Mali mainly, 2012 coup, drugs & more

[davidbfpo]

Caught on FP Blog in a commentary on Wikileaks:

Is it possible to honestly engage these publics on cooperation with U.S. counterterrorism efforts? When I was in Mali in 2007, I was told that President Amadou Toumani Toure had publicly acknowledged the presence of a handful of American forces hunting for al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and that the forces had even been featured, positively, on local television. This was possible because Mali was a democracy, because citizens genuinely feared Islamist extremism, and because the United States is much more popular in West Africa than in the Arab world. It will, of course, be much harder to make the case in places where the United States is feared and loathed.

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...olicy?page=0,1

[M-A Lagrange]

France says Niger Frenchmen 'killed in cold blood'
The two men, both 25, were abducted by four gunmen from a restaurant in the capital Niamey on Friday night.
Mr Fillon has suggested they were murdered as the attempted rescue took place the following day.
"The hostage-takers, seeing they were pursued, killed the hostages in cold blood, according to the first elements in my possession," he said.
But a senior Niger military official told Reuters news agency that the bodies were found away from the scene of the clash, implying that they were probably "executed" before the rescue mission.
Relatives have reportedly asked to see the bodies.
French anti-terror police have already arrived in Niger to investigate the deaths.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12150652

It is the second time that AQMI members choose to assassinate their hostages (at least French ones) rather than turning them.
Hopefully, the perpetrators have been severely damaged to quote a French military source.

[davidbfpo]

Not strictly on Mali, but this thread has covered stories on the drugs and terror links.

A short BBC report on US nationals accused in Liberia:

Seven people, including two Americans, have been charged with conspiring to aid the Afghan Taliban by selling the militant group weapons and moving drugs through West Africa, US officials say.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12460236

[davidbfpo]

An interesting analysis of AQIM and how it has made itself at home in the barren parts of the Sahel, in Niger and Mali:http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensec...utm_campaign=0

As AQIM activities appear to revolve around kidnapping the last sentence is telling:

The criminalisation of the Sahel’s political economy might cause more enduring damage than the Jihad.

[davidbfpo]

The author of the previous article is back:

Yvan Guichaoua, West Africa expert researching non-government armed groups, describes what kind of force Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is, what motivates its members and what are the conditions of its success. Smuggling, fast cars, and the economics of ransoms combine with ideology to create a threat.

Podcast - forty minutes - and yet to be listened to:http://www.opendemocracy.net/yvan-gu...4-20%2005%3a30

[davidbfpo]

An IISS Strategic Comment:

Could West Africa follow Mexico's path into drugs and gang-fuelled violence? The question sounds alarmist, but has concerned international law-enforcement agencies in recent years, as countries such as Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria have emerged as major transhipment points for the global trade in cocaine and heroin. With the business increasingly a destabilising force in West Africa, G8 ministers meeting in Deauville next week will discuss a new initiative to tackle it.

Link:http://www.iiss.org/publications/str...cocaine-coast/

An indication of the scale of the cocaine trade comes from:

Burkina Faso's customs agency destroys more than 100 tonnes of cocaine every year, but this is believed to represent only a small fraction of the drugs circulating the country.

Burkina Faso is the third least developed countries in the world:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso

[ganulv]

I’ve avoided participating in this forum after a number of my previous postings involved a high posturing to information exchange ratio but since this involves Burkina I’ll bite. I may well end up regretting it, but here goes.

How I know: My better half likely knows more about Burkina Faso than any American citizen who does not hold a security clearance. I spent five weeks with her there last summer, mostly in Bobo with a few days immediately after arrival and prior to departure in Ouaga. I also read a lot.

In my short time there I observed nothing that looked like evidence of any domestic drug trade. On the one hand, why should I given my horrible French and the briefness of my visit. On the other hand, I have some knowledge of how drug dealing works at the street level (if anyone is dying to know how I came about that knowledge PM me) and I didn’t see any signs of it. Mind you, this is almost all in Bobo. I did see some prostitutes during my few days in Ouaga so the crime situation there is almost certainly different.

But as the linked article points out, you have to go through Burkina if you want to get anything that came off a ship in Ghana to Mali without a (more) circuitous route so a traffic in cocaine is plausible. I was in on a couple of conversations with Burkinabé regarding the mechanics of stealing, shipping, and fencing stolen scooters. Can’t recall the particulars, and all it proves is that there are criminal networks in the region, not that they are moving drugs and/or affiliated to international terror networks. But it does go to plausibility.

I don’t know more than the average man in the street about al-Qaeda—actually, and rather distressingly given al-Qaeda’s prominence in American political discourse, I know far more than the average man in the street about al-Qaeda, I just know very little indeed—nor do I know much about how intelligence work is done, but I have to wonder if any supposed chatter about al-Qaeda in the Sahel isn’t from time to time put into circulation by private firms looking to hire out to the U.S. Government rather than from federal employees.* Burkina Faso does have a tiny military, but outside of Ouaga it is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else and a non-West African African would stick out, not to mention someone from anywhere else. Which is to say that even a black Yemeni can’t expect to blend in there.† Anecdotally, there does seem to be some surveillance for international terror types. I spent a few hours of one afternoon in successive army and gendarme custody after trespassing onto a military base (but really, when there are no fences or signs how are foreigners supposed to know? as the gendarme pointed out to the sergeant who hauled me to the gendarmerie, right before adding, “Like I say every time you bring another one down here.”). After the incident one of my Burkinabé friends said words to the effect of “You never had anything to worry about. Now, if you had been an Arab…” While reading up prior to my visit I found a couple of blurbs about an international military training in Ouaga a couple of months prior to my arrival which I would assume implies a continued U.S. engagement with Burkinabé security forces at some level.

All of the above should be viewed in light of the face that I was in Burkina Faso prior to the winter and spring military and political changes in fortune in Côte d'Ivoire and the recent unrest in Burkina itself.

*I’m not implying any nasty corporate intrigue. But someone looking to pick up a federal contract might from time to time give a talk or interview suggesting this or that with the knowledge that it is going to be picked up in some form by a journalist on a deadline.

†I am not saying there (are or) are not real concerns regarding an al-Qaeda presence in Burkina Faso. I mean, if I were in a position to know that why would I be discussing it on this forum? I’m just saying that any suggestions regarding terror networks in Burkina needs to be viewed in light of certain constraints.