship ties - no matter how fantastical or mythological - allowed what otherwise would have been simple criminal matters to become flashpoints for political unrest.

In addition to unrest over the state’s punitive responses to the Hamama’s raids, the clans of the Hamama often engaged in direct revolts against the tax collection expedition of the state for other reasons. In 1864, in response to a doubling of the annual head tax, a mass revolt broke out among the tribes of the central steppe under the leadership of Ali Ben Ghadhahem - a notable

47 Ibid. 229-235. 48 Ibid. 253

90 of the Maajer tribe which borders the Hamama’s territory.49 Ultimately, the Hamama were persuaded by the Beylical authorities to turn on Ben Ghadhahem’s forces in exchange for the right to plunder the neighboring tribes who had supported the uprising with impunity.50

Nevertheless, when the revolt first broke out, the Hamama joined it in full force. Leaders of the

Hamama were present at the revolt’s planning meetings and the Hamama’s horsemen joined the revolutionary brigades.51 The dynamics that pushed the central steppe tribes to revolt were similar and relate to the same resistance posture that emerged from the harsh climate and pastoral nomadic lifestyle that dominated the area.

The preceding analysis has shown that there was a material context behind the Hamama’s raiding and resistance that made the behavior understandable in rational terms. However, merely asserting the existence of material incentives does not in and of itself demonstrate that those incentives motivated the behavior. We can however find convincing direct evidence of these material motivations in the writings of the Tunisian historian Mustafa Tlili concerning the geographical variation in raids across the Hamama’s territory.52 Although all of the Hamama’s historical homeland can be broadly classified as semi-arid steppe, the topographical diversity of the territory meant that some southern, lower elevation regions received less rainfall than others.

During difficult years, the threat of starvation in these exceptionally arid regions was even more pronounced than in the rest of the Hamama’s territory.

As the material explanation for raiding and resistance would predict, the clans who dwelled in these more arid regions like Awlad Bouyahia and the Awlad Abdelkrim were the

49 Boudhina, Mohamed. Ali Ben Ghadhaahem: 1229 - 1284 Hijri 1814-1867 Miladi. Tunis: Manshuraat Mohamed Boudhina, 1995. 50 Tlili, Mintaqat Gafsa, 2004. 216-220.. 51 Ibid. 250-251 52 Ibid. 227-229.

91 most prone to raiding and resistance to centralized authority.53 Additionally, in years of meager harvests, raids reportedly increased across the Hamama’s territory.54 This at least suggests that differences in material incentives are responsible for the variance in raids - which points to a material motivation.

Were one to return to the 19th century and develop a model to predict which clans among the Hamama would be the most restive, knowledge of the climatological and by implication the material environment might be all that is necessary. Nevertheless, to develop an understanding of the Hamama’s resistance during the 19th century, one must go beyond mere analysis of variance and engage with the way the practice was constructed and understood among the agents. This requires an analysis of the cultural production that was connected with the tribe’s resistance posture.

Honor, Piety, and the Ideological Transfiguration of Resistance

In the earlier discussion of tribal solidarity and its relationship to collective land ownership among the Hamama, we saw how despite being a materially-motivated practice, tribalism was nested in elaborate kinship-based mythology that gave the practice meaning in the eyes of social actors. In order to cooperate, geographically proximate families had to rhetorically construct themselves as literal blood relatives, even when no specific evidence existed to justify the link. When it came to the practice of resistance among the Hamama, a similar relationship between the material and the mythological can be observed. Although the basis for the practice was the material imperative of subsistence, an elaborate mythology emerged to give meaning to

53 Ibid. 54 Ibid.

92 resistance. This mythology helped to sustain the motivation to forcefully preserve clan and tribal independence from state encroachment.

At the core of the mythology of resistance among the Hamama was a representation of the relationship with the Ottoman state as one of voluntary cooperation between politically equal, autonomous entities. Such a posture represented a repudiation of the state’s official view: that the tribesmen of the interior were citizens and subjects of the state, unconditionally mandated to abide by the Bey’s dictates. One justification the Hamama gave for their claim to substantive political independence from the Ottoman Beylik, was the assertion that their ultimate loyalty was to God and to Islam, rather than to any ruler unconditionally. Insofar as the ruler abided by the dictates of Islam, they could use their discretion and abide by his dictates. The unspoken assumption within the discourse however was that were the ruler to deviate from the tenets of

Islam, the Hamama were under no obligation to follow his commands. It was this unspoken assumption that may have inspired the 19th century Hamama proverb: “the saddle, the bridle, and Islam for subsistence.”55

One can observe the cultural manifestation of this ambivalent attitude towards political authority directly in two late 19th century poems written by members of the Hamama that convey opposing sentiments within a common discursive scheme. The first is a praise poem from the 1870’s that was recited in honor of Khayreddine Pasha - the Grand Vizier of the Tunisian

Beylical state. An Ottoman official of circassian origin, Khayreddine spearheaded an ambitious reform program in the 1860’s and 1870’s that earned him a reputation as a great modernizer.

Inspired by the tanzimat reforms that were underway in the rest of the Ottoman Empire,

55 Khawaalidiyya, Al-Daawi. Qabilat Al-Hamama Fi Al-Nasf Al-Awwal Min Al-Qarn Al-'Ashrin (1881-1950). Sidi Bouzid: Donia Print, 2010.

Khayreddine introduced a new constitution in Tunisia and sought to limit the autonomy of the central steppe tribes in an effort to shore up the state’s tax base. His political objective was to limit the ability of tribes like the Hamama to engage in exactly the sort of resistance they had gained a reputation for. Nevertheless, in a poem dated from the 1870’s, an unnamed member of the Hamama exhorts God to protect Khayreddine in flowing classical Arabic56

Give the minister complete safety – I refer to Khayreddine Favor him at the moment he meets you – And make him among the righteous ones Give him help in everything that he desires – For you are the greatest helper Cause him to make wise decisions – In accordance with the sunnah57 of the Prophet Use him to guide all who disobey you – And strengthen your devotees with his hand Give him victory over every challenge he faces – And use him to destroy the corrupters Bless his son – And protect both of them for the sake of the Muslims And let us enjoy him throughout his existence – And protect him at all times Give him magnificent protection – And in hardship, guide him to the righteous path Defeat and conquer his enemies – And protect him from the gaze of the covetous

As would be expected in a praise poem, the author is unequivocal in his support for

Khayreddine’s rule and his stewardship of Tunisia. The use of a refined classical Arabic largely incomprehensible by the Hamama masses suggests that the poet has been unusually educated and is likely close to the tribal notables whom the Beylical state sought to co-opt as official administrators. Nevertheless, the poem does provide a clear picture of how political authority during the period was conceptualized by the people of the Tunisian interior. Although in practice, the Ottoman efforts to subdue the central steppe tribes were motivated by the imperative of maintaining the state’s coffers, as the poem makes clear, the tribes understood their nominal obedience to the Bey as a function of his status as a religious authority. While such a discourse of legitimacy endowed state authority with a sanctity, it also endowed it with a degree

56 Khawaalidiyya, Al-Hamama, 1995. 144-145 57 Sunnah refers to the habits and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.

94 of conditionality. In the poem, God is taken as the ultimate sovereign; the ruler is a proxy for

God only insofar as he follows the sunnah of the prophet and is among the righteous.

The inherent conditionality of the Hamama’s acknowledgment of the Bey’s role as a religious authority is apparent when one observes the way the relationship is conceived in a second poem - this time from the midst of the French invasion of Tunisia. In 1881, under duress, the Bey had signed the Treaty of Bardo, which gave official legal cover to the colonial takeover of the country. That same year, a Hamama poet from Sidi Bouzid wrote a poem exhorting the tribes to resist the invasion and lambasting the Bey for his collusion with the colonizer:

Oh Ummah of our Prophet! Oh you who have demanded jihad - join us! The infidels have oppressed us. If you’re with us, we'll make the invaders scream. Allah dishonors the one who has sold us to the Christians and dishonored us. None of [the Bey’s] commands compel us, for we are not prostitutes. Everything he asked of us we gave. With every bullet in every battle. For the sake of the followers of our prophet. We followed all orders that required bravery. Until he betrayed and sabotaged his religion. And took the infidels as his protectors.58

The poem is written in a colloquial, bedouin Arabic that would have been widely understood among ordinary members of the Hamama - indicating the poem was intended for mass consumption. Despite its expression of sentiments diametrically opposed to the previously- discussed ode to Khayreddine, the poem also acknowledges the Bey’s role as a religious authority - only this time, it justifies resistance to the Bey on the basis of his presumed failure to execute this role properly. Embedded in the poem’s rhetoric is an affirmation of the tribes’ prerogative to evaluate and where necessary hold the Bey accountable for his failure to discharge his responsibilities to the faithful. In the discourse, whatever relationship the Hamama choose to adopt on the basis of this prerogative is taken as sacred. In this way, the Hamama’s military

58 Belhoula, Muhammad Ali. Al-Jihaad Al-Tunisi Fi Al-Sha'r Al-Sha'bi: 1855-1955: Maa'at 'Aam Min Taarikh Tunis. Tunis: Al-Ittihaad Al-'Aam Lil Shughul, 1978. 58.

95 service to the Bey is described in the poem as having been undertaken voluntarily “for the sake of the followers of [the] prophet.” The uprising against the French however is also taken as an effort to protect the faith community in the face of the Bey’s abandonment of his religious duty.

By asserting their right to evaluate the Bey’s comportment with the religion, the Hamama assert their substantive political independence.

In light of this rhetoric, it appears that the material, subsistence-based motivations for resistance have become enmeshed in an elaborate symbolic system that frames confrontation with authority as the quintessence of honor and religious fealty. This parallels the process that

Bourdieu describes as transfiguration, whereby the material basis for a practice is expressed in an ideology that de-emphasizes the material element. Nevertheless, two amendments to the

Bourdieuian position are necessary in the case of the Hamama’s resistance.

First, the existence of an honor-based discourse through which the Hamama framed their resistance to centralized authority does not mean that they were consciously ignorant of the material component of their grievances. Other poems from the 19th century are rife with condemnations of the state’s predatory economic policies. In one particularly poignant 19th century poem from the region of Ksar near Gafsa, the author writes in a highly colloquial Arabic:

"This bey is ruled by money. His deeds make even the infant grow gray hair. He sold the nation to collaborators. The only people who side with him are crooked stooges."59 Other Hamami poetry complains of the corruption of state tax collectors, bitterly castigating the authorities for demanding that people “pay until death.”60 In this sense, and perhaps in a departure from

59 Ibid. 38. 60 Khawaalidiyya, Qabilat al-Hamama, 2010.

Bourdieu, the honor and piety-based based discourse seems not to be masking the material dimension of resistance, but rather imbuing it with an additional layer of meaning.

Second, asserting that the Hamama’s resistance against centralized authority was a materially-motivated practice understood through a discourse of piety and honor does not mean that the piety and honor-based discourse had no independent impact on behavior. This can be seen in the way the Hamama forged connections with holy men in the Jarid who, while lacking the coercive power of the state, helped the Hamama maintain their claim to piety independent of their obedience to the Bey. The Jarid oasis region due south of the Hamama’s territory was one of North Africa’s most important centers for Sufism and the home to numerous saints and holy men, most of whom lived surrounded by followers in a zaawiya or Sufi lodge. There is evidence that the Hamama formed relationships with the saints of the Jarid and often deferred to them, even when doing so would undermine their material interests.

In one ethnographic account from 1860, a caravan of merchants and pilgrims traveling from eastern Tunisia to the Jarid found their path blocked by an encampment of Hamama tribesmen.61 The Hamama were known to camp on roads in preparation for the raiding and plundering activity they had become infamous for. In this instance however, the travelers successfully gained safe passage towards the Jarid after sending an emissary to Sidi Mustafa bin

‘Azuz - an important sheikh of the Rahmaniyya Sufi order in the oasis city of Nafta.62 Sidi

Mustafa had apparently liaised with the Hamama tribesmen and caused them to stand down.

Across the interior regions of North Africa, a system of beliefs was prevalent during the late 19th century which held that holy men like Sidi Mustafa possessed baraka - an Arabic word

61 Clancy-Smith, Julia A. Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters: Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.139-140. 62 Ibid.

97 for blessing that connotes a type of mystical, spiritual energy granted directly from God to certain key individuals.63 Holy men were able to infuse others with their baraka by receiving them as visitors, accepting their tribute, or simply by forming relationships with them. The incident described in the ethnographic account suggests that the Hamama’s belief in baraka was powerful enough to trump the material imperative of raiding caravans. That the source of baraka came from a wellspring of religious authority outside the bounds of the ruling apparatus and far from the geographical center of state power gave the belief system a powerful synergy with the

Hamama’s resistance posture. In this way, both the incentives of the material environment and the ideological system that emerged in concert with that environment motivated behavior in a self-reinforcing way.

The Moral Polity of the Nomad

The paradox that emerges from this discussion of resistance among the Hamama is the way practices that are understandable in terms of instrumental rationality coexisted with a mythology that represented those practices as the epitome of honor and heroism. To the external observer, mere knowledge of the material pressures related to subsistence can explain why and where rebellions against centralized authority occurred. Nevertheless, as the Hamama’s 19th century cultural production shows, resistance to centralized authority took on a kind of sacred quality, particularly when it was justified with reference to religious symbols. This raises the question however of why the heroic discourses that accompanied the practices of resistance

63 Eickelman, Dale F. Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Hammoudi, Abdellah. Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

98 among the Hamama existed at all. Put differently, if the material environment was what conditioned the behavior, what extra purchase does studying the accompanying cultural production give us?

The existing social science literature on peasants and rural revolts/revolutions offers a compelling set of frameworks that point towards answers to these questions. One of the enduring features of the 20th century has been the emergence of revolutionary movements in rural peasant communities, rather than among the urban workers that Marx and Engels identified as a natural revolutionary class. In concert with this empirical phenomenon, a rich social scientific literature has emerged that examines the causes and mechanisms of peasant rebellion, and its relationship to the material conditions of agrarian subsistence.64 Of particular interest for this study of resistance and subsistence among the Hamama is the contribution of James Scott on peasant politics and moral economy.65

For Scott, the most salient feature of peasant society is the constant threat of starvation, given the variable yields of agrarian life from year to year. To ensure survival, Scott reasons that peasants come to embrace moral norms of reciprocity and subsistence that, if violated by landlords, spur rebellion. In essence, these norms contain the expectation that landlords will distribute the bounty of harvests equitably among peasants so as to ensure a basic level of

64 See: Wolf, Eric R. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Migdal, Joel. Peasants, Politics, and Revolution: Pressures toward Political and Social Change in the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Popkin, Samuel L. The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Scott, James C. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Skocpol, Theda. "What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?" Comparative Politics 14, no. 3 (1989). 65 Scott, Moral Economy, 2006.

99 subsistence for all who work the land. When the landlord does not provide enough grain to ensure subsistence, uprisings ensue. Scott’s argument is consistent with the logic of instrumental rationality - the norms themselves are a direct reaction to the pressures of the material environment.66 Nevertheless, in the lived of experience of peasants, Scott suggest that the norms take on a sacred quality; when landlords violate them, a sense of moral indignation ensues.

For the Hamama, one can understand the relationship between the material basis of resistance and its corresponding honor-based ideology in a similar way. Like Scott’s peasants, the constant threat of starvation that the Hamama nomads faced caused them to develop certain moral norms that, once violated by the state, cause them to rebel. As with Scott’s peasants, these norms were understood by agents as sacred principles, despite the fact that they were emerged as strategic responses to subsistence pressures. Nevertheless, the particular norms and themes emphasized in the Hamama’s discourse of resistance were qualitatively different from those that animated the moral economy of Scott’s peasants. This difference reflects the dramatically different pressures of the pastoral nomadic lifestyle that the Hamama practiced, relative to their sedentary peasant counterparts.

Peasants live in fertile areas with relatively bountiful harvests in close physical proximity to landlords; they are are generally subject to the police power of state or proto-state authority.

By contrast, the 19th century Hamama inhabited the harsh, anarchic world of the central

Tunisian steppe - an environment that presented subsistence challenges distinct from those faced by peasants. In years of poor harvests, survival could not be assured simply by demanding a more equitable distribution of resources from states - it required the ability to increase those

66 Munck, Gerardo L., and Richard Snyder. "Interview with James Scott." In Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. 359-361.

100 resources through raiding caravans, neighboring tribes, or sedentary cultivators in more fertile areas. Survival also required the ability to wantonly defy state tax collectors in years when conditions were particularly precarious. Therefore, what emerged in the lands of the Hamama was not a moral economy based on the principle of equitable distribution of resources provided by the state, but a moral polity based on the principle of tribal independence from state centralization. Attempts by the state to disturb this principle of independence were seen as moral affronts to be confronted by force of arms.67

Understanding the Hamama’s resistance posture as part of a “moral polity” that functions in an analogous way to the notion of moral economy is useful because it provides a framework through which to understand the way the politics and culture of the 19th century influenced subsequent periods. Although Scott’s work on moral economy advanced the collective understanding of the microfoundations of peasant rebellion, he borrowed the term from the earlier work of the British social historian, E.P. Thompson.68 Thompson also believed in the idea of a unique moral disposition associated with peasant life - but his work is focused on understanding the way that moral disposition influenced the ideology and practice of food riots in Britain even after the feudal system had been abolished and descendants of peasants had become workers.69 For Thompson, the post-peasantry continued to embrace elements of the peasant moral economy, but reappropriated the ethos to inspire a new set of contentious political practices, most notably food riots.

67 For an example of a similar phenomena in a different context, see: Scott, James C. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. 68 Thompson, E. P. "The Moral Economy Of The English Crowd In The Eighteenth Century." Past and Present 50, no. 1 (1971): 76-136. doi:10.1093/past/50.1.76. 69 Ibid.

101

Bringing Scott’s work on the origins of moral economy into dialogue with Thompson’s work on the latter-day political effects of moral economy points to a framework for understanding how a traditional moral ethos can continue to impact political life, long after the traditional mode of social organization that gave rise to it has ended. Moral economy originally emerges in traditional societies as a way for people to understand their instrumentally rational subsistence practices. After those traditional societies are irrevocably altered by “modernizing” forces however, the values that comprise the moral economy remain in place, transcending their instrumentally rational logic. The framework suggests that the Hamama’s 19th century “moral polity” might impact contemporary practices in a similar way. Although the tribe’s resistance to centralized authority emerged out of a particular subsistence need, the framework suggests that the 19th century ethos conditioned modes of contention during the 20th century, even after the subsistence imperative behind the resistance posture had changed.

One can see how this evolution works discursively through an analysis of the mythology surrounding the naming of “Oued Beyach” - a river on the outskirts of Gafsa in the heart of the

Hamama’s historical territory. The name of the river is said to be derived from an 1871 incident in which a group of Hamama bedouins camped out along one of the main roads and plundered a caravan carrying money to the Bey’s headquarters in the city of Gafsa.70 According to legend, during the raid, the Bey’s servants, incredulous to the wanton defiance of state authority loudly protested declaring “But this is the caraan of the Bey!.” In response, the Hamama bedouins allegedly taunted the servants yelling: “Bey Ach?” or “What Bey?” in Tunisian dialectical

Arabic. Although the practice of raiding was intimately tied to the imperative of subsistence, the dimension of the incident that is most remembered today is the expression of defiance to

70 Tlili, Mintaqat Gafsa, 2004. 256-258.

102 centralized authority, as evidenced by the naming of the river. In this way, the political critique behind that the moral polity exemplifies is preserved, despite the changed material context.

Conclusion

One possible critique of this notion of a nomadic “moral polity” is that it seems to suggest two different relationships between rationality and culture, depending on the era. During the pre-modern era, the framework suggests, in line with Bourdieu’s position, that cultural symbols are mere representations of instrumentally rational behavior. After sedentarization however, the framework suggests that the Hamama’s behavior is governed by value rationality, whereby deeply held beliefs have causal power, independent of the environment. This might appear to create a problematic inconsistency. Nevertheless, there is a clear rejoinder to this critique that emphasizes the respective velocity of social and political change in different periods.

Before sedentarization, the Hamama and their predecessors practiced pastoral nomadism and contended with the encroachment of the central state for centuries. Under these conditions, patterned interactions with political authority created a predictability that spurred a convergence of instrumental and value rationality. The post-nomadic era up to the present, by contrast, has been characterized by rapid political and social changes, which have created a corresponding level of political unpredictability. In such an environment, people are forced to use heuristics, in this case, reflecting deeply rooted oral traditions. For this reason, political behavior after sedentarization is governed by value rationality in much the same way as Thompson’s framework suggests.

103

The twin cases of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui suggest however that the impact of the

Hamama’s 19th century moral polity on contemporary political practices is far from deterministic and predictable. In Sidi Bouzid, residents argue that the 19th century Hamma ancestors have bequeathed them with an innate hatred of the state and a corresponding receptiveness to the message of jihadist salafists, given the penchant of those ancesotrs for resistance to centralized authority. In Metlaoui, by contrast, solidarity at the level of the sub- tribal clan unit is the main feature of the historical memory discourse and is said to be a factor that prevented the jihadist salafists from penetrating the community. This focus on clan affinities is correspondingly absent from Sidi Bouzid’s discourse.

The paradox is that both sub-tribal clan loyalty and resistance to centralized authority were integral parts of the Hamama’s 19th century moral polity. This suggests that in each context, different elements of the 19th century moral polity have been preserved and influence contemporary political behavior in different ways. Ultimately then, to understand the differential in jihadist recruitment success between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, it is necessary to understand why different reimaginings of the 19th century ethos have come to dominate the political discourse in each city. The next chapter, which analyzes the evolution of contentious politics in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui during the colonial era, provides an answer.

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Chapter Four Sedentarization, Resistance and the Emergence of New Repertoires

Introduction

Despite common 19th century tribal origins, contemporary inhabitants of Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui live in fundamentally different societies. The central argument of this chapter is that these contemporary differences stem from the different ways the ancestors of people in each locality experienced and resisted French colonialism during the 20th century. In Sidi Bouzid, an ethic of radical armed resistance against centralized state power came to dominate the collective imagination. In Metlaoui, by contrast, a pragmatic ethic of strategic agitation for material concessions took hold, spurred by the rapid proliferation of labor unions in the region during the

1930’s. This chapter argues these ideals became culturally rooted after independence and today have conditioned distinct political repertoires that hold sway in each community. It is these distinct political repertoires that are responsible for the different levels of success that jihadists achieved in each town after Tunisia’s 2010/2011 revolution.

It may be tempting to treat this account of political development in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui as a story of continuity in the former and change in the latter; nevertheless, such a view would be mistaken. This chapter argues, rather, that both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui experienced profound political and social changes during the colonial era that in each case, dislodged elements of the common pre-colonial ethos and introduced new ideas. The contemporary divergence in political practice thus stems from the fact that different elements of the pre- colonial ethos were dislodged in each community and different ideas replaced them. Therefore, in contrast to the arguments of an earlier generation of scholars who asserted that

“modernization” follows a common teleology, this chapter argues that Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui both exhibit “modern” political sensibilities that reimagine tradition in different ways.

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This chapter proceeds in three parts. The first part of the chapter discusses the advent of

French colonialism in Tunisia, beginning with the 1881 invasion and the armed resistance with which the Hamama confronted it. It goes on to discuss the administrative structure the French established in the country, and the ideological orientation of their colonial project. Ultimately, the section demonstrates that French colonial planners in Tunisia were philosophically committed to the idea of coercive sedentarization of pastoral nomads - a commitment that structured their approach to governance in the Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui regions.

The second section discusses the actual process of sedentarization and the way it proceeded in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. In particular, the section illustrates how coercive colonial land use policies made nomadic subsistence practices increasingly untenable, even absent a formal policy of forced sedentarization. As a result of these policies, people in both Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui gave up their pastoral lifestyles; nevertheless, the new existences they transitioned to differed dramatically between the two contexts. In Sidi Bouzid, people became sedentary farmers on isolated plots of land throughout the countryside; in Metlaoui, inhabitants rapidly urbanized as they entered phosphate mines as employees.

The third part of the chapter offers an analysis of anti-colonial resistance in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Although inhabitants of both regions are heirs to the legacy of the armed resistance of the 19th century, as sedentarization progressed in each town, the way that people conceived of and practiced resistance varied. The section provides a discussion of these divergent resistance practices and argues that they reflect the economic, social, and political changes that the differing modes of sedentarization brought.s from the colonial era.

Ultimately, this chapter documents two parallel processes of cultural and political change that conditioned the distinct heuristics and interpretive frames through which people in Sidi

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Bouzid and Metlaoui view politics today. Although the popular narratives of history that inhabitants of each town present are not precise, authoritative representations of the past, they did not emerge in a vacuum. Understanding the processes through which these narratives emerged can thus shed light on which aspects of the narratives do the most work in influencing contemporary political behavior. This is crucial for understanding the differential success of jihadist salafism in both environments.

Colonialism and the French Civilizing Mission

In 1881, France invaded Tunisia in what would be the opening salvo of its 75 year colonial administration of the country. While the Bey of Tunis had, under intense pressure, signed the Treaty of Bardo - an agreement with France that effectively handed over control of the country - the tribes of Tunisia’s arid central steppe united to resist the French encroachment.1

The Hamama were among the most zealous and militant factions confronting the colonizers.

Ahmad Bin Yusuf al-Nsira, the Gayyid or chief of the Hamama became one of the leaders of the insurrection, along with notables from the surrounding tribes.2

At the time of the invasion, the tribal notables of the Hamama were in a politically complex situation. As nominal servants of the Bey, they were legally obliged to follow his commands and since the Bey had ratified the Treaty of Bardo, they were technically required to accept the French presence and quell any uprisings among their tribal subjects. Nevertheless, they were forced to contend with a groundswell of support for rebellion among their-and-file. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, many individual Hamama tribesmen began heading for

1 Dabusi, Muhammad. Qaadat Al-Muqaawima Al-Musalliha Fil-Bilaad Al-Tunisiyya 'Aam 1881. Tunis: Markaz Al- Nasahr Al-Jaam'ai, 2014. 2 Ibid. 32-34.

107 the coastal city of Sfax to meet invading French forces head on without even conferring with their tribal leaders.3 This seems to have forced the hand of many lower-level tribal officials, pushing them towards rebellion.4

Despite the efforts that the Hamama and other tribes expended in resisting the invasion however, by the end of 1881, France had successfully pacified the country. In contrast to neighboring Algeria, France never formally annexed Tunisia. Instead, it established a protectorate which kept the Bey in place as a figurehead while strengthening the institutions of tribal co-option that the Ottoman Regency had established. While the colonial administration demanded that all of its local agents were fully loyal to France, it adopted the same strategy of employing tribal notables as administrators in the hopes of co-opting the country’s more rapacious tribes. On top of this network of tribal notables, the protectorate administration grafted on a parallel governance structure consisting of “civil observers.” Civil observers were French diplomats who would be formally assigned to the notables tasked with collecting taxes and officially, would serve as liaisons between them and the French government. In truth however, civil observers exercised near-dictatorial powers. The presence of French troops in the country meant that the state could enforce its edicts more easily than before in a way approaching the

Weberian standard of monopolization of violence.5

The colonial administration of the country in the lands of the Hammaa was highly corrupt and widely reviled by the population. In selecting candidates for the position of gayyid, the

French had different criteria depending on whether the gayyid would be responsible for territory with or without European settlers. While they sought out candidates who were “flexible,” had a

3 Ibid. 192. 4 Ibid. 5 Weber, Max. Politics as a Vocation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965.

108 good sense of “discretion,” and could make “right decisions” in areas with large European populations, they were more interested in candidates who were “tough” and who possessed

“bedouin authority and strength” for the administration of tribal areas like Sidi Bouzid.6 Abuse was rampant. The tribal notables who served in the colonial administration were granted widespread judicial authority, which they frequently used to expropriate land and resources from the people living under their authority.7

The heavy-handed authoritarianism of French colonialism was embedded in an ideological “civilizing mission” that sought to justify colonialism on the grounds that it was bringing “underdeveloped” peoples into modernity - defined here as a totalizing, European cultural ethos. As concerned the whole of the Hamama’s territory stretching from Sidi Bouzid to

Metlaoui, the first priority of the civilizing mission was the sedentarization of pastoral nomads - whom French colonial planners viewed as culturally backward and an impediment to their project to establish political control.8 As in the 19th century, nomadism conferred the populations of the steppe with certain advantages in resisting state police power, so for the more militarily-capable French genderarmerie, sedentarization represented an important step towards territorial control. Rather than a blanket policy of forced sedentarization however, the French protectorate used indirectly coercive measures.

6 Al-Haadi Al-Sharif, Muhaammad, and Adnan Mansar. Istratijiyyat Al Haymana: Al-Himaaya Al-Fransiyya W Mu'assisaat Al-Dawla Al-Tunisiyya. Tunis: Matba3t Al-Tasfir Al-Fanni, 2002. 218. 7 Ibid. 8 Fozzard, Adrian. "Tribesmen and the Colonial Encounter: Southern Tunisia during the French Protectorate: 1882 to 1940." PhD diss., University of Durham, 1987. Appendix 9.1 (Volume II 25-38). Hannoum, Abdelmajid. "Translation and the Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldûn Orientalist." History and Theory 42, no. 1 (2003): 61-81.

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Prior to the advent of the protectorate, there had been some legal ambiguity over the status of tribal lands.9 Although the Bey claimed sovereignty over all of Tunisia, the state did not establish the necessary territorial control over tribal areas to lend force to this claim. Upon their arrival in Tunisia therefore, the French protectorate authorities had to make a legal determination: were the lands that tribes claimed genuinely tribal property or did they actually belong to the state, with particular tribes retaining the right to merely use particular lands plots?

In 1901, the protectorate issued its directive: while tribes could remain on their traditional lands, the state was the actual holder of title for the land and therefore, tribal land use was subject to a whole host of often onerous conditions set forth by the state.10

These imposed conditions had the effect of sedentarizing the Hamama through indirectly.

Colonial directives required nomadic clans to register their migrations, including the precise dates and numbers of animals involved.11 Since migrations are meant to be adaptive enough to respond to unforeseen ecological conditions, such a closely regulated system was incompatible with time-tested pastoral practices.12 With respect to the seasonal agriculture that the Hamama clans employed, the colonial authorities demanded that planting activity on traditionally tribal land only proceed with official licenses from the state.13 This framework also provided a justification for the expropriation of lands by the protectorate administration - which happened in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui towards different ends.

9 Hamaas, Muhammad. Al-Isti'maar Al-Fransi Wa Qbaa'il Al-Wasat Wal-Junub Bil-Bilaad Al-Tunisiyya, 1950- 1881: Jalaas, Al-Hamama, Al-Farashish, Awlad Sa'id, Warghama (al-Wadaarna) Wal-Mahaadhiba. Tunis: Markaz Al-Nashar Al-Jaam'ai, 2008. 107-109 10 Ibid. 141-147. 11 Tababi, Hafayyidh. Min Al-Badaawa Ila Al-Manaajim. Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Tunisiyya Lil-Kutaab, 2012. 125. 12 Ibid. 13 Hamaas. al-Isti’maar al-Fransi. 2008. 171-175.

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Before French colonialism, the Hamama were forced to contend with harsh environmental conditions that in certain circumstances, made systemic raiding of caravans and rebellions against state tax collectors subsistence necessities. The onerous regulations on land use that the French protectorate introduced, along with colonial expropriation of tribal lands, only increased this precarity. At the same time, the more effective police power robbed the

Hamama of the traditional means of social insurance that raiding and resistance historically provided. In this situation, the Hamama (and nomads across Tunisia) were left increasingly vulnerable during years of little rainfall, with no recourse to ensure survival. Under these conditions, the stage was set for sedentarization to unfold in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui almost automatically.

Sedentarization and Social Change

At the start of the French protectorate in 1881, Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui did not exist as major population centers. The present-day location of Sidi Bouzid was the site of a zaawiya or

Sufi lodge built around the tomb of Sidi Bouzid - a venerated holy man of the region. In addition to its importance as a pilgrimage site, Sidi Bouzid was the site of an important weekly market in the northern region of the Hamama’s territory. Nevertheless, outside of the zaawiya, the town had few settled inhabitants and most of those who attended the market were nomads. The present-day location of Metlaoui was even more sparsely populated. Located at the southern fringe of the Hamama’s territory, local legends claim that the name Metlaoui derives from an incident involving a young shepherd who, after losing one of his flock to a wolf, confessed to his father that he had fallen asleep next to a winding road. In this context, the word “Metlaoui” is a

111 corruption of the classical Arabic adjective maltawi or winding. Metlaoui was thus not even a settlement - but simply a landmark in a the wilderness.

Despite these humble origins, by the time of the 2010/2011 Tunisian revolution, both Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui had become small urban centers with 48,284 and 38,129 inhabitants respectively. Understanding the 20th-century history of the emergence of Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui as municipalities is thus key to understanding their contemporary political sensibilities.

A study of this history reveals that urbanization proceeded at different speeds in each context and was bound up in different economic forces. It is these divergent processes of urbanization that have conditioned the divergent contemporary political sensibilities in each town.

The contemporary population of the town of Sidi Bouzid is drawn from Hamama clans who historically grazed in four areas of the tribe’s territory that surround the contemporary town and historically constituted its hinterland: Gammouda, Hichriyya, Regueb, and Meknassi. Sidi

Bouzid did not emerge as a major population center until the second half of the 20th century - multiple field informants assessed that the majority of the town’s current residents were born in rural regions that surround the contemporary town. Therefore, a study of political development in Sidi Bouzid requires an investigation of historical social transformation in these four areas. An inter-generational history of Sidi Bouzid is by definition a history of the Sidi Bouzid countryside and only at the final stage, a history of a municipality.

France’s 1901 declaration that traditional tribal lands were in fact the property of the state sparked outrage across the Sidi Bouzid hinterland. This was particularly true among the clans of the southern part of Sidi Bouzid region who experienced the full impact of early colonial land expropriation. In the 19th century, Great Britain had established substantial commercial relations with the Tunisian regency a a means of, among other things, procuring esparto grass - a key

112 component of high-quality paper products from the era.14 In 1903, France announced that land in the mountains of the Bouhedma region would be given to the French-English Esparto Grass company - which had previously bought the grass from the Hamama for seven francs a bundle but had begun to insist on a price of five francs. 15 Soon after, representatives of the Hamama lodged a formal complaint with the civil observer based in Gafsa, declaring: “We have not sold our land to anyone! By God, even if the Tunisian government wants to sell the Hamama tribe to the French-English company, we will not allow any person to occupy our mountains!”16

Although discussions with field informants suggest that nomadism continued in some fashion, there is evidence of a shift towards sedentary farming began in the 1920’s in the form of

“civil disobedience” of French land use policies. This initial shift exposed a contradiction in the colonial land administration scheme: on the one hand, the protectorate sought to sedentarize nomads; on the other hand, it also aimed to preserve land for possible expropriation. The reaction of the local clans to new land use policies show the way these imperatives conflicted. As official limits on nomadic migrations took effect, several incidents of illicit planting of fruit trees were recorded throughout the Sidi Bouzid region. In one incident, the people of Gammouda - the precise area that surrounds the town of Sidi Bouzid- planted 30,000 Francs worth of trees on formerly tribal land that had been designated in the 1901 declaration as state property.17 Rather than commend the people for the development of their historical land, the protectorate

14 Manai, Adel. "Anglo-Tunisian Commercial Relations in the Nineteenth Century: A Travel Note." The Journal of North African Studies 11, no. 4 (2006): 365-72. 15 Ibid. 167-168 16 Ibid. 17 Hamaas. al-Isti’maar al-Fransi. 2008. 171-175.

113 administration ordered the saplings yanked out of the ground and fined those involved for planting on “state land” without a license.18

By the 1930’s, a number of factors had brought inner Tunisia to the brink of famine and exposed the protectorate’s contradictory policy on land use as untenable. First, the financial crisis of 1929 had reverberated across Tunisia and reduced demand for the materials and goods that the Hamama depended on for their livelihood.19 Second, a high birth rate and population increase had put a strain on the existing modes of subsistence as the same resources had to be shared among more people. Third, and most crucially, a prolonged drought greatly reduced the amount of land on which pastoralists could graze. As a result of these dynamics, Tunisian census data suggests between 1932 and 1934, the amount of livestock in Tunisia decreased almost 90% and only recovered in the 1940’s.20 For the traditionally pastoral Hamama clans of Sidi Bouzid, these losses were catastrophic. They also dramatically changed the calculus for the protectorate administration - which worried that the unfolding humanitarian disaster in the interior could push more Tunisians into the arms of the emerging anti-colonial resistance.

In response to these dynamics, the French colonial authorities introduced two kinds of reforms. First, they launched a rural revitalization initiative that aimed to give residents of formerly pastoral regions the technology and technical know-how to dig wells and develop their historical lands by planting trees.21 These were the very practices that had earlier been criminalized when undertaken without a license. Second, in 1935 France introduced a new legal framework that amended the 1901 declaration that historically tribal lands were the property of

18 Ibid. 19 Tababi. Min al-Badaawa. 2012. 121, 129-133. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 124-129.

114 the state.22 Under the new arrangement, after a waiting period, Hamama clans could apply for legal certificates of land ownership. In the context of this policy, a number of Hamama clans - with the apparent blessing of the state - began to develop their historically tribal lands in Sidi

Bouzid. In 1948, the Jlaayliyya received official land titles, followed by the Awlad Sidi Ali Ben

‘Aoun in 1951 and Awlad Youssef in 1953.23 In all three of these cases, records show that colonial planners cited the successful development of the lands as the chief justification for awarding title to the clans.

