The Banana Theory: Are Tuareg rebels in Mali (and Niger) in cahoots with Al-Qaida?

A recurring theme has sprung up regarding the up tick in violence in northern Mali: Are Taureg rebels connected to some broader terror movement? More worrying, are they somehow aligned with Al-Qaida? It’s a theory that has been debunked many times before, but continues to crop up every few months.

In a recent report from VOA, London based human rights activist Ibrahima Kane, says that with instability in the northern lands growing, you cannot miss the parallels.

"There are many rebel groups in that part of Africa. Some of them are supposed to have very strong links with al-Qaida, and there is lots of arms trafficking, many traffics in that part of the region," said Kane.

It’s true that Al-Qaida's north African wing, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, is believed to be holding two Austrian tourists they nabbed in Tunisia at a hideout in northern Mali (or Niger or Algeria).

On the other hand, Anthropologist Jeremy Keenan has long played down the idea of any fruitful relationship between Malian rebels and al-Qaida. He’s brought on to VOA to do the same:

"This is connected geographically but that is totally separate from this rebellion. In other words, the Tuareg rebellion and the Austrian hostage situation are not connected in any way. They just happen to be in the same area, but that is coincidental," he said.

He says links between different armed groups in the region do exist, such as between the Malian and Niger rebels, but they are difficult to define.

"The linkages are very, very complicated.... They involve a lot of history and quite detailed micro-politics and micro-sociology, and so forth but one thing I think I will probably say is the situation in Niger up until these last couple of weeks by and large has been worse than in Mali," he said.

Keenan says he believes the situation in both Mali and Niger has been aggravated by raids by government militaries on civilian areas. The two militaries have been receiving U.S. aid and training to combat terrorism and trafficking in the area.

(He gets so much time airtime compared to Ibrahima Kane that one get’s the idea the “London based human rights activist” was solely contacted for his role to start an empty debate, only to have it debunked. Nonetheless, he was kind enough to oblige.)

Here’s a take from author Sharon Chada (admittedly from September, the last time the Tuareg = Al-Quaida connection was made):

[I]t is the Tuareg, after all, who host the Festival of the Desert every year. And I have to say, I could never quite square reports about them being allied with Al Qaeda with all the music they make, their lifestyle (the men veil, the women don't), not to mention their fierce independence (they've run the desert caravans across the Sahara since Biblical times). I could never quite imagine Bin Laden and company suddenly being enthroned in Tuareg lands…

Anyway, the Iraqi Sunnis get it, and it appears the Tuareg do too: that this, that these Al Qaeda people are never happy just being offered refuge, or someplace to live and educate their kids in safety and prosperity, what they also want is to rule, and in their particularly obnoxious way.

Isn't there something else at work here? It’s the responsibility of any government to secure its borders – however hazy they may be – and insure the respect of its territorial sovereignty. Tuareg rebels may not be terrorists. Fine. But what is their knowledge or connection with the smugglers moving drugs, weapons and people (and cigarettes!) through the desert? In Niger, at least from what they say, a lot. (“…not even a mouse could get through the desert without their knowledge…”) A Tuareg rebel leader from Niger told another VOA reporter that for information regarding smugglers, governments have to come clean with Tuaregs and other nomads and bring them on board as partners.

So far, this isn’t happening. Perhaps that’s the debate we should be having.

Will the real Europe to Africa road rally please stand up?

It’s hard to keep a good road rally down. The Budapest-Bamako, Trans-Saharan Rally will begin as planned this weekend. The story is not the same for the Paris-Dakar rally, which was cancelled due to security concerns.

From PR Web:

The capital of Hungary will host the starting ceremonies of the third annual Budapest-Bamako, Great African Run on January 12, 2008. The 148 cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses will have to travel 8896 kilometers from Budapest before they reach the capital of Mali.

This year's event has a tense start due to security concerns in Mauritania. The 2008 Budapest-Bamako will spend 5 days in the troubled North African country. "The Bamako will go ahead as planned, however we have asked all participants to carefully evaluate the security situation before Saturday," said Andrew G. Szabo director of the event.

