Abstract:
Although neither recent nor old, Jihad reappears in post-uprising Tunisia in an intensive manner relatively to its history in the country. The escalating violence after four years since the fall of Ben Ali’s regime is today, according to the Tunisian government, associated with an organization named Ansar al-Sharia declared a “terrorist organization”. The existence of links between AST and AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), as Tunisian authorities suppose, points to the ongoing manifestation of a new type of Jihad, a transnational Jihad that is lately manifesting itself in a more structural way inside the countries of the so called ‘Arab Spring’. The current study, focusing on the specific role played by AST, argues that ‘Tunisian’ jihad is a part of a global jihadist activism which, though sharing the same doctrinal references, remains a complex and dynamic phenomenon.
