Review of Jeremy Keenan's 'The Dark Sahara: America's War on Terror in Africa' Dennis Sammut
2010-01-20, Issue 466
pambazuka.org/en/category/books/61617Jeremy Keenan's love for the Sahara and for the Tuareg tribes that roam it is well known, and there is no escape from this in his book 'The Dark Sahara' as he tells of the pain inflicted on the region and its people as a result of the civil strife in Algeria over the last two decades, and particularly since the events of 9/11 brought the region to the attention of those chasing al Qaeda and its allies.
Keenan sets on a task to expose various shady activities of the Algerian military and security services as they sought to avail themselves of the United States's new interest in the region after 9/11. The Algerians were desperate to secure American backing in their fight against the insurgency that gripped the country after the Islamic parties had their election victories stolen away from them in 1991. In doing so Keenan has tried to connect three very distinct processes that have by fate come together in the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert: the global war on terror' (or GWOT), Algeria's painful civil war and post-colonial convulsions, and the aspirations of the Tuareg people for a better deal from the post-colonial states that now rule over them from distant and largely insensitive capitals.
Whatever one's views of the many conspiracy theories that have followed 9/11, nobody questions that in their pursuit of al Qaeda and its associates the Bush administration made alliances and cut deals with some of the most unpleasant regimes in the world – regimes with atrocious human rights records. From Tashkent to Sana'a, from Cairo to Islamabad, all other considerations were put aside in favour of the larger objective of winning the 'War on Terror'. Many fledgling democratic experiments – in the Middle East, Africa, the Caucasus and beyond – that emerged at the end of the Cold War were suddenly made a scapegoat of the new priorities. When in the fullness of time history takes stock of the costs of 9/11, it will find that apart from those who died from that heinous plot, many others in faraway places paid the price of the consequences that followed.
In 'The Dark Sahara' Keenan argues that the Tuareg people of the Sahara, and the Algerian people in general, were such victims who paid the price for 9/11 as the Algerian military–security apparatus persuaded the Bush administration that it was engaged in a war with al Qaeda and its allies in North Africa and that the Sahara was one area where al Qaeda terrorists were finding safe haven. Keenan accuses the Bush administration of creating a simplistic and misinformed reading of the situation in the Sahel, which he dubs 'the banana theory of terrorism'. This envisaged hordes of al Qaeda operatives moving from Afghanistan and Pakistan, through Somalia and the Sahel region to link up with Islamic militants in the Maghreb.
Keenan says that the 'events of 9/11 provided a heaven-sent opportunity for Algeria'. Its government, and those of other states in the region, rushed to join the GWOT. Keenan argues this was '… not simply because the regimes of the region were doing America's bidding. It was more complex and nastier than that; their alliance with the US in the GWOT has encouraged and enabled all of them, without exception – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Mali Niger and Chad – to strengthen their repressive apparatus and to manipulate and use GWOT for their own benefits and purposes. This has been done in two distinct but related ways. Firstly the GWOT has provided them with the pretext to crack down on almost all forms of opposition, especially minority groups, and almost any expression of civil society democratisation. Secondly it has provided them with what I call 'terrorism rents'. These comprise the military and other aid and largesse that these regimes receive from the US for allying themselves to the US in fighting the "war on terror". However with no terrorism (except state terrorism) in many parts of the region, notably in the Sahara-Sahel, before the launch of the GWOT, it has had to be contrived.'
In 'The Dark Sahara' Keenan argues that the Algerian government went even further by creating incidents, including the kidnapping of European tourists, aimed at proving the existence of a terrorist threat in the Sahel.
On their own Keenan's claims do not always add up. In the murky world of intelligence services and counter-terrorism operations, and in a region of the world were criminality, smuggling, religious fervour and a general lack of transparency is the order of the day, Keenan tries to give black-and-white answers to questions than a sceptical reader would feel have been left largely unanswered.
However, Keenan tells his story in parallel with that of atrocities said to have been perpetrated by the Algerian state as part of its 'dirty war', aimed at discrediting the Islamist insurgency and cutting popular support from under its feet. This story has been much better documented. Keenan himself refers to Habib Souaidia's book 'La Sale Guerre', published in 2001. Keenan says that 'once in a while there is a book that turns history' and that Souaidia's book 'is one of them, not just because of what it revealed about the role of Algeria's military regime in that war, but because of its subsequent passage through the French courts which gave Algeria's people a reaffirmation of the truth…'
Keenan claims that the Algerian state and the Bush administration conspired to create a narrative – at the expense of the Tuareg people of the Sahara – that would allow the US to support the Algerian government politically, economically and militarily, in return for which Algeria opened its energy industry to American interests.