The event is a zero assistance, extreme endurance rally where teams have to rely on their own resources in case of emergencies. The event was originally created for those who have always dreamt of joining the Dakar, but never had the proper funding. The Budapest-Bamako offers all the thrills and spills of a true African driving adventure.

Speaking of those security concerns, a few weeks after four French tourists were shot in Mauritania, and a subsequent warning from Western governments to avoid the country, tourism is back on the front burner (so to speak).

From Afriquenligne:

Despite the threat of terrorism in Mauritania and the travel warning issued to their citizens by some countries, including France, tourists have continued to flock to the country, official sources told PANA here Monday.

"A group comprising 111 tourists arrived in the Adrar region in the country on Monday and another one was expected (later in the day),'' Crafts and Tourism Minister Ba Madine told the Parliament.

Finally, nine people appeared in a Mauritanian court in connection with the killing of four French tourists, the BBC reports.

Prosecutors in Mauritania alleged the suspects are linked to a group allied to al-Qaeda.

The tourists - apparently members of the same family - were shot by gunmen as they stopped for a roadside picnic.

A fifth person, said to be the father of the family, survived and has been transferred to Senegal for treatment.
…
The victims were initially reported to have been robbed, though the interior ministry now says they were not, the Associated Press news agency reports.

In their statement, prosecutors in Nouakchott said murder suspects were thought to belong to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - a group formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.

Terrorism blamed on cancellation of Paris-Dakar rally

It wasn’t the death of four French tourists in Mauritania that was responsible for the Amaury Sport Organization’s decision to cancel this year’s Paris-Dakar rally.

Rather, French intelligence sources told Reuters, the three-week off-road rally that draws nearly 500 competitors, was called off because the (presumably) Algerian-based Al Qaeda in the Maghreb made a specific threat of violence against it.

More from Reuters:

"Al Qaeda in the Maghreb has been instructed by Osama bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahri to step up attacks in the region," said Mohamed Darif, an expert in radical Islamist groups operating in the Maghreb.

Al Qaeda's global second-in-command called in September for Muslims to "cleanse" the Maghreb "of the children of France and Spain", and the attacks in Mauritania fuelled fears the group may try to extend the sphere of its operations southwards.

"We are the weak link in the chain compared to other Maghreb countries who have put lots of resources into fighting al Qaeda," said a Mauritanian sociologist who declined to be named.

Global War on Terror (Africa version II)

The term the Pentagon reserves for the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership is “bilateral operations.” Compared to the Pan Sahel Initiative, the price tag is considerably larger (from $6.5 million to $500 million), the participating country list larger and the number of African troops trained now number in the tens of thousands. Most importantly, the footprint has grown, as the Washington Post reported, the Pentagon is assigning more military officers to U.S. embassies around West Africa strengthening U.S. intelligence gathering.

But will the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership be any different? The Pentagon argues that the new Partnership is keeping in track with the times. Terrorism and the risk triggered by terror groups are increasing throughout the world – especially in the ungoverned swathes of West Africa.

An auspicious beginning

Terrorism is not new to West Africa. Limited terror campaigns have taken place in Nigeria (especially between Christians and Muslims), Senegal with the Cassamance fight for independence, the Taureg insurgency in Mali and Niger and the Polasario secessionist struggle in Western Sahara. The unifying similarity these groups share is a tie to a single country.

As Peter Chalk points out, the most prolific terrorist group in West Africa is the Algeria-born Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known in French as the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, or GSPC. It’s one of the few groups in West Africa to have ties outside the continent and the ability to move across borders, especially in the stateless region of the Sahara between Algeria, Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

The GSPC organized sometime around 1996-1998 as an offshoot of the GIA, a terrorist organization that declared war on the government of Algeria after it voided the 1991 election victory of the Islamic Salvation Front, the country’s largest opposition party. Throughout much of the 1990s, the GIA’s bloody war targeted civilians, secular schools, journalists, government agents and the military, killing (some claim) as many as 150,000 people.

