Libya And Touareg: Balance Changes Along Desert Routes – Analysis

Πηγή: eurasiareview
By MISNA
Oct. 2 2011


“The conflict in Libya has had only negative consequences on the Touareg community of the Sahel-Saharan region. This is an area of ​​the future, that will increasingly be the focus of attention, for both great powers of terrorist or criminal networks.”said Touareg, Ahmed Akol, former political secretary of the former Nigerian rebel movement Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ), adding that “Northern Niger is directly involved, where the Touareg have lost control of the territory, losing the economic support of the Libyan regime, and are now presented as ‘mercenaries in the pocket of Muammar Gaddafi’. Some definitions do not help our cause.”

The media, especially the French, have so far concentrated on speculation that Muammar Qadhafi is near the Libyan border protected by the Touareg. Some sources also report that the Touareg have recently received a lot of weapons from Libya.

Qaddafi’s support for the Touareg movement in fact is no secret. In the past some of their movements fighting against their governments, especially in Niger and Mali, passed through Libya.

In the mid 90′s, the Colonel was a ‘mediator’ in the peace process between governments and their rebellions.

According to Akola, “The area of ​​Agadez, which has always been disparaged and ignored by the central government in Niamey, (which) has received investment from Tripoli. The local market is supplied primarily on products that come from Libya. The first conflict was a direct result of higher prices and greater economic hardship for the population.”

Akola said that “It’s not just for this reason that the fate of the Touareg is at risk … despite changes in power and representation in institutions, those who really hold power in Niger, or the army, remains in the hands of Zarma. And there will be some time before we see the benefits of small improvements made in local development.”

“In this context, many young people without prospects, eventually taking up arms. The biggest fear is that they should do this while exploited by criminal groups that are native to our area, I am referring for example to the Salafists, groups linked to al-Qaida, which have nothing to do with the Touareg movements,” Akola said.

The borders of the desert are very lucrative for smugglers and criminals. The biggest business, says the leader of the MNJ, “is that of drugs. We are on a route that carries the drugs coming from Latin America to Europe. The area is of strategic importance.”

It is also important for the great powers, from Paris to Beijing, for the control of natural resources. The Sahara desert contains uranium, oil and gas.

Energy resources that prompt Tchangari Moussa, Secretary General of the network ‘Alternative Espace Citoyen’ to say that “the true purpose of the destabilization of Libya was to gain control over the entire range Saharan Africa”, from the north of Chad and Mauritania.

According to Moussa, “The area could also be of interest to Washington, looking for a solid foundation for ‘Africom,” the U.S. military command that should serve Africa, officially, for counter terrorism.

“Before the decolonization France wanted to found a state of the Sahel, which would cut off the countries of those regions where the resources are,” added Moussa.

For this reason and others, the nomadic Touareg rebellions, once masters of the desert, “were once considered legitimate by the same forces that today are accusing (them). Apparently now the Touareg have lost any support in this country”, according to Moussa, who does not belong to the Touareg community and is the chief editor of Alternative Hebdo.

The new game that is emerging on the Sahelian chessboard does not portend to a future of peace and stability.

Both Moussa and Akol said that the first beneficiaries of the conflict will be organizations such as Al Qaeda, who will find – thanks to western occupation – reason to spread insecurity and a motivation to enter the territory.

That said, so far, few voices are being raised in the local Touareg community, a proud community, but also one that is volatile.

Reports or complaints that come up in the international media often come from the diaspora and are difficult to verify.

Additionally, some people talk about “the massacre of Touareg” in Libya by the insurgency. However, it is not easy to distinguish who among the sub-Saharan groups, was in Libya serivng in Qadhafi’s armed forces and who was there to work and seek a life of dignity, having unfairly suffered abuse and discrimination.

“In this story the media have a great responsibility here too, in Niger, we see the same rehashed news, untested, without weighing the consequences,” Moussa said.

