Malian soldiers training
From the New York Times comes news of an expanding front in the defense against global jihad.
STUTTGART, Germany — The American campaign against terrorism is opening a new front in a region that military officials fear could become the next base for Al Qaeda — the largely ungoverned swath of territory stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Western Sahara's Atlantic coast.Generals here at the United States European Command, which oversees the area, say the vast, arid region is a new Afghanistan, with well-financed bands of Islamic militants recruiting, training and arming themselves. Terrorist attacks like the one on March 11 in Madrid that killed 191 people seem to have a North African link, investigators say, and may presage others in Europe. ...
American military officials say that Qaeda-linked militants, pushed out of Afghanistan and blocked by increased surveillance of traditional points of entry along the Mediterranean coast, are turning to overland travel in order to make contact with North African Islamic terror groups.
The officials cite the case of Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan, also known as Abu Mohamed, a Qaeda militant who traveled across Africa in 2002 to help plan attacks.
Mr. Alwan, a Yemeni and a close associate of Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was linked to the October 2000 attack on the American warship Cole. He is believed to have been helping to plan an attack on the United States Embassy in Mali's capital, Bamako, before he was killed in late 2002 during a raid by Algerian forces in Algeria's northeastern Batna Province.
Mr. Alwan's appearance in the region rattled the American military and added impetus to a strategy that had been taking shape since the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States is working with the countries of the so-called Sahel, the impoverished southern fringe of the Sahara, to shore up border controls and deny sanctuary to suspected terrorists.
The program, called the Pan-Sahel Initiative, was begun with $7 million and focused on Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. It is being expanded to include Senegal and possibly other countries. The European Command has asked for $125 million for the region over five years.
An added catalyst to the program was the kidnapping of Western tourists in the desert of southeastern Algerian early last year. A terrorist leader named Ammari Saifi, also known as Abderrezak al-Para because he was trained as an Algerian Special Forces paratrooper, took 32 European tourists hostage near the Libyan border and transported some of them to northern Mali.
To free the hostages, United States military officials say, Germany paid him a ransom of nearly $6 million — equivalent to a quarter of Niger's defense budget — making him instantly one of the most powerful Islamic militants in North Africa.
He is a leader of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or G.S.P.C., which was formed in 1998 and has many links with Al Qaeda.
Earlier this year, Mr. Saifi went on a shopping spree in northern Mali, gathering weapons, vehicles and recruits while American and Algerian intelligence monitored him with growing alarm. In February, Algerian forces intercepted a convoy carrying weapons north from Mali. Algerian officials say the cargo contained mortar launchers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and surface-to-air missiles.
The United States European Command sent a Navy P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft to sweep the area, relaying Mr. Saifi's position to forces in the region. Mali pushed him out of the country to Niger, which in turn chased him into Chad, where, with United States Special Forces support of an airlift of fuel and other supplies, 43 of his men were killed or captured. Mr. Saifi himself got away, American officials say. With his money and experience and broader network, G.S.P.C. remains the most dangerous group in North Africa, they say.
In the wake of the G.S.P.C. hunt, military chiefs from nine African nations were brought to European Command headquarters in Stuttgart last month. Several of the generals, like the military chiefs of neighboring Mali and Niger, had never met one another before. Others, like the military chiefs of Morocco and Algeria, were more accustomed to competing than cooperating.
All the countries expressed anxiety about the growing threat of Islamic militancy within their borders.
Government officials in Burkina Faso have complained to American officials about "bearded ones" showing up in remote areas preaching the salafist, or fundamentalist, strain of Islam that inspires the world's Islamic militants. The foreign imams distribute cassette tapes and have greater wealth than the local imams with whom they are competing.
"These are not local extremists," one American official said. "These are people from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, who are essentially Islamic missionaries preaching a form of Islam that is very, very different from what these countries want or grew up with."
