Insight: Libya becomes 'the new Mali' as Islamists shift in Sahara

Πηγή: Reuters
By David Lewis
May 31 2013

Suicide attacks on a French-run mine and a military base in northern Niger have shown how an Islamist threat is spreading across the weak nations of the Sahara, meaning France may be tied down there for years to come.

Regional rivalries are aggravating the problem for Paris and its Western allies, with a lack of cooperation between Saharan countries helping militants to melt away when they come under pressure and regroup in quieter parts of the vast desert.

Security officials say lawless southern Libya has become the latest haven for al Qaeda-linked fighters after French-led forces drove them from strongholds in northern Mali this year, killing hundreds.

"The south of Libya is what the north of Mali was like before," said a senior adviser to Mali's interim President Diouncounda Traore, asking not to be named.

Niger has said last week's suicide raids, which killed 25 people at the army base and desert uranium mine run by France's Areva, were launched from Libya. Amid growing tensions between the two countries, Libya has denied this.

Chad, which played a leading role in the Mali campaign, said a man was shot dead in an attack on its consulate in the Libyan desert town of Sabha at the weekend.

Smugglers have long used Libya's poorly patrolled south - a crossroads of routes to Chad, Niger and Algeria - for trafficking drugs, contraband cigarettes and people to Europe.

But the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 flooded the Sahara with pillaged weapons and ammunition. Tuareg separatists used them to seize power in northern Mali, only to be ousted by even better-armed Islamists who set up training camps and imposed harsh Islamic law until the French forces arrived.

The Islamists have also exploited Libya's weakness. Veteran al Qaeda commander Moktar Belmokhtar bought weapons there after Gaddafi's fall and his fighters passed through southern Libya to carry out a mass hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant in January, in which 37 foreigners died.

A spokesman for the MUJWA, an al Qaeda-linked group which controlled parts of Mali last year, told Mauritania's al Akhbar news site that the Niger attack was not prepared in southern Libya. But Belmokhtar's group said it also took part.

With no effective national army, Libya relies on local brigades to police its southern border region where at least 100 people died in ethnic violence last year. Tripoli's failure to restore security there may be encouraging permanent Islamist camps and weapons stores, security officials say.

France, which relies on neighbouring Niger for one fifth of the uranium powering its nuclear reactors, has urged regional powers to cooperate to tackle the threat from Libya.

"We're extremely concerned that what's happening in southern Libya could replicate what happened in Mali," a French diplomatic source said, adding that the defence minister had raised the issue on a recent visit to Washington and London. "Dealing with that problem needs to be fast-tracked."

Paris is keen to cut its troop numbers in the region. But, amid persistent bickering and mistrust among regional powers, President Francois Hollande admitted last week that French forces may have be used elsewhere in the Sahel.

Alarmed European governments also approved a 110-man mission this week to improve border security by training Libyan police and security forces. [ID:nL6N0E34Q0] But Paris feels this is being deployed too slowly, given the urgency of the situation.

"As much as the West may wish to leave the problem to Africans, it cannot," said Vicki Huddleston, a former U.S. ambassador to Mali. "Islamists will continue to fight until defeated by the region working together and supported by Western governments."

LACK OF COOPERATION

Borders often have little meaning in a desert where militants can blend in with nomads, and hunting Islamists requires states riven by mutual suspicion to work together.

Algeria, the Sahara's main military power, has long bristled at the idea of outside intervention in the region, particularly one led by its former colonial ruler, France.

It allowed French war planes operating in Mali to fly over its territory. But the Malian official said Algeria had to be more active, whether by arresting militants or preventing the flow of fuel that allows them to cover vast desert distances - the northern Mali town of Gao lies about 1,500 km (930 miles) from the border of southern Libya.

"Algeria's cooperation is essential but they are not on the frontline," he said.

Mauritania also needed to do more because of its strategic location on the western edge of the Sahara, the high number of its citizens who are senior militants, and its experience in tackling Islamists at home, he said.

U.S. officials said efforts to tackle the spreading influence of al Qaeda's Sahara branch had been beset by long-standing rivalries, notably between Morocco and Algeria, and a lack of trust and communication between regional capitals.

Plans to set up a Saharan anti-terrorist command center in southern Algeria never materialised. A low point, officials in Mali's interim government say, was reached in 2011 when senior figures in the previous administration leaked the positions of Mauritanian troops attacking al Qaeda bases in Mali.

Relations between Mali and Mauritania had already soured in 2010 when Bamako released a Mauritanian al Qaeda commander in return for a kidnapped hostage, prompting Nouakchott to recall its ambassador.