Rather than distributing the lands titles to the Hamama clans as collective land however - as had been the case before colonialism - the protectorate broke up the land into small plots and gave the titles to individual families.24 Land titling was effectively a way to accomplish land privatization. The social implications of this new regime were profound. Clan solidarities during the 19th century had stemmed largely from shared ownership of collective land - a practice that allowed clans to claim solidarity with “associated” families that even in the mythological discourse were not genealogically related. By effectively abolishing collective lands, clans lost the material glue that held them together. Today, in contrast to Metlaoui, clan solidarities hold very little weight in Sidi Bouzid. While other dynamics after independence also contributed to this, the loss of collective land set in motion a process that reduced the resonance of clan ties by decoupling the relationships from material interest.

In the Metlaoui region, the process of sedentarization and the transformation of tribal land played out differently. Shortly after the invasion, French prospectors discovered phosphates in the mountains outside of Metlaoui and sought to immediately develop an infrastructure for the

22 Hamaas. al-Isti’maar al-Fransi. 2008. 243-247. 23 Ibid. 249-251 24 Ibid.

115 exploitation of this resource.25 Although the 1901 declaration provided a legal framework for the expropriation of lands, the effort was complicated by the results of an expedition to the Metlaoui region led by French judge Paul Dumas in the run-up to the 1901 declaration. The goal of the expedition had been to determine the legal status of tribal land in the southern part of the

Hamama region.

As evidence, the Hamama clans in the Metlaoui region submitted documents that purported to show their legal claim to the land.26 Because the 1901 declaration was represented as an interpretation of existing law, rather than a new policy, these documents seemed to undermine its applicability in this region. Ultimately however, colonial legal officials dismissed the claims of the tribes on the basis that the transactions recorded in the documents were made without any of the parties having knowledge of the lands’ mineral wealth. Because the protectorate claimed that the document never would have been issued if the parties had known phosphates existed, French courts invalidated the claims of the tribes to the lands on which phosphate deposits were located.27 At the same time, they gave the Awlad Bouyahia, the dominant Hamama clan in the region, title to historically-claimed land in Thalja - a region to the east of Metlaoui outside the mountains where phosphates were to be mined.28 Given the context, this limited concession to the Awlad Bouyahia can be read as a modest attempt to placate locals in the face of expropriation.

After taking control of the land, the French colonial administration set up an infrastructure for the exploitation of its resources. In 1896, the French established the state-

25 Tababi. Min al-Badaawa. 2012. 114-115. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 116-117.

116 owned Gafsa Phosphate and Railway company to serve as the organizational face of phosphate mining in Tunisia. In addition to the importation of technology and the digging of mining tunnels, the first imperative of the company was the training and employing workers to run the its operations and to perform the labor required in the mines. For the most part, administrative positions were held by Europeans from France and Italy.29

Given the region’s harsh, pre-Saharan climate, convincing European workers to come to

Metlaoui was no easy task. Therefore, to increase the attractiveness of employment at the company, the French built a model European village in the middle of the steppe next to the mines, complete with wide boulevards, red-thatched roof houses arranged in a grid, and trees brought in from France. The company also provided a variety of amenities: these included basic services like electricity and running water, but also more substantial comforts like cinemas, bars, and tennis courts. This, it was thought, would allow European workers to maintain at least a semblance of the lives they had enjoyed in their home countries.30

The French colonial administration had hoped that the Awlad Bouyahia and other

Hamama clans in the region of Metlaoui would accept contracts to work in in the mining tunnels as company employees. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 20th century, the population indigenous to the region viewed wage labor as extremely undesirable - even dishonorable.

Surrendering the life of total freedom over one’s schedule and control over one’s own property on the steppe for a life of work with set hours at the behest of a foreign master struck many herders as a kind of slavery.31 Accordingly, the state-owned company was forced to import

29 Tababi, Hafayyidh. 'Umaal Manaajim Gafsa Fil-'Ahad Al-Ist'imaari. Tunis: Daar Al-Taabaa'a Wal-Ishhaar, 2015. 31-35. 30 Tababi, Hafayyidh. Al-Haraka Al-Niqaabiyya Bi-Manaajim Gafsa 1936 - 1956 : Shahaadat Al-Ta'ammuq Fil- Bahath Fil-Taarikh. Tunis: Kulliyat Al-'Ulumm Al-Insaaniyya Wal-Ijtmaa'iyya, 1993. 72-75. 31 Ibid. 31.

117 workers from Algeria, Morocco, and Libya to fill these positions. Work in the mines was dangerous and accidents were frequent. Between 1923 and 1937, multiple fatalities and dozens of injuries occurred every year.32

The dominance of the phosphate company in Metlaoui had the effect of accentuating ascriptive identities and bringing them into conflict. Relations between different worker nationalities were tense and often resulted in violence. In one 1907 incident, a street brawl between Libyan and Algerian workers resulted in dozens of deaths and caused the Libyan contingent to resign en masse and return to their country.33 In a letter to colleagues, one company official described the violence saying:

What leads to these dangerous incidents sometimes are disputes and hatred that appear between the different groups. Each group is always prepared to intervene with all of its members on the basis of solidarity. Every individual discussion threatens to turn into a group-wide clash.34

This tradition of strong intra-group solidarity in the context of a prevailing air of conflict among various ascriptive groups of workers seems to have continued to the present-day - with clan-based identities replacing national-origin identities as the primary axis of conflict. Today in

Metlaoui, unemployed youth have a strong identification with clan identities and view other clans as adversaries insofar as they represent competition for scarce jobs. This suggests that the phenomenology of clan solidarity in Metlaoui today may have more resemblance to the ethos that prevailed among groups of foreign workers, rather than the pre-colonial clan solidarities among the Hamama. In historical context, clan solidarities may simply represent the symbolic language through which competitive animosities are expressed.

32 Tababi, ‘Umaal, 2015. 54-58. 33 Tababi, al-Haraka, 1993. 91. 34 Ibid.

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Given their initial reluctance then, what caused the local Hamama clans in Metlaoui to ultimately enter the mines? As with their counterparts in the Sidi Bouzid hinterland, the French pacification Hamama of Metlaoui had reduced their capacity for raiding and resistance to state tax collectors - their 19th century mode of social insurance to ensure subsistence. In this context, many of the nomads in the regions entered the mines as seasonal workers. The goal was to gain additional income to serve as financial buffer against the precarity of life on the steppe in dryer, difficult years. This seasonal work was not meant to replace pastoralism as the primary mode of subsistence. In the 1930’s however, the same drought and nomadic crisis that pushed the

Hamama clans in Sidi Bouzid to adopt sedentary agriculture gave the indigenous population of

Metlaoui a starker choice: accept work in the mines or die of starvation.35 In response to these circumstances, the Hamama clans of the Metlaoui region sedentarized and joined the mining company. Company records reveal that by the 1940’s, Tunisians constituted the majority of workers at the company, with the Hamama-affiliated Awlad Bouyahia as the largest faction, holding roughly one third of the positions.36

In contrast to Sidi Bouzid however, where sedentarization initially allowed clans to preserve their rural existence on isolated plots spread throughout the coutryside, in Metlaoui sedentarization meant urbanization. The new living conditions that the Hamama clans enjoyed in this setting were significantly less glamorous than those of their European counterparts. While

European workers lived in large, ornate villas, the local population lived in rudimentary dwellings arranged chaotically in concentric rings around the European quarters.37 While

Europeans had running water and electrical services in their homes, the local population often

35 Tababi, ‘Umaal, 2015. 31-35. 36 Ibid. 354. 37 Tababi, al-Haraka, 1993. 72-84.

119 had to travel multiple kilometers on foot for the nearest spigot. Nevertheless, the local population did receive access to some of the recreational facilities; many of the Metlaoui residents interviewed for this story described the stories their parents had told of watching new-release

French films in the cinema. Phosphate workers, regardless of nationality, allegedly received a daily coupon for two beers at the company cantina.38

Today people in Metlaoui, regardless of their generational affiliation or employment status, speak of the colonial period in highly-romanticized terms, describing it as a golden age of progress and openness to the world. “The mines were a window on the west - they gave us an idea about another way of living. It was a time of great civilization - we had some of the most advanced infrastructure in the entire country,” said one retired phosphate worker during fieldwork.39 One younger worker agreed adding: “During the colonial period it was paradise. We had cinemas, We had bars. We even had Tennis courts - the first in all of Tunisia!”40 While

Tunisian historians suggests that living conditions were far more difficult than these narratives attest, the early presence of developed infrastructure and western amenities in the town does seem to have influenced contemporary collective memories in the present day.

What emerged from these distinct processes of sedentarization were two different existences. In Metlaoui, the Hamama clans in the region coalesced to form a society of mining employees. Social life was urban, centralized, and influenced by constant contact with the colonizer. In this environment, the fiercely competitive nature of employment at the phosphate company caused narrow ascriptive identities to deepen - beginning with national identities among foreign workers, and extending to include clan identities once the indigenous population

38 Personal Interview. Youth Unemployment Activists. Metaloui, February 2016. 39 Personal Interview with Retired Phosphate Worker. September 2015, Metlaoui 40 Personal interview with Current Phosphate Worker. February 2016, Metlaoui.

120 entered the mines. In Sidi Bouzid, by contrast, the Hamama clans remained dispersed in isolated plots of land throughout the countryside. While people understood the colonial context, contact with Europeans was not part of the daily experience. Moreover, the redistribution of formerly clan-owned land to individual families as part of the state’s privatization initiative broke the link between clan identity and access to tangible material or intangible political resources. This is in contrast to Metlaoui where clans were given limited recognition of collective lands - a consolation for the expropriation of mineral-rich lands in the context of the phosphate industry.

As colonialism dragged on, these different processes of sedentarization conditioned different anti-colonial resistance repertoires in each area.

The Anti-Colonial Struggle: Armed Revolt, Syndicalist Agitation, and the Road to Independence

Between 1916 and 1919, a Hamami deserter from the French army named Bechir Ben

Sdira led a small-scale guerilla campaign across central Tunisia killed a number of colonial security personnel. His tactics involved hit-and-run assaults and armed harassment of French military units operating in isolated rural areas. After a number of successful operations, Ben

Sdira was found with the help of tribal officials loyal to the protectorate administration and killed without trial.41 Following his death, he was revered as a hero throughout inner Tunisia.

During the 19th century, insurgent violence against the state among the Hamama was materially rooted - tied to issues of tax collection and raiding, with incidents of violence increasing during years of increased economic pressure. At the same time, the discourse constructed resistance as an intangible good oriented towards symbolic goals like honor or religious piety. In this context, Bechir Ben Sdira’s campaign represented a new form of

41 Hamaas. al-Isti’maar al-Fransi. 2008. 189-194.

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“symbolic” resistance that sought to challenge the state, without the material imperative of resisting state tax collectors. The small-scale guerilla tactics that his group employed conferred few grand strategic advantages and were not meant to protect land or property, but they had a powerful symbolic impact. One poem from the era that alludes to Ben Sdira and another anti- colonial resistance fighter of the Tunisian south valorizes his ability to strike fear into the hearts of colonizers: “God have Mercy on Bechir and Daghbaji. In their age, they made the Christians flee.”42 Here, the term “Christians” is used as a shorthand for foreign occupiers.

Bechir Ben Sdira’s operations took place over a decade before the drought and economic crisis that pushed the Hamama clans in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui to sedentarization. Therefore, while he gained acclaim as a folk hero throughout the region, his impact on subsequent resistance practices in each area was mediated by the tremendous social changes that sedentarization brought. In Sidi Bouzid, Bechir Ben Sdira’s campaign against the French became the “model.” Inhabitants sought to use armed violence to punish France for the perceived moral affront of colonialism. In Metlaoui, the growth of the mining industry and labor unions created a new institutional and normative framework for contentious politics. Accordingly, strategic agitation for material concessions in the form of strikes came to dominate the resistance field.

In Sidi Bouzid, cultural production from the 1930’s reveals that the Hamama’s historical resistance against centralized authority during the 19th century remained an important reference point for the people of the region. Nevertheless, drawing inspiration from Bechir Ben Sdira’s campaign, the implications they drew from this legacy were that punitive, guerilla attacks against the state were necessary to confront the colonizer. In 1935, a group of citizens petitioned the

42 Belhoula, Muhammad Ali. Al-Jihaad Al-Tunisi Fi Al-Sha'r Al-Sha'bi: 1855-1955: Maa'at 'Aam Min Taarikh Tunis. Tunis: Al-Ittihaad Al-'Aam Lil Shughul, 1978. 58.

122 figurehead Bey to lobby for the release of a group of nationalist activists that France had imprisoned.43 The Bey declined to consider the request, a refusal that sparked the ire of many throughout Tunisia. That same year, a folk poet from Jelma,44 a region in the northwest corner of present-day Sidi Bouzid governorate, composed a poem attacking the Bey for his betrayal. In this poem, one sees the discursive connection between the collective memory of the Hamama’s resistance against centralized authority in the 19th century, and the anticolonial sentiment that had crystallized by the mid-20th century.45

In a previous age, the Hamama exclaimed “What kind of a Bey is this?!” Allah has no mercy for the one who gave birth to him. All of his descendants are enemies. If I meet the Bey, I’ll say the same to him. And if he still follows his desire, I’ll strike him with an Italian-made gun. And only his concubines, and his jesters, and his guards, and his slaves will wail for him.

The poem’s emphasis on armed violence as a necessity in confronting a traitorous state speaks to the repertoire of resistance that prevailed in Sidi Bouzid during the first half of the 20th century. The symbolic language of the poem bears striking resemblance to 19th century Hamama war poetry; nevertheless, in the wake of Bechir Ben Sdira’s operation, the poem can best be read as a call for anti-colonial guerilla operations, rather than the tax revolts the 19th century Hamama were known for. As the colonial period dragged on, armed anti-colonial insurgent operations in

Sidi Bouzid would increase.

The first expansion in armed anti-colonial activity in the Sidi Bouzid region occurred in the context of the Second World War’s North African campaign. Following the Franco-German

43 Ibid. 240-241. 44 Jelma is known to be in the historical homeland of the tribe of Maajer, rather than the Hamama, despite being in Sidi Bouzid governorate. Nevertheless, the reference to the history of the Hamama suggests that either the poet is of Hamami origin or that the Hamama, being the dominant tribe in the region, served as the major historical reference for people living even as far north as Jelma. 45 Belhoula, Al-Jihaad, 2008. 240-241

123 armistice of 1940, control of Tunisia passed to the French “Vichy” regime- a proxy pseudo-state in southern France that had been set up by the Germans to legitimize their occupation of the country. In 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch - an ambitious military assault with the goal of restoring republican French rule in the North African colonies. In response, the Germans sent a number of Panzer divisions to Tunisia. In February 1943, the Germans defeated the Allies at the “Battle of Sidi Bouzid” - one of a string of defeats the Allies suffered before changing tactics and ultimately forcing the surrender of Germany in May of 1943.46 In addition to the eponymous Sidi Bouzid battle - which took place right outside the contemporary town of Sidi

Bouzid - a number of clashes took place in the surrounding hinterland during the winter and spring of 1943.47

Oral history interviews compiled by the University of Manouba suggest that during the period of hostilities, people in Sidi Bouzid had strong grassroots sympathy for the Germans.

Muhammad Sekri, a veteran of Tunisia’s anti-colonial struggle, describes how people in in Sidi

Bouzid would provide bread and other basic provisions to the German soldiers as they passed through the region. In this context, during the North African campaign, Sekri reported that many residents of Sidi Bouzid went so far as to take up arms against the allies on the side of the

Germans. In an interview, Sekri describes the embrace of the Germans as an expression of a seething anger against colonialism and an effort to confront the colonizer through the use of force. “We hated France - France was our enemy because they were colonizing us. We knew that

46 United States. Department of Defense. Combat Studies Institute. The Battle of Sidi Bouzid. Fort Leavenworth, 1984. 47 Ibid.

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Germany was against France and that they weren’t trying to colonize us - so a lot of people loved the Germans. They treated us with respect - unlike the French.”48

By the 1950’s, anti-colonial agitation across Tunisia reached a fever pitch. The public face of the nationalist movement was the Neo-Destour party - a political organization led by

Habib Bourguiba, Saleh Ben Youssef and other French-educated professionals from Tunisia’s coastal regions. In Tunisia’s major coastal cities, the Neo-Destour organized street protests calling for independence and ultimately served as the primary negotiating contact for France as it charted its disengagement from the country. In Sidi Bouzid, the Neo-Destour message of independence also gained grassroots support and the party established branches.49 Nevertheless the dominant mode of anti-colonial resistance in Sidi Bouzid remained armed guerilla violence.

From 1952-1956, groups of men from across the Sidi Bouzid hinterland formed loosely- organized paramilitary units comprised of 10-20 people each and ascended into remote mountainous areas where they could easily avoid detection.50 The armed resistance fighters were known as fellaga - an Arabic word that roughly translates to bandit and which French officials used to discredit the fighters in official communiques. Despite the term’s pejorative connotation, it was adopted by many among the fighters’ ranks as a badge of honor. Using weaponry acquired from abandoned arms’ caches that the retreating German army had left behind in the 1940’s, the fellaga launched attacks against French military targets from isolated bases in the mountains - difficult terrain that was challenging for an occupying force but which the inhabitants of the

48 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Muhammad Sekri. Recorded 1992. Cassette. 49 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Boujemaa Sa’adouli. 1992, Cassette. 50 Al-Saghayyir, 'Amira, and 'Adnan Mansar. Al-Muqaawima Al-Musalliha Fi Tunis: Al-Jaz' Al-Thaani (1939- 1956). Tunis: Al-Ma'had Al-'Aali Li-Taarikh Al-Haraka Al-Wataniyya, 2005. 25-30

125 region had intimate knowledge of. The campaign threatened to embroil France in a war of attrition, precisely at the moment that hostilities were escalating in France’s “crown jewel” province of Algeria.51

During the guerilla effort, scores of Tunisians from many different governorates died; however, Sidi Bouzid was the unrivaled leader. According to the National Registry of Martyrs of the Nation, 122 fighters from Sidi Bouzid were confirmed to have been killed in combat operations in the mountains: roughly 50% more than than the next closest governorate.52 In addition to direct combatants, an unspecified larger number of people aided the fellaga’s support network; according to oral histories, the fellaga seemed to operate with widespread logistical aid from their communities.53

Sidi Bouzid was also the site of some of the most militarily important confrontations of the insurgency. A 1954 battle that took place in the mountains of Gaarat Hadeed - directly outside the modern town of Sidi Bouzid - is credited by people in Sidi Bouzid today as the the site of the proverbial “first shot” in all of Tunisia fired against the colonizer in the run-up to independence. A more systematic study of history however shows that this is an exaggeration, as armed clashes occurred in 1952 and 1953 as well.54 Nevertheless, the battle of Gaarat Hadeed did signal a dramatic upsurge in violence throughout Sidi Bouzid and the broader Tunisian interior at a critical moment in the campaign for independence.

What caused the armed resistance to gain a following in Sidi Bouzid? Oral history interviews with participants in the armed struggle suggest two factors. First, a number of leaders

51 For a perspective on contemporaneous dynamics in Algeria see: Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. London: MacMillan, 1977. 52 Tunisia. Al-Hizb Al-Ishtiraaki Al-Dusturi. Al-Sajal Al-Qawmi Li-Shuhadaa' Al-Watan. Tunis: Dar Al-'Amal. 53 Interview with elderly members of fellaga and support network. Sidi Bouzid, August 2015. Gafsa, August 2015. 54 Al-Saghayyir, Al-Muqaawima, 2005.

126 of the Neo-Destour party traveled to Sidi Bouzid during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s in an apparent effort to gin up support for popular revolution. Habib Bourguiba visited in 1951 and held a meeting with grassroots cells of the Neo-Destour party - following earlier visits by Salah

Ben Youssef.55 There is evidence that the party structure may have played a role in coordinating armed resistance. Mohamed Hamdi describes how his father - a prominent party activist from southern Sidi Bouzid - would leave at night to fight with insurgents.56 Abdelaziz Chraiti describes the close working relationship between local party leaders and people from the region who volunteered as “gun runners.”57 Mohamed Jleila, another veteran of the armed struggle, describes how local party coordinators were involved in acts of sabotage against colonial railroad infrastructure and farms that laid the groundwork for the later armed escalation.58

Nevertheless, because the Neo-Destour party had a presence across Tunisia, simply pointing to these efforts does not explain why Sidi Bouzid became an area of particular concentration for the fellaga, relative to other regions. To explain this dimension, it is necessary to understand the identities that the fighters had been socialized into. In oral history interviews, many fellaga express awareness of the history of resistance among the Hamama and suggest this legacy conditioned their posture. Borni al-Dhahri, a fellaga fighter from the land of Regueb in

Sidi Bouzid describes growing up and knowing that “there were fellaga among the Hamama

55 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Khalifa Ghabri, Cassette. 56 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Mohamed Hamdi. Cassette. 57 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Abdelaziz Chraiti. Cassette. 58 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Mohamed Jleila. Cassette.

127 before.”59 He also recounts traveling in other parts of Tunisia and living in constant fear that the colonial security forces would arrest him because his clothing identified him as a member of the

Hamama. In al-Dhahri’s telling, the Hamama had a reputation among the French as being particularly dangerous with a particularly strong hatred of colonialism.

Another fellaga fighter, Boujemaa Sa’adouli writes how his uncle was killed fighting with Bechir Ben Sdira’s forces in the Jebel Mghilla region and his brother was imprisoned by

France.60 These twin incidents, he says, gave him a hatred for the French that motivated his participation in the armed revolt. Sa’adouli also describes how these sentiments were shared by the people in his region at large who responded enthusiastically to the Neo-Destour party’s message of independence. The Neo-Destour party in English translates literally to “New

Constitution Party.” According to Sa’adouli, people in the region joined the party “without even knowing what a constitution was.”61 The implication of these accounts is that the particularly strong contribution that Sidi Bouzid made to the fellaga stemmed from an intuitive commitment that people in the region had toward a particular style of resistance. While the popular poetry suggests that oral traditions inherited from the Hamama of the 19th century inspired this posture, the references to Bechir Ben Sedira suggest that it was the new, symbolic armed resistance he introduced that constituted the model. Colonialism created new grievances and new constraints which made people in Sidi Bouzid reappropriate their traditions in a new way.

In Metlaoui, there was also popular participation in the armed uprising of the fellaga, but it took place in a dramatically different context and based on quantitative data, was far more

59 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Borni al-Dhahri. Cassette. 60 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Boujemaa Sa’adouli. Cassette. 61 Ibid.

128 limited than in Sidi Bouzid. By the mid-1930’s, Metlaoui had become the de facto capital of a

“mining basin” in southwest Tunisia, alongside the smaller adjacent mining towns of Redeyef,

Mdhilla, and Oum Larayes - all of which emerged during colonialism under similar circumstances. Both Mdhilla and Oum Larayes were populated by Hamama clans; in Redeyef, influence was split between the Hamama-affiliated Awlad Bouyahia dominant in Metlaoui and the Awlad Sidi ‘Abid - a nomadic clan with roots in eastern Algeria. According to the National

Registry of Martyrs of the Nation, based on what can be surmised from places of birth and places of death, a maximum of 18 people from the mining basin were among those killed fighting with the fellaga, less than 15% of the equivalent figure in Sidi Bouzid.62

In this context, a look at the biographies of the two prominent fellaga leaders who come from the mining basin, Lazhar Chraiti and Sassi Bouyahi, shows that despite their links to the mining basin, they were socialized in predominantly rural regions. Lazhar Chraiti comes from

Awlad Chrait - an agricultural region north of Mdhilla that was largely insulated from the mining industry given the lack of phosphate deposits.63 While Chraiti worked briefly in the mines of

Mdhilla, he was not a product of the social environment of the mines. Although Sassi Bouyahi was born in 1936 - right at the beginning of the nomadic crisis - he was from a remote area between Metlaoui and Oum Larayes and spent his childhood raising camels and sheep.64

Although he worked briefly in the mines as a young adult, much of his socialization occurred in the countryside. In both of these cases, the individuals came from rural environments that had more in common with Sidi Bouzid during the late colonial period than the emerging urban center

62 Tunisia. Al-Hizb Al-Ishtiraaki Al-Dusturi. Al-Sajal Al-Qawmi Li-Shuhadaa' Al-Watan. Tunis: Dar Al-'Amal. 63 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Abdelaziz Chraiti. Cassette. 64 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Sassi Bouyahi. Cassette.

129 of Metlaoui. In line with this pattern, the Tunisian historian ‘Amira ‘Ali al-Saghayyir concludes that participation in the fellaga was primarily a rural phenomenon.65

In lieu of armed insurgency, Metlaoui emerged as a bastion of labor unrest connected to work in the mines. The origins of this tendency predate the widespread sedentarization of

Metlaoui’s Hamama clans. The first strike in Metlaoui occurred in 1912 when Libyan workers demanded that their right to ride the company trains be reinstated; the company had revoked what they claimed was the privilege of riding the train after a worker had jumped to his death from one of the cars.66 Other strikes in the coming two decades demanded reductions in prices at the company commissary, shorter work hours, and higher wages. In these initial incidents, the vanguard of resistance was comprised of the Libyan, Moroccan, and Algerian workers who formed the majority of company personnel at the time.67 Nevertheless, labor unrest in the 1910’s and 1920’s took place outside the structure of formal labour unions. Instead, individual strikes were coordinated at the level of different national worker groups; for example, Libyan workers organized strikes as Libyans, often without the support of Moroccan and Algerian workers.68

Despite the use of strikes, the idea of forming unions to coordinate collective action and negotiate with the company was alien to the North African phosphate miners who had come from environments with no tradition of organized labor. Therefore, the initiative for unionization of mine workers during the colonial era came from Metlaoui’s European population - particularly the Italian workers, some of whom had worked in the mines of Saint-Étienne,

65 al-Saghayyir and Mansar, Al-Muqaawima, 2005. 19-25 66 Tababi, ‘Umaal, 2015. 91-92. 67 Ibid. 92-95 68 Ibid.

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France.69 While early attempts to form unions in the 1920’s were repressed, 1936 represented a turning point. In addition to the sedentarization of the Hamama clans in Metlaoui, which flooded the mines with a locally-embedded cadre of workers, the leftist Popular Front (FP) had triumphed in France’s elections promising a slew of new rights for workers: a 40 hour work- week, guaranteed weekends off, and the right to collective bargaining.70 The reverberations of the FP’s victory manifested in a more permissive attitude towards unionization from Tunisia’s state-owned phosphate company. Accordingly, a variety of different labor union organizations emerged that engaged in varying degrees of coordination with each other.

For the Hamama clans in Metlaoui, the pragmatic tactics of the unions represented a new political “technology.” The armed guerilla tactics that Bechir Ben Sdira had introduced and which the fellaga of Sidi Bouzid had adopted were geared towards inflicting symbolic blows on the colonizer - yet beyond a vague sense that colonialism needed to end, they were not directed towards particular demands. In contrast, the union style of contention was more targeted: strikes were organized at key moments with the goal of forcing the company leadership to the negotiating table, in an effort to extract specific concessions usually surrounding issues of employment. The price of this pragmatic posture however was a lack of focus on - if not a tacit acceptance of - the underlying colonial reality. Instead, the goal of strikes was to secure materially-defined “rights” of the sort that the France’s ruling FN had promised. One can see evidence of this ideational shift in the cultural production of Metlaoui’s inhabitants from the colonial period. As one classic poem from the 1930’s boasts:

Oh how sweet the strike is, for we’ve come and taken our right with it! We thank Blum! And so too the company secretary. The boss is crazy, He ate our right and made it disappear.

69 Ibid. 100-101 70 Ibid. 131-140.

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The yellow syndicate? May Allah curse it. The chief of the cantina? May Allah gouge his eyes out. Our scout came back. He even cut the electricity.71

As with the contemporaneous work from Sidi Bouzid, the poet still revels in his unflinchingly confrontational approach to authority. But the justification for the conflict is to regain rights, not honor. The harsh language towards the yellow syndicate and the chief of the cantina refers to a conspiratorial relationship that existed between the leadership of one of the more company-friendly labor unions (referred to here as the yellow syndicate) and the chief of the company cantina wherein he would bribe the unionists with French merchandise in an effort to prevent them from striking. The final line refers to a tactic that strikers would use wherein they would cut the electricity at the head of the company’s house during bouts of unrest. In both cases, the overriding imperative is strategic action to gain concessions, not a moral responsibility to punish dishonorable traitors.

In Metlaoui, the prevailing expression of anti-colonial militancy took place in the framework of the new, unionist repertoire of contention. In March of 1937, in response to dramatic increases in prices at the company store, hundreds of workers in Metlaoui stormed the headquarters of the company, occupying the company store, its main offices, and its arms depot.72 In response, the French colonial authorities sent troops into the city who swiftly opened fire on the protesters. Ultimately, 18 workers were killed and 30 injured. Today, people in

Metlaoui remember this incident as their grandparents’ generation’s defining contribution to the independence struggle. Near the center of Metlaoui, there are two monuments side by side: one commemorates fellaga who died fighting carrying arms against the French at Sidi Aich, a

71 Belhoula, Al-Jihaad, 2008. 269. 72 Tababi, ‘Umaal, 2015. 149-157..

132 mountain located 50 kilometers to the north of Metlaoui, the other commemorates victims of the

1937 strike crackdown. In a physical testament to the way the unionist repertoire superseded armed resistance during the colonial era, the monument to the victims of the 1937 incident towers over the monument to the fellaga.

In another counterpoint to anti-colonial activism in Sidi Bouzid, during the Second World

War the emerging cadre of local union activists in Metlaoui responded with trepidation to the rise of fascism and the coming of the Germans. Worried that German hegemony in Tunisia would lead to a closing of the public sphere and a restriction of the hard-won right to organize, union leaders called for calm and a reduction in labor unrest in the run-up to the war. The

Tunisian historian Haffayidh Tababi reports that at union meetings, activists would chant “Long live France! Long live the union!”73

Accordingly, the brief period of Vichy French control in Tunisia saw both a paucity of strikes and an increase the working hours of miners to support the French war effort. Rather than support the Germans as a means of reclaiming a sense of moral dignity against the colonizer,

Metlaoui’s union activists - who at this time included members of the region’s local Hamama clans - sought to repel fascism in the keeps of preserving their ability to strike over the long- term. This is a contrast to the stance the Hamama clans in Sidi Bouzid adopted when they took up arms alongside the invading German army. Despite this posture however, once the war ended, strikesin the mining basin dramatically increased, with 168 incidents between recorded between

1946 and Tunisian independence in 1956, according to Tababi’s estimates.74 In oral history interviews, the colonial era Metlaoui union organizer Messoud Sehimi calls these incidents

73 Ibid. 196. 74 Ibid. 263

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“sabotage strikes” aimed at deliberately slowing down the economy to pressure the colonizer to withdraw.75

It may be tempting to view the new “unionist” repertoire of contention that took hold in

Metlaoui as a political technology of “western modernity.”76 Nevertheless, such an interpretation overlooks the way that the unions actually strengthened traditional kinship-based political solidarities. Recall that before the sedentarization of Metlaoui’s Hamama clans, relations between the various worker groups (Algerian, Libyan, Moroccan etc.) had taken on a “tribal quality” with violence between various groups commonplace and strikes often coordinated at the level of the national worker collective. When Metlaoui’s Hamama clans entered the mines, the relations between them took on the same quality.

In the run-up to independence, there were many different organizational umbrellas under which unionist activity took place: the French CGT, the Communist Union, and the indigenous

Tunisian UGTT. Affiliation in these various syndicates was typically along clan lines: the Awlad

Bouyahia, for example, reportedly joined the communist union en masse.77 This was not out of a commitment to a Marxist-Leninist view of politics, but rather out of a conviction that the communists were the best organized faction advocating for workers’ rights. The tribal structure played a crucial role in enhancing the power of syndicates: the sharing of resources among members of clans allowed workers to maintain strikes for longer periods of time, supported by their kin who provided them with food and other basic necessities. Local historians interviewed

75 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Messoud Sehimi., Cassette. 76 This conception of modernity as a multi-faceted concept draws on the framework introduced by Cooper. See: Cooper, Frederick. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 77 High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Sassi Bouyahi. Cassette.

134 in Gafsa contended that it was this clan solidarity that allowed workers to sustain a 1947 strike in

Oum Larayes that lasted for a full 89 days.78 In the same way that during the pre-colonial era, collective land served as the material “glue” that bound the Hamama clans together, in

Metlaoui’s industrial era, collective bargaining power became the new material resource on which solidarity was based. This is in contrast to Sidi Bouzid where land privatization and a lack of early industrialization diminished the material basis for clan loyalties.

Conclusion

The ultimate result of these unique histories of anti-colonial resistance in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui was the emergence of what Charles Tilly calls “repertoires of contention” - tactical toolkits that came to define how people in each town would approach conflicts with centralized authority.79 In Sidi Bouzid, the dominant repertoire of contention that emerged out of the colonial era emphasized armed resistance and/or other kinds of direct confrontation with the symbols of political power. At the core of this repertoire is an understanding of politics that valorizes sacrifice against unjust authority and views negotiation with oppressors as dishonorable. In Metlaoui, by contrast, the dominant repertoire of contention that emerged emphasizes pragmatic, organized resistance oriented towards specific demands. Two distinguishing ideas undergird this approach: a commitment to one’s sub-tribal clan unit as a way to secure material resources and a belief that negotiation, even with adversaries, is a useful way of securing concessions.

78 Personal Interview with Oral historian. Gafsa, August 2015. 79 Tilly, Charles. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

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It is these divergent repertoires that today have conditioned the disparate resonance of jihadist salafist ideas in each town. In order to understand how these repertoires were transmitted across generations however, it is necessary to study the evolution of politics in post-colonial

Tunisia. Far from moving residents of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui beyond their anti-colonial resistance postures, the policies of the post-independence state only accentuated the dynamics that had produced these repertoires, causing them to become even more deeply entrenched in each town’s political imagination.

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Chapter Five Resistance and Repertoire after Independence

Introduction

In both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the colonial era saw the emergence of new political repertoires that still structure the character of mobilizations today. It is the existence of these different repertoires in each town that explains why jihadists recruitments efforts succeeded in the former and failed in the latter. Nevertheless, an understanding of the colonial period alone is not sufficient. To understand how and why the colonial-era repertoires survived, it is necessary to understand how the local societies in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui changed after Tunisia’s 1956 independence and how contentious politics played out during this period. The central argument of this chapter is that in the period after independence, many of the social dynamics that led to the emergence of the repertoires during the colonial period intensified. This ensured that the stories that aging participants in the anti-colonial struggle told about their resistance efforts continued to resonate with the generation that came of age politically in the wake of Tunisia’s independence..

The chapter proceeds in three parts The first part of the chapter examines the ideology and practice of “modernization” during the Bourguiba era. In particular, it explores the way deliberate efforts by the state to marginalize religious institutions and dismantle tribal structures changed the nature of Tunisian society. The second part provides a discussion of the evolution of social and political life in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui after the French withdrawal from the country in 1956. The section provides a discussion of the “high modernist” policies of the post- independence Bourguiba regime and the way they intensified and accelerated many of the dynamics that conditioned modes of resistance during the colonial period. In particular, the

137 section examines the way policies aimed at removing the last vestiges of tribal solidarity succeeded in Sidi Bouzid, but were obviated by the imperative of tribal cooptation in Metlaoui.

The third part of the chapter examines popular resistance practices in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui during the final quarter of the 20th century - a period of authoritarian consolidation. As part of their strategy to pacify the interior, the Bourguiba and successor Ben Ali regimes developed an elaborate array of “cosmetic” civil society institutions which were stacked with regime loyalists and simply served a mechanism of authoritarian control. In this context, meaningful resistance against the state occurred outside the framework of formal, “cosmetic” civil society institutions. Given the lack of a clear institutional framework for resistance, the section argues that oppositional movements in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui during the latter part of the 20th century drew on inherited repertoires of resistance from the colonial era that had been preserved in local oral traditions.

After Independence: Bourguibist “Modernization” in an Authoritarian State

In 1956 France announced its withdrawal from Tunisia after years of unrest in Tunisia’s coastal cities and attacks by tenacious fellaga insurgents. Initially, the Bey was kept in place while Habib Bourguiba, the leader of the anti-colonial Neo-Destour party, led the government as

Prime Minister. After scarcely a year in this role however, Bourguiba proclaimed a republic, overthrew the Bey in a bloodless coup, and seized control of the state and its key institutions. In

1975, the Tunisian National Assembly formally declared Bourguiba “President for Life.” During the early part of the anti-colonial struggle, Bourguiba had worked closely with Saleh Ben

Youssef, the Neo-Destour party’s Secretary General. The two had a falling out however over their approach to negotiations with the French. By 1955, Bourguiba had agreed to accept partial

138 independence from France in exchange for ending the insurgency and as a first step towards further negotiations. Ben Youssef however rebuffed Bourguiba and began coordinating with fellaga in regions like Sidi Bouzid to continue the insurgency.1

The Youssefists, as his supporters were known, emerged as a dissident faction of the independence movement. They differed from their Bourguibist counterparts in their more radical anti-colonial posture and affinity for the Pan-Arabist ideas that had gained currency in intellectual circles in the Arab East. After independence, the conflict led to Ben Youssef’s expulsion from the party and in 1957, after full Tunisian independence had been achieved, a

Tunisian court sentenced Ben Youssef to death for treason. Although he managed to escape the country before being arrested, he was ultimately assassinated in Germany in 1961, in what is widely believed to have been the work of Tunisian intelligence assets abroad. The armed fellaga revolutionaries who fought against the French in places like Sidi Bouzid were generally sympathetic to Ben Youssef’s more radical posture. The fact that at Ben Youssef’s urging, many continued their armed insurgency speaks to the degree of his influence.

