loyalty and defection: misunderstanding civil-military relations in tunisia during the ‘arab...

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Loyalty and Defection:Misunderstanding Civil-MilitaryRelations in Tunisia During the‘Arab Spring’Alejandro Pachona

a Carleton University, Ottawa, CanadaPublished online: 16 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Alejandro Pachon (2014) Loyalty and Defection: MisunderstandingCivil-Military Relations in Tunisia During the ‘Arab Spring’, Journal of Strategic Studies,37:4, 508-531, DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2013.847825

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2013.847825

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Loyalty and Defection:Misunderstanding Civil-MilitaryRelations in Tunisia During the

‘Arab Spring’

ALEJANDRO PACHON

Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

ABSTRACT Scholars have widely adopted the view that the behaviour of theTunisian military during the ‘Arab Spring’ constitutes a positive case of militarydefection. This paper argues that, contrary to this dominant interpretation,the military remained loyal to the authoritarian civilian leadership throughoutthe protests as it had repeatedly done in the past. Defection occurred, however,within the Police and the National Guard, which are mistakenly portrayed ashaving been loyal to Ben Ali. The paper shows that scholars have sought toexplain exactly the opposite of what actually happened and, thus, it questionstheir conclusions regarding civil-military relations in Tunisia.

KEY WORDS: Arab Spring, Civil-Military Relations, Tunisia, Defection, RegimeChange

The authoritarian regime in Tunisia unravelled when the military refusedto repress the wave of popular protests that shook the country betweenDecember 2010 and January 2011. By then, other security agencies hadalready failed to contain the demonstrations, and the military’s decisionnot to use violence deprived the regime of its last coercive means. This, atleast, is the dominant interpretation of the events that sparked the ‘ArabSpring’. This paper argues that such interpretation is inadequate in light ofwhat we now know about the Tunisian revolt. There is little evidence thatthe armed forces (i.e. the Army, the Navy and the Air Force) defected fromthe regime. On the contrary, officers in the three services remained loyal toBen Ali and his ministers. Defections in the coercive apparatus did occur,but they came from mid-level officers in the elite units of the internalsecurity forces rather than from top-ranking officers in the armed forces.This fact has been neglected in the established narrative of the ‘Arab

The Journal of Strategic Studies, 2014Vol. 37, No. 4, 508–531, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2013.847825

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

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Spring’ and, as a result, scholars interested in the role of themilitary duringthe Tunisian revolt have sought to explain exactly the opposite of whatactually happened: they seek reasons for why the military defected andreasons for why the internal security forces defended the regime.The article proceeds as follows: first, it examines how previous aca-

demic works understand military behaviour in Tunisia. Second, itassesses the evidence on which those works rely, arguing that it comesexclusively from early reports that were not corroborated by laterinvestigations. Third, it briefly reconstructs Ben Ali’s last days showingthat defection occurred among the internal security services, not amongthe armed forces. Finally, the article proposes a tentative explanation ofmilitary obedience based on institutional arrangements of the coerciveapparatus in Tunisia. These arrangements were the legacy of a ‘threatenvironment’ characterized by Tunisia’s vulnerability to its neighbours’vastly superior military capabilities.

The Dominant Interpretation: Military Defection

Scholars have argued that Ben Ali’s rule over Tunisia came to an endwhen the armed forces (i.e. the Army, the Navy and the Air Force)refused to use violence against demonstrators. This decision, we aretold, amounted to a defection of the military that sealed the regime’sfate. The case of Tunisia is then contrasted with the response of militaryestablishments in other Arab countries that experienced popular upris-ings through 2011: Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. In theestablished narrative, defection occurred in Tunisia and Egypt, whereasthe military split in Yemen and Libya, and remained loyal in Syria andBahrain. Scholars thus try to identify the causes of defection in Tunisiain particular and, more generally, the factors that explain variance inthe behaviour of military formations in the region.1 In addition, they

1Zoltan Barany, ‘Comparing the Arab Revolts: The Role of the Military’, Journal ofDemocracy 22/4 (Oct. 2011), 28–39; Eva Bellin, ‘Reconsidering the Robustness ofAuthoritarianism in the Middle East. Lessons from the Arab Spring’, ComparativePolitics 44/2 (Jan. 2012), 127–149; Risa Brooks, ‘Abandoned at the Palace: Why theTunisian Military Defected from the Ben Ali Regime in January 2011’, Journal ofStrategic Studies 36/2 (April 2013), 205–20; Philippe Droz-Vincent, ‘From FightingFormal Wars to Maintaining Civil Peace?’, International Journal of Middle East Studies43 (2011), 392–4; IISS, ‘The Arab Awakening,’ in Strategic Survey 2011 (Routledge forInternational Institute for Strategic Studies 2011), 43–96; Derek Lutterbeck, ‘ArabUprising, Armed Forces, and Civil-Military Relations’, Armed Forces and Society (13April 2012), 1–25; Sharon Nepstead, ‘Nonviolent Resistance in the Arab Spring: TheCritical Role of Military-Opposition Alliances’, Swiss Political Science Review 17/4(2011), 485–91; Daniel Silverman, ‘The Arab Military in the Arab Spring: Agent of

Misunderstanding Civil-Military Relations in Tunisia 509

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seek to explain why the Tunisian military remained on the sidelinesafter regime change and let civilians manage the transition.It is possible to identify two types of arguments that seek to explain

the alleged defection of the Tunisian military, both of which rely onthe idea that the military in Tunisia was unlike any other in the region.In the first argument, the military in Tunisia was relatively professio-nalized (or institutionalized) and barred from political participation;in the second, it was marginalized as the regime favoured othersecurity institutions. The first argument emphasizes organizationalvalues and the second organizational interests, but these explanationsare not juxtaposed. Even Brooks – the scholar that draws perhaps asharper distinction between interests and values – refers to the ‘corpo-rate ethos’ that defined the organizational interests of the Tunisianmilitary.2 Moreover, scholars seem to agree that both a professionalcorporate identity and the marginalization of the armed forces devel-oped initially under Habib Bourguiba and continued under Ben Ali.They were, then, long-standing historical features particular to theTunisian military.In the first line of argument, Bellin, for instance, surmises that the

Tunisian military did not have the will to repress civilians because itwas well institutionalized.3 Likewise, Lutterbeck attributes defection toa high degree of institutionalization, but adds that conscription (whichleads to military identification with society at large) also played animportant role.4 For these authors, an institutionalized military isrule-bound and meritocratic, with a clear delineation between the pub-lic and the private realms, an orientation to protect the national inter-ests, and a sense of corporate identity separate from the regime. Theirhypothesis is that institutionalization makes the military more likely todisobey the regime and side with protesters. Barany uses a differentlanguage, but adopts essentially the same view: the Tunisian Armydefected partly because it was ‘among the Arab world’s most profes-sional forces’.5 In an important sense, an ‘institutionalized’ military isno different than a ‘professional’ military: both are characterized byclear rules for the selection and promotion of officers (meritocracy), a

Continuity or Change? A Comparative Analysis of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria’,Paper presented at the APSA 2012 Annual Meeting, <http://ssrn.com/abstract=2108802>.2Brooks, ‘Abandoned at the Palace’, 209.3Bellin, ‘Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism’.4Lutterbeck, ‘Arab Uprising, Armed Forces, and Civil-Military Relations’.5Barany, ‘Comparing the Arab Revolts,’ 31.

