TUNIS, Tunisia – Tunisia has reason to fear a ****** ******. The only democracy that emerged from the turmoil of the 2011 Arab Spring has seen more of its young men join the Islamic State group than any other nation, and many have returned, battle-hardened, to spread radical ideologies back home. It’s also a country full of vulnerable targets, with an economy that depends on welcoming European tourists to its warm Mediterranean shore.

Despite having so much at stake, the shocking slayings of 22 tourists at the national museum in March failed to persuade lawmakers to resolve their ****** over an anti-****** strategy proposed more than a year earlier. Only now – after a single jihadi from a gritty Tunisian town was able to **** 38 tourists at a seaside resort – does the government appear ready to launch a comprehensive response.

“We decided today to pass the counter-********* law before ******** Day on July 25,” Parliament President Mohamed Ennaceur said while visiting ********* of Friday’s ****** at a hospital. “We will be after the government to take the necessary measures in all areas to fight against *********.”

The new anti-********* law would increase ****** powers and provide for harsher penalties, moves that worry ************ activists. It also would create a commission to devise a strategy to tackle the roots of ********* by addressing ******’s economic and social causes, and creating “de-radicalization” centres to change minds through persuasion, not prison.

The law has been stuck in committees since it was first proposed in January 2014 as leaders of the coalition government sought to balance reform and repression. That’s a difficult challenge in any democracy, even more so in a country that knew only one-party rule for 50 years before the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

In the security vacuum that followed the fall of his ****** state, ultraconservative Islamic groups flourished, and when their demands were denied, they began attacking politicians and ******.

With technical help from the U.S. and other countries, Tunisia’s security forces have slowly been rebuilt and are becoming more effective in hunting down ****** cells and ramping up arrests of alleged extremists. But none of this stopped 24-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui from pulling an ******* rifle and three grenades out of a beach umbrella and hunting down tourists at a resort hotel.

Even before this latest ******, Tunisia’s point-man on *********, Rafik Chelli, acknowledged that tougher policing alone can’t do the job.

“Only the security approach has been really implemented and it has not been sufficient on its own,” Chelli told The Associated Press recently.

Immediately afterward, Prime Minister Habib Essid said ***** guards would be placed at tourist sites, and that mosques outside control of the government would be closed. Essid also announced financial rewards for information leading to arrests.

The new law promises a more holistic response, but lawmakers have to get it right, Chelli said. The key “is to ensure that these measures respect freedoms and ************ and the security of the country.”

Chelli blames much of the situation on the Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that was elected immediately after the revolution and lost power in the 2014 elections. He said the party was too lenient on security and “actively encouraged youth to leave for the *****.”

Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi counters that his moderate brand of ***** has kept more people from falling under the ideology promoted by Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh. He blames much of the extremism on Ben Ali’s draconian secularist rule.

“Ben Ali’s repressive policies favoured the emergence of extremism among the youth,” Ghannouchi told the AP. “Daesh is a wrong and extremist interpretation of *****. The bad merchandise must be fought with a quality product, and moderate ***** is the alternative to Daesh and al-Qaida.”

Tunisia must engage in this battle of ideas and take back the terrain of religion that it surrendered to extremists, said Sami Brahem, a researcher at Tunisia’s Center for Economic and Social Studies and Research who advised the government on its strategy. “The dogma of the radical groups is fragile and can’t hold up in arguments against the fundamentals of *****,” he said.

The new law does have its detractors.

************ Watch says the law’s ambiguous definition of ********* and weakened due process rights are a backward step for Tunisia. It could permit government to repress a wide range of internationally protected freedoms, the group said. For example, public demonstrations that lead to “harming private and public property” or disrupting public services could be prosecuted as ********* acts, and ****** could hold suspects incommunicado without charges for up to 15 days.

Moncef Kartas, a researcher on Tunisian security issues, said these harsher security measures could even be counterproductive because they do not address deeper cleavages in Tunisian society that have left so many young men marginalized, frustrated and hopeless. The government has to reach out to neglected communities where only radical voices are heard, he said.

Last fall’s parliamentary elections were hailed around the *****, but just 20 per cent of young people voted. Many feel disillusioned by the country’s slow and uneven economic growth, and abandoned by their leaders. ****** are often the only government representatives many people see.

Radicalization of the youth is a ******* across the region, but especially acute in Tunisia. Some 3,000 of its citizens have left to join extremist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and at least 500 are believed to have returned. Many see ****** as the enemy.

“****** beat kids up, insult them and ****** them,” said Bilal Saadaoui, a 23-year-old breakdancer from Tadamon, the tough neighbourhood where ****** say militants radicalized Rezgui. ****** disappeared after the revolution, but then “they came back stronger, with reinforcements. We just have rocks and they have **** and ********,” he said.

Scaring off the tourist economy will only make it harder for the government to make good on its promises, but these people must be shown that “they are not forgotten,” Kartas said.