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The claimed assassination of Michel Germaneau indicates AQIM is willing to trade Islamist objectives for fund raising.
This is a small surprise from Mokhtar Belmokhtar, AQIM's head. He has always been a business person first, a Smuggler. He married wives from three desert tribes to keep his routes through the Sahel. Now, he is about to give up funding for military objectives alone.
This shows that the multi country task force operating in his backyard are being effective.
Hostage taking for ransom as a fund raising activity is one of the sources for funding AQIM, along with trafficking in people, drugs, cash, and even more mundane contraband like cigarettes. Hostage taking for funds, which stepped up in the last year, is about to dry up,
Mokhtar Belmokhtar. No one will pay anymore if they don't get their people back.
-Shimron Issachar
****************
Prime minister: France is at war against al-Qaida
(AP) – 2 hours ago
PARIS — France is "at war" with al-Qaida and will step up efforts to fight its North African offshoot after it executed a French hostage in the Sahara, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday.
Fillon acknowledged that the group may have killed 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau before — not after — a failed last-ditch raid to try to free him.
Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb said in an audio message broadcast Sunday that it had killed Germaneau in retaliation for a raid last week by Mauritanian and French forces that killed at least six al-Qaida militants.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed the killing Monday, vowing that the perpetrators "will not go unpunished."
His prime minister said Tuesday that France will reinforce efforts to work with governments in northwest Africa fighting al-Qaida in the sparsely populated swath of desert that includes the borders dividing Mauritania, Mali, Algeria and Niger.
"We are at war against al-Qaida," Fillon said on Europe-1 radio. He said France "thwarts several attacks every year," without elaborating.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Tuesday from Mauritania that the Sahel region in question "will not be left to terrorist bands, arms and drug traffickers."
"The combat risks being long but we will continue it," Kouchner said after meeting with Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. Sarkozy sent the minister to the region this week to discuss, among other things, security for French citizens.
Fillon said it was unclear when Germaneau was killed. He said French authorities considered the possibility that the hostage "had already been dead" at the time of a July 12 ultimatum issued by the terrorist group. Fillon said that was only an "assumption" based on "the abnormal, strange character of this ultimatum and of (the group's) refusal to engage in discussion with French authorities."
French forces agreed to take part in what he called a "last chance" operation in the hope they could still save Germaneau, the prime minister said.
Asked whether France would seek to find Germaneau's remains, Fillon said only that when British hostage Edwin Dyer was beheaded in the region last year, "his remains were never found."
Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or North Africa, grew out of an Islamist insurgency movement in Algeria, formally merging with al-Qaida in 2006 and spreading through the Sahel region.
Amid increasing concerns about terrorism and trafficking in northwest Africa, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger opened a joint military headquarters deep in the desert in April to jointly respond to threats from traffickers and the al-Qaida offshoot.
Associated Press writer Ahmed Mohammed contributed to this report from Nouakchott, Mauritania.
The Rest @ The AP
Showing posts with label Sahel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sahel. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sahara States to Cooperate against al Qaeda
By Salah Sarrar
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Sahara-region states must work together to fight an emerging alliance of Islamist militants and drug traffickers with South American links, the head of a regional body said on Monday.
Western governments believe that al Qaeda-linked insurgents and drug smugglers -- using the politically volatile and sparsely populated Sahara as a safe haven -- are forging ties which could make both groups a more potent threat.
Disputes among regional governments have hampered efforts to mount a coordinated response, frustrating the United States and the European Union, which fear the region could become a launching pad for al Qaeda attacks elsewhere.
"The most important issue is the lack of security and smuggling, especially drug smuggling which has now crossed into our region from South America," Mohamed Al-Madani Al-Azhari, Secretary-General of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, told Reuters in an interview.
"It seems that there is coordination and cooperation between smugglers and those extremists who practice terrorism and kidnap foreigners," he said after a meeting of the organisation's executive council in the Libyan capital.
"We have to face all of this frankly," said Al-Azhari, who is Libyan.
"Stability is a central issue because in the absence of stability we cannot have development."
The United States has responded to the al Qaeda threat by sending troops to take part in what it calls training and assistance programmes in some of the region's states.
But some of the bigger powers in the Sahara, led by Libya and Algeria, are resisting Western military involvement.
Al-Azhari said his organisation would coordinate efforts to "lay down a complete and comprehensive strategic plan to fight the lack of security and to not allow the foreign intervention which has begun to appear in our region".