510 Alejandro Pachon

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commitment to provide a social service, and cohesiveness. The differ-ence here is, therefore, semantic rather than substantive.6

In these explanations, it is not clear why a disciplined and rule-boundorganization should be more, rather than less inclined to disobey theregime’s authorities, especially if civilian orders are given within anaccepted legal framework. An explicit articulation of the causalmechanisms at work is of crucial importance because the effect ofprofessionalism (or its functional equivalent institutionalization) onmilitary obedience is an unresolved debate in civil-military relations:Professionalism has been said to make the military more responsive tocivilian control,7 or less responsive,8 or both at different times andaccording to other factors.9 By the mid-1990s, Feaver argued that thelongstanding line of inquiry linking professionalism and military sub-ordination was no longer useful.10 Despite Feaver’s indictment, profes-sionalism emerged yet again as an explanation of military (in)subordination during the Arab revolts.In the second line of argument, defection is explained as a result of

organizational interests. In particular, for the military the costs ofrepression in terms of legitimacy, internal cohesion, and social esteemwere high. The benefits, on the contrary, were low because under BenAli the Tunisian military had one or more of the following features: itwas small and poorly funded; it provided little or no opportunities forpersonal enrichment or political influence; it had no patrimonial ties tothe regime, either of an economic nature (as in Egypt) or of an ethnicone (as in Syria); and/or it was neglected in favour of other securityagencies run from the Ministry of Interior. Thus, the argument goes,

6There are two differences between Bellin’s concept of institutionalization andHuntington’s concept of professionalism: first, institutionalization does not imply poli-tical neutrality as professionalism does; and second, professionalism explicitly includesexpertise in the management of violence (which makes the military different from otherbureaucratic organizations), whereas institutionalization does not. Although theoreti-cally important, these differences are of little empirical significance here and are notdiscussed further.7Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State. The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1957).8Alain Rouquié, The Military and the State in Latin America (Berkeley: Univ. ofCalifornia Press 1987).9Samuel E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, 2nd ed.(Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1988); Robin Luckham, ‘Crafting Democratic Controlover the Military: A Comparative Analysis of South Korea, Chile and Ghana’,Democratization 3/3 (1996), 215–45.10Peter Feaver, ‘The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and theQuestion of Civilian Control’, Armed Forces and Society 23/2 (Winter 1996), 235.


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it was rational for the armed forces not to defend the regime.11 In acomparison with other cases of popular protests in countries fromdifferent regions, Prieur makes a similar case: when an army is forcedto choose between the government and the people, it will defect if theregime offers insufficient institutional or individual rewards, if leader-ship succession is perceived to be near (as it introduces uncertaintyabout future rewards), if it lacks experience in enforcing domesticsecurity, and if it represents society at large. He finds all these char-acteristics to have been present in Tunisia before the 2011 revolts.12 Inthis type of argument, interagency competition is often an importantelement to explain disloyalty. Sayigh argues, for example, that ‘thebehaviour of the Tunisian army in early 2011 revealed distaste for theexcesses of its countries’ internal security agencies’.13 This view echoesStepan’s well-known analysis of the Brazilian transition, in which ‘soft-liners’ within the Army adopted liberalizing measures in order to curbthe autonomy of security and intelligence agencies.14 In Tunisia’s case,given their more central role and their better economic and politicalresources, the internal security forces were supposedly the uncondi-tional backbone of the regime and the military, which had to competefor resources and influence from a disadvantaged position, was notinclined to defend the regime.Analyses that emphasize collective interests, though, generally fail to

specify why the military did not opt for neutrality: why did it not retireto the barracks with complete indifference to both the regime and theprotesters? If the Army clashed with forces loyal to the regime from 13to 17 January, as it is said to have happened, such clashes imposed coststhat should be offset by the benefits that the armed forces expected toobtain from a new regime. What were those benefits? What did theprotesters have to offer the military? Why were protesters in othercountries unable to offer similar rewards? The absence of incentivesto defend the regime can explain inaction, but it is logically incompleteas an explanation of a more active role of the military in regime change(i.e. siding with the challengers). If we accept that the military couldhave done nothing at all, then we have to show not only that it had noincentives to defend the regime, but also that it did have incentives to

11Barany, ‘Comparing the Arab Revolts’; Bellin, ‘Reconsidering the Robustness ofAuthoritarianism in the Middle East’; Brooks, ‘Abandoned at the Palace’.12Denis Prieur, ‘Defend or Defect:Military Roles in Popular Revolts’, SSRN, 15Dec. 2011,23, <http://ssrn.com/abstract=211506> or <http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2115062>.13Yezid Sayigh, ‘Agencies of Coercion: Armies and Internal Security Forces’,International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011), 404.14Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (PrincetonUP 1988).


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support the regime’s opponents, especially if such support entailedconfrontation with other security agencies.Both explanations of the behaviour of the Tunisian military have

been developed in the context of comparative studies of the ‘ArabSpring’. Unfortunately, little attention has been actually devoted toexamining the evidence that supports the defection narrative in thecase of Tunisia. As the rest of this article shows, there are seriousgrounds to doubt the accuracy of that narrative, with evidence suggest-ing instead that the ‘most professionalized military of the Arab region’remained obedient to the regime despite allegedly not having a clearinterest to do so.

