Editing Tunisian Armed Forces (section)

===The military and politics===
The Library of Congress Country Study says:<blockquote>His exclusive power to promote military officers has been among the strongest components of Bourguiba's control over the armed forces. From independence, high-ranking officers—general staff and senior commanders in particular—have been carefully selected for their party loyalty more than for their professional experience and competence. This began in the late 1950s when the president dismissed those officers who had trained in the Middle East and who might therefore have been expected to sympathize with the militant Pan-Arab policies of Egypt's Nasser. The hand-picked senior officers, in turn, carefully screened all officers who were considered for positions of authority in line units to ensure that antiregime elements did not pose potential threats at any level of the military establishment.

As a result of these promotion policies, the Tunisian officer corps took on a very homogeneous character that only began to break down in the 1970s. Senior officers have been generally representative of Tunisia's economically and politically dominant families from the north, the coastal areas, and the major cities. Although military men have been kept from operating major business ventures or holding political office while in uniform, it has been common for family members to be prominent in business or in the Destourian political movement. Generally Western and Francophile in outlook, tied by kinship to the country's upper socioeconomic stratum, and personally familiar with leading figures in the PSD, high-ranking Tunisian officers must be classed as part of the national elite.</blockquote>In 2021, Tunisia boosted the role of military in their fight to curb the pandemic's spread. On Monday 5th, the [[President of Tunisia|Tunisian presidency]] announced that medical and paramedical university graduates of the last three years will be drafted by the army. The intent was to remedy to a shortage of medical staff in public and private hospitals because hundreds of unhappy health professionals have left the country in recent years. Among other decisions, a vaccination campaign will be waged by joint civilian-military teams  around the country under the supervision of the army.<ref name="thearabweekly.com">{{Cite web|title=Tunisia boosts role of military in fight to curb pandemic's soaring toll {{!}}|url=https://thearabweekly.com/tunisia-boosts-role-military-fight-curb-pandemics-soaring-toll|access-date=2021-07-09|website=AW|language=en}}</ref>