The Energy Industry is Not Safe in North Africa

Πηγή: Oilprice
jan 25 2013

Energy interests sector-wide should be prepared for the coming security nightmare that is the Sahel. At a time when even the juniors have become unaccountably brave in frontier regions, the hostage crisis in Algeria demonstrates just how vulnerable the industry is.

It is vulnerable both to the whims of Western military intervention and to Salafi jihadist moves to take advantage of a transnational opening that would have been unheard of with Gaddafi, Mubarak and Assad still in control in Libya, Egypt and Syria.

The hostage crisis at the BP-operated Amenas gas field in the Algerian Sahara was most interesting because it was the result of a militant leadership feud. It was a challenge from one leader to another, and that challenge will have to be met with something equally spectacular. It was also a message to the French about their unexpected intervention in Mali. More attacks on energy installations and Western personnel are likely to come elsewhere in the Sahel, and no amount of high-tech security will prevent them.

In total, we are talking about more than one million square kilometers of ungoverned desert in the Sahel and a French military intervention that will shift them away from Mali and toward other borders to refocus. French interests and citizens will be the primary (and already declared) targets, but Europeans in general will become increasingly profitable kidnapping victims.

Conflict in Mali

The Mali military staged a coup in March 2012--one month before presidential elections. They ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure on the pretext that his administration had failed to deal with the Tuareg, who have been pursuing independence for “Azawad” (Northern Mali) since the 1960s.

The coup leader was Pentagon favorite Amadou Haya Sanogo, who was trained in the US and by AFRICOM and was viewed in Washington as a strong ally in the fight against terrorism and particularly against the solidifying interests of AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). The coup left a security vacuum that allowed the Tuareg room to make a power play.

This came at a good time for the Tuareg, who had lost a major support base with the death of Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi. In March, on the heels of the coup, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA—a secular Tuareg outfit) took over some key government buildings in Gao (in Northern Mali). In April, they announced the creation of independent Azawad. But their victory was elusive and they were soon sidelined by three Islamist groups: Ansar al-Din (an Islamist Tuareg outfit), MUJAW and AQIM, both foreign terrorist groups.

French Special Forces arrived on the scene in March and the UN sanctioned military action. North African nations failed to move on this, leaving any military effort up to the French, while the US monitored the situation from neighboring borders (Burkina Faso and Mauritania).

In June, the MNLA were forced out by MUJAW (whose fighters are almost all former AQIM), and MUJAW took over Gao and imposed an extremely hardline form of Sharia law.

In January 2013, the French sent an initial 1,400 troops into Mali to launch an offensive supported by air strikes. The French were warned that the offensive would push militants into Algeria.

The French intervened when Ansar al-Din seized control of the town of Konna in the second week of January 2013. The French justification was to stop the Islamists from taking control of the rest of Mali. Konna in technically in the north of Mali, but it lies in the central buffer zone between north and south.

This was a flawed justification. Ansar al-Din is interested in taking control of the north, not the south, and its move on Konna was most likely intended only to measure the Mali Army’s response. Ansar al-Din does not have the capability or support (even with the help of the foreign terrorist groups) to take over the south of the country. Nor is that a likely agenda.

These militant Islamist Tuareg are natural enemies of the foreign terrorist groups (AQIM and MUJAW) and their temporary alliance is one only of convenience. Once Ansar al-Din secures its northern territory, it will summarily reject AQIM and MUJAW and likely turn on them.

Ansar al-Din views itself as defending its own territory. They are Tuareg. They are Malians. AQIM and MUJAB are foreigners and they have no territory to defend and will find themselves boxed in in Northern Mali, when traditionally they rely on mobility for their cause. The premature French military action will push AQIM and MUJAW militants to areas of the Sahel/Sahara outside of Mali and thus the crisis will spread.

AQIM, MUJAW and Ansar al-Din cooperated with each other to seize control of northern Mali last year, but since then cooperation has only been sporadic. The only other demonstration of cooperation was on 10 January, when the three launched a joint offensive against the Malian Army. It is important that there is the illusion of a united front—but it will not last. Not only are AQIM and MUJAW struggling with an insurgency leadership question, Ansar al-Din is Tuareg and has an entirely different agenda.

AQIM and Ansar al-Din are at odds over AQIM’s smuggling activities, and these three groups—along with a number of other groups—are also suffering from racial infighting among Black Africans and Arabs. Already, Ansar al-Din is showing signs that it may rescind plans for Sharia law in the north, which is HIGHLY unpopular among the Tuareg.

The leader of Ansar al-Din—Iyad ag Ghali--is under a great deal of pressure from his own tribe, the Ifoghas, to cut all ties with AQIM and MUJAW. This pressure has risen exponentially since the imposition of Sharia law in some areas of Northern Mali. Ghali is also be courted heavily by the secular MNLA, of which he is a former member, as well as Algerian intelligence officials and meditators from Burkina Faso.

The Algerian Hostage Crisis

On 15 January, a group of militants (about 40-strong) entered the Algerian Sahara via Libya and attacked a BP-operated gas field (Amenas) some 100 kilometers from the Libyan border, in a very remote stretch of desert. They took some 700 hostages. On 15-16 January, some 600 hostages were freed, but many of those were believed to have been freed by the militants themselves shortly before a raid by the Algerian Special Forces. On 16 January, Algerian Special Forces launched a three-day rescue operation. At least 60 hostages were killed in the helicopter, including at least 7 Western nationals. A total of 6 militants were captured alive.

This spectacular attack was not about Algeria, and only secondarily about the French intervention in Mali. It was first and foremost about making a power play to resolve a simmering leadership dispute among the Salafi jihadists over the Sahel.

No ransoms were sought, no hostages were executed, nor were the BP-operated Amenas gas facilities wantonly destroyed or sabotaged. It was an extremely high-profile publicity stunt designed to send this message: Mokhtar Belmokhtar is the unquestionable leader of the Salafi jihadist movement. He has managed to launch a surprise attack on a high-security Western gas field and take hundreds of hostages on the territory of Algeria—which is, significantly, the stomping ground of his key leadership rival. The secondary message—which was also necessary for the overall, incontrovertibly united goals of the Salafi jihadists in the Sahel—was a warning to the French over their intervention in Mali.

It is this leadership struggle that will best help us to predict where the next attack might take place, and how these parallel objectives will affect security across the Sahel and beyond—to Egypt and Syria.

The media has tended to attribute the hostage incident to AQIM, as this is something the Western public is familiar with and it suits further “war on terror” ambitions. However, the attack was not conducted by AQIM, rather by MUJAW, a relatively new creation comprised of former AQIM fighters and a mix of Black African Islamists. More specifically still, the attack was led by Belmokhtar, the historical leader of AQIM who split from the group only in October 2012 over a leadership dispute.

What concerns us most urgently is that Belmokhtar’s leadership rival, Abdelmakbel Droukdel, must rise to the challenge and respond with an equally spectacular attack that is still in line with the message to the French.