WESTERN HOSTAGES
U.S. officials have said traffickers use the Sahara region as a staging post for flying illegal drugs from South America into Europe and that Al Qaeda militants could tap into the smugglers' network of aircraft and secret landing strips.
A group called al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) kidnapped a Frenchman and three Spaniards in the Sahara late last year. It has said it will kill the French hostage by the end of this month unless Mali frees four al Qaeda prisoners.
AQIM has waged a campaign of suicide bombings and ambushes in Algeria but in the past few years has shifted a large part of its activities south to the Sahara desert.
Last year it killed a British tourist, Edwin Dyer, after kidnapping him on the border between Niger and Mali while he was attending a festival of Tuareg culture.
The group also said it shot dead a U.S. aid worker in Mauritania's capital in June last year, and carried out a suicide bombing on the French embassy there in August that injured three people.
Senior foreign ministry officials from the Community of Sahel-Saharan States' 28-member countries met in Tripoli to coordinate their positions before a summit of the African Union to take place in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa that began on Monday.
Saharan states for more than a year have been planning a regional conference to map out a joint response to the al Qaeda threat, but the gathering has been postponed repeatedly.
Disputes among neighbouring countries -- including long-running rows between Chad and Sudan and Algeria and Morocco -- have blocked efforts to hammer out a joint approach.
(Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Michael Roddy)
The Rest @ Reuters
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Sahara-region states must work together to fight an emerging alliance of Islamist militants and drug traffickers with South American links, the head of a regional body said on Monday.
Western governments believe that al Qaeda-linked insurgents and drug smugglers -- using the politically volatile and sparsely populated Sahara as a safe haven -- are forging ties which could make both groups a more potent threat.
Disputes among regional governments have hampered efforts to mount a coordinated response, frustrating the United States and the European Union, which fear the region could become a launching pad for al Qaeda attacks elsewhere.
"The most important issue is the lack of security and smuggling, especially drug smuggling which has now crossed into our region from South America," Mohamed Al-Madani Al-Azhari, Secretary-General of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, told Reuters in an interview.
"It seems that there is coordination and cooperation between smugglers and those extremists who practice terrorism and kidnap foreigners," he said after a meeting of the organisation's executive council in the Libyan capital.
"We have to face all of this frankly," said Al-Azhari, who is Libyan.
"Stability is a central issue because in the absence of stability we cannot have development."
The United States has responded to the al Qaeda threat by sending troops to take part in what it calls training and assistance programmes in some of the region's states.
But some of the bigger powers in the Sahara, led by Libya and Algeria, are resisting Western military involvement.
Al-Azhari said his organisation would coordinate efforts to "lay down a complete and comprehensive strategic plan to fight the lack of security and to not allow the foreign intervention which has begun to appear in our region".
WESTERN HOSTAGES
U.S. officials have said traffickers use the Sahara region as a staging post for flying illegal drugs from South America into Europe and that Al Qaeda militants could tap into the smugglers' network of aircraft and secret landing strips.
A group called al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) kidnapped a Frenchman and three Spaniards in the Sahara late last year. It has said it will kill the French hostage by the end of this month unless Mali frees four al Qaeda prisoners.
AQIM has waged a campaign of suicide bombings and ambushes in Algeria but in the past few years has shifted a large part of its activities south to the Sahara desert.
Last year it killed a British tourist, Edwin Dyer, after kidnapping him on the border between Niger and Mali while he was attending a festival of Tuareg culture.
The group also said it shot dead a U.S. aid worker in Mauritania's capital in June last year, and carried out a suicide bombing on the French embassy there in August that injured three people.
Senior foreign ministry officials from the Community of Sahel-Saharan States' 28-member countries met in Tripoli to coordinate their positions before a summit of the African Union to take place in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa that began on Monday.
Saharan states for more than a year have been planning a regional conference to map out a joint response to the al Qaeda threat, but the gathering has been postponed repeatedly.
Disputes among neighbouring countries -- including long-running rows between Chad and Sudan and Algeria and Morocco -- have blocked efforts to hammer out a joint approach.
(Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Michael Roddy)
The Rest @ Reuters
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Government Forces Close in on Tuareg Rebels, MNJ
BAMAKO, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Tuareg rebels in northern Mali have agreed to free military hostages as government forces encircle their positions in a remote desert garrison town, a government source said on Wednesday.
