Tag Archives: Algeria
From GSPC to AQIM: The evolution of an Algerian islamist terrorist group into an Al-Qa‘ida Affiliate and its implications for the Sahara-Sahel region
Al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Algeria’s largest and most active Islamist terrorist organization, was formerly known as the Groupe salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, and usually referred to by its French acronym (GSPC, Salafist Group for Call/Preaching and Combat). It began in the late 1990s as a splinter faction of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), then fighting a bloody insurgency against the Algerian military government with the goal of establishing an Islamic state. GSPC/AQIM eclipsed its predecessor and remains active not only in Algeria but also in the neighboring Sahelian states. Best known for its raids and bombings against Algerian military bases and convoys, the group has also perpetrated kidnappings of European tourists and terrorist attacks in Mauritania and Mali. It has likewise been linked to planned strikes in Europe, as well as to smuggling and human trafficking across the vast Sahara. This article will examine the transformation of the GSPC, whose stated goal was the overthrow of Algeria’s long-ruling secular nationalist government, into AQIM, a participant in the global jihad allegedly committed to the destruction of the “Far Enemy.”
The Western Sahara conflict: regional and international repercussions
The lack of resolution of the Western Sahara conflict boils down to two main points: the conflicting positions of Morocco and Western Saharan nationalists, on the one hand, and geopolitical considerations, on the other hand. These geopolitical interests have been the main impediment to the resolution of the conflict because they strengthened the obstinate position of Morocco, which argues, thanks to external support, that it will only negotiate on the basis of ‘autonomy’ within Moroccan sovereignty. This proposal currently enjoys the implicit consent of France, the United States, and Spain, regardless of UN resolutions that refute any preconditions for the current negotiations.
AFRICOM and the Geopolitics of African Oil
On 1 October 2008, the new Africa Command (AFRICOM) officially became operational as America’s newest combatant command, with its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, to oversee U.S. military activities on the continent. Until the creation of AFRICOM, U.S.-African military relations was conducted through three different commands: the European Command, which had responsibility for most of the continent; the Central Command, which oversaw Egypt and the Horn of Africa region along with the Middle East and Central Asia; and the Pacific Command, which administered military ties with Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean. This reflected the fact that Africa was chiefly viewed as a regional theater in the global Cold War, or as an adjunct to U.S.-European relations, or—as in the immediate post-Cold War period—as a region of little concern to the United States.
But since the late 1990s, Africa has become an increasingly important source of American oil imports. World oil production has peaked and, as production from older fields declines, there are only two parts of the world where significant new fields will come into production over the next 10-15 years: Central Asia and Africa. Africa now supplies more oil to the United States than the Middle East; it currently provides some 15-20% of total U.S. oil imports and is expected to provide at least 25% by 2015. In 2002, the Bush administration declared that access to Africa’s oil supplies would henceforth be defined as a “strategic national interest” of the United States. As a result, Africa’s status in U.S. national security policy and military affairs rose dramatically.
Administration officials have sought to portray AFRICOM as a demonstration of America’s commitment to help Africa and its benign intentions toward the continent. But the military officers who will run AFRICOM are under no illusions about the purposes of the new command. According to General William Ward and Vice Admiral Robert Moeller—the commander and deputy commander of AFRICOM respectively—the primary mission of AFRICOM are to protect access to oil and other resources, to make Africa a major front in the Global War on Terrorism, and to counter China’s growing economic and political involvement in Africa.
The creation of AFRICOM, thus, represents the globalization of the “Carter Doctrine,” the pledge made by President Carter in his final State of the Union Address in 1980 that the United States would use all necessary means “including the use of military force” to ensure the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. This pledge has now been extended to the entire world, driving the growing U.S. military presence not only in Africa, but in South America, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia as well. It is important to recognize that the United States is not the only country that is responsible for the militarization of African oil production and that China, India, Russia, and other countries are also playing significant roles.
So, what will AFRICOM actually do to fulfill its mission? When AFRICOM became operational in October it took over the implementation of a wide range of ongoing military, security cooperation, and security assistance programs that have already led to a series of U.S. air raids on Somalia as well as the establishment of a new U.S. military base in Africa—located at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti—and a vastly enlarged U.S. naval presence, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. It will also manage the delivery of increasing quantities of U.S. arms to Africa and a host of new programs that have been created in recent years to provide weaponry and military training to African allies. Over the past seven years, the value of U.S. security assistance to Africa has risen from about $100 million each year to an annual level of approximately $800 million.