Beware—Libya, Niger and Mauritania

While most attention is presently on the security situation in Algeria, this may be misplaced. Algeria is the most secure of all the Sahel countries and its security forces have significantly greater capabilities. We would be more inclined to expect another terrorist attack outside of Algeria—for instance, in Libya, Niger, or Mauritania.

Libya will be the most affected, and that is fitting as this is where it all began. Unilateral French intervention led to a NATO-level conflict that effectively destabilized the entire Sahel and opened up windows of opportunity for Islamic militant groups—opportunities that have never existed before.

Libya remains a security nightmare, awash with roving militias, some of them understood to be “friendly”, working for, but not controlled by the government, others waiting for another opportunity to regroup, such as the chaos in Mali may provide. Those “friendly” Islamic militias also comprised the security team protecting the US consulate in Benghazi when it came under attack on 11 September 2012.

The violence in Mali has already sparked off a string of threats in Libya, with security forces claiming to have intercepted vehicle-borne explosive devices at the Benghazi airport before they could be detonated. Militant threats in retaliation for the French intervention in Mali have specifically listed hotels catering to foreigners across the country, but to a higher degree in Benghazi. Western diplomats remain a specific target. The Italian consul in Benghazi narrowly survived a drive-by shooting on 12 January.

After Libya, Niger is the most vulnerable to what will now be a spread of Salafi jihadist activity and kidnapping across the Sahel. It is most vulnerable because it is the poorest and its government lacks structure. Corruption among the security forces is extremely high, and there is evidence of individual security force collusion in kidnappings of foreigners.

This is also another likely theater for direct intervention by France because of French uranium interests here. Niger provides a significant amount of the uranium France uses in its nuclear reactors, and these uranium facilities should be on high alert.

Particularly in Niger, the kidnapping networks are dangerous and kidnappings are often conducted by third parties interested only in selling foreigners to AQIM or MUJAW—the two key terrorist groups in the region. This makes the kidnapping network immediately larger, and recruitment irrelevant. There is no ideological requirement. Locals looking to profit from this business will note the renewed momentum of the Salafi jihadist movements due to events in Mali and Algeria, and they will be seeking to take advantage of that momentum.

U.S. and 3 European Countries Warn of Threats to Westerners in Libya

Πηγή: post-gazette
By ALAN COWELL and RICK GLADSTONE, (The New York Times)
Jan 24 2013

LONDON -- Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States issued ominous warnings on Thursday about threats to Westerners in Libya, in particular the unruly eastern city of Benghazi, less than a week after the deadly hostage crisis in neighboring Algeria.

Travel advisories issued by the foreign ministries of the three European countries did not elaborate on the precise nature of the threat, nor was it clear how many expatriates might be affected, but they warned their citizens to leave Benghazi immediately.

Hours later, the United States, which has admonished Americans to avoid Benghazi since the deadly attack on an American diplomatic compound there on Sept. 11, took note of the European advisories in an "emergency message" for United States citizens who might be in Libya or preparing to travel there.

"Although there is no specific information pointing to specific, imminent threats against U.S. citizens, the potential for violence and kidnappings targeting Westerners in Benghazi is significant," read the American message, posted on the Web site of the United States Embassy in Tripoli, the capital. "We strongly encourage all U.S. citizens to take appropriate precautions, as the security situation in Libya is volatile."

The message urged American expatriates to heed a Jan. 2 advisory issued by the State Department that broadened warning to avoid travel to Benghazi to include many other parts of Libya because of the lawlessness and instability that have troubled the country since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi more than a year ago.

Benghazi, Libya's second-biggest city and the base of the revolution that overthrew Colonel Qaddafi's autocracy, has come to symbolize the problems in Libya and the impunity of regional militias, including some with Islamic militant ties who are believed to have played a role in the attack on the American Mission that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Militants have also attacked other foreign targets recently, including an attempted ambush of Italy's consul earlier this month.

Britain's Foreign Office also warned against "all but essential travel" to several other Libyan cities besides Benghazi, citing a "high threat from terrorism" and a possibility of retaliatory attacks targeting Western interests in the region after the French military intervention in Mali, which preceded last week's Islamist militant attack on a remote Algerian gas field near the Libyan border.

Earlier this week, a senior Algerian official said several Egyptian members of the squad that attacked the Algerian gas complex were also among those who had attacked the American Mission in Benghazi.

The Egyptians were among 29 kidnappers killed by Algerian forces during the four-day siege of the gas plant, in which at least 37 foreign hostages and one Algerian died. Three militants were captured alive and one of them, under interrogation by Algerian security forces, recounted the Egyptians' involvement in both attacks, the Algerian official said.

"We are aware of a specific, imminent threat to Westerners in Benghazi," the Foreign Office advisory said. "We advise against all travel to Benghazi and urge any British nationals who are there against our advice to leave immediately."

The advisory also recommended that Britons who were still in Benghazi travel only in groups and only during daylight hours.

In other Libyan places, it said, "there is a high threat from terrorism. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travelers." The advisory did not specifically link its warnings to the kidnappings in Algeria.

Foreign Office officials declined to elaborate on the exact nature of the threat. David Lidington, a minister in the Foreign Office, told the BBC that the government had based its warnings on "credible, serious and specific reports."

"Our advice to people is not to delay, just leave," he said.

The BBC also quoted Libya's deputy interior minister, Abdullah Massoud, as saying the Western reactions were unfounded.

As the crisis in Algeria unfolded, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain repeatedly warned that Qaeda-linked extremists and other Islamist militants in North Africa presented a growing threat to Western interests.

"Just as we have reduced the scale of the Al Qaeda threat in other parts of the world, including in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so it has grown in other parts of the world," he said. "We need to be equally concerned about that, and equally focused on it."

During the Algerian hostage crisis, the kidnappers depicted their attack as linked to the French intervention in Mali, in turn provoked by a lightning advance south by Islamist extremists who have turned Mali's desert north into a separatist redoubt.

The Libya travel warnings came just as local Benghazi business leaders have been seeking to improve the city's attractiveness as a place for foreign companies to invest. They have been emphasizing Benghazi's proximity to Libya's most productive oil fields, among the biggest in Africa and the Middle East.

More than half a dozen major multinational oil companies based in Europe have operations in Libya, including ENI of Italy, Total of France and Repsol of Spain. None would disclose the number of Western expatriate employees they have in Libya, citing security reasons, but there was no immediate indication that they were hurriedly preparing to vacate the country.

"We remain in Libya and are in coordination with the government, which is making every effort to maximize safety," said Kristian Rix, a spokeswoman for Repsol. David Nicholas, a spokesman for BP of Britain, said the company has no production in Libya but had been exploring there and "has a small number of people in Tripoli."

N. African chaos continues – from Libya to Mali to Algeria

French soldiers heading to Mali, January 2013

Πηγή: Jerusalem PostBy ARIEL BEN SOLOMON
21 Jan 2013

Analysis: West created a vacuum in Libya where weapons, tribes, militias, radicals were mixed together in disarray.

The focus of the tensions, fighting and killing that resulted from the Arab uprisings, including the ongoing civil war in Syria, has moved west to north Africa.

