Next Morning

I hadn't really slept in about 2 days so i woke up today at around 1 pm. Hamduallah

My experiences last night at the barricades were pretty intense.

As I wrote last night, I initially went out there to stop potential looters from robbing me or 
any of my friends. I had also never have had to opportunity to "man the barricades" before, and I enjoy new experiences.

I had heard rumors that there may be members of the interior ministry connected security forces (aka THE POLICE, NOT THE ARMY) causing problems, but i thought they were just corrupt cops killing people for their stuff.

When I got to the barricades people were a little surprised I was there. I don't speak Arabic very well, and I was probably one of the only foreigners who was stupid and bored enough to stand on a corner in the entire country that night.

I was only there for a few minutes when we were told that looters were not the real enemy tonight. Like I have written before, there has been a highly organized and brutal attempt by the interior ministry (i think its safe to call them the "former" interior ministry now) to sow chaos by going on a campaign of seemingly-random mass murders across the country.

These terrorists were armed with automatic weapons and driving around in cars, and we were all on foot armed only with axe handles, knives and badly constructed barricades. At this point I started getting a little nervous.

However, despite the terror and despair everyone was feeling, the barricades were sort of like a block party, albeit a block party with terrifying undertones of violence.

As the night went on people started bringing out water and tea, and more people came out to join us. There were a lot of people there who seemed like they wanted to practice their English and i wanted to practice my Arabic (jaiysh=army, katush=gun shot, tahan=asshole=policeman)

When the police start killing random citizens out of spite, and then a newly revolutionary army goes a head and deputizes everyone with a knife or stick, it really brings out the worst and best in people.

There was one drunken fat man, who's breath smelled of liquor who was wielding dual butcher knives. He kept threatening other volunteers and vandalizing things and eventually people made him leave.

Most of the people were extremely inspirational and there were some people who took it upon themselves to be sort of leaders or messengers and ran from corner to corner, letting people know what was up. In my neighborhood the people who were doing this were two old men, and (implausibly) one young woman.

The young woman, named Leila spoke some English. She said "you are in our country, in our revolution" I started to say "I just don't want anyone taking my shit or shooting at my house" but she cut me off "you should get citizenship here, like Che in Cuba."

My motives are far from revolutionary, and she was totally busting my balls, but it still felt nice.

Police on my street

There is a building on my street that does not look like it belongs in Tunisia.

It is brightly colored and has a design that what look more comfortable in Southeast Asia then in North Africa.

It clearly took a lot of money to build.

I learned this week that relatives of Ben Ali live there. Someone at the barricades told me that the head of the family worked as a traditional musician, a career that would not generally support the construction of such an ostentatious building.

The people at the barricades assume that the family who lived in this house paid for their life style in a corrupt manner. They were angry about this, and angry because the presence of Ben Ali's family here could bring looters, or worse.

A few minutes ago there were well armed pro-army/government police going in and out of the house. Many people at the barricades last night hopefully speculated that these people would have some of their money and/or property confiscated. Whether this process is starting is anyone's guess.

Even though the police are local, and therefore presumably on the up and up, after the events of this last weekend it was still a little nerveracking to see police with assault rifles on my street.

UPDATE

xerocada asked

"Would you define "pro-army/government police"?

BBC's coverage today indicated that there is still a lot of sporadic violence in the capital as well as confusion as to the composition of the interim government. Please comment."
______________________________________________________________________________________________


The worst violence  of the last few days involved the army and local citizens groups fighting (unidentified and partially identified) well armed and well organized cells of terrorists.


I generally have referred to these people as "terrorists" and Tunisians have been using the term "militia." They are the ones going around shooting random people and soldiers and burning down government buildings.


This "militia" is almost definitely made up of former security forces, and most likely certain elements of the presidential bodyguard and/or high ranking "special police" linked to the interior ministry. (these are two groups Tunisians have mentioned, but they could be the same organization)

In the first day of the violence these men kept their uniforms on during the day, and my friend saw a bunch of non-military security forces in black uniforms open fire on a group of people peacefully celebrating the end of the regime.

At night they changed into plain clothes and drove around killing soldiers and civilians and generally doing nasty things.

These are the anti-military/government police.

However, it seems that most local police were not involved in this terrorism and they are currently working with the army, especially during the day. These are who i mean by the pro-army/government police (ie. they are not shooting at soldiers and they are not trying to terrorize the new government out of existence.

The clashes in Tunis have been protests, and I haven't heard of anyone being shot at them yet. As of yesterday my friends in Tunis were seeing machine-gun toting Militia exchanging fire with Army helicopters. As far as I have heard those pitched gun battles are over.