The changing face of Islamist militancy creates particular problems for governments. For years Al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM relied largely on Algerians but they were joined last year by gunmen from across northern and parts of West Africa.

The MUJWA group includes more black Africans better able to drift unnoticed between West African nations since France's onslaught. "They have deployed to other theatres," said Soumeylou BouBeye Maiga, a former Malian foreign minister and security chief. "They will take on France elsewhere as there is a concentration of forces here."

Niger's long border with Mali, tough line on tackling the militants and role as a supplier of uranium to France have long made it a target. U.S. troops are training the army and Niamey has stepped up security in the north, where French Special Forces went this year to protect mines. Four French mine workers seized in Arlit in 2010 are still being held.

U.N. conflict expert Ismael Diallo said France, which had originally ruled out using ground troops in Mali, was gradually being dragged deeper into policing the region.

"France has no choice," said Diallo, a former senior official in Burkina Faso. "Regional cooperation will not improve soon enough and to a credible level to deter the armed groups."

"WE ARE WATCHING"

In Mali, drone surveillance and counter-terrorism teams on the ground have done much to stifle the militants. Suicide attacks around the northern towns of Gao and Menaka this month claimed no victims apart from the bombers themselves.

According to French officials, about 600 Islamists have been killed in "Operation Serval", named after a desert wildcat.

About 200 tonnes of ammunition and dozens of vehicles were seized in operations that scoured desert and mountain bases, disrupting arms and fuel dumps that the Islamists prepared during their nine-month occupation of northern Mali.

"They don't seem to have the ability to coordinate attacks in Mali anymore," said a French officer in Mali. "We assume that they will try to regroup but it will take time for them and it is risky as they know we are watching."

French operations have been backed by a British spy plane and U.S. drones operating from Niger alongside an established monitoring base in Burkina Faso.

But Islamists who once traveled in large convoys have adapted and are keeping a low profile. "At any given time, they could be anywhere," said a U.S. official. "People go where the fight is."

Al Qaeda Headquarters in Libya

Libyan security forces gather outside the French Embassy in Tripoli following a car-bomb attack on April 23. 

Πηγή: The Daily Beast
By Jamie Dettmer
May 6 2013

The volatile country, still reeling after the Benghazi attack and several recent bombings, has become a magnet for al Qaeda terrorists determined to sow instability in the region.

A rare interview with a top Libyan intelligence official reveals that, as an unintended consequence of the French intervention to quash a radical Muslim insurgency in nearby Mali, which forced al Qaeda in the Mahgreb to move north earlier this year, Libya has now become the main base of the terror group in the region, heightening the instability of what is already a volatile country.

“Libya has become AQIM’s headquarters,” says the intelligence source, adding that in just the last few weeks three new al Qaeda camps have opened in southern Libya.

The terror group’s boosted presence in Libya comes at a time when the struggling country is reeling from several threats to—or attacks on—Western targets.

On April 23, jihadist bombers sought to attack the British Council in Tripoli just minutes after other members of a suspected al Qaeda cell managed to detonate a powerful blast outside the French Embassy. The embassy bombing left two gendarmes injured—one seriously—and wounded several locals. The attack on the British Council failed—thanks to the incompetence of the jihadists.

As The Daily Beast revealed last week, the British Council, a government-funded educational body under the aegis of the British foreign office, was also an al Qaeda target April 23 in the first attacks on foreign missions in the capital since the ouster 18 months ago of Col. Muammar Gaddafi. Libyan and foreign security officials fear the attacks may herald the start of a jihadist terror campaign in the country.

British officials have declined to confirm or deny the planned attack, saying, “Our security policy is not to comment on security matters.”

But more details of what happened outside the British Council have now been divulged to The Daily Beast by local sources who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, indicating that the attack wasn’t in fact foiled by alert security guards, but was botched by a bomber who panicked after he parked his car, heavily laden with explosives, too close to a high concrete bollard and was unable to open his door.

Security sources says the would-be terrorist—he’s been dubbed the Keystone Bomber—then tried to exit through a window, prompting a guard, apparently oblivious to the danger, to call out, offering help.

Mistaking the offer of assistance as a challenge, a companion in a nearby getaway vehicle sped away, turned at a junction, and crashed into a parked vehicle before escaping. The bomber also drove off, prompting the alarm reported last week by The Daily Beast of jihadists hunting for another high-profile Western target to attack.

