Tunisia warns of ISIL infiltration as unrest spreads

The growing demonstrations and unrest in Tunisian cities over the spate of unemployment has inevitably led to the intervention of President Beji Caid Essebsi who has expressed an understanding for the anger over unemployment, but warns that members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in neighbouring Libya may exploit grievances and see it as a way to enter the country.

In a televised address, President Essebsi informed that the government will put in place a programme to try to ease the jobless rate in the country.

Such protests were “natural”, Essebsi said during the address. “There is no dignity without work… You can’t tell someone who has nothing to eat to stay patient.”

“After the start of these demonstrations, ill-intentioned hands have intervened and inflamed the situation,” the president said in his first public remarks since protests broke out.

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Meanwhile, government imposed a nationwide curfew Friday as the unemployment protests coincided with the Arab Spring anniversary spreading from the nation’s impoverished heartland to the capital, leading to looting and property destruction.

The indefinite curfew, announced by the Interior Ministry and scheduled to take effect at 8 p.m. local time Friday evening, followed five days of protests and rioting in several cities over widespread unemployment.

This week’s unrest underscores the difficulties Tunisia has faced in addressing basic economic needs since 2011, when similar protests drove out its longtime autocratic president and triggered demonstrations that ousted long-serving leaders across the Middle East in a movement known as the Arab Spring.

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