As long as the US-Algerian-driven intelligence-media services continue to rewrite the contemporary history of the region on a near-daily basis,1 albeit increasingly in the genre of farce, there will be some degree of controversy over which of these two perspectives is the more likely. However, the Briefings in the last two issues of ROAPE2 have given strong pointers as to where the ‘truth’ may lie. Since the second of these was written,3 there has been an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that the alleged spread of terrorist activities across much of the Sahelian Sahara, has indeed been an elaborate deception on the part of US and Algerian military intelligence services.
This immediately raises the question of how and why this deception could be mounted and sustained over such a vast geographical area for what has now been almost two years. Three points should be made in answer to this question. The first is that if one is going to fabricate a story, it helps enormously if the place chosen for its enactment is ‘out of sight’ and ‘beyond verification’. The Sahara, with its vast empty spaces, is the perfect location for such scams.
The second point stems from my use of the term ‘intelligence-media services’. The success of this deception has been reliant on the compliance of a gullible and uncritical media. The media, both local and international, has been a willing and culpable agent in this duplicity. In the case of the Algerian press, the main public source of information in this affair, this is not surprising. Anyone who knows the Algerian media appreciates that its apparent relative freedom masks the fact that many of its journalists and editors, especially those handling military-security matters, are in the control of the country's military intelligence and security services. They thus act as a conduit for whatever scenario those services, notably the DRS (Direction des Renseignements et de la Se´curite´) might wish to purvey. The international media, with its greater ‘real’ freedom, is especially culpable. The sloppiness of its working practices, notably its cut-and-paste culture and failure to do its own research,4 has meant a piecemeal and quite uncritical acceptance of US-Algerian misinformation. Furthermore, a combination of ‘neo-con’ thinking, government-compliant press interests – especially in the US, a blind acceptance until recently of the Bush-Blair line on ‘terrorism’, and the fact that terrorism, especially for the specialist intelligence and security publications, is ‘good business’, has ensured the rejection of those articles that have offered a more critical analysis of alleged ‘terrorism’ in the Sahelian Sahara.
The third point concerns the knowledge and perceptions of the local peoples of the Sahelian Sahara. Most of them do not recognise the picture that has been painted of their region by the intelligence-media services over the last year or two and believe that many of the alleged terrorist incidents attributed to it have been fabricated by some sort of combination of US-Algerian-local government interests. In the short run, this does not pose any threat to the efficacy of the deception, as the local populations are relatively sparse in number and politically marginalised, with little or no effective forms of representation through which to express their views. The few that have raised concerns, notably in Algeria, have been subject to state harassment. In the longer run, however, as I discuss later, the perceptions and actions of these peoples are likely to become critically important.
The purpose of this article is to explain what lies behind this deception and what it is designed to achieve. Only then can we ‘make sense’ of what has been happening in North and West Africa – and in the Sahelian Sahara especially – during the course of the last couple of years. More importantly, it explores the implications of such a dangerous strategy for both local peoples as well as Europe and western interests elsewhere.
The broad trajectory and objective of this media-intelligence hype and misinformation over the last couple of years becomes even more clear when we re-examine the scenario of events in the Sahara within the contexts of both the established pattern of ‘dirty tricks’ undertaken by America's main regional ally, Algeria, and the interests of the main beneficiaries of this deception, namely: US imperialism, the beleaguered Bush administration, elements within the Algerian military and local Sahelian governments. The deception has been designed to create the ideological conditions for the US's ‘invasion’ of Africa and the securing of US strategic national resources.
Pan-Sahel initiative
The events to which I refer came to the world's attention with the disappearance of European tourists in the Algerian Sahara in February 2003. Within a matter of a few weeks, 32 tourists had disappeared, taken hostage, so it transpired, by the GSPC. As news of the hostage-taking became more prominent, so US-EUCOM commanders, notably Generals Jones and Wald, began hyping up their statements about terrorist activity in North and West Africa. Referring explicitly to the bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia, the arrest of al-Qaeda suspects in Morocco and the Algerian hostage-taking, they warned of the region – Europe's backdoor – becoming another Afghanistan. They spoke in increasingly exaggerated language of terrorists from Afghanistan and Pakistan ‘swarming’5 across the vast, ungoverned and desolate regions of the Sahara desert – through Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania. The GSPC, so they claimed, had now emerged in Europe – only a stone's throw away across the narrow Straights of Gibraltar – as an al-Qaeda recruiting organisation, while in North Africa it sought nothing less than the overthrow of the Algerian and Mauritanian governments. The apparent seriousness of this terrorist threat was demonstrated by the American government's decision to send its own troops into the region. In what the Bush administration calls the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI), but what local people are inclined to refer to as the ‘US invasion’, some 1,000 US Special forces, marines and contractors were sent into Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad in January 2004 to help train and beef-up local military units in counter-terrorism. The legitimisation of this intervention was there for all to see, or at least read about in the media, as GSPC ‘terrorists’ began popping up all over the region, first in Mali and Mauritania and then, in one of the Sahara's most bizarre escapades, in the form of a seemingly contrived chase of El Para and his small band of GSPC across the northern desert regions of Niger (Air, Tenere, etc.) and into the even more remote Tibesti mountains of northern Chad, where he reportedly remains, either captured by or in cahoots with the rebel MDJT (Mouvement pour La Democratie et la Justice au Tchad).6
