Tunisia Sandwich

Caught in the middle

Libyan Mortars land in Tunisia

“Free” Tunisia sits between Algeria and Libya. Algeria is making it clearer they intend to help the Qadaffi regime. Tunisia used to be under the colonial control of Italy, but was invaded by France in the 1880s and only gained its independence from France in the 1950s. Unlike Algeria, Egypt and Libya that bought Soviet weapons during the cold war, Tunisia’s military has US and European weapons like the US built F5 fighter planes and M60 tanks.

You may remember this entire North African “revolution” started when a street vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire because a female government official told him he couldn’t sell stuff on the street without a permit.

A logical inference is that the Libyan military wasn’t just playing around with their artillery and accidentally fired it – but that they spotted someone or some thing trying to slip into Libya through the Southern part of their border. If Algeria really comes to the aid of Qadaffi, there is no way they can let Tunisia be an entry point for covert military adventures.

So now that the UK has “boots on the ground”, what happens when the first truck bomb blows up by their hotel?

And so it goes…

And which side would Morocco line up on?

 http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE73I01X20110419

Other reports today (after I started to write this)indicate that Tunisia is playing an active role in supplying fuel and other supplies to Tripoli.   Time to expand the “Asset Freeze” to all of Africa?

http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFN2016870720110420

2009 Nobel Peace Prize indeed!