The fighting reached its peak in 1996 and a schism in the GIA appeared from opposition towards the targeting of civilians. Hassan Hattab left to form the GSPC. (Not that the GSPC maintains especially friendly relations with the general public: They have been known to shake down people at their informal roadblocks and storm into towns, robbing and stealing money and equipment for their use.)

What put the GSPC on the map was the kidnapping of 32 European tourists between February 22 and March 23, 2003 in the southern part of the Algerian Sahara. A majority of the tourists were German, and the German government attempted to negotiate with the group to secure their release. However, the Algerian government forbade any negotiations with terrorist organizations, so the GSPC simply moved their prisoners across the border into Mali. With the help of an intermediary, the German government reportedly paid the group an estimated €5 million for the release of the hostages, who were eventually freed in Gao, Mali in May and August 2003. (One German women died in the desert.)

Side note: One reason Mali was d’accord with the negotiations and the eventual transfer of money, a U.S. regional “political” officer told me, was the Malians wanted a cut of the take, say 5 or 10 percent. He also went on to complain that Germany’s decision to pay the GSPC left everyone in the region in a bad position, not only because they gave a terrorist organization such a large sum of money, but the victims were traveling in the desert without a local guide, which is generally a euphemism for “artifact stealers.” (No local guide would allow tourists to take any artifacts out from the desert.) Mali’s cut of the ransom couldn’t be verified, but the looting is backed up by a report from the International Crisis Group.

Another note: According to a story in Le Monde Diplomatique, the GSPC has actually been infiltrated by Algerian security forces, faking the kidnapping to fabricate an al-Qaeda presence in the country to push it closer to the U.S. government so it can buy weapons and other resources to fight terror.

With the money, which the German government never confirmed nor denied paying, the GSPC reportedly bought weapons, ammunition and other equipment. For the U.S., the timing was impeccable. At the same time the Pentagon was boasting a new front to the war on terror, the kidnappings and ransom squelched any skepticism.

With U.S. help, the GSPC was pursued across the desert, forced out of Mali and caught by Algerian forces. Another group turned up in Chad, where Chadian and Nigerien forces attacked and defeated them, killing upwards of 40 terrorists.

In a little time, the new Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership overshadowed the work of the Special Forces in Djibouti.

Today’s terror threat

Fast forward three years and terrorist activity remains a threat:

• The scope of the GSPC extends into Europe and declares France its prime European target;
• The GSPC facilitates the movement of Algerians to join the insurgency in Iraq;
• June 2005: 150 GSPC members raided a Mauritanian military base in Lemgheitty, burning military vehicles and killing 15 soldiers;
• July 2005: The group shot down an Algerian military helicopter on reconnaissance over Mali;
• September 2005: the group ambushed a police patrol, killing eight people;
• December 2006: GSPC attacked employees of Brown Root & Condor, a joint venture of KRB, a Halliburton subsidiary, and Algeria’s Condor Energy, killing one Algerian and injuring several Americans;
• April 2007: GSPC changes its name to “The Organization of Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb,” going by the acronym AQIM;
• April 2007: Two car bombs go off in Algiers, killing 23 people; AQIM claims responsibility;
• Oil from the Gulf of Guinea and other West African states now makes up 15 percent of the U.S. oil supply, an amount which could grow to 25 percent in the next decade.

The GSPC’s alliance with Al Qaeda was seen by some observers as proof of its weakness, not of its strength. “Forced to retreat from urban areas, having lost support from the Algerian people and struggling to fill its ranks with new recruits, the GSPC faced an uncertain future, and so the group took a series of steps to align its activities with Al Qaeda’s framework for a global jihad,” writes Lianne Kennedy Boudali.

In the short term, AQIM may gain new financial support and have an easier time recruiting. However: “AQIM is not a serious strategic threat to U.S. interests in North Africa, noris it on the brink of creating a new African safe-haven for Osama bin Laden. AQIM does not currently pose a threat to the survival of the Algerian government, or to any of its neighbors.”

