Famine not fanaticism poses greatest terror threat in Sahel

Disenfranchised and impoverished nomads living in the Sahel region of West Africa are unlikely to join forces with international terrorist groups because of ideological or religious beliefs, but rather as a result of the money being dangled in front of them, regional analysts said. The United States, fearful that the Al Qaeda terrorist network may have shifted to the southern fringes of the Sahara after its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan were destroyed, has opened up a West African front on the war on terror, sending crack Marine units to train local troops in Niger, Chad, Mauritania and Mali. But some commentators question the US obsession that local dissident groups may wish to hook up with Al Qaeda. They say that tackling more fundamental problems in the region, like food, water and jobs, would prove a better use of time and money. "Groups close to Al Qaeda, if they come to the Sahel region, could get support at the local level if they brought in resources," Aboubacrim Ag Hindi, a law professor at the University of Bamako in Mali told IRIN. "But the biggest danger in this region is not Al Qaeda. It is famine." "If the development of these zones is not undertaken, we may see more rebellion there," he added. This year, the most serious locust plague in 15 years threatens to aggravate chronic food shortages caused by decades of drought and rising population densities across the increasingly arid Sahel. Mauritania estimates that it will lose about 40 percent of its crops and pasture this year and Malian government officials privately forecast that a third of the country's grain crop will fall prey to the winged insects. "If locusts create food insecurity, this will be an additional hardship on zones that have always been neglected," explained Herve Ludovic de Lys, the head of the UN's Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) regional office in Dakar. International donors, like the United States and the European Union, have been accused of being slow in responding to appeals for funds to fight the insect plague. And some West African leaders have even urged Washington to treat the locust invasion like a war, arguing that their capacity for the destruction of human life is far greater than that of the worst conflicts. Combating poverty is the key During a visit to Africa last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged that destitute countries were attractive hiding places for armed militants. "We know that poverty and instability lead to weak states, which can become havens for terrorists and other criminals," Blair said in a speech in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. But the British leader, who was chairing a meeting on economic development in Africa, was quick to return to the Al Qaeda hymn-sheet. "Even before September 11, Al Qaeda had bases in Africa. They still do. Hiding in places where they can go undisturbed by weak governments where they plan their next attack, which could be anywhere in the world," he said. One Sahel-based group which is causing Washington and London particular concern is the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), an Algerian-based group, which is thought to have links to Al Qaeda.

Swarms of locusts are devastating the crops and pasture lands of West Africa

Last year, the GSPC abducted 32 European tourists who were touring the desert of southern Algeria. It eventually released them in Algeria and Mali following reports that a ransom had been paid. The GSPC has also been detected in Niger and Chad. Earlier this year, a rebel group active in the Tibesti Mountains of northern Chad, the Chadian Movement for Democracy and Justice (MDJT), captured several GSPC members including the leader of the kidnap squad, Amari Saifi, a former para commando in the Algerian army who is commonly known as Abderazak El Para. Various media reports have suggested that the Chadian rebels, who draw most of their support from the Toubou people of the central Sahara, are now trying to auction their hostages to the highest bidder. Anti-terrorism measures could backfire Through its Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative, the United States aims to help West African governments flush out militants seeking refuge in the remote fringes of their territory. It also wants to help them combat people traffickers, gunrunners and other smuggling networks operating across their porous borders. "The aim of the Pan-Sahel Initiative is to enhance regional peace and security," a tight-lipped senior official of the US Central Command in Washington told IRIN. "Elements of it include assisting countries with border incursions, trafficking of people and illicit materials, security operations and training for officials," she added. But several regional experts warned that this strategy could backfire. Stephen Ellis, an Africa expert at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, said he was concerned that the U.S.-led crackdown on terrorism could simply fuel existing tensions in the region. "Initiatives such as this threaten the Tuaregs' very means of living," said Ellis, who has just completed a year as Africa director of the Brussels-based think tank, the International Crisis Group. "Life in the desert has been very difficult, especially since the 1973/74 drought. People have been obliged to live from other revenue sources such as tourism, state subsidies and banditry." In Mali, a leading figure on the government commission set up to combat the proliferation of small arms, painted a similar picture of impoverished desert nomads resorting to desperate measures. "Cigarette, fuel and weapon smuggling is carried out by the population and it is difficult to consider them as bandits as it is their only source of income and allows them to survive," Amadou Bocoum, the commission's deputy chairman, told IRIN. "But weapon smuggling is alarming in Mali, given the porous nature of its more than 3,000 km of borders with neighbouring countries," Bocoum added. Ellis, Bocoum and others said the smuggling routes were not only used to move clandestine African migrants towards the Mediterranean coast for the short sea-journey to Europe and bringing back weapons and contraband cigarettes to the Sahel. They were also used to trade food and fuel. Tuareg rebel as traditional lifestyle collapses Often, they said, such trading provided the only source of income for nomadic populations whose livestock had been decimated by the progressive drying out of the Sahara.