The Pentagon would like to avoid direct military intervention in Africa whenever possible, preferring to bolster the internal security capabilities of its African friends and to build up the military forces of key states that can act as surrogates for the United States. But it is also preparing for the day when a disruption of oil supplies or some other crisis will lead to further direct military intervention. Washington has substantially increased the size and frequency of U.S. military exercises in Africa and has negotiated agreements to guarantee that U.S. troops will be able to use local military bases in a number of African countries, including Algeria, Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Sao Tome, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia.
It is now up to the Obama administration to decide whether or not to follow the path marked out by the Bush administration—a strategy based on a determination to depend upon the use of military force in Africa and elsewhere to satisfy America’s continuing addiction to oil—or to chart a new path based on an international and multi-lateral partnership with African nations and with other countries that have a stake in the continent (including China and India) to promote sustainable economic development, democracy, and human rights in Africa and a new global energy order based on the use of clean, safe, and renewable resources.
Daniel Volman (dvolman@igc.org) is the Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (www.concernedafricascholars.org). He is a specialist on U.S. military policy toward Africa and African security issues and has been conducting research and writing on these issues for more than thirty years.
From The Geopolitics of Petroleum ACAS Blog Series
Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa
Coauthored with William Minter
At the end of President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery invoked the hope of a day “when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors.” No one expects such a utopian vision to materialize any time soon. But both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have spoken eloquently of the need to emphasize diplomacy over a narrow military agenda. In her confirmation hearing, Clinton stressed the need for “smart power,” perhaps inadvertently echoing Obama’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq as a “dumb war.” Even top U.S. military officials, such as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, have warned against overly militarizing U.S. foreign policy.
In practice, such a shift in emphasis is certain to be inconsistent. At a global level, the most immediate challenge to the credibility of change in foreign policy is Afghanistan, where promised troop increases are given little chance of bringing stability and the country risks becoming Obama’s “Vietnam.” Africa policy is for the most part under the radar of public debate. But it also poses a clear choice for the new administration. Will de facto U.S. security policy toward the continent focus on anti-terrorism and access to natural resources and prioritize bilateral military relations with African countries? Or will the United States give priority to enhancing multilateral capacity to respond to Africa’s own urgent security needs?
If the first option is taken, it will undermine rather than advance both U.S. and African security. Taking the second option won’t be easy. There are no quick fixes. But U.S. security in fact requires that policymakers take a broader view of Africa’s security needs and a multilateral approach to addressing them.
The need for immediate action to promote peace in Africa is clear. While much of the continent is at peace, there are large areas of great violence and insecurity, most prominently centered on Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. These crises require not only a continuing emphasis on diplomacy but also resources for peacemaking and peacekeeping. And yet the Bush administration has bequeathed the new president a new military command for Africa (the United States Africa Command, known as AFRICOM). Meanwhile, Washington has starved the United Nations and other multilateral institutions of resources, even while entrusting them with enormous peacekeeping responsibilities.
The government has presented AFRICOM as a cost-effective institutional restructuring and a benign program for supporting African governments in humanitarian as well as necessary security operations. In fact, it represents the institutionalization and increased funding for a model of bilateral military ties — a replay of the mistakes of the Cold War. This risks drawing the United States more deeply into conflicts, reinforcing links with repressive regimes, excusing human rights abuses, and frustrating rather than fostering sustainable multilateral peacemaking and peacekeeping. It will divert scarce budget resources, build resentment, and undercut the long-term interests of the United States.
Shaping a new U.S. security policy toward Africa requires more than just a modest tilt toward more active diplomacy. It also requires questioning this inherited security framework, and shaping an alternative framework that aligns U.S. and African security interests within a broader perspective of inclusive human security. In particular, it requires that the United States shift from a primarily bilateral and increasingly military approach to one that prioritizes joint action with both African and global partners.
AFRICOM: The New U.S. Military Command for Africa
On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would create a new military command for Africa, to be known as Africa Command or Africom. Throughout the Cold War and for more than a decade afterwards, the U.S. did not have a military command for Africa; instead, U.S. military activities on the African continent were conducted by three separate military commands: the European Command, which had responsibility for most of the continent; the Central Command, which oversaw Egypt and the Horn of Africa region along with the Middle East and Central Asia; and the Pacific Command, which administered military ties with Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean.