On Saturday, the Algerian army finished its attack on the terrorists who had led a four-day siege of a gas plant, killing the majority for a provisional count of 32. The number of hostages killed as of Sunday was put at a preliminary 23, according to Algerian officials.

The targeted workers came from many countries, as the plant came under a coordinated attack by terrorists who had also tried to blow up a pipeline.

Algerian Communication Minister Muhammad Said stated that the attackers came from various countries and included only three Algerians.

They entered from neighboring countries, according to DPA.

“We have indications that they originated from northern Mali,” a senior official was quoted as saying by The New York Times.

An Algerian al-Qaida-linked jihadist, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who is based in Mali, has claimed responsibility through spokesmen and is blamed by Algerians for planning the attack, according to the report in the Times.

His spokesmen claim the Algerian assault was in response to France’s attack against Islamists in Mali.

Harold Rhode, a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and a former official at the US Department of Defense, interprets the events in that “the French are putting up a valiant fight, but in the Middle East you fight to win.”

“The bottom line is... that Middle Eastern culture sees inaction or verbal excuses as weakness, and when they see that they pounce – they hit big time.”

Rhode goes on to say that in order to understand the Muslim mentality, it helps to go back and look at the writings of Muslim theologian Ibn Hazm, who explained the Muslim concept of war in his work The Book of Morals and Conduct: “The measure of prudence and resolution is to know a friend from an enemy; the height of stupidity and weakness is not to know an enemy from a friend.”

Rhode implies that this is what is going on in the region.

“If you negotiate before victory they see this as weakness, and this is how the US is seen concerning Syria, Iran, and in North Africa. And America is what matters. And by not doing anything and saying, ‘let us reason together’ before victory – is basically saying I don’t have the will or ability to do what is necessary to win.”

Algeria has historically been tough on terrorists, and their failure to coordinate their response to the attack has irked allies. Algerian officers have trained with the US military and the governments share intelligence to fight against al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), according to a report by Eli Lake in the Daily Beast.

But the countries do not have nearly as strong a relationship as those of other countries in the region. Lake reported that Algeria has not accepted large defense aid packages like those of Morocco or Egypt, and instead gets most of its arms from Moscow.

Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, a research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, says that “Algerians have been dealing with Islamic groups for more than 20 years.” The 1990s civil war left behind a “residual group of Islamic radicals,” which “at some point re-branded itself into the AQIM.”

If the attack on Algeria can be traced back to an international array of Islamist radicals based in Mali, then it is necessary to understand how northern Mali recently became taken over by Islamists, with roots going back to the war in Libya.

The conflict in Mali began in January 2012 with various groups fighting for autonomy in the north of the country.

Later in the spring of 2012, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad declared an independent state named Azawad, which remains unrecognized by the international community.

It comprises more than half the territory of the Mali state.

The Mali government eventually called for help as the Islamists began taking over more of the country, and France decided to intervene to stop their advance. Reuters reports that Paris currently has 2,000 troops in the country, with its war planes pounding rebel positions for the past 10 days.

Belmokhtar has said that he would be ready “to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government, provided they stop their bombing of Mali’s Muslims.”

Maddy-Weitzman explains that the “Libya events brought a number of well-armed Taureg back to Mali, and some of them were Islamists, while others were Taureg nationalists.” It was the “Libyan events that triggered a swing in the balance of power” and allowed for these Islamic radicals to slip into Mali.

We are now seeing the “blow back into Algeria.” Tunis Afrique Presse reported at the end of last week that the attackers had demanded safe passage to Libya, but Algeria refused to negotiate. It is likely they wanted to go to Libya because the country remains unstable, divided into zones of influence by various tribes and other groups.

Maddy-Weitzman indicates Libya would be a good place to go “for terrorists looking to disappear, where the central authority is weak. And in addition, it is next door.”

In regard to whether the issue of ethnic and cultural divisions could be part of the picture, Maddy-Weitzman agrees that it could, saying the divisions are part of the internal power struggles, but the overall motivation is that of the Islamic radicals.

What seems to be evident is that the West created a vacuum in Libya where weapons, tribes, militias and radicals were mixed together in disarray, without a well-thought out plan on how to deal with the aftermath of the conflict.

This seems to be the broken record playing throughout the region from the Iraq invasion, to Afghanistan, and perhaps next in Syria – that the desire to “rebuild” is not stronger than the local currents, which are ultimately more important in determining events on the ground.

Algerian stance spoils U.S. strategy for region

 Freed hostages from Algeria crisis: Survivors of one of the largest hostage crises in recent memory began recounting their ordeal, which began Wednesday when Islamist militants took over a natural gas facility in Algeria.

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Craig Whitlock
Jan 19 2013

LONDON — The hostage crisis in Algeria has upended the Obama administration’s strategy for coordinating an international military campaign against al-Qaeda fighters in North Africa, leaving U.S., European and African leaders even more at odds over how to tackle the problem.

For months, U.S. officials have intensively lobbied Algeria — whose military is by far the strongest in North Africa — to help intervene in next-door Mali, where jihadists and other rebels have established a well-defended base of operations. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other high-ranking U.S. officials made repeated visits to Algiers in the fall in a bid to persuade the oil-rich country to contribute troops to a U.N.-backed military force in Mali.

But Algeria’s unilateral decision to attack kidnappers at a natural gas plant — while shunning outside help, imposing a virtual information blackout and disregarding international pleas for caution — has dampened hopes that it might cooperate militarily in Mali, U.S. officials said. The crisis has strained ties between Algiers and Washington and increased doubts about whether Algeria can be relied upon to work regionally to dismantle al-Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa.

“The result is that the U.S. will have squandered six to eight months of diplomacy for how it wants to deal with Mali,” said Geoff D. Porter, an independent North African security analyst. “At least it will have been squandered in the sense that the Algerians will likely double down on their recalcitrance to get involved. They’ve already put themselves in a fortress-like state.”

Obama administration officials have said that a multinational military intervention is necessary to stabilize Mali but that such a campaign must be led by African countries and is unlikely to succeed without Algerian involvement. Algeria’s military is the heavyweight of the region, and its intelligence services are the most knowledgeable about the murky Islamist networks that have taken root.

Algeria is also the birthplace of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Most of the group’s leaders and allies are Algerian, including the suspected ringleader of the hostage plot, a one-eyed desert bandit named Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

The group has expanded its activities beyond Algeria to Mali, Mauritania and Niger. But Algeria has been reluctant to fight AQIM outside its borders. The reasons are complex, but Algerian leaders say they are under little obligation to help other countries facing the problem — such as Mali — given that no one came to their aid in the 1990s when they fought their own grueling civil war against insurgents.

U.S. officials offer mixed reviews of Washington’s overall ties with Algiers on counter-terrorism. One senior U.S. diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk freely about the relationship, called it “solid, not spectacular. It’s not carte blanche by any stretch of the imagination.”

As the extremist threat has become more acute in recent years, the U.S. military has repeatedly pressed Algeria for overflight permission so its long-range reconnaissance planes can reach northern Mali from U.S. bases in Europe.