For many the Sahara is part of the last frontier, a region of the world largely unspoiled by the ugly hand of 20th century progress. Sustainable tourism in 2001 and 2002 had started to provide the region and its people with a livelihood, returning some of the prosperity seen at the time of the caravan routes of earlier centuries. The incidents with the kidnapping of tourists, and claims of terrorists running amok in the region put a brake to this process. It also gave a justification for the central government in Algiers, and in other Sahel states, to use strong-hand tactics in dealing with any claims for political rights for the Tuareg people. Keenan talks of the impact of the GWOT on the peoples of the Sahara: 'I was able to see the immense damage that the deception of its GWOT was causing to the livelihoods and well being of the peoples of much of this part of the Sahara-Sahel (and beyond), and that it was only a matter of time before it would encounter blowback…' In fact it is this warning that the 'War on Terror' in the Sahel may be turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy that should cause those dealing with the region to take Keenan's book seriously.
How this came to be is however a matter for discussion. Keenan accuses the United States of conniving with Algeria, saying that 'there is no doubt that the Algerian and US military intelligence services have been complicit in exaggerating and fabricating the evidence used to launch the Saharan front in the GWOT'. While the book does provide some evidence of this, it leaves many questions only partly answered.
Dennis Sammut reviews Jeremy Keenan's 'The Dark Sahara: America's War on Terror in Africa', a book which tackles US counter-terrorist activities in Africa and alliances with dubious governments in the wake of 9/11.SOURCE: pambazuka.org/en/category/books/61617---
The Collapse of the Second Front September 26, 2006
By Jeremy Keenan
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.orgIt started in 2002 with a few hesitant probes that were low on intelligence, high on imagination, and short a couple of helicopters reportedly lost in the desert wastelands of northern Mali. Then, in 2003, the U.S. launch of a second front in its “war on terror” moved into top gear. In collaboration with its regional ally Algeria, the Bush administration identified a banana-shaped swath of territory across the Sahelian regions of the southern Sahara that presumably harbored Islamic militants and bin Laden sympathizers on the run from Afghanistan.
Although the United States had vague suspicions that the Sahel region of Africa might become a possible terrorist haven following its dislodgment of the Taliban from Afghanistan, the gear change was triggered by the hostage-taking of 32 tourists in the Algerian Sahara. The United States attributed their capture in March 2003 to Algeria's Islamist “terrorist” organization, the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC). The presumed mastermind of the plot was the GSPC's second-in-command, who goes by many aliases, including El Para after his stint as a parachutist in the Algerian army.
The GSPC held the hostages in two groups approximately 300 kilometers apart in the Algerian Sahara. An Algerian arI disagreeault liberated one of the groups. The captors took the other group to northern Mali and finally released the hostages following the alleged ransom payment of five million Euros. The hostage-taking confirmed U.S. suspicions. Even before the hostages were released, the Bush administration was branding the Sahara as a terror zone and El Para as a top al-Qaida operative and “bin Laden's man in the Sahel.”
The U.S. spin on these events was all very dramatic. And it was all largely untrue.
The Pan-Sahel Initiative In January 2004, following earlier visits from the U.S. Office of Counterterrorism to Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, Bush's Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) rolled into action with the arrival of a U.S. “anti-terror team” in Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital. U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State Pamela Bridgewater confirmed that the team comprised 500 U.S. troops and a deployment of 400 U.S. Rangers into the Chad-Niger border region the following week. (In 2005, the PSI expanded to include Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, and Nigeria, and the organization became the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative).
By the end of January, Algerian and Malian forces, reportedly with U.S. support, were said to have driven the GSPC from northern Mali. Then, in a series of engagements, a combined military operation of Niger and Algerian forces, supported by U.S. satellite surveillance, chased El Para's men across the Tamesna, Aïr, and Tenere regions of Niger into the Tibesti Mountains of Chad. There, thanks to the support of U.S. aerial reconnaissance, Chadian forces engaged the GSPC in early March in a battle lasting three days, reportedly killing 43 GSPC. El Para managed to escape the carnage but fell into the hands of a Chadian rebel movement. This group held him hostage until October 2004 when he was returned to Algeria, allegedly with the help of Libya. In June 2005, an Algerian court convicted him in absentia of “creating an armed terrorist group and spreading terror among the population.” It sentenced El Para to life imprisonment.
