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

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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.

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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

Suicide Blast Wounds 2 at Embassy in Mauritania

By ADAM NOSSITER

DAKAR, Senegal — A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the French Embassy in Mauritania’s capital on Saturday night, slightly wounding two embassy security guards who were jogging near the walls.

“Someone approached them and blew himself up,” a spokesman for the French Embassy, Marc Flattot, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Nouakchott.

“It wasn’t a big explosion,” he said.

“There were a number of light wounds. They were shocked,” he said of the security guards, who were hospitalized for observation.

“No doubt they had been spotted,” Mr. Flattot said.

Mauritania is a large Islamic country of mostly desert that has suffered a number of attacks attributed to a North African militant group affiliated with Al Qaeda, including the killing of an American in June.

But there had not been a suicide bombing on record, and analysts and diplomats in Nouakchott considered Saturday’s attack an escalation of terrorist activities in a land whose vast, unpatrolled northern frontiers have become a cause of concern to counterterrorism officials.

“They’re clearly becoming more active,” a Western diplomat in Nouakchott said of the militant group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. “It’s the first time we’ve seen them do it here.”

The diplomat cautioned, though, that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had previously shown its ability to bring militants into Mauritania from neighboring Mali.

Now, the diplomat said, “It’s perhaps more focused.”

On Saturday night, a Mauritanian Web site said to be close to the government, the Agence Nouakchott d’Information, reported that the suicide bomber was a Mauritanian.

It said the bomber cried “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” before blowing himself up as he approached the two Frenchmen.

The police told Agence France-Presse that the suspect was a jihadist who had been sought by security officials.

No responsibility for the bombing was claimed Saturday night.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb previously declared itself responsible for the shooting of the American, Christopher Leggett, six weeks ago on a street in Nouakchott. Saturday’s attack, unlike the shooting, took place in the heart of the capital’s diplomatic and upper-end residential district, Tevragh Zeina.

Three Mauritanians were charged with murder last week in Mr. Leggett’s death; one was wearing an explosives belt that did not detonate when he was arrested in July.

Three others, accused of close ties to Al Qaeda, are in custody in the killing of four French tourists in Mauritania in 2007.

Also in July, one of the Qaeda branch’s leaders threatened war against France over President Nicolas Sarkozy’s declarations against the burqa, the head-to-toe covering worn by some Muslim women.

France is the former colonial power in Mauritania and provides millions of dollars in aid each year.

Earlier last week, Mauritania’s newly elected president, the former coup leader and general Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, declared at his inauguration that he would “spare no effort in the fight against terrorism and its causes.”

Mauritania is considered to be a country of moderate Islam; the Islamist candidate in the recent presidential elections got little support.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb recently carried out attacks in the desert in the neighboring country of Mali, including an encounter with a Malian Army patrol and the killing of a senior Malian Army officer in his home.

“This is the logical follow-up to the recent encounters in the north of Mali,” said Isselmou Ould Moustapha, the editor of Tahalil Hebdo, a newspaper in Nouakchott.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Paris.

Mauritanian Political Landscape Changed after Presidential Election

By Anne Look Nouakchott, Mauritania 25 July 2009

Voters outside Maurtiania's capital wait to cast their ballots in an election meant to restore constitutional rule following last year's coup, 18 Jul 2009

Mauritania's National Assembly President Messaoud Ould Boulkheir did not win the recent presidential election, but he did not exactly lose either. As the new de-facto leader of the opposition, he will have a tough time luring support away from the former general who led a coup against the country's first freely elected leader and went on to win the recent presidential election.

Boulkheir garnered more votes than long-time opposition leader Ahmed Ould Daddah, who was competing in his last presidential race. Under Mauritanian electoral law, Daddah will be too old to run in the next election.

But with just over 16 percent of the vote, Boulkheir was far behind former general Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who won more than 50 percent of the vote in a field of nine candidates, making a second round unnecessary. The two opposition leaders had vowed to support each other if the vote had gone to a second round. While the opposition claimed the election was fraudulent, Mauritania's Constitutional Council validated the results, and observers from the African Union and the Arab League say the vote was fair.

Boulkheir will have a tough challenge if he hopes to lead the opposition to victory in the next presidential election.

Boulkheir gained respect from the international community for his steadfast opposition to last August's coup and his role in negotiating the Dakar accord that paved the way for the election. During the campaign, he pledged to combat voter fraud in a spirit of non-violence and democracy.

"We will go through democratic channels and protest democratically. If we encounter violence, we are ready to suffer that violence," he says. "We are ready to die for our convictions."

Born to slave parents, the 66-year-old politician rose through the ranks of civil service to become head of his party, president of the National Assembly and a crusader in the fight to end slavery in Mauritania. His slave mother was almost beaten to death by her master, before French authorities intervened and helped the family escape to freedom.

Though slavery was abolished in 1980, many say it is still practiced in the more traditional, far-flung regions of the country. Boulkheir had vowed that, if elected, he would bring existing slave holders to justice.

Though he had finished fourth in two previous presidential elections, opposition to the coup expanded his traditional support base from his fellow Haratines, or former slaves, to the country's white Arab and black African populations, making him a major contender in this race.

On the last day of campaigning, Boulkheir held a large rally in Nouakchott, the capital, bringing together his long-time supporters and those who had recently joined his camp.