Algiers has agreed at times, but it only approves flights on a case-by-case basis and often requires extensive advance notice, U.S. officials said. It withheld blanket permission unless Washington promises to share intelligence from the flights, including what they observe while over Algerian territory. U.S. officials said they are legally barred from doing so because of concerns that Algeria might misuse the intelligence to target people who are political opponents, not terrorists.

The Algerian military and security services have a history of brutality and extrajudicial killings. During the civil war in the 1990s, one faction of Algerian generals earned the nickname “the eradicators” for their insistence on eliminating enemies instead of negotiating.

“It’s closer to a police state than anything, and cooperation is on again, off again,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “They are fairly tight about it.”

At the same time, the United States has become dependent on Algerian intelligence to sort out a blurry constellation of jihadi groups, desert bandits, ethnic rebels and other groups. While some profess allegiance to al-Qaeda, most are focused on local grievances or criminal rackets.

“As is obvious to you, we are not from this region,” Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, told reporters during a September visit to Algiers, his fourth stop there in 18 months. “We do not have the same understanding of the various actors in the region.”

U.S. officials estimate that AQIM has about 250 to 400 dedicated fighters in its ranks. But it often makes common cause with other militant groups, making its true strength difficult to pinpoint.

An enduring example of failed U.S. attempts to persuade Algeria to play a regional counterterrorism role can be found in Tamanrasset, a remote Algerian garrison town in the heart of the Sahara.

In 2010, at the behest of U.S. military officials, Algeria agreed to establish a regional intelligence-sharing and joint-operations center in Tamanrasset to track al-Qaeda fighters and other cross-border militants responsible for an epidemic of hostage-takings. Security forces from Mali, Niger and Mauritania were invited to participate and, it was hoped, organize joint patrols in the desert.

Three years later, however, the Tamanrasset center is still a bare-bones operation where military leaders from the four countries meet only sporadically, U.S. officials said. Algeria has also rebuffed requests to host U.S. military or intelligence officers at Tamanrasset, to the disappointment of the Pentagon and CIA.

Algeria’s precise motives remain a puzzle to U.S. officials, but some analysts said its leaders have shown they are willing to tolerate jihadists in the region as long as they confine themselves to the wastelands of the Sahara, thousands of miles away from Algiers, the capital, and the Mediterranean coast where most of the country’s population lives.

Additionally, jihadists’ migration to Mali and other countries may make them less of a problem for Algeria. “It more or less has kept the neighbors off balance and allowed Algeria to remain the regional hegemon,” said J. Peter Pham, an adviser to the U.S. military and an Africa expert at the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Algerian officials have denied such suggestions. In discussions with U.S. officials, they have blamed Mali for allowing the terrorist threat to fester, accusing its leaders of being corrupt and cutting secret deals with AQIM, according to classified diplomatic cables made public by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

In a February 2010 meeting, frustrated U.S. officials prodded Nourredine Ayadi, the Algerian ambassador to Mali, to hasten the opening of the joint operations in Tamanrasset.

Ayadi bluntly replied that the Malians couldn’t be trusted, according to a U.S. cable summarizing the meeting. He charged that Malian officials had tipped off AQIM about a pending joint Malian-Algerian military operation and that the Malian government had refused to extradite “high-level” al-Qaeda suspects to Algiers.

“It seems likely that efforts to bring Mali and Algeria closer to fight AQIM, though necessary, will continue to be a very uphill battle,” Gillian Milovanovic, the U.S. ambassador to Mali, said in a cable to officials in Washington.

More recently, Algeria has been even more hostile to the idea of sending troops to Mali to fight alongside the French, who have sent about 1,400 troops to rescue the weak Malian central government and its tattered armed forces. France was Algeria’s colonial master, and the two sides fought a prolonged, bitter war before Algeria won independence in 1962.

Algerian officials also have resented the willingness of Mali and European countries to pay huge ransoms to Islamic militants. Although kidnappings of Americans had been rare prior to this week, several dozen Europeans and Canadians have been taken hostage in North and West Africa in recent years, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue for insurgent groups.

“They are the best-funded al-Qaeda franchise in the world, and probably the best armed,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who is an analyst at the Brookings Institute. “This is not going to be a cakewalk.”

Feelings also remain raw in Algeria over the NATO-led military intervention in Libya. Although the campaign successfully toppled longtime ruler Moammar Gaddafi, the United States and its NATO allies did little to contain the aftershocks.

The region was destabilized by a flood of weaponry and armed Tuareg nomads who had fought for Gaddafi but escaped across Libya’s borders. Many of those mercenaries have since teamed with AQIM to take control of the northern half of Mali.

“This has just been an utter disaster. It was eminently foreseeable,” the senior U.S. diplomat said of the ripple effects from Libya. “It was the infusion of that additional manpower and weapons . . . that enabled this to happen.”

Algeria BP Siege: Mokhtar Belmokhtar Militants Trained in Jihadi Camps in Libya

In Amenas gas complex

Πηγή: International Business Times
By GIANLUCA MEZZOFIORE
Jan 18 2013

Islamist militants who attacked the Algerian gas complex of In Amenas were trained in jihadist camps across the border in southern Libya, according to local sources.

The recovered bodies of terrorists killed in the counter-attack by Algerian security forces include three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a French citizens, a security source told Reuters.

It is believed that the terrorists crossed the border from Libya to launch the attack. One of the leaders of the group was Abou al-Barra, a long-time jihadist activist.

Barra has been described as the most important commander under Mokhtar Belmokhtar's Al-Mulathemeen Brigade - the group which raided the gas plant, which is owned by BP, Norway's Statoil and the Algerian state oil company Sonatrach.

Barra served in the Algerian army before joining the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat involved in the Algerian insurgency of the late 1990s and early 2000s

Afghan war veteran

The Algerian state news agency confirmed that some militants were still in the industrial part of the complex.

Libyan authorities were said to be aware that three militant camps south of the desert town of Sabha were training terrorists. A Libyan veteran of the 1980s Afghan war was in control of the camps and it is believed that he had met Belmokhtar in 2011.

Extremist militia in Libya were likely to have financed militant groups in Mali and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, said the source. French intervention in Mali fired up an already turbulent situation in the vast desert region of North Africa. A Salafist group in eastern Libya called for protests after Friday prayers in Benghazi in response to the French assault in Mali, CNN reported.

Even former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan described Mali as "collateral damage from Libya". The resumption of rebellion in Mali was undoubtedly driven by an influx of fighters and arms from Libya after the fall of Gaddafi.

Belmokhtar has been involved in several hostage-takings over the past decade. He accumulated a fortune in ransom payments from governments and multinational companies, amassing state-of-the-art weapons from Gaddafi.

Well-trained and heavily armed Tuareg fighters, who fled Libya after Gaddafi's death in October 2011, formed the militant Ansar al Din movement, nicknamed Les Rebels.

Jihadists also profited from the Libyan civil war as a black market developed in ordnance supplied by Western governments eager to topple the former Libyan ally and dictator.

Stakes for France Are High as Hollande Continues an Intervention in Mali

Malian Army soldiers ran a checkpoint in Nioni on Friday. Officials said that 1,800 French troops were in Mali, with more coming.