By early 2004, western intelligence and diplomatic sources were claiming to be finding the footprints of this new terror threat almost everywhere. Indeed, it was only a matter of days before the media,7 quoting ‘western diplomatic sources’, linked the Madrid train bombings to al-Qaeda groups, specifically the GSPC, lurking deep in the Sahara, and with their leader, El Para, being described as ‘a main subcontractor of al-Qaeda’. It required little more imagination for the media-intelligence services to warn that these al-Qaeda bases could launch terror attacks on Europe itself. By the summer of 2004, the only thing missing from this ‘terror scenario’ (apart from the small matter of any verification!) was the actual discovery of al-Qaeda bases in the Sahara. This was soon remedied, with the tone being set by an Algiers-based correspondent of Jeune Afrique, who claimed that El Para had been in touch with al-Qaeda's military leader, Mohamed Atef (alias Abou Hafs el-Misri), before he was reputedly killed by American bombing of Kabul in November 2001, and that Atef's last wish had been to turn the Tibesti into ‘a sort of Saharan Tora Bora’.8
A week later, and on cue, the hitherto missing piece in the Saharan jigsaw, Libya, was painted into the ever more terrifying picture of Saharan terrorism. A relatively obscure French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, quoting the ever-dependable ‘source proche d'un service de contre-espionnage europe´en’,9 claimed that Libyan security forces had intercepted members of El Para's GSPC terrorists ‘ready to strike’, and that the GSPC had established an operations base in the desert mountains of Tibesti ‘au nord du Tchad’.10 Notwithstanding the geographical ambiguity of this expression, the New York Times went the whole hog, stating that ‘Libyan forces have discovered a terrorist camp with ties to al-Qaeda in the country's southern desert.’ Agence France Presse (AFP) added the final touch, confirming that the Tibesti was now a ‘new sanctuary for the Osama bin Laden movement’.11 It remains to be seen if the US military will take up its recently threatened option to use air strikes in the region, as broadcast by Voice of America, or perhaps even use these remote and desolate mountains for testing any upgrades of its ‘daisy-cutter’ bomb, which was last seen on TV with such dramatic and devastating effect in Tora Bora itself. It is more likely, and probably more politically destabilising in the long-term, that Libya's Col. Ghadafi, already showing signs of reverting to ‘old form’, will play a proxy ‘counter-insurgency’ role in the region.
Why has the US become involved in NW Africa?
The reason for the US's involvement in North and West Africa needs to be understood from both a US and an Algerian perspective, for the two countries are now close allies in the affairs of the region.
The main reason for US involvement in North and West Africa is, quite simply, oil.12 / 13The US is facing an increasingly serious energy crisis as a result of a fundamental imbalance between energy supply and demand. One of the first actions of the new Bush administration, many of whose top members had been seconded from the oil industry, was to establish a National Energy Policy Development (NEPD) Group under the Chairmanship of Vice-President and former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney.14 The Group's report, known as the Cheney Report, was presented in May 2001, four months before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Its findings were stark. Between 1991 and 2000, Americans had used 17% more energy than in the previous decade, while during the same period domestic energy production had risen by only 2.3%. It projected that US energy consumption over the next twenty years (2000–2020) would increase by about 32%, with the oil share remaining at around 40%.15 In 2000 that share was an average of 19.5 mb/d (million barrels per day), more than a quarter of the world's total consumption. Thus, although the share of oil in total energy consumption might remain the same, it is estimated that the absolute amount of oil being consumed will rise by 33% by 2020.16 These estimates look like being met: according to the International Energy Agency, US oil consumption this year (2004) is estimated to rise by 2.9%, the fastest rate of growth in 23 years. These figures would not be so critical if domestic oil production were on the rise. But that has not been the case for about 30 years: domestic production peaked in the early 1970s at 11.3 mb/d and has been declining ever since, with the result that US dependence on oil imports has grown sharply from about 4.3 mb/d in 1985 to 10 mb/d in 2000.17 In spite of technological advances transforming exploration and production, the US now (2000) produces 39% less oil than in 1970.
The main conclusion of the Cheney Report is that US oil consumption over the next 20 years (2000–2020) will grow by more than 6.0 mb/d. At the same time, if US oil production follows the same historical pattern of the last 10 years, it will decline by 1.5 mb/d. In other words, by 2020 domestic oil production would be supplying lessthan 30% of US oil needs. Thus, to meet US oil demand, oil and product imports will have to grow by a combined 7.5 mb/d, from around 10 mb/d in 2000 to some 17.7 mb/d in 2020. That means that US imports, already at over 50% of US consumption, will increase by more than another 50% by 2020, with the result that the US will be importing nearly two of every three barrels of oil that it uses. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration has recognised that if this imbalance is allowed to continue, it ‘will inevitably undermine our economy, our standard of living, and our national security.’ But it is a crisis, which, for a number of reasons, is not readily solved. On the domestic front, America's infrastructure is old and inflexible. US refining and pipeline capacity has not kept pace with increasing demand. With the oil pipeline system stretched to capacity and not a single new refinery built in nearly a generation, many access and infrastructural challenges have to be addressed.18 As for electricity, an antiquated and inadequate transmission grid prevents long-distance routing of electricity. Bottlenecks, not helped by corporate corruption, are everywhere. At the same time, the diversification of primary energy sources is being limited by the current narrow range of energy options. At present (2000), coal (52%), nuclear (20%) and natural gas (16%) account for 88% of electricity generation. However, under existing policy, and notwithstanding the fact that matching supply and demand for natural gas will require 38,000 miles of new pipelines plus 225,000 miles of distribution lines, natural gas is expected to constitute 90% of the projected increase in electricity generation between 1999 and 2020. This is in spite of the US having enough coal to last another 250 years and the fact that nuclear generation has a favourable cost structure and good safety record.19
Nor is there a simple fix on the global front. Although the world still has substantial oil reserves,20 much of them, at least from a US perspective, are either in the wrong place or of the wrong type. America's somewhat antiquated refining and pipeline infrastructure places a premium on Gulf oil, which is sweet (low sulphur content) and light, compared to other major suppliers such as Russia, Indonesia and Venezuela. However, Middle East oil, especially that from Saudi Arabia (not to mention Iraq), is not only some two months shipping distance from the US, but subject to high political risk.
