Niger Rebels Say They Kidnapped U.N. Envoy
Moderator at work
I have merged two threads: Tuareg Insurgency in Northern Niger (2007-2009) and Niger Rebels Say They Kidnapped UN Envoy.
Some of the posts on NIger are found in a parallel thread on Mali:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=9254
Virtually everyone who has worked foreign affairs in defence issues in Ottawa knows Bob—he was/is an outstanding diplomat (including Canadian ambassador to the UNSC) and senior official at National Defence. I hope he's OK, and released quickly.
As Allan Thompson reports in his excellent profile, "The only consolation, one friend said last night, is that if anyone could talk himself out of a tight spot, it would be Fowler."
Niger Rebels Say They Kidnapped U.N. Envoy
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: December 16, 2008
Quote:
DAKAR, Senegal — A splinter faction of an insurgent group of nomadic tribesmen fighting in northern Niger claimed on Tuesday that it had abducted a Canadian diplomat serving as the United Nations envoy to the country.
The diplomat, Robert Fowler, was first reported missing on Monday, according to the United Nations, when the vehicle in which he was traveling was found abandoned on the outskirts of Niger’s capital, Niamey. Mr. Fowler was with his aide, Louis Guay, and their driver, the United Nations said. The car’s engine was still running, and there were no signs of a struggle, officials said.
Also: Confusion over missing envoy, Tororonto Star, 16 December 2008.
Robert Fowler no stranger to conflict zones, Toronto Star, 16 December 2008.
Unrest in the Sahara, al-Jazeera English (useful background).
Few clues surrounding diplomats’ disappearance
Few clues surrounding diplomats’ disappearance in Niger
Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Quote:
UNITED NATIONS -- Suspects holding veteran Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler and his aide were feared Tuesday to be scanning world reports about the pair to assess how "valuable" they might be.
One insider speculated the kidnappers -- depending on their identity and their goals -- may feel they have hit a "jackpot" given some of the publicly available accounts of Fowler's career.
Fowler is a former deputy minister in the Defence Department and was Canada's longest serving ambassador to the UN.
Canadian diplomats likely held by al-Qa'ida/AQIM
Video suggests diplomats in clutches of al-Qaeda
GEOFFREY YORK
From Monday's Globe and Mail
February 9, 2009 at 4:13 AM EST
Quote:
JOHANNESBURG — One of the kidnapped Canadians seems exhausted. The other is still clutching his briefcase. Standing behind them are armed men, posing for the camera - the trademark of the al-Qaeda terrorist group.
This is the latest description of a videotape that apparently shows the disturbing fate of Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, the two Canadian diplomats who were kidnapped in December in the West African nation of Niger.
...
The video adds further evidence to the theory of al-Qaeda involvement in the kidnapping. The leading theory among the investigators - including Canadian, American and United Nations security specialists - is that the two Canadian diplomats are being held by a cell of al-Qaeda's branch in North Africa, which is already suspected of masterminding a series of similar kidnappings of Western tourists in Mali, Algeria and Tunisia.
AQIM states it is holding Fowler, other hostages
Al-Qaida N. Africa claims 6 hostages
UPI, Published: Feb. 19, 2009 at 1:03 PM
Quote:
NIAMEY, Niger, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida's North Africa branch claims it is holding hostage a Canadian U.N. peace envoy, his aide and four tourists who were kidnapped in the Sahara.
A spokesman for al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian group that claims to have joined Osama bin Laden's terror network in 2006 but some say has simply adopted the name, threatened "to deal with the six kidnapped according to Islamic Shariah law," an audio recording played on pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera said.
al-Qa'ida operatives free to win release of Canadian
The secret Mali deal to release two Canadians
Four al-Qaeda members were freed from prison in exchange for diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay
Geoffrey York
Bamako, Mali — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 1:45PM EDT
Last updated on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 8:45PM EDT
Quote:
Four terrorists, including a bomb-maker, were released from prison in the African nation of Mali in exchange for the freedom this year of Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, high-ranking government sources in Mali have confirmed.
The released prisoners were members of al-Qaeda’s increasingly powerful branch in the Sahara region of northern and western Africa. Two of them had been arrested in the northern Mali desert town of Gao last year after an accidental explosion while they were manufacturing a bomb, the sources say.