In the aftermath of Tunisian independence, relations between the fellaga and Bourguiba took a turn for the worse. Although in 1956, France had announced its withdrawal from Tunisia, the negotiated agreement allowed France to keep one military base in the northern port city of

Bizerte. In 1961, Bourguiba met with fellaga veterans and recruited them to organize a paramilitary assault on the French outpost in Bizerte - an operation that ended in the deaths of over 630 Tunisians and failed to accomplish its objectives2. In Sidi Bouzid, people claim that

1 Al-Saghayyir, 'Amira, and 'Adnan Mansar. Al-Muqaawima Al-Musalliha Fi Tunis: Al-Jaz' Al-Thaani (1939-1956). Tunis: Al-Ma'had Al-'Aali Li-Taarikh Al-Haraka Al-Wataniyya, 2005. 28-32 2 Roberto Cantoni. Breach of Faith? Italian-Soviet Cold War Trading and ENI’s International ’Oil Scandal’ . Quaestio Rossica, 2015.

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Bourguiba deliberately ordered the fellaga to participate in what he knew was a suicide mission in the hopes of purging the country of fellaga.3 Tension between the fellaga and Bourguiba peaked in aftermath of the Bizerte crisis. In 1962, a group of influential fellaga leaders sympathetic to the Youssefist vision attempted to overthrow Bourguiba in a coup; after the coup was foiled, its organizers were convicted of conspiracy against the state in military tribunals and subsequently executed or given lengthy prison sentences.4

Bourguiba carried out his political purges in the context of a sweeping effort to change the nature of Tunisian society. Although Bourguiba had vehemently opposed French colonialism and often emphasized Tunisia’s Arab and Islamic identity in speeches, once in power, he sought to remake the country in accordance with a totalizing conception of western modernity. On the religious front, Bourguiba sought to marginalize the role of Islam in the public square. He closed the famed Zitouna University and Mosque, which had been one of the world’s premier centers of

Islamic learning for centuries and campaigned against the hijab, once referring to it as an “odious rag.”5 In one well-remembered display, Bourguiba publicly drank a glass of juice on television during the day during Ramadan in defiance of the past.6

Bourguiba’s reforms on the tribal front were even more fundamental. At the core of his vision was a commitment to the idea that kinship-based solidarities were antithetical to the modern ideal of statehood that he was trying to inculcate.7 Practically, Bourguiba used two

3 Personal interviews with Sidi Bouzid residents. July 2015, November 2015, Feburary 2016, Sidi Bouzid. 4 Al-Hadaad, Saalem. Harakaat Al-Rafad Li-Nidhaam Bourguiba Bayn Al-Ihtijaaj Al-Salmi Wal-Tamarrud Al- Musallih. Tunis: Matba'at Fann Al-Tabaa'a, 2005. 5 Moore, Clement Henry. Tunisia since Independence: The Dynamics of the One-party Government. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. 6 Hopwood, Derek. Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia: The Tragedy of Longevity. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992. 7 Charrad, M. States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 211.

140 tactics to break the bonds of tribal solidarity. First, in a break with the system employed by both the Beylical state and the French protectorate, he ceased recognition of tribes as administrative units for tax collection and governance purposes.8 Instead, the state drew new administrative boundaries centered solely around territory. Often, lines would strategically be drawn so as to divide tribes - a strategy that was deployed extensively in the Hamama’s historical territory.

In pre-colonial and colonial times, both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui were part of the administrative district of the Hamama, with the oasis city of Gafsa as its capital. After independence however, the Hamama’s district was divided into two governorates: Sidi Bouzid, roughly equivalent to the historical hinterland of Sidi Bouzid where the fellaga militants were concentrated during the independence struggle, and Gafsa, including the mining basin, the city of

Gafsa and surrounding oases, and a sparsely populated stretch of land to the north with deep historical links to the tribes in the south of Sidi Bouzid. Since the Tunisian revolution, there have been a variety of protests in Metlaoui calling for a new “mining basin” governorate to be created with Metlaoui as its capital.9 Such an arrangement would be more in line with pre-independence geosocial conventions - whereby Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui were both hubs in the respective hinterlands to the northeast and southwest of the Gafsa city region.

The second pillar of this anti-tribal agenda was the refusal of the state to recognize traditional tribal claims to land ownership. By independence, the lands of the historical domain of the Hamama and other tribes were in a sort of legal limbo. France’s 1901 declaration had asserted state control over traditionally tribal lands, but the 1935 addendum had provided a legal framework for the distribution of the lands to tribesmen in the form of privately-held plots.

8 Ibid. 212 9 Ibid. 213-215.

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Despite the announcement of these reforms however, the actual distribution of land titles progressed at a snail’s pace during the late colonial era - such that by independence, the legal status of large swaths of the Hamama’s lands had not been clarified.10 In the context of this ambiguity, in 1957 Bourguiba issue a declaration, formally abolishing government recognition of traditionally tribal-held collective lands.

Tribalism and Cultural Engineering in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui

The effects of the 1957 declaration were felt differently in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. In

Sidi Bouzid, the policy resulted in the creation of three types of land which exist to the present day. The first type consisted of property that had formally been granted a certificate of ownership. This included formerly collectively-held tribal land plots that were distributed to families during the late colonial era and afterwards, as well as land with pre-colonial land titles that the protectorate administration had recognized.11 It also included land that the state had distributed to political allies of the ruling party as blatant patronage - some of which was expropriated.12 The second type consisted of historical tribal land that the state laid claim to following the 1901 declaration and that simply passed into the hands of the post-colonial state following independence in a relatively uncontested manner.13 By the accounts of numerous field

10 This can be surmised from Hamaas’s analysis that despite the ratification of the declaration in 1935, the first lands were not distributed until 1948 and only happened in major areas of Sidi Bouzid during the early 1950’s. Given that this coincided with the beginning of the war in the countryside, and given the large swaths of state-owned and undocumented “shaa’ia” land that existed after independence, the idea of a legal limbo is the most convincing interpretation. See: Hamaas, Muhammad. Al-Isti'maar Al-Fransi Wa Qbaa'il Al-Wasat Wal-Junub Bil-Bilaad Al- Tunisiyya, 1950-1881: Jalaas, Al-Hamama, Al-Farashish, Awlad Sa'id, Warghama (al-Wadaarna) Wal- Mahaadhiba. Tunis: Markaz Al-Nashar Al-Jaam'ai, 2008. 247-253 11 Conversations with Sidi Bouzid land owner. Tunis, April 2016. Remotely throughout 2017. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

142 informants, the majority of land in Sidi Bouzid remained state-owned even at the time of the

2010/2011 revolution. The third type of land consisted of “shaa’ia” land - lands that were traditionally associated with large extended families who had invested resources for agriculture, but who had not received any formal title of ownership from the state. In the decades following independence, some families established farms on these traditional “shaa’ia” lands and after the revolution, there was a movement to petition the state to grant formal titles confirming the rights of these families to the land.

At the time of Tunisian independence, Sidi Bouzid’s central city was not a major population center. Between 1956 and 2011 however, this once-isolated rural outpost became a town of nearly 50,000.14 The emergence of Sidi Bouzid as a city is thus a function of three parallel processes of urban migration. First, with the founding of Sidi Bouzid as a governorate, the town became host to regional branches of a variety of Tunisian ministries, from education, to health, to agriculture. To this day, public administration remains the largest source of employment for the town’s inhabitants - a testament to the role the state bureaucracy played in

Sidi Bouzid’s urban coalescence.15 Second, the process of land privatization that began in the colonial era created a class of wealthy rural landlords who owned large estates; many of these families relocated to Sidi Bouzid’s central town to take advantage of the greater infrastructure, while subsisting on the substantial income that their agricultural lands in the countryside generated. Third, some of the “losers” of the process of land privatization migrated to Sidi

Bouzid in search of basic work in cafes, construction, or as street vendors. Despite the poor pay

14 Tunisia. Recensement Général De La Population Et De L'Habitat 2014. 2014. http://census.ins.tn/fr/resultats. 15 Ibid.

143 that these jobs offered, the income was enough to shield people from the risk of starvation that they faced as landless or poorly-landed agricultural workers.16

The social composition of the contemporary town of Sidi Bouzid owes much to these migration processes. During fieldwork, the strong majority of the research contacts I developed relationships with were either born in rural areas themselves, or had been born to parents who migrated from the countryside. Despite this connection to the countryside however, a sentiment prevails among some in Sidi Bouzid that there is no going back. Some explained this in practical terms: given the land privatization policies of Bourguiba, agricultural land has been divided up into smaller and smaller increments in every generation, such that it can no longer sustain an income. Others suggested however that farming has lost its prestige - especially among university graduates. During fieldwork in Sidi Bouzid, I heard stories of young men in Sidi

Bouzid who could easily earn a substantial income by developing family agricultural lands but who simply opted to remain unemployed or work menial jobs while holding out for employment with the municipal administration. In contrast to agricultural work, public service is seen as offering a “nail in the wall” (mismar fil-Heet) - in other words, a dependable and prestigious source of income.

In this context, the clan-based solidarities that undergirded social life in Sidi Bouzid during the late Ottoman and early colonial era have been diminished as sources of social mobilization. The breakup of collective land during the colonial period had begun this process of detachment from clan identities, while the Bourguibist state’s refusal to recognize tribal claims to land hastened it. But settling down in the city seems to have been the final step in the process.

16 Ayeb, Habib, and Ray Bush. "Small Farmer Uprisings and Rural Neglect in Egypt and Tunisia." Middle East Report 272 (Fall 2014)

144

One unique social feature of Sidi Bouzid, relative to Metlaoui, is the cosmopolitan nature of the residential quarters. The quarters are comprised of families from different areas of the Sidi

Bouzid hinterland who, in many cases, had no pre-existing relationship to neighbors before settling in the city. Among youth in Sidi Bouzid, the neighborhood (or Houma) has displaced the clan as the dominant local identity for youth in the town, a solidarity reinforced through daily meetings youth have with peers in cafes and childhood friendships at neighborhood schools.

Many people in Sidi Bouzid do not even know their clan affiliations. As an example, during the course of my fieldwork, I developed relationships with numerous individuals from the

Awlad Bouaziz - the clan unit that the famed late street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi came from.

Although my research contacts agreed that there were two families in the Sidi Bouzid countryside that carried the surname Bouazizi - one in Bir El Hafey, the other in Mazaara’ - some contacts asserted that the two factions were genealogically separate and not related. Others asserted that the two Awlad Bouaziz units were both branches of the same clan, but that the Bir

El Hafey branch had migrated from the group’s original homeland of Mazaara’. Additionally, the same research contacts disagreed as to which of the three primary branches of the Hamama the

Awlad Bouaziz were descended from - with some asserting that they were a faction of the Awlad

‘Aziz, and others asserting that they belonged to the Awlad Radhouan. This is indicative of the way clan identities - having been disconnected from their material basis - are starting to fade away.

Nevertheless, people in Sidi Bouzid still view the countryside as a sort of spiritual anchor that conditions how they situate themselves in society - a consequence of the ties to rural regions that they maintain. Residents of Sidi Bouzid maintain strong personal ties with relatives who have remained in the surrounding hinterland outside the town and often visit them during

145 holidays and festivals. Despite the weakness of clan-based identities in Sidi Bouzid relative to

Metlaoui, residents of Sidi Bouzid maintain affinity with the rural region in which their family originates. A common question people in the town of Sidi Bouzid ask each other upon meeting each other is:“ween bledek?” or “where is your country?” During fieldwork, residents of Sidi

Bouzid I spoke to often described the town as having a fundamentally “rural nature” - evidenced by the fact that in Sidi Bouzid “everybody knows everybody else.”

It is this emotional connection to the countryside that plays a role in conditioning the contemporary political sentiments of Sidi Bouzid’s youth. Despite their more urban existence, youth in Sidi Bouzid describe a feeling of ownership over the history of the fellaga and the armed resistance that their rural ancestors participated in - using the Arabic term mawrouth or inheritance. Youth I spoke to in the town described growing up and listening to stories their grandparents told about the armed uprising against France. When I expressed interest in learning about the history of the armed insurgency of the 1950’s, several research contacts offered to connect me with elderly relatives who witnessed or had been directly involved in the events. At the same time, even youth with otherwise little knowledge of history are aware of the falling out that occurred between Bourguiba and the fellaga. This has fueled feelings of resentment and estrangement with the contemporary Tunisian state. One popular facebook meme that circulated among youth activists in Sidi Bouzid references a 1959 quote from Bourguiba: “The fellaga say that they expelled the French with their rusty guns, but I expelled France with my intellect and diplomacy.” Next to the quote, there is a picture of fellaga leader Lazhar Chraiti with the quotation: “this is where the falsification of history began.” In essence, the connection that youth feel with the countryside and its mythology of resistance corresponds with a feeling of alienation from the vision of modernization that Bourguiba introduced and which the

146 contemporary state embodies. It is this feeling that has increased the contemporary salience of the fellaga’s armed resistance in the political imagination..

In Metlaoui, the historical evolution of the relationship between people and land proceeded differently. Although Bourguiba’s 1957 declaration abolished collective tribal land, data collected during ethnographic fieldwork suggests that the policy was not fully implemented in Metlaoui and the larger mining basin. During an initial research trip to Metlaoui, I was taken to an expanse of steppe acreage by a member of the Awlad Bouyahia and informed that the area was the collective property of the clan. The area was barren with no agricultural development and contained no houses, save for a few small corrals of sheep and camels that Awlad Bouyahia members had set up to supplement income and connect with tradition. When I asked how the land was administered, I was told that a council of clan leaders held stewardship over the land and had to coordinate with the leaders of the Awlad Salaama, who owned the adjacent steppe land around the city of Oum Larayes. The system was similar to the land administration regime that the Hamama used during pre-colonial times.17

The true legal status of the land may well be ambiguous - akin to the “shaa’ia” land ownership in Sidi Bouzid; however, one explanation for the persistence of these apparent pre- colonial land administration practices may be the limited recognition that the French gave to the land during the early colonial-era. While the colonial regime expropriated a significant portion of the Awlad Bouyahia’s land for the purpose of mining phosphates, France formally provided certificates of recognition for pre-colonial titles to some of the lands traditionally held by the

17 Tlili, Mostafa. Mintaqat Gafsa Wal-Hamama Fi 'Ahad Muhammad Al-Saadiq Bey: 1859 - 1881. Tunis: Daar Saamid Lil-Nashar Wal-Tawzi', 2004.

147

Awlad Bouyahi at the beginning of the 19th century.18 These lands were invariably those a considerable distance away from the area in which phosphates were being mined.

Despite the persistence of collective land however, the intergenerational history of

Metlaoui’s contemporary inhabitants is defined by the urban experience. After independence, the dominance of the phosphate industry over the local society in Metlaoui only increased. As a consequence of the success of anti-colonial movements in Algeria, Libya, and Morocco, the workers from these countries returned to their homelands, prompting a labor shortage in the mines that the indigenous population came to fill.19 Although the Awlad Bouyahia and other

Hamama clans had become the largest workers’ contingent in Metlaoui during the colonial era, in the years after independence, indigenous Tunisian workers came to represent virtually the entire worker’ contingent at the phosphate company.20

While there was probably no forced labor in a literal sense, the post-colonial state did impose onerous restrictions on the digging of wells that prevented the people in the region from accessing the water table in a way that would be sufficient for agriculture, as happened in Sidi

Bouzid.21 Moreover, the establishment of the company and the amenities provided to workers made many people in the region ultimately view mining work as preferable to agricultural work, despite the initial hesitancy that the clans in the region showed to sedentarization during the colonial era.22 In contrast to Sidi Bouzid then, where contemporary inhabitants are only one step

18 Tababi, Hafayyidh. Min Al-Badaawa Ila Al-Manaajim. Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Tunisiyya Lil-Kutaab, 2012. 116-117 19 Personal interview with local oral historian. Gafsa, August 2015. 20 Ibid. 21 Conversations with disgruntled phosphate company employee. Metlaoui, February 2016. High Institute for the History of the National Movement Oral History Project. Interview with Messoud Sehimi, Cassette. 22 Conversations with Metlaoui resident. Sousse, August 2015.

148 removed from the rural experience of the countryside, in Metlaoui, youth are in many cases the fourth or fifth generation to have lived in the city. In contrast to Sidi Bouzid, which is surrounded by rich agricultural lands, the countryside that surrounds Metlaoui is barren steppe.

Popular poetry from Metlaoui acknowledges this reality. One well-known song performed at

Awlad Bouyahia weddings today addresses the tribe, lamenting: “Oh Awlad Bouyahia! You were shooting hunters, but now you’ve become wagon shovelers!”23 This is a reference to the traditional mining practice of shoveling phosphate rock into train cars.

Despite the centrality of the city in Metlaoui’s history, in contrast to Sidi Bouzid, sub- tribal clan solidarities continued to play an important role in urban social life. On one level, this is reflected in the social ecology of the city. The majority of residential quarters in Metlaoui are tribally homogeneous - with most neighborhoods comprised solely of members of the Awlad

Bouyahia and some individual neighborhoods consisting wholly of members of one Awlad

Bouyahia subdivision. On another level, it is reflected in the way social relationships between

Metlaoui residents are discursively represented. While many youth in Sidi Bouzid could not name the specific tribe they belonged to, multiple research contacts in Metlaoui from the Awlad

Bouyahia - many without any specific knowledge of history - knew that the Awlad Bouyahia contained exactly 17 subdivisions and could name the purported relationships between various branches. Youth speak proudly of their tribal identities and use them to understand their relationship to other members of the city. Instead of, “what’s your country?” as in Sidi Bouzid, a common question that residents of Metlaoui pose to one another in the contemporary city is:

“what are you?” - in other words, “what clan are are you from?”

23 In Metlaoui dialectical Arabic: “Ya Awlaad Bouyahia - Kuntum siyaada yatlagou waleetom sarjaay bil fago.”

149

Far from a contradicting the logic of urban life in Metlaoui, the persistence of clan solidarities in Metlaoui is a direct outgrowth of it. As suggested previously, the roots of this tendency lie in the early stages of urbanization during the colonial era. In contrast to the late urbanization that happened in Sidi Bouzid after tribal lands had been broken up and clan identities had begun to fade, the Awlad Bouyahia and other clans urbanized at the beginning of the 20th century with their clan structures still fully intact. Tababi shows, for example, how the clan-based arrangement of residential quarters in Metlaoui dates to the colonial era and the very first Hamama clans who settled in the town.24 After independence however, two dynamics combined that further increased the salience of clan identities in Metlaoui, relative to Sidi

Bouzid.

First, as the population of Metlaoui increased - a consequence of both urban migration and high birth rates - competition for positions at the phosphate company became more intense, creating an atmosphere of tension among various clans that resembled the strained relations between Moroccan, Algerian, and Libyan workers’ contingents during the colonial era. This led to the development of a norm by which positions at the phosphate company would be distributed to members of different clans, commensurate with their population size.

Second, as a consequence of the growth of civil society in Metlaoui, the logics of union organizing and clan solidarity became intertwined. While during the colonial period, different clans had joined different unions, after independence, all of the unions became subsumed under the local branch of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT). Nevertheless, after independence, the relationship between clans and unions took a novel turn. In Metlaoui a

24 Tababi, Hafayyidh. 'Umaal Manaajim Gafsa Fil-'Ahad Al-Ist'imaari. Tunis: Daar Al-Taabaa'a Wal-Ishhaar, 2015. 82-83.

150 tradition emerged whereby leadership positions at the union were distributed to various clans according to a “confessional” system. The secretary general, being the highest position, must come from the Awlad Bouyahia; other positions are reserved for members of the Awlad Salaama and the Jaridiyyah. In Metlaoui, members of the union are lambasted by youth as corrupt, given their ability to influence hiring at the phosphate company and their alleged tendency to reward family members and tribal kin.25 Since connections to the union leadership can be crucially beneficial to youth seeking employment however, tribal solidarity is one way that youth in

Metlaoui can get ahead in life. In the same way that collective land served as the material resource that held clan solidarity together during the 19th century, after independence, access to the gates of employment became the new material resource that sustained the resonance of clan identities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

In Metlaoui, the history of contentious politics in labor unions combined with the continued resonance of materially-rooted clan identities have conditioned the political repertoires that youth in the town employ today. In both union and clan-based mobilizations, the goal is to employ targeted strategies to gain specific material concessions for oneself and one’s kin. It is this logic of material status that dominates the political subjectivity of the town’s youth. While the connection to the fellaga revolutionaries has not disappeared from the collective memory, the power of the armed resistance against the French as a political reference has been tempered by a different set of collective memories that have emerged from Metlaoui’s history of labor union activism and materially-rooted clan solidarity. Despite the antipathy to the state, this history has imbued youth with a vision of pragmatic, material protest that does not challenge the philosophical foundations of Bourguiba’s high modernism. Rather than seeking to upend the

25 Conversations with unemployed and employ youth. January 2016 and February 2016, Metlaoui.

151 foundations of the political structure in Tunisia, the logic of contention around material status causes Metlaoui’s inhabitants to tacitly accept the Bourguibist vision of the state, at the same time they protest its failure to provide them material benefits. It is this fundamental difference with Sidi Bouzid that has structured the different approaches the town towns have taken to political contention and caused a divergence in the way youth in each town received the messages of jihadist salafists.

Cosmetic Civil Society and Modern Rebellions

The foregoing analysis has shown how after Tunisia gained independence in 1956, the

Bourguibist state’s “modernization” program reinforced many of the same social dynamics that had led to the emergence of the colonial era repertoires of contention in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui. This has caused the memory of the colonial era revolts to remain salient. Additionally, despite the authoritarian political context, Tunisia also witnessed a number of organized challenges to the state after independence that have entered the collective memory in their own right. The particular character with which these mobilizations unfolded in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui were very much in keeping with the colonial era repertoires and served to strengthen their value as references for youth during the 2010/2011 revolution and post-revolutionary periods.

After Bourguiba successfully fended off the challenge posed by the Youssefists and the insurgent Fellaga leaders, he set about consolidating his hold over civil society. On the surface,

Tunisia’s civil society was advanced - particularly given the ubiquity of the national UGTT labor

152 union throughout the country.26 In practice however, during the 1950’s and 1960’s civil society’s role was primarily cosmetic - designed to add a veneer of legitimacy to Bourguiba’s authoritarian rule and to provide an easy way of disseminating state-sponsored narratives to the population.27

Following independence, UGTT-led strikes plummeted as party officials were placed in positions as senior leaders and local coordinators of the union.28 Because the expulsion and assassination of Ben Youssef had given Bourguiba total control over the party, the hegemony over civil society meant that there was no space for genuine contention.

Bourguiba’s ability to carry out his authoritarian consolidation was aided by his government’s ability to deliver economic growth and dramatically improve the delivery of basic services during the first two decades of his rule. Although a brief experiment with agrarian collectivism had failed during the 1960’s, nationally successful import substitution initiatives and the development of the country’s tourism sector delivered prompted an expansion of the country’s economy.29 In Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the 1960’s and 1970’s saw unprecedented increases in wealth. In Sidi Bouzid, the development of advanced agricultural technology rendered areas of the countryside that had long been barren suitable for agriculture.30 This dramatically raised the incomes of many rural families living in poverty and ensured their subsistence. In Metlaoui, despite difficult work conditions, employment in the mines was

26 Moore, Clement Henry. Tunisia since Independence: The Dynamics of the One-party Government. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. 27 Wilder, Keenan. "The Origins of Labour Autonomy in Authoritarian Tunisia." Contemporary Social Science 10, no. 4 (2015): 349-63. 28 Ibid. 29 Ayadi, Mohamed, and Wided Mattoussi. Scoping of the Tunisian Economy. Working paper no. 17. Africa Growth Initiative: Learning to Compete. Brookings Institution, 2016. 30 Abaab, A. "L'agriculture Familiale En Tunisie Centrale Face Aux Nouveaux Défis écologiques Et économiques." In Agricultures Familiales Et Politiques Agricoles En Méditerranée : Enjeux Et Perspectives, edited by P. Campagne, A. Abaab, M. Elloumi, A. Fragata, and L. Zagdouni. Vol. 12. Options Méditerranéennes : Série B. Etudes Et Recherches. Montpellier: CIHEAM, 1997.

153 plentiful and the departure of foreign workers allowed Tunisians to assume more senior and financially lucrative positions at the company. These material advancements may have helped prevent the critical mass of popular will necessary for organized contention against the

Bourguiba regime.

In the late 1970’s however, rising discontent with Bourguiba’s authoritarianism and increasing inequality led to the first mass mobilizations of the post-independence era. As the decade progressed, the UGTT organized an increasing number of illegal strikes culminating in what became known as the “Black Thursday” General Strike of January 1978.31 The UGTT’s declaration of the general strike spurred widespread rioting throughout Tunisia’s cities and led to the deaths of dozens of demonstrators in a brutal crackdown.32 In Metlaoui, the local branch of the union opted what one union leader from the period characterized as a “wait and see” approach with respect to the Black Thursday uprising. Despite not organizing any demonstrations, immediately upon being spotted on the streets after exiting his house, the union leader was arrested to preempt any unrest.33 Still, demonstrations seem to have taken place in

Metlaoui during Black Thursday regardless. Another retired phosphate worker from the era who

I interviewed claimed that on the day the UGTT called the general strike, there were protests that were “civil” before becoming more violent once police intervened.34

While Black Thursday was the beginning of a contentious era, the defining event in

Metlaoui’s contentious politics during the Bourguiba occured in the context of widespread bread riots that struck Tunisia in 1984. In 1983, the Tunisian economy had begun to stagnate - a

31Beinin, Joel. Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford, CA: Stanford Briefs, an Imprint of Stanford University Press, 2016.46-48 32 Ibid. 33 Interview with retired union leader. Metlaoui, September 2015. 34 Interview with retired phosphate worker. Metlaoui, February 2016.

154 byproduct of an economic downturn in Europe during the early 1980’s and falling oil prices.35

To support Tunisia’s economic growth, Bourguiba negotiated a loan from the IMF that mandated deep cuts to the Tunisian government’s subsidies for wheat and semolina. These cuts spurred an immediate rise in the price of bread which provoked massive riots throughout inner Tunisia, beginning in December of 1983 and reaching their apex in January of 1984.36 The demonstrations provoked a violent crackdown by the state, whereby police were ordered to shoot indiscriminately into crowds of protesters. While the death toll is disputed, some estimates place the number as high as 143.37

Metlaoui experienced some of the most intense protests nationally during the 1984 uprising. According to one report, six protesters from Metlaoui were killed - a figure that places the town in the fourth position nationally as far as death toll.38 Two retired phosphate workers and UGTT members interviewed separately for the project provided similar accounts that shed light on why the protests in Metlaoui were so intense, relative to other similar-sized towns.

According to both informants, the Metlaoui protests in 1984 began outside the phosphate washing facility when workers organized a strike that sought to bring company operations to a standstill.39 Upon seeing the union workers, masses of people in Metlaoui poured out into the streets in solidarity. Police responded by setting up snipers on roofs in residential quarters with orders to shoot anyone seen on the streets in defiance of a curfew.40 Among residents of

35 Beinin. Workers and Thieves. 2016. 53-55 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Labid, Salem. "Al-Azmat Al-Ijtimaa'iyya Wal-Siyaasiyya Fi Tunis." Al-Hiwar Net. December 1, 2011. http://www.alhiwar.net/ShowNews.php?Tnd=13181. 39 Personal interviews with retired phosphate workers. February 2016, Metlaoui. 40 Ibid.

155

Metlaoui, the event still features prominently in local accounts of the town’s history provided by activists and lay citizens alike. During fieldwork, I visited a house in one of the targeted residential quarters and was shown bullet holes bored into one of the walls by a police gun.

The impact of this history of post-independence contentious politics in Metlaoui has been the continued belief in the efficacy of “unionist” tactics as effective ways to express political grievances. In the 1984 bread riots, the colonial era tactic of “shutting down the company” - specifically the phosphate washing facility - during protests continued to undergird the repertoire of contention. At the core of this repertoire was a purposeful restricting of the state’s access to vital infrastructure and resources until specific, targeted demands were addressed. At the same time, it is important to note that this style of protest also carries a tacit acceptance of the overall political regime, since petitioning the state to improve material circumstances tacitly acknowledges its legitimacy to rule. In this context, the events of 1978 and 1984 had the effect of reinforcing the colonial era repertoire of contention by providing a visceral display of the use of

“unionist” tactics in political protest for a new generation.

During fieldwork, Younes,41 a retired union official who helped organize protests during the 1984 bread riots and was imprisoned after the uprising, described a connection between his

1984 activism and the history of union organizing in Metlaoui during the colonial era of which he is intimately aware.42 He argued that Metlaoui was instrumental in the establishment of a base of support for the French CGT union during the 1920’s and that conflict with the colonizer often played out in the form of conflict with the phosphate company. On the one hand, he describes the company as effectively the agent of the state in the mining basin; the company’s secretary

41 Personal interview. February 2016, Metlaoui. 42 Ibid.

156 general, he says, controlled the police force, administered hospitals, and distributed social services. On the other hand, he argues that the company’s administration was unjust and discriminated between European and North African workers. The existence of these narratives suggest that people like Younes - the very individuals responsible for the 1984 uprising in

Metlaoui - see their resistance practices as historically rooted.

In Sidi Bouzid, by contrast, in conversations with activists and lay citizens about the town’s history, the 1978 Black Thursday strike was never mentioned. While one leftist activist I spoke to in Tunis who grew up in Sidi Bouzid mentioned the bread riots, they were always presented in the context of discussions of the national political situation in the 1970’s and

1980’s.43 In contrast to Metlaoui, no research informants - including unionists I interviewed - were able to provide specific details of how the incident played out in Sidi Bouzid. This seems to stem from two factors. First, even as late as 1984, most contemporary residents of Sidi Bouzid

(or their parents) were still living in isolated rural areas, where the union was not present and there was no “street” on which to organize or industrial infrastructure to close.44 This served to insulate these populations from the dynamics of contention behind the 1978 and 1984 mobilization.

Second, despite the fact that contentious union activity had come to a near standstill in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the generation of Metlaoui residents who participated in the 1984 uprising had come of age in the immediate aftermath of independence and so had heard stories of the unrelenting strikes that the late colonial era had brought. By contrast, even the people who were living in the central town of Sidi Bouzid in 1984 were mostly recent arrivals from the

43 Personal interview. Sidi Bouzid leftist activist. Tunis, January 2016. 44 Tunisia. Recensement Général De La Population Et De L'Habitat 1984. 1984

157 countryside and so had not grown up watching or hearing about strikes and union activity in the same way. Instead, the dominant political reference for those in Sidi Bouzid was still the armed struggle against France that their fellaga ancestors had waged. The union-inspired, organized street unrest that characterized the 1978 and 1984 mobilizations were not consistent with the repertoire of contention that prevailed in Sidi Bouzid at the time.

Despite this, Sidi Bouzid - particularly the rural areas that surround the contemporary city

- was not silent during the Bourguiba era. The one major movement of contention that people from Sidi Bouzid participated in during this period however was in keeping with the region’s historical approach to conflict with authority: armed resistance. In 1980, a group of commandos who had received paramilitary training in Libya from Mu’ammar Qadhafi’s regime staged an armed assault on the oasis city of Gafsa - the main urban hub in the central steppe region where

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui are located.45 After gaining control of the city’s vital installations, the commandos exhorted the people of Gafsa to rise up in rebellion in the hopes of entrenching control in the city. The masses in Gafsa did not take to the streets in support of the militants however and after several days of clashes with Tunisian security forces who had launched a counter-attack, the commandos had been routed - with many killed and taken into custody. 30 people were convicted of involvement in the attack and 12 were sentenced to death.

The political and ideological origins of the 1980 Gafsa operation hearken back to the

Bourguibist-Youssefist split that occurred within the Neo-Destour party in the 1960’s.46 In areas like Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa, the popular sympathy that the Youssefists and fellaga leaders had garnered translated into latent support for pan-Arab nationalist opposition to the Bourguiba

45 Al-Hadaad, Harakaat, 2005. 204-212. 46 Al-Madini, Tawfiq. Al-Mu'aarida Al-Tunisiyya: Nasha'atuha Wa Tatawwiruha. Damascus: Ittihaad Kutaab Al- 'Arab, 2001. 21-25.

158 regime that continued for decades. In the 1970’s, a loose alliance of Youssefist pan-Arabists formed “The Progressive Nationalist Front for the Liberation of Tunisia” (PNFLT) as an organizational umbrella for supporters of the tendency. In addition to undertaking covert activity within Tunisia, the PNFLT had a close working relationship with the Qadhafi regime in Libya during the 1970’s and 1980’s.

It used this relationship to funnel young Tunisian volunteers to a variety of Arab guerilla groups in the region that the Libyan regime supported, including armed movements operating under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Polisario Front fighting in the Western Sahara.47 In an interview, one veteran pan-Arab activist in Sidi Bouzid drew a parallel between the leftist and nationalist foreign fighters of this early era and the jihadist salafist foreign fighters who left Tunisia after the revolution. While the leftist and Arab nationalist causes these foreign fighters championed were far removed from the jihadist ideology of today, the contact argued that the rhetoric directed towards them was essentially the same: an exhortation to support one’s kin under siege by a ruthless foreign adversary through a confrontation with that adversary by force of arms.48

The leaders of the 1980 Gafsa operation had been socialized politically in the Youssefist-

Arab Nationalist mllieu that the PNFLT came to represent. The group’s overall leader, ‘Azzedine

Sharif, had fought with Arab nationalist militias in Palestine during the 1940’s and was implicated in the 1962 fellaga-led Youssefist coup against Bourguiba.49 Ahmad al-Morghani, the group’s military leader, had been involved in the PNFLT since 1974 and gained battlefield

47 Ibid. 48Personal interview with activist. Sidi Bouzid, November 2015. 49 For complete biography, see: Belhoula, Al-Munsif. Shahaada Lil-Taarikh 'An Ahdaath Gafsa Al-Musalliha Sanat 1980. Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Maghribiyya Lil-Tabaa'a Wal-Nashar, 2014. 135-150

159 experience fighting for the Arab nationalist Polisario Front in the Western Sahara.50 A number of participants, including five of the twelve sentenced to death, had trained with leftist Palestinian militias fighting against Israel.51 Some had been formal members of the PNFLT and were recruited by PNFLT personnel based in Libya.52 Therefore, the best way to conceptualize the ideological orientation of the attackers is as a radical mutation of the defunct Arab nationalist wing of the Neo-Destour party that had been represented by Saleh Ben Youssef and supported by the fellaga leaders.

While the participants in the Gafsa events came from all over Tunisia, Sidi Bouzid was disproportionately represented, with five of the 31 people convicted in the plot having been from the region.53 Of these, four came from Meknassi - a rural region to the south of Sidi Bouzid that contributed more fighters to the fellaga than any other part of contemporary Sidi Bouzid governorate.54 ‘Abdel Majid al-Sakri, one of the Meknassi fighters, was executed for his involvement in the plot and became a heroic icon in the Sidi Bouzid countryside.55 During the

1950’s, some of the most important fellaga leaders in Sidi Bouzid came from the Sakri family and so there is a clear connection between the legacy of the armed resistance fighters during the anti-colonial struggle and the 1980 Gafsa assault.

Although Metlaoui is part of Gafsa governorate, none of those convicted were from

Metlaoui. One named Mohamed ‘Ali al-Hmidi had lived part of his adolescence in Metlaoui but

50 Ibid. 151-158 51 Data compiled from biographies of participants, see: Ibid. 214-234 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Tunisia. Al-Hizb Al-Ishtiraaki Al-Dusturi. Al-Sajal Al-Qawmi Li-Shuhadaa' Al-Watan. Tunis: Dar Al-'Amal. 55 Personal interview. Sidi Bouzid activist. Remotely in November 2017.

160 came from the Jarid - he archipelago of oases to Metlaoui’s south.56 His codename among the attackers was “the Jaridi” - which suggests his birth region, rather than Metlaoui, was the area he identified with.57 The sole person from the mining basin convicted of involvement in the Gafsa assault was Larabi ‘Akrami, and his case is the exception that proves the rule.58 ‘Akrami was 60 years old at the time of the incident and was himself a veteran of the 1950’s armed struggle against France, having served in the fellaga during his youth. In other words, his political socialization had much more in common with that of his counterparts in Sidi Bouzid than the dominant political socialization in Metlaoui. Overall then, in the same way that the tradition of union-led opposition to colonialism in Metlaoui paved the way for the intense union-led protests the city witnessed during the 1984 bread riots, the tradition of armed opposition to colonialism in

Sidi Bouzid made the region fertile recruiting ground for the 1980 armed Gafsa operation and helped participants acquire heroic status in its aftermath.

