U.S. and Tunisia Are Fighting Militants Together. Just Don’t Ask Them About It. By Lilia Blaise, Eric Schmitt and Carlotta Gall – New York Times
TUNIS, Tunisia — Two years ago, American Marines battled Al Qaeda militants in western Tunisia along the border with Algeria. A Marine and a Tunisian soldier were wounded and two other Marines were later commended for their valor in the gunfight.
Yet many details of the February 2017 clash remain murky, largely because of the Tunisian government’s political sensitivities over the presence of American forces on their territory.
Publicly, American officials will say only that the battle happened in a North African “host” country. The Tunisian authorities have refused to confirm that anything happened at all.
Last year, when one of the most detailed accounts of the clash to date surfaced in a report in Task & Purpose, a privately owned American website focused on military and veterans affairs, the Tunisian Ministry of Defense was dismissive. It said the “presence of American troops in Tunisia was only for cooperation and training, not conducting operations.”
But in fact, the United States and Tunisia have quietly expanded and deepened their security and counterterrorism ties over the past several years, with some 150 Americans training and advising their Tunisian counterparts in one of largest missions of its kind on the African continent, according to American officials.
And the 2017 clash, confirmed by an American official and an American security expert, was a stark example of the risks American forces face in trying to help their North African allies battle Qaeda-linked groups…