It is a report that should get Nigeria’s military and political
authorities worried, especially as Nigeria gets ready to send a force of
3,300 soldiers to join the West African intervention force to the
balkanised state of Mali.
Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa is operating terrorist training
camps in northern Mali and providing arms, explosives and financing to a
militant Islamist organization in northern Nigeria,
the top American
military commander in Africa said on Monday.
The affiliate, Al Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb, has used the momentum gained since seizing
control of the northern part of the impoverished country in March to
increase recruiting across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and
Europe, said the commander, Gen. Carter F. Ham.
General Ham’s
assessment is the most detailed and sobering American military analysis
so far of the consequences of the Qaeda affiliate and associated
extremist groups seizing the northern part of Mali to use as a haven.
“As
each day goes by, Al Qaeda and other organizations are strengthening
their hold in northern Mali,” General Ham said in remarks at the
Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.
“There is a compelling need for the international community, led by
Africans, to address that.”
In addition to the risks inside Mali,
General Ham also said that members of Boko Haram, an extremist group in
northern Nigeria, had traveled to training camps in northern Mali and
have most likely received financing and explosives from the Qaeda
franchise. “We have seen clear indications of collaboration among the
organizations,” he said.
Radical Islamists have turned northern
Mali into an enclave for Qaeda militants and for the imposition of harsh
Shariah law, which has been used to terrorize the population,
particularly women, with amputations, stonings, whippings and other
abuses.
The Qaeda North Africa affiliate is now considered one of
the best armed and wealthiest of the Qaeda franchises across the world,
largely because of millions of dollars gained in kidnapping ransoms,
drug proceeds and illicit trafficking in fuel and tobacco, General Ham
said.
Last week, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary
general, recommended that the Security Council endorse a plan by the
African Union and the Economic Community of West African States to
deploy a security force at the request of the Mali government to reclaim
the north from the extremists. But the action did not offer financial
support from the United Nations.
“Northern Mali is at risk of
becoming a permanent haven for terrorists and organized criminal
networks where people are subjected to a very strict interpretation of Shariah law and human rights are abused on a systematic basis,” Mr. Ban said in his report.
While
a detailed military plan has yet to be drafted, the idea has been for
about 3,300 troops from Nigeria and other African countries to help
Mali’s military mount a campaign against the militants. France, the
United States and other countries would help with training, intelligence
and logistics.
General Ham acknowledged that Qaeda fighters would
probably solidify their gains in northern Mali — an area the size of
France — in the months that it would take to train and equip an African
force to help Mali’s fractured military oust the militants from the
north.
General Ham said that pursuing a diplomatic solution should
be the first avenue for resolving the conflict. Malian diplomats have
recently met with some ethnic Tuareg rebels in neighboring Burkina Faso
in an attempt to resolve some long-standing complaints by the Tuareg
people and isolate the Arab foreign fighters from the Qaeda franchise.
General
Ham, a former Iraq war commander who oversaw the initial American-led
air campaign against Libya last year, identified hurdles that an African
force would face in evicting the extremists. Most of the African
militaries likely to participate in such an operation have largely been
trained and equipped for peacekeeping missions, not offensive
operations, he said.
The region’s desert terrain, vast distances
and the likelihood of an extended conflict also pose significant
challenges to an African force, as well as to any Western militaries
playing supporting roles, he said.
Mr. Ban identified even more basic issues to address before an African-led force would be ready to deploy. “Fundamental questions on how the
force would be led, sustained, trained, equipped and financed remain
unanswered,” he said in his 39-page report to the Security Council last
Wednesday.
Islamists seized control of the long-unstable north
after a coup d’état in the Malian capital of Bamako last March. The
Malian Army collapsed after the coup, fleeing the main cities of the
north in the wake of the rebel advance, and power in Bamako has since
been uneasily shared by weak civilian leaders and the military, which
has been accused of serious human rights abuses.
The fall of Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya prompted Tuareg fighters from northern Mali,
who had been fighting alongside Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, to return
home with weapons from Libyan arsenals. They joined with
Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militants who had moved to the lightly policed
region from Algeria, and the two groups easily drove out the weakened
Malian army in late March and early April. The Islamists then turned on
the Tuaregs, routing them and consolidating control in the region in May
and June.
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