Standing in his one-room store between tables stacked with brightly colored t-sh...
BEN GUERDANE, Tunisia - Standing in his one-room store between tables stacked with brightly colored t-shirts and jeans, Fathi Mars gestures in despair.
The financial fallout from Libya’s war is another blow for Tunisia. The North African country helped inspire the broader Arab Spring uprisings with its overthrow of autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. But while Tunisians now have democracy, financially they are struggling. The fighting nixed a trade deal between Tunisia and Libya which would have allowed travelers to import consumer goods worth 10,000 Libyan dinars to Tunisia, reversing the limits and arbitrary bans previously put on imports by armed groups and officials representing the Libyan state, traders and officials in Ben Guerdane said.
Most adults in the ramshackle town of 100,000 don’t have a regular job, according to a local labor union and without income from trading, tensions rise. When Libya closed the main Ras Jdir crossing into the country for more than two months last year, Ben Guerdane residents demonstrated. Traditionally, Tunisian traders have been able to exploit a lucrative gap between high prices at home, where the government has been increasing taxes, and low prices in Libya, where little or no import duties or taxes are paid on goods, and food and fuel have been heavily subsidized.
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