The immediate effect of the Cheney Report was to focus the attention of the Bush administration on Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa, as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for African Affairs Michael A. Westphal noted, supplies 14% of US oil imports and has the potential to increase significantly over the next decade.21 US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner declared that ‘African oil is of strategic national interest to us’ and ‘it will increase and become more important as we go forward.’22 Africa's largest oil producer is Nigeria, which is currently the fifth largest source of US imported oil.23 However, African oil production is not limited to Nigeria: other countries on which the Bush administration is fixing its sights are Angola, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Chad and Equatorial Guinea, and especially the offshore deposits in the Gulf of Guinea between Nigeria and Sa˜o Tome´ and Principe.24 West African oil is especially significant to the US. First, it is the ‘right type’, providing a ready alternative to Middle East oil, being ‘sweet’ (i.e. low sulphur content) and ‘light’ and thus easy to pump and refine. Second, it is geographically close (compared to Middle East oil) to the US East Coast markets and its main VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) terminal, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (the LOOP). Third, West Africa, compared to the Middle East, is a region of comparative low political risk.
The Cheney Report anticipates that West Africa will provide 25% of America's imported oil by 2015. It is therefore disturbing but not surprising that the Bush Administration has defined African oil as a ‘strategic national interest’ and thus, a resource that the US might choose military force to control.25
US-Algerian relations
Algeria is a major oil and gas producer. New exploration and production techniques are seeing proven oil reserves of 9.2 billion barrels being revised upwards, with oil exports set to increase substantially. Algeria's gas resources are even more significant. Proven reserves of 160 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) are being revised upwards of 200Tcf, making Algeria one of the world's leading gas producers. However, with 90% of its oil exports going to Europe and with its gas expected to meet 30% of Europe's future demand,26 Algeria is not seen as a major supplier to the US. That, however, does not mean that Algeria's hydrocarbons are not strategically important to the US. On the contrary, the greater the contribution of North African countries (notably Algeria and Libya) to Europe's future energy supplies, the less the demand from Europe for oil and gas resources from elsewhere. In that sense, what is good for Europe is also good for America. Moreover, Algeria is the world's second largest liquid natural gas (LNG) producer, with significant exports to America's New England coast.27 US interests in Algeria are also reflected in the substantial investments and/or operational involvements of US companies in Algeria's hydrocarbons sector.28
While these hydrocarbon ties are important, they are not enough to explain the nature of America's new alliance with Algeria. To understand this alliance, we need to appreciate both the wider geo-politics of the entire northern and western part of the continent and a specific problem faced by the Algeria's army.
The key to understanding the geo-politics of north and west Africa now lies in the Sahelian Sahara: a belt of perceived political instability and unrest, marginal to and largely beyond any effective state control, which extends from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic coast of Mauritania. Four features of this region have been exercising the minds of the US administration.29 First, US military intelligence sees this zone as a conduit for potential terrorists moving between what it sees as the traditional terrorist havens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and the Sudan, and the Western Saharan-Sahel regions of Niger, Mali, Southern Algeria, Mauritania and the Senegal Valley. The fact that there is little or no verifiable evidence of any such movement, other than the rhetoric of US military intelligence services, is a matter to which I shall return presently. Second, the region serves as something of a hub for major trans-Saharan narcotics and other smuggling operations, which are seen by the US authorities, rather simplistically, as a source of terrorist funding.30 Third, the region is seen as feeding into and threatening to destabilise the adjoining regions of West and North Africa. In this respect, the US is particularly anxious that Nigeria, with its 60% Muslim population, might become a theatre of al-Qaeda operations.31 Fourth, the central part of this zone, straddling much of Niger, Mali and southern Algeria, and perhaps now also Chad, and lying strategically between the two oil/gas rich regions of Nigeria (and the rest of West Africa) and Algeria (and Libya) to the north, has become the base for what the Americans claim (and perhaps even believe) to be al-Qaeda subsidiaries. In short, from an American perspective, control of this Sahelian belt, as manifested in the Bush Administration's Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) and the regional establishment of associated basing rights (see below),32 is designed to secure US national security interests – namely oil.
The specific problem facing the Algerian army, namely that of weapons procurement, goes back to the army's annulment of the National Assembly elections in January 1992 and the ensuing violent struggle between the Algerian army and Islamic militants which has left some 150,000 dead. The first round of the elections on 26 December 1991 showed that the FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) was heading for a massive majority in the new assembly on the second ballot scheduled for 16 January. This would have brought to power the world's first democratically elected Islamist government, something that neither the leadership of Algeria's army nor western powers was prepared to allow. The Algerian army had sought and received the covert backing of the two key western powers, France and America, for its annulment of the elections, which to all intents and purposes was a military coup. In the violence that followed, the country succumbed to an increasingly dirty ‘civil war’ in which army elements and their various militia were probably responsible for as many atrocities as Islamic militants. Indeed, there are some Algerians who say that the main armed Islamist Group, the Groupe(s) Islamique(s) Arme´(s) (GIA) was a construct of the Algerian army. Certainly, there is now increasing evidence to show that the army and its various militia groups were responsible for many of the civilian massacres and other atrocities. As the violence intensified, so western countries kept their distance, with both the US and EU countries being reluctant to sell arms to Algeria for fear of Islamist reprisals33 and criticism from human rights groups. This has resulted in the Algerian army becoming progressively under-equipped. As Mustafa Barth noted,34 a major preoccupation of the Algerian army for some years now has therefore been to acquire modern, high-tec weapon systems, notably night vision devices, sophisticated radar systems, an integrated surveillance system, tactical communications equipment and certain lethal weapon systems. The Clinton administration distanced itself from Algeria.35 However, in July 2001, Algeria's President Bouteflika was invited to Washington. He told President Bush that Algeria was ‘seeking specific equipment which would enable us to maintain peace, security and stability in Algeria.’36 Bouteflika's visit to Washington was followed less than three weeks later by a visit by Algerian army chief of staff, General Lamari, to US military HQ Stuttgart at which he sought further support for the army's modernisation effort.