Πηγή: New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Jan 18 2013

PARIS — This was not the war President François Hollande wanted.

In just two hours last Thursday, after a plea for help from Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, Mr. Hollande decided to send in French warplanes and ground troops.

It was supposed to be a quick and dramatic blow that would send the Islamists scurrying back to their hide-outs in northern Mali, buying time for the deployment of an African force to stabilize the situation. Instead it is turning into what looks like a complex and drawn-out military and diplomatic operation that Mr. Hollande’s critics are already calling a desert version of a quagmire, like Vietnam or Afghanistan.

Some here speak of Mr. Hollande’s “Sahelistan.” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, reminded Mr. Hollande of “the danger of a military operation without a clear enemy, with the risk to civilians that is bound to engender hostility among the citizens.” He warned of “neocolonialism.”

Mr. Hollande, who has a reputation for indecisiveness, has certainly taken on a difficult task. The French are fighting to preserve the integrity of a country that is divided in half, of a state that is broken. They are fighting for the survival of an interim government with no democratic legitimacy that took power in the aftermath of a coup.

But Mr. Traoré, 70, does represent the internationally recognized government of Mali, said a senior French official, shrugging. And then, like every French official on the topic, he asked a questioner to imagine the alternative — “another Somalia” on the western edge of Africa, lawless and dominated by Islamic radicals close to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, who would set about instituting the harshness of Shariah law all over Mali, stoning adulterers and cutting off the hands of thieves, while engaging in the drug and arms smuggling, kidnapping and terrorism that funds their notion of jihad.

That prospect, the officials insist, is why the entire region, including Algeria, has supported the French intervention, which was also backed by the Security Council. The French initiative has also had public support, if provoking quiet concern about overreaching, from allies like the United States and Britain.

It was not supposed to be this way, French officials and experts acknowledge. Sometime in the autumn, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2085, African troops from the Economic Community of West African States, or Ecowas, together with a retrained and reinspired Malian Army, were supposed to take back the north of the country. Those African forces were to be trained with the help of the European Union and guided in their mission by French forces in an advisory capacity, with the United States helping to provide financing and airborne reconnaissance, intelligence, air transport and air-to-air refueling.

France was supposed to have a largely civilian role, not itself engaged in fighting and with no troops on the ground. Ecowas and the Malians were supposed to fight their way into northern Mali and clear it of Islamists.

Just 10 days ago, before Mr. Hollande’s sudden action, a senior adviser at the Élysée described how slowly the Mali operation was going. He described the difficulties with Ecowas, with squabbles over financing, training and transporting Ecowas troops, and how hard it had been to get Washington, after the Libyan civil war, to pay attention to a deteriorating situation in Mali and the risks of Islamic terrorism spreading in the Sahel.

The Americans finally started listening to French concerns last September, he said, but had their doubts about how easy it would be to drive the Islamists out of the vastness of northern Mali. And Washington did not consider the Ecowas plan to be well conceived.

The Islamist rebels chose not to wait around, of course, launching their push to the south and prompting French intervention in a singularly leading role. With 1,800 troops now in Mali and a projected total of 2,500, the French do not need help on the ground, officials insist. But they are pushing Washington to move more quickly through the interagency process to provide reconnaissance drones, air transport planes and refueling planes. European and NATO allies like Britain have already moved to help, with the British quickly providing two C-17 transport planes to move troops and equipment.

On Friday, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain gave explicit support to France and an implicit push to Washington and European allies to do more in West Africa to fight radical Islamic terrorism. “Those who believe that there is a terrorist, extremist Al Qaeda problem in parts of North Africa, but that it is a problem for those places and we can somehow back off and ignore it, are profoundly wrong,” he told Parliament.

Mr. Cameron called the Algerian drama a warning. “What we know is that the terrorist threat in the Sahel comes from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which aspires to establish Islamic law across the Sahel and northern Africa, and to attack Western interests in the region and frankly, wherever it can,” Mr. Cameron said in words that will please Paris. “Just as we have reduced the scale of the Al Qaeda threat in other parts of the world, including in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so it has grown in other parts of the world. We need to be equally concerned about that, and equally focused on it.”

Most experts think that the French, even if they drive the Islamists out of major populated areas in the north of Mali, will not move in force throughout the vast desert. The French still mean to prepare the ground for Ecowas and Malian troops, to create the stability that can allow new political negotiations on Mali’s future.

Mali will only succeed, French officials say, if the state is reconfigured, with significantly more autonomy for the Tuaregs in the north, who have long wanted their independence, and rebuilt governmental institutions and legitimacy. That of course will take some time, even if it is done under the auspices of Ecowas or the United Nations.

Camille Grand, a defense expert and director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, said the French objective is “to return to the status quo ante, where those Islamist groups are cornered in the gray zones on the borders, with limited ability to act and not controlling population centers, where it is difficult for them to make raids or take hostages.”

Those goals, he said, are “definitely something that makes sense from a military standpoint. But “if the ultimate objective is to eradicate the presence of radical Islam in the Sahel,” he warned, “it probably won’t happen; it’s a bridge too far for anyone.”

In all likelihood, Paris is not that ambitious. But Mr. Hollande’s critics worry that he may already have gotten himself in deeper than he planned, or even realizes. In a column Friday in Le Monde, Natalie Nougayrède wrote that the French endgame is unclear. “In launching itself militarily in the front line, France also takes on a responsibility” for the reconstruction of the state, she said. “The after-intervention — we have seen it elsewhere in the world — is the true headache of interventions. The ultimate test will be there.”

Algerian Daily: Tunisia Training Syria-Bound Terrorists in Three Army Bases

Πηγή: ABNA
By FNA
Dec 31 2012

Tunisia has three military bases which are specially used for training armed rebels who are sent to Syria and Iraq to carry out terrorist operations, an Arab-language newspaper disclosed.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The Algerian army has identified three military bases in Tunisia's Jendouba province near the country's border with Libya, the Algerian newspaper al-Khabar wrote. Jendouba is located 60 kilometers from Algeria-Libya borders.

Early information shows that military trainers come from Libya to these bases to train the terrorists, it said.

Commander of the National Gendarmerie of Algeria Major-General Ahmed Boustila and a team of his inferior commanders have reportedly shifted their focus on this issue to prevent the flow of terrorists into Algeria.

Earlier this month, a Tunisian newspaper revealed that an organized terrorist network in Tunisia recruits and dispatches young people to Syria via Turkey after training and mobilizing them, adding that the Tunisian government is fully aware of the crime.

According to a report by the internet-edition of Tunisian al-Jaridah daily, the family of Omayah bin Mohammad Noureddin, one of the Tunisian terrorists, had called the newspaper and revealed the details of the crime.

"It is a phenomenon which has extensively spread across Tunisia," Noureddin's family members said.

They said their son, 25, and a junior of history at college left home on December 12, sent to Syria via Turkey and has not returned yet.

The report came after three Tunisian terrorists were arrested by the Syrian army in October. The three militants belong to a group of foreign terrorists supporting the so-called Free Syrian Army, dubbed 'Jibhat Nosrat El Shem'.