On the ground

In a September 2007 report in Vanity Fair, a writer and photographer were embedded with U.S. Special Forces near Timbuktu, Mali. It provided them with the perfect chance to witness the $500 million, five-year Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership on the ground.

In the eyes of the U.S. military, the reason for the training and coordination is clear:

"In Africa—in Mali, in this case—the biggest thing is to prepare them to battle their terrorist elements on their own so that we don't have to worry about sending in American troops," a captain tells writer Austin Merrill.

Ditto for the Malian army: “The threat of these terrorists is very real," a Malian commander says. "They've taken refuge in our country and have the necessary means to wage war. Every time we try to confront them, they disappear and resurface elsewhere—in Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Chad. Then when we come back home to our base, they return to northern Mali. We absolutely have to work together on this. One single country can do nothing alone. We are soldiers of this land. We know how to fight. This is my Sahara. But to get the enemy I need more money."

But the International Crisis Group isn’t so certain about the risk of terrorism in the region: “[T]he Sahel is not a hotbed of terrorist activity,” a report from 2005 states.

But that does not mean the group isn't worried about Islamist activity in the region. Muslim populations here, and elsewhere around the world, express opposition to U.S. policy in the mid-east. Also, the extreme poverty in the region (Mali and Niger are the two poorest countries in the world) coupled with the constant risk of food insecurity and weak governments with not may bring about the right conditions for terrorists to develop local support systems and recruit new members.

It leads one academic to tell IRIN: "[T]he biggest danger in this region is not Al Qaeda. It is famine."

The Vanity Fair story provides a perfect example of the intersection of U.S. policy, poverty and radical Islam:

One night in January 2006, two four-wheel-drive Toyotas arrived at Alwoidu's mosque carrying seven men, most of them in their 40s. Two were Palestinians, two were Algerians, and three were Pakistanis. They'd begun their drive in Morocco, headed south along the Atlantic coast to Mauritania, and then turned east into the thick of the Sahara.

"They were recruiters, and came looking for people to integrate into their radical way," says Baba Darfa, a member of the Wahhabi mosque. "When they arrived, they gathered us together and told us that their mission was to fight against the enemies of Islam—the Americans and the British. They told us, 'Your brothers are dying in Iraq. Americans are killing them because they are Muslim.'"

The men spent 11 days in Timbuktu, moving from mosque to mosque, spreading their message. They gave Darfa more than $3,000 to change at a local bank, an amount equal to more than six years of income for the average Malian citizen. "And that was only to get around town and buy food," Darfa says. "They were very rich—they handed money out to people after prayers. They were careful not to use the words 'al-Qaeda,' but they encouraged everyone to join the jihad against the United States."

Then one morning they were gone. "They disappeared in the middle of the night," says Darfa. "It wasn't until three days later that we realized they had taken two boys with them. They were the kids who had run errands for them the whole time they were here."

The boys were 11 and 14 years old, students in the Koranic school at the Wahhabi mosque. Their parents said nothing to authorities for fear of being labeled as extremists themselves, but one of the fathers believes the boys were sent to Pakistan under fake passports arranged by the recruiters, Darfa says.

One of the U.S. military’s objectives is to instill more government control throughout the Sahara region, not just protecting people from terrorists but also to corral the ubiquitous smuggling networks that could help to fund terrorists. Separating these groups from their ill-gotten gains is a wise tactical choice, but still risky business in because the lack of border posts between these countries means that any commercial activities – from bringing diesel fuel from Mauritania to transporting cigarettes from Burkina Faso – is technically smuggling.

However, it’s how the local population – especially the nomadic Tauregs who lost much of their cattle in the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s – now are forced to make a living. Tighten up the borders, and the U.S. military may make enemies out of the Tauregs, who already feel ostracized by the region’s governments.

For the military, this is where the development arm of the Trans-Sahel Partnership comes in handy. In fact, in the Vanity Fair story, reporter Merrill spent half his time watching the U.S. military train Malian soldiers and the second half following the U.S. military performing health care in a village south of Timbuktu. Their few hours of work is not going to add much capacity to the Malian health care system, but the soldiers feel it creates much needed goodwill between them and the local population.