The Security Apparatus under Ben Ali

The Tunisian armed forces (Army, Navy and Air Force) were thesmallest in North Africa, numbering between 40,000 and 43,000troops. Their size, however, seems to have been appropriate to fulfilltheir functions.15 They were organized under the Ministry of Defence(MoD) with the main role of providing external security. Except foroccasional emergency relief and public works projects in remote areas,deployments were mostly oriented towards border security and,through the 1990s and 2000s, peacekeeping operations in Africa.16

To maintain domestic order and to suppress dissent, Ben Ali – like itspredecessor Habib Bourguiba – relied mostly on internal security andintelligence agencies organized under the Minister of Interior (MoI).They included the National Police, the National Guard and thePresidential Guard, all of them under the Office of National Security.Early reports estimated these agencies to have numbered at least130,000 members.17 However, those figures appear inflated, and amore reliable estimate places the number around 80,000 members,with 49,000 belonging to the formal security forces and the rest beingpart-time augmentation forces or paid informants.18

As was the case for officers in the armed forces, senior officers in thepolice were often highly educated, trained at military academies (rather

15Querine Halon, The Prospects for Security Sector Reform in Tunisia: A Year after theRevolution, Strategic Studies Institute Monograph (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College,Sept. 2012), 8.16‘Cable/09TUNIS506’, Wikileaks, 22 July 2009, 09Tunis506, <http://wikileaks.org/

cable/2009/07/09TUNIS506.html>.17Lutterbeck, ‘Arab Uprising, Armed Forces, and Civil-Military Relations’, 7; PeterSchraeder and Hamadi Redissi, ‘Ben Ali’s Fall’, Journal of Democracy 22/3 (July2011), 6.18Halon, The Prospects for SSR in Tunisia, 13.


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than at separated police academies), and several had attended policeacademies in France and the United States. Training was standardizedand even rules of engagement had been established.19 The Police hadseveral elite units (the Intervention Forces) dedicated to the protectionof government personalities or anti-terrorist missions: BrigadeNationale d'Intervention Rapide (BNIR), Service de Protection desHautes Personalités (SPHP), Brigade d'Ordre Publique (BOP), BrigadeNationale de Recherche et de Neutralisation d'Explosives (BNRNE),and Brigade Anti-Terrorisme (BAT). The National Guard, initially arural and coastal paramilitary organization, also had an elite unit forsimilar operational needs: L'Unité Spéciale de la Garde Nationale(USGN).The Department of State Security (DSS), which was often called the

political police, also operated within the MoI. It constituted a hierarchyparallel to the police despite having de facto police functions. Although,there was no public legal statute defining the duties of the DSS, itsmembers carried out arrests and house searches and conducted theinitial interrogation of suspects. They were responsible for a numberof serious human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests anddetention, torture and harassment of lawyers and relatives of terroristsuspects.20 The DSS forces were reportedly disbanded in March 2011,shortly after Ben Ali’s fall. Finally, the Judicial Police operated withinthe Ministry of Justice, but was controlled by the MoI. While the threeservices of the armed forces in the MoD had a unified command andperiodic joint training, the forces within the MoI seem to have operatedwith little coordination, in arrangements that have recently been char-acterized as ‘almost byzantine in their complexity’.21

Popular Unrest and Military Response

Starting in December 2010, civil unrest and popular protests spreadquickly throughout Tunisia following the self-immolation of streetpedlar Mohamed Bouazizi in the city of Sidi Bouzid. What began as aspontaneous expression of deep-seated discontent quickly evolved intoa country-wide popular revolt. To quell the uprising, the regime initiallymobilized the police and the National Guard, which used significantviolence to repress the protesters. The extent of such violence was madeclear by the National Commission to Investigate Violence during the

19Ibid., 16.20Amnesty International, In the Name of Security. Routine Abuses in Tunisia (AmnestyInternational, 23 June 2008), 9, <www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE30/007/2008/en/b852a305-3ebc-11dd-9656-05931d46f27f/mde300072008eng.pdf>.21Halon, The Prospects for SSR in Tunisia, 12.


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Riots that was created few days after Ben Ali’s overthrow and washeaded by the former president of the Tunisian Human Rights League.In May 2012, the commission reported that between 17 December2010 and 14 January 2011, 338 people died and 2,147 were injured.The vast majority of these casualties were civilians and were caused bypolice gunfire in cities such as Kasserine, Sidi Bouzid, and Gafsa, as wellas in Tunis and its suburbs.22 Despite their repressive tactics, however,the internal security forces proved unable to suppress the street demon-strations and, on 9 January, President Ben Ali ordered the deploymentof the Army as well.The narrative according to which a defection of the armed forces

triggered the collapse of the regime rests on three different pieces ofevidence: First, Rachid Ammar (then Army Chief of Staff) orderedtroops not to fire on the protesters. Second, as a consequence, Ben Aliplaced Ammar under house arrest. And third, there were clashesbetween the internal security forces loyal to Ben Ali, on the one side,and the Army that wanted to protect the protesters on the other. It isdifficult to accurately establish where these pieces of information ori-ginally came from, for authors do not always specify their sources.23

Lutterbeck’s and Brooks’ are perhaps the better documented narratives,and their sources are representative of those in other works.24 The firstrelies on French-language newspaper reports in Jeune Afrique, LeFigaro, Rue 89, Le Dépêche, Le Parisien, Le Monde, andMagharebia. The second relies on a report by Amnesty International,as well as English-language newspaper reports in Africa News,Maghreb Confidential, and (mostly) the New York Times. All news-paper sources in both works are from mid-January 2011; the report byInternational Amnesty is from February 2011; and a report by theInternational Crisis Group (used by both Lutterbeck and Brooks) isfrom April 2011. This means that the defection narrative was built onearly reports of the popular revolt. Was this narrative confirmed asmore information became available?Evidence that officers in the armed forces refused to follow the

orders from the president or the Minister of Defence would providethe strongest basis for the defection case. This is why the rumorsconcerning Ammar’s insubordination and house arrest are of crucial

22Raphaelle Rafin, ‘Tunisia’s National Fact-Finding Commission on Abuses FinalReport’, iLawyer, 13 June 2012, <http://ilawyerblog.com/tunisias-national-fact-find-ing-commission-on-abuses-final-report/>.23Neither Barany nor the IISS, for instance, provide sources for their respectiveanalyses.24Lutterbeck, ‘Arab Uprising, Armed Forces, and Civil-Military Relations’; Brooks,‘Abandoned at the Palace’.


