Thursday, March 31, 2005
Islamic militancy in the Western Sahara
This report suggest the typical: that heavy-hand U.S. policy can come back to haunt it. This is not new. The details from the islamists in the region are more interesting.
Jax
DAKAR (Reuters) - The United States will only fuel a rise in Islamic militancy in countries bordering the Sahara
desert if it takes a heavy-handed approach to fighting terrorism in the region, an influential think tank says.
Proselytising Pakistani clerics, an Algerian fundamentalist group allied to al Qaeda and growing resentment of
U.S. foreign policy were causes for concern but did not make West Africa a hotbed of terrorism, the International
Crisis Group (ICG) said on Thursday.
"There are enough indicators to justify caution and greater western involvement out of security interests, but it
has to be done more carefully than it has been so far," ICG's West Africa project director Mike McGovern said in
a report.
Mindful of the al Qaeda training camps that emerged in Afghanistan, some U.S. officials say countries like Mali,
Niger, Chad and Mauritania, which are among the world's poorest, make similarly fertile hunting ground for
militants seeking recruits.
U.S. Special Forces and military experts have trained soldiers in all four countries as part of efforts to help them
fight the threat in the region's vast swathes of desert.
But a military policy that offers no alternative livelihoods to already marginalised nomadic populations risked
causing resentment and radicalising locals further, ICG said.
Preachers, most of whom are Pakistani, from a fundamentalist Muslim missionary society called Jama'at
al-Tabligh have been converting former Tuareg rebels in Mali, it said.
The group's teachings are similar to those that underpin the philosophy of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Although the movement itself was staunchly apolitical, its converts included British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid
and the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, captured in 2001 during the war in Afghanistan, ICG said.
"Both Western and African intelligence services consider them a significant potential threat," it said. "Many
analysts agree that a turn toward Tablighi fundamentalism is sometimes a first step toward a career in violent
Islamist militancy."
AID NOT JUST SOLDIERS
The Tuaregs, a pale-skinned minority who live and work in the Sahara, launched insurgencies in Niger and Mali
in the early 1990s because they felt persecuted by a black elite governing far away in the countries' capital cities.
Resentment remains high among former fighters in the ancient Saharan trading towns of Kidal and Timbuktu in
Mali and Agadez in Niger. They say too little has been done to integrate them.
U.S. policy in the Sahara has so far focused on fighting smuggling networks and stopping Algeria's last
powerful rebel force, the al Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), from gaining a
foothold outside its homeland.
Many Tuaregs in Timbuktu and Agadez viewed the presence of elite U.S. forces in their towns with suspicion
during training exercises last year, seeing them as a threat to the delicate balance of power that has lasted for
generations in the Sahara.
ICG welcomed plans by Washington for more social and economic support but said Islamic charities, some of
whose operations have been under scrutiny since the September 11 attacks on the United States, were already
filling the aid vacuum.
"Even organisations known to most Americans purely as terrorist groups, like Hezbollah or Hamas, use a large
part of their funds to provide social services," the report said. (Link)
Jax
DAKAR (Reuters) - The United States will only fuel a rise in Islamic militancy in countries bordering the Sahara
desert if it takes a heavy-handed approach to fighting terrorism in the region, an influential think tank says.
Proselytising Pakistani clerics, an Algerian fundamentalist group allied to al Qaeda and growing resentment of
U.S. foreign policy were causes for concern but did not make West Africa a hotbed of terrorism, the International
Crisis Group (ICG) said on Thursday.
"There are enough indicators to justify caution and greater western involvement out of security interests, but it
has to be done more carefully than it has been so far," ICG's West Africa project director Mike McGovern said in
a report.
Mindful of the al Qaeda training camps that emerged in Afghanistan, some U.S. officials say countries like Mali,
Niger, Chad and Mauritania, which are among the world's poorest, make similarly fertile hunting ground for
militants seeking recruits.
U.S. Special Forces and military experts have trained soldiers in all four countries as part of efforts to help them
fight the threat in the region's vast swathes of desert.
But a military policy that offers no alternative livelihoods to already marginalised nomadic populations risked
causing resentment and radicalising locals further, ICG said.
Preachers, most of whom are Pakistani, from a fundamentalist Muslim missionary society called Jama'at
al-Tabligh have been converting former Tuareg rebels in Mali, it said.
The group's teachings are similar to those that underpin the philosophy of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Although the movement itself was staunchly apolitical, its converts included British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid
and the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, captured in 2001 during the war in Afghanistan, ICG said.
"Both Western and African intelligence services consider them a significant potential threat," it said. "Many
analysts agree that a turn toward Tablighi fundamentalism is sometimes a first step toward a career in violent
Islamist militancy."
AID NOT JUST SOLDIERS
The Tuaregs, a pale-skinned minority who live and work in the Sahara, launched insurgencies in Niger and Mali
in the early 1990s because they felt persecuted by a black elite governing far away in the countries' capital cities.
Resentment remains high among former fighters in the ancient Saharan trading towns of Kidal and Timbuktu in
Mali and Agadez in Niger. They say too little has been done to integrate them.
U.S. policy in the Sahara has so far focused on fighting smuggling networks and stopping Algeria's last
powerful rebel force, the al Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), from gaining a
foothold outside its homeland.
Many Tuaregs in Timbuktu and Agadez viewed the presence of elite U.S. forces in their towns with suspicion
during training exercises last year, seeing them as a threat to the delicate balance of power that has lasted for
generations in the Sahara.
ICG welcomed plans by Washington for more social and economic support but said Islamic charities, some of
whose operations have been under scrutiny since the September 11 attacks on the United States, were already
filling the aid vacuum.
"Even organisations known to most Americans purely as terrorist groups, like Hezbollah or Hamas, use a large
part of their funds to provide social services," the report said. (Link)