This supporter said Boulkheir could be the president of all Mauritanians, the president who could bring progress to the country. "He's the Mauritanian Obama," she said, referring to the U.S. president. She said Boulkheir was the candidate of change, peace and national unity.

So, why didn't Boulkheir do better in the election?

Political analyst Mohamed Vall Ould Oumer says that, in reaching out to broaden his base, Boulkheir lost his traditional supporters, the more than half a million former slaves who make up one fifth of the country's population.

Oumer says that Boulkheir ignored everyday concerns like food prices, wastefulness and the redistribution of wealth. Oumer says that, in response to Abdel Aziz' claim that he was the "President of the Poor," Boulkheir said he was the president of the rich and the poor. That was a trap, Oumer says, and Messoud fell into it.

Oumer says the only card Boulkheir has left to play is the threat he could pose in the next presidential election by rebuilding his base and championing democratic change.

Mauritania Opposition Rejects Presidential Election Results

By Scott Stearns Nouakchott, Mauritania 19 July 2009 Mauritanian opposition candidates are rejecting results from a presidential election that show former military leader Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz winning. With more than 70 percent of ballots counted, Mauritania's electoral commission says Aziz is winning more than 52 percent of the vote. If that count holds up, the leader of last August's coup would win election in the first round - avoiding a run-off in which his main political opponents had vowed to unite against him. Those opponents immediately rejected the provisional results as an "electoral charade, which is trying to legitimize the coup." In a joint statement, Ahmed Ould Daddah, Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, and Hamai Ould Meimou denounced what they called "prefabricated results." They are calling for the international community to investigate what they say were voting irregularities, including counting opposition ballots for Aziz. The opposition leaders are asking "competent bodies", including the country's constitutional council and Interior Ministry to not validate the results. Their joint statement is urging Mauritanians to mobilize to defeat what opposition leaders are calling an "electoral coup d'etat." During the campaign, Daddah said he was quiet when he says vote fraud denied him victory in presidential elections in 1991 and 2007. But he said this time he is not prepared to be silent if the election is stolen and told his supporters neither should they. Arab electoral observers monitored more than 300 of Mauritania's 2,500 polling stations. They saw irregularities including partisan electoral officials, security forces inside polling stations, and the denial of voters who registered after June 6th - most of whom support the opposition. But the group's preliminary report says it does not believe those irregularities will affect the overall outcome of the vote. Mohsen Marzouk is Secretary General of the Arab Democracy Foundation. Marzouk says Mauritania is a crucial point that will affect all its people. He called for political parties and official institutions to adhere strictly to democracy as the best way to solve the political crisis and promote stability and development. Arab observers say they will consider opposition complaints and include them in its final report. Boulkheir and Daddah had both publicly pledged to support the other in a potential run-off against Aziz if no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote. This election was meant to restore constitutional rule to Mauritania after Aziz led a coup 11 months ago that toppled the nation's first freely-elected leader. Aziz ran a populist campaign, calling himself the "Candidate of the Poor" pledging to improve access to health care while lowering food and fuel prices. To the cheers of his supporters, he vowed to build more jails to imprison his political opponents, who he says are corrupt. Aziz campaigned far longer than most of his opponents as he began running for a previously-scheduled June election that he agreed to postpone as part of a power-sharing deal that included the opposition dropping their electoral boycott.

Voters in Mauritania Prepare for Saturday Election

By Scott Stearns Nouakchott 17 July 2009

Supporters of Mauritania's former military leader Mohamed Ould Abedl Aziz attend a political rally in the southern city of Rosso, 17 Jul 2009

Voters in Mauritania go to the polls Saturday to choose a new president. It is an election to restore constitutional order following last year's military coup.

Friday is a day of reflection in Mauritania for voters to consider what they have heard from candidates over the past two weeks.

So what are people thinking?

This university student in the southern city of Rosso says former military leader Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is the right man to lead Mauritania because he is determined to fight corrupt politicians.

"I support him because President Aziz is a man of actions and thought," he said. "Most Mauritanian people support him because he came and tried to make dramatic change in this country, and we as people, we as poor people, we must go with him side-to-side and shoulder-to-shoulder."

Aziz led the coup last August that toppled Mauritania's first democratically-elected leader.

He refused African Union demands to restore civilian authority and changed the constitution to allow retired soldiers to run for office before resigning his commission to run for president.

Opposition candidate Ahmed Ould Daddah's campaign posters ask, "Do you want to be finished with coups d'etat?" Daddah is a former Central Bank Governor who says Mauritanians can end the cycle of coups and transitional governments in favor of a real democracy where decisions are made by voters not soldiers.

This Daddah supporter in the capital says Aziz is going to fall and break because of the electoral alliance between Daddah and opposition lawmaker Messaoud Ould Boulkheir.

Dadah and Boulkheir have both vowed publicly to support the other in a potential runoff against Aziz. Boulkheir is a former president of the National Assembly who says this is a vote about defeating those who take power through military force.

This woman leaving Boulkheir's closing campaign rally says he is the one who will become president, God willing. She says he represents and supports all Mauritanians and is the one who can do things for the whole country.

More than 250 electoral observers from the Arab League and African Union are here to monitor Saturday's vote. Results are expected within 48 hours. If no one wins more than 50 percent, the top two vote-getters will face-off in a second-round of balloting August 1.