The whole saga was captured on CCTV cameras at the British Council in the smart residential district of Hay Andalous, a few blocks from the French embassy. The attacks were clearly coordinated with the British Council explosion planned to go off six minutes or so after the embassy bomb.

Despite the botched operation outside the British Council, foreign and Libyan security officials say the planning and bomb making involved in the attacks were of a high standard. At the embassy the bombers parked the car as close as possible to the perimeter wall, so when the blast hit, concrete shards were hurled in all directions. The British Council bomber was clearly ordered to do the same thing.

Though Western officials are close-lipped about the general threat that the jihadists pose, the president of Chad, Idriss Déby, complained last week that Libya isn’t doing enough to prevent these fighters from using Libya as a training ground for new recruits, undermining security in the region. The Libyan government has denied the claims, saying there has been no influx of jihadists from Mali.

Disgruntled militiamen in league with the Muslim Brotherhood last week applied a choke hold on the government by besieging key ministries in an effort to coerce approval of a measure that is likely to collapse of the government of Ali Zeidan, plunging Libya into even greater political turmoil and weakening Libya’s ability to battle jihadists.

The measure that passed May 6 disbars officials who worked for Gaddafi’s regime from public office. Many in the cabinet will be forced to leave.

Since the assault last September on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that left ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead, Libyan jihadist groups have been undergoing a reconfiguration, with more of them coming under the direct sway of AQIM. One Libyan intelligence source likens it to a “swarm of bees” accepting a new queen bee.

According to this source, AQIM didn’t order or plot directly the assault on the U.S. Consulate but was involved in the decision to attack, which was taken not by a single mastermind, but by a committee of Libyan and Egyptian jihadist ringleaders. “Radical cells in several of Benghazi’s revolutionary militias were involved in the decision,” he says, including members of the February 17 Brigade, the militia that also had guards detailed to protect the consulate.

He says the leaders of the militia most frequently blamed for the attack, Ansar al-Sharia, were not involved in the assault, although radical subordinates were. Other attackers came from the Omar Mukhtar brigade, the Abu Salem Martyrs Brigade, and the Rafala Sahati brigade. Three Algerian members of AQIM were present at the assault on the consulate and for the subsequent attack on a nearby CIA compound, where consulate staff fled. “They are now fighting in Syria,” he says.

Some Libyan officials believe there was double intelligence failure in the lead up to the consulate attack—with both the CIA and the jihadists misunderstanding the intentions and operations of the other by misinterpreting the macabre “language of espionage and terrorism.”

In the weeks before the assault there were more than two dozen assassinations of former Gaddafi security and intelligence officials in Benghazi. Some were score-settling slayings by hard-core revolutionaries out to revenge Gaddafi-era oppression, but most were jihadist hits on people thought to be acting as informants for American spies based at the Benghazi CIA annex. The jihadists thought the Americans would take the hint and shutter the CIA base. But most of those slain weren’t in fact informants, and the Americans didn't realize Benghazi jihadists had the annex in their sight.

Since Zeidan came into office last year and to the frustration of U.S. lawmakers, there have been no significant official updates on the progress a Libyan probe is making into Stevens’s death.

Fears Grow That Libya Is Incubator of Turmoil

Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former Al-Qaeda commander whose LIFG terrorist organization had killed U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Πηγή: abcNews
By MAGGIE MICHAEL, AP
Jan 26 2013

Libya's upheaval the past two years helped lead to the ongoing conflict in Mali, and now Mali's war threatens to wash back and further hike Libya's instability. Fears are growing that post-Moammar Gadhafi Libya is becoming an incubator of turmoil, with an overflow of weapons and Islamic jihadi militants operating freely, ready for battlefields at home or abroad.

The possibility of a Mali backlash was underlined the past week when several European governments evacuated their citizens from Libya's second largest city, Benghazi, fearing attacks in retaliation for the French-led military assault against al-Qaida-linked extremists in northern Mali.

More worrisome is the possibility that Islamic militants inspired by — or linked to — al-Qaida can establish a strong enough foothold in Libya to spread instability across a swath of North Africa where long, porous desert borders have little meaning, governments are weak, and tribal and ethnic networks stretch from country to country. The Associated Press examined the dangers in recent interviews with officials, tribal leaders and jihadis in various parts of Libya.

Already, Libya's turmoil echoes around the region and in the Middle East. The large numbers of weapons brought into Libya or seized from government caches during the 2011 civil war against Gadhafi are now smuggled freely to Mali, Egypt and its Sinai Peninsula, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. Jihadis in Libya are believed to have operational links with fellow militant groups in the same swath, Libyan fighters have joined rebels in Syria and are believed to operate in other countries as well.