Not everyone is so sanguine. In the Vanity Fair story:

"Getting it wrong is much more dangerous than doing nothing," says Mike McGovern, an anthropologist at Yale who has traveled extensively in the Sahara region to study the threat of terrorism there. "Trying to do something good is not even close to being good enough. This is not about anyone's intentions. It has to do with strategic political action, symbolism, and perception. This is where the very best intentions can be totally misconstrued, and the end product can be just as bad as if the beginning intentions were nefarious."

Camp Monroe, Liberia?

However, it’s something the U.S. military will be doing more in the future. In the early part of this year, the Pentagon announced the creation of AFRICOM, a command center solely responsible for military activities on the continent. Previously, Africa had been shared by three different commands – Europe, the Pacific and the Middle East. "Rather than three different commanders who have Africa as a third or fourth priority, there will be one commander that has it as a top priority," US Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Ryan Henry told Agence France Press.

What the military would like to do is eventually build a second base – like Camp Lemonier in Djibouti. All they need to do is find a lucky suitor.

Global War on Terror (Africa version) I

Three, maybe four, misconceptions about terror in Africa

Myth one: Africa is chock full of terror groups. Answer: Not really. “Prior to 2001, there were no designated ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ in Sub-Saharan Africa,” writes Jessica R. Piombo in Strategic Insights. “There have been a number of organizations that area governments label as ‘terrorists,’ yet the United States has been hesitant to recognize the groups as such, for the understandable reason that in many cases, area governments are labeling opposition groups terrorists in order to gain support to combat their opponents.”

Myth two: Terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa is made up of radical Islamic groups. Answer: It depends on how you define “made up.” Of the four sub-Saharan African members of the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list provided by the Dept. of State, two groups are perceived to be Islamist: Al Ittihad Al Islamiyya, AIAI, of Somalia and the Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat working in the Sahara Desert. They have recently re-branded themselves and now go by the term: Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. (More on this group later.) The other two include the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda and former military personnel in Rwanda. Note: Al-Qaeda also operates in Africa, but is not from Africa. Also, a whole host of listed groups are active in Egypt and Algeria and a few operate in Libya, but whose countries are not part of sub-Saharan Africa. (Which makes this somewhat of a trick question.)

Myth three: Terrorists mostly operate in failed or failing states with unstable governments with little ability to exert control outside the capital city. Answer: False. Organizations targeting Westerners and their interests often work in states with a modicum of law and order, like Kenya or South Africa (places with Westerners and Western interests). “Terrorist groups tend to use the ‘failed’ states like Somalia more as staging grounds and transit points, rather than places where the groups build long-term organizational and financial networks,” Piombo writes.

Not really a myth, but an interesting point: In Africa, terrorist activity and terror networks generally follow specific geographic boundaries, boundaries corresponding with the historical borders of Islam. In the south and central part of the continent, terror groups are basically unheard of because there are few Muslims and Islamic groups. This is a historical fact. However, in other regions where Islam has long been established, a great number of Islamic groups proliferate, whether they are terrorist or humanitarian. With an increased number of groups to choose from, the odds will increase that a few of them will posses terrorist leanings. “In East and West Africa, Islam as a political ideology has capitalized on ethno-national struggles to create a potent force,” Piombo writes.

For example, in West Africa:

Radical groups have also been able to capitalize on local struggles for power and influence, as with the recruitment of militants from the Tuareg group in Mauritania and Mali. Nigeria has seen major increases in sectarian strife and militarized Islam in recent years, further contributing to rising concern in the Western and Sahelian regions. Attacks against Western oil companies in the Niger Delta, however, come not from Islamist organizations, but from ethnic-nationalist movements seeking a more equitable share of oil revenues, to compensate for the environmental degradation wreaked by oil exploitation.

Sept. 11: Dateline Africa

Africa’s Sept. 11 took place on August 7, 1998 with the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, killing a handful of Americans and hundreds of locals. Local al Qaeda groups carried out the attacks after having trained in Somalia and Sudan, where Osama bin Laden lived until 1991 before debarking to Afghanistan. The attacks were part of Al Qaeda’s ratcheting up of violence against United States interests in foreign countries. The embassy bombings preceded the attack of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen by two years.