Within a year, the United States and its allies had transformed the Sahara-Sahel region into a second front in the global “war on terror.” Prior to the hostage-taking in March 2003, no act of terror, in the conventional meaning of the term, had occurred in this vast region. Yet, by the following year, U.S. military commanders were describing terrorists as “swarming” across the Sahel and the region as a “Swamp of Terror.” The area was, in the words of European Command's deputy commander General Charles F. Wald, a “terrorist infestation” that “we need to drain.” Stewart M. Powell, writing in Air Force Magazine, claimed that the Sahara “is now a magnet for terrorists.” Typical of the media hype were articles in the Village Voice such as “Pursuing Terrorists in the Great Desert.”
But the incidents used to justify the launch of this new front in the “war on terror” were either fiction, in that they simply did not happen, or fabricated by U.S. and Algerian military intelligence services. El Para was not “Bin Laden's man in the Sahara,” but an agent of Algeria's counter-terrorist organization, the Direction des Renseignements et de la Sécurité. Many Algerians believe him to have been trained as a Green Beret at Fort Bragg in the 1990s. Almost every Algerian statement issued during the course of the hostage drama has now been proven to be false. No combined military force chased El Para and his men across the Sahel. El Para was not even with his men as they stumbled around the Aïr Mountains in search of a guide and having themselves photographed by tourists. As for the much-lauded battle in Chad, there is no evidence that it happened. Leaders of the Chadian rebel movement say it never occurred, while nomads, after two years of scratching around in the area, have still not found a single cartridge case or other material evidence.
How and why did such a deception take place? The “how” is simple. First, the Algerian and U.S. military intelligence services channeled a stream of disinformation to an industry of terrorism “experts,” conservative ideologues, and compliant journalists who produced a barrage of articles. Second, if a story is to be fabricated, it helps if the location is far away and remote. The Sahara is the perfect place: larger than the United States and effectively closed to public access.
The “why” has much to do with Washington's “banana theory” of terrorism, so named because of the banana-shaped route Washington believed the dislodged terrorists from Afghanistan were taking into Africa and across the Sahelian countries of Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania to link up with Islamist militants in the Maghreb. Hard evidence for this theory was lacking. There was little or no Islamic extremism in the Sahel, no indigenous cases of terrorism, and no firm evidence that “terrorists” from Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the Middle East were taking this route.
Washington appears to have based its notion on some unpublished sources and Algerian press reports on the banditry and smuggling activities of the outlaw Mokhtar ben Mokhtar. It also misconstrued the Tablighi Jama`at movement, whose 200 or so members in Mali are nicknamed “the Pakistanis” because the sect's headquarters are in Pakistan. Finally, local government agents told U.S. officials what they wanted to hear.
Notwithstanding the lack of evidence, Washington saw a Saharan Front as the linchpin for the militarization of Africa, greater access to its oil resources (Africa will supply 25% of U.S. hydrocarbons by 2015), and the sustained involvement of Europe in America's counterterrorism program. More significantly, a Saharan front reinforced the intelligence cherry-picked by top Pentagon brass to justify the invasion of Iraq by demonstrating that al-Qaida's influence had spread to North Africa.
The Algerian Connection Washington's interest in the Sahel and the flimsiness of its intelligence were extremely propitious for Algeria's own designs. As western countries became aware of the Algerian army's role in its “dirty war” of the 1990s against Islamic extremists, they became increasingly reluctant to sell it arms for fear of Islamist reprisals and criticism from human rights groups. As a result, Algeria's army became progressively under-equipped and increasingly preoccupied with acquiring modern, high-tech weapon systems, notably night vision devices, sophisticated radar systems, an integrated surveillance system, tactical communications equipment, and certain lethal weapon systems. Whereas the Clinton administration kept its distance, the Bush administration invited Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as one of its first guests to Washington. Bouteflika told his American counterpart that Algeria wanted specific equipment to maintain peace, security, and stability.
September 11 was a golden opportunity for both regimes, especially Algeria, which sold its “expertise” in counter-terrorism to Washington on the basis of its long “war” against Islamists through the 1990s that left 200,000 people dead. This common ground in the war against terrorism was the basis of a new U.S.-Algerian relationship. However, by late 2002, Algeria was publicly admonishing the United States for its tardiness in delivering on its promises of military equipment. Washington's caution, however, was justified by the fact that Algeria was on top of its “terrorist” problem and consequently no longer in need of such sophisticated equipment.