Some barricades being removed

My neighbors who are relatives of Ben Ali (the ones in the nice house I mentioned earlier) supposedly got attacked today. It was nothing major though.

Rumor is that they had taken out some loans when their relative was President and never paid them back because they didn't have to. Supposedly, now that their license to steal is gone, the people who they owe money to were trying to get some of it back.

Anyways I guess the lenders punched a guy and threatened them, and now a squad of 5 or 6 military guys is posted up on my block.(unfortunately they were the first people I have met in this conflict who refused to have their pictures taken) This is a good thing, as it makes us extremely secure, and as a result we didn't even bother building the barricade on my street tonight. (we take it down every morning so people can use their cars and park for the stores and mosque)

Since our houses are safe, My neighbor invited me to come hang out at his friends barricade. His friend lives on a main street close to my house, so we grabbed our Assahs (sticks used for defense) and walked over.

On the way over, we stopped by a black market beer shop and picked up a bunch of beers. The beer dealers were operating out of a somewhat run down house and got down just like dope dealers in America...a bunch of big older guys were sitting around watching, and 14 year olds would take your money and give you the beer.

We got to the barricade and chilled out and gave beers to the guys who don't pray. We had checked about five or ten cars when a military truck came rumbling by. He said that though the situation was still not settled, things has improved enough that the Soldiers wanted us to remove the barricades on the major streets, although we could still keep them on the side streets.

We quickly removed the the main barricade but still controlled access to the side streets. The local police are driving around now, but in every car of three policemen must have one soldier in it. This is because neither the military, nor anyone I have talked to, trusts the police.

When one of these mixed cars drove by our barricade, one of my new friends yelled at it something that basically means "much respect to the soldiers, fuck the police."

Eventually I headed back towards my house and went to my other friend's corner, where practically the entire block was out drinking coffee and eating cake.

As much as I hope things get back to normal, I hope the blockparty-like atmosphere atmosphere in my neighborhood continues.

Mah block

Tonight turned out to be pretty exciting/terrifying after all, especially towards the beach. Some of my neighbors found a terrorist sniper sitting on the neighborhood post office early in the evening. They dealt with him, but i dont know they called the military or just did him themselves.

 Last night there had been extremely heavy fighting around my house starting at around 6 or seven. I had only heard a few bursts of automatic gun fire before 9 or 10 pm tonight, so i figured we were out of the woods......

Turns out I was wrong. The rumors on the barricades were very confused (as rumors generally are) but I guess the army started following two suspicious looking vehicles driving down the main tourist road by the beach.

The two cars were indeed filled with police/terrorists, and when they opened up on the military, killing two soldiers. they then went on a very violent car chase that went through my neighborhood (I didn't see it but i sure heard it)

The military and people's militia killed most of the terrorists in the car after that. Unfortunately one got away, but if he isn't on his back now he will be soon, hamduallah.

I took a nice video of the people's volunteers and the barricades in my area, it will be up soon...

To the barricades/"Don't Trust the Police"

Coming back from downtown today (more on that in next post) on every corner we saw huge groups of men boys and even a few women holding every manner of blunt object.

They were all wearing white arm bands that showed that they were with the army and protecting their neighborhood.

I had already gotten some axe handles and given them to some friends, and my one friend invited me to stand on his corner with him and his boys. His corner is a few blocks away from my house so I decided to go against my better judgement and go with him.

Walking to his corner was surreal. Every single corner had a collection of men, young boys and even a few women brandishing all sorts of weapons (except guns). They had built barricades out of random trash to block traffic and were standing around them.

When i got to his corner i was introduced to all the guys standing there. To say I was completely out of place would be a gross understatement, but they were generally friendly with me.

 Shortly after I got there learned some very disturbing news. Men in unmarked cars had been driving around Sousse and shooting random people out of their cars. Since these men were killing seemingly random people and since they had guns it was assumed by most Tunisians that they were probably former members of elite police/interior ministry units. These men are roughly comparable to the Republican Guard in Ba'athist Iraq and were the people who did the dirty work of the Ben Ali regime.

I've been hearing stories about them since I got here, and to put it mildly they are not to be trifled with. They have a lot to fear from a new regime, since they could probably be convicted of human rights violations.

Now the theory was they were murdering random people, to sow chaos and maybe bring about a return of the old regime.

My new friends and I stood around the barricade, axehandles in hand waiting for something to happen. I'm pretty sure we had all come there initially for the same reason, we didn't want looters taking any of our shit. But with this new information the stakes became much higher.