Conclusion

Despite the economic growth that Bourguiba delivered, the tremendous centralization of political power that defined his reign gave citizens few legitimate channels to air political grievances or voice opposition to policies. As a result, opposition took place through extra-legal channels. Nevertheless, the specific extra-legal channels that people in Tunisia gravitated towards varied sub-nationally. In Metlaoui, residents soughts to air their grievances with general strikes and economic protest; in Sidi Bouzid, radical armed mobilization against political

56 Belhoula, Shahaada, 2014. 179-180. 57 Ibid. 58 Al'Akrami, Al-'Arabi. Min Dhaakirat Mujaahid Al-'Arabi Bin Ahmed 'Akrami. Tunis: Dar Aqwaas Lil-Nashar, 1997.

161 authority continued to dominate the resistance field. This variance ultimately raises the question of why two regions operating in the same authoritarian context express grievances against the system in different ways.

This chapter has argued that the specific character of the colonial-era resistance in each region played an instrumental role in structuring the form resistance took after independence. In

Metlaoui, residents responded to the 1984 increase in the price of bread by blocking the entrance to the phosphate washing facility and attempting to shut down company operations. In form, these tactics echoed those employed by colonial era union organizers during the independence struggle. Eyewitnesses and organizers of the 1984 protests paid tribute to their colonial-era union predecessors, suggesting that the memory of the independence struggle impacted the repertoire of contention behind the 1984 movements.

In Sidi Bouzid, while there was no comparable union mobilization, people from the region were recruited into the 1980 armed commando assault on Gafsa and gained heroic status in its aftermath. In this context, the connection between the Gafsa militants and the fellaga- supported Youssefist movement as well as the role played by members of prominent fellaga families from Sidi Bouzid shows a continuity between the armed uprising against France and the

1980 operation. In both cases, the character of the post-independence challenges to the

Bourguiba stemmed from the collective memory of the anti-colonial resistance and the tactical toolkit that it had provided to residents. The ultimate effect of these movements therefore was to reinforce the colonial repertoires of contention by introducing them to a new generation and layering them on top of the memory of colonial period in local oral traditions. The following chapter will show how these reinforced repertoires of contention impacted the resonance of jihadist salafist ideology in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui during the Ben Ali period.

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Chapter Six The Rise of Ben Ali and the Roots of Radicalism

Introduction

This chapter provides an analysis of political life in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui during the reign of President Ben Ali - Bourguiba’s authoritarian successor who ruled the country from

1987 until his forced abdication following the 2010/2011 revolution. The chapter surveys the early history of the jihadist salafist movement in Sidi Bouzid during the mid-2000’s and shows how in Metlaoui, different forms of social rebellion emerged in lieu of religious radicalism. The central argument of the chapter is that these divergent approaches to social rebellion stem from differing repertoires of contention that youth in each community were socialized into. These repertoires are the same repertoires that emerged in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui during the colonial era and were reinforced during the Bourguiba era.

The chapter proceeds in four parts. The first part of the chapter provides a discussion of

Ben Ali’s rise to power and the optimism with which members of civil society greeted his emergence. It also discusses the authoritarianism, corruption, and economic inequity that plagued the Ben Ali era and the way this contributed to grievances on a national level. The second part of the chapter analyzes the lived experience of “marginalization”or tahmish - a word that youth in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui use to describe their lives. Based on ethnographic field work, the section shows that despite different local histories, the lived day-to-day experience of tahmish in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui is remarkably similar.

The third part of the chapter shows how in the mid-2000’s the jihadist salafist cell emerged in Sidi Bouzid and became involved in a mysterious series of events known the

“Suleiman Affair.” While only a few dozen individuals were implicated, the militants enjoyed significant popularity on the streets and their actions brought a new set of intellectuals to the

163 forefront of local civil society. In Metlaoui, a jihadist salafist cell was broken up at nearly the same time that the Suleiman affair occurred - however, the militants failed to gain popular support on the streets. The fourth part of the chapter provides an overview of the “Mining Basin

Revolt” - a popular movement in Metlaoui and the larger mining basin i that did gain popular legitimacy, even while jihadist salafist ideas failed to resonate. Taken together, the comparison of these two events shows how different culturally-rooted repertoires produce different forms of popular contention.

Ben Ali and the Failure of “Modernization”

In 1987, Bourguiba’s Prime Minister Zine Abidine Ben Ali seized power in a bloodless coup after compelling a group of physicians to issue a declaration that Bourguiba’s advanced age had rendered him mentally unable to discharge the duties of his office. Upon assuming the

Presidency, Ben Ali pledged that his tenure would see unprecedented political liberalization, including competitive elections and a genuinely free press. In his first address to the nation he declared:

There is no place in our present era for life-long presidential terms, nor for automatic succession from which the people are excluded. Our people deserve an advanced, well- organized political life based on a multitude of political parties and popular organizations.1

To many in Tunisia, Ben Ali’s rise to power represented a sort of political “reset” that ushered in a new era of optimism. The anthropologist Kevin Dwyer argued that many in Tunisia

- particularly among the intellectual class - saw an inherent value in “changing horses” and were

1 Al-I'laam Al-'Arabi Wa Rihaanaat Al-Taghyir Fi Dhall Al-Tahawwulaat. Beirut: Markaz Diraasaat Al-Wahada Al- 'Arabiyya, 2017. 79

164 eager to believe that Ben Ali’s commitment to reform was genuine.2 Nevertheless, the following two decades unmasked Ben Ali’s reform agenda as a farce. Despite rebranding the party he inherited from Bourguiba as the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), elections were mere formalities; in the first parliamentary vote after the coup, the RCD won 100% of seats.3

Subsequent presidential and parliamentary elections saw Ben Ali and his party triumph by similarly incredible margins.4 Ben Ali also sought to reign in civil society using the same tactics that Bourguiba used during the early years after independence. In the UGTT, party loyalists were placed in key positions and labor mobilizations decreased in frequency and intensity throughout the 1990’s.5 In the media realm, Ben Ali introduced draconian policies of official censorship over press outlets. In 2010, Reporters Without Borders ranked Tunisia 164th out of 178 countries in media freedom - an abysmal ranking that put it below even such infamous human-rights violators as Qadhafi-era Libya,Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan.6 To support these authoritarian policies, Ben Ali created a parallel state security service - outside the administrative structure of the normal police and national guard.7

In addition to deepening authoritarianism, corruption ran rampant during the period of

Ben Ali’s rule - backed by the coercive power of the state. In Tunisia, a history of state-led

2 Dwyer, Kevin. Arab Voices: The Human Rights Debate in the Middle East. London: Routledge, 2016. 154-158. 3 "TUNISIA: Parliamentary Elections Majlis Al-Nuwab, 1989." Inter-Parliamentary Union. 2008. http://archive.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/2321_89.htm. 4 "IPU PARLINE Database: TUNISIA (Majlis Al-Nuwab), Election Archives." Inter-Parliamentary Union. 2008. http://archive.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2321_arc.htm. 5 Wilder, Keenan. "The Origins of Labour Autonomy in Authoritarian Tunisia." Contemporary Social Science 10, no. 4 (2015): 349-63. 6 Reporters Without Borders. "Press Freedom Index 2010." News release. http://en.rsf.org/spip.php?page=classement&id_rubrique=1034. 7Alexander, Christopher. "Back from the Democratic Brink: Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Tunisia." Middle East Report, no. 205 (1997): 34. Brooks, Risa. "Abandoned at the Palace: Why the Tunisian Military Defected from the Ben Ali Regime in January 2011." Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 2 (2013): 205-20. doi:10.1080/01402390.2012.742011.

165 industrialization and low mobilization capacity among associations of firms left the economy vulnerable to state capture.8 Cammett shows how the Ben Ali regime used coercive measures like the selective enforcement of customs duties or outright arrests of business leaders to assert influence over the private sector.9 In the process, both the Ben Ali family and the family of Leila

Trabelsi - Ben Ali’s wife - acquired ownership over a large array of firms, using the coercive power of the state to manipulate the competitive environment.10 A World Bank report shows the

Ben Ali and Trabelsi-owned firms performed significantly better than competitors in highly- regulated economic sectors than in less-regulated ones.11 This suggests the regime abused the state regulatory apparatus not simply to weaken potential political competitors, but for bare- faced personal enrichment.

To add insult to injury, as Ben Ali’s tenure wore on, the economic inequities of the

1980’s became even more deeply entrenched. On the one hand, the years between 1990 to 2000 saw a dramatic decrease in “absolute poverty” in a number of governorates - particularly the country’s rural northwest - as destitute peasants found opportunity in emerging provincial cities.12 On the other hand, the economy was unable to absorb these masses of newly-mobilized citizens, as evidence.13 Some analysts have attributed these inequities to neoliberal reforms instituted by the Ben Ali regime, with the encouragement of western development organization

8 Cammett, Melani Claire. Globalization and Business Politics in Arab North Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 107-116 9 Ibid. 116-121. 10 Schraeder, Peter J., and Hamadi Redissi. "Ben Ali's Fall." Journal of Democracy 22, no. 3 (2011): 5-19. 11 Rijkers, Bob, Caroline Freund, and Antonio Nucifora. "All in the Family: State Capture in Tunisia." Policy Research Working Papers, 2014. doi:10.1596/1813-9450-6810. 12 Bibi, Sami. Poverty and Inequality in Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania. Report. African Development Bank, 2011. 13 Cavatorta, Francesco, and Rikke Hostrup Haugbølle. “The End of Authoritarian Rule and the Mythology of Tunisia under Ben Ali.” Mediterranean Politics, vol. 17, no. 2, 2012, pp. 179–195.

166 like the World Bank.14 Whatever the interpretation of the root causes of the economic system failure however, governorate-level economic data shows that interior regions remained underdeveloped and experienced much higher unemployment rates than their coastal counterparts.15

Being Angry and Young in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui

In Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the result of these political and economic changes was the emergence of a large underclass of unemployed or just as frequently underemployed youth with high aspirations, few outlets to realize those aspirations, and no reliable institutions to air their grievances. During fieldwork with young men in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, I uncovered several themes that help demystify the lived day-to-day experience of this population. Whether in Sidi Bouzid or Metlaoui, youth today frequently use the word despair or ya’s in Arabic to describe their state of mind. “Tunis is a country of nothing” is a common trope one hears to describe the exasperation. Unemployed young men in both cities live parallel day-to-day lives: every morning they wake up, leave their parents’ houses to head to local neighborhood cafes, and sit in circles with similarly-unemployed friends and neighbors; if they are lucky, they will have gathered some spare change to smoke a few cheap, smuggled Algerian cigarettes and order a single shot of espresso - which they often drink over a period of six hours. At the end of their days, they return to their homes and go to sleep only to wake the next morning and repeat the monotony of the routine.

14 Kaboub, Fadhel. "The Making of the Tunisian Revolution." Middle East Development Journal 5, no. 1 (2013). 15 Obayashi, N. (2012). Tunisia: Economic and Social Challenges Beyond the Revolution. African Development Bank Group.

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In repeated conversations, unemployed and underemployed young men in both Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui described feelings of emasculation - with one unemployed activist from

Sidi Bouzid repeating exasperatedly in a speech that made the rounds on social media “We want to live like men! We want to live like men!”16 Youth I interviewed described their day-to-day experience as a sort of living death that involves waking up and going to sleep everyday, but given their perceived bleak prospects, living without any feeling of accomplishment or hope of moving forward in life. Some had been unemployed for years and recounted stories of friends who had been without work for over a decade. While it is difficult to objectively assess whether their assessments of their own chances for success are accurate, it is worth noting that the majority of unemployed youth I met during initial fieldwork in 2013 failed to find stable work by the end of the principal ethnographic research in 2016. Of the university graduates who did find work, most accepted menial jobs in bakeries or grocery stores or retail outlets - positions that did not require a university-level degree to begin with.

On a practical level, prolonged unemployment and underemployment forces youth to delay marriage, or prevents them from formulating marriage plans at all. In Tunisia - especially conservative areas like Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui - young men are expected to amass considerable financial resources before a marriage can take place. This includes the resources to pay for and furnish a residence for the couple, gold given to the family of the bride, and the cost of the wedding ceremony itself. Weddings are expected to be extravagant affairs that last for several days and bring relatives from across the country. For unemployed or underemployed youth unable to cover these expenses, marriage seems to be an impossibility. During the course of fieldwork in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, I met young men who were forced to break off

16 Video provided by Thawrah TV. April 20, 2011.

168 engagements after several years of failing to find work. Given the conservative nature of society in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, marriage is the only socially acceptable framework in which intimate relationships between young men and women can occur, so the inability of youth marry is tantamount to their inability to experience any kind of partnership with the opposite sex.

Beyond deprivation from the intrinsic emotional benefits of marriage, the emotional consequences of this failure to marry can be devastating for young men’s self-esteem. First, there is the shame involved in disappointing one’s family. In both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, marrying and having children is considered an important family responsibility - a message that young men

(and women) are given consistently by their parents throughout adolescence. Failing to marry is thus failing to fulfil one’s role. Second, a core part of the vision of masculinity that young men in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui are socialized into is the role of protector/provider for women. While possessing economic resources is a practical requirement for marriage, the ability to be a breadwinner in a long term relationship is also an important intrinsic goal for many young men.

We can understand the emotional stakes of the failure of unemployed and underemployed youth to marry through the lens of “identity theory” - a foundational paradigm in sociological social psychology that has its intellectual roots in the symbolic interactionist approach.17 It argues that an individual’s self is a reflection of the multitude of roles he or she occupies within the social structure and contains multiple identities, arranged in a hierarchy according to their salience at particular times.18 Stryker views these identities as consisting of social roles and contends that each identity that an individual holds contains information about the behaviors that

17 Mead, George Herbert, Charles W. Morris, Daniel R. Huebner, and Hans Joas. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Blumer, Herbert. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 18 Owens, Timothy J., Dawn T. Robinson, and Lynn Smith-Lovin. "Three Faces of Identity." Annual Review of Sociology 36, no. 1 (2010): 477-99.

169 a person must perform when the identity is salient.19 Within the theory, the meanings associated with different role identities arise out of the social relationships people have with others who either share the identity, or possess a complementary identity (Mother/Daughter, Husband/Wife, etc.) People’s perceptions of who they are come from social interactions where they learn what their identities require of them. Conversely, when one is unable to perform the role that their internal sense of self dictates is fundamental to who they are, a feeling of psychological stress emerges. This helps to explain the feelings of despair that youth express.

The feeling of not performing one’s socially-prescribed role is exacerbated by what in

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui has been a generational downturn. In Metlaoui, most youth have fathers and/or relatives who have had long careers with the phosphate company and have used their earnings to support them. In the aftermath of independence, work at the company was abundant and many families that had lived in crushing rural poverty were suddenly able to procure 20th century amenities. Similarly, in Sidi Bouzid, while there were families who came to the city in search of basic subsistence work, most of today’s unemployed youth were born in Sidi

Bouzid because their parents had either found work in the governorate administration or had prospered after the development of agricultural lands. In general, as compared to rural areas of

Sidi Bouzid governorate, the town of Sidi Bouzid is inhabited by the region’s wealthiest inhabitants.20

The current state of economic malaise however has meant that in both towns today’s youth have significantly fewer opportunities than their parents. Every year, more people compete for fewer jobs. Additionally, even agricultural lands are divided up into smaller and smaller

19 Stryker, Sheldon. Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Caldwell, N.J: Blackburn Press, 2002. 20 Tunisia. Recensement Général De La Population Et De L'Habitat 2014. 2014

170 segments with each generation, limiting youth’s ability to derive the same household income from family-held plots.21 The implication of this unfortunate reality is that in each town, today’s youth are unable to meet the standards set by the previous generation as to how much wealth is necessary to subsist on and to to support a family. These expectations represent another reason why many youth are forced to delay marriage. They also contribute to the broader sentiment of

“life failure” that many youth suffer from.

In the context of the difficult personal circumstances, youth in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui express extreme antipathy towards the state, at both a local and a national level. Specifically, during fieldwork many expressed visceral disgust at the way local, state-sponsored corruption directly exacerbates their difficulties in the search for meaningful employment. In both Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui, the post-independence state co-opted traditional, pre-independence local elites by elevating them economically and politically - a process that has also been observed in other regions of rural Tunisia.22 The privileges enjoyed by these families has contributed to the

(largely accurate) perception of many youth that the odds are stacked against them. This has bred feelings of resentment. A common insult that youth use either seriously or in jest with friends - is qouwaad an Arabic word that means “pimp” but in the dialect carries a meaning roughly equivalent to the English slang word “snitch.” The word is used to describe people who have become agents of the state - in the discourse, tantamount to an abandonment of one’s principles.

This is also the term which is used to describe the notable, wealthy families that have been coopted.

21 Conversations with Sidi Bouzid land-owner. February 2016, April 2016. 22 Ibid.

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In Sidi Bouzid, multiple research contacts suggested that there were certain families in the area who had collaborated with the French during the late protectorate period to become notable and who were then effectively co-opted by the Bourguiba and later Ben Ali regimes as reliable allies. These families were handsomely rewarded with bountiful agricultural lands and given senior positions in the local branch of the ruling party.23 Not only do these families have the capacity to monopolize public sector employment by paying bribes to hiring decision- makers, but they also have been known to undermine efforts by those youth who do seek a future in agriculture. One research contact working as a teacher described an event earlier in his life during the Ben Ali era when he attempted to buy land from one of these prominent families and after receiving agreement to his terms, paid a sum of money.24 Nevertheless, the land title was never delivered and given the prominence of the family in the ruling party, he felt that complaining to the police would accomplish nothing, given that security services were often at the beck and call of prominent party officials.

In Metlaoui, research contacts described an analogous system of cooption, but true to the more prominent role clan identities have played in Metlaoui’s history, is more enmeshed with existing structures of clan solidarity. Youth in Metlaoui argued that most of the big decisions in the city are determined by a secret “council” of tribal notables representing various clans that determines by fiat which individuals will gain employment or promotions at the company and which individuals will prevail in union elections. The individuals on this council also hold important positions in the administration of the Gafsa Phosphate Company, the phosphate workers’ unions and the ruling political parties. Therefore, the tribal notables are reportedly able

23 Conversation with teacher in Sidi Bouzid. November, 2015. 24 Ibid.

172 to exert this power because they control the institutions which are responsible for these personnel decisions and so can rig company hiring and syndicate election processes on a whim. This has fueled resentment on the part of many youth toward the phosphate workers’ union. During a conversation in a cafe during fieldwork in Metlaoui, one of my research contacts sought illustrate how widespread the sentiment was among youth in Metlaoui that the union was corrupt by calling a server from the cafe over to the table. Without providing any context, my contact asked the server: “who gets jobs at the company?” The response was automatic: “The son of the unionist.”25

In addition to feelings of resentment towards the local representatives of the state, in both

Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, there is a perception among youth that their regions have been exploited economically by the coastal elites who control the national government. Since many of the farms in Sidi Bouzid are state-controlled, the governorate’s agricultural activities are an important contributor to the Tunisian state’s budget. This is in addition to the governorate’s role in supplying vegetables, fruits, and olive oil to populations on the coast. In Metlaoui, the profits from sales of phosphates go to the state-owned company and represent one of the country’s most important sources of revenue. Among youth in the town, there is a perception that millions of dollars are being taken out of the ground every day and leaving the region.

Despite these contributions to the national budget, infrastructure development in Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui is very poor by Tunisians. In Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui many people live alongside narrow dirt roads that separate houses. Local hospitals are under-resourced and as a result, the infirm in both towns are often forced to travel to other parts of Tunisia for suitable medical care. This lack of sufficient medical care is particularly problematic in Metlaoui where

25 Discussion with young phosphate workers. Metlaoui, February 2016.

173 the phosphates in the air have spurred a rise in various cancers and lung ailments.26 This poor level of development is in marked contrast to the situation that prevails in coastal regions of

Tunisia, where roads are paved and adequate medical facilities, and unemployment is markedly higher. Since Tunisia’s economy is highly state-controlled and governorates have very little power, most youth attribute these disparities to the conscious choices of Tunisia’s rulers about which regions are worthy of investment. An oft-repeated standby in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui

(as well as other regions of the interior) is that because Bourguiba and Ben Ali came from the adjacent coastal governorates of Sousse and Monastir, the state has deliberately promoted investment and development of these regions at the expense of the interior out of favoritism. This is another way that unemployed and underemployed youth link their desperate circumstances to the inequities of the political system.

Across Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, there is almost universal disillusionment with the political status quo. While all of this study’s fieldwork was carried out after the revolution, one of the most remarkable findings in both towns was that few youth believe the revolution actually improved things. Although some youth exclaimed bitterly that “thing were better before” the most common sentiment expressed in fieldwork conversations was a feeling that the systemic injustices that had motivated the revolution continued to exist as late as five years after the first protests. Give this consensus, the dramatically different ways that youth have mobilized in the face of similar sentiments of resentment and frustration with the status quo is a puzzle to be explained. When one analyzes the structure of the pre-revolutionary mobilizations and the way they set the stage for divergent responses to jihadist salafist mobilization in Sidi Bouzid and

26 Tunisia: The Phosphate Curse. Directed by Yasmine Ryan. Al-Araby. https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/features/2014/12/18/special-documentary-tunisia-the-phosphate-curse.

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Metlaoui after the revolution, the reason for the variance becomes clear. Youth in both cities are intuitively using the colonial-era repertoires of contention as references to assess political ideologies and proposed mobilizations. In this way, the oral traditions that have preserved the memory of the colonial-era mobilizations condition the different ways youth respond to the same objective circumstances and frustrations.

The Suleiman Affair and the Roots of Jihadist Salafism in Sidi Bouzid

The arrival of Ben Ali as President in 1987 stemmed the tide of the rising discontent that gripped Tunisia during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. As was the case nationally, many in Sidi

Bouzid greeted the news of the coup with optimism that dissipated the drive to resist.

Additionally, the brutal civil war of the 1990’s in neighboring Algeria may have had the counterintuitive effect of pushing Tunisians to embrace stability and non-confrontation. Research contacts in Sidi Bouzid - including one young man who ultimately became a jihadist salafist sympathizer - describe a palpable fear that prevailed during the 1990’s that the violence of the

Algerian Civil War would spread to Tunisia.27 By the mid-2000’s however, nascent opposition movements emerged in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui to challenge the status quo.

The character of the movements varied markedly. In Sidi Bouzid, a small group of young radicals aided by a mysterious blind religious cleric formed a jihadist cell and sought to join a militant training operation that al-Qa’ida operatives had set up on a mountain outside of the

Tunisian capital. While only a few dozen youth were implicated, their actions gained widespread sympathy in Sidi Bouzid and put in motion a chain of events that indirectly influenced the character of the 2010/2011 revolutionary uprising. In Metlaoui, by contrast, analogous efforts by

27 Discussions with jihadist salafists. Sidi Bouzid, July 2013.

175 a jihadist salafist vanguard to organize a militant cell in 2006 failed to attract popular sympathy.

Instead, a general strike organized by insurgent trade unionists in the nearby mining city of

Redeyef provoked an uprising in Metlaoui that became the defining oppositional movement of the era. When one analyzes the structure of these pre-revolutionary mobilizations, the importance colonial-era repertoires of contention as reference points for youth becomes clear. The oral traditions that have preserved the memory of the colonial-era mobilizations have conditioned the different ways youth respond politically to the same desperate material circumstances.

In Sidi Bouzid, the American war in Iraq helped spur certain segments of Sidi Bouzid’s population to jihadist activism during the 2000’s. Almost invariably, the people of the town viewed the American invasion and occupation of Iraq as a moral outrage. In this context, interest in jihadist salafism increased because many of the insurgents who fought against American troops were jihadist salafists loyal to Al Qa’ida’s Iraq affiliate. In addition to the impact of the

Iraq War, the proselytism efforts of the reclusive blind Sheikh Khatib al-Idrissi played an instrumental role in the mobilization of the embryonic salafist youth movement in Sidi Bouzid.

Al-Idrissi was born in Sidi ‘Ali Ben ‘Aoun, a small village located 40 kilometers from Sidi

Bouzid in the southwestern corner of the governorate.28 His family claimed descent from the

Prophet Muhammad and as a young man he had worked in the medical field as a nurse. In 1986 however, al-Idrissi left Tunisia and traveled to Saudi Arabia with the ambition of studying the

Islamic sciences.

While there, he studied under the tutelage of some of the most renowned salafist religious clerics in the Arab East, including ‘Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, the head of the Yemeni Muslim

28“Sira Dhatiyya L-shaykhina Al-Khatib Al-Idrissi Al-Bukhari Hafadhuhu Allah (Arabic)”; Salafist Internet Forum. http://r-warsh.com/vb/showthread.php?t=210298.

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Brotherhood, and ‘Abd al-’Aziz Ibn Baz, the former chief religious scholar in the Saudi

Kingdom.29 Although al-Idrissi fully adopted the fundamentalist religious doctrines of his teachers, he ultimately came to believe that the achievement of the global Islamic renaissance they envisioned required a more activist, confrontational posture than they seemed to be comfortable with. Accordingly, having achieved a level of distinction as a religious scholar, al-

Idrissi returned to Sidi ‘Ali Ben ‘Aoun in 1994 with the goal of spearheading an Islamic awakening in Tunisia.30

In the early 2000’s, al-Idrissi sought to capitalize on the curiosity about jihadist salafism as a consequence of the Iraq War.31 Using his prestigious scholarly credentials as a selling point, al-Idrissi offered himself up as a religious mentor to the town’s young men. Aspiring jihadist salafists would travel the short distance from Sidi Bouzid to Sidi ‘Ali Ben ‘Aoun to attend lectures at the Sheikh’s home.32 Although much of the content of these lectures focused on abstract principles of Islamic jurisprudence, those with intimate knowledge of al-Idrissi’s proselytism activities suggests that participants were also exposed to ideas that reflected the strategic vision of the global jihadist movement. Some of the young salafists who participated in this study were students of Sheikh al-Idrissi and all of them were firm admirers of Osama Bin

Laden and other major jihadist leaders.33

In 2006 and early 2007, a mysterious sequence of events that collectively became known as the ‘Suleiman Affair’ forever altered the trajectory of Sidi Bouzid’s nascent salafist

29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Personal discussion with Sidi Bouzid resident. Sidi Bouzid. July 27, 2013. 32 Ibid. 33 Personal discussion with salafist activists. Sidi Bouzid. July 24, 2013.

177 movement. Although many of the facts remain contested, parties generally agree that in late 2006 and early 2007, Tunisian security forces undertook a major operation against a group of young salafists who had camped out in the mountains outside the small village of Suleiman, just 35 kilometers away from the Tunisian capital. According to government allegations, several months prior to the clashes, a group of six fighters loyal to the al-Qa’ida affiliated Algerian Salafist

Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) had crossed into Tunisia from Algeria with the ambition of organizing a network of militant cells.34 After several months of preparations, this small core of foreign infiltrators had successfully recruited a group of 40 young Tunisian salafists from various parts of the country, including Sidi Bouzid. In December, the militants established a paramilitary camp in the mountains around Suleiman for the purposes of training their new recruits.35 According to one of the accused, in the weeks leading up to the clashes, the young salafists received instruction in various forms of combat; although the emphasis was on hand-to-hand fighting techniques, the young recruits also received training in the use of AK-47 assault rifles.36

In January 2007, following 10 days of sporadic shootouts with the militants, security forces killed the alleged organizers and took 30 young Tunisian jihadist salafists into custody for alleged involvement in the plot, as well as an unspecified larger number of people alleged to have been attached to the militants’ support network. Documents alleged that initially, the foreign infiltrators had sought shelter in the town and that three students from the Higher

Institute of Technological Studies in Sidi Bouzid had been involved in transporting a cache of

34 "US Diplomatic Cable: 2006/2007 Terror Cell in Tunisia: What Happened and Why." Wikileaks. January 24, 2008. http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08TUNIS75_a.html. 35 Ibid. 36 "Barnamaj Raf'at Al-Jalsa: Qadiyat Sulayman. [Video File] (Arabic)." YouTube. May 8, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tKr0v6H1h4.

178 weapons to the camp.37 After three trials, 38 individuals from Sidi Bouzid were sentenced to prison, or in two cases, to death.38 Amnesty International sharply criticized the proceedings, alleging that state security had intimidated lawyers, extracted confessions from detainees under torture, and brazenly trampled on due process rights.39 According to Sidi Bouzid residents, a number of the accused were students of Sheikh Khatib al-Idrissi. Still, they allege that many people were caught up in the security dragnet who had only a passing relationship to the alleged perpetrators.40

In the aftermath of the arrest, Sidi Bouzid residents claimed that people in the town harbored great resentment and anger toward the state over what they saw as a draconian crackdown. But beyond this, research contacts also spoke of an intrinsic support many felt for the Suleiman operation. It is here that one sees the importance of the inherited repertoire of contention. One secular civil society activist in Sidi Bouzid who enjoys good relations with salafist-leaning youth suggested that the jihadist salafists gained broad-based support because the

Suleiman Affair functioned as an important historical allegory: “What the jihadist salafist current did in 2006 at Suleiman resonated with people, because they didn’t see it as anything related to

Islam or shari’a. In their minds it was simply armed revolutionaries going up into the mountains to confront authority.”41 For youth who had grown up with stories of the fellaga and the armed

37 "US Diplomatic Cable” Wikileaks. January 24, 2008. 38 "19 CONVICTED OF SUPPORT FOR "SOLIMAN" TERRORISTS, WHO REPORT MISTREATMENT." April 2008. Accessed February 13, 2017. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08TUNIS381_a.html. Kashaf -al-Hisaab li Qadaa; yukaafih al-Irhaab. (2008, November 14). Retrieved February 13, 2017, from http://www.anhri.net/tunisia/aispp/2008/pr1114.shtml 39 "In the Name of Security: Routine Abuses in Tunisia." Amnesty International. June 23, 2008. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE30/007/2008/en/b8527bf4-3ebc-11dd-9656- 05931d46f27f/mde300072008eng.html. 40 Discussions with Sidi Bouzid residents. July, 2013. 41 Interview with Civil Society Activist. November 2015, Sidi Bouzid.

179 insurgency in the mountains against the French, the jihadist salafists were simply acting out the locally-understood historical archetype of heroism. In this context, Sidi Bouzid’s young men saw the jihadist salafists’ rush to the mountains for paramilitary training as a laudable act of manliness.

Just as important as the sentiments of the rank-and-file observers of the Suleiman events are those of the participants themselves. Repeated discussions with Marwan,42 one of the young men who was implicated in transferring weapons to the camp and spent several years in prison helped shed some light on the underlying motivations of this core group of militants. According to Marwan, the militants involved in the Suleiman affair knew very little about Islam - but they had a vague sense that the Tunisian state under Ben Ali was “attacking the religion.” In

Marwan’s case, his desire to lash out at the state under the banner of religion stemmed from one specific incident.

During high school, he had become romantically involved with a young woman from a conservative religious background who wore a khimar - an Islamic head covering that drapes fully over the shoulders, leaving only the front of the face visible. Under Bourguiba and Ben Ali,

Tunisia’s government pursued a policy of extreme secularism - state institutions were often hostile to women who wore even a standard hijab, much less a more intensive khimar. While his love interest was walking on the street, police approached her and started taunting her and harassing her for the garment she was wearing. The verbal harassment quickly got physical - police shoved Marwan’s love interest. Marwan lost his composure and immediately began

42 Narration based on personal interviews with Marwan (psuedonym). September 2015, November 2015, April 2016, Sidi Bouzid.

180 physically brawling with the officers. This incident, Marwan says, began a process of ideological evolution that ultimately resulted in his recruitment into the Suleiman Group’s support network.

Marwan says that his rush to radicalism after the incident is very typical of the way people in Sidi Bouzid react when insulted and is indicative of a culturally-rooted ethic of ta’assob - an Arabic word that denotes an ethic of extreme solidarity with in-group members, up the point of a willingness to use violence. When asked about the roots, Marwan suggested that the ta’assub has been a part of Sidi Bouzid’s culture for almost a millennium. Speifically, he claimed that the nomadic Almoravid Empire that swept across North Africa in the 11th century originated in Sidi Bouzid and the propensity among people in the town to rush to violence when insulted has roots in this period. Comprised of Berber nomads from the Sahara, the Almoravids were known for their harshness and puritanical, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. While there is no objective historical evidence to support Marwan’s claim about the Almoravid’s origin, the implicit claim in the narrative is that Sidi Bouzid’s dominant political repertoire has roots in the imagined mentality of a nomadic past. When asked about more recent history however, Marwan references the armed resistance against France - particularly the famous 1954 battle at Gaarat Hadeed just outside of Sidi Bouzid town. Marwan is thus an example of how the exposure to narratives about the recent past can impact one’s conceptualization of the distant past and the identities derived from it. These narratives seem to be the way the colonial era repertoire of contention reproduces itself.

In Metlaoui, as with Sidi Bouzid, during the mid-2000’s a small number of individuals adopted the jihadist salafist ideology and according to official accounts, were implicated in attempts to organize militant activity. A security operation in Metlaoui during November of 2006 netted 14 young men in the town who were subsequently convicted of conspiring to supply

181 militants operating in the country with explosives.43 In contrast to Sidi Bouzid however, where the Suleiman Affair is deeply ingrained in the collective memory of contemporary inhabitants, virtually nobody I encountered in Metlaoui had any recollection of the incident. As a researcher,

I only discovered that the incident took place after reading about it in an archived newspaper report.44 Ultimately however, after consultations with sources on the ground, I was able to confirm that a security operation against an authentic cell of jihadist youth did take place in

Metlaoui during the year 2006.45 Nevertheless, the source who confirmed the incident suggested that the militants had very limited popular support and the incident failed to make an impact on

Metlaoui’s local politics.

During fieldwork, I was unable to learn whether the 2006 Metlaoui cell had any relationship to Khatib al-Idrissi; nevertheless, based on the time period and the local context, I assess that a link to al-Idrissi’s network is likely. During a research trip to the city Gafsa - a short

20 minute shared taxi ride from Metlaoui - I met an individual who participated in a fundamentalist proselytism campaign during the late 2000’s and described frequently traveling from Gafsa to Sidi Ali Ben Aoun to attend lectures at Sheikh al-Idrissi’s home.46 While Sidi Ali

Ben Aoun is geographically closer to Sidi Bouzid, it is on the road between Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui and shared taxis between Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa frequently stop there. This observation is important because it suggests that Khatib al-Idrissi’s reach extended to the broader salafist movement in central Tunisia and therefore, that the mere proximity of Khatib al-Idrissi to Sidi

43 "Tunis Tusajjin 14 Shaabaan Bi Tuhamat Muhaawilat Sana' Qanbala Li-Tandhim Irhaabi." Turess. Accessed February 14, 2017. http://www.turess.com/alfajrnews/4808. 44 Ibid. 45 Remote discussions with Metlaoui civil society activist. November, 2017. 46 Discussion with former salafist activist. Gafsa, August 2015.

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Bouzid is not enough to explain why the ideology gained more legitimacy in the town than it did in Metlaoui.

What then explains the lack of success that jihadists gained in Metlaoui? The source who confirmed that the 2006 incident took place suggested that clan solidarity and the enmeshment of clan structures with the formal (if co-opted) institutions of civil society were crucial to the movement’s failure. The leader of the jihadist salafists in Metlaoui during 2006 was a shadowy figure named Zied who was not a member of the dominant Awlad Bouyahia clan, nor any of the other Hamama subdivisions, but rather a member of a demographic group of Metlaoui residents called “Jaridiyyah.” The Jaridiyyah are descendants of migrant workers from the oases to the south of Metlaoui; they are economically marginalized in the town and during the Ben Ali era, had little influence in the phosphate workers union and the ruling RCD party. According to the source, the jihadist salafist movement failed to gain legitimacy in 2006 because it stayed confined to the Jaridiyyah, or put another way, because it failed to catch on among Metlaoui’s dominant Awlad Bouyahia clan who were more enmeshed in civil society. To understand why jihadist salafism failed to take root among the Awlad Bouyahia (and other clans) it is helpful to analyze an oppositional movement that did gain popular legitimacy among the Awlad Bouyahia and other clans throughout the mining basin: Tunisia’s 2008 mining basin uprising.

Metlaoui and The Revolt of the Mining Basin

The uprising of the Mining Basin began on January 5, 2008 after the state-owned phosphate company released a list of names of people who had, allegedly, prevailed in the company’s hiring process.47 In light of the widespread unemployment, people had been

47 Gobe, Eric. The Gafsa Mining Basin between Riots and a Social Movement: Meaning and Significance of a Protest Movement in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. January 20, 2011. https://hal.archives-

183 anxiously awaiting the release of the list; however, many responded with dismay when it became apparent that many of the new hires at the company were family members or close associates of prominent, politically well-connected individuals in the region - especially senior officials in the phosphate workers’ union.48 Although the hiring process was presented as a transparent competition involving a written exam, applicants were never notified of their scores - prompting accusations that the “competitive” of the process was a farce designed to give cover to the corrupt backroom process through which candidates were actually selected.