While the Cole did not exact immediate retaliation (it was an election year), the bombings in Africa did. Almost two weeks after the bombings (and three days after he appeared before a grand jury in the Monica Lewinsky case), President Bill Clinton sent 75 cruise missiles into Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden had been hiding out in plain site and also bombed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factor in Khartoum, Sudan, which intelligence stated was helping Osama bin laden make chemical weapons. That piece of intelligence later turned out to be questionable.

Since the U.S. embassy bombings, Africa and African terrorists have been involved in other terrorist plots:

• In April 2002, Nizar Nawar, a 24-year-old Tunisian, blew himself up with a truckload of natural gas in front of the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba, an island off the coast of Tunisia, killing 14 Germans, six Tunisians and a Frenchman.
• In 2002, suicide bombers killed 11 people at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombassa and simultaneously a group attempted to shoot down an Israeli airliner.
• The March 11, 2004 train bombings in Madrid were allegedly carried out by people associated with a Moroccan Islamist group.
• Going forward, the BBC says that Somalia, a country without a functioning government for more than a decade and a half (and a sizeable population of unemployed young men with a penchant for guns), will continue to be a haven to terrorists hatching new plots.

The U.S. response

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. military set up the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa in the country of Djibouti. The idea behind the new command center was three fold: Monitor and confront terrorists in the area (Djibouti strategically borders Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia, and looks across the Red Sea from Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.); provide military-to-military training for countries in the region; offer development assistance to the local population by building schools, hospitals and wells. Members of the group also provide medical and veterinary visits.

Placing the U.S. military’s most forward base in East Africa made strategic sense: Terrorists had already chosen targets in East Africa; the increasing number of nearby failed states or governments mired with legitimacy issues; the sheer size of the lawless areas where terror groups could easily set up training camps.

But the U.S. military’s approach would not solely focus on search and destroy. “You catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar,” as my mother used to say. Even though she’s never been to Ethiopia, her premise appears to work there. To succeed on the ground, terrorists need at least tacit approval from locals. Of course, this support could be bought or it could come in the form of performing a few nice deeds. If the terror groups could do it, why can’t the U.S. government. So in the heady days of the Global War on Terror and “power for power’s sake,” the U.S. military started engaging in a little soft power, building alliances with the locals through development projects and humanitarian efforts. At least one organization argues that by showing locals the softer side of the U.S. military goes a long way in building peoples’ distrust of terror groups, reducing the appeal of extremism and curbing anti-Americanism.

Even with the strategic importance of East Africa, the State Dept. found that it could no longer ignore West Africa, a region generally less prosperous and strategically important than its eastern neighbors, but also witnessing a greater amount of chaos due to war and civil unrest. This military’s new softer method seemed to be working in Djibouti, so the Pentagon decided to duplicate its idea on the other side of the continent.

In 2002, the Office of Counterterrorism announced the Pan Sahel Initiative, involving four West African countries (Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania) where the United States military provided training and equipment for quick reaction forces to help better police the region’s immense borders (namely, the Sahara desert) where terror groups may take root among the innumerable long-standing smuggling rings.

On April 1, 2004 Karl Wycoff, Associate Coordinator, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism updated the House subcommittee on Africa regarding the realities of terror in Africa:

In parts of West Africa, we have seen dramatic rises in the level of anti-American and extremist Islamic rhetoric, most notably in northern Nigeria. We are working to support effective and inclusive governance in these countries to dilute the appeal of extremists…The U.S. is cooperating with other countries to address the enormous security, development, and other needs of Liberia and to support efforts in neighboring countries to ensure that this region does not become a haven for terrorist and criminal activity.

As a military program, the Pan Sahel Initiative was to be something different for the Pentagon. They were going to keep the soft power stuff, but unlike the large base in Djibouti, they were going to do away with the a huge infrastructure to provide training and development assistance. Craig Smith in the New York Times:

Having learned from missteps in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American officers are pursuing this battle with a new approach. Instead of planning on a heavy American military presence, they are 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.

