Fighting banditry in the southern Sahara

A military operation to flush out armed bandits from the northern Malian region of Kidal should be completed by the weekend, an army information officer told IRIN on Wednesday. Sub-Lt Aboubakar Tapo declined to give details of the operation. However, AFP quoted a civilian from Kidal as saying he saw an unspecified number of wounded being taken to hospital. The army has been trying for months to dislodge the bandits from the area. Tapo said the majority were Tuaregs. He said they have been raiding settlements to steal cattle and seizing cars from nongovernmental organisations for resale in a trans-Saharan trade that includes neighbouring countries such as Algeria, Mauritania and Niger. “They also traffic in guns,” Tapo said. For example, police in Niger arrested three men armed with Kalashnikov automatic assault rifles in Agades, a desert town in northern Niger, after an unsuccessful attempt to seize a jeep, a humanitarian source told IRIN. The southern Sahara region between Mali, Niger and Chad has been plagued by banditry in recent times. Some of the bandits are thought to be former rebels who fought the Malian and Niger armies until peace deals were reached in 1995. In Niger, rebellion broke out again in 1997, and ended in 1998. In northern Chad a new rebellion began in late 1998. Attempts to stamp out crime in the southern Sahara have failed, although Tapo said Mali’s army had registered some success in the area between the town of Gao and the border with Niger following joint army patrols by the two countries.