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importance. Brooks recently conceded, though, that the details ofAmmar arrest were ‘murky’.25 Attempts to reconstruct the last daysof Ben Ali’s regime based on files from civil and military courtproceedings have greatly clarified the events, but did not mentionAmmar’s supposed house detention. Further, they do not suggest thatthe regime distrusted the general. On the contrary, Rida Karira, thenMinister of Defence, stated on 14 January 2011 that he had fullconfidence in Ammar and the loyalty of the Army.26 The same day,Ben Ali declared the state of emergency and sent no other thanAmmar to the Ministry of Interior to take over the operations.27

There is no evidence that Ammar was arrested, or that he refused tofollow the orders of Ben Ali or the Defence Minister, except for oneoccasion discussed below.28

Did the order not to shoot civilians constitute a defection? Toanswer this question, we should perhaps examine the series of eventsthat took place during the last days of the regime. On 9 January, underBen Ali’s orders, the Ministries of Interior and Defence started to worktogether to suppress the uprising. That day, a first meeting to maximizesecurity precautions was attended by leaders of the National Guard,the Army, and the presidential security (Ali Seriati), as well as the twoministers.29 Seriati was responsible for coordinating the operationsdespite the fact that he was not the highest ranking officer. Followingthis meeting, on the morning of 10 January, Ammar issued an ‘admin-istrative telegram’ prohibiting his units from using their weaponsunless otherwise commanded.30 After Ben Ali fled the country, news-papers would report this as a ‘refusal to shoot civilians’ that had

25Brooks, ‘Abandoned at the Palace’, 206, note 5.26Al Arabiya, ‘Al Arabiya Inquiry Reveals How Tunisia’s Ben Ali Escaped to SaudiArabia,’ Al Arabiya News, 13 Jan. 2012, <http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/01/13/188093.html>.27Abdelaziz Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: La Véritable Histoire Du 14 Janvier 2011’, JeuneAfrique, 25 Jan. 2012; Pierre Puchot, ‘14 Janvier 2011 à Tunis : Le Jour Où Ben AliEst Tombé’, Mediapart, 10 Nov. 2011, <www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/071111/14-janvier-2011-tunis-le-jour-ou-ben-ali-est-tombe>.28Ammar did refuse to help protect the houses of members of the Trabelsi family whenSeriati made the request. However, this was not an order as Seriati was inferior in rankto Ammar. The latter argued that the role of the military was to protect publicinstallations and not private ones. The only instance where Ammar actually disobeyedthe Minister of Defense was concerning the order to suppress the rebellious units of theinternal security forces at Carthage Airport, see Puchot, ‘14 Janvier 2011 à Tunis’.29Al Arabiya, ‘Al Arabiya Inquiry’; Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: La Véritable Histoire’.30Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: La Véritable Histoire.’


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permitted the triumph of the protesters over the regime.31 The centralrole of the military in precipitating the end of the regime seemed to beconfirmed when Ammar declared on 24 January 2011 that the Armywould support ‘the revolution’.Yet, from Monday 10 January 2011 to Friday 14 January, high-

ranking officers in the three services obeyed the orders of their author-itarian civilian leadership. On 13 January, for example, Ammarinformed the Defence Minister that units of the police were handingtheir weapons over to the Army because protesters had burnt policeand National Guard Stations where the weapons were stored. TheDefence Minister received the news with suspicion and orderedAmmar to stop collecting those weapons. The next morning, Ben Aliallowed the continuation of the operation to prevent the demonstra-tors from taking control of the weapons, and the minister reversed hisorders. On both occasions Ammar proceeded as instructed, whichsuggests that the chain of command between the civilian leaders andthe armed forces was fully functional. Ammar also coordinated withSeriati to protect public buildings. Ammar sent, for instance, threearmoured forces to reinforce the security of the MoI building uponSeriati’s request on the morning of 14 January.32 The generalremained loyal to civilian authorities even after Ben Ali left, as evi-denced by the fact that his intervention in favour of the ‘revolution’ inlate January was actually a response to a request by then InterimPresident Mohamed Ghannouchi.33

The order not to shoot unless otherwise commanded could havebeen part of the operational protocol, rather than an expression ofthe armed forces’ absolute reluctance to use lethal force againstcivilians. It needs not be interpreted as a defection. As I discussbelow, the Army had participated in repression of popular revoltsmany times before. It is impossible to know if the military wouldhave used force had the protesters attacked the public buildings itwas commanded to protect, including the MoI. An unexpected turnof events would close Ben Ali’s era before protesters attempted sucha feat.

31David Kirkpatrick, ‘Chief of Tunisian Army Pledges His Support for “theRevolution”’, New York Times, 24 Jan. 2011; Issabell Lasserre, ‘Rachid Ammar, LeCenturion Du Peuple’, Le Figaro, 21 Jan. 2011.32Abdelaziz Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: Que Mijotait Ali Seriati ?,’ Jeune Afrique, 28 March2011, <www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/ARTJAJA2619p054-056.xml0/justice-securite-tunisie-mohamed-ghannouchitunisie-que-mijotait-ali-seriati.html>.33Abdelaziz Barrouhi, ‘Le Général Ammar, l’Homme Qui a Dit Non,’ Jeune Afrique, 7Feb. 2011.


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The Collapse of the Internal Security Apparatus

In contrast with the unity and obedience of the armed forces, theevidence points to a dramatic collapse of the internal security forces.As mass demonstrations became larger, Ben Ali sought to calm thesituation by announcing political reforms. On 12 January 2011, hedissolved the government and removed Rafik Hajj Kassem, the hatedMinister of Interior. The newly appointed minister, Ahmad Fariaa, tookmeasures to increase the security of the MoI building and the presiden-tial palace, as well as other public and private installations. Later on,Fariaa would also prohibit the use of live ammunition unless accordingto the law. These concessions revealed how critical the situation hadbecome for the regime, and how utterly the coercive apparatus hadfailed in its effort to crush the uprising. Reports during the second weekof January 2011 indicated that, in some regions of Tunisia, the policehad stood aside while protesters looted and burnt properties of Ben Aliand the Trabelsi family.34 Protesters also sacked and burnt between 250and 300 police stations, and even policemen’s homes in some towns.35

When the protests reached Tunis, the security situation was criticalfrom the regime’s point of view. On the morning of 14 January, theprotest convoked outside the presidential palace by the Union GénéraleTunisienne du Travail (UGTT) – the main union in the country –reached around 70,000 participants. The Army and the riot policewere deployed around the city, the first to protect public buildingsand the second to disperse the protesters. Presidential security unitsunder the command of Colonel Sami Sik Salem guarded the CarthagePalace from inside, whereas four units of the National Guard under thecommand of Mohammed al-Arabi al-Akhal protected it from outside.Anti-terrorist units were charged with the security of the MoI. Theseunits included the BAT under the command of Colonel Samir Tarhouni,who had previously been part of the Presidential Guard. Tension andfear prevailed among members of the security forces in both theCarthage Palace and the MoI building, as radio news indicated thatprotesters were attacking the houses of members of the Trabelsi Family,as well as police and National Guard installations around Tunis.36

In the early afternoon of 14 January, upon being informed thatseveral members of the Trabelsi family were at the airport ready toleave the country, Tarhouni – seemingly on his own initiative – decidedto ‘arrest’ them. Shortly before 3:00pm, and disregarding his order to

34David Kirkpatrick, ‘Behind Tunisia Unrest, Rage Over Wealth of Ruling Family’,New York Times, 14 Jan. 2011.35Halon, The Prospects for SSR in Tunisia, 15.36Al Arabiya, ‘Al Arabiya Inquiry’.