As Barth observed,37 the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center heralded a new era in US-Algerian military relations. Bouteflika, who made a second visit to Washington in November, was one of the first Muslim leaders to offer help and support to the USA in its ‘War on Terror’. He hoped that the US would now see Algeria's struggle against Islamic militants as comparable to its war against al-Qaeda and thus be more willing to sell lethal weaponry. Although 2002 saw a marked increase in military collaboration, with the US announcing that it was planning to expand military and security aid to Algeria through the transfer of equipment and accelerated training, it was mostly symbolic in the form of frequent visits to Algiers by senior US officials,38 regular visits by US naval ships and a doubling of the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET).39 Although Bouteflika paid another visit to Washington in June, at which the sale of night vision military systems was agreed, little equipment actually seems to have been transferred during the course of the year.
A turning point in US-Algerian relations
By the end of 2002, US-Algerian relations were beginning to become a little tetchy, with Algeria complaining publicly that US assistance was both minimal and slow in arriving. One reason for America's tardiness was the American government's expressed fear of criticism by human rights groups.40 Another was the decline of ‘terrorism’ in Algeria,41 which was probably leading the US administration to think that the Algerian army was on top of the terrorist situation42 and could manage without US military equipment.43
However, within a matter of months, US-Algerian relations had been ratcheted up to an altogether higher and more active level: they were front-line allies in the ‘War on Terror’. The circumstance behind this transformation was the kidnapping of 32 European (German-speaking) tourists in the southern Algerian Sahara. The action was almost immediately attributed to the GSPC, now branded as an al-Qaeda subsidiary. To begin with, the emir (leader) singled out as being responsible for the kidnapping was Mokhtar ben Mokhtar (Belmokhtar), an outlaw who had been driven over the border into northern Mali in the late 1990s, where he was now established as a local war-lord-cum-bandit operating a major cigarette-smuggling operation across the Sahara. Mokhtar ben Mokhtar was known to have had links with Hassan Hattab, the leader of the GSPC at that time. However, as Mokhtar's involvement became seemingly less likely, the name of Abderrezak Lamari (El Para), another alleged GSPC emir, whose sphere of operations until that time had been in the mountainous north-east of the country, began to emerge in media-intelligence reports as the emir responsible for the kidnapping.
Irrespective of who was behind the incident, it was immensely beneficial to both the Algerians and the Americans. From Algeria's perspective, this was stark proof that ‘terrorism’ was not only far from eradicated in Algeria, but that militant Islamists (terrorists) were now established in the hitherto tranquil Sahara. Algeria also made much ado of blaming the long time (3 months) spent in locating and freeing the first group of hostages and the further three months involved in engineering the release of the second group on the fact that its army lacked the sophisticated military equipment that it had been seeking from the Americans.
From the US perspective, the hostage-taking was ‘good news’ in terms of the US administration's attempts to demonstrate the global threat of terrorism and to ‘globalise’ its ‘War on Terror’. This high profile ‘terrorist act’ was absolutely pivotal in enabling America to take its ‘War on Terror’ into Africa, and so legitimise its ‘political-military’ interest in Africa as a whole. In particular, the hostage-taking provided firm evidence that a network of al-Qaeda links not only stretched from the Horn of Africa across the Sahel to Mali and Mauritania (a questionable assertion which is examined below), but that al-Qaeda, or rather al-Qaeda subsidiaries, now straddled the Sahara from Mali (and perhaps elsewhere in West Africa) to northern Algeria, providing a major threat to US oil and gas interests in Algeria, the southern Mediterranean rim and Europe itself. ‘Proof’ of al-Qaeda terrorists in the Sahara gave US-EUCOM's commander, General James Jones, all the legitimacy he required to pursue his mission of acquiring basing rights and establishing what he referred to as a ‘family of bases’ across the continent.44 General Jones was now able to talk with confidence of ‘threats to the southern rim of the Mediterranean’, from ‘large uncontrolled, ungoverned areas across Africa (vast swathes of the Sahara, from Mauritania … to Sudan) that are clearly the routes of narco-trafficking, terrorist training and hotbeds of instability,’ and which ‘are going to be potential havens for that kind of activity.’45
I shall presently show how the sequel to the hostage-taking, namely the GSPC's escapades across the Sahel, is now enabling the US to take its ‘War on Terror’ into sub-Saharan Africa. For the moment, though, before moving any further south, we need to pause and raise two crucial questions. First, what was the nature of the US intelligence that led both the Pentagon and the State Department to see the Sahel as a ‘terrorist’ zone? Second, was the hostage-taking, as Mustafa Barth has suggested,46initiated by elements within the Algerian military establishment, and if so, at what time and at what level did the Americans become involved?