Fighters loyal to insurgent chief Ibrahima Bahanga have besieged Tin-Zaouatene since last Friday following a flurry of raids against military targets in what appears to be a limited revival of the region's 1990s Tuareg rebellion.
The army had set up a cordon around Bahanga's positions, a military source said, while local officials and mediators from neighbouring Algeria extracted guarantees including the release of government soldiers and access for a demining team.
"There's nothing official but, from what has leaked out, the mediators have obtained from
Bahanga the liberation of the hostages, access for a team to demine the zone and a (temporary) cessation of hostilities," the government source said.
It was not immediately possible to contact the insurgents.
The Rest @ Reuters Africa
Fighters loyal to insurgent chief Ibrahima Bahanga have besieged Tin-Zaouatene since last Friday following a flurry of raids against military targets in what appears to be a limited revival of the region's 1990s Tuareg rebellion.
The army had set up a cordon around Bahanga's positions, a military source said, while local officials and mediators from neighbouring Algeria extracted guarantees including the release of government soldiers and access for a demining team.
"There's nothing official but, from what has leaked out, the mediators have obtained from
Bahanga the liberation of the hostages, access for a team to demine the zone and a (temporary) cessation of hostilities," the government source said.
It was not immediately possible to contact the insurgents.
The Rest @ Reuters Africa
Friday, August 03, 2007
Guinea-Bissau a Narco State?
Drug trafficking on the rise in West Africa
Impunity and low risk make West Africa a haven for narco-traffickers. Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country nearly surrounded by Senegal, may be the first narco-state. Opium and heroin passes through Africa on its way to the US.
Thursday, July 05, 2007By IRIN
While worldwide production, trafficking and consumption of illegal drugs remained stable last year, West Africa bucked the global trend and saw increased trafficking and use of cocaine and other drugs, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2007 World Drug Report.
“No country in West Africa is immune from the drug trafficking attack,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, the UNODC representative for West and Central Africa.
While in 2005 cocaine seizures in Africa accounted for only 0.3 percent of global seizures, the continent saw a six-fold increase in seizures of the drug between 2000 and 2005 – one of the largest increases in the world.
More than half of all African cocaine seizures are made in West Africa. Senegal, Gambia, Cape Verde and Nigeria all saw cocaine seizures increase by at least 10 percent in 2005, the report said.
“Rising levels of seizures in the region reflect the fact that this continent, notably countries along the Gulf of Guinea and off the coast of Cape Verde, are increasingly being used as a transhipment point for cocaine from South America to markets in western Europe,” the report said.
Increasing proportions of opiates, including heroin from Afghanistan, are also being trafficked to North America via Africa, the report said. Traffickers are even exploring Africa as a source for smuggling chemicals needed for methamphetamines into the United States, now that controls in Canada and Mexico are tighter.
West Africa is appealing to traffickers because of its geographic location, but also because of the impunity and relatively low risk many traffickers face, Mazzitelli said.
He said the Sahel belt, the extremely poor countries which mark the dividing line between north Africa and the Sahara desert and the more tropical sub-Saharan Africa region, is of particular concern for hashish trafficking.
“Those states are huge, have vast uninhabited areas, and there is very little presence by authorities. That facilitates the open gap of corridors for illicit trafficking.”
Post-conflict African states are also appealing to traffickers because stable but weak, often corrupt environments are “perfect” for their activities, he said.
At the beginning of July, Senegalese authorities made two record seizures of cocaine within days of each other, after finding an empty sailing boat with 1.2 metric tons of cocaine in Nianing. The cocaine, worth $100 million on the street, was reportedly accompanied by plane tickets from Brazil to Guinea Bissau. Six people were arrested – three of them Senegalese.
The UNODC said increased trafficking is likely much of the reason for increased drug use in West Africa. Cocaine and crack cocaine are forming new markets, most notably in Cape Verde, and to a lesser extent in Senegal.
According to the UNODC report, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Cameroon all saw increased use. ...Where there is no industry or jobs , the money that the traffickers may be ready to pay for protection may become big income...
Heroin use is also on the rise in West Africa, raising other humanitarian concerns.
The increased use of the drug – which can be injected with shared syringes – will be a factor in the containment of HIV/AIDS, Mazzitelli added.
In post-conflict countries, trafficking can also lead to instability, he said, as the army, police and politicians compete for their share of the profit.
“Where there is no industry or jobs, the money that the traffickers may be ready to pay for protection may become a big income. Many may fight to put their hands on this money.”