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protect the MoI, Tarhouni and 11 of his men belonging to the Anti-Terrorist Brigade (BAT) headed to the airport of Carthage to preventthe Trabelsi from travelling. For the following five hours, they wouldhold 28 members of the family hostage in the VIP lounge of the air-port.37 During this time, the Colonel requested reinforcements from hisown troops, and also asked his friend Arabi al-Akhal, head of theNational Vanguards (USGN), to come to the airport. The latter aban-doned his position at the presidential palace and joined the rebelliousunits. Tarhouni similarly managed to obtain the support of another unitfrom the fast intervention brigades (BNIR) under the command ofColonel Zouheir El Ouefi. At about 5:00pm, three colonels andapproximately 90 of their subordinates belonging to three differentelite units of the MoI were in open rebellion at the airport.38 GeneralJalal Boudarika, the Director-General of the intervention units andTarhouni’s superior, went to the airport to order the release of theTrabelsi, but Tarhouni responded that the family would not leave.Later on, Tarhouni also refused to answer calls from the Minister ofInterior.39 These events, which constitute a clear case of defection, havebeen ignored in the dominant interpretation of the Tunisian revolt.The rebellion of the colonels in the elite units of the internal security

forces led to a general perception of conspiracy and chaos amonggovernment officials; especially the Minister of Defence, Ridha Karira.At 4:00pm, Karira ordered the chief of the Air Force, General TaiebLajimi, to send helicopters to pick up the army’s Special Forces Brigade(Groupe de Forces Speciales-GFS) based in Bizerte. The minister wantedto use the GFS to liberate the Trabelsi family and the General complied:the GFS arrived at the airport shortly before 5:00pm.Back at the presidential palace, Seriati declared with alarm that the

BAT has betrayed the government. The time was 4:10pm. At that point,Seriati also received information indicating that the palace might beattacked by an army helicopter and/or by a National Guard frigate.Seriati, who had been insisting on evacuating the president, then pressedto leave the Palace immediately. The presidential convoy then headed tothe airport, as preparations had been made for Ben Ali’s family to exit

37Tarhouni also had the opportunity to detain Serene Ben Ali (the daughter of thedictator) and members of the Mabruk family, but for unknown reasons he let theirplane take off.38Some reports indicated as many as 170 men were supporting Tarhouni’s rebellion,but I use here the smaller estimate.39Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: Que Mijotait Ali Seriati ?’; Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: La VéritableHistoire’; Puchot, ‘14 Janvier 2011 à Tunis’; Tunisie Numérique, ‘Le 14 Janvier2011, l’Histoire D’un Héro de La Révolution Tunisienne: Le Lieutenant-ColonelSamir Tarhouni’, Tunisie Numérique, 7 Aug. 2011.


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the country for Saudi Arabia. When Seriati informed the presidentabout the rebellion of the elite units of the security forces and declaredthat he was not in a position to guarantee his security, Ben Ali decidedto accompany his family and to come back later that same day. Thiswas a change of plans, as originally he did not intend to travel. Thepresidential plane took off at around 5:50pm. At 6:00pm, the Ministerof Defence ordered General Lajimi to arrest Seriati and the General,again, complied: Seriati was arrested 20 minutes later.40 The ministeralso called Ammar, apparently ordering the elimination of the rebel-lious units,41 but Ammar (who had sent Boudarika to the airport toclarify the situation) refused to follow the order, arguing that he wasworking to avoid an armed confrontation.42 Once Ben Ali left thecountry and the Prime Minister assumed the Presidency, Tarhouniindicated his desire to hand over the prisoners to the Army in front ofthe media. Ammar carefully supervised the operation from the MoI andordered Tarhouni be separated from his unit.In the palace, news of Ben Ali’s departure sent a wave of panic

through the presidential security. Colonel Sami Sik Salem (in chargeof guarding the presidential palace since 1994) tried to contact Seriatifor instructions to no avail. Then, he decided to call the Prime Ministerand ask him to fill the power vacuum, and proceeded to organize ameeting at the palace with the highest government officials for anordered transfer of power. Sik Salem also invited Ammar to the meet-ing, but Ammar responded that he could only act on instructions fromthe Minister of Defence. Later, Sik Salem gathered his troops andordered them to defend the palace, but not to shoot without his permis-sion for any reason whatsoever. The agents, who had worked withoutarms for several years, apparently started to leave their positionsinstead.43 This evidence indicates that some presidential security mem-bers close to Ben Ali neither opposed the power transition, norremained by the dictators’ side. Rather, they played a role in facilitatingthe transfer of power or simply deserted.The days immediately following Ben Ali’s fall were rather chaotic.

Prison inmates rioted and some tried to escape amidst the confusion;and there were reports of gun battles in the heart of the capital betweensecurity services and rogue elements.44 During this period, the police

40Puchot, ‘14 Janvier 2011 à Tunis'.41The former minister denied this order in his testimonies, Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: QueMijotait Ali Seriati ?’.42Al Arabiya, ‘Al Arabiya Inquiry’; Barrouhi, ‘Tunisie: La Véritable Histoire'.43Al Arabiya, ‘Al Arabiya Inquiry’; Puchot, ‘14 Janvier 2011 à Tunis’.44Vivienne Walt, ‘Chaos Threatens Tunisia’s Revolution’, Time, 16 Jan. 2011, <www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2042740,00.html>.


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was incapable of resuming its internal security functions and the armedforces had to control both civilian looters and rogue members of thesecurity forces, and to impose order.45 The armed forces also mannedcheckpoints and protected strategic sites and public buildings, securedthe borders, countered incursions from Libyan armed groups, andestablished camps for 1.6 million refugees fleeing the violence inLibya.46 Two years after the revolt the police remained in a generalstate of disarray.The established account of the Tunisian revolt neglects the defection

of the internal security forces and obscures the issues facing the countryin regards to the reform of its security sector. Why, for instance, werethe elite forces of the internal security services the ones that defected?Why were the police unable to resume their domestic security tasksforcing the military to adopt policing functions? Why did the militaryremain obedient to the regime despite its alleged marginalization?

