samedi 10 mars 2012


    • ENGLISH translation with 
    • Barbara Worley



      Ibanakal Tourna


      Touareg connections

      West Africa is a powder keg in the making



      In NIGER:



      The west (Niamey-Dosso-Tera-Tillabery) is inhabited by Djerma and Songhay, and the east (Diffa-Bilma-Dirkou) by Kanuri and Toubou; the north (Tahoua-Agadez-Arlit) by Touaregs and Arabs -- all practicing a moderate Islam, sometimes even called "lukewarm" by extremists and preachers of the 25th hour.

      Central Niger (Maradi, Zinder-Illéla Dogon Doutchi) is the stronghold of ethnic Hausa, potentially strong practitioners of Salafist Islam that has become radicalized in the past 90 years, even giving birth to sects of which the best known is Boko-Haram which straddles Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, where the Haussa who are traders have been established for centuries.



      B-Three scenarios a possibility



      1-The connection between AQIM and Boko-Haram has been established since 2010, according to regional intelligence experts, and recently by a senior member of the Nigerian Air Force at the summit of ECOWAS [CEDEAO] and a Maghreb-Sahel conference in Nouakchott last month.

      For the natives of both countries [Niger and Nigeria] or the connoisseurs of the Niger-Nigeria social landscape, this is nothing new, knowing that the same ethnic group lives on both sides of the borders, and that ramifications long ignored by the appropriate authorities of Niger annoy the authorities of Nigeria who blame Niger for serving as a base for Boko Haram -- according to the same "deal" made between the Malians and AQIM. This “deal” involves overlooking the activities of terrorist sects which, in return, "vow" to save the country "friend."



      2-As with AQIM in neighboring Mali, it’s been ten years now that this "Deal" has lasted, and that Boko Haram has been structured, trained and strengthened by using the large urban centers of Maradi, Zinder, Sarnaoua, Tessaoua, Dan Barto, Mayayi, Dakoro, Guidan Roumji, Illéla, Keita, Dakoro where the sect has funded tens of thousands of mosques between 1996 and 2012. The phenomenon has gained such momentum that the Islamists have started, since the early 2000s, to "invest" and to preach more and more among the northern Tuareg majority and further west to the Djerma majority, in order to "restore" the "lost sheep of Niger to the right path."

      Preaching campaigns -- often very aggressive – have been undertaken in Niamey; it has ended up with hundreds of thousands of unemployed and disaffected people who are increasingly calling themselves "Satz," "Moualim," or "Malam," which means teacher or missionary of the Izala sect -- descendants of the Wahhabi and Salafi [extremist] sects that were imported from the [Persian] Gulf in the 1980s. All of this has been under the attentive eye of West African politicians who are happy to get rid of the idle youth for whom they can provide no alternatives to the "structural adjustments” advocated by the IMF [FMI] in the aftermath of the 1990s.

      The consequences are visible on the ground -- in 15 years the women of Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, and Guinea, like Mali, have ended up with new clothing, wearing the hijab, long scarves and more particularly the burqa in Niamey, Bamako, Conakry, Dakar, Nouakchott and areas previously spared – such as Agadez, Tahoua, Gao, Nouadhibou, Maïdiguru, Joss, Abuja, Lagos, Casamance, and even some cities in Burkina recently contaminated by the frenzy of Salafism that has spread at a rapid speed throughout the Community of West African states.



      3-The passivity with which the governments of these regions are observing this phenomenon and feigning ignorance of the facts, or their "tolerance" since the 1990s, is in complete contradiction to the mandate that Westerners have "begged" for in order to fight against salafist terrorists and their sponsors in AQIM -- of which the Algerian leaders only talk about “El Para” (the ‘parachutist,’ a former army soldier and a step-son of Algerian generals who have great influence in Algiers), or Laghouar (‘the blind one,’ who lost an eye when he was handling explosives and is also a former Algerian army soldier, nicknamed ‘Mr. Marlboro’ of the Sahel for the traffic of "cigarettes") – and they knew the area well, even before having "created" AQIM (Alqaïda in the Islamic Maghreb).

