A short (really 'compressed') 'summary' on Tunisian Air Force's ops vs local (and Algerian) extremists is meanwhile available as Tunisia Waged a Successful Air War Against Militants — And No One Noticed
A very interesting 'reaction' by one of readers of this article appeared shortly later (apparently by what might be a 'disgusted Algerian', or at least sounds that way):
This reader is partially right: I should have better emphasised the levels of military and security cooperation between the two countries - at least the levels that are meanwhile 'in powers'.This article describes a tension between Algeria and Tunisia that DOES NOT exist.
Wondering what your sources may be. The Minister of Defense of Tunisia himself acknowledged publicly the shortcomings of Tunisia in the intelligence field, and as he put it “ without the help of Algeria with regards to Intelligence we would have been overwhelmed by the jihadi rebels”.
Furthermore, the successes that this article describes are in part Algerian, or rather joint Tunisian/Algerian wins.
Algeria and Tunisia have signed a joint agreement whereby Algeria agreed to assist Tunisia with its COIN campaign in the common border area.
Algerian Helicopters have actively participated in COIN operations on Tunisian soil at the request of Tunisian authorities.
Tunisia has a very courageous and tenacious military, but they are under-equipped whilst Algeria has one of the largest military in the Mediterranean, and was ranked #1 in Africa prior to Egypt’s recent acquisitions.
Algeria is helping Tunisia in its COIN campaign, first out of solidarity as the two countries are very close allies, and second out of common interest.
Algeria cannot afford, and will not allow terrorism to take hold in Tunisia.
The security and stability of the two countries is intertwined, Algeria wants Tunisia to succeed in its COIN campaign and provides financial, military and intelligence support to the Tunisian authorities to that effect.
Sorry, but the story involving the scrambling of an Algerian Su30MKA in response to Tunisian air raids in the Kasserine region is pure fantasy.
Anyone with basic knowledge of these two countries and their security / defense apparatus would dismiss it as complete nonsense.
That said, it is so that there were two periods of 'cooperation' between Algeria and Tunisia in regards of security situation in the latter country:
1.) immediately following the revolution of 2011, when there was plenty of mutual suspicion (especially Algerians suspected that Tunisians would be supervised by specific Western powers), and
2.) another, running ever since negotiations between two governments and establishment of direct links between two military commands, in March 2013.
While there is little doubt that this cooperation directly contributed to the Tunisian success of 2013 (which is little surprise considering the wealth of intelligence and experience on Algerian side), it cannot be denied that it was a very unpleasant period - for both sides - and that there were tensions ‘well beyond’ the ‘usual suspicion’ at that time. What I mean with this is that some of my sources clearly say, Algerians were de-facto threatening to open fire.
Good thing is: nothing of this kind happened, things were sorted out, and the cooperation is indeed, very good nowadays.
Finally, I should add that even though certainly supporting Tunisians, Algerian authorities are kind of unable to confirm this officially. Reason is that they repeatedly criticised various of local media's 'exaggerations' about operations in question, and declared these for 'anti-drug-smuggler' operations.
Now Algiers just can't correct itself...
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