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.”