Finally at like 8 pm (as i'm writing it's 845) I got hungry. I also felt less brave now that my potential enemies were hardened, homocidal secret agents out for political revenge, not skinny teenagers trying to steal my laptop.

I decided to walk back to my house to make pasta. I was stirring the sauce when I heard loud, opposing gun fire come from the street where my friends were. If I had thought about it I would have stayed in the house, but i ran out to see what had happened.

My friends had not been shot at. Instead the mysterious assassins had murdered some people in the next town and got caught by the military coming into Khzema. Soldiers rolled up and explained.

Basically they said that they had caught one of the assassins and indeed he was interior ministry. The soldier then said that they were looking for the rest and that we should all watch our back. then he said the most chilling thing.

"Don't trust the police, don't trust ANY police, if you see them attack them"

A member of the Tunisian military just told a mob of stick wielding civilians to attack any policeman on sight.

gunfire is continuing and it seems different then last night.

last night it seemed very one sided, like security forces were firing on looters.

now it sounds more like a gun battle, where both sides are armed.

This is not good

Mosque Sermon

Today the neighborhood Mosque broadcast it's entire friday sermon over the loudspeaker. Until this friday, they only announced the call to prayer over the loud speaker.

I only barely understood parts of it, but it definitely referenced Tunisia and current events. Until about a week ago, broadcasting an amplified religious sermon, especially one about politics would have been unthinkably stupid and would get you some very negative attention from the interior ministry.

This illustrates something important about the so-called "Jazmine Revolution". This movement might not be able to create a European-style democracy here, or end pervasive corruption and unemployment. However, freedom of expression, especially relating to religion and political dissent, will increase.

Yesterday I went downtown to meet my Tunisian friend who came in from Gafsa. We went to a bar for a few beers and on the way I was able to take some photos.

On the way we walked past a peaceful demonstration that was wrapping up in front of the local trade union office. The trade union (the UGTT) is one of the most progressive (or at least anti-regime) organizations that operated above ground over the last few years. The army's actions in support of the people started the revolution, but the UGTT's actions are what started the protest movement.

If I had to guess I would say any left of center/secular political group here will probably coalesce around the UGTT

The people here were demonstrating in favor of the the union and against any members of the old regime staying in positions of power. The UGTT has been threatening a mass strike if former regime figures stay in power.

Police offices are still in pretty bad shape.

Even worse off are companies (like TunisAir) that were owned by the ruling families. This office was right next to a police station, and it still got looted and burned.



My friend Leila was nice enough to talk about the political future of Tunisia

What she says is pretty in line with what I've been hearing here, although it might be different outside of the Sahel.(my region)

The attitude at the barricades is very apolitical. Everyone I have talked to has expressed hatred of the former regime, but this was because of their corruption, brutality and incompetence, not their ideology. Also people often praise the army and hope for "stability." So far I have heard no endorsement or even much mention of any political party, or ideology.

Barricades, My narration

"we are the not the police, we are the army, we do not shoot our people, we are with the people"

Today at around 2pm I went to downtown Sousse with some friends to see the damage.

The louage (bus) station was on fire. So was the the Tunis train station. I'm not getting out of here anytime soon. Huge pillars of smoke are still rising into the sky.

On the way downtown our cab had to stop. the army and police were both outside the town liquor store arresting looters. The army was arguing with the police and eventually made them leave, then this happened...

I wrote in the last page that, despite what I would have assumed, the Army is LOVED by the average Tunisian and the police are generally hated and feared. Today showed why.

In this video he's basically saying "we are not the police, we do not shoot our own people like the police, we are the army, we need your help but we will defend you" the people cheered and then the army drove away.

The only police that are still working are the elite, political police. They shoot people for the most minor infractions. Today my American friend saw some Tunisians stomping on a picture of the former president and cheering. All of a sudden police came up and began indiscriminately shooting into the crowd. He didn't see anyone die but still.

The army sent young boys around to distribute leaflets today. They said if you want to defend your neighborhood put a white rag around your arm and grab any weapon you can. The people are clearly for the army at this point.

As I write there are mobs of civilians (including, foolishly and implausibly, myself) wearing white armbands on every corner. Someone, almost definitely the former special police/secret service, has been driving around shooting at these groups of people and getting in gunfights with the army.

I'll write more and post pictures later, but people are shooting around my house and I want to check it out...


UPDATE

I should say that the regular cops, the ones who direct traffic and write reports are almost definitely NOT RESPONSIBLE for this stuff. My good friends father is a cop, and both him and his dad are wearing white arm bands at the barricades. The people doing this are the elite/worst.