Sahelian Foreign Ministers Discuss al-Qaida Threat

Scott Stearns | Dakar 16 March 2010

Photo: AFP

A general view of the Ministerial Conference of Sahara-Sahel States in Algiers, 16 Mar 2010

Related Articles

• AFRICOM Commander Urges Against Moving Headquarters to Africa

Foreign ministers from Africa's Sahelian countries are meeting in Algeria to better coordinate their response to al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists who are responsible for a series of bombings and kidnappings.

The meeting outside Algiers includes foreign ministers from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. They are working on a joint plan of action to confront the group al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which operates across parts of the Sahara kidnapping foreigners and bombing military posts.

The group claims responsibility for last week's bombing of an army barracks in western Niger. It is holding two Spanish aid workers and an Italian couple kidnapped in Mauritania.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb last year killed a British hostage in Mali and shot dead a U.S. aid worker in Nouakchott before bombing the French Embassy there in August.

Mauritania's state-run news agency says government officials are concerned the deserts of northern Mauritania and Mali will be the next battlefield as more Algerian terrorists cross the border to join the group.

While al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is not large enough to topple a government, diplomats fear it could make the Sahara a safe haven for terrorists planning attacks elsewhere.

"I think there is a threat to stability in the sense that these are countries that are not terribly stable in the first place. This is not an organization that risks taking over a country," says Marina Ottaway, who directs the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Sunni group began in Algeria in 1992 after military rulers canceled parliamentary elections when it appeared Islamist groups might take power. They have since aligned themselves with the broader al-Qaida terrorist network, but Ottaway says they remain a loosely-organized group.

"They have had their problems in the sense that they started out trying to present themselves as, 'We are it', essentially," said Marina Ottaway. "'We are controlling all of the operations in the area.' They have not succeeded in getting all groups to join them. The Libyans have not joined them."

The U.S. State Department says it hopes the meeting in Algeria consolidates collective action against groups seeking to exploit the region to attack civilians.

The top U.S. military commander for Africa met with Algeria's president last November to discuss joint anti-terrorism efforts. The head of U.S. Air Forces in Africa met with senior Algerian Air Force officers earlier this year.

Ottaway says too much U.S. involvement may be counter-productive.

"I think it is open to discussion to me whether it is really in the best interest of these governments to all come together, particularly to come together with the U.S. military, to try and work out a common front because in a sense, by doing that, they also encourage these various groups to come together," said Ottaway. "All the groups involved in terrorist activities, kidnappings and so on, also find more of a reason to centralize their activities. So that it may in fact lead to have some unintended consequences."

Regional diplomats say this meeting in Algeria is especially important given the fall-out over Mali's release of four suspected militants last month. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb demanded their release or said it would kill French hostage Pierre Camatte.

He was freed, but Algeria and Mauritania withdrew their ambassadors to Mali in protest as they intended to try their own nationals among the suspected terrorists. Algeria said Mali's actions played into the hands of the insurgents.

Related articles by Zemanta

• French hostage released in Mali (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Algerian, Libyan charged in plot to kill artist (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• New Terror Threat in North Africa: Kidnapping Foreigners (time.com)
• Malian troops taught anti-terrorist tactics by US soldiers (telegraph.co.uk)

Islamic Radicalism Slows Moroccan Reforms - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By STEVEN ERLANGER and SOUAD MEKHENNET

CASABLANCA, Morocco — Morocco has long been viewed as a rare liberalizing, modernizing Islamic state, open to the West and a potential bridge to a calmer Middle East that can live in peace with Israel.

But under pressure from Islamic radicalism, King Mohammed VI has slowed the pace of change. Power remains concentrated in the monarchy; democracy seems more demonstrative than real. While insisting that the king is committed to deeper reforms, senior officials speak instead of keeping a proper balance between freedom and social cohesion. Many discuss the threat of extremism in neighboring Algeria.

Since a major bombing of downtown hotels and shopping areas by Islamic radicals in 2003, and a thwarted attempt at another bombing campaign in 2007, there has been a major and continuing crackdown on those suspected of being extremists here.

In 2003, anyone with a long beard was likely to be arrested. Even now, nearly 1,000 prisoners considered to be Islamic radicals remain in Moroccan jails. Six Islamist politicians (and a reporter from the Hezbollah television station, Al Manar) were jailed recently, accused of complicity in a major terrorist plot. The case was full of irregularities and based mainly on circumstantial evidence, according to a defense lawyer, Abelaziz Nouaydi, and Human Rights Watch.

