Tunisia is at the forefront of a global struggle against jihadi-salafi violence that has intensified since 2011. In the first two years after the revolution that ended decades of authoritarian rule under Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisian jihadi-salafists saw Tunisia largely as a “land of da`wa,” or spiritual outreach. Rather than confront the state directly, they recruited adherents through social activism and encouraged young Tunisians to join the expanding fight against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, which rallied would-be jihadi-salafi fighters and revolutionaries from around the world. Yet, Tunisia could not isolate itself from the gathering violence in the region. By 2013, a slew of attacks against military forces along the country’s western border and two high-profile political assassinations in the capital thrust Tunisia into a new phase of escalating and expanding confrontation. In the words of jihadi-salafists, Tunisia had become a “land of jihad.”…