The Observer reports: When two gunmen who had trained in Libya opened fire on tourists and staff at one of Tunisia’s top museums last week, it shocked the country but perhaps not the Tunisian security forces, who had been working for years to try to stave off this kind of attack.

They had long feared that returnees from the region’s spiralling conflicts in Iraq, Syria and, more recently, neighbouring Libya would bring the fight home and choose a soft target to do it.

Nearly 3,000 young Tunisians are known to have travelled abroad to fight, the largest number from any Arab country, and thousands more were stopped from making the journey. Around 500 have returned, and although some are in jail for fighting abroad, others were released by judges, who decided they were not a danger.

The number of returnees, and the cost and manpower involved in following someone 24 hours a day, makes it almost impossible for the government to follow even those they know have spent time with extremist groups overseas. There may be other jihadis who manage to stay off their radar, slipping over the border to Libya in a flow of traders who are often young men of fighting age. [Continue reading…]