In a rare interview, Yassine Mansouri, Morocco’s chief of intelligence, said that the arrested politicians “used their political activities as a cover for terrorist activities.”

“It was not our aim to stop a political party,” he said. “There is a law to be followed.”

Morocco is threatened, Mr. Mansouri said, by two extremes — the conservative Wahhabism spread by Saudi Arabia and the Shiism spread by Iran. “We consider them both aggressive,” Mr. Mansouri said. “Radical Islam has the wind in its sail, and it remains a threat.”

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, especially active in Algeria, remains a major problem for Morocco, Mr. Mansouri said. Officials say it is appealing to the young and has recreated a training route to Afghanistan through Pakistan, and it just sponsored a suicide bombing in Mauritania.

Foreign Minister Taïeb Fassi Fihri said: “We know where the risks to our stability are. We know kids are listening to this Islamic song, so we have to act quickly.”

King Mohammed, who celebrated his 10th year on the throne this year, has vowed to help the poor and wipe out the slums, called “bidonvilles,” where radicalism is bred. One such slum, Sidi Moumen, where the bombers lived, is being redeveloped. Half of it has already been ripped down, and some 700 families shipped to the outskirts of the city, where they are provided a small plot of land at a cheap price to build new housing.

Hamid al-Gout, 34, was born in Sidi Moumen and built his own hovel here. Nearly everyone has been to prison, he said, and Islamist political groups quietly hold meetings. “Sometimes we talk, 12 or 14 people, about our lives,” he said, then added carefully, “But there is no radical thinking here now.”

Abdelkhabir Hamma, 36, said that he had been told that if he and his family did not leave by the end of the year, they would be thrown out. He said that while many respect the king, few trust other authorities.

The king sees himself as a modernizer and reformer, having invested heavily in economic development, loosened restraints on the news media, given more rights to women and shed light on some of the worst human-rights abuses of the past. These are remarkable steps in a region dominated by uncompromising examples of state control, like Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Because the king, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, is also revered as the “Commander of the Faithful,” challenges to Moroccan Islam are taken very seriously.

In March, the king cut diplomatic ties to Iran, accusing Tehran of “intolerable interference in internal affairs” by trying to spread Shiism in Morocco and recruiting Moroccans in Europe, especially in Belgium, to participate in acts of terrorism, Mr. Mansouri said.

The king has tried to be more inclusive, traveling for instance to the north of Morocco, where his father had refused to go. The north is also a hotbed of extremism and home for many of the Qaeda bombers of Madrid. The king held a traditional ceremony of mutual allegiance, or baiaa, this year in Tetouan and highlighted significant development funds there.

But Morocco’s response has also been to slam the brakes on reform, even of the corrupt judiciary and of laws governing women’s rights, in order not to inflame conservative and traditional views of Islam, especially in the countryside and among the poor, where extremists fish. For that reason, too, the king has not put Morocco forward as an interlocutor between Israel and the Palestinians, as his father did. The view here is simply that Israel — and other, harder-line Arab states — must move first, before Morocco exposes itself.

The crackdown has also damaged Morocco’s human rights record. Muslim prisoners are treated roughly in jail, sometimes sodomized with bottles, said Abdel-Rahim Moutard, a former prisoner himself, his hands broken during interrogations. He runs Ennasir, a rights organization for prisoners. But when they emerge from prison, they get little help, even from the mosques or Ennasir.

“A lot of them are shocked that their country would treat them this way,” Mr. Moutard said. “After the bottle treatment, every time he goes to the toilet he’ll remember, and he will think of vengeance.”

The main Islamist party, the Party for Justice and Development, is effectively neutered, but officials want to ensure that it does not combine with the Socialists. So for recent elections for local authorities, the palace created the Authenticity and Modernity Party, run by Fouad Ali El Himma, 46, who as a youth had been chosen, like Mr. Mansouri and other boys from varied backgrounds, to study with the young king. Mr. Himma is also a former deputy interior minister.

The effort is to provide an alternative — sanctioned informally by the palace — but also to try to mobilize Moroccans, who do not see their participation as having much effect on weak governments, to vote. The new party won, with 22 percent of the vote on a turnout of 52 percent; Mr. Himma is seen as a future prime minister.