Libyan officials, activists and experts are increasingly raising alarm over how Islamic militants have taken advantage of the oil-rich country's weakness to grow in strength. During his more than four-decade rule Gadhafi stripped the country of national institutions, and after his fall the central government has little authority beyond the capital, Tripoli. Militias established to fight Gadhafi remain dominant, and tribes and regions are sharply divided.

In the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of the revolt that led to the ouster and killing of Gadhafi, militias espousing an al-Qaida ideology and including veteran fighters are prevalent, even ostensibly serving as security forces on behalf of the government since the police and military are so weak and poorly armed. One such militia, Ansar al-Shariah, is believed to have been behind the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in the city that killed four Americans, including the ambassador. Since then, militants have been blamed for a wave of assassinations of security officers and government officials.

Earlier this month, former Libyan leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil warned the militant threat extends to efforts to establish a state that can enforce rule of law.

"Libya will not see stability except by facing them," he told a gathering videotaped by activists and aired on Libyan TV. "It is time to either hold dialogue or confront them." He listed 30 officials and police officers assassinated in Benghazi the past year.

The Mali drama illustrates how the threat bounces back and forth across the borders drawn in the Sahel, the region stretching across the Sahara Desert. Libya and Mali are separated by Algeria, but the two countries had deep ties under Gadhafi. Thousands of Tuaregs moved from Mali to Libya beginning in the 1970s, and many joined special divisions of Gadhafi's military where they earned higher salaries than they would have at home.

As Gadhafi was falling in 2011, thousands of heavily armed Tuareg fighters in southern Libya fled to northern Mali. The Tuareg are an indigenous ethnic group living throughout the Sahel, from Mali to Chad and into Libya and Algeria.

The fighters, led by commander Mohammed Ag Najem, broke the Mali government's hold over the north and declared their long-held dream of a Tuareg homeland, Azawad. But they in turn were defeated by Islamic militants, some linked to al-Qaida's branch in North Africa, who took over the territory and imposed rule under an extreme version of Shariah, or Islamic law. This month, as militants moved south, France launched its military intervention to rescue the Mali government, conducting airstrikes against militants.

In retaliation, militants seized an oil complex in eastern Algeria, prompting a siege by Algerian forces that killed dozens of Western hostages and militants.

The militant group that carried out the Algeria hostage taking, in turn, had help from Libyan extremists in the form of smuggled weapons and "organizational ties," the group's leader, Moktar Belmoktar said.

"Their ideological and organizational connection to us is not an accusation against a Muslim but a source of pride and honor to us and to them," Belmoktar, the one-eyed Algerian founder of the Masked Brigade, said of the Libyans in an interview with The Mauritanian newspaper in mid-December. "Jihadists in al-Qaida and in general were the biggest beneficiaries of the Arab world uprisings, because these uprisings have broken the chains of fear ... that the agent regimes of the West imposed."

He urged Libyan militants not to submit to calls by the Tripoli government to hand over their weapons, saying their arms are "the source of their dignity and their guarantee of security."

With pressure building on Mali's Islamists, Libya provides a possible alternative haven for jihadis, said Scott Stewart of the global intelligence group Stratfor.

"It is a very good place to operate if you are an extremist," he said. "There are fault lines and divisions ... The central government has very little authority outside Tripoli. This is very conducive environment for Jihad to thrive."

They already have a free rein in Benghazi.

"Libya became a heaven for them," Col. Salah Bouhalqa, a leading military commander in Benghazi, said of al-Qaida. "The Westerners are fearful that what happened in Algeria will take place in Libya. And here, just like Mali and Egypt and Iraq, these groups have extensions."

Some extremists say they are determined to shape the new Libya. Youssef Jihani, a member of Ansar Shariah in Benghazi, vowed that he and other jihadis would not accept a return to the days when they were jailed and executed under Gadhafi's rule. He told the AP in Benghazi late last year that the toppling of Gadhafi would not have been possible without the strength of jihadi fighters who he said joined the uprising to ensure an "Islamic state of Libya, where Shariah rule is implemented."

The bearded young man said he lay down his weapons last year. But he said he would take arms up again if Libya's next constitution doesn't make a clear reference to rule by Islamic law or if secular politicians hold power and try to rein in jihadis.

