Tunisia: The "murdered" economy

On March 18, two terrorists were killed and 19 others killed and 44 injured after a four-hour standoff and exchange of fire in a famous tourist attraction in Tunis, a country on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, ——— the Bardo Museum in Tunis. This is the worst incident of terrorist violence against tourists in the world's tourist destination since the 2002 suicide attack on the djerba synagogue (21 deaths, including 16 foreign tourists). Tunisian police revealed that the two attackers belonged to a fundamentalist group called islamic jihad. Two days after the incident, the Islamic State (ISIS) issued a statement declaring responsibility for the incident.

Of the 17 killed were foreign tourists, and most of the injured were foreign tourists. M SC Mediterranean Cruises said in a statement that as many as 9 of the victims were tourists aboard the company's luxury cruise ship "M SC Brilliant" that docked in the port of LaGurette, Tunisia, and the rest of the foreign tourists killed were also from foreign luxury cruise ships arriving in Hong Kong.

Since its independence, Tunisia has been one of the fastest-growing and socially stable North African countries, and one of the most secular among Arab countries, and has always been regarded as a "model graduate" of the Arab Spring.

However, Tunisia is a small country after all, and the wrong transformation of light industry such as textiles in the last few years of the Ben Ali era has led to an increase in dependence on the European market, and now the European market is weak, affecting the recovery of Tunisia's light industry. Tunisia's GD P growth rate was as high as 3.6% in 2012, which once made many people cheer that "Tunisia is the only one with a smooth transition from the 'revolution'", but it fell to 2.6% in 2013, and the 2014 data is expected to be lower than in 2013.

In this context, Tunisia is becoming increasingly dependent on "smoke-free industries" ——— tourism. Tunisia is the founding place of ancient Carthage, the pearl of North Africa in the Arab era, the rare European open environment in the Arab world, and the picturesque scenery of the southern Mediterranean, so it has always been a tourist attraction that attracts global attention.

The contribution of tourism to the Tunisian economy in the post-"Ben Ali" era is crucial. According to the World Tourism and Tourism Council, in 2013 Tunisia's tourism industry contributed 7% of the country's total G D P, and together with related industries, the contribution was as high as 15.2%.

The 2011 "revolution" plunged Tunisia's tourism industry to the bottom, but since 2012, tourist arrivals have begun to pick up as conditions have settled and there have been few violence and terrors like those common in Libya and Egypt. According to the Tunisian Ministry of Tourism, tourism directly or indirectly creates as many as 480,000 jobs in Tunisia, accounting for 12% of the country's total labor force.

Although the Tunisian government stated in a statement that the purpose of terrorists attacking foreign tourists is to destroy the Tunisian economy by attacking Tunisian tourism, in an attempt to create an economic crisis and thus cause social and political chaos so that they can fish in muddy waters, tourists and international tourism giants are not politicians, they are concerned about security and economic benefits.

Just a few days after the 3.18 attack, two well-known Italian cruise lines, M SC and Costa, have announced that they will temporarily cancel their plans to call at Tunisian ports. The luxury cruise ships of the two cruise companies have always been the "parents" of Tunisia's tourism economy, and each cruise ship carries more than 3,000 foreign tourists at a time, and the business opportunities that come with it.

The International Labour Office (BIT) noted that the frequency of terrorist attacks is still fatal to the development of tourism. For example, the events of 9/11 in 2001, which resulted in the loss of 6.6 million jobs in the global tourism industry in the following two years, and Egypt, which has been plagued by suicide bombings since 1996 and intensified after the "revolution", has never been able to restore the grand situation of the past when customers came and business opportunities rolled in. Tunisia is one of the countries with the most stable political and social transition and the fastest economic recovery in the "Arab Spring", but even so, after 3 years, its "fist industry" ——— tourism reception volume and total output value have not yet returned to the pre-revolutionary level. Tunisian Prime Minister Eheed admitted that the impact of the attack on the Tunisian economy could be "terrible".

There's more to worry about than that. According to Tunisian police data, 2,000-3,000 Tunisians fighting extremist terrorist groups such as ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Libya are the largest group of foreign soldiers in ISIS, of which about 500 have been sent home. Fundamentalist terrorist organizations have always been grumpy about failing to replicate the "great achievements" of Libya, Syria and other places in Tunisia, and those Tunisian terrorists who have returned from the battlefield are of course even more unwilling to always be "holy wars" in foreign countries, and tourism and foreign tourists are bound to become the objects of their key "care", even if they cannot succeed every time, as long as they create a terrorist atmosphere that is enough to scare off foreign tourists, it is enough to deal a heavy blow to the Tunisian economy, and then affect the country's employment and social stability. Once this happens, it will not only be Tunisia's tourism or economy that will be "murdered" by violent terrorists.