Immediately after the results were released, mass street protests broke out in the mining cities of Redeyef, Oum Larayes, and Mdhilla. While in Oum Larayes and Mdhilla, protests were spontaneous, largely uncoordinated affairs, in Redeyef - which experienced the most sustained unrest throughout the uprising - a small group of insurgent trade unionists affiliated with the secondary school teachers syndicate led by Adnan Haji took hold of the protests and played a pivotal role in coordinating demonstrations. The uprising continued until June of 2008, with periods of tense calm punctuated by marches, mass protests, and riots across the region’s four mining cities. Metlaoui witnessed a small solidarity demonstration in February; however, the town did not erupt in sustained protests until May, when three days of rioting injected new steam into the region-wide uprising. Still, because the people of Metlaoui did ultimately join the revolt, understanding its earlier phases in other mining cities is important because it sheds light on the movement’s character. Additionally, given the historical similarities between the four mining cities, understanding the way participants in the earlier phases of the uprising understood their motivations can offer clues as to why the movement resonated in Metlaoui.

ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/557826/filename/Tunisia_The_Gafsa_mining_basin_between_Riots_and_Social_Mov ement.pdf. 48 Personal Interview, Former Political Prisoner from Redeyef and Union Activists. Sousse, July 2015.

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Four themes emerged from discussions with youth who participated in the movement in

Redeyef and Oum Larayes.49 First, far from being a union-led uprising, the main targets of the protests were the corrupt union officials who had used their positions to secure employment for family members.50 Second, while others outside the mining basin may have drawn wider political significance, among protesters, the goal of the movement was firmly focused on the specific, narrow demand for increased employment opportunities.51 Third, while the marginalized youth who participated in the movements in Redeyef and Oum Larayes scorned the local leaders of the UGTT and the phosphate workers’ syndicate, they still professed to have been inspired by a “unionist mentality.”52 Many of them had strong knowledge of the mining basin’s history of labor unrest and suggested that their willingness to embrace strategic protests oriented around specific demands for employment was a legacy of this heritage. Fourth, despite their harsh words for the union as an institution, youth expressed admiration for a group of insurgent trade unionists in Redeyef affiliated with the Secondary School Teachers’ Union and led by ‘Adnan Hajji.

To understand more about how historical memory and contemporary political co-option of the union leadership conditioned the uprising, I conducted interviews with two senior

“insurgent” trade unionists in Redeyef: Wasim,53 a close associate of ‘Adnan Hajji, and

Brahim,54 a union organizer who spent time in prison for his involvement in the uprising.

49 Personal Interview, Insurgent Union Activists. Redeyef, August 2015. Personal Interview, Phosphate Workers. Oum Larayes, October 2015. Personal Interview, Mining Basin Uprising participants. Tunis, July 2015. Sousse, July 2015. Redeyef, August 2015. Oum Larayes, October 2015. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Pseudonym. Personal interview. Redeyef, August 2015. 54 Pseudonym. Personal interview. Redeyef, August 2015.

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According to these research contacts, a schism had emerged throughout the Gafsa Mining Basin prior to 2008 between union leaders allied with the regime, and “field unionists” who sought to develop authentic relationships with youth and other lay citizens in the region to mobilize them.

Generally speaking, the phosphate workers’ union - the most powerful constituent body of the

UGTT in the region - was composed largely of RCD members fully loyal to the regime and unwilling to endorse any serious challenges to the status quo. It was through these partnerships that this group of trade unionists emerged as leaders during 2008.

During a conversation, Brahim provided an explanation for how the history of phosphate workers’ strikes in the mining basin helped inspire the 2008 uprising, despite the phosphate workers’ union “being the source of the problem.”55 Specifically, he suggested that while he and the protesting youth were not phosphate company employees, virtually everybody in the mining basin had family members - usually parents - who worked for the company and participated in strikes. From a political socialization standpoint, people in the region grow up hearing about strikes, watching strikes being organized, and hearing stories of past “legendary” strikes like those that were organized during the colonial era. Brahim cites his own phosphate worker father as his chief political influence and suggests that the example of his father’s career as a union activist for phosphate workers pushed him towards his own career as an insurgent unionist advocating for the interests of unemployed youth. In this way, the repertoire of contention survives, even as people have lost faith in the institution that transmitted it.

This discussion is important because it shows the micro-sociological mechanisms by which the unionist repertoire is transmitted in the mining basin. This is a mechanism that also exists in Metlaoui and as will be demonstrated, helped condition the town’s contemporary youth

55 Ibid.

186 revolts over the issue of jobs. Nevertheless, when I asked Brahim why he thought the 2008 uprising began in Redeyef and did not spread to Metlaoui until its final month, he suggested that

Metlaoui is distinct from Redeyef in having much stronger clan solidarities. In Redeyef, while the population and syndicate leadership seem to be split between the Awlad Sidi ‘Abid, Awlad

Bouyahia, and Jaridiyyah, in Metlaoui, the Awlad Bouyahia are demographically dominant and have an unrivaled position of supremacy in the phosphate workers’ union. This seems to have increased the resonance of clan identities.

During 2008, the head of the regional branch of the national UGTT for Gafsa was

‘Ammar ‘Abbassi - a man derided by youth in Redeyef and Oum Larayes as the person most responsible for the corrupt nature of the phosphate company’s hiring process. He is also a member of the Awlad Bouyahia and this has led some to suggest that the greater tribal solidarity in Metlaoui stemmed from fealty to ‘Ammar ‘Abbassi and other Awlad Bouyahia leaders in the union. “Metlaoui is a completely tribal place and it’s totally co-opted” said Brahim. Some older residents of Metlaoui agreed with this assessment, but without the same critical perspective:

“The reason Metlaoui waited so long to join the protests was because Ammar Abbassi was one of us. People couldn’t go against him!” said one man, in the midst of a conversation about the

Awlad Bouyahia and its history.56

Despite initial hesitation however, the Metlaoui portion of the phosphate basin uprising began in May of 2008 after an altercation at a sit-in of phosphate workers who had been involuntarily dismissed from the company. During the course of the sit-in, the wife of one of the workers was shoved by police and fell to the ground.57 Immediately, talk of the incident spread

56 Ibid. 57 Personal interviews with protest participants. Metlaoui, January 2016. February, 2016.

187 among the community - particularly among youth of the Awlad Bouyahia who viewed the physical violation of the striking phosphate workers’ wife as an affront to their honor.58 Despite the idiosyncratic nature of the trigger, Metlaoui residents told me that the mood on the streets had been tense for months; many families in the town have relatives in Redeyef and by May of

2008, people were well aware of the movement that had erupted elsewhere in the mining basin.

Following the incident at the sit-in, protests raged for four days and involved violent clashes between unemployed youth and police that resulted in numerous injuries and caused the death of Nabil Chagra - a young protester who was struck by a police van.59 Unlike in Redeyef however, they were more spontaneous and were not led by insurgent trade unionists like those who became prominent in Redeyef. Interviews with youth participants in the 2008 uprising in

Metlaoui revealed similar sentiments to their counterparts in Redeyef. Tariq, one of the young leaders of the uprising who, by 2016 was employed at the phosphate company, suggested that the chief targets of the protest were the corrupt union officials who had rigged the hiring process.

“The unionist does not work,” the protester suggested. “He’s an employee but he spends his whole day doing “union work” which is essentially managing the corruption he benefits from.”60

Tariq describes the phosphate company as “the mother” and suggests that being from Metlaoui, he has a “right” to work at the company. This, he says, is why he protested in 2008.

Despite this congruence in the motivations of protesters in Redeyef and Metlaoui, there was one consistent element that movement participants in Metlaoui mentioned that seemed to be absent from the discourse in Redeyef: a complementary framing of the protests as tribal. Hamid,

58 Ibid. 59 Al-Zaghidi, Sabri. "Hata La Nansa Wa Hata Yanhani Al-Jami'a Ihtraamaan Laha Wa Wa Yastallahum Minha Al- Durus Al-Jawhariyya." Turess. January 5, 2014. https://www.turess.com/echaab/19493. 60 Personal interviews with protest participant. Metlaoui, February, 2016.

188 a participant in the 2008 protests, argued that tribalism was operative in the tendency of family members - including those who had already procured employment at the phosphate company - to participate in the protests anyway in support of specific relatives who were yet to find work.

Among the youth of the Awlad Bouyahia, this “tribal” conception of the uprising is linked to a popular narrative about the history of phosphates in Metlaoui. Because the Awlad Bouyahia are the original inhabitants of Metlaoui and the phosphates were originally discovered on their land, they believe they have a particular right to employment at the company.61 Jobs for the Awlad

Bouyahia youth are, in the popular imagination, effectively a proxy for the “rent” that the state owes the clan by virtue of the mining operation’s presence on their land.

In the context of the narrative about tribalism, the condemnations that young men like

Tariq level at the leaders of the phosphate workers’ syndicate are not stands against the principle of distribution of employment opportunities to their kin, but rather statements of frustration that union leaders are are not providing enough benefits to their kin. This interpretation makes sense when one analyzes the way the uprising ended and the way protester related to the much-deried

‘Ammar ‘Abbassi when he sought to intervene. According to a former member of the RCD youth organization interviewed for the study, after three days of unrest Ammar Abbassi approached the protesters and offered many of them positions at the Gafsa phosphate company in exchange for a pledge to end their street demonstrations.62 In response to this offer, the youth abandoned their protests and returned home, satisfied in the concession that Abbassi had offered them. Several weeks later the protests burned out. The research contact who narrated this account stressed that Abbassi’s ability to offer positions to protestors, and their willingness to accept

61 Interviews with Awlad Bouyahia Members Sousse, August 2015. Metlaoui, August 2015, February 2016. 62 Interview with former member of RCD youth branch in Metlaoui. February, 2016.

189 these concessions, came about because of a tribal connection between them.63 Abbassi’s offer was specifically directed to protesters who were also from the Awlad Bouyahia and whom he believed he could placate by playing the role of the benevolent tribal elder distributing resources to his kin. Given the demographic strength of the Awlad Bouyahia, this was enough to rob the revolt of its momentum.

In the context of this analysis, it becomes easier to understand why jihadist salafism failed to resonate among the Awlad Bouyahia in 2006, and consequently, why it failed to take hold in Metlaoui. The unique repertoire of contention that developed in Metlaoui during the colonial era has two pillars: strategic protest that seeks to agitate for material concessions, and clan-based collective action that seeks to gain resources for kinship groups. In 2008, clan-based mobilization with the goal of pressuring powerful clan leaders to grant concessions follows the spirit of this repertoire. Based on the narratives of history that youth provide and the narratives that protesters in Redeyef and Metlaoui give about how they were socialized into the “unionist” style of protest, youth appear to be intuitively applying an inherited political repertoire. In this context, the millenarian rhetoric of jihadist salafists emphasizing fundamental social reform conflicts with the strategic understanding that youth in the mining basin have about what politics is. On the other hand, the Jaridiyyah are excluded from the tribal-union patronage system. While

Jaridiyyah have grown up watching the same strikes as their Awlad Bouyahia, they have watched them with the knowledge that even using the same tactics, they are at a pronounced disadvantage in receiving the material concessions that their Awlad Bouyahia counterparts have more ready access to. In this context, it is not surprising that they embrace jihadist salafism and its radical, comprehensive vision of social reform.

63 Ibid.

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Conclusion

This chapter has shown how the distinct modes of resistance that youth in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui pursued during the mid-late 2000’s were governed by the same repertoires of contention that have defined politics in each region since the colonial era. Given the importance of this period for the early coalescence of the jihadist salafist movement in Tunisia, understanding this relationship between culturally embedded political repertoires and resistance also helps to explain why the ideology resonates in some places but not others. The ethnographic data also confirms the importance of the primary mechanism that this study posits for the reproduction of political repertoires: historical memory and oral traditions.

In both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, activists and observers of the mid-late 2000’s movements express a deep feeling of connectedness to history and provide consistent narratives about the impact of the past on contemporary behavior. In Sidi Bouzid, the most significant ethnographic informant connected to the Suleiman jihadist cohort interviewed suggested his embrace of jihadism stemmed from the innate toughness and resistance to centralized authority that he believes his ancestors in Sidi Bouzid have imbued him with. Others suggested that the popular legitimacy the Suleiman defendants gained stemmed from a perceived similarity between the jihadists and the fellaga militants of the 1950’s. In Metlaoui, among unemployed members of the Awlad Bouyahia, a perceived sense of the efficacy of shutting down phosphate company operations caused many to reject the ideology. The only demographic group that showed modest support for jihadism was the Jaridiyyah - a group that had been historically excluded from union activism and thus failed to absorb the repertoire.

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Understanding the late 2000’s is crucial because it set the stage for revolutionary and post-revolutionary mobilizations in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Not only did the Suleiman

Affair lead to the emergence of a jihadist salafist vanguard that would gain prominence after the revolution, but it also served as an important reference point for many in Sidi Bouzid that helped pave the way for the 2010/2011 revolution. By the same token, the Mining Basin revolt served as an important political reference for youth in Metlaoui after the revolution, such that they found jihadist salafist ideology less appealing. In this way, the mid-late 2000’s mobilizations added another set of stories to the local oral traditions that helped sustain the repertoires of contention that have held sway in each respective town since the colonial era.

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Chapter Seven The Revolution and the Ghost of History

Introduction

This chapter analyzes popular mobilization in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui at the time of the

Tunisian revolution - a key event in the history of jihadist salafism in Tunisia. Tunisia’s

2010/2011 revolution was a watershed event in the history of the Arab World. As the opening salvo in the Arab Spring, the reverberations of the uprising were felt throughout the Middle East and North Africa and fundamentally reshaped the region’s geopolitics. The revolution was also a watershed event for local politics in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Sidi Bouzid became known as the proverbial “birthplace of the revolution” after the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi which sparked weeks of rioting in the town; after the uprising, the young heroes of the revolution played an instrumental role in mobilizing support for jihadist salafism in the town. In contrast to

2008, Metlaoui failed to mobilize during the 2010/2011 uprising, despite numerous potential triggers that paralleled Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation. On the other hand, after the uprising, the chaos of the post-revolutionary period in Metlaoui caused tribal antagonisms to boil over and ushered in an era of unencumbered street protest.

The central argument of this chapter is that the disparate approaches that Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui took to street protest during the revolution and its immediate aftermath are a function of different socially-rooted repertoires of contention that reflect different local histories of resistance. At the same time, as with previous mobilizations after independence, the revolution had the effect of deepening these repertoires and amplifying their salience in the collective imagination. In addition to the increased freedom of expression that the revolution brought, it was this amplification of the repertoires’ resonance that paved the way for the growth of jihadist salafism in Sidi Bouzid and its failure to attract support in Metlaoui.

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The chapter proceeds in three parts. The first part of the chapter analyzes how local civil societies in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui changed in the wake of the 2007 Suleiman Affair and 2008

Mining Basin uprising. While in Sidi Bouzid, a vanguard revolutionary group of “organic intellectuals” emerged who were influenced by the political radicalism of previous generations, the materially-rooted ethos in Metlaoui caused the town’s politics to remain vulnerable to the same clan-based co-optation that had led to the end of the 2008 movement. Accordingly, no such revolutionary elite emerged.

The second part of the chapter analyzes the process through which mobilization occurred in Sidi Bouzid after the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi. A close look at the structure of mobilization reveals that it stems from coordination between two different kinds of actors - the organic intellectuals who emerged to prominence after the Suleiman Affair and frustrated young men from working class neighborhoods in Sidi Bouzid like Hayy Nour. Both of these individuals were influenced by the oral traditions that glorified the armed uprising against France and embraced a radical repertoire of contention that favored direct challenges to the legitimacy of the regime.

The third part of the chapter analyzes the “non-event” of Metlaoui’s failure to mobilize during the 2010/2011 revolution, even as cities across Tunisia had risen up against the Ben Ali.

While the story of Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation gained international acclaim, few know the stories of Chamseddine Heni and Mosbah Jawhari - two youths from Metlaoui who lit themselves on fire in public protest before and during the revolution respectively. Nevertheless, in Metlaoui the revolution led to a period of hostility between the town’s various clans - a conflict that culminated in violent clashes during the first half of 2011.

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In Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, these revolutionary and post-revolutionary mobilizations were distinctly modern phenomena. Nevertheless, in both cases, interviews with participants reveal that the motivations and tactics they used reflect repertoires of contention that they have been introduced to by way of local legends and oral traditions. For movement participants, the politics of the present are a conscious effort to recreate the past.

Civil Society and Organic Intellectuals on the Eve of the Revolution

The Suleiman Affair and the 2008 Mining Basin revolt occurred during a period of strong authoritarian co-option of Tunisia’s civil society. The UGTT - Tunisia’s national labor union - was still the most prominent civil society association in terms of social reach, but its leaders Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui were members of the ruling party and failed to challenge the Ben Ali regime’s excesses.1 In this context, they served the function of what Gramsci describes as

“traditional intellectuals”; local leaders who have some influence in society but are beholden to the ruling class and so serve to shore up its authority in otherwise restive areas.2 In Gramsci’s framework, the role of traditional intellectuals is contrasted with that of organic intellectuals: individuals who have become educated and have established credibility in the institutions of the ruling class, but who maintain an organic connection with the interests and identities of the oppressed classes.3

When one analyzes the developments in local civil society in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui in the period before the revolution, a profound difference can be observed. In Sidi Bouzid, the

1 Marks, Monica. "Tunisia's Unwritten Story." The Century Foundation. March 24, 2017. https://tcf.org/content/report/tunisias-unwritten-story/. 2 Gramsci, Antonio. "Prison Notebooks: The Intellectuals." Edited by Roger S. Gottlieb. In An Anthology of Western Marxism: From Lukacs and Gramsci to Socialist-feminism, 112-19. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 3 Ibid.

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Suleiman Affair provided an opening for a radical cadre of “organic intellectuals” to emerge and gain broad-based legitimacy. This radical vanguard was dedicated to the overthrow of the Ben

Ali regime and politically opposed to the “traditional intellectuals” in the ruling RCD party and

UGTT. In Metlaoui, by contrast, no such faction emerged and “traditional intellectuals” in the

UGTT and phosphate company continued to have popular legitimacy. Based on comments from activists in both towns, this difference seems to stem from different collective memories of past resistance that people in each town absorbed during their political socialization.

The origins of Sidi Bouzid’s organic intellectual class hearken back to the 1980’s when, as a consequence of Bourguiba’s educational reforms, a generation of youth from across rural

Tunisia entered “modern” French-style universities after achieving high marks on national examinations.4 During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s - consistent with the general tumult that the country was experiencing - the Tunisian universities witnessed contentious debates between communists, Arab nationalists, and Islamists. Many prominent political notables in Sidi Bouzid were active in these student movements and emerged out of this period of political ferment having undergone a two-phase political socialization.5

On the one hand, like most people in Sidi Bouzid, they had grown up hearing stories of the fellaga and the armed resistance to France. On the other hand, they had been exposed to a new set of ideological and political references in the university. It is this dual socialization that supports the designation of these activists as “organic intellectuals.” During the 1990’s and

2000’s, a number of these activists returned to Sidi Bouzid and began careers as teachers or

4 Masri, Safwan M. Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. 243-259. 5 Bouazizi, Lamine. "Hikaayati Ma' Al-Thawra: Al-Akadimi Wal-Baahith Fil Anthrubulujiyya Al-Thaqafiyya Al- Amin Al-Bu'azizi." Interview. Tunisian News Network. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPNCTWwQAXU&t=317s.

196 municipal administrators. Although the political “reset” that Ben Ali’s rise to power helped to diffuse opposition in the years following the 1987 coup, by the 2000’s, Sidi Bouzid’s organic intellectuals had begun to carefully organize opposition to the Ben Ali regime within three occasionally overlapping political structures: the local branch of the UGTT union, the local lawyers association, and the local branch of the Progressive Democratic Party.

In Sidi Bouzid, the leadership of the UGTT branch was dominated by RCD loyalists who played a role akin to Gramsci’s traditional intellectuals.6 Therefore at the highest levels, the branch paralleled its counterpart in Metlaoui. In contrast to Metlaoui however, a number of insurgent factions emerged within the UGTT-affiliated secondary school teachers’ syndicate that sought to challenge the Ben Ali regime politically.7 “We used union work as a cover for political activity,” said one union leader during an interview conducted the preliminary stages of fieldwork.8 The insurgent unionists had participated in various ideologically-oriented student movements during their university days and in Sidi Bouzid coalesced in different ideological interest groups. While these informal factions were not political parties in the organizational sense, they functioned as “proto-parties” in union elections since they often voted as blocs and were bound together by shared commitment to an overarching ideological worldviews (i.e. communist, Arab nationalist, Islamist).9

In the secondary school teachers’ association, despite the existence of a significant communist contingent, insurgent union activity was dominated by Arab nationalists - particularly

Nasserists and Ba’athists who often competed against each other for positions in syndicate

6 Personal Interview with UGTT Activists. Sidi Bouzid, July 2013. Personal Interview with Revolutionary Coordinators. Sidi Bouzid, February 2016. 7 Personal Interview with UGTT Activists. Sidi Bouzid, July 2013. 8 Ibid. 9 Interview with leader of Sidi Bouzid branch of Tunisian Ba’ath Party. Sidi Bouzid, July 2013.

197 elections.10 According to one research contact from Sidi Bouzid active in the Arab nationalist student movement of the 1980’s, Sidi Bouzid’s nationalist cadre was distinct from its counterparts in other regions of Tunisia in that it used its activism in favor of pan-Arabist causes as a pretext to mobilize against the Ben Ali regime.11 Across Tunisia, pan-Arabist activists frequently organized demonstrations in support of Palestine after contentious episodes in the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Sidi Bouzid however, these demonstrations sometimes served the dual purpose of expressing opposition to the ruling party. In a June 2010 demonstration that pan-

Arabist factions had organized - seven months before Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation - activists chanted “Down with the fascist, foreign client November 7 regime.”12 The slogan was a direct allusion to Ben Ali’s November 7th coup against Bourguiba and has been cited by some activists as proof that Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation was merely the trigger for a latent revolutionary energy in Sidi Bouzid

Superficially, the existence of an insurgent group of union activists attached to the secondary school teachers’ syndicate may seem to parallel the situation in the mining basin.

While not in Metlaoui itself, the 2008 uprising was led by insurgent union activists in Redeyef like ‘Adnan Hajji who also came out of the local secondary school teachers’ union. A deeper comparison however suggests that even in the common organizational context of the secondary school teachers’ union, insurgent UGTT activists in Sidi Bouzid and Redeyef expressed opposition to the regime in starkly different ways. In Redeyef, the insurgent union officials organized demonstrations of unemployed youth demanding that the phosphate company make specific concessions and grant more jobs. In Sidi Bouzid, by contrast, the insurgent union

10 Ibid. 11 Interview with pan-Arabist leader. Sidi Bouzid, February 2016. 12 Bouazizi, Lamine. "Hikaayati Ma' Al-Thawra”

198 officials rallied around grand political ideologies like pan-Arabism and used these ideologies as a platform condemn the entire ruling regime in public demonstrations. In Sidi Bouzid, the dominant repertoire of contention called for radical change; in the mining basin, it called for advocacy directed toward extracting incremental material concessions.

Why did Sidi Bouzid’s insurgent union activists adopt this more radical political orientation? The strong identification that many of the insurgent activists had with pan-Arabist ideology provides an important clue. After Bourguiba’s split with Saleh Ben Youssef, the fellaga militants who had dominated the anti-colonial movement in Sidi Bouzid flocked to the

Youssefist cause. Saleh Ben Youssef was ideologically a pan-Arabist, as were the fellaga who tried to overthrow Bourguiba in a coup, as were the militants who staged the 1980 assault on the city of Gafsa. Therefore, in Sidi Bouzid, the identifying as a pan-Arabist in effect meant identifying with the fellaga, Youssefism, and the counter-Bourguibist trend more generally.

One can see how the legacy of the fellaga and the historical repertoire of contention impacted the socialization of Sidi Bouzid’s insurgent pan-Arabists through the example of Ali

Zarai - a leading insurgent UGTT member who is credited as one of the revolution’s first major supporters and who helped serve as a spokesman for the revolutionaries in national and international media.13 Zarai was based in Sidi Bouzid’s central city but his family came from

Meknassi - the area of Sidi Bouzid that contributed the most fighters to the fellaga and where three of the four Sidi Bouzid residents convicted in the 1980 armed Gafsa takeover came from.14

13 Hassan, Amro. "TUNISIA: Apparent Suicide Triggers Youth Protests against Unemployment." Los Angeles Times. December 23, 2010. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/tunisia-suicide-triggers- youth-protests-against-unemployment.html. 14 Tunisia. Al-Hizb Al-Ishtiraaki Al-Dusturi. Al-Sajal Al-Qawmi Li-Shuhadaa' Al-Watan. Tunis: Dar Al-'Amal. Belhoula, Al-Munsif. Shahaada Lil-Taarikh 'An Ahdaath Gafsa Al-Musalliha Sanat 1980. Tunis: Al-Dar Al- Maghribiyya Lil-Tabaa'a Wal-Nashar, 2014.

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Since the 1990’s, he was known as an important figure in Tunisia’s underground Ba’athist movement - the same political current which Saddam Hussein championed in Iraq. In a television interview after the revolution, he argued that the radical nature of Sidi Bouzid’s political life was an inheritance of the fellaga and represented a unique cultural quality that had been inherited from past generations:

Most of the leaders of the national movement that fought against France were from the Sidi Bouzid region. Therefore, there is a historical factor associated with the nature of the “citizen” who lives in Sidi Bouzid: his fierce nature in resisting oppression. It’s a very fierce nature in resisting oppression - and a nature that doesn't accept to be insulted or to have his dignity violated. Perhaps, he can go hungry. It's possible that he can be hungry. But he will never accept an insult against his dignity. This historical factor was behind the act of Mohamed Bouazizi. Mohamed Bouazizi didn't burn himself because he couldn't find anything to eat - he burned himself because he was slapped by a member of the police.15

Zarai’s quotation shows how despite the unarmed nature of the revolution, it drew inspiration from the anti-colonial militants. Rather than the use of weapons, direct confrontation and a refusal to be controlled by corrupt political authority is the primary message he takes from this history. Nevertheless, the fellaga and the anti-colonial movement remain the central references.

In addition to the pan-Arabist insurgent UGTT activists, Sidi Bouzid’s local lawyers association frequently adopted an oppositional stance to the Ben Ali regime during the late

2000’s. Although organizationally distinct from the UGTT, in colloquial parlance the lawyers association activists were known as “niqabiyyin” or syndicalists - the same designation given to activists like Ali Zarai. During the Ben Ali era, they rose to prominence in civil society through their proactive efforts to provide free legal representation to political opponents of the Ben Ali

15 Television interview with Ali Zarai, pulled from public Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/mongi.farhani.5/videos/2779453341206/?hc_ref=SEARCH

200 regime in criminal trials.16 The leaders of the lawyers’ association generally espoused leftist ideologies, ranging from Marxist-Leninism to socialist-leaning pan-Arabism. Nevertheless, their activism transcended formal ideology as they represented dissidents across the ideological spectrum. According to one report, lawyers from Sidi Bouzid volunteered to represent those arrested in connection with both the 2008 Mining Basin uprising and the jihadist Suleiman

Affair.17

The Suleiman Affair representation is particularly significant for three reasons. First, in the aftermath of the incident, there was tremendous, generalized anger towards the authorities in

Sidi Bouzid about the seemingly arbitrary arrests of youth who had scant, if any connection, with the jihadist cell. Therefore, representing the Suleiman defendants gave the lawyers a degree of popular legitimacy. Second, the providing of legal representation was not a low-risk endeavor when it came to terrorism-related trials. Amnesty International reports that lawyers for terrorism defendants were often physically assaulted by security forces or regime supporters engaging in extralegal violence.18 Third, the lawyers accepted the responsibilities of representation despite extreme antipathy towards the ideology of the jihadist defendants. In the aftermath of the revolution, the same lawyers joined the leftist Popular Front coalition en masse and sought to organize against political Islamism. During the Ben Ali era however, defending the jihadists had been a matter of conscience.

16 Belhassine, Olfa. "Tunisie : Le Combat Sans Fin Des Avocats De Sidi Bouzid." JusticeInfo.net. January 6, 2016. https://www.justiceinfo.net/fr/justice-reconciliation/25333-tunisie-le-combat-sans-fin-des-avocats-de-sidi- bouzid.html. 17 Ibid. 18 "In the Name of Security: Routine Abuses in Tunisia." Amnesty International. June 23, 2008. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE30/007/2008/en/b8527bf4-3ebc-11dd-9656- 05931d46f27f/mde300072008eng.html. 23.

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Khaled Aouinia is an important leader of the local lawyers association who represented jihadist defendants in the Suleiman Affairs went on to play a key role in the revolution. In an interview with Al Jazeera, he describes his activism as simply the modern day manifestation of a history of resistance in the central steppe region with origins in the Ottoman era.

The process of marginalization did not begin now. The process began during the era of Turkish colonialism. The revolution of Ali Ben Ghadhamen in 1864 led to the suspension of the constitution that work had begun on in 1860. It was practically the first constitution in the Arab World but it came in the context of the Beys marginalizing certain regions like Thala - the town of Ali Ben Ghadhahem - and surrounding regions like Sidi Bouzid. Sidi Bouzid is merely an administrative designation. The phenomenon goes back two centuries - people were protesting for the same reasons. Therefore, marginalization is not new to the region. Attempts to improve the situation in these regions have taken various forms. In the 1950’s, the first bullet against the colonizer was fired in this area - specifically Sidi Bouzid in the Gaarat Hadeed mountains. Also, the first attempts at union organization were in these mountains - in the Redeyef region. Therefore, it is not strange that Redeyef is repeating the movement anew and these other Atlas regions are repeating the movement anew.19

Despite the dramatic changes in the motivations and practices of resistance between the

Ottoman era and the armed uprising against France, Aouinia suggests that the political posture of the regions’ inhabitants has remained consistent throughout history. The comment is significant because it reveals his personal understanding of history and the way he sees his current activism as stemming from it.

The third and final faction of Sidi Bouzid’s insurgent organic intellectual class was composed of activists belonging to a radical wing of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) - one of a number of token opposition parties that had licenses to operate in Tunisia during the

Ben Ali era.20 Like their counterparts in the UGTT, these PDP activists had emerged from

19 Aouinia, Khaled. "Shaahada 'ala Al-Thawra - Khaalid Al-'Awaainiyya." Interview. Al-Jazeera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Utd7X9Myc&t=247s. 20 Haugballe, Rikke Hostrup, and Francesco Cavatorta. "Will the Real Tunisian Opposition Please Stand Up? Opposition Coordination Failures under Authoritarian Constraints." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 38, no. 3 (2011): 323-41.

202 university student unions and came from a variety of different ideological backgrounds: some had an affinity for the pan-Arabist thought of Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser, some were radical leftists, some had a vague sympathy with political Islam. They joined the PDP, not because its social democratic ideology appealed to them per se, but rather because it was the most viable organizational cover for them to conduct their political activities against the state without as high a risk of arrest.21

From the beginning, this group was committed to the idea of direct political confrontation with the state and they adopted a targeted strategy to pursue this goal: they would build connections in Sidi Bouzid’s neighborhoods and present themselves as people who could help individual citizens that had problems with the government. Sometimes citizens would approach them, but often, the radical PDP wing deliberately went looking for problems that they could use to justify political protests.22 The PDP activists would ask the aggrieved citizens to participate with them in sit-ins in front of the main government building in Sidi Bouzid where they would chant slogans against the ruling party. The goal, these organizers said in interviews, was to make the regime pay the highest possible price for every small little incident in the hopes of triggering a wider confrontation.23

As with the lawyers, the Suleiman Affair was instrumental in the emergence of the radical PDP activists as major figures in Sidi Bouzid’s civil society. In 2006, several months before the outbreak of the Suleiman Affair, a young activist named Wahid Brahimi was imprisoned after condemning the Ben Ali regime’s arrests of Islamists under the country’s

21 Personal discussions with PDP activists. February 2016, Sidi Bouzid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid.

203 terrorism law.24 The timing of Brahimi’s supposed arrest is curious - having occurred before the

Suleiman Affair itself - and its details are shrouded in mystery. Nevertheless, it is beyond dispute that in 2008, PDP personnel organized a demonstration calling for the release Brahimi.25 Given that the 2008 demonstration came on the heels of the post-Suleiman Affair security sweep, the purpose may also have been to channel the popular anger against the random arrests. The demonstration was broken up violently by police and radical PDP activists Lassad Bouazizi,

Mahmoud Ghozlani, Hadi Khlifi, Ali Bouazizi, Abdelrazaq Ayaachi, and Abelkader Nsiri were arrested.26 The arrests only served to increase their visibility in the public eye.

Former PDP leaders interviewed for this study suggested that the posture of the Sidi

Bouzid PDP branch assumed separated them from the party on a national level. “There was the

PDP and then there was the Sidi Bouzid PDP” one activist chuckled.27 One activist recalled conversations with national PDP leaders during the years before the revolution that carried a clear message of cease and desist. One activist attributed the tension between Sidi Bouzid’s branch and the national leadership of the party to regionalism. He described a discussion he had with Ahmed Najib Chebbi, the party’s national secretary general, where Chebbi claimed that by virtue of his family’s origins in Tunisia’s Ottoman-era Turkish elite, he was from a segment of society that had the right to rule Tunisia.28 Regardless of whether the account is accurate, it does suggest that from the vantage point of the Sidi Bouzid activists, they and the party’s national leadership had different orientations towards the regime.

24 "Bayaan: Al-Hizb Al-Dimuqrati Al-Taqaddami Maktab Al-Tansiq Al-Mu'aqqit Lil-Jaam3a Sidi Bouzid." Turess. November 24, 2008. https://www.turess.com/alfajrnews/10101. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Personal discussions with PDP activists. February 2016, Sidi Bouzid. 28 Ibid.

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The role of historical memory in conditioning this political posture became apparent during discussions with Mustafa29 one of the leading radical PDP activists who also played a major role in organizing protests in the immediate aftermath of Mohamed Bouazizi’s self- immolations. Throughout our conversations, Mostafa described a vision of contemporary politics that echoed the rhetoric of the 19th and 20th century Hamami poetry: as a battle between real men standing strong for the community on the one hand, and pimps/snitches (Arabic: quwaadda) on the other hand who can easily be bought off.30 In his view, politics in Sidi Bouzid has always been a struggle between the real revolutionaries on the one hand and the pimps/snitches on the other: the Hamama had their real men, but many of their leaders were collaborators with the Bey.

He references the great Hamami 1920’s anti-colonial resistance fighter Bechir Ben Sdira before noting that he was assassinated by a member of his own tribe.

He is especially animated when he discusses the grandparents of the current generation in

Sidi Bouzid who fought against the French in the mountains: the real revolutionaries, as he describes them, who liberated the country before their history was erased by Bourguiba and the other “traitors” to the nation. “During the last revolution,” he says,”the traitors claimed to be the heroes and branded the real heroes as traitors. That’s why we need to document the history of this revolution - so it doesn’t happen again.”31 This statement is an allusion to the Youssefist fellaga veterans who were executed on charges of treason for their 1962 coup attempt against

Bourguiba. For Mostafa, his activism reflects a responsibility to uphold the legacy of previous generations who sought to overthrow previous tyrannical regimes.

29 Psuedonym 30 Personal discussions with PDP activists. February 2016, Sidi Bouzid. 31 Ibid.

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In Metlaoui, by contrast, no such cadre of organic intellectuals emerged to challenge the

Ben Ali regime. First, in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Mining Basin revolt, members of the insurgent faction of secondary school teachers’ union in Redeyef were imprisoned, depriving them of the ability to inspire unrest. Nevertheless, even if this faction had remained influential, and even if its influence had extended to Metlaoui, it is still not likely that they could have inspired activism comparable to Sidi Bouzid’s revolutionary protests. From the beginning, the narrow focus of Redeyef’s insurgent unionists was jobs, rather than the radical political opposition to the Ben Ali regime that Sidi Bouzid’s PDP activists championed. During the Ben

Ali era, demands for change at the highest levels of political power were simply not part of the dominant repertoire of contention in the mining basin.

Beyond the less radical orientation of the mining basin’s insurgent UGTT activists, the

2008 revolt actually had the effect of further cementing the legitimacy of traditional intellectuals in Metlaoui like ‘Ammar ‘Abbassi. To begin, despite his role in the ruling party and his close relationship with the Ben ‘Ali regime, ‘Abbassi enjoyed substantial legitimacy in Metlaoui at the beginning of the 2008 uprisings among the Awlad Bouyahia. This is a factor research contacts in

Metlaoui cited as one of the reasons the town did not erupt in protests until the fifth month of the

2008 uprising.32 Even more however, ‘Abbassi gained legitimacy as a reliable defender of Awlad

Bouyahia interests when at the height of the revolt in Metlaoui, he descended onto the streets and offered youth jobs at the phosphate company in exchange for an end to the protests. In the run-up to the revolution, the legitimacy of traditional intellectuals like ‘Ammar ‘Abbassi remained undisturbed.