It is estimated that hundreds of Tunisian terrorists are currently fighting against forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as West-led foreign fighters who seek to destabilize the Arab country.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

In October, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of stirring unrests in Syria once again.

The US and its western and regional allies have long sought to topple Assad and his ruling system. Media reports said that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.

The US daily, Washington Post, reported in May that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups battling the President Bashar al-Assad's government have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.

The newspaper, quoting opposition activists and US and foreign officials, reported that Obama administration officials emphasized the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the Persian Gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

Opposition activists who several months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said in May that the flow of weapons - most bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military in the past - has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.

Exclusive: Algeria seizes missiles smuggled from Libya: source

Πηγή: Reuters
By Lamine Chikhi

Feb 18 2012

Algerian security forces have found a large cache of weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles, which they believe were smuggled in from neighboring Libya, a security source briefed on the discovery told Reuters on Saturday.

The find follows warnings from governments in the region that instability in Libya after the end of Muammar Gaddafi's rule is allowing weapons taken from Gaddafi's arsenal to fall into the hands of al Qaeda's north African branch and other insurgent groups across the Sahara desert.

The weapons cache was discovered in the desert about 60 km (40 miles) south of In Amenas, an energy-producing Algerian region near the border with Libya, said the source, who spoke to Reuters on condition on anonymity.

The source said the cache was located following a tip-off from a smuggler who had been arrested. He said it contained a "large quantity" of arms including the shoulder-launched missiles - a weapon which, in some variations, could be used to bring down an aircraft.

"This weapons seizure shows that the chaos in Libya is dangerous for the whole region," the source said.

There was no official confirmation of the discovery from the Algerian government and there was no way of independently verifying the source's account.

Western security experts tracking arms which have disappeared from Gaddafi's looted arms depots say the shoulder-fired missiles - also known as man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS - are one of their biggest concerns because they could be used with relative ease by insurgent groups.

INSURGENCY

Gaddafi's forces had about 20,000 of the missiles, according to a U.S. government task force which is trying to locate the missiles. The task force says most of the missiles are still inside Libya, in the hands of militias loosely allied to the interim leadership that took over after Gaddafi's rule was overthrown last year.

Security officials in North Africa say the worst-case scenario is that al Qaeda's north African wing, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), could use one of the missiles to bring down a commercial airliner coming in to land or taking off at an airport somewhere in North Africa.

The group is waging a long-running insurgency against Algeria's government. It also carries out kidnappings, ambushes and bomb attacks on Western targets in the Sahel, a huge volatile band that straddles the borders of Algeria, Libya, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Speaking in Geneva last week, a U.N. panel of experts on Libya said the lack of strong central government control in Libya was making it difficult to track down the missing MANPADS.

"People are concerned and they are right," said one panel member, on condition of anonymity. "There is certainly weapons traffic into the Sahel. It is a large desert area with limited (border) controls."

Algeria has been one of the region's most vocal states in warning of the security impact of Gaddafi's fall. The revolt has left huge quantities of weapons unsecured and a fragile interim government that is struggling to impose its authority and control the country's borders.

However, Libyan officials say they are working to secure the missing weapons and have accused Algeria of exaggerating the threat.

They say its neighbor was against the revolt in Libya and is now using the security issue to undermine the new leadership in Tripoli, allegations that Algerian officials deny.

Kidnapped Algerian governor freed in Libya

Flying high: The Al Qaeda flag, with Arabic writing and a moon design, was seen flying alongside a Libyan national flag above Benghazi's courthouse, November 2, 2011.

Πηγή: The Peninsula
By Reuters
Jan 18 2012

ALGIERS: A kidnapped Algerian regional governor has been freed after his captors were intercepted inside Libya, officials said yesterday, an incident that will raise new concerns about instability spilling over from Libya to its neighbours.

Two Algerian security sources earlier said the governor was being held by Al Qaeda. Security experts have warned the group is exploiting turmoil in Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi to carve out a safe haven.

Algeria’s state news agency, citing a source close to the Interior Ministry, said the governor, Mohamed Laid Khelfi, was freed by the Libyan authorities when they stopped his kidnappers about 150km inside Libyan territory.

The agency said the governor would soon be handed over to the Algerian authorities at a nearby border crossing.

An Algerian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “The governor is safe and well. He was freed. That is all I can say for now.”

The kidnapping, deep in the Sahara desert, was the most audacious attack on a senior official for years in Algeria, which has been fighting a two-decade battle against Islamist insurgents.

There was no immediate comment from officials in Libya’s interim government on the incident.

Khelfi, governor of the Illizi region about 1,700km southeast of the Algerian capital, was driving away from a meeting on the Libyan border on Monday afternoon when three armed men stopped his convoy, the Interior Ministry said.

The attackers released his driver and an aide, but took the governor in the direction of the Libyan border, a ministry statement said. He later made telephone contact with his family.

The ministry did not identify the kidnappers, saying only they were young Algerian men who were known to the authorities.

Two Algerian security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the governor had been held by Al Qaeda’s north African branch, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The group carries out kidnappings, ambushes and suicide bombings, mainly in Algeria but also in neighbouring states which straddle the Sahara desert.

With backing from Western states, which are concerned the group could spread its activities further afield, Algerian security forces have been able to reduce the insurgency to a small rump of fighters hiding out in remote areas.

But the instability in Libya could give AQIM a new lease of life by providing the insurgents with a source of weapons and a safe haven in vast desert tracts which the new Libyan authorities lack the capacity to police.

“This (kidnapping) is a very dangerous escalation which shows that the group is feeling secure and strong because of the chaos in Libya,” said Samer Riad, a security expert who runs Algeria’s numidianews.com news portal.

Western diplomats say Algeria is under serious threat from al Qaeda and is an important ally in helping fight the spread of the insurgency. Some security experts say the al Qaeda threat also helps Algeria garner international support.

The kidnapping was unusual because in Algeria, governors and all other senior government officials almost always travel with heavy security details, making them a “hard” target, which the insurgents tend to avoid.

One of the security officials who spoke to Reuters said the governor had on Monday been at Debdeb, a border crossing with Libya, trying to calm down local protesters angry at unemployment and poor living conditions.

Among the protesters were relatives of Abdelhamid Abu Zeid, one of AQIM’s leading field commanders in the Sahara desert, the official said.

Report: Algeria stops Libyan weapons smugglers

Πηγή: taiwannews
By AOMAR OUALI (AP)
Dec 14 2011

An Algerian daily reports that the army has arrested seven Libyans in two four-wheel drive vehicles packed with weapons near the desert border.

Al-Khabar on Tuesday quoted unidentified local security officials as saying they believe the arms were intended for al-Qaida militants who roam the deserts.

Algeria has repeatedly sounded the alarm over the danger of weapons from Libya where a civil war raged for much of the year _ falling into the hands of militants.

The trucks contained assault rifles, Katyusha rockets and ammunition of various calibers, the paper reported.

The seven men arrested tried to pass themselves off as former Libyan rebels on patrol, but the officials said there were too many weapons in the trucks.

The paper added that the army has mounted a major operation to crack down on desert smuggling networks.