The nature of US intelligence
What was the nature of the US intelligence that led both the Pentagon and the State Department to see the Sahel as a ‘terrorist’ zone? The answer, in a nutshell, would appear to be very little – or, in contemporary parlance, the product of ‘group-think’. The fact that most of the peoples in this region in recent years have suffered drought, rebellion, refugee status and political marginalisation, does not make them ‘terrorists’, although the potential for some of them to become such, especially after America's recent ‘invasion’ of their region, may be there. This ‘group-think’ seems to be based on little more than the assertion that
as terrorist cells were uprooted from Afghanistan and elsewhere by US central Command, … they shifted to … the wide-open, relatively desolate areas of Africa, … an easy back door into Europe through Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.47
We have said for a long time that if you squeeze the terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other places, they will find new places to operate, and one of those places is the Sahel/Maghreb.48
What little other US intelligence there is on the region seems to be derived mostly from young, ambitious officers in the militaries with which the US has good connections and which they are training. These are often the worst possible intelligence sources, as the vast majority of them come from ethnic groups that are alien to the region (i.e. non-Tuareg, Tubu, etc) and whose knowledge of the indigenous Sahel populations is usually prejudiced by their experience of the region's several recent rebellions and other, often long-standing inter-ethnic conflicts. The result of this poor ‘ground intelligence’ is that the US is operating in a more or less permanent ‘Iraqi situation’ (i.e. the Chalabi syndrome) in which it is highly vulnerable to misinformation.
Who was behind the hostage-taking?
There is an increasing amount of evidence to support the suggestion, first made by Mustafa Barth,53 that the hostage-taking was initiated and orchestrated by elements within the Algerian military establishment, and that this may have been condoned by the US. There is insufficient space here to list and examine in detail all the evidence behind this point of view, which has already been outlined in the two previous editions of ROAPE.54 Nevertheless, a few points should be highlighted. The first is that a hijack attempt, as mentioned by Barth,55 was made on tourists near Arak in October 2002, and that the abductors, having been tracked down by the gendarmerie and caught near Tin Gherhoh, were released on orders from those close to the highest levels in the military. Significantly, the military and civilian authorities (i.e. wali) made no mention of this ‘hijack’ to travel agencies in the region who bear a major responsibility for the safety of tourists. It was first drawn to their attention through reports in a Swiss newspaper and subsequently confirmed by personnel attached to the gendarmerie. The tourists’ account of the incident strongly suggests that neither the GSPC nor El Para were involved in this kidnap attempt. The timing of this incident coincides with the onset of the slight tetchiness in US-Algerian relations mentioned above.
There are massive, irreconcilable differences between the official statements of the Algerian military authorities, as carried in the media, and the hostages’ versions of events. For example, ‘terrorists’ reportedly killed by the Algerian military in their assault to free the first group of hostages in the Gharis region subsequently joined the second group of tourists on their journey to Mali. They were also identified on later occasions after their move to Mali, including through subsequent photographic identification and their phone contacts with their former hostages in Europe.
It is also inconceivable, as both Barth and I have indicated, that the second group of hostages (numbering 15 people) and their captors (by that time numbering 64 people56) could have made the 3,000 kilometre journey (their estimate – probably a little less) to Mali without the knowledge and support of the Algerian army. The journey itself took approximately 45 days, from the third week of May to the first week of July. Because of the way the vehicles were being driven, more days were spent doing repairs than driving. Such a large convey would easily have been seen and identified by the US satellite surveillance of the region, especially as the convoy was stationary in one place for some four days while repairs were undertaken. Moreover, as Barth stated, and as the hostages themselves have confirmed, they were given logistical support throughout the journey in the form of GSP-coordinated supplies of fuel and spare parts. On one occasion, an urgently needed spare part was delivered as a ‘special order’, brand new and in the original Toyota packaging. On another occasion, a cylinder head gasket had to be replaced. They waited in a single place for 3–4 days while a vehicle went back 300–400 kms to have it repaired!
We also know that from the outset of the drama, that is from the end of February, the Americans were intercepting the kidnappers’ radio communications.57 It is also inconceivable that the Americans, who were working closely with the Algerians in the ongoing surveillance and monitoring of the drama, did not have their own translation facilities and were thus able to follow the entire development and orchestration of events.
This last point raises the obvious question of whether this operation was planned in the way that it developed from the outset. The answer is almost certainly No. The latest official explanation of the kidnap,58 as put out by official Algerian media-intelligence, is that the leader of the GSPC, Nabil Sahraoui, who allegedly replaced Hassan Hattab in October 2003 (later reputedly found shot) and who was himself reportedly killed by Algerian forces in Kabylia on 18 June 2004, came up with the idea of raising ransom money for kidnapped European tourists in order to finance a ‘spectacular’ (perhaps in Algiers) and establishing a ‘Tora Bora’ (see above) in the Sahara. The problem with this version of events is that no mention of a ransom was made prior to the release of the first group of hostages on 13 May 2003. It was not until a week or so after the fabricated attempt to release the second group on 19 May that any reference was made to a ransom demand – by which time the ‘orchestrators’ were in need of an ‘exit strategy’. If the idea of a ransom only entered the arena three months after the hostages were abducted, and after half of them had been freed, the obvious question is why the hostages were taken in the first place. The answer, which goes beyond the bounds of this paper, will probably never be known. Suffice it to say that there are several possible strands. The most obvious, as already suggested, was to demonstrate the existence of terrorism in the previously tranquil Sahara and so inveigle the Americans into developing the Sahara-Sahel as a frontline in the ‘War on Terror’. However, one seemingly ridiculous idea that holds sway amongst certain ‘security elements’ in Europe is that elements within the Algerian army, still tied up with former East German-Stasi connections, thought that they could use the hostage drama to do a deal with Germany to acquire the European Tiger Attack-Helicopter (AH),59 following the refusals of the Americans and the French to supply Apaches and the French-modified South African Rooivalk60 AHs respectively.