Police Failure and Military Obedience

Middle East specialists have argued that, given the characteristics of theTunisian military, its defection ‘makes perfect sense’,47 or that it was‘the least surprising development’ of the Arab revolts.48 On the con-trary, had army officers abandoned the regime, their behaviour wouldhave been quite surprising, for the Tunisian military had historicallyobeyed authoritarian civilians.The Tunisian revolt in 2011 was not the first uprising that the

internal security forces failed to contain. They proved to be equallyincompetent during two of the major crises that punctuated the lastdecade of Bourguiba’s rule: the general strike of 1978 and the breadriots of 1984. The general strike of January 1978 was the first openconfrontation between the unionist movement and the governmentsince independence. It was organized by the UGTT, which had becomeincreasingly autonomous and critical of Bourguiba’s economic policy.The urban poor quickly joined the protests, leading to extensive riotingthat the police alone were unable to suppress. In response, Bourguibarequested that the Army intervene to re-establish order. Ben Ali, thenDirector of National Security, coordinated the operations to quash the

45Kirkpatrick, ‘Chief of Tunisian Army Pledges His Support for “the Revolution”’.46Halon, The Prospects for SSR in Tunisia, 5.47Steven Cook, ‘The Calculations of Tunisia’s Military’, Foreign Policy (20 Jan. 2011),<http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/20/the_calculations_of_tunisias_??military?wp_login_redirect=0>.48Bellin, ‘Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism’.


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uprising, which led to the death of at least 100 people, several hundredothers injured and more than 1,000 arrested.49

Six years later, the ‘bread riots’ of 1984 were a spontaneousresponse to the government’s decision to eliminate subventions onprimary food stuffs at the request of the International MonetaryFund. Even before the measures had been officially announced,there were violent demonstrations in the south of the country thatoverwhelmed the police and the National Guard. These eventsinvolved significantly more Tunisians than the general strike of1978 and led the government to declare a state of emergency. Onceagain, Bourguiba ordered the Army to restore order in the face ofmajor protests. During the disturbances, 89 Tunisians died, 938 wereinjured and over 1,000 were arrested.50

Paraphrasing a scholar contemporary to these events, ‘twice theNational Guard and the gendarmerie demonstrated their incompe-tence in a situation of generalized chaos and twice the military tookover the internal security functions’.51 Thus, on both occasions itwas the Army that guaranteed the regime’s survival in the face offailure of the internal security apparatus. Scholars who argue that theprofessionalized Tunisian military did not have an inclination torepress also argue that the military resented having to adoptpolice functions under Bourguiba.52 If such was in fact the case,however, it could only confirm that the Tunisian military tradition-ally obeyed civilian authorities, even when doing so went against itsown preferences.The dynamics of police failure and military obedience was confirmed

more recently, albeit on a smaller scale, by the unfolding of the protestsin the Gafsa Mining Basin in 2008. The protest started on 5 January inRedeyef and spread to other mining towns, notably Moularès andM’dhila. It was initially organized by an association of unemployedgraduates against what they considered to be unfair employment prac-

49Dirk Vandewalle, ‘From the New State to the New Era: Toward a Second Republic inTunisia',’ Middle East Journal 44/4 (1988), 602–20; Global Security, ‘January 1978General Strike’, Global Security, 8 May 2011, <http:/www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/tunisia/politics-1978.htm>.50Global Security, ‘The Riots of 1984 and Their Aftermath’, Global Security, 8 May2011, <www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/tunisia/politics-1984.htm>.51Lewis B. Ware, ‘The Role of the Tunisian Military in the Post-Bourguiba Era’, MiddleEast Journal 39/1 (Winter 1985), 39.52Barany, ‘Comparing the Arab Revolts’; Bellin, ‘Reconsidering the Robustness ofAuthoritarianism’.


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tices, nepotism and lack of transparency.53 Demonstrations quicklyattracted support from other sectors of the local society, expandingtheir demands to include general concerns with unemployment, povertyand corruption. Unrest in the region continued through the first half of2008 with different levels of intensity.In the initial days of the conflict, the police intervened with mini-

mal force and negotiation committees were established. However, on6 April 2008, following an attack on a police station in Redeyef, theregime decided to launch a first massive operation which culminatedwith the arrest of tens of people. In response, local unions declaredan unlimited strike that forced the internal security forces to releasesome of the protesters, and that led to further escalation of theconflict through the month of May 2008. Thus, the first attempt torepress the popular protests backfired on the regime and has beenproperly characterized as a failure.54 More effective repression tookplace after 6 June , when a curfew was imposed on the region andthe police proceeded to shoot at demonstrators without warning,killing one and injuring another 20.55 The following day, the Armywas deployed to support the operations and the police started arrest-ing activists across the entire mining basin. A total of 300 protesterswere arrested or detained in the Gafsa region, many of whom weretortured or otherwise ill-treated while in the custody of DSS officers.At least 200 people were also prosecuted in connection with theprotests (including in military tribunals). According to AmnestyInternational, all forces involved in the operations committed serioushuman rights violations.56 The participation of the Army in thesecond round of repression in 2008 put a definite stop to the pro-tests, as Ben Ali made cosmetic concessions to the protesters on 9June. Once more, then, the military had backed the regime andcollaborated with the internal security apparatus to defeat the pop-ular manifestations.

53Amnesty International, Behind Tunisia’s Economic Miracle: Inequality andCriminalization of Protest (Amnesty International, 17 June 2009), <http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE30/003/2009>; Eric Gobe, ‘The Gafsa Mining BasinBetween Riots and a Social Movement: Meaning and Significance of a ProtestMovement in Ben Ali’s Tunisia’ (HAL- Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, 2010),<http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00557826/fr/>.54Gobe, ‘The Gafsa Mining Basin’, 8.55Amnesty International,Tunisia:Open Inquiry IntoKilling ofDemonstratorAgainstRisingPrices (Amnesty International, 9 June 2008), <www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE30/008/2008/en/242038ee-36d8-11dd-b59e-d93366ce2eab/mde300082008eng.pdf>.56Amnesty International, In the Name of Security: Routine Abuses in Tunisia.