Jihani proudly said he believes in al-Qaida and supports its slain leader Osama bin Laden and Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. He said that during Libya's civil war in 2011, he killed a captured soldier from Gadhafi's army after discovering 11 video clips on his mobile phone showing soldiers raping women and men. Jihani said he ordered the soldier to dig his own grave, then severed his head with a knife.

"I wish I could behead him 11 times," he said. His story could not be independently confirmed.

Stewart, of Stratfor, also pointed to a concern that al-Qaida could make inroads among Libya's impoverished and alienated Tuareg.

Living in mud-brick slums or camps in the deserts of southwestern Libya, most Tuaregs were never given citizenship under Gadhafi's rule, though he used their fighters as mercenaries, and now they suffer not only from poverty but from the disdain of Libyans who see them as Gadhafi loyalists.

For centuries, Tuareg ran caravan routes across the Sahara, carrying gold and other valuables. Now they're known for smuggling weapons and drugs. In slums around the towns of Sabha and Owbari, they sleep next to livestock in shacks with corrugated metal roofs, with webs of electric cables dangling from poles overhead and garbage-filled streets.

Libya's new leadership has largely shunned them. The Tuareg's four members in parliament were removed because of ties to Gadhafi's regime, leaving them without a political voice. The Tuareg contend they were exploited by Gadhafi, along with all other Libyans.

"Gadhafi's rule left behind a breeding ground for terrorism by depriving people of their rights and education .... After all the promises, we thought we will live in heaven, but kids here die from scorpion bites," said Suleiman Naaim, a Tuareg rights activist, told the AP in Owbari.

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.

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.

The US Was Operating In Mali Months Prior To French Incursion: Meet The "Intelligence and Security Command"

Πηγή: Zerohedge
By Tayler Durden
Jan 20 2013

Last week we reported that in the aftermath of the so far disastrous French campaign to eradicate "rebels" in the north of Mali, because of their implied threat fo Europe, that "US Drones, Boots Arrive In Mali." Turns out we were wrong, and as the case virtually always is, for some reason there was already a US presence of at least three US commandos in Mali in the summer of 2012. What they were doing there remains a mystery, as it is a mystery if the ever co-present flip flops on the ground were there inciting the perpetual scapegoat Al Qaeda to do this, or that. Or maybe it was not the CIA. Maybe it was the Army's "little-known and secretive" branch known as the Intelligence and Security Command. Regardless, what becomes obvious is that while the US was on the ground and engaged in secret missions, it needed an alibi to avoid "destabilizing" the local situation once its presence became conventional wisdom. It got just that, thank to one Francois Hollande just over a week ago.

From the WaPo, as of July 8, 2012:

In pre-dawn darkness, a ­Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos — alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.

At the same time, the crash in Mali has revealed some details of the commandos’ clandestine activities that apparently had little to do with counterterrorism. The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which is conducting a probe of the fatal plunge off the Martyrs Bridge in Bamako, the capital of Mali, said it does not suspect foul play but has “not completely ruled it out.” Other Army officials cited poor road conditions and excessive speed as the likely cause of the 5 a.m. crash.

U.S. officials have revealed few details about the soldiers’ mission or their backgrounds, beyond abrief news release announcing their deaths hours after the accident.

In many countries, including most in Africa, Special Operations forces work openly to distribute humanitarian aid and train local militaries. At times, the civil-affairs assignments can provide credible cover for clandestine counterterrorism units.

But in Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.

The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”

Megan Larson-Kone, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Embassy in Mali, said the soldiers had stayed in Bamako because they were “winding down” civil-affairs programs in the aftermath of the coup while holding out hope “that things would turn around quickly” so they could resume their work.

Two of the soldiers, Capt. ­Daniel H. Utley, 33, and Sgt. 1st Class Marciano E. Myrthil, 39, were members of the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion, 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, which is based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

For two months after the crash, the U.S. military withheld the identity of the third soldier killed. In response to inquiries from The Washington Post, the Army named him as Master Sgt. Trevor J. Bast, 39, a communications technician with the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir.

Enter the Intelligence And Security Command

The Intelligence and Security Command is a little-known and secretive branch of the Army that specializes in communications intercepts. Its personnel often work closely with the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees missions to capture or kill terrorism suspects overseas.

During his two decades of service, Bast revealed little about the nature of his work to his family. “He did not tell us a lot about his life, and we respected that for security purposes,” his mother, Thelma Bast of Gaylord, Mich., said in a brief interview. “We never asked questions, and that’s the honest truth.”

Why Mali?