But can the defenders of the local form of Islam refute the Salafis' arguments from the Qur'an and Islamic tradition?
im really kinda uneasy with the usa training troops in south america,asia, former russian territorys,and africa I am worried that at some point in the future these forces might be envolved with some pretty nasty stuff in there countrys involving there own domestic strife. El Salvadorian death squads come to mind.
Joseph,
It is always risky to train people for miitary operations--I am sure the Algerians didn't think this guy would become a problem when he was a Special Forces soldier FOR rather than AGAINST them. Sometimes you wind up focusing on the immediate threat first then the secondary threat later. Think of the USSR, joined forces to defeat the Nazis, then fought a cold war with the US for 50 years.
Some things are nice that the Press does not know about, can get more done that way! joesph you are worred to be found out we are not the French we see the Truth and the Gloves are com-ing off we can see now that it well. I can't say
Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and all her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give Them Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory Amen
Joseph, I share your unease; the people we train today for what a appears to be a reasonable cause will still be Muslims in the future. Even if the people who are trained remain our friends, so long as Islam is their philosophy, their children and all their descendants will be grist for the Islamic mill, and thus potential jihadists, fighting us with weapons and methods we have given them.
Big R, your point is well taken. Joining forces with the Soviets to fight the Nazis falls was an expedient choice which falls into the category of "emergency ethics," which differ substantially from the ethics of everyday life.
The difference between joining forces then with the Soviets and joining forces now with any Islamic forces lies in the fact that our fight with the Soviets, although prolonged, was a highly localized one. We've had many "localized" conflicts where there was a discrete outcome where "one of us wins, the other loses." Certain rules governed the action, and finally, it was over, and that was that. Finito.
In fact, until Islam, that was the standard format for conflicts, large and small. But now, the rules have changed, and the reason for fighting has changed.
They fight under the moral imperative that the fact that the fact that anyone who is different is evil. Since we think, and they don't, since we change, and they don't, we will always be different, and so the fight never ends. Even Turkey, once quite secularized (meaning that religion was a personal matter, not a matter of state control), is now tottering in the direction of theocracy.
These people are "conservative" in the worst sense of the word. "To conserve" means to "to keep things the same." It is, however, the nature of the human mind to think, to discover what was not known before, and to change accordingly.
The philosophy that is encoded in Islam, on the other hand, including their moral code, demands that they remain the same, and that everything be predictable. One must never think; one must never exhibit curiosity; one must never ask questions; one must never innovate. All of these processes, which come naturally to the human mind, "rock the boat."
Since it is not in the nature of the human mind to remain unthinking, uncurious, unquestioning, un-innovative, and unchanging, the only way to achieve the goal of total predictability is to exert total control over the thinking and behavior of every human being on the earth by whatever means necessary.
That--the exertion of total control over each of us--is what they are trying to do. They have invented a "religion" that promotes and justifies this goal, that grants it the moral authority to do whatever they must to achieve it.
Islam begins by taking hostage the minds of the very young, and under the threat of being declared "immoral," incessantly drills them in the "evil" represented by thinking, questioning, and innovating. For some well studied neurodevelopmental reasons, by the time these children reach puberty, it is too late for for the vast majority of them to change. There are a courageous few who preserve their humanity despite the unremitting efforts to ablate it.
The conflict will never end until Islam is gone. Its disappearance can occur in one of two ways; through death or education.
Anyone out there thought of South Africa and the ANC who are very sympathetic towards the terrorists in the Middle East.
For instance, Mandela has slammed the prisoner atrocities in Iraqi, no problem with that, but remains silent on the rest of the atrocities in the Middle East whether it is brutalities towards their own people or others. Have a problem with that. Selective morality.
Islam and its accompanying militancy is growing very nicely in this country with little to no attention from the greater world. I guess the jihadists need the vital Cape point junction and the vast mineral wealth in that country to continue their goals to control the world.
Do not descriminate but do reserve your right to refuse service.. do NOT sale anything from your shops, stores, companies,etc.. to muslims and Islamic countries, lets hurt them where it hurts the worst, in their pockets.