32 Personal Interviews with Metlaoui Residents. Metlaoui, January 2016, February 2016.

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In both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the distinct characters of the local civil societies that coalesced in the run-up to the revolution seemed to have been influenced by the distinct collective memories of the leading activists in each. In Sidi Bouzid, the memory of the armed uprising against France inspired leading civil society activists to seek direct political confrontation with the Ben Ali regime. In Metlaoui, traditional intellectuals loyal to the regime continued to dominate. Nevertheless, even their opponents in neighboring Redeyef’s secondary school teacher’s union mounted challenges to ‘Ammar ‘Abbasi based on the issue of employment rather than his political co-option by the regime. The distinctive character of local civil societies helps explain why Sidi Bouzid erupted in revolutionary protest in 2010 while

Metlaoui remained silent during the same period, even as protests began to engulf nearly all of

Tunisia’s major cities and neighboring municipalities like Gafsa and Tozeur

Self-Immolations and Revolution in Sidi Bouzid

As the wave on unrest that became known as the Arab Spring spread eastward to Egypt and Libya, then Yemen, and ultimately to Syria, the story of its unexpected beginning acquired near-mythic status. The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid became a visceral symbol for the actions of millions of Arab youth willing to take extreme measures to reclaim their dignity amidst desperate circumstances. Nevertheless, the actual mobilization that followed the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the unrelenting protests that followed in his town of origin have never been fully studied. While the causes of the broader Arab Spring were deeper and more fundamental than the mobilization at its ground zero,33 understanding the first protests

33 For a survey of scholarly reflections on the uprisings as a whole, see: Lynch, Marc. The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

207 in Sidi Bouzid is important because they provide an important demonstration for how the hegemony of a carefully consolidated authoritarian regime can quickly unravel. For the purposes of this study, it is also important to understand the revolution because of the impact it had on later efforts by jihadist salafists to establish a foothold in Sidi Bouzid. In both cases, movement participants were following historically-rooted political repertoires that they had inherited through oral traditions.

On December 17, 2010, the revolution in Sidi Bouzid began with a slap. A young street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi (real name: Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi) who worked at the main market in Sidi Bouzid found himself in an altercation with a female police officer.Mohamed had gained a reputation for his short temper among his colleagues at the market; he reportedly had earned the nickname “Mohamed Kouchkouch” - a word in the local dialectical Arabic that connotes foaming at the mouth. Although there are conflicting accounts about why the police officer stopped him and why she responded in the way that she did,34 what few people dispute is that the officer physically slapped Mohamed. Research contacts described the slap as a humiliating insult in Sidi Bouzid’s more traditional honor culture, given that the police officer was female; in Sidi Bouzid conservative ideas about gender relations still dominate. In response to the incident, several hours later Mohamed doused himself with paint thinner and lit himself on fire in front of the main government building in Sidi Bouzid.

The immediate reaction on the streets of Sidi Bouzid was one of outrage and disgust: in the aftermath of the self-immolation, angry young men from Mohamed’s neighborhood, Hayy

Nour, gathered in front of the main government building in Sidi Bouzid. Many of the other street

34 Day, Elizabeth. "The Slap That Sparked a Revolution." The Guardian. May 14, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/15/arab-spring-tunisia-the-slap.

208 vendors at the market where Mohamed worked also lived in Hayy Nour - a sprawling, working class quarter at the edge of Sidi Bouzid.35 Therefore it seems that the motivation was a combination of “vendor solidarity” and “neighborhood solidarity.” The initial protesters from

Hayy Nour were soon joined by marginalized youth from across the town, and they joined together in an ad-hoc public protest. The first slogan that these youth chanted was “With spirit and with blood, we redeem you Mohamed.”36 The demonstrations soon gave way to rioting: on the first day of the protests, the youth climbed over the wall of the main government building and penetrated it.

We can gain insight into the motivations of the young protesters who participated in this first day of demonstrations through the example of Maher,37 a young activist whom veterans of the PDP’s radical wing named as the person most responsible for rallying the youth of Hayy

Nour in the immediate aftermath of the self-immolation.38 On December 17, 2010 Maher was also working as a street vendor at the market and was a personal friend of Mohamed Bouazizi.

Maher argues that the chief motivation for the initial protest among the youth of Hayy Nour was out of a desire to take revenge against the police who were widely hated in their neighborhood, given their harassing behavior and corruption.39 In the same vein, he disputes the idea that the motivation for the protest was related to employment or a desire to receive government jobs.

Despite the mass unemployment in Hayy Nour, Maher claimed that a security forces hiring initiative immediately prior to the revolution was boycotted by 90% of unemployed youth who

35 Conversations with street vendor and youth protest leader. Sidi Bouzid, February 2016. 36 Ibid. 37 Psuedonym 38 Conversations with street vendor and youth protest leader. Sidi Bouzid, February 2016.

39 Ibid.

209 would rather have stayed unemployed than work for the security apparatus. “We don’t want jobs, or resources or anything,” he stated. “That’s not what a revolution is about. No real revolutionary would say people were protesting because they wanted jobs. I don’t want anything from anybody!”40

Following the self-immolation, civil society’s radical organic intellectual class also began to mobilize. In the immediate aftermath of the slap, the first faction of organic intellectuals that sprang into action was the radical PDP wing, which had previously developed the strategy of looking for socially resonants incidents issues to rally opposition to the regime around. Lassad

Bouazizi, a PDP coordinator and a guard at the market where Mohamed worked, had been in close contact with Mohamed and had been one of the last people who had spoken to him before his self-immolation. Immediately after the self-immolation, Nasim,41 a member of the PDP in

Sidi Bouzid rushed to the scene and filmed as Lassad Bouazizi traded rhetorical barbs with police. He promptly proceeded to send the footage to Al Jazeera and appeared on the air several hours later reporting news of unrest in the Tunisian interior.

In the hopes of sparking the widest and most furious reaction on the streets possible,

Nasim admitted to me during fieldwork that he had falsified aspects of the story in his Al Jazeera interview - particularly the fact that Mohamed Bouazizi was a university graduate.42 Given the widespread sentiment in Tunisia at the time that university graduate unemployment was particularly regrettable, Nasim strategically constructed the narrative that he thought would most energize other areas of Tunisia into revolting by pointing to social problems they could identify

40 Ibid. 41 Pseudonym 42 Interview with PDP activist. February 2016, Sidi Bouzid.

210 with. He reiterated that the goal had been to cause the fall of the Ben Ali regime and the handling of the Bouazizi incident was deliberately part of this planning.

The following day, December 18, crowds amassed in front of the headquarters of the local government and Khaled Aouinia - the lawyer-activist who represented the defendants from the Suleiman Affair - gave a rousing speech condemning the state’s treatment of the Sidi Bouzid governorate and chastising the provincial governor.

Listen Mr. Governor - and those who work for the Governor! "Terrorism" (and I say this with quotation marks) is a phenomenon that arises objectively from a backward, corrupt reality. Governor - if you do not hurry to solve these problems, you will find phenomena far more dangerous than terrorism. This is the result of accumulations - and every day more poverty and misery is accumulated! Sidi Bouzid is the only governorate without a single legitimate factory. There was a plan for an electric cable factory that would have employed 3000 - but it has been stolen and the effort was in vain!43

After listing a litany of injustices, Aouinia rallied the crowd with the slogan

“Employment is a right, oh gang of thieves!” The content of the speech is revealing in that while it references economic problems, it also uses language that mocks the tendency of Ben Ali regime officials to denounce opposition movements as “terrorism.” This language was particularly provocative, given the popular anger in Sidi Bouzid over the blanket arrests that occured in the wake of the Suleiman Affair. Nevertheless, given the focus on the employment issue, it may seem difficult to square the content of Aounia’s speech with the comments of youth like Maher who claim revenge against the police, rather than employment, was the motivation.

We can resolve this paradox by critically examining the content of the speech. Solely based on the text, there are two meanings that can be extracted. First, the statement could mean, as it did in

Metlaoui, that the reason for the protest was the lack of employment opportunities, and that

43 Khalid Aouinia, Speech to Sidi Bouzid, Dec. 18 2010. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APmufYVm58Q&t=7s.

211 providing the opportunities would cause the protests to stop. Second, it could mean that the reason for the protest was a desire to bring down the Ben Ali regime, and the failure to promote development in Sidi Bouzid was simply one of the abuses meant to justify this posture.

Ethnographic evidence points towards the latter

As mentioned earlier, Aouinia himself was a member of Sidi Bouzid’s radical, insurgent organic intellectual class. In the Al Jazeera interview referenced in the previous section, it is clear that he views the conflict between Sidi Bouzid and the coasts as having roots in the 19th century and lauds the 1950’s fellaga militants as an inspiration. Moreover, in the aftermath of the revolution, Aouinia participated in an event with veterans of the 1980’s armed assault on Gafsa - an encounter that was lauded on social media as a seminar between different revolutionary generations. Taken together, these encounters seems to augur against the narrow reading of the protest as stemming from a simple demand for increased employment opportunities, rather than a more radical political objective.

The clearest evidence however comes from discussions with Maher - the young protest leader - about how he and his colleagues reacted to Aounia’s speech. Maher maintains that despite the rhetoric of Aouinia and other leaders of civil society, the motivation of young protesters remained squarely focused on revenge and hatred against the police.44 Youth would repeat slogans like “Employment is a right, oh gang of thieves!” without even comprehending what they meant. Nevertheless, Maher argues that Khalid Aouinia and other civil society leaders inspired youth in a different. “Youth are basically in prison,” said Maher. “They go between their homes and their cafes but they’ve basically got nothing to lose. But Khalid ‘Aouinia was risking

44 Conversations with street vendor and youth protest leader. Sidi Bouzid, February 2016.

212 everything since he had a government job and could have lost it.” This, he said, gave youth courage to continue their protests.

In a testament to this radical political posture, youth protesters in Sidi Bouzid behaved differently than their counterparts in Metlaoui when faced with the opportunity to negotiate with the authorities. On December 23, a young man named Houcine Neji climbed an electrical pylon and threatened to commit suicide by touching the electrical line. Instead of sending a team to negotiate with Neji, the police stormed the pole and in the chaos, Neji was killed. A violent demonstration ensued that saw rock throwing youth face off with police.45 In the aftermath, local authorities approached five major youth leaders of the revolt and tried to open negotiations with them on ways to address the protesters’ demands. Instead of signaling the beginning of the end of the revolt however, the state’s attempt to negotiate led to an escalation in unrest. The majority of other youth revolutionaries disavowed their five youth leaders who agreed to meet local government officials and continued the protests without them.46 This demonstrates the different political context in Sidi Bouzid during the revolution, relative to Metlaoui’s 2008 protests, when

‘Ammar ‘Abbasi effectively ended the protests by co-opting their leaders with offer of employment.

The next three weeks saw an escalation of violence and unrest throughout Sidi Bouzid governorate and Tunisia more generally as news of the deaths of Mohamed Bouazizi and

Houcine Neji spread. In this regard, the insurgent faction of the local branch of the UGTT played an important role as national and international spokespeople for the protesters. Ali Zarai - a leader of the radical, Ba’athist wing of the UGTT - served as an important intermediary between

45 Ibid. 46 Ibid.

213 protesters and international media. In interviews, Zarai frequently gave sympathetic portrayals of the protesters and chastised the Tunisian administration for the dismal state of development in the region. In this sense, the UGTT’s activism contributed to helping the protests in Sidi Bouzid became a national news story - the key development that allowed the wave of unrest to culminate in the overthrow of Ben Ali.

Nevertheless, it would be a distortion to ascribe a leadership role to the UGTT in the Sidi

Bouzid protests. On the contrary, some influential leaders of the radical PDP wing expressed their disdain for the UGTT, arguing that union officials expressed qualified support for the protests in an effort to contain them - a characterization that aligns with Gramsci’s description of civil society as a sturdy structure that protects the state from full-frontal assault.47 One PDP veteran characterized the involvement of the UGTT in the revolution by simply saying “the counter-revolution entered the protests with us on December 23rd.”48

This view is understandable when one considers the comments of union leaders in the context of the Ben Ali regime’s self-preservation imperative. In a December 28, 2010 Op-Ed published online, one Sidi Bouzid UGTT leader expresses sympathy with the protesters and complains about the poor economic circumstances in Sidi Bouzid, while simultaneously expressing hope that calm will soon be restored to the region.49 Therein lies the problem however. If a protest is simply about employment, the protest can end when the ruling party offers employment. If it is about something greater, even improvements in material conditions will not save the ruling party from the wrath of the marginalized. So the disdain of some Sidi

47 Personal discussions with PDP activists. February 2016, Sidi Bouzid. 48 Ibid. 49"'Uqalaa' Sidi Bouzid Write for Al-Shurouq: Al-Matlub Tanwi' Al-Qaa'ida Al-Iqtisaadiyya Fi Wilaayatihim." Turess. December 28, 2010. https://www.turess.com/alchourouk/178353.

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Bouzid activists for the UGTT seems to stem from a belief that their involvement moderated the demands of the revolution and tried to strip them of their explicitly political character. Many of the revolutionaries - particularly the young protesters from Hayy Nour and other quarters - did not want calm.

The major question that remains then is: what motivated the youth of the revolution? Two themes came to light across conversations with revolutionary youth about their motivations. The first was regional disparities: youth I spoke to from across Sidi Bouzid cited the greater infrastructure development and greater job opportunities in coastal regions as a central grievance with the government. Given the large size of the public sector and the centralized nature of its administration, many youth perceived regional disparities as part of a deliberate state campaign to impoverish the interior regions of Tunisia. Additionally however, one of the most robust findings across ethnographic encounters with revolutionary youth was the way they described their activism as a legacy of past resistance in Sidi Bouzid - particularly the fellaga and armed uprising against France. It is this connection to the fellaga and that seems to be responsible for

Sidi Bouzid’s particular brand of youth politics. While complaints about regional disparities exist throughout central Tunisia and were common among people I interviewed different governorates, the commitment to upholding the legacy of armed revolutionaries through popular protest was relatively unique to Sidi Bouzid.

In some sense, the connection to the past is felt and expressed in vague terms. A number of revolutionaries I spoke to argued that resistance to authority was an essential cultural feature of Sidi Bouzid and that violent responses to incidents like the Mohamed Bouazizi self- immolation stemmed from an ingrained cultural impulse called ‘asabiyya or ta’assob - the latter being a linguistic permutation of the former. ‘Asabiyya is an Arabic term that Ibn Khaldun

215 popularized in his 14th century scholarly writings that means something akin to fanatical solidarity.50 One research contact from Hayy Nour suggested that while most youth had little knowledge of specific historical events, there was a general understanding even among the uneducated that Sidi Bouzid has historically been a jiha munaadila or “militant region.”51

Another research contact referenced an incident after the revolution where Sidi Bouzid’s local soccer club was playing for the league championship against the club from Hammam Sousse - the birthplace of former President Ben Ali. While Sidi Bouzid prevailed in the match, he argued that had Sidi Bouzid lost, there would have been “another revolution.”52 When asked how a sporting event could conceivably trigger a mass political mobilization, he responded simply:

“We have this history where we always strike first so you know who we are. Then, let’s see how you deal with us.”53

Despite the generally vague character of the recollections however, during conversations with revolutionary youth, a number of specific points reoccurred. First, youth insisted that the first shot against the French from the fellaga was fired in Sidi Bouzid - specifally in the mountains of Gaarat Hadeed that are visible from and provide a dramatic backdrop to the city’s main street. Second, youth frequently referenced the supposed “suicide mission” that Bourguiba sent the fellaga on when he ordered them to attack the last remaining French bas in the country at

Bizerte. Because many families in Sidi Bouzid lost relatives at Bizerte (or had relatives who participated), it seems that youth gain knowledge of this event merely by being exposed to their family histories. In this context, Maher - the young street vendor from Hayy Nour who led some

50 Khaldun, Ibn. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. 51 Discussions with Hayy Nour Youth. June 2015, Sidi Bouzid. 52 Discussion with youth civil society leader. September 2015, Sidi Bouzid. 53 Ibid.

216 of the first protests after the self-immolation - “Youth know absolutely nothing about politics - especially the street vendors, they have no idea about different ideologies. But they do know the histories of their grandparents who fought against the French, and they do know that the history was stolen from them.” In this sense, he refers to protests against the state as a way of restoring karaama or “dignity.”

It is not simply ex-post facto discussions with protesters however that suggests that historical memory played a role in inspiring the revolution; one can see it during the mobilizations themselves. During one protest that occurred in the months following the revolution, a protest leader declares on camera:

The youth of Sidi Bouzid are always here and will always be here. Today, tomorrow, the revolution, next year, at the Kasbah, 100 years, 200 years, it's no problem - we'll do it again. We did the impossible, and we'll do it again. Anything you can imagine in your head we'll do. Sidi Bouzid has produced suicidal youth. Suicidial youth! They can do the impossible! They can do the impossible!... Look at our history - I challenge anyone in Tunisia find a region with a more militant history than Sidi Bouzid. There's no region that is stronger than us. From fighting against colonialism until now, and including the revolution that we gave to Tunisia...even in religion, it's said "tribe before nation." I'm a son of Sidi Bouzid. I have no need for Tunisia - I only need Sidi Bouzid. Just these 400,000 people. They're not treating us like people, they're treating us like dogs. But we want to live like men in our country.54

The activists’ comments effectively encapsulate the ethos of the protests. The collective feeling of injustice that events like Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation creates a desire to rebel against authority. But the specific form that rebellion takes follows from heuristics about what one is supposed to do when he rebels. In Sidi Bouzid, youth look to history to answer this question of “what is to be done.” Because the historical narratives glorify previous acts of unceasing confrontation with the state, this is precisely the form that rebellion takes when it occurs in the present. After the revolution, the same historical memory discourses played a role

54 Video from Thawrah TV Public Facebook page. Available upon request.

217 in conditioning the popular resonance of jihadist salafism. In both cases, contemporary movements sought to emulate the imagined past.

Revolutionary Abstinence and Clan Conflict in Metlaoui

One of the more perplexing aspects of Metlaoui’s political trajectory is the town’s lack of participation in Tunisia’s 2010/2011 revolution. Since the 2008 Mining Basin Uprising, Metlaoui has witnessed significant street unrest, including recurrent street protests in the aftermath of the

Tunisian revolution. Nevertheless, during the principle period of revolutionary mobilization between December 17, 2010 and January 14, 2011, Metlaoui’s streets were practically silent.

The silence is especially striking because during late 2010, Metlaoui witnessed two prominent self-immolations of youth, each of which garnered national media attention. Despite these potential triggers - which were analogous to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Sidi

Bouzid - no mobilizations took place. A number of analysts have referenced the self-immolations that occurred in Metlaoui around the time of the revolution as important counter-examples that underscore the difficulty in explaining why Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation had the impact it did.55 By analyzing these events in context however, the explanation becomes clear. In Sidi

Bouzid, the historical memory discourse and radical repertoire of contention had primed movement participants for direct confrontation with the state. In Metlaoui, by contrast, a different historical memory discourse and a different repertoire of contention caused people to react differently to the same triggers.

55 Patel, David Siddhartha. "Comparing Explanations of the Arab Uprisings." Project on Middle East Political Science. October 2, 2014. https://pomeps.org/2014/11/11/comparing-explanations-of-the-arab-uprisings/. Gelvin, James L. The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015.

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The first self-immolation in Metlaoui occurred on November 19, 2010 - less than one month before the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi. Chamseddine Heni - a young unemployed man from the working class neighborhood of Hayy Chabeb - doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire at the side of the main highway that cuts through Metlaoui.56

According to youth from the town interviewed during fieldwork, the real reason for Heni’s self- immolation was a dispute with his father.57 He had collected money in the hopes of making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean by boat as an illicit migrant as many young men in

Metlaoui have done. When Heni’s father discovered his plan, he took the money from Heni; accordingly, Heni self-immolated himself in retaliation.

At first glance, the background conditions of the self-immolation appear to be different from those of Mohamed Bouazizi’s; a family squabble rather than a confrontation with authority.

Nevertheless, according to both field informants in Metlaoui and news reports from the day itself, the initial story that spread among people in the neighborhood was that the self- immolation stemmed from a conflict between Heni and the local administration.58 Heni had supposedly been at the headquarters of the administration in the week before his self-immolation demanding employment but had been forcibly expelled from the building. Therefore, people speculated that his self-immolation was related to his search for employment. At the time, the incident was featured in a report by a local NGO monitoring human rights issues in Tunisia, which noted that plain clothes state security officers were present at both Heni’s funeral and burial.59 This would suggest that the government was concerned about the incident and its

56 "Wafaat Shaab Bil-Mitlaawi Ba'd an Ahraqa Nafshou." Turess. November 20, 2010. https://www.turess.com/kalima/2463. 57 Discussions with Hay Chabeb Youth. January 2016, Metlaoui. 58 Ibid. 59 "Wafaat Shaab Bil-Mitlaawi Ba'd an Ahraqa Nafshou." Turess. November 20, 2010.

219 potential to launch a wider mobilization. Nevertheless, no mobilization materialized. The funeral and burial passed without any incident.

The second self-immolation occured on January 5, 2011 after Mosbah Jawhari, an unemployed young man from Metlaoui, lit himself on fire.60 While fewer details are available about the specifics of the incident, the broader political context is telling. January 5 was also the day that Mohamed Bouazizi died from the injuries sustained three weeks prior.61 It also came on the heels of the announcement of a General Strike by Tunisia’s national lawyers association.62 In other words, the national political atmosphere in which the self-immolation occurred was highly charged and more conducive to mass mobilizations than at any other time in Tunisia’s recent history. Nevertheless, in contrast to Sidi Bouzid, and despite the contentious national political context, Metlaoui saw no popular reaction to the self-immolation of Mosbah Jawhari. As with

Chamseddine Heni less than two months prior, the event passed without incident.

What is to explain the “non-mobilization” that occurred in the face of these two self- immolations in Metlaoui? When asked directly, no Metlaoui residents were able to provide a clear answer. The idea that there should have been a mobilization was not an intuitive assumption. Zouhair,63 a street activist I worked with during fieldwork remarked that the phenomenon of unemployed youth engaging in self-immolation actually began in Metlaoui during the early 2000’s and that several youth had come before Heni and Jawhari.64 As with the

60 "Tasaa'id A'dad Muhaawilaat Al-Intihaar Fi Tunis." Turess. January 5, 2011. https://www.turess.com/kalima/2771. 61 Rifai, Ryan. "Timeline: Tunisia's Uprising." Al Jazeera. January 23, 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/tunisia/2011/01/201114142223827361.html. 62 Ibid. 63 Psuedonym 64 Interview with Youth Civil Society Leader. January, 2016.

220 other incidents, there was no necessary connection between the phenomenon of self-immolation and street protest. Nevertheless, he did provide an explanation for why Metlaoui did not join the protests during the revolution, attributing it to three factors.65

First, Zouhair argued that because Metlaoui had risen up two and a half years prior, there was not as much appetite for a protest among Metlaoui’s residents. Second, he argued that following the 2008 uprising, the leaders of those protests had been co-opted by the state. This claim agrees with the assessment of a member of the former ruling party’s youth organization who argued that in 2008, protest leaders were offered jobs in exchange for ending the unrest.66

Third, he argued that the mentality in Metlaoui was simply different than that in Sidi Bouzid. On

December 22, 2010 - the activist had traveled from Metlaoui to Sidi Bouzid to witness the protests and had noted that the leaders were members of the PDP and other small opposition parties. These civil society leaders - being from marginal segments of the society - were incapable of making any real changes. For this reason, he argued that the 2011 Tunisian revolution was essentially a palace coup and that the street protests in Sidi Bouzid were irrelevant to the downfall of Ben Ali.67 He contrasted the politics in Sidi Bouzid with what he called the “unionist mentality” that prevails in Metlaoui. According to Zuhair, what distinguishes the “unionist mentality” is a focus on dignity (karaama in Arabic) - defined as being able to buy basic subsistence necessities at a reasonable price.

This final point - about a difference in mentality between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui - deserves further scrutiny. First, this material definition of dignity - linked to tangible subsistence needs - contrasts with the definition of dignity that research contacts in Sidi Bouzid provided. As

65 Ibid. 66 Discussion with former RCD youth organization coordinator in Metlaoui. February, 2016. 67 Interview with Youth Civil Society Leader. January, 2016.

221 mentioned previously, in Sidi Bouzid, research contacts described dignity in moral terms and linked it to the recovery of their “stolen history” through confrontation with the state. Second, the negative characterization of Sidi Bouzid’s revolution suggests a different view of political efficacy. During field research in Sidi Bouzid, it emerged that the PDP was an important

“umbrella organization” for a closely knit group of organic intellectuals who organized direct political opposition to the Ben Ali regime. Nevertheless, consistent with Sidi Bouzid’s historically-rooted repertoire of contention, the focus was on direct confrontation with political leaders, rather than tangible concessions like employment opportunities. In this context, the activist’s indictment of Sidi Bouzid’s organic intellectuals as ineffectual may simply suggest that he has a set of criteria for assessing a movement’s political efficacy that differs from that of his counterparts in Sidi Bouzid.

Ethnographic fieldwork I carried out in Metlaoui provided a perspective on this different vision of political efficacy, and supported the idea that it was culturally rooted. In line with

Metlaoui’s historical repertoire of contention and the pervading “unionist mentality”, research contacts in Metlaoui consistently presented a vision of politics focused on the ability of movement leaders to procure specific tangible material benefits for citizens. One research contact argued that Sidi Bouzid’s revolutionary mobilization was “chaotic” and “anarchistic” which he contrasted with Metlaoui’s “civil” approach to politics.68 He argued that the presence of phosphates gives people in Metlaoui a tangible way to pressure the government. Another young man from Metlaoui who had lived most of his life in Tunis expressed frustration with what he described as the banality of the conversations. “Metlaoui is not a political place. All people want and all they talk about is getting a job for 500 dinars a month, a house, and a car.

68 Personal interview with older resident. Metlaoui. June 2015.

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That’s it. Nobody wants to talk about real issues.”69 Still, he admits that Metlaoui’s residents have been forced to become political given the region’s economic challenges.

Given this popularly-held conception of politics as strategic and materially rooted, the self-immolations that occurred in Metlaoui were unable to inspire mass mobilization. Tangible concessions, rather than changes in political leadership, were the only popularly resonant justifications for street mobilization. In this context, less than three months after the revolution, a different sort of mobilization captured the imagination of Metlaoui’s youth that was more directly linked to both the dominant, material repertoire of contention and local collective memories that emphasized resource entitlement. In the spring of 2011, in the wake of the revolution, a mysterious document circulated among groups of youth in Metlaoui’s cafes that reportedly contained a list of new hires at the phosphate company.70 The origin of the document remains a mystery, though some contended that tribal notables who had also had senior positions in Ben Ali’s ruling party were responsible for its creation and distributed it as a means to draw popular ire away from them in the wake of the revolution.71 In any case, while the document was totally unofficial; many interpreted it as a harbinger of what was to come when the results were announced. According to youth interviewed for the study, the Awlad Bouyahia - Metlaoui’s demographically dominant clan - had received substantially fewer positions than they believed they were entitled to, given their alleged 70% share of the population. The 70% figure is highly contested among clans in Metlaoui: while members of the Awlad Bouyahia I spoke to insisted on the 70% figure, members of others clans insisted the figure was lower.

69 Personal Interview with Metlaoui youth. Sousse. August 2016. 70 Personal interview with Metlaoui civil society activist. Tunis, February 2016. 71 Ibid. "Khaas Bi-Shurouq: Hadhahi Asbaab Al-Fitna Wa Judhuruha Fi Al-Mitlawi." June 9, 2011. http://www.turess.com/alchourouk/192608.

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In any case, youth from the Awlad Bouyahia greeted the news with bewilderment and rage, most of it directed at the Jaridiyah - not a clan in the sense of shared kinship but descendants of migrant workers from the oases to Metlaoui’s south. During this period, the

Arabic word jardhaan or rats emerged as a moniker which Awlad Bouyahia would use to refer to

Jaridiya.72 In June, tensions boiled over into open clashes on the streets, as Awlad Bouyahia and

Jaridiya youth clashed with hunting rifles and rocks. Residential quarters were sacked and by the end of the clashes, dozens of youth had been killed in the fighting.73 During the clashes, angry youth from the Awlad Bouyahia chanted: “Go home, go cry! The guns of the Awlad Bouyahia are firing! The Hamami does not accept humiliation!”74 What is interesting about the slogan is that it self-consciously makes reference to the collective memory of the Hamama and the bedouin past, while at the same time rooting that history in the contemporary struggle for material resources. The history of the Hamama is redefined not as a call to arms against the state, but as an assertion of a right to employment.

In conversations with members of the Awlad Bouyahia, I encountered a consistent narrative through which the Awlad Bouyahia justified both their claim of entitlement to priority employment at the phosphate company and the actions that were taken against the Jaridiyyah.

The narrative alleges that after French prospectors working for the nascent colonial administration discovered phosphates in the Awlad Bouyahia’s domain in 1896, colonial authorities struck a deal with clan. According to the alleged arrangement, in exchange for the right to mine phosphates on their territory, the French offered the the Awlad Bouyahia free

72 Discussions with Awlad Bouyahi Youth. Metlaoui, February 2016. 73 "Khaas Bi-Shurouq: Hadhahi Asbaab Al-Fitna Wa Judhuruha Fi Al-Mitlawi." June 9, 2011. http://www.turess.com/alchourouk/192608. 74 Personal discussion with Awlad Bouyahia Youth. September 2015, Metlaoui.

224 medical treatment, a variety of amenities for survival like coal for heating and cooking, a percentage of the profits from the phosphate mining operation, and priority employment at the phosphate company, commensurate to their share of the population.75 The narrative further alleges that all of these pillars of the agreement fell by the wayside after independence, with the exception of priority employment at the phosphate company, which to this day, the Awlad

Bouyahia claim as their legitimate right.76

In the context of this tribal narrative, the Awlad Bouyahia conceive of protest over jobs as an effort to enforce their right to benefit from the phosphate revenues, which stems from their traditional claim of ownership over the land on which the phosphates are mined. Jobs for the

Awlad Bouyahia youth are, in the popular imagination, effectively a proxy for the “rent” that the state owes the clan by virtue of the mining operation’s presence on their land. One can see this conception of protest and its relationship to popular ideas about masculinity in the graffiti that graces the walls of buildings in the town. Among the most common slogans is: “Metlaoui, with its men.” While rather vague in denotative meeting, one of my contacts from the Awlad

Bouyahia provided a credible interpretation of the connotation the expression carries among people in the town. “It means that tribalism is still a big factor,” he remarked. “Here in Metlaoui, we have a resource and this gives us a way to pressure the government. We can block the export of phosphates.”77

Conclusion

75 Pieces of this narrative were found in conversations, but the most complete synthesis drawn from Personal Interview. Middle-aged Awlad Bouyahia day laborer. Metlaoui, August 2015. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

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As the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi gained iconic status in humanity’s collective memory, the question of how a small personal act of protest managed to spark a mass uprising remained a mystery. The analysis presented in this chapter has demonstrated that far more significant than the act itself was the fact that it occurred in Sidi Bouzid. In contrast to media narratives however, it was not simply Sidi Bouzid’s objectively poor socioeconomic indicators that caused the self-immolation to inspire revolutionary street protests, but also the deeply resonant collective memory of the armed revolt against France and other historical campaigns of resistance. These memories helped sustain a common radical repertoire of contention for both civil society and ordinary citizens.

In civil society, historical memory impacted the political socialization of a group of

“organic intellectuals” who provided organizational leadership for the uprising. They also served as national-level spokesmen for the protests and helped turn them into a flashpoint for direct confrontation with the Ben Ali regime. For rank-and-file citizens, the same historical memories conditioned young men to express their grievances through confrontation with the police and to refuse to negotiate, even when attempts to co-opt the protest leaders were initiated by the regime.

Among both groups, research contacts framed their revolutionary activism as an effort to live up to an historical ideal of heroism that their ancestors had bequeathed the with them. In this sense, for the revolutionaries in Sidi Bouzid, politics was not simply about doing something but rather about being someone.

In Metlaoui, a very different set of historical memories produced a very different popular response to the common trigger of self-immolation. Although people in Metlaoui are aware of the armed struggle against France and feel ownership over it, the memory of the period does not have the same political salience with respect to street mobilization. Rather, the politics of

226 material status and strategic negotiation that the town’s “unionist” heritage has inculcated in people seems to have superseded the armed struggle against France as the dominant political reference. Therefore, when Chamseddine Heni and Mosbah Jawhari lit themselves on fire shortly before and shortly after Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, the organizational and cognitive infrastructure to create a revolution did not exist. There was no cadre of organic intellectuals seeking to organize opposition to the regime, and no sense among youth that protest against the state was an appropriate response to self-immolation. While mobilization did occur in Metlaoui after the revolution, as with the 2008 uprising, it was narrowly focused around the issue of unemployment and extracting material concessions.

Understanding these two disparate responses to self-immolation at the time of the revolution is important because it sets the stage for the understanding the disparate responses to jihadist salafist recruitment efforts after the revolution. In Sidi Bouzid, the same historical memory discourses and same repertoires of contention that inspired the revolution helped push people into the arms of jihadist salafist recruiters. The same youth from Hayy Nour who had served a coordinators of the revolutionary protests became core members of the local jihadist salafist current and many traveled to Syria to fight with Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic State. By contrast, in Metlaoui, the same materially-focused political impulses that prevented the self- immolations of Chamseddine Heni and Mosbah Jawhari from sparking a wider confrontation seemed to shield people from the impact of jihadist salafism. In this way, in both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the revolution was simply a harbinger of things to come.

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Chapter Eight Jihad, Strikes, and the Great Escape

Introduction

In both Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, Tunisia’s 2011 revolution ushered in an era of unprecedented political openness. During the Ben Ali era, the public sphere had been devastated.

Images of the President were omnipresent in public spaces and though people in both towns remembered their local histories of resistance, outside a narrow cadre of organic intellectuals few people dared to engage in openly political discussion. In this context, the revolution released the dam on a torrent of political ideas that could be openly discussed for the first time. As youth emerged from the political vacuum, they were exposed to a smorgasbord of different ideologies: from moderate Islamism, to liberalism, to Marxism to jihadist salafism. Lacking any criteria through which they could objectively evaluate the arguments of ideological entrepreneurs, youth relied on intuitive repertoires of contention to assess them. Because the local repertoires of contention in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui differed, the popular response to jihadist salafism differed as well.

This chapter proceeds in three parts. The first part of the chapter provides a structured comparison of the attempts jihadist salafists made to exert control over mosques in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui after the revolution. In Sidi Bouzid, jihadist salafists effectively took control of mosques unopposed and used the mosques as a platform to recruit followers. In Metlaoui, a popular mobilization against the jihadists led by members of the Awlad Bouyahia - the town’s dominant clan - prevented jihadists from gaining control of the mosques and helped ensure the ideology remained on the town’s political fringe.

The second part of the chapter analyzes the growth of jihadist salafism as a social movement in Sidi Bouzid. Of particular emphasis here is the way Sidi Bouzid’s jihadist salafists

228 effectively co-opted the youth leaders of the 2010/2011 revolution and used the mantle of the revolution to gain popular legitimacy and enter the political mainstream. While only a small subset of Sidi Bouzid’s population fully embraced jihadist salafism, a majority of youth developed a modicum of respect for jihadist leaders and soft support for their religio-political project. It was this large pool of soft supporters that allowed jihadist salafists to turn out large crowds at public rallies and to remain in control of mosques.

The third part of the chapter analyzes the emergence of “unions” for unemployed youth in Metlaoui and argues that these organizations filled the same political space that jihadism did in Sidi Bouzid. In this sense, they served as a pragmatic alternative and helped channel the frustration of anger that youth felt. This section argues that in the same way that support for jihadism in Sidi Bouzid seemed to emerge from the ideas youth had about history, the organization of unions and use of “strikes” by youth seeking employment at the phosphate company also stemmed from an attempt to follow the example set by previous generations. The final part of the section deals with the phenomenon of illegal immigration to Europe as a counterpoint to jihadist foreign fighter recruitment.

Jihadism, Clanism and the Battle for the Mosques

While the Ben Ali regime sought to suppress dissent across Tunisia’s civil society, the level of surveillance and control within the religious sphere was particularly intense. Mosques were only allowed to be open during designated prayer times, clerics were state employees and required a license to preach, and religious knowledge was tightly controlled. In contrast to

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Algeria, which gave wide latitude to politically quiescent “scholarly salafists,”1 Tunisian authorities criminalized any outward expressions of fundamentalism.2 One research contact who had embraced the jihadist salafist ideology prior to the revolution said he had been expelled from high school before the revolution simply for praying on campus.3 Throughout fieldwork, several individuals I interviewed recounted stories of being harrassed by police before the revolution solely for having beards.4

In the aftermath of the revolution, the situation changed markedly. First, during the transitional period, mosques across Tunisia that had been well-surveilled and staffed by officially-sanctioned Imams fell out of the control of the state’s Ministry of Religious Affairs.5

While some Tunisian secularists blamed the moderate Islamist Ennahda party which assumed power in 2012 for deliberately failing to reassert state control, one also cannot discount the uncertainty that gripped the security apparatus in the wake of the revolution about what the “new rules” were. Second, in March 2011, the interim government passed a general amnesty for political prisoners. Under the amnesty policy, the state was obliged to release virtually every salafist who had been detained on terrorism charges during the previous decade, including all 30 convicted conspirators in the Suleiman Affair.6 The detainees’ return came at a time of

1 Boubekeur, Amel. "Salafism and Radical Politics in Postconflict Algeria." Carnegie Papers, no. 11 (November 2008). 2 "Religion and Political Activism in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia." In Protest, Social Movements, and Global Democracy since 2011: New Perspectives, edited by Thomas Davies, Holly Eva. Ryan, and Alejandro Milciades. Pena, by Anna Grasso. Bingley, U.K: Emerald, 2016. 3 Conversation with salafist research contact. July 2014, SIdi Bouzid. 4 Conversations with jihadist salafits. July 2013, Sidi Bouzid. July 2014, Sidi Bouzid. 5 Torelli, Stefano M., Fabio Merone, and Francesco Cavatorta. "Salafism in Tunisia: Challenges and Opportunities for Democratization." Middle East Policy 19, no. 4 (2012): 140-54. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4967.2012.00566.x. 6" Tunisia Frees Last Political Prisoners: Activist." Google News. March 2, 2011. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g8FcC4VQrXcTWZIxs2bvzAKJSMOg?docId=CNG.72b aebb483973586ff9863836d430cfa.a81.

