Tunisia - Military Personnel

The Tunisian 35,800-member Armed Forces comprise the Land Army, Navy, and Air Force. Males ages 20-23 are obligated to complete a year of military service. Active duty personnel are not authorized to vote while serving.

While under French control, Tunisia served France as an important source of manpower. After establishing the protectorate, the French, under a beylical decree in 1883, were granted the authority to recruit local Muslims for the purpose of forming mixed French-Muslim military units. By 1893 all Muslim males in Tunisia became subject to military duty, although it was possible for those chosen for service to provide substitutes as long as induction quotas were fulfilled. As a result, most of the recruits came from the poorer classes of Tunisian society, and illiteracy was the norm among them. Conscripted Muslim Tunisians were required to serve for three years, as were French settlers, who were subject to the conscription laws of metropolitan France.

To assist in the pacification effort throughout the Maghrib, the French — as they had done in Algeria — formed Muslim infantry regiments of tirailleurs (riflemen) and spahis (cavalry) in Tunisia. In the late nineteenth century some of these units joined with their Algerian counterparts in aiding the French in military conquests south of the Sahara. Muslim Tunisian soldiers also formed regiments in the Foreign Legion and served in southern Tunisia as haristes (camel corpsmen). Although Muslims served in all branches of the French army, strict segregation was normal.

Few Tunisian soldiers — unless they were naturalized French citizens — were able to become officers, and of those only a small number rose beyond the rank of captain. In mixed units Muslim officers were not permitted command authority, and none were given high-level staff positions anywhere in the French military organization. The infantry and cavalry units were strictly divided on ethno-religious grounds; Muslim soldiers served under the command of French officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs). More equality existed in artillery units, where Muslim soldiers were assigned as drivers as the French served as gunners. Most of the transportation corps consisted of Muslims under French command.

Although recruited chiefly for military service in Africa, Tunisian members of the French army were liable for service abroad and served with courage and distinction in such divergent spots as France and Indochina. It has been estimated that of the approximately 75,000 Tunisians who served France during World War I, some 50,000 experienced combat in the trenches on the western front, where they suffered a high casualty rate. Before France collapsed under the onslaught of Hitler's troops in World War II, many Tunisian soldiers and their counterparts from Algeria and Morocco were sent to Europe to aid the French in their fight against the Germans. As part of Hitler's June 1940 armistice agreement that accompanied German occupation, France was permitted to retain 15,000 troops in Tunisia, of which roughly 10,500 were Muslims. After Allied successes in the fight to liberate North Africa in 1943, Tunisian and other North African soldiers saw action in the Italian campaign and the eventual liberation of France.

In April 1956 the French transferred responsibility for Tunisia's internal security to the new Tunisian government, including indigenous elements of the police services that had operated under French control during the protectorate era. In June 1956 the French government, beset with greater concerns for the Algerian conflict, agreed to assist Tunisia in the formation of its own military arm. The nucleus of the new military force — the ANT — consisted of roughly 1,300 Muslim Tunisian soldiers, who were released from the French army, and some 600 ceremonial troops of the beylical guard, which the French had permitted the Tunisian bey to retain as a personal bodyguard throughout the protectorate era. These sources of military personnel were supplemented by volunteers — loyal party youth and politically reliable fellaghas of the earlier resistance movement.

According to Minister of National Defense Abdullah Farhat in 1976, the republic's defense policy was based on the idea that "Victory in this age comes through one or two elements," he pointed out, "the atomic weapon or comprehensive people's defense. Since we have no expansionist aims or nuclear ambitions, the only thing left for us is the second alternative."

The Tunisian government continued to emphasize the notion of a comprehensive people's defense in the mid-1980s, but in reality, defense policy was oriented more toward the modernization of the regular forces than to the building of reserve strength. Bourguiba in public statements still stressed "the need to ensure participation of civilians and all the people in defending the gains of the state" and called for "military preparation for all citizens."

To offset the cost of the military, the ANT since its formation has lent its support to civic development programs. Much of this effort has come from the engineering units and vast numbers of conscripts who have labored on construction projects or in the building of transportation facilities, mainly in the Sahara and other remote areas of the country. In 1985 the minister of national defense announced the formation of a special army regiment that would be devoted to developing the Sahara. Observers, however, have reported that the younger soldiers at times have shown as little enthusiasm for this tertiary mission as they have for their role as surrogate policemen.

Under the National Service law, which operated in conjunction with military conscription requirements, Tunisian youth who reached age 20 were expected to serve either in uniform for one year or for a like period on programs such as building roads in rural areas, laying railroad track, retimbering land, planting to control desert encroachment, or constructing rural housing units. The program operated as a responsibility of the army, but various ministries provided technical planning and supervision of the work programs. In practice, the projects involving National Service conscripts were designed to avoid competition with workers in high unemployment areas. Almost all of the work, therefore, was located in remote rural regions of the country. In the mid-1980s it was thought that approximately 3,000 young people served in the National service.