      It's not a secret to anybody that most presidential advisers nested in power sometimes have direct acquaintances known by everybody from Bamako to Ouagadougou to Niamey, or from President Issoufou to "his intermediary." In sum, these power elites are trapped by their own machinations and corrupt practices, because in doing so they are hostages of the AQIM of Boko-Haram by the different traffics that pass from Guinea Bissau and Conakry and go through Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey, where the "tithe" of passage [protection payment] is taken each time.



      C- Perspectives of the terrorist groups, according to the current schemas in West Africa.

      Mali is riddled with corruption linked to drug trafficking and various "commissions" that are taken from ransoms paid by the West to AQIM, to set hostages free. They [the commisions from ransoms] are redistributed by the intermediaries of Koulouba [name of Mali’s presidential palace; i.e. the President of Mali] and AQIM. This has caused serious tension between the intermediary countries: Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Algeria. This is a veritable "hive" of double agents, and each one is counting on its "Touareg" or "Moor" or "Toubou" to understand more clearly their neighbor’s “game" and "trafficking in their own part of the Sahara." Circumstantial alliances are formed and dissolved at the will of the game played by the Algerians or their groups that are holding or planning to kidnap Western hostages. The kidnapping of UN employees at Niamey, the death of two young French people kidnapped several meters from the Niger Presidential palace, are signs of an all-powerful and omni-present organization in the West African capitals, where luxury hotels, by the counsel of the president, are using spies or informers of AQIM or its subcontractors.

      Today, the terrorists are strengthened by the complicity of the power elites, but especially with the complicity of military staffs and para-military who do not hesitate to "escort" the goods [drugs] through Algeria and Libya – and they do not hesitate to sell the information about "which patrol is monitoring which entrance or which road."

      The [ransom] commissions are relayed when the Islamist-traffickers send a simple SMS [text-message] with the coordinates of the nest egg that can amount to 1 million Euros for escorting 40 loaded vehicles, according to a military source.

      These dangerous games help sow doubt among the citizens of these countries, but also among their African and European allies, who discover with amazement the degree of complicity and how far the worms have gone in the apple ...

      Westerners feel like they have been taken for a ride from the beginning by the Algerians and their AQIM minions, and they are discovering that the Algerians are refusing to acknowledge the raw reality -- that this "fabrication" was shared and desired by their supposedly protected former colonies of French Sudan ..!



      D-Conclusions



      It is urgent for Europeans and their services -- including the U.S. -- to focus on these questions, to sort out the weeds though ..

      The present scheme will inevitably lead to more connections between AQIM, Boko Haram, Shébabs, and other fundamentalists, including Christians such as "the army of the Lord" in Uganda, all of them using the ideology of religion to create the network, and get their hands on [drug] traffick for more money and launder it through the conquest or complicity of the authorities.

      For such poor countries to ally with the devil and give him their territories, so that he can conduct this illicit trade, while designating as scapegoats the authochthonous [indigenous] peoples, is a dangerous strategy and its effect will boomerang; it will be deeply destructive and dramatic, because it is their survival as a nation or nations.

      Mali is moving inexorably toward a division, because it has been deceived by its allies for the past 20 years. 

      Niger may end up splitting into two parts, by Boko-Haram and AQIM, and Niger’s president has been aware of this for 15 years. For the moment, Niger is fighting against AQIM, but Niger is slow to find initiatives for its youths, and for the 4,500 former combatants in the North.

      Burkina is not threatened, but the contamination will be effective if Burkina continues to believe the reports of its neighbors. Senegal has many sleeper cells and may eventually become like Mauritania.

      Mauritania is the only country to fight against terrorism, in opposition to Algiers and Bamako who have endorsed terrorism for a long time.



      The solution

      The Tuaregs are capable of being a bulwark against fundamentalism, but the animosity of Algeria, Niger, and Mali against this Tuareg minority insures that the Tuaregs will always be marginalized, and these states will always prefer an unnatural alliance with AQIM or Boko Haram than with the Tuareg people who are scattered across half of the Sahel and the Maghreb, who sooner or later could claim their freedom and their territories, even though the Tuaregs are a safe ally against extremism. A tacit agreement was reached between Algiers, Bamako, and Niamey to do everything to stifle and deform the noble struggle of the Tuareg for their rights.

      The key and the solution continues to remain the Touaregs.

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