The failed helicopter deal would explain the ‘cock-up’ of 19 May, when the Algerian army announced on public radio around midday its successful assault on the second group of hostages held in Tamelrik, only to deny it in the evening. From then on, the hostage-takers had to find an exit-strategy – a search, which, after much publicity over negotiated ransom deals through the good offices of Libya, took them on the long trek to Mali – a country where Algeria could control the intelligence environment.61
In my review of Barth's Briefing,62 I stated that the plausibility of his allegations hinged on the question of whether El Para is a genuine emir of the GSPC or one of the many infiltrators that the Algerian army is believed to have introduced into the GSPC. In the last few months, two lines of suggestive evidence have begun to emerge. One is a rumour, which seems to be circulating increasingly in Algeria, that El Para was ‘turned’ by the Algerian security forces in January 2003. The background to this rumour is as follows: El Para was held responsible for an attack on an Algerian army convoy at Teniet El-Abed in the Aures mountains on 4 January 2003 in which 43 soldiers were killed and 19 wounded. Shortly afterwards, the Algerian media carried a report stating that the army had surrounded a mountain near Tebessa, a little to the east of the Teniet ambush, on which a force of GSPC was trapped. There appears to have been little media follow-up to this story, triggering the rumour that El Para was captured on the mountain and ‘turned’. His first mission for his new masters was allegedly to make amends for the botched Arak hijack three months earlier and to organise the abduction of the German-speaking tourists. It is still widely held in the media-intelligence reports that Mokhtar ben Mokhtar was used to actually abduct the hostages and that El Para took over the operation in March. This is most unlikely as the operation was not in Mokhtar's commercial cigarette-smuggling interests. Moreover, the hostage-takers (unlike Mokhtar's Sahel-based operatives) were GSPC men from the north with little familiarity with the desert.63
The second line is more concrete and derives from the almost phantasmatic qualities of El Para's alleged escapade through the Sahel in the first few months of this year.
Establishing a GSPC ‘Terrorist’ presence in the Sahel
If this analysis is correct, then it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for either the Algerians or the Americans to have foreseen or planned the Mali endgame, which seems to have been an ingenious and hastily contrived exit strategy. As I described in the last issue of ROAPE, the outcome of the hostage liberation in Mali was that at least 62 GSPC ‘terrorists’, along with their emir, El Para, were left free to remain in Mali on the condition that they did not bother the local population. It was clearly impossible for the Algerians and Americans, who were now making much ado about terrorism in the Sahara, to leave so many known ‘terrorists’ at large. At the same time, the terrorists’ presence in the Sahel provided the Americans with the opportunity to legitimise the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI) and to show to the world that the Sahel had become the location of Europe-threatening al-Qaeda terrorist training camps.
The US-Algerian alliance took this opportunity to develop a twin strategy. One arm was to give the impression that their military alliance was indeed waging an aggressive war against terrorists (portrayed through their intelligence-media as El Para, now described as the second-in-command of the GSPC and its undisputed emir in the Sahara-Sahel, and his GSPC, now described as an al-Qaeda subsidiary); the other arm being to create the impression that the GSPC was expanding and spreading its operations throughout the Sahel, especially the PSI countries of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad.
Between mid-December 2003 and early February 2004 considerable media coverage was given to what appeared to be a major assault by Algerian, American and Malian forces on the GSPC ‘hostage-takers’ in Mali. However, a careful analysis of these reports, all of which lack verification, indicates that no more than four ‘terrorists’ may have been killed in the course of these operations.64 That is surprising considering that the US has the region under permanent satellite and listening surveillance, has threatened to use air strikes in the region, and that both ground and air forces in the region are substantial.65 One is left with the conclusion that it was perhaps never the intention of this particular campaign in the ‘War on Terror’ to eliminate these particular ‘terrorists’.
The second strand of the strategy, creating the impression of expanding GSPC activity across the Sahel, has had two dimensions to it. The first consisted of incidents in southern Algerian in late 2003 which gave the impression of continued terrorism (banditry?) in the region. As described in the last issue of ROAPE,66 it transpires that elements in the local/regional security and administrative authorities may have used their kinship connections with local smugglers-bandits to create the impression of terrorism in this hitherto tranquil region.
The second and major dimension of this second strategy relates to what can only be described as the pantomime of El Para's escapade across the Sahel in February-March 2004. Scarcely a day has passed since mid-February without the media carrying some report of alleged GSPC activity in the Sahel. The picture that has been created is of a ‘break-out’ by El Para from his alleged base(s) in northern Mali, with possible sorties into Mauritania, followed by an almost desperado-like sweep across Niger and on into the Tibesti mountains of Chad – a journey of some 4,000 kms. This is a remarkable journey, not simply because of the difficult terrain, but in El Para's case because they were allegedly under US satellite surveillance and being chased (according to media reports) by US Special Operations forces. There is no point in commenting on all these reports, as most of them are wildly imaginative, except to say that they have served to create the impression of the Sahel being turned into an extremely dangerous ‘terror zone’. They have also helped elevate El Para's ‘wanted’ status to that of the top echelons of al-Qaeda.
Behind this picture, however, are some interesting facts. The first is that photographs of El Para's group taken in mid-January show that it been re-equipped with petrol-driven Toyota station wagons (the most popular vehicle amongst trans-Saharan smugglers) mounted with 14.5 mm heavy machine guns. This would be explained by expenditure of the alleged hostage ransom money (5 million euros). However, an interesting feature of the vehicles is that they are mounted with fog lamps, suggesting perhaps that they may have had a coastal origination, such as Algiers. Perhaps more significant is the fact that the Chad government, on capturing some of these vehicles in March, reported that they bore Algerian registrations.67
Second, the only verifiable incident on his alleged journey from Mali to Tibesti occurred on 23 February when a group of tourists were hijacked at Temet in northern Air by a group of 40–50 bandits claiming to be El Para's group of GSPC. The bandits went to a lot of trouble to make their identities known, including giving the tourists written ‘contracts’ stamped with a GSPC stamp and signed with El Para's signature by an individual who claimed to be El Para and whose identity has been confirmed by photographs taken of him and identified by members of the previous hostage group.68 There is therefore virtually no doubt that El Para and his group were at Temet on February 23 and that the group went to absurd lengths to make sure that their presence there could be verified and well publicised – hardly the actions of a hunted terrorist group. There was no sign of the US Special Operations Forces reputedly in pursuit!