US forces special training in Mali

In the northern desert lands of Niger, for example, the Tuareg stronghold of Agadez is a hive of illicit commerce. The light-skinned nomadic Tuareg men, distinctive in their blue cloth wraps that allow only their eyes to be glimpsed, are to be found across southern Algeria, south-western Libya, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The European Institute for Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation estimates there are 1.3 million Tuaregs spread across the Sahara. They staged fierce rebellions in Niger and Mali in the 1990s to protest at central government neglect of their welfare. Although peace deals were reached in 1995 and hundreds of Tuareg rebels were drafted into the government security forces, the lot of the Tuareg people has not improved significantly and tensions remain a decade on. "The peace agreements signed after the Tuareg rebellions were not fully respected, reintegration was not adequately implemented and the political systems did not take into account the aspirations of the inhabitants," said OCHA's de Lys. Banditry along the main Trans-Sahara highway from Niger to Algeria has increased in recent months and many of those shooting up trucks and buses on the Niger side of the border have started describing themselves as Tuareg rebels. Experts like de Lys fear the locals' anger at the crackdown on their livelihoods could be exploited by international terrorists hiding in the desert. "Groups taking refuge in barely-controllable areas could easily take advantage of the frustration of the Toubous and Tuaregs," he said. In the last few months, there have been growing concerns that Tuareg rebels in Niger could be regrouping after a series of attacks and ambushes along the Trans-Sahara Highway and reports that rebels, integrated into the national army under the 1995 peace deal, have been deserting their ranks. In June the United Nations imposed tighter restrictions on staff movements in northern Niger, upgrading the area to phase two, the second of five security levels. Earlier this month, five people died when Niger government forces clashed with bandits claiming to be Tuareg rebels in the Air Mountains. The clashes followed two attacks over the summer by armed men on passenger buses between Agadez and Arlit in which three people, including a two-year-old, were killed. Mohamed Ag Boula, the brother of Rhissa Ag Boula who used to lead the now-dissolved Air and Azaouak Liberation Front (FLAA) rebel group, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying his 200-strong group was fighting to defend the rights of the Tuareg, Toubou and Semori nomadic populations of northern Niger. Rhissa Ag Boula won a senior position in government as part of the 1995 peace deal, which brought a four-year Tuareg rebellion in northern Niger to an end. But in February he was sacked as tourism minister and shortly afterwards he was arrested in connection with the murder of an official in Niger's ruling party in Agadez, 800 km northeast of Niamey. In Mali too, unidentified armed assailants attacked a humanitarian convoy in the north-eastern region of Bourem at the end of June and local newspapers blamed the Tuareg for the assault. Since then, a rash of tribal fighting has broken out between rival nomad groups of Arab descent near the eastern town of Gao. Kinsmen before countrymen There is a risk that in a region where people are more loyal to their kinsmen than to their country, problems in one nation could easily cross the border and disenfranchised groups could unite, independently of any Al Qaeda connection. "People are related," Ag Hindi said. "(People from Niger) fight in Mali without even knowing that they have passed the border. And all are dissatisfied with the economic rehabilitation of deprived areas." Ethnic crossover is also a concern for Chadian President Idriss Deby. Diplomats have started to ring alarm bells about the general turmoil and instability in eastern Chad which is struggling to cope with the influx of 200,000 refugees from the Darfur conflict in western Sudan. Deby, a former warlord who seized power in the impoverished and landlocked country in 1990, took his first body blow in May when disgruntled soldiers staged a mutiny, which the authorities said was a warm-up for assassinating the president. Heavy gunfire rattled around N'djamena and the city's mobile phone networks were shut down for several days. Diplomats said the would-be-putschists came from Deby's own Zagawa ethnic group, which lives on both sides of the Sudanese border. The Zagawa are one of the tribes on the receiving end of the violence being dished out in Darfur by Sudan's pro-government Janjawid militia movement. Diplomats said the insurgents in Chad were venting their anger at Deby's soft line towards Khartoum and were angry that he was not doing more to support his own kinsmen being slaughtered by the Janjawid. Coup plots have also proved a headache for Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Taya. At the end of September, the authorities in Nouakchott said they had foiled the third coup attempt in 15 months. The most violent attempt to unseat Ould Taya, who has ruled the desert nation for 20 years, took place in June 2003. Heavy fighting raged for two days in the capital Nouakchott before forces loyal to the president regained control. The Mauritanian government has accused the same group of dissident officers of being responsible for all three attempts to depose Ould Taya, a pro-Western strongman, who has angered many of his staunchly Islamic countrymen by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and switching support from Iraq to the United States. It has variously accused the dissident faction in the army of being in league with Islamic fundamentalists, desert nomads, Libya and Burkina Faso. But some analysts warn that a line must be drawn between these domestic upsets and the international militancy of groups like Al Qaeda. They point out that it is tempting for African governments under domestic pressure to cast their home-grown problems as part of the global war on terror. "There is a risk of confusion between Tuareg claims motivated by economic and political discontent and armed movements following ideological militancy," Ellis, the Dutch-based academic, said. At the University of Bamako, law professor Ag Hindi agreed. "One should not mix up the Tuareg with the terrorists," he said by telephone from Mali. "The Tuareg are opposed to religious fanaticism. They are Muslim by conformity, not by conviction." A diplomatic source in Senegal, who monitors security issues in West Africa, said such connections could not be ruled out entirely. "The Tuareg movement is an opposition movement fighting for territory, autonomy and resource management, and nothing a priori links them to groups such as the GSPC," he said. "However, you cannot rule out the possibility that the GSPC has started planting seeds among them."