It was widely suspected that there was much more to the release than was initially reported. As you'll see from the full report, the UK government was said to be quite unhappy with Canada's actions in this case (as they were also trying to secure the release of a hostage), as were the Algerians (the primary target of AQIM attacks).
Murky issue partly in the "daylight"
Rex,
Thanks for the update and having read the article cited I am sure several governments were disappointed. The decision by Mali was influenced by a desire to keep Canada "sweet". I wonder how they will explain this story, or better just ignore it?
I'd missed that one prisoner's release sought was Abu Qutada, who is in a UK jail after breaching his immigration bail. Were the kidnappers following a direction from AQ "core" or from a more local AQIM?
davidbfpo
Tuareg Insurgency in Northern Niger (2007-2009)
MICROCON, 21 Dec 09: Circumstantial Alliances and Loose Loyalties in Rebellion Making: The Case of Tuareg Insurgency in Northern Niger (2007-2009)
Quote:
The goal of this paper is to specify the nature of the
Mouvement des Nigériens pour la Justice (MNJ) as a non-state armed organisation and to make sense of its shaky existence since its inception, almost three years ago, with a particular focus on the period that made the MNJ a serious political and military opponent to the government. Our argument is that circumstantial alliances and percolation of grievances provoked by local micro-political dynamics and long-standing disenfranchisement of some sections of the Tuareg youth permitted the movement to take off as a credible rebel group. Ultimately, we want to verify if existing analytical tools made available by the theoretical literature on non-state armed groups are adequate to make sense of the MNJ’s organisational trajectory, particularly considering Jeremy Weinstein’s seminal book
“Inside Rebellion” (Weinstein, 2006). By putting too much emphasis on
“initial conditions”, Weinstein’s model, we argue, fails to properly acknowledge the micro-social dynamics that shape armed groups and their erratic trajectory, and we stress the need to investigate what armed organizations are sociologically made of rather than bluntly postulating their existence.
Spillover from Libya in the Niger desert
Cross refer for some background on today's post to the thread 'Gaddafi's sub-Saharan mercenaries':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=12565
The BBC News reports:
Quote:
Fighters of the ousted Libyan regime, ethnic Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants operate in the remote region. Some Tuaregs fought on the side of the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi during this year's conflict in Libya.,,and "guided by Malian Tuaregs".
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15654572
Niger's complicated hunger crisis
As attention is focussed on Mali along comes the BBC with this report:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17506421
For once governance may not be a problem:
Quote:
Niger has suddenly emerged, after a coup in 2010, as a welcome and unexpected exception in a rough neighbourhood. The new, democratic government was quick to detect the first signs that this year's food crisis would be particularly severe.
I am always wary of reading this:
Quote:
it is shocking to note the complete absence of men
Death, emigration to work and more can account for this. So can the presence of the media and having gone to fight - shades of Somalia too.
Niger has its own Tuareg's (as reported in previous Posts).
Tuaregs treated differently
A BBC report a month old which I missed, which covers several factors, but this is different:
Quote:
....former rebels have been integrated into government - the new prime minister appointed in April 2011 is a Tuareg, as are most of the local officials in Agadez.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17192212
Balancing domestic and security
A backgrounder 'Letter from Niamey' by Andrew Lebovich, who was in country in May 2013, which starts with:
Quote:
The shifting focus on Niger as a Western partner for counter-terrorism should not blind the European Union, France, and the United States to the West African nation's governance and reform deficits. Internal militant unrest, trafficking and other criminal enterprises, and weak, corrupt rule all threaten Niger’s tenuous stability.
He ends:
Quote:
In Mali, systemic domestic problems from government corruption to intercommunal rivalries among the military and the ranks of armed rebels fractured its political structure and grievously weakened the state more than terrorist attacks could. In Niger, it appears that similar warning signs are being ignored. For the United States, France, and other European powers, stabilizing Niger’s government and maintaining its security cooperation trumps everything else. Although the onus is on Niger’s government to reform itself, outside powers must make sure such steps are implemented as promised. Western governments set on hunting down Islamist militants cannot ignore impending threats to Niger’s stability that fall outside their narrow focus on counterterrorism.
Link:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/featur...iger?page=show
Four Special Forces personnel killed in Niger ambush
Initial stand-alone from the Niger thread for maximum visibility.