Third, it is almost certain that the group divided at Temet, with a number, estimated at much less than the original 40–50, heading on to Tibesti, and a smaller group, thought to include El Para, returning to Algeria.69 The group that continued to Chad was thought to be under the command of Abdul-Haqq, one of El Para's lieutenants with a close likeness to his leader.
Fourth, the group that travelled to Chad had a mixed fleet of vehicles, containing its own petrol-driven Toyotas, as well as diesel-fuelled vehicles taken from the tourists at Temet. This is particularly significant as there are effectively no fuel supplies, either petrol or diesel, between Air and Tibesti.
Fifth, according to all reports of the battle between this group and the Chad forces, the group must have arrived in Chad around 1 March. This means that they made the journey from Temet to Tibesti (Wour region) in 5–6 days. This is a remarkable achievement (especially if being chased by US Special Operational forces!), as the journey from Tenere to Tibesti involves some of the most difficult passages in the Sahara, not least because most of the few accessible routes are mined. There is also no fuel available in the region apart from occasional small supplies amongst traders at Dirkou, the military at Chirfa and Madama and secret caches held by smugglers and bandits. The only sure source of fuel in the region would be from the Algerian military base at In Ezzane in the extreme SE corner of Algeria. The western scarps of the Djado and Mangeni plateaux are effectively inaccessible, which would have obliged the GSPC group to take either a northern route via Salvador, the north of Mangeni and then across or around Tchigai, or a southern route heading east of Seguidine. Neither route would have been accessible without detailed knowledge of the terrain (and fuel), suggesting that the group must have been assisted by either the Niger army, which is most unlikely, the Algerian army or local bandits. The main bandit operating in this area is Aboubacar Alembo. However, his family claims that he played no part in it. That is quite likely, as he had only recently survived an attempt to execute him arranged by senior elements in the government. The plan had almost worked: four of his gang were killed, but Alembo managed to escape thanks to his captors suffering a car crash. At the time of the GSPC incursion, he was reportedly keeping low and would have been unlikely to risk himself on the GSPC's behalf. One is therefore left with the question of whether the Algerian army once again provided the logistical support.
Why did El Para send this Group to Chad? First, to show that the GSPC was active right across the Sahel, from Mauritania, through Mali and Niger and into Chad. It is this extensive terrorist activity which justifies and legitimises the Pan Sahel Initiative. Second, to show to the Germans (who had an international warrant for El Para's arrest) that he had been killed. The first reports from the Chad government were that its forces had killed 43 members of the GSPC, a number that was later reduced, possibly when the government learnt that not that many had arrived in the country! Early reports indicated, with varying degrees of uncertainly, that El Para himself, although not formally identified, was amongst the dead. These initial reports received little credibility, especially amongst those who are familiar with the pattern of Algeria's ‘civil war’: Mokhtar ben Mokhtar, for example, has been reported killed at least six times and is now generally referred to as one of the Algerian government's more useful ‘phantoms’. Third, there must now be the question of whether the Tibesti incursion was also designed to draw Libya into the situation, as now seems dangerously likely. Finally, those who may still be inclined to believe the danger of the El Para/GSPC terrorist threat to the Sahel must ask themselves why neither the Americans, Algerians or any other government have rushed to take El Para, as one of the world's most wanted terrorists, into their custody. The story that has been widely published in the media in the last few weeks is that El Para escaped the onslaught of the Chad army, but fell into the hands of the rebel MDJT who, in turn, have been trying for several weeks to trade him in for some level of ransom or other recognition. If he was one of the world's top terrorists, there can be no question that he would not already have been seized. If, on the other hand, his role in the ‘War on Terror’ has been as I have suggested, then neither the Algerians nor Americans would want him returned to them in this way. Neither would any of the Sahelian governments be keen to put an end to the GSPC/El Para saga as it is their presence in the region which underpins their receipt of US financial and military support. However, from what we know of the Temet incident, it seems, as both the Americans and Algerians would also know, that El Para probably never went to Chad. Wherever the actual whereabouts of El Para, both the US and the Algerians need some sort of closure on the Chad episode, which is becoming increasingly farcical and embarrassing to them. The latest story coming out of Algeria is that El Para is going to be extradited to Algeria to stand trial.70
Deception for the peoples of the Sahel, Africa & Europe
It might be argued that this article has not provided definitive proof that the ‘War on Terror’ in the Sahara has been an elaborate deception. That may be so. However, the circumstantial evidence is nigh overwhelming, so much so that the US-Algerian alliance must put forward indisputable verification for all that it has claimed, something which it has singularly failed to do since the outset of this saga, if it is to have any credibility. However, more important than the actual ‘proof’ of this deception is how it is being perceived by the peoples of the region and how they are likely to act on those perceptions.