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Military Institutions and the Threat Environment

How are we to explain the recurrent willingness of the Tunisian mili-tary to defend the established civilian authorities from popular upris-ings? Why would a relatively professional military, recruited from abroad social base and with no obvious economic or ethnic ties to theregime, defend an aging dictator? It is perhaps tempting to argue thatthe historical features of the Tunisian military determined its behaviourduring the popular revolt. As Ware stated, Bourguiba maintained asmall military and limited the possibilities for it to adopt an activepolitical role. Further, he made the military part of his project toestablish a firm secular state under a single-party regime: the militarywas unified by a Kemalist ideal, devoted to national integrity, andsubservient to the regime.57 Since Ben Ali did not significantly alterthe structure of civil-military relations in the country, it is not unrea-sonable to argue that the subordination of the military to civilians waswell-established, and that obedience during the 2011 revolt was path-dependent. However, the argument that the military obeyed because ithad historically done so is not satisfying. Instead, I propose a tentativeexplanation centred on the institutional arrangements that emerged as aresponse to Tunisia’s threat environment.In the 1960s, Tunisia faced serious threats emanating from its far

larger and better armed neighbours Algeria and Libya. Initially,Tunisians were distrustful of Algeria and sympathetic to Libya. Infact, severe economic problems led Bourguiba to seriously considerunification with oil-rich Libya in 1972. In a context of regional compe-tition, this project was vehemently opposed by Algeria and was even-tually abandoned. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the relations withAlgeria improved, but the tensions with Libya became increasinglyacute mainly because, after the failure of unification, Colonel Gaddafisought to destabilize the Tunisian regime and replace it with one moreamenable to his own plan for the region. His method was to encouragea social upheaval, closing the Libyan borders at will and expellingTunisians who worked in the oilfields to accentuate the problem ofunemployment inside Tunisia. During the revolt of 1984, for instance,he expelled 32,000 workers, and menaced the border by mobilizingtroops.58 The Libyan threat was not a direct military aggression (whichwould have been resisted by France, the US and Algeria); instead, it wasa diffuse menace.

57Ware, ‘The Role of the Tunisian Military in the Post-Bourguiba Era’, 37. My italics.58Nicole Grimaud, La Tunisie à La Recherche de Sa Sécurité (Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France 1995), 170.


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Because Tunisia could not marshal the resources to compete with itsneighbours militarily, Bourguiba designed a strategy of defence thatcombined diplomatic and military efforts. In the diplomatic front,Bourguiba pursued a policy of compromise and rapprochement withits neighbours and, from 1968 onwards, he also sought informal assur-ances by France and the US which were made credible by a densenetwork of cooperation, training and weapons procurement. In themilitary front, Bourguiba articulated the doctrine of ‘total defence’ inOctober 1965. According to this doctrine, the security of the countrydepended on the cohesion between the military and the people.59 Incase of external aggression, the armed forces would resist with thesupport of the people until external aid from allies materialized. Thefocus of the armed forces was then on protecting the country fromexternal threats, although they could be called upon to re-establishinternal order in exceptional circumstances. In pursuing this goal, in1967 the government implemented universal conscription and estab-lished military academies to educate army officers within Tunisia (sevenof which were operating by 1969); and in the early 1970s, the militarywas reorganized by brigades and the three branches started to partici-pate in joint operations and training to maximize their defensive capa-city.60 The operations were coordinated by the MoD, whose functionswere defined in a 1975 Presidential Decree. This decree specified thatthe Minister of Defence serves the President of the Republic, who is theSupreme Commander of the Armed Forces.61

With the help of France, a major plan for military modernization wasdesigned in the late 1970s (the Pichon Plan), which was aimed tofurther expand defensive capacity against external aggression. Thisplan included the creation of additional military academies and thedevelopment of a unified domestic security doctrine. From 1975 to1977, the military budget was increased threefold to procure betterequipment and implement some partial aspects of the plan. Efforts toimplement the plan in earnest, however, were not undertaken until1980, when a command of 60 guerrillas trained by the Libyan militarycrossed into Tunisia and attacked the local police and the NationalGuard in Gafsa. Their goal was to start a rebellion and demand Libyanintervention.62 The guerrillas recruited 350 new members after theinitial attack, but the population at large did not respond to the instiga-tion. The Army was called to eradicate the incipient subversive move-ment and, within four days, it defused the threat and neutralized

59Ibid., 94.60Ibid., 135.61Halon, The Prospects for SSR in Tunisia, 25.62Vandewalle, ‘From the New State to the New Era,’ 609.


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infiltrations in other areas of the country. The Gafsa incident (as well asIsrael’s attack on Hamman-Chott in September 1985) pushed the mod-ernization plan forward through the 1980s, with even more resourcesassigned to the armed forces despite the fact that the country was tryingto implement economic austerity policies.63 It is noteworthy that theparticipation of the military in the repression of popular discontent in1978 and in 1984 took place concomitantly with major efforts toprofessionalize the military.As cooperation on security matters between Tunisia and its allies

solidified, the doctrine of popular defence largely fell into disuse. Thedoctrine was further undermined because of poor economic perfor-mance and the development of domestic political movements thatchallenged the regime’s policies (notably the growth of the Islamicmovement). Social unrest highlighted the need for the armed forcesto be capable of coping with diffuse external threats even in theabsence of domestic unity.64 During the Gafsa incident, the armedforces relied on their operating capacity rather than a civic-militaryfront; showing that ‘la défense populaire générale’ was a relic fromthe previous decade.The Islamist movement gathered strength through the 1980s, with some

small groups espousing violent strategies. In 1987, hotels in the Sahelregion were attacked with home-made bombs wounding severalEuropean tourists. The Tunisian government then arrested someIslamists alleged to be responsible for the bombings, as well as the leader-ship of the Islamic Tendency Movement (the strongest Islamic organiza-tion) on charges of plotting the overthrow of the republic. The leniency ofthe sentences imposed later that year displeased Bourguiba, who ordered asecond trial. This event triggered the ‘constitutional coup d’état’ throughwhich Ben Ali took over the Tunisian government, as an aging Bourguibaseemed unable to manage the country’s deep political and economic crisis.Once in power, Ben Ali promoted military officers who were trained

in French and American institutions and were technically competent,65

continued the foreign policy of the Bourguiba government (cooperationwith France, the US and Algeria), and also sought more economic andtechnical cooperation with Libya. These policies and a changing regio-nal configuration of power helped Tunisia to become less fearful of itsneighbours through the 1990s and 2000s. Ben Ali similarly continuedthe division of labour established by Bourguiba between the Ministriesof Interior and Defence. He developed an extensive apparatus for

63Lewis B. Ware, ‘Ben Ali’s Constitutional Coup in Tunisia’, Middle East Journal 42/4(Fall 1988), 587–601.64Ibid., 156.65Ware, ‘Ben Ali’s Constitutional Coup in Tunisia'.