Quote:
(CNN)Three Green Berets were killed and two others were wounded in southwest Niger near the Mali-Niger border when a joint US-Nigerien patrol was attacked Wednesday, officials told CNN.
Two administration officials said the wounded US troops had been evacuated to the capital, Niamey, and would soon be moved to Germany. They were described by the officials as being in a "stable condition." The bodies of the three killed also were evacuated.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/04/politi...ger/index.html
The United States is not at war in Africa, but our African partners are.
More background on the Niger mission:http://taskandpurpose.com/niger-army...l-forces-war/?
Two passages of note IMHO:
Quote:
Instead, Obama justified the intervention based on the 1973 War Powers Resolution that requires frequent updates to Congress on efforts in Niger, his most recent of which, in December 2016, indicated the United States had 575 military personnel in the country and a second drone base — although U.S. forces there were technically not authorized to use lethal force.
A President Trump update:
Quote:
In a June 2017 letter to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, President Donald Trump mentioned there are 645 military personnel in Niger “to provide a wide variety of support to African partners conducting counterterrorism operations in the region.”
Silence as questions remain over deadly Niger ambush
A CNN report with some more details and more questions:
Quote:
Officials said the 12 man Green Beret-led team had just completed a meeting with local leaders and were walking back to their unarmored pick-up trucks when the unexpected ambush resulted in a firefight that lasted 30 minutes.
(Later) .....the unit in Niger "had actually done 29 patrols without contact over the previous six months," Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. told reporters.
Link:http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/13/po...nce/index.html
The film clip has a sentence akin to Niger has not given the USA permission to launch air strikes.
In the dust a HVT opportunity may explain their deaths
Jason Burke, in The Observer, is an accomplished journalist on terrorism; his article helps to provide the context and some pointers to why the four soldiers died in:
Quote:
That there are conflicting accounts of the clash is not surprising. It occurred in an environment where hard fact is rare, and rumours swirl as fiercely as the dust storms that sweep the scrub and desert.
Was this man the target?
Quote:
Al-Sahraoui’s background and allegiance is evidence of the extremely fractured nature of the conflict across the swath of northern Africa known as the Sahel. The 40-year-old is thought to have grown up in refugee camps in the south of Algeria, where he was committed to the nationalist cause of the Western Sahara. Little is known about how he became interested in Islamist extremism.....
Did the Niger-SOF team use their initiative?
Quote:
Any soldier knows that if you give guys on the ground more independence, then they will be that much more aggressive and will take more risks.
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...rces-islamists
I have changed the thread's title to four SOF dead, after the fourth soldier was found. RIP.
Death of U.S. Soldiers in Niger Sparks FBI Probe, Criticism
What's Up With The Headgear?
what's up with the picture of the 4 dead service persons? Two have Green Berets? One has no beret? One has a maroon beret (of the 82nd Airborne)but has an SF flash and SF emblem?
It was originally reported they were all Green Berets. So what's up?
Conflicting Accounts in Niger Ambush Are Subject of Pentagon Investigation
New Details Emerge About Attack That Killed U.S. Soldiers in Niger
Administration Sees No Change in Rules or Mission of U.S. Troops in Niger
It's the locals who will defeat the Niger (insert)
Andrew Lebovich, a regional SME who has actually been there, has a column in FP. It ends with:
Quote:
And while the threat to international interests in the region is real, it is these local communities whose lives are affected the most by these groups and by government responses — and also the local communities that will be most able to constrain them.
There is much we still do not know about what happened near Tongo Tongo on Oct. 4. But instead of looking at Niger as just another outpost of the global war on terror, our attention should be on the local and regional environments where these groups operate — and where the brunt of any increased military action will be felt the most.
Link:http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/27/...-are-in-niger/
Risk -v- Reward with remote operations
Hat tip to WoTR for their article, authored by a recent US SOF commander for the region and his key question:
Quote:
Where exactly does the United States need to project power abroad to prevent strategic surprise?
Later he provides a partial answer:
Quote:
America does not need special operators lurking in every shadowy corner of the globe but good strategy relies on contextual and geographic awareness.
Link:https://warontherocks.com/2017/12/pl...te-operations/
On my second reading this sounds similar to the Imperial era debate over how to safeguard India's northwest frontier, notably how 'forward' that defence should be.