Emerging narco-states
Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country with a sprawling archipelago of islands just south of Senegal on the West African coast, has gained a reputation as Africa’s first narco-state, a point of entry for illicit drugs coming from Latin America. The UNODC knows of more than 50 seizures of drugs in the past two years in that country alone. The biggest happened in September, when police found 674 kg of cocaine. A second bust of another 600 kg came in the spring.
In April, authorities in Burkina Faso intercepted 49 kg of cocaine on the border with Mali.
In May, Mauritanian authorities discovered 630 kg of cocaine in an abandoned aeroplane near the airport in Nouadhibou, 500 km north of the capital Nouakchott.
The Rest @ The Spero Newsletter
Impunity and low risk make West Africa a haven for narco-traffickers. Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country nearly surrounded by Senegal, may be the first narco-state. Opium and heroin passes through Africa on its way to the US.
Thursday, July 05, 2007By IRIN
While worldwide production, trafficking and consumption of illegal drugs remained stable last year, West Africa bucked the global trend and saw increased trafficking and use of cocaine and other drugs, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2007 World Drug Report.
“No country in West Africa is immune from the drug trafficking attack,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, the UNODC representative for West and Central Africa.
While in 2005 cocaine seizures in Africa accounted for only 0.3 percent of global seizures, the continent saw a six-fold increase in seizures of the drug between 2000 and 2005 – one of the largest increases in the world.
More than half of all African cocaine seizures are made in West Africa. Senegal, Gambia, Cape Verde and Nigeria all saw cocaine seizures increase by at least 10 percent in 2005, the report said.
“Rising levels of seizures in the region reflect the fact that this continent, notably countries along the Gulf of Guinea and off the coast of Cape Verde, are increasingly being used as a transhipment point for cocaine from South America to markets in western Europe,” the report said.
Increasing proportions of opiates, including heroin from Afghanistan, are also being trafficked to North America via Africa, the report said. Traffickers are even exploring Africa as a source for smuggling chemicals needed for methamphetamines into the United States, now that controls in Canada and Mexico are tighter.
West Africa is appealing to traffickers because of its geographic location, but also because of the impunity and relatively low risk many traffickers face, Mazzitelli said.
He said the Sahel belt, the extremely poor countries which mark the dividing line between north Africa and the Sahara desert and the more tropical sub-Saharan Africa region, is of particular concern for hashish trafficking.
“Those states are huge, have vast uninhabited areas, and there is very little presence by authorities. That facilitates the open gap of corridors for illicit trafficking.”
Post-conflict African states are also appealing to traffickers because stable but weak, often corrupt environments are “perfect” for their activities, he said.
At the beginning of July, Senegalese authorities made two record seizures of cocaine within days of each other, after finding an empty sailing boat with 1.2 metric tons of cocaine in Nianing. The cocaine, worth $100 million on the street, was reportedly accompanied by plane tickets from Brazil to Guinea Bissau. Six people were arrested – three of them Senegalese.
The UNODC said increased trafficking is likely much of the reason for increased drug use in West Africa. Cocaine and crack cocaine are forming new markets, most notably in Cape Verde, and to a lesser extent in Senegal.
According to the UNODC report, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Cameroon all saw increased use. ...Where there is no industry or jobs , the money that the traffickers may be ready to pay for protection may become big income...
Heroin use is also on the rise in West Africa, raising other humanitarian concerns.
The increased use of the drug – which can be injected with shared syringes – will be a factor in the containment of HIV/AIDS, Mazzitelli added.
In post-conflict countries, trafficking can also lead to instability, he said, as the army, police and politicians compete for their share of the profit.
“Where there is no industry or jobs, the money that the traffickers may be ready to pay for protection may become a big income. Many may fight to put their hands on this money.”
Emerging narco-states
Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country with a sprawling archipelago of islands just south of Senegal on the West African coast, has gained a reputation as Africa’s first narco-state, a point of entry for illicit drugs coming from Latin America. The UNODC knows of more than 50 seizures of drugs in the past two years in that country alone. The biggest happened in September, when police found 674 kg of cocaine. A second bust of another 600 kg came in the spring.
In April, authorities in Burkina Faso intercepted 49 kg of cocaine on the border with Mali.
In May, Mauritanian authorities discovered 630 kg of cocaine in an abandoned aeroplane near the airport in Nouadhibou, 500 km north of the capital Nouakchott.
The Rest @ The Spero Newsletter
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