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internal coercion that allowed him to dislodge the Islamic movementand, more in general, to suppress political dissent despite his earlypromise to open the political system.By the end of Ben Ali’s regime, the Tunisian armed forces remained

relatively cohesive, meritocratic and rule-bound. They also remainedsubordinated to the civilian leadership. This was the result of theinstitutional infrastructure put in place in the previous decades; inparticular, the array of military academies that trained officers with aunified doctrine oriented towards external threats, and the separatedevelopment of the ministries of interior and defence with civilianleaderships. In 1985, examining whether the military would play amore central role in post-Bourgiba Tunisia, Ware argued that the great-est constraint for the coming to power of the military was the possibilityof Libyan or Algerian intervention.66 His view illustrated the impor-tance of the threat environment on the development of civil-militaryrelations in the country.Students of civil-military relations have argued that the nature of

threats a country faces determines the form of the civil-military rela-tions. This is a refinement of Huntington’s idea that the ‘functionalimperative’ partially shapes the character of the military and its inter-action with civilians.67 Recently, Desch surmised that high externalthreats unify both civilians and military personnel, and allow for aconvergence of interest between the two. Therefore, their presenceshould improve civilian control (civilian preferences would prevailover military preferences), whereas high internal threats should worsenit.68 His theory builds on the notion that security forces that aredespised because of their involvement in internal repression cannotmobilize popular support for external defence. Threat environmentsthat combine high internal and high external threats (as in the case ofTunisia in the mid-1980s) are structurally undetermined. In those envir-onments, Desch believes, civilian control ranges from poor to fairdepending on the level of cohesion within civilian and military institu-tions, the relations between them, and – more centrally – the externalorientation of military doctrine.69 If the military is oriented towardsexternal priorities it is not likely to become a contender for the controlof society and, thus, civilian preferences should prevail.The obedience of the Tunisian military to the civilian authorities can

be seen as a result of the institutional arrangements that evolved in the

66Ware, ‘The Role of the Tunisian Military in the Post-Bourguiba Era’.67Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 2.68Michael Desch, ‘Soldiers, States, and Structures: The End of the Cold War and theWeakening US Civilian Control’, Armed Forces and Society 24/3 (1998), 389–406.69Desch, ‘Soldiers, States and Structures’, 395.


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shadow of serious regional threats. Once those institutions were inplace, norms of subordination became deeply entrenched in the routinesof the armed forces. The norms were not challenged even in periods ofdeep political crisis, where the military could have played a morecentral role. Additional research is required to examine the extent towhich the causal mechanisms identified by Desch adequately explainthe interactions between the armed forces and the rest of the state. Apreliminary look at the available evidence suggests that civil-militaryrelations in Tunisia were compatible with the predictions of the theory.

The Puzzle of the Internal Security Forces

Threat structure, however, cannot explain the behaviour of the internalsecurity forces. There is comparatively less information regarding thehistory and the role of domestic security agencies in Tunisia. Thus, it isdifficult to establish why the internal security forces alone failed tocrush the demonstrations in 1978, 1984, 2008, and 2011; or why theelite forces defected from the regime in 2011. The forces within the MoIwere apparently rather fragmented, each with different levels of supportfor Ben Ali. Not only there were at least four different services withinthe MoI (DSS, Presidential Guard, National Guard, and Police), butsome of those services also had specialized units for different opera-tional needs.The DSS was perhaps the service most invested in the survival of the

regime as it carried out a great deal of the repression of political dissent(including torture), but it had little capacity to disperse rioting masses.Neither the elite units of the police, nor those of the National Guardhowever seem to have been particularly interested in defending Ben Ali.In fact, these were the units that unmistakably moved against the regime.It is unclear what motivated Tarhouni and the men who followed him,but it is important to note that the members of the anti-terrorism forceswere not trained to deal with protesters. Their training was focused onanti-terrorism, hostage rescue and building incursions. The orders toshoot unarmed civilian might not have been welcomed by such forces.Tarhouni seemed to have received exactly those orders a couple of hoursbefore heading to the airport. Allegedly, he wanted to detain the Trabelsito force Ben Ali to step down.70

At least one part of the Presidential Guard was not bound to theregime either. We know that, rather than resisting the transfer ofpower to a new government, the Commander of the President andOfficial Personalities Security Service at the presidential palace calledupon civilian authorities to take over when Ben Ali fled. Additionally,

70Al Arabiya, ‘Al Arabiya Inquiry’.


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as shown above, there is some evidence that elements of the presiden-tial guard may have deserted their positions. Members of the regularpolice in several regions also deserted or stepped aside as the protestsgrew in size and strength. This is not surprising if one takes intoaccount their lack of skill and preparation: Rank and file recruitswere poorly paid, trained and managed. They had to ask for permis-sion to marry or to visit a city outside the capital, and were barredfrom voting or travelling abroad.71

All these are but pieces of an incomplete puzzle. Further researchshould seek to elucidate how these services operated, their degree ofcooperation, and their level of professionalism. Such research wouldhelp clarify why they defected in 2011 and why, more in general, theywere incapable of resuming responsibility for internal security in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. A deeper understanding of these factors will alsocontribute to the efforts to reform the security sector in the country.Observers of the process of security sector reform in Tunisia correctlyargue that the MoI requires the most reform, but it is also where thenew government faces more serious challenges asserting its authority.72

A telling incident was the effort of the minister to remove the director ofthe intervention forces in January 2012 on charges of firing on thecrowds during the 2011 revolts. Some 12,000 police from theBouchoucha Barracks then organized a strike in protest and physicallyblocked access to the accused director. This strike ended with citizenschasing police away from the building entrance, but the Minister ofInterior was forced to move the accused director to a consultant posi-tion elsewhere in the ministry.73 By contrast, reform within the armedforces is considerably more cooperative and limited in scope.

Conclusion

Scholars who have examined the role of the armed forces during the‘Arab Spring’ have adopted the view that Tunisia is a positive case ofdefection of the armed forces. It is not. The armed forces in Tunisiawere cohesive as well as subservient to the authoritarian civilian leader-ship. The military obeyed an aging Ben Ali as it had obeyed an agingBourguiba. Arguing that professionalism, institutionalization, a sense ofcorporate identity, or marginalization led to defection in the case ofTunisia seems inadequate, simply because the military, having all those

71Borzou Daragahi, ‘A Tunisian State Police Officer Shares Harrowing Inside View’,Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2011, <http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/03/world/la-fg-tunisia-police-20110202>.72Halon, The Prospects for SSR in Tunisia, 40.73Ibid., 26.


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features, remained obedient to the regime. Similarly, arguments basedon an alleged dispute between forces at the MoI and those at the MoDare misleading. Not only had the military participated in repression inseveral occasions before, it had done so in coordination with the inter-nal security services when the latter failed to contain the protests. Thisindicates that the behaviour of the military cannot be properly under-stood separated from the rest of the coercive apparatus.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Mendeloff, as well as the anonymousreviewers of this journal, for helpful comments on an earlier version ofthis article.

Note on Contributor

Alejandro Pachon is a doctoral candidate at the Norman PatersonSchool of International Affairs (Carleton University). His research iscurrently focused on the behavior of security forces during popularuprisings, civil-military relations, and security sector reform.

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loyalty and defection: misunderstanding civil-military relations in tunisia during the ‘arab...

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