Gaddafi's daughter urges the overthrow of Libya's government

Aisha Gaddafi, daughter of Muammar Gaddafi

Πηγή: The Telegraph
Nov 29 2011

The daughter Muammar Gaddafi has urged the Libyan people to rise up and overthrow the transitional government which toppled her father's regime.

In an audio message broadcast on Syria's al-Rai television station, Aisha Gaddafi called for a revolt against Libya's new rulers, a government that she said "arrived with the planes of Nato."

"My father has not left, he is always among us," she said, following the traditional 40-day mourning period after his death. "Don't forget the orders of your father urging you to continue fighting, even if you no longer hear his voice."

Col Gaddafi, who ruled Libya 42 years, was captured with his son Muatassim on October 20 as he fled from the city of Sirte. He was later shot dead by rebel forces.

As the Libyan capital of Tripoli fell to rebel forces in August, Aisha, her mother and two of her brothers took refuge in neighbouring Algeria.

Aisha's appeal puts her in direct conflict with the terms of a deal she and her family members made with Algeria's government, promising not to make public statements at the risk of losing their status as humanitarian refugees.

After similar statements in September, Algerian officials warned that she could be expelled.

The Algerian regime had close ties with Gaddafi but has since worked to repair strained relations with Libya's new leaders.

China offered Gadhafi huge stockpiles of arms: Libyan memos

Πηγή: The Globe And Mail
By Graeme Smith
Friday, Sep. 02, 2011


China offered huge stockpiles of weapons to Colonel Moammar Gadhafi during the final months of his regime, according to papers that describe secret talks about shipments via Algeria and South Africa.

Documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show that state-controlled Chinese arms manufacturers were prepared to sell weapons and ammunition worth at least $200-million to the embattled Col. Gadhafi in late July, a violation of United Nations sanctions.

The documents suggest that Beijing and other governments may have played a double game in the Libyan war, claiming neutrality but covertly helping the dictator. The papers do not confirm whether any military assistance was delivered, but senior leaders of the new transitional government in Tripoli say the documents reinforce their suspicions about the recent actions of China, Algeria and South Africa. Those countries may now suffer a disadvantage as Libya’s new rulers divide the spoils from their vast energy resources, and select foreign firms for the country’s reconstruction.

Omar Hariri, chief of the transitional council’s military committee, reviewed the documents and concluded that they explain the presence of brand-new weapons his men encountered on the battlefield. He expressed outrage that the Chinese were negotiating an arms deal even while his forces suffered heavy casualties in the slow grind toward Tripoli.

“I’m almost certain that these guns arrived and were used against our people,” Mr. Hariri said.

Senior rebel officials confirmed the authenticity of the four-page memo, written in formal style on the green eagle letterhead used by a government department known as the Supply Authority, which deals with procurement. The Globe and Mail found identical letterhead in the Tripoli offices of that department. The memo was discovered in a pile of trash sitting at the curb in a neighbourhood known as Bab Akkarah, where several of Col. Gadhafi’s most loyal supporters had lavish homes.

The document reports in detail about a trip by Col. Gadhafi’s security officials from Tripoli to Beijing. They arrived on July 16, and in the following days they met with officials from three state-controlled weapons manufacturers: China North Industries Corp. (Norinco); the China National Precision Machinery Import & Export Corp. (CPMIC); and China XinXing Import & Export Corp. The Chinese companies offered the entire contents of their stockpiles for sale, and promised to manufacture more supplies if necessary.

The hosts thanked the Libyans for their discretion, emphasized the need for confidentiality, and recommended delivery via third parties.

“The companies suggest that they make the contracts with either Algeria or South Africa, because those countries previously worked with China,” the memo says.

The Chinese companies also noted that many of the items the Libyan delegation requested were already held in the arsenals of the Algerian military, and could be transported immediately across the border; the Chinese said they could replenish the Algerian stocks afterward. The memo also indicated that Algeria had not yet consented to such an arrangement, and proposed further talks at the branch offices of the Chinese companies in Algiers.

Appendices stapled to the memo, and scattered nearby, show the deadly items under discussion: truck-mounted rocket launchers; fuel-air explosive missiles; and anti-tank missiles, among others. Perhaps most controversially, the Chinese apparently offered Col. Gadhafi’s men the QW-18, a surface-to-air missile small enough for a soldier to carry on his shoulder – roughly similar to a U.S. Stinger, capable of bringing down some military aircraft.

Government spokespeople in Beijing, Algiers and Pretoria either declined to comment or could not be reached on Friday. E-mails sent to two Chinese arms manufacturers were not answered.

The three governments have been reluctant to endorse NATO’s actions in Libya, but claimed to support the arms embargo. Before abstaining from the UN resolution that authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, China approved an earlier decision, Resolution 1970, that banned all military assistance to Tripoli. At the time, China’s representative at the United Nations said the “bloodshed and civilian casualties” were part of the “special circumstances” that prompted his country to vote in favour of the sanctions. South Africa also endorsed the sanctions, saying they would send a message that the Libyan regime should stop its indiscriminate use of force.

Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci issued a statement on Thursday, saying that his country had “resolutely applied” the terms of UN resolutions, and complaining about widespread rumours to the contrary.

“The truth of Algeria’s behaviour will be revealed,” Mr. Medelci said.

A possible justification for any state caught supplying weapons to Col. Gadhafi would be that NATO, and other sponsors of the Libyan rebels, were funnelling arms to the opposite side of the conflict. Trucks filled with war supplies rolled across the Egyptian border for rebels in the east, and France confirmed that it dropped weapons – including Milan anti-tank missiles – into the hands of rebels in the mountains of the western front.

Those supplies for the rebels were not prohibited by Resolution 1970, however; the embargo referred specifically to the “Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” or Libyan government.

“About the ‘Oh, NATO did it too!’ defence, I don’t think it holds,” said Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think tank.

Arms embargoes are usually monitored by panels of experts appointed by the United Nations. George Lopez, a professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies who recently served on such a panel, said that proof of a violation typically requires a bill of lading or other documentation to show that weapons changed hands.

If anybody strikes a deal that breaks the rules, however, it may also qualify as a sanctions violation.

“The willingness to assent to the deal is all that is needed,” Mr. Lopez said.

Given the difficulty of punishing UN embargo breaches, it seems likely that the more important consequences for the countries involved – China and Algeria in particular – will be their tarnished reputations in Tripoli.

Now that Col. Gadhafi has lost power, the Chinese appear to fear, with some justification, that they could lose their foothold in the Libyan oil fields.

“Oil is a basis for war, and oil was the fundamental interest behind the war,” wrote the Chinese media group Caixin in a recent commentary.

A senior official at the Arabian Gulf Oil Co., in Benghazi, told The Globe and Mail last month that he would be reluctant to do business with Chinese companies in future because of their government’s stand against the rebellion.

While a diplomatic quarrel between China and Libya may have significant economic implications, the tensions along the Algerian border may prove more troublesome from a security standpoint. Many Libyans already feel outraged by the fact that Col. Gadhafi’s wife and three children escaped into Algeria last week, and a rebel commander suggested that his men might pursue them into Algerian territory.

