The Tunisian government is reacting as well as it can to the horror visited on its beaches last Friday. It is investigating if the murderer was linked to any organisation and therefore getting some impression if any more terrorist acts are planned. Prime Minister Habib Al Sid has said that there was little information on the gunman’s links to any terror group and the Interior Ministry confirmed that he had some contact with a Libyan group, although since the gunman may not have ever travelled outside Tunisia most of his contacts would have been through social media. The various student bodies the gunman joined at the university are currently being investigated for any ties with the attack.
Nonetheless, there were obvious failures in the way the gunman was allowed to continue killing unarmed people for half an hour before he was stopped. In the aftermath of the March attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis where 22 people, mainly foreigners, were killed, the two policemen at the beach last weekend should have been ready to act immediately and much more ruthlessly and they may have saved some of the 38 people killed.
When some young Tunisians realised what was happening, they bravely formed a human shield to protect tourists, at great risk to their own lives. It is this spirit that we all need to celebrate at this grim hour, since it is only through such bravery that terrorists will be defeated. Murder and terror will fail through good counter-intelligence, combined with massive public rejection of the evil minds that carry out such horrors.
