L'accrochage de Aïn Draham. The forgotten fil rouge in the battle for Tunisia’s second independence

Abstract

This article is the result of a set of investigations performed in Tunis over a period of two years. The scope of this article is to better investigate a series of events that happened in Aïn Draham on the 31st of May of 1957, by proposing the accurate description that is largely missing in the existing literature. The aim is to devote a broader space to those events by placing them in the context of the post-independence period, as well as in Habib Bourguiba’s (al-Ḥabīb Būrqība) actions, by trying to demonstrate the existence of a link between Aïn Draham clashes and overstudied events such as Sakiet Sidi Youssef and the Bizerte war. The ultimate goal is to challenge current literature’s approach, which moves directly from the independence (1956) to the Bizerte evacuation (1961), having as the only intermediate event the bombardment of Sakiet Sidi Youssef in 1958. Aïn Draham battle occurred during a crucial and delicate period of Tunisian history, as a result of internal and external tensions, in an area under extreme pressure (the Algerian-Tunisian border) and on the edge of an international crisis. The main idea behind the article is to re-evaluate resistance pathways and understand the value of understudied histories, as well as their contribution to and influence over well-known events of Tunisian contemporary history.