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| Africa North |
| US boosts funding for Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative, usual suspects bitch |
| 2005-12-14 |
| The United States has set aside $500 million over the next five years to secure a vast new front in its global war on terrorism: the Sahara Desert. Critics say the region is not the terrorist zone that some senior US military officers assert. They add that heavy-handed military and financial support that reinforces authoritarian regimes in north and west Africa could fuel radicalism where it scarcely exists. The Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) was begun in June to provide military expertise, equipment and development aid to nine Saharan countries where lawless swathes of desert are considered fertile ground for militant Muslim groups involved in smuggling and combat training. "It's the Wild West all over again," said Major Holly Silkman, a public affairs officer at US Special Operations Command Europe, which presides over US security and peacekeeping operations in Europe, former Soviet bloc countries and most of Africa. During the first phase of the programme, dubbed Operation Flintlock, US Special Forces led 3,000 ill-equipped Saharan troops in tactical exercises designed to co-ordinate security more effectively along porous borders and beef-up patrols in ungoverned territories. Maj Silkman said Africa has become the most important concern of the US European Command (EuCom) because of rampant corruption, drug and human trafficking, poverty and high unemployment, which create a significant "potential for instability", particularly in the Saharan region, where 50 per cent of the population is younger than 15. The head of Special Operations Command Europe, Major General Thomas R Csrnko, said he was concerned that al-Qaeda is assessing African groups for "franchising opportunities," notably the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat - known as GSPC by its initials in French - cited on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organisations. The Algeria-based GSPC, estimated to have about 300 fighters and said to be linked to al-Qaeda, was accused of kidnapping European tourists in 2003 and has taken responsibility for a spate of attacks in the Sahara this year. General Csrnko considers the group the main threat to security in the region, and has cited the potential for terrorist camps in the Sahara comparable to those once run by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Eucom officials say there is evidence that 25 per cent of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saharan Africans. Terrorist attacks such as the 11 March, 2004, Madrid train bombings that killed 191 persons have been linked to north African militants. But some observers say terrorism in the Sahara is little more than a mirage and that a higher-profile US involvement could destabilise the region. "If anything, the [TSCTI] ... will generate terrorism, by which I mean resistance to the overall US presence and strategy," said Jeremy Keenan, a Sahara specialist at the University of East Anglia. A report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that although the Sahara is "not a terrorist hotbed", repressive governments in the region are using the "war on terror" to tap US largesse and deny civil freedoms. The report said the regime of Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya - a US ally in west Africa deposed on 3 August in a bloodless coup - used the threat of terrorism to legitimise the denial of human rights. Mr Keenan said the government of Algeria is an even worse offender, misleading Washington about the GSPC threat to acquire modern weapons and shed its pariah status. Aside from the 2003 kidnapping issue, US and Algerian authorities have failed to present "indisputable verification of a single act of alleged terrorism in the Sahara", Mr Keenan said. "Without the GSPC, the US has no legitimacy for its presence in the region," he added, noting that an escalating American strategic dependency on African oil requires that the United States bolster its presence in the region. Maj Silkman, however, said cultivating security, not oil resources, is the prime objective of the TSCTI. She said it is vital that other members of the international community get involved. "Reducing the threat is not as much about taking direct action as it is in eliminating conditions that allow terrorism to flourish," she said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 $ 500 million US dollars litterly being pissed away. Stay the hell out of it and let combat attrition and HIV take care of the problem. Sorry Major Silkman, my apologies for being so blunt, but you're full of kak as a Christmas turkey, we've no business there, or anywhere in bloody Africa. Rent "Blackhawk Down" and take a historical read of the French experience if you will. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2005-12-14 22:06 |