U.S. special forces are hunting for Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida along Algeria’s southern border with Mali in a little-known military operation aimed at destroying a key North African recruiting hub for Osama bin Laden’s global terrorist network, according to U.S. and Algerian officials. Small teams of elite U.S. soldiers have been working with local security forces in recent months in the Sahara Desert in an effort to capture or kill members of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, a radical Islamic organization that has pledged its allegiance to al-Qaida and is suspected in terrorist plots in Europe and the United States. "They send troops in and out and have put up some kind of infrastructure" along the border with Mali, where members of the Algerian-based group are believed to be hiding among local Bedouins and nomadic tribes, a senior Algerian government official said of the U.S. troops, adding that "There is no permanent presence of the U.S. military in Algeria."
But U.S. government officials with access to official reports said the U.S. special forces have been working with Algeria and neighboring countries to trap members of the Salafist group, which is on the U.S. terrorism list. Many of the group’s members, estimated to be as high as 3,000 fighters, are believed to be veterans of bin Laden’s Afghanistan training camps. Most all the al Qaeda cells that have been picked up in Europe have some link to this group," said Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism specialist at the Investigative Project, a think tank in Washington. "These are the descendents of the al Qaeda training camps who have gone home."
"The United States fights against terrorist activity in Algeria and the Sahel," the U.S. Embassy in Algiers said in a recent statement, declining to offer any specific information. "The U.S. government has an ongoing program known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative which provides training and support to Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania to help them control their borders, interdict smuggling, and deny use of their national territories to terrorists and other international criminals," a Defense Department official said. The flow of militants from Algeria, however, remains a rising priority for counterterrorism officials. "Conflict there has bred an extremely dangerous foe," said Kohlmann. "Dating back to 1998, there is a continuous trail of these operatives in various terrorist plots around the world." |