U.S. counterterrorism officials have long worried about Mali, a weakly governed country of 14.5 million people that has served as a refuge for Islamist militants allied with al-Qaeda.

With only 6,000 poorly equipped troops, the Malian armed forces have always struggled to maintain control of their territory, about twice the size of Texas. Repeated famines and rebellions by Tuareg nomads only exacerbated the instability.

About six years ago, the Pentagon began bolstering its overt aid and training programs in Mali, as well as its clandestine operations.

Under a classified program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors were deployed to West Africa to conduct surveillance missions over the country with single-engine aircraft designed to look like civilian passenger planes.

In addition, the military flew spy flights over Mali and other countries in the region with ­longer-range P-3 Orion aircraft based in the Mediterranean, according to classified U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

In what would have represented a significant escalation of U.S. military involvement in Mali, the Pentagon also considered a ­secret plan in 2009 to embed American commandos with ­Malian ground troops, diplomatic cables show.

Under that program, code-named Oasis Enabler, U.S. military advisers would conduct ­anti-terrorism operations alongside elite, American-trained ­Malian units. But the idea was rejected by Gillian A. Milovanovic, the ambassador to Mali at the time.
The stumbling block:

In an October 2009 meeting in Bamako with Vice Adm. Robert T. Moeller, deputy chief of the Africa Command, the ambassador called the plan “extremely problematic,” adding that it could create a popular backlash and “risk infuriating” neighbors such as Algeria.

Furthermore, Milovanovic warned that the U.S. advisers “would likely serve as lightning rods, exposing themselves and the Malian contingents to specific risk,” according to a State Department cable summarizing the meeting.

Moeller replied that he “regretted” that the ambassador had not been kept better informed and said Oasis Enabler was “a work in progress.” It is unclear whether the plan was carried out.

Moeller was right, and neighbors such as Algeria eventually did promptly respond in "popular backlash" that led to the deaths of at least one US hostage.

But back to the US Commandos, and, lo and behold, prostitutes:

The soldiers died of “blunt force trauma” when the vehicle landed upside down in the shallow river, crushing the roof, the Army said.

The Special Operations Command said it could not answer questions about where the soldiers were going, nor why they were traveling with the unidentified Moroccan women, saying the matter is under investigation.

Larson-Kone, the embassy spokeswoman, said the soldiers were on “personal, not business-related travel” at the time, but she declined to provide details. Officials from the Africa Command also said that they did not know who the women were, but they added in a statement: “From what we know now, we have no reason to believe these women were engaged in acts of prostitution.”

Hookers or not, what is obvious is that the US did have a largely secretive presence in Mali, which may or may not have led to ongoing social destabilization, which ultimately provided none other than the US with the ultimate cover to engage in whatever "anti-terrorist" operations it so chose. The name of the cover?

France.

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.”

Mali insurgency followed 10 years of U.S. counterterrorism programs

Islamist extremists grab more territory in Mali: French military forces step up their campaign, launching airstrikes for the first time in the central part of the country.

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Walter Pincus
Jan 17 2013

What went wrong with the counterterrorism efforts the State and Defense departments ran in Mali for 10 years?

French troops are moving against Islamist fighters who’ve traveled south from northern Mali. The White House or Congress, or both, should examine why the U.S. programs targeting the groups failed.

It’s worth understanding, since the United States is trying similar efforts in other nations.

In November 2002, the State Department announced that officials from its Office of Counterterrorism had visited Mali and other West African countries to brief governments on the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), which was “designed to protect borders . . . combat terrorism, and enhance regional cooperation and stability.”

Despite those big goals, State funded PSI with only $7.75 million, the first $6.65 million coming in 2004. With that money, U.S. European Command (EUCOM) sent U.S. Special Forces training units to work with the Mali military. The fear was that Islamic fighters driven from Afghanistan would settle in northern Mali. Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey B. Kohler, then head of planning at EUCOM, said, “We’re helping to teach them [the Malian military] how to control this area themselves so they can keep it from being used by terrorists.”

In 2005, PSI was replaced by the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), a partnership of State, Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) meant to focus on improving individual country and regional capabilities in northwest Africa.

According to a Government Accountability Office study, Mali got roughly $37 million in TSCTP funds from 2005 through 2008. More than half went to Defense projects. But GAO reported that there were bureaucratic differences over the programs and funding problems. “USAID received funds for its TSCTP activities in Mali in 2005 and 2007, but not in 2006,” for example. “Because it received no funds for 2006, the mission suspended a peace-building program in northern Mali,” the area with the greatest threat.

