Tunis Bardo Museum Bombing
Mark Perry March 19th, 2015

On Wednesday, Mar 18th multiple gunmen entered the famous Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia. The museum features relics from the Ancient Greece, Rome and from the Islamic world. The gunmen started shooting tourists inside the museum which resulted in 17 confirmed deaths, and 24 injuries as of today. The tourists which were killed were from countries such as Italy, France, and Japan. Two of the gunmen were killed during the attack by Tunisian forces, and one security officer and one clean women were also killed by the gunmen.

Upon news of this attack, worldwide news outlets such as CNN and The Guardian started posting articles dealing with the event, the possible identities of the gunmen and the implications. The Prime Minister of Tunisia, Habib Essio, issued a statement in the wake of the attack, including "....cowardly assault targeting economy". The 3 hour siege and hostage situation has sparked mass social media posts and views across the country.

Finally as of today Isis has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying "just the start". While their responsibility has not been officially ruled senior US officials have said that we should take their statements seriously. 9 individuals have been arrested in conjunction with the attack in Tunisia and are under investigation.

This event comes to this dismay of the relatively successful country of Tunisia. Success here can be seen as their liberation and democratization, as they have been described as the "lone democratic success of the Arab Spring". The North African country however does have conflict and recently it was reported that 3,000 jihadisits from Tunisia have made their way to Syria and Iraq. These facts and ideas are pertinent to this event as the world can see how the environment of Tunisia is both one of harboring jihadists while also being successful at pushing democracy in the Arab world.

In terms of risk, the Bardo museum itself was not in any way prepared for an attack of this magnitude or strength. There were little to no guards and not enough safety measures to prevent an attack. While we can look and say that the museum should have had more safety precautions, why would it? Museums have historically been sacred locations avoided by terrorist organizations and in times of war. During World War II the Nazis avoided bombing historical sites and museums, such as in Italy with the protection of famous museums and artifacts by Mussolini. So the assumption can be made that the Bardo Museum was not irresponsible in its security methods.

So if it was not the museum responsible in preventing this attack who was? According to  Peter Haas in his work Addressing the Global Governance Deficit the globalizing world and new political actors are at fault for global governance problems. In this case, the globalizing world makes the most sense. With the emersion of social media in terrorist organizations, such as ISIS, scheming, recruiting and implementing terrorist attacks have never been easier. It seems that every week we see new articles of ISIS recruiting teens from the United States for their terrorist organization. Through Peter Haas analysis we can see that as the world gets smaller, so does the risk. This pushes the international community to work harder to prevent terrorist attacks and have a leg up on threats.



Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/18/eight-people-killed-in-attack-on-tunisia-bardo-museum

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/18/africa/tunisia-parliament-evacuated/

Addressing the Global Governance Deficit Peter M Haas.