230 unprecedented political openness: in the aftermath of the revolution, the interim government openly tolerated demonstrations with brazenly jihadist rhetoric.7 The environment was so permissive that soon after the revolution, representatives from the jihadist salafist Ansar al-

Shari’a movement appeared as guests on national Tunisian television talk-shows.8

In this environment, jihadist salafists across Tunisia began to execute a strategy of installing themselves as Imams of mosques. According to one source close to Ansar al-Shari’a leaders in Kairouan, the strategy had been planned before the revolution9 - a claims that agrees with the conclusions of Aaron Zelin who has studied the strategic evolution of the movement’s national leadership.10 Nevertheless, the success of this attempt to assert control over mosques varied sub-nationally. This variance is particularly apparent in the twin cases of Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui. In Sidi Bouzid, jihadist salafists successfully assumed preaching duties at the town’s largest mosques; in Metlaoui, an effort by a small vanguard group of jihadist salafists was stymied by popular opposition.

In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, according to Sidi Bouzid residents, the state-sanctioned Imams at the town’s major mosques resigned from their posts. While the circumstances of their departure are unclear, given the tensions of the period and the alleged membership of the clerics in the former ruling party, it seems likely that popular pressure played a role. Whatever the reason, with no state-approved clerics available to lead the daily prayers or to deliver the Friday sermons in the months following the revolution, according to Sidi Bouzid

7 Al-Salafiyya Fi Tunis. Attounissia (Via YouTube). February 9, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7zW3a48roU. 8 Awl Dhuhur 'Ilaami Lil-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya Fi Tunis. Attounissia (Via YouTube). March 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-udctd_jy0&t=75s.. 9 Discussion with jihadist salafist ideologue. Kairouan, July 2014. 10 Zelin, Aaron. "Tunisia: Uncovering Ansar Al-Shari'a." Washington Institute for Near East Policy. October 25, 2013. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/tunisia-uncovering-ansar-al-sharia.

231 residents various members of the congregation would volunteer on an ad hoc basis to fulfill these responsibilities. Although worshippers experimented with several candidates, according to Sidi

Bouzid residents, they eventually reached a consensus on several individuals who came to assume the Imam responsibilities in a semi-official capacity.

In a striking turn of events, the men who assumed the town’s most prominent preaching responsibilities were jihadist salafists who had been in prison before the revolution. At the town’s largest mosque, located at the edge of the Hayy Nour neighborhood where Mohamed

Bouazizi had lived, the two men who emerged as Imams were Mohamed Amine al-Jaziri and

Khalifa Garaoui - both individuals who had been given lengthy prison sentences for their involvement in the Suleiman Affair.11 During the mid-2000’s, al-Jaziri and Garaoui had been students of Khatib al-Idrissi and so their rise as important local religious intellectuals represented a culmination of al-Idrissi’s proselytism campaign. Additionally, ‘Imad Ben Saleh - known by the nom de guerre Abu ‘Abdallah al-Tunisi - settled in Sidi Bouzid during this period and gave religious lectures at mosques throughout the town.12 Ben Saleh was one of the most prominent salafist clerics in Tunisia and had been based in Egypt in the immediate period following the revolution; nevertheless, in 2013 he was expelled from Egypt on accusations of funneling young men to jihadist groups in Syria.13

11 "Tamatt'iu Bi-'Afu Tashri3i 'Aam: Hadhahi Hiya Al-Qaa'ima Al-Ismiyya Al-Kaamila Lil-Daal'iin Fi Ahdaat Suleiman." December 12, 2015. http://www.jomhouria.com/art44707_%D8%AA%D9%85%D8%AA%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%A7%20%D8%A8 %D8%B9%D9%81%D9%88%20%D8%AA%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B9%D9%8A%20%D8%B9%D 8%A7%D9%85:%20%D9%87%D8%B0%D9%87%20%D9%87%D9%8A%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D 8%A7%D8%A6%D9%85%D8%A9%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9% 20%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A9%20%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B6%D8% A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%8A%D9%86%20%D9%81%D9%8A%20%D8%A3%D8%AD%D8%AF%D8%A7 %D8%AB%20%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86. 12 Interview with jihadist salafist cleric. July 2013, Sidi Bouzid. 13"Al-ifraaj 'an Sheikh Salafi Mutahim Bi Tazwir Jawaazat Saf Li-Muqaatilin Mutatarrifin." France24. April 5, .تونس-سلفيون-ترحيل-مصر-أبو-عبد-هللا-مطار-قرطاج-إفراجhttp://www.france24.com/ar/20130405- .2013

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The salafists’ success in gaining control of the mosques might seem perplexing: after all, at the time of the revolution, the ideology was by no means mainstream. It raises the question of how jihadists were so successfully able to take control. Throughout fieldwork, I encountered two explanations. The first explanation was presented to me by leaders and supporters of the jihadist salafist movement itself. According to the narrative, at the time of the revolution the jihadist salafists were among the only people in Sidi Bouzid with both the desire to preside over the mosques and the technical skills to credibly discharge the responsibilities that come with prayer leadership. These skills, jihadist salafists claimed, were developed during deep studies of the religion they had undertaken while in prison. While there may be some truth to this narrative, it does not seem plausible when one considers the geographic distribution of jihadist salafism. If the success of the salafists was solely based on merit, and the experience of imprisonment had given the salafists a particular level of merit, we would have also seen salafists selected as

Imams in Metlaoui, given the fact that starting in 2006, Metlaoui’s salafist activists also spent time in prison. Therefore, because there was variance in the ability of jihadist salafists’ to take control of mosques across the two cities, the causes of the variance must lie elsewhere.

In this context, the second explanation I encountered - which attributed the success jihadist salafists’ gained in taking over the mosques to pre-existing popular sympathy - was more plausible. According to research contacts, the jihadist salafist leaders who had served time in prison for involvement in the Suleiman Affair already had gained a degree of popular legitimacy in the period following their arrest.14 Beyond the specific issue of the Suleiman Affair, some research contacts argued that at the time of the revolution, jihadist salafists benefited from the fact that many Sidi Bouzid residents had a pre-existing admiration for Osama Bin Laden that

14 Conversations with Sidi Bouzid residents. Tunis, June 2013. Sidi Bouzid, July 2014.

233 transcended normal ideological divisions. During an interview, one young salafist recalled:

“Some of us were leftists, some of us had no interest in politics. Some of us were religious, some of us barely prayed. The one thing we had in common however was that we all loved Osama Bin

Laden.”15

Multiple research contacts I spoke to in Sidi Bouzid during preliminary fieldwork in 2013 expressed admiration for Bin Laden and nearly all agreed with the assessment that admiration for

Bin Laden was widespread in Sidi Bouzid at the time of the attacks.16 Paradoxically, many of the same people however doubted that Bin Laden was complicit in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In this sense, it seems people supported Bin Laden as a symbol of unified Arab and Muslim resistance against what people perceived to be foreign aggression by Western powers. “A lot of people in Sidi Bouzid are uneducated,” said one research contact. “So if you ask a random person on the street who is not a critical or literary thinker, he just views Osama Bin Laden as a person who fought against America. So because he hates America, he likes Bin Laden. And in his mind, he doesn’t distinguish between different elements of the society.”17 In this regard, he suggested that support for Bin Laden transcended the traditional ideological divide between leftists and Islamists. Since jihadist salafists self-consciously styled themselves as heirs to Bin

Laden’s legacy, this gave them advantages in their campaign to assume control of mosque preaching responsibilities.18

15 Discussion with jihadist salafist youth. Sidi Bouzid, July 2013. 16 Discussions with non-salafist Sidi Bouzid residents. Sidi Bouzid, July 2013. Sidi Bouizid, July 2014. 17 Discussion with unemployed young men. Sidi Bouzid, July 2013. 18 For a perspective on the relationship between popular support for Osama Bin Laden and jihadist recruitment in another social context, see: Merone, Fabio. "Salafism in Tunisia: An Interview with a Member of Ansar Al- Sharia." April 11, 2013. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11166/salafism-in-tunisia_an-interview-with-a- member-of-.

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Beyond pre-existing support for Osama Bin Laden - research contacts in Sidi Bouzid claimed that jihadist salafists had gained the sympathy of a majority of the town’s inhabitants by virtue of the fact that they had been oppressed by the authorities during the Ben Ali era. The campaign of arrests that decimated the salafist ranks had been starkly condemned by people in

Sidi Bouzid as a blatant example of state overreach. In this context, the perseverance of the activists throughout their imprisonment was personally inspiring to residents of the town - even among those who expressed indifference about jihadist salafist ideology. One resident of Sidi

Bouzid claimed that while he had never been religious before the revolution, when he saw how the jihadists were oppressed he became more serious about the faith.19 Residents of the town seemed to agree that the jihadist salafist activists deserved a chance.

The sentiments described thus far all seemed to exist in Sidi Bouzid immediately after the revolution - but before the jihadist salafists had begun to build their movement in earnest.

Nevertheless, even at this early stage, there are hints of a connection between Sidi Bouzid’s historically rooted repertoire of contention and passive support for the jihadist salafists. To begin with, observers in Sidi Bouzid suggested that at the time of the Suleiman Affair, one of the factors driving support for the militants in Sidi Bouzid was the apparent correspondence between their armed activism in mountains and the popular mythology of the fellaga.20 By contrast, the arrest of members of an alleged militant cell in Metlaoui during the same period did not inspire the same popular outpouring of support.

Second, some Sidi Bouzid residents suggested that jihadist salafists gained popular sympathy because the town’s history has given people a unique openness to political messages

19 Conversation with Sidi Bouzid civil society activist. Tunis, June 2013. 20 Conversation with local historian. Sidi Bouzid, November 2015.

235 calling for fundamental changes across the Ummah - a term used to refer to either the broader

Arab World or the broader Muslim World.21 Research contacts who emphasized this connection pointed to both Sidi Bouzid’s history of support for pan-Arabist causes in the context of the

Youssefist opposition and the phenomenon of pan-Arabist foreign fighters from the region who traveled to the Levant to join guerilla efforts against Israel. In this context, the widespread sympathy for the message of Osama Bin Laden and his call for Muslim unity against foreign aggression in Sidi Bouzid may have been linked to this history.

Third, it is important to consider the context of the revolution when assessing the reception that jihadist salafists in Sidi Bouzid received during their campaign to assert control over mosques. The revolution in Sidi Bouzid had unleashed the latent antipathy that many residents of the town felt towards the Ben Ali regime. In this context, the popular sympathy people held for jihadist salafists given their status as victims of the Ben Ali police state was likely exacerbated by the general “revolutionary” sentiments that prevailed at the time. As argued in the preceding chapter, the collective memory of the armed uprising had a major impact on the character of mobilization during the revolution. Therefore, any connection between the revolution and jihadist salafism implies at least an indirect link between collective memory and jihadist salafism.

In the aftermath of the revolution, Metlaoui also experienced a major grassroots mobilization by a local vanguard of jihadist salafists. Although information was more difficult to obtain than in Sidi Bouzid, one source with knowledge of the movement claimed that after the revolution, Metlaoui’s nascent jihadist movement was led by the same individuals who had been implicated in the 2006 investigation of the Metlaoui jihadist cell - including Zied, the

21 Conversation with civil society activist. Sidi Bouzid, November 2015.

236 movement’s leader.22 The source also named Zied as the leader of the Metlaoui branch of Ansar al-Shari’a - an organization set up by jihadist salafist leaders in Tunisia to coordinate proselytism efforts. In this way, the core group of jihadist salafist activists in Metlaoui had significant commonalities with their counterparts in Sidi Bouzid who had been implicated in the Suleiman

Affair.

According to eyewitness accounts, after the revolution, the jihadist salafists in Metlaoui launched a campaign to take control of mosques in the town. Nevertheless, in contrast to Sidi

Bouzid, in Metlaoui these attempts were an abject failure. In one incident, as a group of jihadist salafists tried to install themselves at the head of the congregation during prayers at of one of the largest mosques in the town, Metlaoui residents formed a posse and approached the sanctuary brandishing knives and swords.23 In their fury, they overwhelmed the jihadist salafists and expelled them. Far from the positive reception that jihadist salafists gained from residents of Sidi

Bouzid, residents of Metlaoui were actively opposed to the movement and sought to limit its reach.

Why was support for jihadist salafism so limited and why did the current garner such strong opposition? Metlaoui residents attributed the rejection of the ideology to clan-based solidarity. According to one moderate Muslim Imam I interviewed who successfully fended off a jihadist salafist challenge, the counter-mobilization to the jihadist salafists was led specifically by youth from the Awlad Bouyahia clan.24 By contrast, support for Metlaoui’s jihadist salafists seemed concentrated among two groups: the Jaridiyyah, the same minority population group that clashes with the Awlad Bouyahia during the 2011 ‘urushiyya violence, and the Awlad Masa’i, a

22 Conversation with Metlaoui civil society leader. Tunis, May 2015 23 Ibid. 24 Interview with moderate Muslim Imam. Metlaoui, February 2016.

237 branch of the Awlad Bouyahia that has historically worked in agriculture and at the town’s market, rather than in the phosphate mines.

While it was impossible to assess how deep support for jihadist salafists was in either of these groups, I found no specific evidence to suggest that they gained the support of a majority of either the Jaridiyyah or the Awlad Masa’i. Some research contacts suggested that support for jihadist salafists was so weak that they did not gain a foothold in a single cafe. Another research contact claimed that although jihadist salafists set up proselytism tents in Metlaoui, they were in the back alleys of the residential Hayy Trabelsi neighborhood where Jaridiyyah are concentrated.25 This is in contrast to Sidi Bouzid, where jihadist proselytism activities occurred in public spaces. Overall, this suggests that while jihadist salafism gained more support among some groups than others, the support was fairly limited across all demographic groups.

Scores of Awlad Bouyahia languish in unemployment; because they form the majority

(or near-majoritarian plurality) of Metlaoui’s residents they also likely form the majority of the town’s unemployed residents. Cross-governorate economic data suggests that unemployment in

Metlaoui is even higher than in Sidi Bouzid; therefore, Metlaoui’s Awlad Bouyahia youth are in the aggregate likely no better off economically than youth in Sidi Bouzid. On the surface then, there is no intuitive reason why the logic of clan solidarity ought to conflict with the logic of jihadist salafism. Nevertheless, when one examines the meaning of clan solidarity in Metlaoui - particular in the wake of the 2011 tribal clashes between the Awlad Bouyahia and Jaridiyyah - the Awlad Bouyahia’s aversion to jihadist salafism becomes easier to understand.

In contrast to Sidi Bouzid, where clan solidarities have very little tangible social impact, in Metlaoui clan solidarities ground social life. Among the Awlad Bouayhia, there is a discourse

25 Conversation with Metlaoui civil society activist. Tunis, February 2016.

238 that they are the original inhabitants of the land and thus entitled to preferential treatment in the phosphate company hiring competitions. As official unemployment statistics show, this does not mean that being part of the Awlad Bouyahia actually will get an unemployed young man a job; only that membership in the Awlad Bouyahia gives youth a belief that they have a right to a job.

It is this belief that material rights derive from clan identity that seems to be responsible for the mass rejection of jihadist salafist ideology by the Awlad Bouyahia. In particular, jihadist salafist ideology has two components that clash with this ethos.

First, the ideology embraces a vision of political reform that transcends the material.

Jihadist salafist rhetoric emphasizes piety, total conflict with corrupt political authority, and fanatical defense of religious symbols - not jobs or advantages in phosphate company hiring competitions. By contrast, the Awlad Bouyahia’s clan identity discourse takes the existence of the company, its hiring process, and the political and civil society context that surrounds it as a given, since access to the phosphate company’s resources is what gives the clan its privileged status. Second, jihadist salafism is founded upon a premise of unity around the organizing principle of religion, and accordingly rejects the idea that certain kinship based groupings should have special privileges over others. It is also meant to be a totalizing identity: jihadist salafists are Muslims first, and reject all other loyalties as conflicting with this imperative. Status in the jihadist salafist belief system is determined by commitment to the ideology, rather than any other ascriptive criteria. Indeed, given that Zied, the leader of the jihadist salafists in Metlaoui, was a member of the Jaridiyyah,26 to embrace the ideology would have been to subordinate themselves to the leadership of an “outsider.” This stands in direct contradiction to the notion of the Awlad

Bouyahia as a preeminent clan with special material rights. Therefore, embracing the jihadist

26 Conversation with Metlaoui civil society activist. October, 2017. (Remotely)

239 salafist ideology would have required the youth of the Awlad Bouyahia to deemphasize their clan identity and to abandon their claims to special material privileges. It is for this reason that the ideology generated opposition.

The unique resonance of clan identities in Metlaoui is a direct outgrowth the town’s tradition of materially-based repertoire of political contention. The notion that the Awlad

Bouyahia have a unique “right” to jobs at the phosphate company derives from popular historical narratives about the history of the town and the supposed pact between the Awlad Bouyahia and the French administration at the time of the phosphate company’s founding. Given the fact that the tribes in the region initially refused to join the phosphate company and that mining jobs were not scarce, the idea of such a pact seems implausible.27 Nevertheless, the discourse is still a product of history. As explained in previous chapters, the strength of clan solidarities in Metlaoui and their relationship to the discourse of employment rights stems from the historical enmeshment of clan structures with labor unions and professional syndicates. The focus on

“employment” and other material concessions from the state also reflects the “unionist” repertoire of contention. In the same way that the legacy of Sidi Bouzid’s history of armed resistance helped the jihadists gain support, the legacy of Metlaoui’s history of materially-rooted contention undermined jihadist recruitment efforts among the Awlad Bouyahia.

With this knowledge of the historical context, it becomes possible to understand the one exception to the trend: the seeming success that jihadist salafists had in recruiting members of the Awlad Bouyahia-affiliated Awlad Masa’i.28 Unlike the majority of the Awlad Bouyahia, the

Awlad Masa’i have never been involved in working for the phosphate company.29 In general,

27 Tababi, Hafayyidh. Min Al-Badaawa Ila Al-Manaajim. Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Tunisiyya Lil-Kutaab, 2012. 28 Conversation with Metlaoui civil society activist. Tunis, February 2016. 29 Ibid.

240 they sustain their livelihood through work in agriculture, selling produce at the town’s outdoor markets, or doing basic work in construction. In other words, the Awlad Masa’i have been insulated from the very dynamics that have conditioned Metlaoui’s unique materially-rooted repertoire of contention. In this sense, they bear more of a resemblance to the people in Sidi

Bouzid than the other members of the Awlad Bouyahia. It is thus not surprising that their response to jihadist salafism paralleled Sidi Bouzid’s.

Using the same framework, it is also possible to understand why jihadist salafism gained some support among the Jaridiyyah. Although in Metlaoui, Jaridiyyah have a distinct identity, they are not a clan in the sense of embracing an ideology based on purported kinship links.

Indeed, the 2011 tribal clashes had revealed the full extent of their second-class status in the town’s clan politics. Because there is no discourse of Jaridiyyah as a privileged group entitled to particular material rights, it makes sense that members of the group did not guard the identity as jealously as their counterparts in the Awlad Bouyahia. The clan system that jihadist salafism threatened was of no discursive benefit to the Jaridiyyah. Interestingly, the idea of the Jaridiyyah as the group in Metlaoui most amenable to participate in radical political movements has an historical precedent. As mentioned previously, during the 1980’s armed Gafsa operation, the only participant from Metlaoui was Mohamed ‘Ali al-Hmidi - a young man who lived in

Metlaoui but was originally from the oasis of Degache. His codename among the attackers was

“The Jaridi.”30

When it comes to understanding why jihadist salafists succeeded in Sidi Bouzid but failed in Metlaoui, the attempts that jihadist salafists in both cities made to control mosques

30 Belhoula, Al-Munsif. Shahaada Lil-Taarikh 'An Ahdaath Gafsa Al-Musalliha Sanat 1980. Tunis: Al-Dar Al- Maghribiyya Lil-Tabaa'a Wal-Nashar, 2014. 179-180

241 represents the critical juncture. In Sidi Bouzid, jihadists gained popular sympathy and assumed control of mosques with ease. This success stemmed from the antipathy to the state that prevailed in the aftermath of the revolution and the historical memory discourses that the revolution had made relevant. In Metlaoui, jihadist efforts to control mosques were thwarted after the Awlad

Bouyahia - the town’s dominant clan - rallied to oppose the militants. The distaste of the Awlad

Bouyahia for jihadism and their solidarity also stemmed from historical memory discourses and deeply-ingrained repertoires of contention. As the following sections will show, after the question of control over mosque preaching responsibilities was decided in each city, the historically-rooted repertoires of contention continued to exert an influence in each town’s street politics. In Sidi Bouzid, these repertoires helped jihadist salafists gain widespread popular legitimacy; in Metlaoui, they spurred the rise of alternative outlets for the expression of grievances.

Jihadism as a Social Movement in Sidi Bouzid

Control over the mosques gave the jihadists salafists a powerful platform for their proselytism efforts. After the revolution, most Sidi Bouzid residents, being relatively conservative and pious by Tunisian standards, would at a minimum attend the weekly friday group prayers at the mosque. Although most worshippers were not jihadist salafists, the newly- installed Imams would deliver sermons to the congregations that unabashedly advocated for salafist interpretations of the religion and jihadist political ideas. During prayers at one of the town’s major salafist mosques marking the 2013 Eid al-Fitr celebration for example, the Imam’s sermon encouraged worshippers to affirm the tawhid, or oneness of God, by following the

242 example of Osama Bin Laden.31 In the summer of 2014, a jihadist salafist Imam delivered a sermon that lambasted participation in elections as tantamount to apostasy.32

In addition to these efforts within the context of official religious institutions however, jihadist salafists engaged in other forms of activism. They would often set up da’wa, or preaching, tents outside of the mosques where Sidi Bouzid residents could go to learn more about salafist ideas. Oftentimes, these tents would also provide food at no charge, in ostensible service to the poor. During my time in Sidi Bouzid, I personally encountered a da’wa table associated with the jihadist Ansar al-Shari’a movement that was serving ice cream. After two beaming men in long white robes had put their arms on my shoulders and led me towards the table, a jolly bearded jihadist salafist with glasses scooped some ice cream into a cup for me.

With a warm smile, and in perfect English, he softly said: “This...is for free.”

Other forms of salafist activism were more aggressive however. In Sidi Bouzid’s main outdoor market, one of the salafists who had been convicted of involvement in the Suleiman

Affair created an informal security force with the aim of “promoting virtue and preventing vice.”33 Separately, salafist activists sought to end the sale of alcohol in the town by confronting and intimidating the owners of establishments that distributed liquor. In one infamous case, dozens of young salafists ransacked one of the town’s more established hotels because its owner ignored their calls to stop serving alcoholic drinks.34

In addition to these general efforts, Sidi Bouzid’s jihadist salafist leaders made targeted

31 Conversation with Sidi Bouzid residents. August, 2013. 32 Conversation with Sidi Bouzid residents. July, 2013. 33Al-Salafiyya Fi Tunis - Sidi Bouzid. Youtube. 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq9QPJ_GVzM. 34 "Sidi Bouzid Runs Dry after Salafists Destroy Last Remaining Bar." France24. June 9, 2013. http://observers.france24.com/content/20120906-tunisia-sidi-bouzid-runs-dry-after-salafists-destroy-last- remaining-bar-hotel-horchani.

243 efforts to recruit the “youth of the revolution” (Arabic: shabaab al-thawra) - a collective epithet given to the young coordinators of the 2010-2011 revolutionary protests. One member of the revolutionary youth contingent said that in the wake of the revolution, the jihadist salafist leaders personally approached him and presented him with a custom-printed copy of the Qur’an with his name on it.35 Other recruitment efforts were more public. In a 2013 demonstration, a jihadist

Imam who had previously been convicted of involvement in the Suleiman Affair made a special plea to the young revolutionaries who had participated in the early protests against Ben Ali:

Oh youth of the Bouzid revolution! Oh lions of Bouzid! Oh you who have changed the course of History! Oh you who have performed the greatest jihad, which is speaking the truth against the ignorant Satan!..The media that has deceived you for 55 years - this same media is lying about you now! I ask you all a question..Has the nature of this media not become clear to you? Has it not become clear to you who is honorable and who is meek? The honorable ones are those that commit to the book of Allah. The traitors are Ben Ali and those like him who want to return the previous regime to power. I say: over our dead bodies!36

According to sources in Sidi Bouzid, the jihadist salafists’ efforts to recruit the youth of the revolution were an overwhelming success. One source active in revolutionary circles suggested that Sidi Bouzid’s revolution transformed into a “religious revolution” after jihadist salafists began their proselytism campaign.

When one examines the way the youth of the revolution conceive of their own embrace of jihadist salafist ideology, the influence of historical memory and the locally-rooted repertoires of contention becomes clear. In 2012, for example, news broke that the leaders of the Nidaa’

Tounes party would be meeting in Hayy Nour - the neighborhood where Mohamed Bouazizi lived and where many clashes took place during the initial days of the revolution. Nidaa’ Tounes is the current ruling party in Tunisia and many of its senior leaders are veterans of Bourguiba’s

35 Conversation with revolutionary activist. Sidi Bouzid, July 2015.

244 and Ben Ali’s regimes, including Tunisian President Beji Caid Sebsi. Immediately, local members of the jihadist salafist organization Ansar al-Shari’a in Sidi Bouzid began a sweep of the town’s streets in hopes of breaking up the meeting. One revolutionary activist in Sidi Bouzid who runs an influential Facebook page praised the jihadist salafists and suggested that their confrontation with Nidaa’ Tounes was honoring Sidi Bouzid’s history of resistance.

Ansar al Shari'a has begun a sweep of Sidi Bouzid after news leaks that the Nidaa' Tounes Party is holding a meeting in Hayy Nour. In my name and in the name of the militant Hayy Nour, those miscreants and stray dogs of Sebsi will not pass. The prostitutes of Abdallah Kouche Alley37 will not succeed in entering Sidi Bouzid. Hayy Nour will be an impenetrable fortress against the return of the RCD38 and against the dogs of Sebsi. Sidi Bouzid is the land of Mujahidin and Fellaga and Revolutionaries. It will not be a bastion of support for the dogs of Nidaa' Tounes.39

Two elements of the post stand out. First, religion plays an extremely marginal role in the rhetoric: other than the mention of Ansar al-Shari’a as the group leading the sweep, there is no mention of salafism or Islam. Nevertheless, because the jihadist salafists are confronting the state, they are in the revolutionary’s opinion fulfilling the archetype of the tough, authority- resisting warrior and so deserve praise. Second, there is a pronounced similarity between the rhetoric of the post and the poetry of the 19th century, down to the use of the prostitution metaphor. The declaration that Sidi Bouzid is a “land of mujahidin” in addition to being a land of

“fellaga and revolutionaries” suggests that the revolution views jihadist salafism as simply the latest manifestation of the region’s history of resistance.

One can see how the jihadist salafist rhetoric resonates on an individual level through the example of Hichem, a long-term unemployed young man from Sidi Bouzid in his early 30’s who

37 A reference to the “red light district” in the Old City of Tunis. 38 French Acronym for the Constitutional Democratic Rally - the ruling party of Ben ‘Ali. 39 Revolutionary’s Page. Facebook. August 2012.

245 played a significant role in the initial protests against Ben ‘Ali.40 Hichem also served as a street coordinator for the countless demonstrations that took place against the government during

Tunisia’s transitional period under the banner of “Youth of the Revolution.” Hichem frames his political activism as an expression of Sidi Bouzid’s primordial ta’assob, but when asked about where this ta’assob comes from, he responds by narrating the entire mythological history of the

Hamama, going back to the Bani Hilal. He goes on to say that this ta’assob has found an expression throughout history. Sidi Bouzid, he argues, is a “militant region” and he boasts that the current youth generation are descendants of the fellaga. Hichem’s grandfather, who also gave comments to this study lived in a rural area in the countryside around Sidi Bouzid and served as a facilitator in the armed militants’ support network during the 1950’s, so the history has a personal element. Hichem is adamant about the fact that he feels more Bouzidi than Tunisian - his primary loyalty is to his town and his region, not Tunisia.

During repeated conversations, Hichem expressed a strong degree of sympathy for the jihadist salafists and argued that his qualified support of the movement was a natural outgrowth of his attachment to Sidi Bouzid.41 He confesses that while he did not follow his friends from the cadres of revolutionary youth who became jihadist salafists in both ideology and practice, he strongly considered traveling to Syria to join the jihadists there. Throughout its entire existence,

Hichem says, Sidi Bouzid has been “raped and pillaged” by the central state. He has particular scorn for the elites from the coastal regions of Tunisia who were disproportionately represented in the regime of Ben Ali. Jihadist salafism, he argues, is the only ideology that seeks to destroy the state and all of its tentacle institutions completely in one fell swoop. Because his commitment

40 Interviews with Hichem (psuedonym). Sidi Bouzid, June-September, 2015. 41 Ibid. June 2015.

246 to Sidi Bouzid’s interests requires him to confront the state in the most extreme way possible, jihadist salafism, he argues is an ideology that actually serves the interests of those in Sidi

Bouzid. Counterintuitively, the purported motivation to protect the local community from the state actually opens the citizen subject towards embracing an ideology with purportedly global, transnational ambitions. It is a deep sense of history and connectedness to the imagined past that facilitates Hichem’s embrace of this viewpoint.

With the support of the youth of the revolution, the jihadist salafists gained widespread support across Sidi Bouzid. Nevertheless, during fieldwork, it became clear that political support for the jihadist salafists did not always amount to full compliance with the behaviors prescribed by the ideology. During my time in Sidi Bouzid, I encountered a number of youth who drank alcohol, did not pray, and consumed western popular culture, but who also insisted that Tunisia needed shari’a and that they hoped the jihadist salafists would succeed in their political program.

Moreover, I heard stories of individuals who had participated in demonstrations organized by radical leftist organizations, only to turn up at jihadist salafist demonstrations as well.42 The appeal of jihadist salafism for this population was counterintuitive, given the clear contradictions between the ideology and their day-to-day social practices.

Research contacts in Sidi Bouzid offered an explanation for these apparent contradictions. In particular, they suggested that support for jihadist salafism among non- religious youth in Sidi Bouzid stemmed from a desire to confront the state that transcended ideological packaging. During fieldwork in Sidi Bouzid, activists of all political backgrounds - including some secularists - frequently repeated the following trope: “Most youth in this town don’t pray and aren’t very religious - but if ISIS were to come here, over 90% of youth would

42 Conversations with Sidi Bouzid residents. Sidi Bouzid, July 2014. Sidi Bouzid, November 2015.

247 join them.” Many use the word tha’r to desribe this impulse, an Arabic term roughly meaning vendetta that has historically been used to describe the ideal of collective punishment during blood feuds among clans. The word suggests an identification with the history of the Hamama and the bedouin past.

I witnessed the counterintuitive nature of jihadist salafist support firsthand during a trip to

Sidi Bouzid in the summer of 2014. Soon after I arrived in the town, Tunisian security forces conducted an operation against one of the primary salafist mosques in the city, arresting the

Imam and various other worshippers during dawn prayers. Among Sidi Bouzid residents of all stripes, the immediate reaction to the operation was one of outrage. Some of the research contacts who expressed these sentiments were Sufis or secular political activists, suggesting even a base level of religious antipathy was not sufficient to prevent this sympathy from occurring.

One secular leftist activist from Sidi Bouzid I interviewed following the raid said that while he had some differences in vision with the Imam, he supported him after the arrest on the basis of his hatred of police.43 During the evening, an ideologically diverse array of youth from Sidi

Bouzid poured onto the streets in support of the arrested Imam, chanting: “Oh tyrant! Oh coward! The house of God will not be insulted.”

The most extreme dynamic of the jihadist salafist movement in Sidi Bouzid has been its practice of recruiting young men to fight with the Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Syria.

Virtually all of the residents of Sidi Bouzid I spoke to, including those with more secular orientations, personally knew people who had traveled to Syria for jihad. In February 2013 alone, dozens of Sidi Bouzid residents were killed in Aleppo in battles with pro-Assad forces.44

43 Personal interview with leftist activist. Sidi Bouzid, July 2014. 44 "Tunisia Says 800 Tunisian Islamists Fighting in Syria." Al Arabiya. May 12, 2013. http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/05/12/Tunisia-says-800-Tunisian-Islamists-fighting-in-

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While the sensitive nature of this subject made research difficult, some Sidi Bouzid residents claimed that the jihadist salafist-controlled mosques played a pivotal role in the recruitment process. For starters, jihadist salafist Imams made frequent references to the Syria conflict in their friday sermons with the deliberate aim of stoking the passions of worshippers. More directly, sources suggested that small groups of jihadist salafists with connections to al-Nusra

Front leaders frequently gathered in the mosques between prayer times and approach young worshippers with the intention of recruiting them for jihad in Syria.45 In spite of this, there are indications that would-be jihadists also came from non-salafist circles. One Sidi Bouzid resident recounted how his unemployed, frustrated but largely secular brother had been recruited for jihad in Syria and was on the verge of leaving for the battlefield before a last-minute intervention by family members prevented him from realizing his ambitions.46

Understanding the dynamics through which jihadist salafists mobilized in Sidi Bouzid provides a basis for understanding why young men from Sidi Bouzid flocked to foreign jihadist groups in such significant numbers. Waleed, a citizen journalist from Sidi Bouzid who was consulted regularly during this study and who has lost dozens of friends to the Syrian jihad, argues that the people he knows who have become foreign fighters all have a common set of experiences. While not all of them are unemployed in the strict sense, he suggests almost all of them live with a tremendous sense of disappointment in their lives. A large number are highly educated but have not found suitable employment opportunities that fulfill the expectations and

Syria-.html. HYPERLINK "http://www.tunisia-live.net/2013/08/27/tunisian-prime-minister-ansar-al-sharia-a-terrorist- organization/" Conversation with Sidi Bouzid resident. July, 2013 45 HYPERLINK "http://www.tunisia-live.net/2013/08/27/tunisian-prime-minister-ansar-al-sharia-a-terrorist- organization/" Conversations with Sidi Bouzid resident. August, 2013. 46"Masirat Shabaab Al-Tawhid Bi-Bouzid Lil-Tandid Bi-I'tiqaal Al-Akh Khalifa." March 01, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgaiF094gT4.

249 ambitions that their education imbued them with. He uses the term “dead life” because the young men he describes feel like they are essentially living corpses. They go through their daily routine with a dispassion and a sense of being unmoored that over time, becomes psychologically devastating. “Because these guys already feel like they’re dead, in their minds, dying in Syria is no different than what they’re already experiencing. But at least in that case, they feel like they can do something nice for their religion before they die.”

It is logical that the poor quality of life Waleed’s friends experienced made them more predisposed to take risks. But the narrative also contains the implicit assumption that in their state of desperation, Waleed’s friends viewed jihad in Syria as a worthwhile activity to channel their despair into. In the midst of their anguish, they would have needed to have held certain ideas that caused them to view jihad in Syria as a meaningful activity. Desperation may have been necessary, but it clearly could not have been sufficient. If one reads this narrative in the context of Sidi Bouzid’s collective memory and dominant repertoire of contention, the decision to travel to Syria makes more sense. When one feels lost and views life as devoid of meaning, fighting a dangerous foreign war for the sake of allegedly oppressed in-group members is understandable if he has been socialized into a belief that holds fighting foreign invaders for the sake of besieged brethren as the quintessence of honorable masculinity. Becoming a foreign fighter in Syria is a jump into the abyss - but the choice of that specific abyss reflects the legacy of the past.

Unemployed Unionists and Illicit Migration in Metlaoui

In Metlaoui, jihadist salafists failed to take over mosques and languished on the ideological margins of the community. Nevertheless, the ideological defeat of the jihadist

250 salafists did not obviate the collective desire for change. After the revolution, Metlaoui experienced substantial street unrest, usually coinciding with the release of results for various phosphate company hiring competitions. Moreover, the desire to “escape” that seemed to motivate youth in Sidi Bouzid to travel to Syria for jihad also existed in Metlaoui. Nevertheless, rather than foreign jihad, the dominant expression of escapism among Metlaoui’s youth seemed to be illegal immigration to Europe by boat. By analyzing both of these phenomena in greater depth, the reason for the different expressions of the same impulses becomes clear. As in Sidi

Bouzid, youth are formulating their reactions to their contemporary circumstances by taking cues from the collective memory of the past.

