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U.S. Training African Forces to Uproot Terrorists
May 11, 2004
By CRAIG S. SMITH
STUTTGART, Germany - The American campaign against
terrorism is opening a new front in a region that military
officials fear could become the next base for Al Qaeda -
the largely ungoverned swath of territory stretching from
the Horn of Africa to the Western Sahara's Atlantic coast.
Generals here at the United States European Command, which
oversees the area, say the vast, arid region is a new
Afghanistan, with well-financed bands of Islamic militants
recruiting, training and arming themselves. Terrorist
attacks like the one on March 11 in Madrid that killed 191
people seem to have a North African link, investigators
say, and may presage others in Europe.
Having learned from missteps in Afghanistan and Iraq, the
American officers are pursuing this battle with a new
approach. Instead of planning on a heavy American military
presence, they are dispatching Special Operations forces to
countries like Mali and Mauritania in West Africa to train
soldiers and outfit them with pickup trucks, radios and
global-positioning equipment.
"We want to be preventative, so that we don't have to put
boots on the ground here in North Africa as we did in
Afghanistan," said the European Command's chief of
counter-terrorism, Lt. Col. Powl Smith, adding that by
assisting local governments to do the fighting themselves,
"we don't become a lightning rod for popular anger that
radicals can capitalize on."
American military officials say that Qaeda-linked
militants, pushed out of Afghanistan and blocked by
increased surveillance of traditional points of entry along
the Mediterranean coast, are turning to overland travel in
order to make contact with North African Islamic terror
groups.
The officials cite the case of Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan,
also known as Abu Mohamed, a Qaeda militant who traveled
across Africa in 2002 to help plan attacks.
Mr. Alwan, a Yemeni and a close associate of Osama bin
Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was linked to the
October 2000 attack on the American warship Cole. He is
believed to have been helping to plan an attack on the
United States Embassy in Mali's capital, Bamako, before he
was killed in late 2002 during a raid by Algerian forces in
Algeria's northeastern Batna Province.
Mr. Alwan's appearance in the region rattled the American
military and added impetus to a strategy that had been
taking shape since the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States
is working with the countries of the so-called Sahel, the
impoverished southern fringe of the Sahara, to shore up
border controls and deny sanctuary to suspected terrorists.
The program, called the Pan-Sahel Initiative, was begun
with $7 million and focused on Mali, Mauritania, Niger and
Chad. It is being expanded to include Senegal and possibly
other countries. The European Command has asked for $125
million for the region over five years.
An added catalyst to the program was the kidnapping of
Western tourists in the desert of southeastern Algerian
early last year. A terrorist leader named Ammari Saifi,
also known as Abderrezak al-Para because he was trained as
an Algerian Special Forces paratrooper, took 32 European
tourists hostage near the Libyan border and transported
some of them to northern Mali.
To free the hostages, United States military officials say,
Germany paid him a ransom of nearly $6 million - equivalent
to a quarter of Niger's defense budget - making him
instantly one of the most powerful Islamic militants in
North Africa.
He is a leader of the Salafist Group for Preaching and
Combat, or G.S.P.C., which was formed in 1998 and has many
links with Al Qaeda.
Earlier this year, Mr. Saifi went on a shopping spree in
northern Mali, gathering weapons, vehicles and recruits
while American and Algerian intelligence monitored him with
growing alarm. In February, Algerian forces intercepted a
convoy carrying weapons north from Mali. Algerian officials
say the cargo contained mortar launchers, rocket-propelled
grenade launchers and surface-to-air missiles.
The United States European Command sent a Navy P-3 Orion
surveillance aircraft to sweep the area, relaying Mr.
Saifi's position to forces in the region. Mali pushed him
out of the country to Niger, which in turn chased him into
Chad, where, with United States Special Forces support of
an airlift of fuel and other supplies, 43 of his men were
killed or captured. Mr. Saifi himself got away, American
officials say. With his money and experience and broader
network, G.S.P.C. remains the most dangerous group in North
Africa, they say.
In the wake of the G.S.P.C. hunt, military chiefs from nine
African nations were brought to European Command
headquarters in Stuttgart last month. Several of the
generals, like the military chiefs of neighboring Mali and
Niger, had never met one another before. Others, like the
military chiefs of Morocco and Algeria, were more
accustomed to competing than cooperating.
All the countries expressed anxiety about the growing
threat of Islamic militancy within their borders.
Government officials in Burkina Faso have complained to
American officials about "bearded ones" showing up in
remote areas preaching the salafist, or fundamentalist,
strain of Islam that inspires the world's Islamic
militants. The foreign imams distribute cassette tapes and
have greater wealth than the local imams with whom they are
competing.
"These are not local extremists," one American official
said. "These are people from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, who
are essentially Islamic missionaries preaching a form of
Islam that is very, very different from what these
countries want or grew up with."
United States military officials say part of the problem is
that Islamists in the region are in touch with one another
while the governments of the countries they are in, are
not. Mali and Mauritania, for example, do not have the
means to talk to each other from their garrisons, which in
some cases are only a couple hundred miles apart. "If they
see something, they don't have an easy way to pass it on to
their counterparts," the official said.
General Charles F. Wald, deputy commander of the European
Command, said global-positioning equipment was allowing
militants to create virtual garrisons in the sand.
"It's in a form of, maybe, buried weapons in the desert
someplace and knowing because of your G.P.S. capability
where that might be," he said. "It's knowing, in their
case, one of the main logistical needs is water, where the
wells are, for example. It's knowing where you can buy
fuel."
General Wald said the European Command's next major Special
Operations exercises would be held in North Africa with
several countries taking part "on a mulitlateral basis,
which is an historic thing to do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/international/africa/11AFRI.html?ex=1085290863&ei=1&en=a40685f1f7c7a789
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