'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,'' said the European Command's chief of counter-terrorism, Lt. Col. Powl Smith, adding that by assisting local governments to do the fighting themselves, ''we don't become a lightning rod for popular anger that radicals can capitalize on.''

The idea seemed so simple it had to work. Again, Craig Smith:

United States military officials say part of the problem is that Islamists in the region are in touch with one another while the governments of the countries they are in, are not. Mali and Mauritania, for example, do not have the means to talk to each other from their garrisons, which in some cases are only a couple hundred miles apart. ''If they see something, they don't have an easy way to pass it on to their counterparts,'' the official said.

The trainings seemed to be working. Armies in Niger and Chad were happy to practice shooting with real bullets. The Malians liked the trucks. Before long, however, a few Americans were demanding the Pentagon step up participation even more in Africa. Here is Ed Royce, R-Calif., former chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations:

Africa's growing strategic importance is clear. Within a decade, 25 percent of US oil imports will come from Africa, mainly from Nigeria, Algeria, and Angola. Several African countries are potential terrorist havens or targets, as demonstrated by the 1998 Al Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Radical Islam is spreading in Africa, in part due to the efforts of Sudan, a state sponsor of terrorism. Somalia is also under the sway of Islamist extremists.

The US military has intervened in Africa more than 20 times in the past 15 years, including in Liberia in 2003, when it helped end a brutal factional war. Today the US is providing airlift and other aid to African peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region. The need for such operations will continue.

Meanwhile, China is rapidly laying down stakes in Africa. China's commerce is mushrooming throughout Africa, and it is seeking to secure Africa's natural resources and markets. China is second only to the US as an importer of African oil. African governments generally favor China for its dogmatic opposition to external "interference" in their affairs. Closer US-Africa military cooperation, spurred by an Africa Command, would help offset this bias. Why concede Africa to Beijing, which undermines democracy, human rights, and transparency?

The arguments for more U.S. involvement in the continent didn’t subside. Not only was China moving into Africa, but so was Iran: “As Iran faces growing isolation in Europe and the West, Africa offers a ready market not only for the export of ideology and religion, but of weapons and other Iranian goods. Among its primary clients are Nigeria, Senegal, Zimbabwe and South Africa.”

There’s other issues, of course. Let’s return to Karl Wycoff at the Capitol: “Throughout the continent, the prevalence of poverty, famine, and disorder offers terrorists an opportunity to insert themselves into a region, to develop support systems, and to troll for new members for their groups.”

By 2006, the Department of State said the picture of terrorism in Africa looked something like this:

• “A small number of al-Qaida (AQ) operatives in East Africa, particularly Somalia, continued to pose the most serious threat to American and allied interests in the region. Although elements were severely disrupted at year's end, AQ continued to operate in Somalia and elsewhere in East Africa.”
• “There were few significant international terrorist incidents in Africa, but civil conflict and ethnic violence continued in a number of countries. AQ-affiliated terrorist groups were present and operated in Northwest Africa.”
• “The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) merged with al-Qaida in September and changed its name to Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). AQIM/GSPC continued to operate in the Sahel region, crossing difficult-to-patrol borders between Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, and Chad to recruit extremists within the region for training and terrorist operations in the Trans-Sahara and, possibly, for operations outside the region. Its new alliance with al-Qaida potentially has given it access to more resources and training.”
• “Hizballah continued to engage in fundraising activities in Africa, particularly in West Africa, but did not engage in any terrorist attacks within the region.”

But by this time, the $6.25 million Pan Sahel Initiative had outlasted its significance and its “Band-Aid approach” was finally shelved. In 2005, the government rolled out the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, a $500 million, five-year plan incorporating work done in the Sahel (in Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger, as well as Nigeria and Senegal) and the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia).

The difference with the Pan Sahel Initiative and the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership isn’t just a budget on steroids and incorporating a few new countries: The Pentagon says it’s a whole a new way to fight terror.