Al Qaeda in Africa

Osama Bin Laden's direct and indirect
associates are opening up in a new front in Africa,
stretching from Djibouti and neighbouring Somalia in
the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic coast of Western
Sahara between Morocco and Algeria. The US, which does
not want to deploy its forces on the ground there, is
trying to counter the perceived threat by training
and equipping local security forces to deal with the
militants who have already started showing their teeth
there.
The region is seen as perfect breeding ground for
militancy because most people living there are denied
social justice and governments of the concerned
countries are deemed apathetic to the poverty and
living conditions in the mostly desert and rural
areas.
"People there see for themselves they have little to
lose since they are impoverished and little to look
forward to in life," comments an African expert, Awol
Usu. "Militant groups find it easy to locate young men
among them ready to wage extremism against governments
and pro-establishment symbols," said Usu.
"Government authority does not reach some of the
interior parts of some of the countries in the
Djibouti-Western Sahara belt," an area that covers
tens of thousands square kilometres, Usu told
Malayalamanorama.
Non-native militants, some them Pakistanis and
Afghanis, are moving through the region, distributing
leaflets and giving lectures exhorting local residents
to rise up and fight against the US and its allies.
Since they move through areas where no policing is
done or no security forces exist, they evade capture;
when confronted, they are fully armed to put up a
fight and account for themselves.
The New York Times reports that American generals
based in Europe see the largely ungoverned region as a
"new Afghanistan."
Intelligence reports indicate that well-finaned
militants are being trained and armed for attacks
similar to the March 11 attacks in Madrid that killed
nearly 200 people. Investigations have brought out a
North African link to the Madrid blasts.
In order to counter the threat, the US, instead of
planning on a heavy military presence, is sending
dispatching Special Operations forces to countries
like Mali and Mauritania in West Africa to train
soldiers and outfit them with pickup trucks, radios
and global-positioning equipment, according to the New
York Times. The US is spending an annual $25 million
for the scheme, which covers Mauritania, Mali, Niger,
Chad, Morocco, Algeria, Burkina Faso and will extend
to Senegal soon.
Other sources said the US was operating a separate
programme for Somalia, where no legal government
exists and clans are ruling their fiefdoms.
The paper quoted Lieutenant-Colonel Powl Smith, head
of the US European Command's anti-terrorism force, as
saying: "We want to be preventative, so that we don't
have to put boots on the ground here in North Africa
as we did in Afghanistan.By assisting local
governments to do the fighting themselves, "we don't
become a lightning rod for popular anger that radicals
can capitalise on," he said.
Intelligence sources believe that Al Qaeda militants
who fled in the wake of the Afghan war are now
travelling overland through the region contacting
local units to carry out attacks.
The most dreaded and organised militant group in the
region is believed to be the Salafist Group for
Preaching and Combat, whose leader Nabil Sahraoui
alias Abu Ibrahim Mustafa is said to be close to Bin
Laden and his deputies. The group kidnapped 32
Germans near the Algerian border and transported
some of them to northern Mali and collected $6 million
in ransom for their release last year in an episode
that gripped the region for several weeks. The man who
led the kidnap operations was identified as Ammari
Saifi, also known as Abderrezak Al Para. The $6
million he received are being spent on recruting,
training and arming militants.
Among the other regional groups known to have links
with Al Qaeda are Morocco's Islamic Combat Group,
which is blamed for the Casablanca bombings in May
2003 and the March 11 blasts in Madrid; Tunisia's
Combatant Group, whose leader Sami Ben Khemais was
arrested and jailed for plotting to bomb the US
embassy in Rome in 2001; the Armed Islamic Group of
Algeria; and the Islamic Fighting Group of Libya,
which had tried to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar
Qadhafi and stir local passion to rise up against the
regime.
The common factor among these groups is that most of
their leaders are known to have been among the
followers of Bin Laden — the so-called Arab Afghans
— and fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
during the 80s before returning home and setting up
their own outfits following the departure of Soviet
forces from Afghanistan in 1989.
Among the most prominent Al Qaeda activist whose
appearance signalled militant operations in the region
was Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan, also known as Abu
Mohamed, who travelled across Africa in 2002 to help
plan attacks. A Yemeni, Alwan was a a close associate
of Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, and was said
to have taken part in the October 2000 attack on the
American warship Cole off the Yemeni coast.
He was killed in late 2002 in a clash with Algerian
security forces. At that time he was said to be
planning an attack on the US embassy in Mali's
capital, Bamako.
In recent months, Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian
authorities have seized sizeable shipments of weapons
and explosives, including mortar launchers,
rocket-propelled grenade launchers and surface-to-air
missiles, from suspected militants.
One of the central pillars of the American strategy is
to bring in security chiefs of the concerned countries
to sit down together and hold unprecedented talks on
security and transborder co-operation. Several such
meetings have already been held.
There is a sense of urgency to the American effort,
since the developments in Iraq and the worsening
crisis there are seen to prompt militants throughout
the region to wage attacks against American and
allied targets.
However, the anti-US sentiments are already
deep-rooted and Washington would find it difficult to
keep pace with the militants who have the advantage of
the discontent of the local population as well as the
obvious anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias that is showing
in American policy.