In 2006, Mali was included in the U.S. Millennium Challenge, a U.S. effort to provide economic support to countries “committed to good governance, economic freedom, and investing in their citizens.” A $461 million compact provided money for agriculture and expanding Mali’s access to markets and trade. It was to end on Sept. 17, 2012, but ended in March after the military coup.

One defense element under TSCTP was Operation Flintlock, a joint exercise to train the Malian army and armed forces of Algeria, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia. It would later add troops from Burkina Faso, Morocco and Nigeria.

Operation Flintlock 2005 was called the biggest exercise in Africa since World War II, involving 1,000 U.S. personnel and forces from seven regional countries. The exercise scenario, according to a BBC story, was “a terrorist group being chased across national borders from Mauritania in the west, through to Mali, Niger and finally Chad.”

A partial breakdown of spending under TSCTP showed that in the 2006-2007 period about $5 million was meant for youth programs in the north such as schools and to “expand the ability of citizens to participate in local government,” said a State Department document.

Operation Flintlock exercises were held in Mali in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, Mali got equipment worth $5 million, including 37 “new Land Cruiser pickup trucks, along with powerful communications equipment” for the desert, according to a U.S. statement. Mali also got $1 million in U.S. mine-detector equipment.

The 2009 exercise, held near Bamako, the capital, saw the first U.S. Special Operations Forces use of the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. The 2010 exercise involved some 1,200 people, and U.S. Special Forces showed a Malian special forces team how to handle an ambush in the Sahara, a Defense news release said.

The U.S. Africa Command had planned to hold a Flintlock 2012 exercise in Mali, but it was canceled because of problems in the north. Then the coup in March ended U.S. military assistance.

Even coup leader Capt. Amadou Sanogo represents something of a U.S. failure. He had participated in the Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training programs, with basic training at Fort Benning, Ga.; English-language training at Lackland Air Force Base, Tex.; an intelligence course at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; and study at Quantico, Va., with the Marine Corps.

Last November, Army Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr., deputy commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, told a Defense Strategies Institute conference in Alexandria that “we are not going to kill our way to victory” using Navy SEAL raids and drone strikes alone. What’s needed, he said, are “preemptive efforts before the fight starts . . . done with [host country] partners.”

Wasn’t that our Mali strategy?

Mysterious fatal crash offers rare look at U.S. commando presence in Mali

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Craig Whitlock
July 9 2012

In pre-dawn darkness, a ­Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos — alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.

At the same time, the crash in Mali has revealed some details of the commandos’ clandestine activities that apparently had little to do with counterterrorism. The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which is conducting a probe of the fatal plunge off the Martyrs Bridge in Bamako, the capital of Mali, said it does not suspect foul play but has “not completely ruled it out.” Other Army officials cited poor road conditions and excessive speed as the likely cause of the 5 a.m. crash.

U.S. officials have revealed few details about the soldiers’ mission or their backgrounds, beyond a brief news release announcing their deaths hours after the accident.

In many countries, including most in Africa, Special Operations forces work openly to distribute humanitarian aid and train local militaries. At times, the civil-affairs assignments can provide credible cover for clandestine counterterrorism units.

But in Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.

The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”

Megan Larson-Kone, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Embassy in Mali, said the soldiers had stayed in Bamako because they were “winding down” civil-
affairs programs in the aftermath of the coup while holding out hope “that things would turn around quickly” so they could resume their work.

Two of the soldiers, Capt. ­Daniel H. Utley, 33, and Sgt. 1st Class Marciano E. Myrthil, 39, were members of the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion, 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, which is based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

For two months after the crash, the U.S. military withheld the identity of the third soldier killed. In response to inquiries from The Washington Post, the Army named him as Master Sgt. Trevor J. Bast, 39, a communications technician with the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir.

The Intelligence and Security Command is a little-known and secretive branch of the Army that specializes in communications intercepts. Its personnel often work closely with the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees missions to capture or kill terrorism suspects overseas.

During his two decades of service, Bast revealed little about the nature of his work to his family. “He did not tell us a lot about his life, and we respected that for security purposes,” his mother, Thelma Bast of Gaylord, Mich., said in a brief interview. “We never asked questions, and that’s the honest truth.”

Haven for Islamist militants

U.S. counterterrorism officials have long worried about Mali, a weakly governed country of 14.5 million people that has served as a refuge for Islamist militants allied with al-Qaeda.

With only 6,000 poorly equipped troops, the Malian armed forces have always struggled to maintain control of their territory, about twice the size of Texas. Repeated famines and rebellions by Tuareg nomads only exacerbated the instability.

