After provoking an uproar in February by denouncing the presence of "hordes of illegal migrants" in Tunisia – comments that have led to violence against migrants of sub-Saharan origin in the country – President Kaïs Saïed sparked a new controversy last week, this time with neighboring Libya.

During a visit on March 16 to the premises of the Tunisian Company of Petroleum Activities (Etap), the Head of State reopened a file that has fallen into the dustbin of history: that of the Libyan offshore field of Bouri, located 120 km north of Libya and considered one of the largest oil fields in operation in the Mediterranean. According to UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), its reserves contain "4.5 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas."

A border dispute settled... in 1985

In a video broadcast by the Tunisian presidency's website, Kaïs Saïed appears flanked by the CEO of ETAP, Dalila Chabbi Bouattour, with whom he holds, in front of the camera, a map of the country's hydrocarbon reserves. Pointing directly to the Libyan offshore field, the president laments that Tunisia has received only "crumbs of Bouri", while a fair sharing of its revenues could "meet all the needs of Tunisia and more". This is despite the fact that the dispute over the maritime border area between Libya and Tunisia was decided in favour of Tripoli by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1982. A decision confirmed three years later by the body that sits in The Hague.

The Bouri offshore field. © FMM Graphic Studio

Kaïs Saïed then recalls that in the 1970s, well before recourse to the ICJ, there was an intention to divide the field into two equal halves with Libya, but that this solution had been rejected by Tunisia then chaired by Habib Bourguiba, in power between 1957 and 1987.

Unsurprisingly, these remarks both critical of the first president of the Tunisian Republic and seeming to question the decision rendered by the ICJ provoked an outcry within the Libyan political class and on social networks.

"The wealth of Libya belongs to the Libyan people," thundered the chairman of the energy committee in the Libyan parliament, Aïssa Aribi, in a statement relayed Sunday by the Libyan News Agency.

For his part, the Libyan Minister of Oil and Gas, Mohamed Aoun, simply recalled in a press release that the ICJ had decided the border dispute in favor of Libya, and that the Tunisian president was "wrong".

On the side of the Tunisian media, some question the timing and purpose of the presidential exit. "It remains to be questioned about the motives of the Tunisian president who thought he had to put this long-settled case back on the table," writes the online news site Kapitalis. What does he seek to prove or provoke? Knowing that Tunisian-Libyan relations, without really being good, are not at their lowest level either and that the two countries, which face internal tensions, will gladly dispense with polemics all the more unproductive because they are anachronistic or even senseless."

Experts are also wondering, said a Tunis-based historian, who requested anonymity for fear of professional reprisals. "Specialists on Tunisia's land and sea borders are still wondering which fly stung Kaïs Saïed," he said. Even if, alas, Tunisians are now accustomed to him throwing anathemas and sweeping judgments."

And to continue: "Fortunately the Libyans have remained sober in their reactions by recalling their sovereign right over this area, because this is what allows, for the moment, not to transform this somewhat absurd controversy into a major diplomatic crisis. At the time, Libya and Tunisia agreed to settle their dispute by taking the matter to international justice. But when we accept the logic of a compromise, we accept the sentence of the Court."

"He alone decides everything"

According to the academic, this "umpteenth" controversy is the result of "a political calculation motivated by personal reasons" since the president's statements seem to him to have been prepared, card in support.

"He may have wanted to show the public that he has inherited the mistakes of the past on key issues such as hydrocarbons, but I see above all a way for him to distance himself from current problems and raise his stature with the population," adds the academic. You can't even blame his advisers for not dissuading him from reopening this case because he alone decides everything, even to the point of allowing himself to rewrite history and build a new nationalist narrative in order to build his own image."

Quits, insists the historian, "to try, as soon as he can, to tarnish the image of Habib Bourguiba, who remains a historical and charismatic leader in the eyes of Tunisians".

>> Read also: "Anti-migrant discourse in Tunisia: 'A way to make forget the country's problems'"

Criticized internationally, the Tunisian president, who arrogated full powers to himself in July 2021, is under pressure. A few weeks after the African Union - which had condemned its "shocking" statements on sub-Saharan migrants - it is the European Union that has expressed concern in recent days about the deterioration of the political and economic situation in the country, where the opposition denounces a decline in rights and freedoms since the presidential coup.

"This pointless controversy comes at a time when Tunisia is struggling to get out of the international crisis caused by the president's comments on sub-Saharan migrants. We cannot afford the luxury of a new diplomatic crisis, let alone with neighboring Libya, concludes the Tunis-based academic. Especially since the country is quite isolated regionally and internationally because of our difficulties, both politically and economically, but also economically and financially."

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