Jihad and anti-jihad in Saharan Africa. Where did the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat get four million pounds to spend on jihad? Why, from ransom money paid by the dhimmi German government. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Ali Dashti and Nicolei:
America has launched a secret war against Islamic terrorists across the southern Sahara after it discovered that a group linked to al-Qaeda bought heavy weapons using the proceeds of a ransom deal with the German government. The realisation that a new Islamic fundamentalist force was building what officials call "garrisons in the sand" on the border of Algeria and Mali has led America to launch a new anti-terror campaign across a swathe of Africa's harshest and most sparsely populated terrain.The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has spent about £4 million, which it received in return for releasing 17 European tourists kidnapped last year, on surface-to-air missiles, heavy machine-guns and mortars.
It also bought satellite positioning equipment to enable it to conceal and later return to weapons caches buried in the sands of the Sahara.
Major Sarah Kerwin of the US Army's European Command, which is responsible for north and west Africa, said: "There are clear indications that Muslim extremists from the Middle East and Afghanistan have moved into these massive open spaces, where they are as elusive as if they were out at sea.
"They bring a new threat where they can bury weapons in the sand, mark the exact position with their satellite equipment, and then move off along the camel trails with other tools and equipment."
Later on in the article, a "Western diplomat" tells us that what the Germans paid "was equivalent to 25 per cent of the defence budget of Niger last year. That gives the extremists a huge boost, an advantage which they can exploit to destabilise these governments."
Waiting for the huge media outcry over jihad in Saharan Africa. Waiting for the perfidy of the German government to be decried. Bet I'll still be waiting when I'm borne to my grave an old and hoary corpse.
This is probably a totally ignorant question but ask it I will:
What happened to all the "Super Spy" satellites?? I thought the "eyes in the sky" could zero in on License plates? Why can't they track movement in this vast "sea-like" expand of desert?
And If they can track and locate things and people, why can't there be a missle sent to destroy these weapons?
Who would complain? The terrorists? Other Muslims? Does the world really care what they think?
Good point susanc but this can only be done if the perpetrators are first located and also the terrorists can still do their dirty work at night.
A takeover of the southern Sudan, in order to protect the non-Muslim blacks subject to more than two decades of mass murder and deliberate starvation, would provide the United States with bases that, unlike Wheeler Air Force Base in Libya, lost when King Idris was deposed by Khaddafy, unlike the bases in Saudi Arabia (that are already shaky), unlike the attempt to keep a base in Iraq (doubtful), or others in Kuwait and Qatar (ditto), would not be in a Muslim region but in a place where grateful Christians, having been rescued by the United States (a referendum could be held on the matter of independence -- the oil wealth is in the south of Sudan, where the persecuted non-Muslim blacks live)-- would achieve their independence, and owe their rescue, to the armed forces (what would it take? 5,000 Marines?) of the United States.
This would also hearten the beleaguered Christians elsewhere in black Africa, from Nigeria (where shari'a is being imposed in the northern states) and Togo (where the Christians are leaving, to go to France, Canada, Germany, Greece, wherever they can -- as Muslim power, even with a despotic Christian ruler, grows inexorably), and Kenya and Tanzania and South Africa.
If Bush were to do this, what would the Arab League do? Scream that it has a divine right to continue killing blacks in the south? What would Kofi Annan, who prevented Romeo Dallaire from possibly stopping the genocide in Rwanda, and who has been completely ineffectual (see the reports of the Special Rapporteur for the Sudan, the Hungarian Gaspar Biro), say? Would he declare that the Sudanese situation (the laughable "peace treaty" will be violated as soon as the northerners think the world is no longer watching -- of course, even such discussions as this will help to keep them, temporarily, in line) must be handleed by the U.N., which in the past 30 years has NEVER done anything contrary to the wishes of the Arab-Muslim lobby that is the most powerful group at the U.N.? It will be a perfect defining issue (and, by the way, pictures of smiling black Sudanesefaces, truly grateful to the American soldiers for their salvation --in constrast to the murderous, or at best whining, baksheesh-demanding Iraqi "contractors" currently driving American soldiers nuts with their transparent exploitation of the American government (i.e. taxpayers), which is seen as an endless source of bounty, with a widespread attitude of "let's grab as much of that money as we can while the getting is good" and of course the Americans have to stay to "rebuild" the country because they "owe it to us." (Those Iraqis did allow us to remove that very nice man Saddam Hussein, and his two adorable sons, now didn't they? Yes, we owe them for that.)
What better place for a permanent American base (permanent because it accords completely with the wishes, and needs, of the people there, unlike all bases in Muslim countries).
susanc,
Don't jest. Read the article again. They are using a satellite-positioning array. Hmmm. People commonly forget who controls the satellite-positioning array (GPS system). For reasons I am being kind in my words pertaining to information regarding this array.
Noj
Now can we test a few MOABs?