About six years ago, the Pentagon began bolstering its overt aid and training programs in Mali, as well as its clandestine operations.

Under a classified program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors were deployed to West Africa to conduct surveillance missions over the country with single-
engine aircraft designed to look like civilian passenger planes.

In addition, the military flew spy flights over Mali and other countries in the region with ­longer-range P-3 Orion aircraft based in the Mediterranean, according to classified U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

In what would have represented a significant escalation of U.S. military involvement in Mali, the Pentagon also considered a ­secret plan in 2009 to embed American commandos with ­Malian ground troops, diplomatic cables show.

Under that program, code-named Oasis Enabler, U.S. military advisers would conduct ­anti-terrorism operations alongside elite, American-trained ­Malian units. But the idea was rejected by Gillian A. Milovanovic, the ambassador to Mali at the time.

In an October 2009 meeting in Bamako with Vice Adm. Robert T. Moeller, deputy chief of the Africa Command, the ambassador called the plan “extremely problematic,” adding that it could create a popular backlash and “risk infuriating” neighbors such as Algeria.

West's intervention in Libya tipped Mali into chaos: experts

TOPSHOTS Malian men take part in a meeting of residents from Northern Mali, in Bamako on April 4, 2012.

Πηγή: The Daily Star

By Michel Moutot
April 5 2012


PARIS: When Western forces helped topple Libya's Moamer Kadhafi they forced hundreds of well-armed Tuareg fighters to flee home to Mali, tipping another fragile African state into chaos, experts say.

And for some observers, the Western powers' role in helping trigger the crisis now gives them a responsibility to help try to end it.

"It must be said and said again that the factor that unleashed all of this is the Western intervention in Libya," said Eric Denece, director of the French Centre for Intelligence Research (CF2R), a think tank.

When Kadhafi's regime fell to a popular uprising backed by NATO warplanes, his Tuareg hired guns fled south across the Sahara to their former homes in Mali and Niger in heavily-armed convoys of off-road pick-up trucks.

"At first, these veterans of the Libyan militia had nothing against Mali, but nature abhors a vacuum, and they needed to find something to do. So they allied with local groups, and now look where we are," he said.

In the past two weeks since a military coup in Mali caused a collapse in government authority, Tuareg rebels have seized the entire north and east of the country, including major towns like Gao and Timbuktu.

Most worryingly for foreign observers, Islamist fighters from the local Ansar Dine group and from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the North African wing of the global extremist network, have been fighting alongside the Tuaregs.

Denece argues that the West, and France in particular, should have been aware of the result of their actions in Libya and acted before now.

"The Malian foreign minister, Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, came almost every month to Paris for talks at the foreign ministry, the Elysee and the DGSE foreign intelligence service," he told AFP.

"He told them: 'Now that you have intervened and created chaos, what are you doing to help us, the countries in the region? Your intervention spread weapons and fighters across the Sahel. You know we can't fight those people'."

It is difficult to estimate how many fighters in total crossed the desert after the Libyan revolution, but they brought their weapons and training with them and were more than enough to tip the military balance in West Africa.

In Algiers, author and expert Mohamed Mokeddem, put at at least 1,000 the number of Tuareg mercenaries that flooded back into Mali, adding: "What is certain is that the Libyan crisis served AQIM and the Tuareg cause.

"We are seeing the final phase in the creation of a lawless, uncontrollable zone in the Sahel," he told AFP by telephone. "The Malian army can't do anything in this area. They have lost control.

"A good proportion of the Tuareg population, which has been abandoned and marginalised for years, has rallied to the banner of AQIM and local Islamists. They feel like they're taking their revenge," he said.

"The former Kadhafi militiamen are now a force that no-one in the region has the means to oppose. They have reintegrated into the social fabric of North Mali. They have ad hoc alliances with AQIM, Arab tribes and local Islamists."

The Algerian military is the only force in the region with the troops and firepower needed to face down the threat, but it is prevented from operating outside its own national territory by Algeria's constitution, he said.

Denece foresees a nightmare scenario in which the bands roaming the Sahel build ties with fellow Islamist militants in neighbouring areas, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, and even with the Shebab in far-off Somalia.

Before then, he fears, the West will be obliged to act. "Because of what they did in Libya, they have a real responsibility," he argued.

"If the French, Americans and perhaps the Algerians work together, in three months we could get back to the situation we had before Libya. We'll never liquidate all the gangs, but we could help Mali to take its towns back."