At the beginning of the uprising, rebels used radar installations at Benina Airport, near Benghazi, to track suspicious aircraft travelling between Algeria and the loyalist strongholds of Sabha and Surt. They recorded details for several flights by giant C-130 Hercules and Ilyushin Il-76 transport planes, bearing registration codes used by the Algerian military.

“Now we know what was inside those planes,” said Mohammed Sayeh, a member of the National Transitional Council. “That is why it took the Libyan people such a long time to get rid of the dictator, because they were fighting against the mercenaries and machinery provided by our neighbours.”

The new leadership in Tripoli seems acutely aware, however, that Libya needs peace with the neighbours during this shaky moment of transition. Having seized control of the capital, the rebels have not yet secured some of the remote desert towns that remain dangerously close to the Algerian border. Even while criticizing Algiers for its role in the war, Mr. Hariri referred to the Algerians as “brothers;” Mr. Sayeh emphasized that the new government must forge good relations with all countries, regardless of their history.

“We will start a new era,” Mr. Sayeh said. “We will forgive them, but we will not forget.”

Battle-hardened fighters seem less inclined to forgive. The authoritarian regime in Algiers now finds itself uncomfortably close to two North African countries that have overthrown their dictators, which could offer staging grounds for dissidents. Salaheldin Badi, a former pilot who commands one of the Misrata brigades that rushed into Tripoli last month, hinted that his men might be willing to let their revolutionary fervour spill across the border.

“Algeria played an important role, helping Gadhafi get his Chinese weapons,” Mr. Badi said. “That’s okay,” he added, with a mischievous grin, “because we will send weapons back for the revolutions in their countries.”

At least 50,000 killed in Libyan war, rebel commander says

Rebel fighters sit in a vehicle on the road between Misrata and Sirte, Moammar Gadhafi's hometown, on Tuesday.

Πηγή: CNN
By the CNN Wire Staff

August 30, 2011

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- At least 50,000 people -- both civilians and combatants -- have been killed in Libya's six-month war to oust strongman Moammar Gadhafi, a rebel military commander told CNN Tuesday.

The grim number was culled from death tolls reported in battle zones -- including Benghazi, Misrata, Tripoli and the Nafusa Mountains -- as well as from accounts from agencies such as the Red Cross, said Hisham Abu Hajer, the Tripoli Brigades coordinator.

The threat of even more bloodshed loomed as alarming reports of human rights violations surfaced and the leader of Libya's interim council issued an ultimatum Tuesday for tribal leaders in towns still under the control of loyalists: Surrender peacefully or face fierce military battles come Saturday, after Eid al-Fitr festivities have drawn to a close.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of the National Transitional Council, told reporters Tuesday that the rebels are in negotiations but will use brute force if the loyalists don't give in.

Jalil said the rebels hope to "avoid more bloodshed and to avoid more destruction and damage." But in the end, he said, "It might have to be decided militarily. I hope this will not be the case."

As fighting continued for the last bastions of Gadhafi's grip, the longtime dictator's whereabouts still were unknown. Members of his family, including Gadhafi's wife, Safia, two sons -- Mohamed and Hannibal -- and daughter Aisha escaped to Algeria.

Mourad Benmehidi, Algeria's ambassador to the United Nations, said his nation allowed them to enter on "humanitarian grounds."

Unlike Libya's other neighbors, Algeria has not recognized the authority of the National Transitional Council and the authoritarian government in Algiers has much to fear with Arab revolutions so close to home.

Jalil said Tuesday that the rebels would ask Algeria to extradite members of the Gadhafi family back to Libya. He also said that once Libyan liberation is complete, the country will set up courts to hear people's complaints against the Gadhafi regime.

But significant battles still stood in the way of total victory, most notably at Sirte and Bani Walid in the north and Sabha in the south. There has been speculation that Gadhafi and his other sons could be hiding in one of those towns.

Rebel fighters forged ahead Tuesday toward Sirte, situated along the Mediterranean coast between the capital, Tripoli, and the opposition nerve center of Benghazi.

Tripoli residents greeted the end of Ramadan with celebratory gunfire amid news that one of Gadhafi's most notorious sons, Khamis, died after a battle with rebel forces Sunday night in northwest Libya between Tarunah and Bani Walid.

A rebel commander said Khamis Gadhafi was buried in the area.

Members of his 32nd Brigade, the Khamis Brigade, were known for human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch said Monday that the brigade executed detainees a week ago in a warehouse near Tripoli.

Forces led by Khamis Gadhafi also killed scores of captive civilians as they tried to retreat from Tripoli, according to Muneer Masoud Own, who said he survived the massacre. CNN could not independently verify the claim, though Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both documented the alleged incident.

The United Nations voiced "extreme alarm" at the reports of "atrocious human rights violations" in Libya, including the summary executions.

"We are also deeply concerned about reports that there are still thousands of people unaccounted for who were arrested or taken prisoner by Gadhafi security forces either earlier in the conflict, or before it even started," said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

"Given the gruesome discoveries that have taken place over the past few days, there is good reason to be extremely concerned for their safety," Colville said. "We urge any members of the former regime in a position to reveal where prisoners have been held to do so, before more lives are lost."

Another report, released Tuesday by Physicians for Human Rights, documented crimes committed in the city of Misrata, under siege from Gadhafi's forces until rebels were finally able to win.

The report cited four witnesses who saw Gadhafi's troops forcibly detain 107 civilians and used them as human shields to guard munitions from NATO strikes.

One father told the physicians group that soldiers forced his two young children to sit on a tank, and threatened the family, saying, "You'll stay here, and if NATO attacks us, you'll die too."

The report said Gadhafi shielded weapons in markets, mosques and schools and detailed accounts of detention and torture.

In another instance, four witnesses told the group that Gadhafi's forces demolished a home for the elderly and abducted 36 disabled, elderly, and homeless people whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Although Libya's war is not over, signs of normalcy began to sprout in Tripoli Tuesday. Some shops reopened. Traffic picked up and humanitarian aid was trickling in. France reopened its embassy Monday and Britain said its personnel are preparing to do the same.

But food and water were in short supply.

The United Nations' World Food Programme was dispatching about 600 tons of staple food commodities -- wheat flour, pasta, vegetable oil and tomato paste -- for the Red Cross to distribute in Tripoli.

The U.N. children's agency was procuring 5 million liters (1.3 million gallons) of water to ship to Tripoli. The agency warned Libya was facing a potentially disastrous water shortage, mainly due to disruptions in the pipeline network serving areas that lack water resources.

Another of Gadhafi's sons, businessman Saadi Gadhafi, has offered to negotiate an end to the war with the rebels, who he claimed cannot "build a new country without having us (at) the table." He has made previous offers, though this time he appeared ready to cut loose from his father and his brother Saif al-Islam, once assumed to be the heir apparent.

"If (the rebels) agree to cooperate to save the country together (without my father and Saif) then it will be easy and fast. I promise!" Saadi Gadhafi said in an e-mail to CNN's Nic Robertson.