Date: October 5, 2021
Is 60% of Tunisia’s army funded by America?
Lead Fact Checker: Mohamed-Dhia Hammami
Feedback Contact: info@arabmediafactcheck.org
Fact Check Assessment: False
On October 5, 2021, an article entitled US-Tunisian military cooperation tested by Saied's actions and authored by Elizia Volkmann, a British freelance journalist based in Tunis, on the Al-Monitor website quoted Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Washington-DC based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, as saying that, “The budget of the army has tripled since the [Tunisian] revolution and about 60% of the budget comes from military assistance from the United States.”
The article doesn’t mention that Masmoudi is a member of the Political Bureau of the Tunisian Ennahda Party, which has been vigorously opposed to the current Tunisian president’s suspension of Parliament since the Summer of 2021, and that he has been a longstanding advisor to Ennahda’s founding President Rached Ghannouchi, including during the previous periods that saw Ennahda controlling key levers of government and with substantial representation in the (now) suspended Parliament.
More problematically, the author lets Masmoudi’s claim that 60% of Tunisia’s army is funded by America go unchallenged and incorrectly states a wildly inaccurate number for Tunisia’s total military budget: “2018 military donations accounted for 40% of an overall budget of $244.9 billion.” In fact, Tunisia’s total military budget in 2018 was only $846 million. Moreover, according to the US Pentagon, over the ten years from 2011 and 2020, a total of “more than $1 billion” was provided by the US to Tunisia's military. US funds were delivered under three programs: International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, and Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining, and Related Programs. Between 2015 and 2020, for example, the total military aid to Tunisia fluctuated between $34.4 million in 2015 and $103.2 in 2017. It never, however, exceeded 12% of the annual expenses of the Tunisian military.
Masmoudi’s further claim that Tunisia’s military expenditures tripled since the Tunisian revolution in 2011 is also misleading. In 2011, military expenditures were $517 million while in 2020 they reached $1.046 billion. While this represents a doubling in real, USD terms, the military budget did jump more than threefold between 2011 and 2020 if one counts in nominal, Tunisian dinar terms - the national currency, the Dinar, having lost more than 50% of its value since the 2011 revolution.
