article_snippet: Jihadist firebrands representing thousands of active militants at home and abroad have been threatening retribution on Tunisia's outward-looking, investment-friendly majority.
article_snippet: In four tumultuous years they have competed hard with, but also showed a capacity to work with, opposition parties, led by the "moderate Islamist" Ennahda, which is represented in government and parliament.
article_snippet: Local Salafist groups (of whom the best known is Ansar Al-Sharia) as well as multinational units including ISIS have been most effective in recruiting disaffected young Tunisians in the capital's poorer quarters and in dusty towns of the south and interior, where the original revolution that removed Ben Ali in February 2011 surged up.
article_snippet: Legitimate claims for more jobs and resources in these underprivileged areas during the four subsequent years have largely come to nothing, adding to frustrations.
article_snippet: Radical jihadists -- some with back bases in Libya and Algeria -- have posed a major security challenge to successive governments, murdering two prominent "secular" politicians in 2013.
article_snippet: The Tunisian armed forces, supported by Algeria's more experienced and better equipped military, have been fighting jihadist radicals in the Mount Chaambi region for nearly three years.
article_snippet: The Tunisian armed forces, supported by Algeria's more experienced and better equipped military have yet to declare final victory, pointing to the resilience of underground groups.
article_snippet: While successive governments have acted against radical Salafist groups, thousands of Tunisians have gone underground; thousands of Tunisians are widely believed to make up the biggest national group fighting with jihadists in Syria (over 3,000 by many accounts), and are present in Libya and other failing states.
article_snippet: In January 2013, Tunisians and Libyans made up the majority of jihadists who attacked a strategic gas plant operated by BP and Statoil in southern Algeria.
article_snippet: Prime Minister Habib Essid has promised a robust security response.
article_snippet: Massacre at the Bardo places Tunisia more centrally within the global ISIS narrative, which has recently expanded to neighboring Libya.