N. Africa: 'Instability Spreading'

Πηγή: The American Spectator
By AYMENN JAWAD AL-TAMIMI

Sep. 19 2011

Since the de facto downfall of the Gaddafi regime, much analysis has justifiably focused on the questions of Libya's internal dynamics and future stability. However, the possible implications on the security of the wider region, extending south through the Sahel to Nigeria, have been less widely considered.

One cause for concern that should have been raised during NATO's campaign in Libya was the fact that airstrikes did not target Gaddafi's vast stockpiles of missiles and other arms. The predictable result of this massive error has been that several arms depots -- including one that contains SA-7b Grail heat-seeking missiles imported by the Gaddafi regime from former Soviet bloc countries -- have been found looted in Tripoli.

The consequences of this development are very worrying indeed. The greatest danger is that smugglers could hand over these weapons to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is the local affiliate branch of the jihadist group across northwest Africa and the Sahel. As Peter Bouckaert -- emergencies director of Human Rights Watch -- put it, "If these [munitions] fall into the wrong hands, they could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone."

AQIM initially began as an anti-government insurgency (also targeting Berber activists) in the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s under the name "Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat,"eventually swearing allegiance to al Qaeda in 2006.

AQIM has since furthered its range of operations southward into Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. The group primarily engages in suicide bombings and other attacks on outposts belonging to the Algerian security forces, and has been involved in kidnappings of foreigners elsewhere (e.g. in December 2009, an Italian couple en route to Burkina Faso were taken hostage by AQIM in Mauritania).

The outcome of the Libyan civil war will no doubt give further impetus for AQIM to step up its attacks on the Algerian government, which made the tactical error of openly backing Gaddafi against the rebel forces and could well see further unrest among the population.

A further problem is posed by the outflow of pro-Gaddafi Touareg fighters from Libya into the country's southern neighbors. The Touareg are a nomadic Muslim Berber group, whom Gaddafi supported in their insurgency campaigns against the governments of Chad, Mali and Niger. Gaddafi never disguised his hatred of Berber language and culture, but his cooperation and cordial relations with Touareg fighters were partly rooted in his later rhetoric that called for a borderless Islamic republic across the Sahara.

As Tristan McConnell points out, the Touareg have controlled traditional caravan trade routes across the Sahara, now used for arms smuggling and human trafficking. Disgruntled over the loss of support with the overthrow of Gaddafi, mercenaries within the Touareg might forge ties with AQIM, a development that would only strengthen the latter and foster greater security threats to nations like Niger.

Yet perhaps most troubling is the fact that AQIM has recently been establishing contact and financial links with an Islamist group in Nigeria known as "Boko Haram" (meaning "Western Education is Forbidden"). Some members of Boko Haram may also have received training from AQIM militants. If AQIM gets hold of weaponry from Libya, it is probable that some of those arms will be supplied to Boko Haram as well.

Boko Haram, originally founded in 2002, is a group that seeks to transform all of Nigeria into an Islamic state. Among the organization's "grievances" include the supposed unacceptability of teaching that the Earth is spherical and the "sinful" idea that rain is caused by evaporation and subsequent condensation of water. Boko Haram came to widespread attention in 2009 for its massacres against minority Christians in the north, and it poses a particular threat in a nation that has a sharp sectarian divide between a predominantly Muslim north and a primarily Christian south.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian government has effectively engaged in a policy of appeasement towards Boko Haram, which forced one university in the country's northeast to close indefinitely in July(and may be aiming to target other universities in the south),bombed police headquarters in Abuja, the capital city, in June, and was responsible for a car bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Nigeria last month, killing 23 people.

On the other hand, as disclosures from Wikileaks cables show, the Nigerian authorities have released known terror suspects -- including affiliates of Boko Haram and AQIM -- in an attempt to placate Muslim tribal elders in the north, who were supposed to act as parole officers for released detainees.

In light of these trends, consider how much further damage deeper cooperation between Boko Haram and AQIM will do to Nigeria's stability.

Unfortunately, NATO, which has been spending billions of dollars trying to prevent the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan (even though the group is hardly likely to want to return there anyway), now appears to have significantly increased the risk of the creation of a strong hotbed of Islamist militancy in a vast region extending from Libya and Algeria down toward Nigeria.