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| Africa: North |
| US warns of GSPC threat |
| 2005-07-27 |
| Creeping advances by Algeria's hardline Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) into neighbouring Sahel countries pose the greatest security threat to remote northwest Africa, a top US Defense Department official said on Monday. Fears that the isolated nations lined up along the Sahara desert could become havens for terror groups have ramped up considerably with the inroads the Al-Qaeda-linked GSPC has made into Mauritania, which was hit June 4 by an attack claimed by the Algerian militants. The group made headlines again this week with an electronic message of congratulations to their "Al-Qaeda brothers" for the kidnapping in Iraq of two Algerian diplomats last Thursday. "The GSPC poses the greatest threat to the region's security because, even as the Algerian people turn against jihad (holy war), the organization has found itself adherents across the Sahel region and is recruiting to better develop those resources," Rear Admiral Hamlin Tallent of the US European Command (EUCOM) said. "They truly represent the modern experience with Al-Qaeda; a mobile, self-sustaining and worldwide but loosely connected group of wily, desert-hardened militants," he said by telephone from EUCOM's headquarters in Germany. "What's needed (to rid the region of their insurgency) is a cooperative effort by well-armed militaries." The US military has planted the seeds of this cooperative effort with joint military exercises, which took place in June across five Saharan states including Mauritania and Algeria. Including training in general marksmanship, orienteering and communications, the exercises known as Operation Flintlock 2005 was the first step in a broader five-year, 500 million-dollar US plan to boost the capacities of African militaries in the context of Washington's anti-terror campaign. A command post exercise was also organized in the Senegalese capital Dakar which took military commanders from nine nations - including regional heavyweights Nigeria and Morocco as well as Niger, Mali, Chad and Tunisia - through terrorism scenarios requiring cooperation to solve. Building on these exercises, military commanders from Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Algeria met with their US counterparts in Nouakchott in mid-July for a strategic planning session which Tallent said could lead to a regional headquarters for the Saharan anti-terror fight. Mauritanian and Malian troops are also working together to "exert some pressure" on the insurgency, though Tallent declined to elaborate. A second meeting, in Algeria, is scheduled for the next several weeks, he added. Washington's militarized approach to assistance to these northwest African states, among the world's poorest and least stable nations, has been criticized as feeding a threat that does not really exist and helping to legitimize a crackdown on opposition through stepped-up security measures. "The abuse of what we bring to bear is always a subject of concern, and we recognize that there is a history of an abuse of resources, which is sobering," said Tallent. "But ultimately, our footprint here is very small, and we are providing only as much as the governments want us to provide, which, ultimately, should be help in keeping their populations safe." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Washington's militarized approach to assistance to these northwest African states, among the world's poorest and least stable nations, has been criticized as feeding a threat that does not really exist and helping to legitimize a crackdown on opposition through stepped-up security measures. Notice how one never gets the IDs of the critics? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-07-27 18:45 |