As with the 2008 mining basin uprising, unemployed youth sought to organize resistance in accordance with the “unionist” repertoire of contention. On the one hand, most unemployed youth in Metlaoui and even many phosphate workers reviled the workers’ union as a corrupt, partisan institution that supports the interests of its leaders over the people it is supposed to represent. Despite the 2008 mining basin uprising, the basic conditions that led to the uprising remained in place. The union continued to control the gates of employment at the company and often ensured that the family members of its leadership committee were hired, regardless of their qualifications. Barring the direct hiring of their relatives, union leaders frequently took bribes, effectively selling positions at the company to the highest bidder. One retired phosphate worker spoke of a hiring competition in 1997 for engineers at the company: of the 70 people who gained employment, only two had any engineering background; the remaining 68 had gained their positions through family connections or bribery.47

47 Interview with Retired Phosphate Worker. February 2016, Metlaoui.

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Despite their generally poor opinion of the phosphate workers’ union as an institution however, Metlaoui’s unemployed and underemployed youth sought to pressure the phosphate company to grant them jobs using what they describe as “unionist” tactics.48 While unemployed youth are not afforded representation in the workers’ union, in recent years, a variety of organizations have sprouted up that bill themselves as union for the unemployed. At certain key junctures, such as announcements of new hires at the company, these unemployed youth unions organized “strikes” aimed at putting a halt to the company’s operations and forcing its executives to the bargaining table. During these strikes, young men recruited by the unemployed youth union barricaded the entrance to the phosphate washing facility, or set up protest camps in the middle of the train tracks that transport the phosphate rocks to a processing center on the coast, effectively halting the export of phosphate. When these strikes occur, they captured the imaginations of youth and gain widespread support from the masses.

During discussions with the leaders of the unemployed university graduates’ union, the role of history and historical memory in structuring their political consciousnesses became clear.

Many lamented the loss of the”good union” that fought against the French, bitterly remarking that the current leaders of the phosphate union were pimps and snitches49 that the old regime had put in place to prevent unrest in the mining basin. On the other hand, they proudly proclaimed that they were heirs to the legacy of Metlaoui’s “unionist heritage” and spoke of the crucial role the mines played in the nationalist workers’ movement in the run-up to Tunisian independence.

When asked about where the idea of closing the phosphate washing facility came from, the unemployed youth emphasized that despite not being union activists in the traditional sense, their

48 Interview with Unemployed University Graduates Syndicalists. February 2016, Metlaoui. which means “pimps” but has taken on the connotation of قوادة This is a translation of the classical Arabic word 49 snitches/collaborators in the Tunisian dialect.

252 parents all worked for the company and had participated in union organizing activity. Closing the phosphate washing facility was a tactic that workers had often effectively used in their strikes so the youth suggested that they were simply following this lead. They spoke of growing up and watching their parents participate in strikes, or sparring with company management over promotions. The growth of unemployed youth unions in Metlaoui thus seems to be a sort of reproduction of practices across generations, stemming from this history of labor unions and the events youth witnessed growing up.

If one compares the socialization of these unemployed “unionists” in Metlaoui to that of the jihadist sympathizers in Sidi Bouzid, significant parallels emerge. Both see their unique approach to politics as a performance of the history they are heirs to; both describe a process where they became conscious of that role by watching parents and grandparents. The only difference is in the particular role that they believe their region’s history compels them to perform: jihadist sympathizers in Sidi Bouzid suggest that jihadism is simply the current articulation of not tolerating aggression and defending in-group members, unemployed

“unionists” in Metlaoui suggests that their activism is an effort to restore the town’s tradition of union activity that serves the community, rather than the personal interests of the union leaders.

What seems to be happening is that marginalized young men in both cities are self-consciously looking to the history and the popular mythology they have grown up with for inspiration about how they should relate to their circumstances. Since Metlaoui’s popular mythology emphasizes strikes and strategic protest, youth in the town seem to have elected that approach. Given the smaller role that armed conflict with the state plays in the collective memory, many are bewildered by jihadist salafism and react with revulsion. This has reduced the extent to which

253 jihadist salafists are able to marshal the support of unemployed masses and helps explain why they were unable to establish control over mosques.

Understanding the logic of status and the way it serves as a shield against the penetration of jihadist salafism provides a basis for understanding why so few young men from Metlaoui have joined jihadist groups in places like Syria. In Metlaoui, while despair is ubiquitous, illegal immigration to Europe by boat rather than foreign jihad seems to attract the demographic of despondent youth who feel dissatisfied with their lives and are willing to go to extreme lengths to change their lot. Activists from the unemployed graduates syndicate connected the two phenomena together in discussions, saying “youth from Metlaoui don’t go to Syria - they go to

Italy!”50 During fieldwork in Metlaoui, several young men who had made the dangerous sea crossing to Italy before returning to Tunisia gave comments that provided a clearer picture of how the phenomenon works.51 According to these youth, there is an intricate human smuggling pipeline that connects would-be migrants from Metlaoui to facilitators on the streets of Padua,

Italy where most migrants from Metlaoui settle. Because of the difficulty of procuring employment without papers, a large number of the migrants turn to work as street level drug dealers, which they see as the only way of making decent income.

The most striking connection between the phenomena of illegal immigration to Europe and jihad in Syria is the rhetoric that would-be participants use. One intending illegal immigrant interviewed for this study used almost the exact same metaphor as his jihadist counterparts in

Sidi Bouzid. When asked whether he was concerned about the tremendous danger of the sea- crossing he replied “I’m a man and men aren’t afraid of the sea. Right now in Tunisia, I’m dead.

50 Interview with Unemployed University Graduate Syndicalists. February 2016, Metlaoui. 51 Interviews with Returned Migrant Workers. February 2016, Metlaoui.

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I have no hope. If I die on the crossing, there’s no difference between that and the situation I’m in now.”52 This lends credence to the idea that the population of illegal immigrants to Europe originating in Metlaoui might have been jihadists if the cultural influences in the town had more resembled Sidi Bouzid’s. It is the exact same discourse - the only difference is that in Metlaoui, the youth do not seek to go abroad to confront political authority, but to secure tangible material gains. This, in line with the dominant repertoire of contention, is also the unifying principle of the town’s street politics.

Conclusion

The case of Sidi Bouzid undermines much of the conventional wisdom in the west about jihadist salafist ideology. Given the violence that organizations like ISIS have perpetrated, it is tempting to think of mere ideological support for jihadism as morally reprehensible in its own right. But in Sidi Bouzid, the ideology attracted the sympathy of a majority of youth, including many who exhibited grace and hospitality to me during fieldwork and harbored no desire to commit violence. This was despite a decade and a half of open incitement of violence against

American civilians by leading jihadist figures across the globe. Additionally, given the emphasis jihadists place on the implementation of Islamic shari’a law as a political, it might be tempting to think of jihadist salafist sympathizers as uniformly religious and conservative. Indeed, during fieldwork in Sidi Bouzid, the opposite seemed to be true: many jihadist sympathizers were barely practicing Muslims and embraced western culture.

The economic malaise and lack of opportunities for social mobility that prevails in Sidi

Bouzid was an important enabling condition for the growth of the ideology. Nevertheless, true explanation requires reference to other factors, since it is not self-evident why, in the face of

52 Interview with Unemployed Youth. September 2015, Metlaoui.

255 desperation, youth would turn to an obscure ultra-rigid religious current for answers. By engaging with the explanations that individual social actors themselves give about why they found the ideology compelling, it becomes possible to understand what these other factors are. In

Sidi Bouzid, the resonance of jihadism seems to reflect deeply-held beliefs about the past that guide how marginalized youth confront the perceived injustices of the present. While marginalization creates the will to confrontation, it is historical memory of past armed resistance that makes jihadism seem the most sensible way to carry out that confrontation.

In this sense, the counter-example of Metlaoui is important in that it models the counterfactual implied by the claim that the historical memory of armed resistance in Sidi

Bouzid was crucial in conditioning the resonance of jihadist salafism. Both Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui have a large underclass of unemployed or underemployed youth. Hiring in both cities is highly corrupt and controlled by centralized state bureaucracies - whether government ministries in Sidi Bouzid or the state-owned phosphate company in Metlaoui. Feelings of disenchantment with politics abound in both contexts. Metlaoui thus serves as a proxy for what Sidi Bouzid might have looked like if the memory of past resistance had been different. In line with the overall argument, different popularly-held historical memory discourses in Metlaoui seem to have changed the way youth actors responded to recruitment attempts by analogous vanguards of local jihadist ideologues.

What emerges from this comparison is a different way of understanding how youth respond to jihadist rhetoric. For youth in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the different repertoires of contention and different historical memory discourses lead to different images of heroism: armed confrontation with political authority, or strategic pressure and negotiations to gain resources for self and kin. In this context, the dramatic rhetoric of jihadist salafists caused youth to weigh the

256 question of what sorts of heroes they wanted to be. In Sidi Bouzid, beyond the ideology’s religious content, the vision of heroism that jihadists offered seemed to agree thematically with the vision of heroism that they had been socialized into. In Metlaoui, the vision of heroism was different, so the response to ideology was different. In both cases, contemporary street politics was a way of connecting to the imagined past.

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Chapter Nine Conclusion

Introduction

This study’s argument about political mobilization in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui emerged from deep engagement with the particularities of each case. Without extensive ethnographic engagement with the locally-specific nature of politics in each town, the argument about collective memory and historical patterns of resistance would not have emerged. Nevertheless, throughout the process of theory generation, I remained cognizant of the broader region context - both within Tunisia itself in the Arab World more generally. For every lead that emerged during the ethnographic and historical analysis, I also considered its plausibility as an explanation for radicalization outside the narrow comparative context of Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Ultimately therefore, this study endeavors to achieve what King, Keohane, and Verba term “hypothesis generating.”1

In social scientific work that uses in-depth case studies as the primary inspiration for theorizing, research questions are often defined at two levels. First, there is usually a narrow question meant to make the inquiry into the cases themselves systematic and transparent.

Second, and beyond the direct question of inquiry, there are often a variety of peripheral questions, far broader in scope, that the individual study is meant to spur new thinking on, but does not claim to answer definitively. The idea that studies of limited geographical, social, and/or temporal scope might have implications that stretch beyond their direct areas of focus is consistent with the view of social science as a collaborative enterprise that scholars like David

1 King, Gary, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.

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Laitin have propounded.2 It also accurately reflects the role that some of the very best studies of this genre have played within social science.

Many classic works in comparative political analysis have come to be known more for the tentative, speculative insights they have offered for understanding big questions, rather than their specific, causally rigorous answers to their narrow research questions. Putnam’s Making

Democracy Work for example asks why two specific regions in Italy have developed differently; yet, as a theory building project, it has spurred thinking on the relationship between civic associations and democratic vibrancy throughout the world.3 Scott’s Weapons of the Weak seeks to explore passive resistance among peasants in one Malaysian village; but, his work has reframed the way scholars think about the concept of resistance more generally.4 Laitin’s

Hegemony and Culture explores the politics of identity among the Yoruba people of Nigeria; but, his work has helped scholars working on issues of identity in other contexts think about the relationship between state policy, rationality and culture.5

These works may not be generalizable in the sense that they have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that their findings are broadly applicable outside of their narrow areas of focus, but they are transferable in the sense that they lead to the development of analytical paradigms:6 heuristics about which factors are important, which phenomena are related, and which processes

2 Laitin, David. Comparative Politics: The State of the Subdiscipline. Proceedings of American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC. DC, 2000. 3 Putnam, Robert D., Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Nanetti. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. 4 Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. 5 Laitin, David D. Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. 6 See definition Merton, Robert K. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press, 1968.. 12-16

259 may be at work in explaining a given outcome. Analytical paradigms should not be imported wholesale but they can be used to prime the analytical faculties of scholars for the processes of pattern recognition that good social research entails. In this way, the concepts and mechanisms that these classic, single-country studies have identified are transferable and inform the development of theory in other contexts. Social inquiry is always engaging at two levels: in providing rigorous, systematic answers to small questions, studies are always pointing the way towards answers to big questions.

Taking this approach to social inquiry as a starting point, this study also seeks to pose questions on two levels. The direct research question is rather narrow: why do Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui have such different political practices? Nevertheless, by answering this specific question systematically, the study proposes a new paradigm for understanding political change in the Middle East and North Africa that has transnational implications. In doing so, it seeks to engage directly with the broader question of why jihadist movements gain a following in some places but not others.

Accordingly, this chapter will proceed in two parts. The first part of the chapter examines the study’s explanation for the variance in jihadist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui and shows how it is more plausible than the explanations provided by established social movement theory paradigms. In so doing, it helps to crystallize which ingredients of the argument are the most transferable. The second part of the chapter shows how the argument travels outside of the Tunisian context. Across the Arab World, many of the regions that have become bastions of jihadist mobilization share social features with Sidi Bouzid; specifically, they represent historically restive tribal peripheries with histories of armed resistance to centralized

260 authority. The argument presented in this study thus provides a powerful analytical lens for interpreting these cases.

Engaging Alternative Explanations

The question of the variance in jihadist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui can be reframed in a way that allows for a consideration of various social movement theory paradigms as alternative explanations. How have towns with similarly poor economic fundamentals and a similar history produced populations that have adopted such different modes of political practice? Why have the masses of frustrated youth who bear the brunt of the burden of economic malaise adopted such different political strategies across the two towns? What social dynamics caused radical ideas to resonate in one place but not the other? While this study’s argument is influenced by the rich existing literature on social movements and mass mobilization, it offers a departure from existing paradigms that is necessary to capture the full complexity of the jihadist radicalization phenomenon.

Early scholarly attempts to understand social movements focused on the perceived psychological dislocation that the decline of traditional solidarities in rapidly modernizing polities creates. Reappropriating Durkheim’s ideas about anomie,7 this group of scholars argues that the hallmark of modernity is the emergence of something called “mass society.”8 According to this perspective, the decline of traditional social networks and their replacement with the atomistic social relations that come with the establishment of a modern state bureaucracy leave

7 Durkheim, Emile, and George Simpson. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Snowball, 2012. Print. 8 Kornhauser, William. The Politics of Mass Society. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1960. Print.

261 people socially isolated, emotionally vulnerable and desperate for the feelings of belonging that the now-displaced traditional social structures would have provided. As a result, the masses in this new, unstable state of affairs remain vulnerable to manipulation by totalitarian movements which, through their essentialist conception of the nation, can fulfill this deep psychological need for belonging.

As an analytical lens for the study of radicalism and pragmatism in Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui, the mass society perspective is problematic. First, the primary dynamics it identifies as being causally relevant to the emergence of specific sorts of movements are present in both of this study’s comparative cases. The Tunisian state, being the largest employer in both Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui, has a penetrating, ubiquitous influence in the two towns. Second, the picture mass society theorists paint of how social relations have changed as a result of state penetration is simply not accurate. Despite the advent of “modernization,” strong family ties and strong friendships are still the basis of social life in Tunisia. Even as unemployed men in Sidi

Bouzid and Metlapio face their disappointment, they spend their time primarily engaged in social pursuits with friends at cafes to pass the time.

Nevertheless, the mass society perspective does contain one useful element: the attention it gives to the historical shift from traditional, kinship based societies to societies where the modern state predominates. In Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the sedentarization of the Hamama tribesmen from whom the populations of both cities descend has been critical in conditioning the way both towns have developed a political consciousness. The problem is that the mass society literature fails to provide an accurate description of how this process really unfolds. Rather than impose a static, narrow view of how people psychologically transition from tradition and

262 modernity, this study endeavors to take the historical and ethnographic evidence on its own terms.

A second group of scholars draws inspiration from structural functionalist sociology and sees social movements as originating from the new economic grievances that modernization unleashes. Although, like the mass society theorists, the structural functionalists situate themselves in the Durkheimian tradition and argue that social movements emerge spontaneously from strains in the social structure, they propose a substantially different set of motivations. The instability of modern society does not come simply from the loss of existential security that traditional authority carries; rather, it is the result of increased awareness of social inequality and the corresponding loss of self-esteem that such awareness brings. Merton and Gurr, for example, argue that when people feel a sense of relative deprivation, they develop the belief that hostile outside forces are unjustly preventing them from gaining what they are entitled to.9 This creates a desire to lash out at the ruling social and political order and accordingly, leads to the formation of mass social movements.

The mechanisms that these theorists propose accord well with what I observed during fieldwork in Tunisia. Many young Tunisians whom I interacted with in both Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui spoke eloquently about the tremendous gap between their aspirations and reality that they are forced to contend with, expressing sentiments similar to those that the relative deprivation hypothesis would predict. Nevertheless, since the economic conditions and corresponding negative sentiments exist in both towns, the empirical reality suggests that

9 Merton, Robert K. "Social Structure and Anomie." American Sociological Review 3, no. 5 (1938): 672. Gurr, Ted Robert. Why Men Rebel. Princeton, NJ: Published for the Center of International Studies, Princeton University Princeton University Press, 1970.

263 feelings of relative deprivation are not sufficient by themselves to inspire particular sorts of social movements. Rather, it suggests that they are mediated through other social processes that produce particular outcomes. Any framework for understanding the roots of radicalism and pragmatism in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui respectively must be able to account for these processes.

A third group of scholars dispenses with the structural focus of the first two approaches and seeks to understand social movements by interrogating the processes and the institutions through which they recruit followers.10 The intellectual project of these scholars, termed the resource mobilization approach, begins by acknowledging the inherent collective action problems that plague social movements: given the high threshold of participation necessary for a movement’s success, any one individual’s participation would not have a measurable effect one way or the other.11 As such, the resource mobilization approach seeks to understand the organizational and ideological resources that movements deploy to attract followers, despite the collective action problem. While the theory is flexible, resource mobilization scholars tend to focus on variables that impact the ability of formal institutions to disseminate their message to potential supporters.

On the surface, the resource mobilization approach presents a compelling explanation for the variance in political practice between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. Given the presence of the phosphate industry and the corresponding strength of syndicates/unions in Metlaoui, there does

10 Mccarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald. "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory." American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 6 (1977): 1212-241. Tilly, Charles. Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. 11 Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

264 seem to be at least some difference between the formal institutions of mobilization across the two towns. Metlaoui’s phosphate syndicate is Tunisia’s oldest, most established institution of organized labor; it has played a profound role in the town’s political history since the colonial era, a marked contrast to Sidi Bouzid. Nevertheless, the resource mobilization approach with its focus on formal institutions of mobilization is insufficient to explain the variance for three reasons.

First, during the 2008 Revolt, the most influential trade unionists in the mining basin like

Adnan Hajji and Adel Jayyar in Redeyef were not part of the phosphate mining syndicate but rather belonged to the secondary school teachers’ syndicate. This is a syndicate with a significant presence in Sidi Bouzid as well, so as far as mobilization is concerned, the institutional difference between the two contexts seems to have been peripheral to the process of mobilization. Second, in Metlaoui, the phosphate mining syndicate enjoys very poor legitimacy on the street as a corrupt, reactionary force that has been co-opted by Tunisia’s authoritarian elites. Rather than a force of pragmatic resistance, residents of Metlaoui and independent trade unionists in Redeyef condemned the phosphate syndicate as the source of their grievances. Third, unemployed men constitute the most important social actor in Metlaoui as far as mobilization is concerned; yet, being unemployed, they are not members of the phosphate syndicate. Therefore, it is unlikely that the phosphate syndicate would have any direct influence over their political expression.

Despite these objections, the resource mobilization approach is useful because at the very least it suggests that mobilization institutions are important in some way. Although in Metlaoui, the powerful syndicates do not seem to serve as the engine of political protest in the way the resource mobilization approach predicts - as a direct platform for the mobilization of actors - the

265 history of syndicalism does seem to have played an important part in the way citizens conceive of their identities, and the way those identities impact the way they express themselves politically. Accordingly, the question that arises from this discussion is how a history of syndicalism can impact street-level mobilization among unemployed youth, even while syndicates as institutions lack credibility with this population.

A fourth group of scholars acknowledges the problems of focusing narrowly on formal mobilization institutions and offers an alternative perspective that shifts the focus to the decision- making and perceptions of an insurgent collectivity.12 This approach, known as the political process or political opportunity model, argues that social movements emerge when an aggrieved collective develops a belief that their movement can succeed in a process that McAdam terms

“cognitive liberation.” Cognitive liberation depends on some fundamental change in the structure of society, called a political opportunity, that gives people a newfound feeling of political efficacy; nevertheless, it is not reducible merely to structural changes. The ability of a collective to reach cognitive liberation once political opportunities exist depends on the social networks and organizations in a given community that are necessary to coordinate collective action.

The political opportunity approach has great relevance for this study of radicalism in Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui. The testimony by revolutionary leaders from the radical wing of the PDP in Sidi Bouzid that in part, they were reacting to rumors of an imminent palace coup in honing their strategy of stoking street protest is broadly consistent with the predictions of the model.

12 McAdam, Doug. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Press. Tarrow, Sidney G. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Eisinger, Peter K. "The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities." American Political Science Review 67, no. 01 (1973): 11-28.

266

Nevertheless, the model does not appear to be sufficient to explain the variance between Sidi

Bouzid and Metlaoui. For starters, the political opportunity that is relevant to understanding the revolution existed on a national level and seems to predate even the mining basin uprising - so there is no way the model can account for why radical protest emerged in only one of the two cities. During the post-revolutionary period, as concerns the rise of militant jihadism, the sense of political opportunity was high across Tunisia, yet the two towns appear to have responded to those political opportunities in different ways. While in addition to political opportunities,

McAdam gives importance to formal organizations and social networks, these factors do not seem to vary enough between the two cases to account for the variance in political practice.

Therefore, like the resource mobilization approach, the political opportunity approach is not sufficient to explain the variation in radical and pragmatic politics between Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui.

Despite this insufficiency, the political opportunity model points toward some questions that are useful in the more integrated framework that this study present. For example, cognitive liberation as McAdam describes it seems to have taken hold in Sidi Bouzid during the revolution.

The idea that a widespread belief in political efficacy is necessary before a community can mobilize is plausible and consistent with this study’s empirical findings. Nevertheless, the counter-example of Metlaoui suggests that one cannot accurately predict when this belief in efficacy will emerge based on structural factors alone. Rather, it seems that there are other, less easily observable factors that impact whether cognitive liberation can occur.

A final group of scholars seeks to shift the analysis to the level of culture. Of paramount importance to this paradigm is the process of identity creation and identity expression. Melucci, for example, argues that social movements are successful when they create new collective

267 identities that resonate with followers.13 Jasper argues, complementarily, that social movements succeed because they allow followers to express the moral convictions that their pre-existing identities carry.14 Wood seems to take Jasper’s argument even further suggesting that the mere

“pleasures of agency” are enough to motivate people to participate in high-risk collective action.15 On some level, all of these arguments are intertwined: for old collective identities to coalesce around mass movements, those identities must take on new, distinctly modern characteristics; conversely, new identities do not appear out of thin air and likely contain elements of the pre-existing identities as well.

Of the existing approaches to the study of social movements, the culturalist approach provides the most compelling framework for analyzing the different modes of political mobilization in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui. At the same time, this approach differs from the other paradigms in that it does not seek to lay out a universal model or explanation for social movements. It offers no direct predictions about how political mobilization happens, absent a thorough explication of a community’s culture. What it does offer, as Goodwin suggests, is an

“expansive set of concepts and distinctions for the analysis of social movements.”16 In other words, it contains clear guidelines about the kind of information that is needed to understand why

13 Melucci, Alberto. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 14 Jasper, James M. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 15 Wood, Elisabeth Jean. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 16 Goodwin, Jeff, and James Jasper. "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory." Sociological Forum 14, no. 1 (1999).

268 and how political mobilizations happen: the content and parameters of the identities that ground communities which, in most cases, are culturally specific.

In adopting this culturalist approach, this study of political mobilization in Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui is able to harness the insights of the other social movement paradigms in a way that still lets the empirical reality speak for itself. For example, while the mechanisms for social mobilization that mass society theorists propose do not apply well to the Tunisian case, a focus on how traditional solidarities and worldviews evolved with the advent of state-led

“modernization” provides a way to reinject discussion of social dislocation in a more nuanced way. Although the changing nature of traditional solidarities should be taken as an important background process that frames social mobilization, the culturalist approach allows the analyst to maintain a provisional agnosticism about how this process unfolds and its political implications.

In a similar vein, while the arguments of structural functionalist scholars who focus on relative deprivation seem not to be useful for explaining the variance between Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui, a focus on identity allows for a slight reframing of the question that this paradigm poses. Instead of asking simply whether relative deprivation is present or absent, the culturalist approach compels the analyst to ask what identities relative deprivation activates, and how these identities coalesce into different forms of political action. The implication is that if different communities have different sorts of identities, relative deprivation could trigger different sorts of political action.

While the resource mobilization perspective’s focus on formal institutions of mobilization does not seem to explain the variation between Sidi Bouzid and Metlaoui, the culturalist approach suggests that different institutional histories could shape collective identities, even when the actual institutions lose legitimacy. The presence of phosphates in Metlaoui but not

269 in Sidi Bouzid has therefore led to a sharp divergence in institutional history with significant cultural implications. Focusing on the historical way in which institutions have changed collective identity thus offers a way for the consideration of institutional legacies, even in the absence of politically meaningful institutional differences today.

Finally, a focus on identity and culture helps to harness the insights of the political opportunity model. In the case of Sidi Bouzid, cognitive liberation and perceived political opportunities seem to have been important for the revolution’s taking the form that it did.

Nevertheless there appear to have been local, historically-contingent factors that caused political notables to react to those circumstances in the ways that they did. The focus on collective identity, when combined with the political opportunity model, provides a basis for uncovering the influences beyond the structural configuration of the society, that influence perceptions and lead to the kind of cognitive liberation that McAdam describes.

The ultimate implication of this discussion is that that existing social movement theories fail as alternative explanations for the variance in jihadist mobilization between Sidi Bouzid and

Metlaoui. Nevertheless, they do highlight dynamics relevant to the phenomenon more generally.

In order to understand the way factors like material grievances or political opportunity structures produce jihadist collective action however, it is necessary to understand the cultural substrates through which these objective material changes are experienced. In this context, the primary substantive claim is that the relevant cultural substrates for jihadist socialization are a function of locally specific histories of political contention, and the collective memories that stem from them. It is this aspect of the argument that can inform theorizing of jihadist mobilization in other contexts.

270

The Comparative Potential of the Argument

This study has argued that jihadist salafism was able to take root in Sidi Bouzid because the town’s history of armed resistance to state centralization imbued citizens with a certain cultural worldview that made jihadist rhetoric rhetoric resonate. Under this argument, it was Sidi

Bouzid’s historical status as an ungoverned tribal periphery, the violent conflicts that state- making projects in the region caused, and the valorization of these conflicts in local historical memory discourses that created the propensity for radicalism. While Metlaoui provides an interesting demonstration in its own right of the way local civil society traditions can inhibit the reach of jihadist movements, it is most important because in juxtaposition with Sidi Bouzid, it highlights the importance of these features. These features are especially significant because when one expands the analytical lens beyond Tunisia, it appears that many of the sub-national regions in the Arab World that have emerged in recent years as bastions of jihadist ideology share these features with Sidi Bouzid.

Libya, for example, is composed of three historical Ottoman provinces with very different histories: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. The latter comprises the cities of Derna and Benghazi, which have been at the forefront of militant jihadist activism for over two decades. During the 1990’s, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group waged a low-level insurgency against the Qadhafi regime in the Benghazi-Derna region that included attacks against security forces and an assassination attempt against Qadhafi himself.17 After the 2011 Libyan revolution - which also erupted in the Benghazi-Derna region - the two cities became the two most significant hubs of jihadist salafist militant activity in the country. Benghazi quickly fell into the

17 Cassman, Daniel. "Libyan Islamic Fighting Group." Stanford Mapping Militant Organizations Project. Accessed April 21, 2018. http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/675.

271 hands of jihadist militias, who assassinated US Ambassador Chris Stevens during a 2012 visit to the city. Derna represented an early “satellite colony” of IS in Libya and as of 2018, even as jihadist movements had been driven out of all other major Libyan cities, Derna was still partially controlled by an independent jihadist shura council.18

What distinguishes Cyrenaica and the Derna-Benghazi corridor from the rest of Libya is the unique role it played during Libya’s armed uprising against Italian colonialism. The area was the bastion of the Senussi movement - a Sufi order and tribal confederation that provided the principal armed opposition to Italian colonialism in Libya during the 1920’s and 1930’s.19

During this period, Senussi militants operating under the command of Libyan resistance hero

Omar Mukhtar waged a sustained campaign against the Italians operating from bases in the Jebel

Lakhdar mountains that span the hinterland between Derna and Benghazi. In 1951, when Libya gained independence, the leader of the Senussi movement, Idris al-Senussi, was installed as King

- before being overthrown in a coup by Mu’ammar Qadhafi in 1969.

The parallels between the Benghazi-Derna region and Sidi Bouzid are striking. Both have local histories of armed anti-colonial rebellion; both have seen those histories marginalized in the state-building narratives that elites from the far away political center propagated. While further research on the process of jihadist socialization in eastern Libya is needed to determine why the region has been such fertile ground for jihadism, the parallels suggest that the dynamics may be similar to those that this study identified in Sidi Bouzid.

18 Assad, Abdulkader. "Derna Shura Council Seizes Weapons in Haftar-led Forces’ Attack on City’s Western Districts." The Libya Observer. March 19, 2018. https://www.libyaobserver.ly/news/derna-shura-council-- weapons-haftar-led-forces’-attack-city’s-western-districts. 19 Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif. The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization, and Resistance. Albany: SUNY Press, 2011.

272

One can find similar parallels by scrutinizing the modern legacy of jihadist salafism in

Egypt. In recent decades, Egypt has witnessed two low-level jihadist insurgencies. The first occurred during the 1990’s and was led by al-Jamaa’a al-Islamiyya. Violent incidents were concentrated in Upper Egypt (Southern Egypt) and Cairo neighborhoods populated by large numbers of Upper Egyptian migrants.20 The second broke out after the 2011 Egyptian

Revolution and consisted of violent attacks against security personnel operating in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. Attacks were carried out by militias operating under a variety of jihadist salafist brandings - from Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis to IS.21 A closer look at the history of these two areas links them to each other, as well as to Sidi Bouzid.

Although in the 20th century, Upper Egypt was home to peasant cultivators working lands adjacent to the banks of the Nile, in contrast to the rural areas of the northern Delta region,

Upper Egypt has a deep history of pastoral nomadism and resistance to centralized authority.

Until the early 19th century, the de facto rulers of Upper Egypt were notables of the nomadic

Hawaara tribe - a status that parallels the role the pre-colonial Hamama played in the central

Tunisia steppe.22 During the 20th century, Upper Egypt was the site of violent revolts against

British colonialism - particularly during the 1919 uprising and its run-up.23 Today, the legacy of this history has endured in strong clan ties and in local oral traditions glorifying legendary

20 Ayubi, Nazih N. M. Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World. London: Routledge, 1991. 123-135. 21 Shay, Shaul. "Egypt's Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis and the Islamic State." International Institute for Counter- Terrorism2. November 2, 2015. https://www.ict.org.il/Article/1341/Egypts-Ansar-Bayt-al-Maqdis-and-the- Islamic-State. 22 See: Abul-Magd, Zeinab. Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2013. 23 Goldberg, Ellis. "Peasants in Revolt - Egypt 1919." International Journal of Middle East Studies 24, no. 02 (1992): 261-80. doi:10.1017/s0020743800021565.

273 bandits of old who asserted their independence and resisted colonialism.24 This parallels the status that the fellaga militants have in local collective memories in Sidi Bouzid. While further research is needed to determine the role of these collective memories in generating sympathy for jihadist salafists in Upper Egypt - this study’s argument suggests that this could be a valuable line of inquiry.

The Sinai Peninsula has a very different history from Upper Egypt. The harsh climate of the region has made it inhospitable for agriculture; accordingly, pastoral nomadism persisted in the Sinai into the 20th century. Today, the people of the Sinai have a bedouin identity; they speak a dialect of Arabic distinct that has more in common with the Arabic varieties found in the

Arabian peninsula than mainland Egypt. The territory was the site of bloody clashes between

Egypt and Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis, 1967 War, and 1973 War. In this context, scholars have argued that its population has low levels of identification with the Egyptian polity and sees the Egyptian state as an unwanted, foreign entity.25 While there may not be the same identification with the heroic anti-colonial struggle, the broad contours of the argument seem to apply to the Sinai as well: a historically tribally-governed periphery, brought under forcible control by the state, with a collective memory discourse defined by a history of armed conflict.

Therefore, the Sinai might also be a case where the radicalization mechanisms identified in this study are at work.

24 Brown, Nathan. "Brigands and State Building: The Invention of Banditry in Modern Egypt." Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 02 (1990): 258. 25 Goodman, Joshua R. Contesting Identities in South Sinai: Development, Transformation, and the Articulation of a "Bedouin" Identity under Egyptian Rule. Tel-Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 2013.

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Finally, this study’s argument provides a new perspective on the study of jihadist radicalization in Iraq. After the United States invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, chaos and insurgent violence gripped the country. A variety of militias opposed to the US emerged with different ideological brandings and sectarian affiliations. Nevertheless, the jihadist component of the insurgency - its most lethal manifestation - was most concentrated in two regions: al-Anbar province, particularly the city of Fallujah, and Tal ‘Afar, a city in Northern Iraq with a population consisting mainly of Iraqi Turkmen. In 2014, when the Iraqi jihadists reconstituted themselves as IS, the two areas reemerged as bastions of jihadist militancy. While IS gained the most media attention from its capture of Mosul - Iraq’s second largest city - Fallujah and Tal

‘Afar were arguably more important. Fallujah was the first city that IS recaptured in Iraq in 2014 after it had spent 2012 and 2013 regrouping in Eastern Syria; Tal ‘Afar was the last city that IS retained control of in Iraq and held out for weeks even after the group had been dislodged from

Mosul.

A survey of the history of these two areas suggests parallels with Sidi Bouzid and the other cases discussed in this section. The population of Fallujah and al-Anbar are descended from the Dulaim - a nomadic pastoral tribe with a history that closely parallels the Hamama’s.

The Dulaim’s territory was located in Iraq’s western desert and proved remarkably difficult to subdue - particularly in matters of the extraction of tax revenues.26 During the 1920 revolt against British colonialism, al-Anbar was the site of armed clashes between Dulaimi tribesmen and British forces.27 In the mid-1990’s, Dulaimi officers in Iraq’s army staged an unsuccessful

26 See: Batatu, Hanna. The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba’thists, and Free Officers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978. 27 Ibid.

275 rebellion against Saddam Hussein. As in Sidi Bouzid, therefore, when jihadists came to al-Anbar in 2003 - and again in 2014 - people were interpreting their rhetoric in the context of oral traditions valorizing the taking up of arms and resistance to state centralization. While more work is needed, it is plausible that these oral traditions helped increase the resonance of jihadist rhetoric.

Tal ‘Afar has a very different history, but nonetheless, one that is suggestive of the same dynamics. The city is essentially a satellite hub of an ethnic group known as “Iraqi Turkmen” - descendants of Turks who settled in Iraq during the days of the Ottoman Empire and retained

Turkish language and culture. Like the Sinai bedouin, the Turkmen were marginalized by the post-independence state. Under Saddam Hussein, the state made Arab nationalism the sole constituent element of Iraqi nationalism - the Turkmen language and Turkmen names were banned, and Turkmen were displaced from their villages.28 While it is difficult to say whether oral traditions emphasizing resistance to the state explain the success of IS and other jihadist groups in Tal ‘Afar, this study suggests that at a minimum, understanding the way this history is represented in the collective imagination could be key to understanding jihadists’ appeal.

Conclusion

At first glance, jihadist salafism appears a most incomprehensible phenomenon. The rigid social outlook, grandiose ambitions, and violent tactics of jihadist groups may cause some people to view those who adopt the ideology as socially deviant and/or mentally unstable. But by

28 Shams, Alex. "Iraq's Turkmen Mobilise for a Post-ISIL Future." Al Jazeera. February 13, 2017. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/iraq-turkmen-mobilise-post-isil-future- 170102075837918.html.

276 studying the lived experience of jihadist militants and sympathizers, and situating that lived experience in its broader social and/or historical context, it becomes easier to grasp the ideology’s internal logic. In studying jihadist mobilization in its natural habitat, this study aims to inspire new thinking and raise the consciousness of future scholars who seek to understand jihadism - both in Tunisia and beyond.

As of this writing, the Islamic State has been defeated militarily on battlefields in Syria,

Iraq, and Libya. Nevertheless, the key implication of this study is that jihadist salafism as a cultural phenomenon transcends the formal organizations that espouse it. It is for this reason that even after years-long hiatuses, jihadist ideology seems to regain footholds in the same areas that armed jihadist groups had previously been driven out of. For those interested in combating violent extremism, this analysis suggests that in the future, states will either need to improve the material conditions that cause marginalized youth to look to the past for resistance, or as in the case of Metlaoui, provide them with alternative models of expressing their grievances peacefully.

While inspiring such change can be difficult, if the next wave of violent extremism is to be prevented, it may well be necessary.

277

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