El Para was proof that “terrorism” was far from eradicated in Algeria and that Islamic militancy now linked the Maghreb and Sahel. His activities not only eased Washington's political reticence on military support for Algeria, but also provided the missing link in its banana theory of terrorism.
Who conned whom is perhaps immaterial, although the U.S. lack of human intelligence on the ground and its cherry-picking of unverified intelligence certainly made it unusually receptive to the wooing of Algeria's military intelligence services. The situation resembled Ahmed Chalabi's manipulation of U.S. intelligence agencies in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, while Algeria certainly duped U.S. intelligence services, the overall fabrication of the so-called Second Front involved the collusion of both parties. U.S. monitoring of the hostage situation, including the use of AWAC surveillance, speaks to Washington's willing participation.
The Front Collapses The Second Front deception has done immense damage to the peoples and fabric of the Sahara-Sahel region. The launch of a Sahara front in the “war on terror” has created immense anger, frustration, rebellion, political instability, and insecurity across the entire region. The successful Mauritanian coup, the Tuareg revolts in Mali and Niger, the riots in southern Algeria, and the political crisis in Chad are direct outcomes of this policy. It has also destroyed the region's tourism industry and the livelihoods of families across the entire region, forcing hundreds of young men into the burgeoning smuggling and trafficking businesses for a living. In Washington, the same people who failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein are now busy classifying these innocent victims of U.S. foreign policy as putative “terrorists.”
Fortunately for the people of the region, this Second Front is collapsing. U.S. regional commanders admitted to a German journalist this last spring that their EUCOM predecessors had over-hyped the terrorist situation. In the meantime, U.S. skullduggery in the region is likely to be exposed further by President Bouteflika's recent investigation into fraud and corruption by the Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root Condor (BRC), set up and registered as an Algerian company by Dick Cheney in 1994.
The Bush administration fabricated an entire front in the “war on terror” for its own political purposes. Its obsession with secrecy is not for reasons of national security but to conceal falsehood. That is why the Senate Intelligence Committee is stalling its investigation of Douglas Feith and his role at the Pentagon's controversial Office of Special Plans. The investigation is likely to open “an even bigger can of worms,” as one former intelligence officer has warned.
The collapse of the second front is likely to have widespread implications for America's “war on terror.” At a global level, it will reduce the credibility of the Bush administration still further, reinforcing the already widespread belief that much of what it has been saying about terrorism is simply not true. While of little consequence for those countries with which U.S. relations are already at an all-time low, the ramifications will be far more serious for countries such as those in the European Union on whom America still relies for a modicum of support. Increasing public skepticism toward the Bush administration's claims about terrorism and disapproval of the conduct of its “war on terror” has been forcing the governments of many of these countries to reconsider the extent and nature of their support for the American enterprise. This erosion of U.S. credibility in the world will carry over to subsequent U.S. administrations, even ones that attempt to reform American foreign policy.
This North African imbroglio also holds serious implications for America's principle regional allies in the deception. In Algeria, Mali, Niger, Chad, and pre-coup Mauritania, the launch of the Saharan front went hand in hand with an increase in repressive behavior by the security establishments of these countries against their civilian populations. Not surprisingly, the front's collapse is now leading to outbreaks of rebellious anger against these governments and a consequent increase in political instability and insecurity. In a terrible irony, the attempt to fight terrorists in a terrorism-free land might ultimately produce the very movements and activities that the U.S. government claimed it wanted to expunge in the first place.
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See also:U.S. takes terror fight to Africa's 'Wild West': Critics say Saharan plan backs despots, is magnet for troubleSOURCE:
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/27/MNGISGDLR91.DTLConcerned Africa Scholars: US militarization of the Sahara-Sahel Security, Space & Imperialism SOURCE:
concernedafricascholars.org/docs/bulletin85.pdf ---
Other recommeded reading:The Dying Sahara: US Imperialism and Terror in AfricaBy Jeremy Keenanwww.amazon.com/Dying-Sahara-Imperialism-Terror-Africa/dp/0745329616The Dark Sahara: America's War on Terror in AfricaBy Jeremy Keenanwww.amazon.ca/Dark-Sahara-Americas-Terror-Africa/dp/0745324525