In an interview, Mr. Himma spoke passionately about the commitment of the king to aid the poor and reform the country. Morocco “has always been a country of transit, and we have found the cement for all this — our multifaceted monarchy,” he said.

Critics, however, see the king and his friends as a closed, anti-democratic “monarchy of pals.” The king has concentrated much economic power in the palace, argues Aboubakr Jamai, former editor of Le Journal Hebdomadaire — becoming Morocco’s chief banker, insurer and industrialist. Moves toward a more democratic system, with more power to the Parliament, or even a constitutional monarchy, are off the table, certainly for now.

The officials readily concede that poverty, illiteracy and corruption remain serious challenges. The king, they say, has made judicial reform a key goal.

Yet in a nationally televised address on his 10th anniversary as king, Mohammed VI spoke of poverty and development. But he did not use the word “corruption,” and he spoke only once of “social justice,” making no mention of judicial reform.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Don't be outraged for Muslim women (guardian.co.uk)
• Muslims brace for Ramadan violence (nationalpost.com)
• Pope reinforces his respect for Islam (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Islamic Rebels Gain Strength in the Sahara

Moving South From Algeria, al Qaeda-Affiliated Insurgents Find Support Among Locals in Mauritania, Mali and Niger

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels are spreading far beyond their original battleground in Algeria and increasingly threatening Africa's Sahara belt, scaring away investors and tourists as they undercut the region's fragile economies.

Dozens of security personnel, as well as an American aid worker and a British tourist, were killed by militants in several attacks in the region this summer alone. The attacks -- which prompted this year's lucrative Paris-Dakar car race to relocate to South America -- have become more frequent and brazen. Recent hits occurred not just in the remote desert but also in Mali's tourist magnet Timbuktu and in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, where a suicide bomber attacked the French Embassy last weekend.

Though still dominated by the veterans of Algeria's civil war, this Saharan insurgency has grown deep local roots. Armed bands roaming the desert include hundreds of recruits from Mauritania, Mali and Niger -- vast and impoverished countries that straddle the Arab world and black West Africa, and that relied on the now-collapsed tourism industry as the key source of foreign exchange.

"What had started out as an Algerian problem is now engulfing Mali and Mauritania. They are the weak link," says Zakaria Ould Ahmed Salem, a specialist on political Islam at the University of Nouakchott.

An Islamist insurgency that cost 200,000 lives erupted in Algeria 18 years ago, after that country's secular regime annulled the second round of elections that the Islamists were poised to win. But it is only in the past few years, as Algerian security forces contained the violence at home, that the rebels -- who seek to create an Islamic state encompassing North Africa -- began mounting operations in neighboring Saharan countries that had been unscathed by international terrorism.

Underlining its wider ambitions, the main Algerian insurgent movement, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, re-branded itself in 2007 as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Actual operational links between AQIM militants in the Sahara and traditional al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan or Afghanistan are tenuous, if they exist at all, Western officials say.

But the group's new name has made it easier to find money and recruits for the cause outside Algeria. "Someone like Bin Laden is considered a hero here," explains Mohamed Fall Ould Oumere, publisher of La Tribune newsweekly in Nouakchott.

Mauritania, where most people speak Arabic and watch satellite TV chains like Al-Jazeera, is a particularly fertile ground for AQIM's growth, and accounts for a growing share of the movement's cadres, Western diplomats say. In Mali, Niger and Chad, the bulk of AQIM recruits also come from Arab-speaking communities, which in these countries are outnumbered by black African majorities.

AQIM is trying to spread south, "aiming to attract the young Muslims of the region -- white ones and black ones," says Isselmou Ould Moustafa, a specialist on AQIM who interviewed many of the group's members for his Mauritanian publication, Tahalil Hebdo.

Security officials in Nigeria recently claimed that AQIM trained in Algeria some members of Boko Haram, the Islamist sect whose armed uprising cost several hundred lives in northern Nigeria last month. According to some experts on AQIM, there is also evidence of contacts between the Saharan insurgents and the Shabaab, the radical Islamist militia controlling a chunk of Somalia. "It's an arc of fire," says Mr. Oumere.