People of the region, especially the Tuareg of Niger, Mali and southern Algeria have already suffered severe loss of livelihood by this fabrication of terrorist activity across the Sahel. The major industry of the region, tourism, has all but collapsed. Nearly all local people know that there has been no ‘real’ terrorism in this region and believe that the reported incidents have been initiated by a combination of forces centring around the US, the Algerian government (the DRS) and their own Sahelian governments. The immediate outcome of these events, especially the PSI (‘invasion’) is the generation of widespread anti-Americanism. There is also a growing fear and suspicion of their own governments. People in the Sahel know their governments are benefiting from the US in the form of financial and military support and therefore have a vested interest in both generating and maintaining this climate of terror. They are therefore seeing many actions of their local governments as attempts to provoke unrest. For example, in southern Algeria, many Tuareg now see the provocative actions of the Tamanrasset wali 71 over the last year or two as perhaps being attempts to provoke them into demonstrations or other sorts of anti-government action.72 In Niger, Tuareg in Air are increasingly beginning to see the arrest and detention of Rhissa ag Boula, the Tuareg Minister for tourism and the former rebel leader, as a move to regenerate the ant-government feelings of the 1990s rebellion. Indeed, a number of provocative articles in the national press have been questioning the reason for recent Tuareg army desertions and suggesting that there may be attempts to revive the Tuareg rebel movements of the 1990s. Indeed, people are now talking of this new fear and mistrust of the government as recreating the same sort of conditions that underlay the rebellions of the 1990s. The indigenous populations, notably the Tuareg and Tubu, have been angered and are frightened by many media reports now branding them as part of this ‘terror zone’. These reports do not belong to the esoteric: they are readily accessed by Internet and disseminated by way of discussion through the local communities. People are beginning to understand that they have become part of America's ‘War on Terror’ on largely fabricated and fictitious grounds. They resent these references to their ethnic identities, which now associate the words ‘Tuareg’ and ‘Tubu’ with ‘terror’, and fear that they may ultimately involve ‘massacres’ by local government militia or US air strikes purporting to be striking at fictitious terrorist bases. Threats of US air-strikes have already been broadcast by Voice of America.
There is a growing recognition amongst local peoples throughout the region that the PSI, combined with the Algerian intervention, has led to an increase in the political instability of what was a politically complex, fragile, but relatively stable region. Many of these people now believe that the US presence and actions will not only draw Islamist extremists into the region in the same way as in Iraq, but that local men, not only youth, will be driven by fear, anger and desperation into ‘terrorist’ activities. In Nigeria, with its 60% Muslim population, local imams are already preaching that the US and Algerian military are behind the alleged terrorism in the Sahel. This is a little more than a year (February, 2003) since a taped message, purportedly from Osama bin Laden, singled out Nigeria as a potential theatre for al-Qaeda operations. Local people also realise that the American military, especially in the desert, does not offer good targets. They therefore believe that softer targets may be sought elsewhere in North and West Africa, or quite possibly in Europe itself. The almost inevitable ‘blowback’, to use the fashionable US intelligence term for their own ‘cock-ups’, from the US intervention in this part of Africa is increasing the risk and insecurity to all western interests in the region, whether they be oil and mining companies, other commercial interests such as tourism, or even civilians themselves.
In a matter of months, the US and its new-found allies, have succeeded in creating a ‘terror-zone’ across southern Algeria, northern Nigeria, Mauritania, Northern Mali, Northern Niger and Chad. Together, they have managed to create the conditions for the emergence of terrorism that previously only barely existed.73 In July 2003, Algeria, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, encouraged by the US, signed a cooperation agreement on counter-terrorism that effectively joined the two oil-rich sides of the Sahara together in a complex of security arrangements whose architecture is American. Not only is this a criminally dangerous strategy, but in the light of what we now know of US intelligence in the wake of Iraq, it is likely to end in disaster for all concerned.
Where is this dangerous strategy heading? Four likely scenarios might be aired. The first, as already mentioned, is that there is an increased likelihood of provocative and/or reprisal action against local peoples in the Sahelian-Sahara (especially in regions such as Air-Tamesna-Azaouagh Valley, Ahaggar, Adrar-n-Iforas and, of course, Chad) by their governments, possibly with the support of the US facilities in the region (e.g. air strikes). Second, the increased military presence in the region, especially in border zones is seriously disrupting the enormous and highly lucrative smuggling businesses. It will be surprising if the major players in these businesses, who are well financed, equipped and armed, tolerate this situation for long. Indeed, they might well become the main agencies for alliances with Islamist extremists being drawn into the region. Third, the recent (early July) involvement of Libya in this affair, whether deliberate or inadvertent on the part of the Americans and Algerians, marks a potentially dangerous escalation of the international implications and ramifications of this affair. Now that Ghadafi holds the ‘oil initiative’ over the US and Europe, he is perhaps more of a loose canon than in the past. Libya's bellicose threats to the MTJD earlier this month (July) suggest that Libya may be returning to old form in terms of Ghadafi's designs on Chad, the Sahel and perhaps elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, the next step in the American scheme of things would appear to be to use the pretext of the ‘War on Terror’ in the Sahel to firm up basing rights and militarisation (aid!) programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, especially where US strategic interests are at stake.
Postscript
Although the US has not been one of Algeria's traditional markets for its oil exports, it is significant that Algeria increased its export of ‘Saharan Blend’ to the US during the first 5 months of 2004 by some 400% over the same period of 2003, from 48,000 bpd (barrels per day) to 193,000 bpd. The US is seen as becoming an increasingly important customer of Algeria's light, sweet grade crude oil. This is not simply because of US increasing demand, but also because Algeria has been increasing its crude production rapidly and needs to find new customers. In addition to the US, these include the Asian market: Indonesia now purchases around 1 million barrels per month; India will receive its first cargo of Saharan Blend this summer; ExxonMobil may this month (July 2004) ship some Saharan Blend to its Japanese refinery, while in March Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil firm, sold the first shipment of a one-year contract to supply 2 million barrels to the Chinese trader Unipec. Production of Saharan Blend has surged over the last four years to reach 1.25 million bpd, substantially above its (1 August 2004) OPEC quota of 830,000 bpd. Production of Saharan Blend is projected to hit 1.5 million bpd by 2005. This is good news for the US, as is the fact that a new export birth for VLCCs (very large crude carriers) was opened at Algeria's Arzew port in 2003 (source: Reuters).