Last year I mentioned that Tanzania's coastal zone, including Dar es Salaam, is strongly Muslim, and may become a regional extension of the Islamic Front, which shortly thereafter started to happen. During US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s mid-February visits to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, when first initial talks took place, Rumsfeld and the ambassadors were informed bluntly that al Qaeda’s West and North African networks are rolling in ill-gotten cash from crime and dope smuggling. They have millions of dollars to spare for bribes to buy the services of local military and intelligence agencies for derailing the American initiative. And thus they discussed how to pull North and West Africa together for a revival of the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terror Initiative.
The US secretary of state and ambassadors conducting the negotiations with local leaders quickly discovered that the entire counter-terror project would stand or fall by an extensive US economic aid program. Washington saw there was no way out of offering the African participants a kind of Marshall Plan. The cost of this program plus the outlay for setting up the inter-African counter-terror force could run to $2-3 billion over the next five years.
The Moroccans,
who found it hard to swallow the high ranks awarded Algerian officers,
were compensated by a secret pact concluded with Rumsfeld for Algerian
officers to be barred from the disputed territory of West Sahara and for
Moroccan officers to command field operations alongside their US and French
counterparts.
The Americans
agreed to deploy satellites for surveillance of the 3,000 sq.mile territory.
Incoming data will be passed on to Moroccan and Algerian intelligence units
working with the special force and its coordination center.
In reaction then as seen below, al Qaeda established a central hub of operations in Zouerate, a remote iron mining town in northern Mauritania, western Africa, to build an expanded terrorist network on similar lines to the structure Abu Musab al Zarqawi established in Syria and Iraq. Together with funds, arms and profitable connections with the smuggling gangs of Sahara, in the early days of 2006, Al Qaeda came along with an offer of backing for West Saharan independence for the Polisario in that area. And this prompte US and France to sell more arms to Algeria. US sources familiar with the aviation industry comment that if France was willing to give up a sale of 70 warplanes to Algeria, President Jacques Chirac must be really worried that al Qaeda’s African-based threat looms very close indeed.
As of March 10, some 1,600 Polisario activists have gathered in the Mauritanian mining town. If the present tempo is sustained, there should be more than 2,500 there by the end of the March. The Polisario are competent, seasoned guerrilla fighters accustomed to fighting with meager equipment in harsh desert conditions. Even so, they have trounced national armies like those of Spain, Algeria and Morocco in more than one battle. For 30 years they have been fighting for a hopeless cause with conditions in their refugee camps around Tindouf gone from bad to wretched.
P.S. As of March
10, some 1,600 Polisario activists have gathered in the Mauritanian mining
town. If the present tempo is sustained, there should be more than 2,500
there by the end of the March. The Polisario are competent, seasoned guerrilla
fighters accustomed to fighting with meager equipment in harsh desert conditions.
Even so, they have trounced national armies like those of Spain, Algeria
and Morocco in more than one battle. For 30 years they have been fighting
for a hopeless cause with conditions in their refugee camps around Tindouf
gone from bad to wretched.