All the governments in the region say they are fighting back. But the area's political instability and frequent bickering between neighboring countries have long made it easy for Islamist rebels to roam the Sahara, obtaining sanctuary and help from local tribes. Mali and Mauritania both have strained relations with Algeria. Planned regional summits to tackle the cross-border terrorism problem have been repeatedly postponed.

A military coup in Mauritania last year complicated the situation: The U.S. reacted to the overthrowing of Mauritania's democratically elected president by reducing military cooperation with the country and pulling out a reconnaissance plane that flew regular sorties over the Sahara to search for insurgents. Cooperation is likely to be restored now that Mauritania has held a democratic election last month.

Government officials here say that, without outside help, Saharan countries have little chance of defeating AQIM. "This is a zone that can't be controlled. We don't know who's out there in the vast desert and what are they doing," says Mohamed Ould Rzeizim, who served until this week as Mauritania's minister of interior.

To finance its campaign, AQIM is smuggling Europe-bound cigarettes, drugs and illegal immigrants through the desert, Mauritanian and Western officials say. Depots of untaxed cigarettes, often brought in by ship from South America, dot the desert along Mauritania's porous northern borders.

An equally important source of revenue for AQIM is ransom money -- estimated at tens of millions of dollars -- paid by European governments for the freedom of European tourists kidnapped in separate attacks in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali and Niger. The hostages were usually transported across the Sahara to AQIM's bases in lawless northern Mali, where local officials helped negotiate the ransom collection and the tourists' release.

Mali's role as a sanctuary for AQIM has long infuriated Algeria and the U.S. The country appears to be taking a harder line after the Islamist rebels -- who refrained from killing their hostages in the past -- announced in June that they executed their British captive, Edwin Dyer.

A few days after the killing of Mr. Dyer, suspected militants also gunned down in Timbuktu the regional chief of Malian intelligence, Lt. Col. Lamina Ould Bou. The colonel, an ethnic Arab and former Islamist rebel, had played a crucial role in Mali's efforts against AQIM. According to Malian government accounts and al Qaeda Internet postings, armed clashes in the region in following weeks killed dozens of Malian troops and Islamist guerrillas.

"We are now engaged in a total struggle against al Qaeda," Mali's President Amadou Toumani Touré declared last month.

The Saharan rebels have so far targeted only foreigners and security forces, sparing civilian targets like restaurants and hotels. In Algeria, Pakistan and Iraq, by contrast, al Qaeda-affiliated militants showed no concern about killing large numbers of Muslim civilians.

"These youngsters are not yet ready to carry out blind attacks and to explode car bombs, Algerian-style. They have not yet completely broken with the Mauritanian society," says Mr. Moustafa, the AQIM expert. But, he cautions, bloodier attacks are likely to happen soon: "They have bad teachers. Their future targets will be Mauritanian."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Mali Ex-Rebels to Tackle al-Qaeda

The main group of Tuareg ex-rebels in Mali has agreed to help the army tackle al-Qaeda's North African branch. Both groups roam across the Sahara Desert and correspondents say the deal could prove significant. The agreement was brokered by Algeria's ambassador to Mali. Algeria is where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb stages most of its attacks. Last month, the group killed a British hostage who was being held in Mali after being seized in Niger. Two weeks later, after the president declared an all-out war on the group, the army said it had seized an al-Qaeda base near the border with Algeria. However, the group remains active in the region and has also staged attacks in Niger and Mauritania. The BBC's Martin Vogl in Mali's capital Bamako says the Malian and Algerian governments will both be pleased to have Tuareg forces as part of their offensive against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The Tuareg know how to operate in the desert perhaps better than anyone else and could be the government's best hope of beating al-Qaeda in the region, he says. US support Under the deal, special units of fighters from the Alliance for Democracy and Change (ADC) are to be sent to the desert to tackle al-Qaeda. Although the ADC signed a deal to end its rebellion three years ago, one of its factions is still active. The Tuareg, a historically nomadic people living in the Sahara and Sahel regions of North Africa, have had militant groups in Mali and Niger engaged in sporadic armed struggles for several decades. They have argued that their region has been ignored by the government in the south of the countries. But there has been a history of animosity between the Tuareg groups and al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, Mali, Algeria and Libya have reportedly agreed to work more closely against the group. Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure said he had agreed to share information and military resources with his two counterparts. Correspondents say the US is giving substantial economic and military support to countries of the region which promise to tackle al-Qaeda.