Until the creation of Africom, the administration of U.S.-African military relations was conducted through three different commands. All three were primarily concerned with other regions of the world that were of great importance to the United States on their own and had only a few middle-rank staff members dedicated to Africa. This reflected the fact that Africa was chiefly viewed as a regional theater in the global Cold War, or as an adjunct to U.S.-European relations, or—as in the immediate post-Cold War period—as a region of little concern to the United States. But when the Bush administration declared that access to Africa’s oil supplies would henceforth be defined as a “strategic national interest” of the United States and proclaimed that America was engaged in a Global War on Terrorism following the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, Africa’s status in U.S. national security policy and military affairs rose dramatically.
According to Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs—the highest ranking Defense Department official with principal responsibility for Africa at the Pentagon, who has supervised U.S. military policy toward Africa for the Bush administration—Africom attained the status of a sub-unified command under the European Command on 1 October 2007, and is scheduled to be fully operational as a separate unified command no later than 1 October 2008. The process of creating the new command will be conducted by a special transition team—which will include officers from both the State Department and the Defense Department—that will carry out its work in Stuttgart, Germany, in coordination with the European Command.
Africom will not look like traditional unified commands. In particular, there is no intention, at least at present, to assign the new command control over large military units. This is in line with ongoing efforts to reduce the presence of large numbers of American troops overseas in order to consolidate or eliminate expensive bases and bring as many troops as possible back to the United States where they will be available for deployment anywhere in the world that Washington wants to send them. Since there is no way to anticipate where troops will be sent and the Pentagon has the ability to deploy sizable forces over long distances in a very short time, Washington plans to keep as many troops as possible in the United States and send them abroad only when it judges it necessary. This, however, was exactly the intention when the Clinton and Reagan administrations created the Central Command and based it in Tampa, Florida; and now the Central Command is running two major wars in southwest Asia from headquarters in Qatar.
Africom will also be composed of both military and civilian personnel, including officers from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the commander of the new command will have both a military and a civilian deputy. On 10 July 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the President had nominated four-star General William E. “Kip” Ward to be the commander of Africom. General Ward, an African-American who was commissioned into the infantry in 1971, is currently serving as the deputy commander of the European Command. Previously he served as the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) in Mogadishu, Somalia during “Operation Restore Hope” in 1992-1994, commander of the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia during “Operation Joint Forge” in 2002-2003, and chief of the U.S. Office of Military Cooperation at the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. The novel structure of the new command reflects the fact that Africom will be charged with overseeing both traditional military activities and programs that are funded through the State Department budget (see below for details on these programs).
The Bush administration has emphasized the uniqueness of this hybrid structure as evidence that the new command has only benign purposes and that and that, in the words of Theresa Whelan, while “there are fears that Africom represents a militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and that Africom will somehow become the lead U.S. Government interlocutor with Africa. This fear is unfounded.” Therefore, Bush administration officials insist that the purpose of Africom is misunderstood.
On closer examination, however, the difference between Africom and other commands—and the allegedly “unfounded” nature of its implications for the militarization of the continent—are not as real or genuine as the Bush administration officials would have us believe. Of course Washington has other interests in Africa besides making it into another front in its Global War on Terrorism, maintaining and extending access to energy supplies and other strategic raw material, and competing with China and other rising economic powers for control over the continent’s resources; these include helping Africans deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other emerging diseases, strengthening and assisting peacekeeping and conflict resolution efforts, and responding to humanitarian disasters. But it is simply disingenuous to suggest that accomplishing these three objectives is not the main reason that Washington is now devoting so much effort and attention to the continent. And of course Washington would prefer that selected friendly regimes take the lead in meeting these objects, so that the United States can avoid direct military involvement in Africa, particularly at a time when the U.S. military is so deeply committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and preparing for possible attacks on Iran. The hope that the Pentagon can build up African surrogates who can act on behalf of the United States is precisely why Washington is providing so much security assistance to these regimes and why it would like to provide even more in the future. Indeed, as argued below, this is actually one of the main reasons that Africom is being created at this time.
So why is Africom being created and why now? I would argue that the answer to this question is twofold. First, the Bush administration would like to significantly expand its security assistance programs for regimes that are willing to act as surrogates, for friendly regimes—particularly in countries with abundant oil and natural gas supplies—and for efforts to increase its options for more direct military involvement in the future; but it has had difficulty getting the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon to provide the required funding or to devoting the necessary attention and energy to accomplish these tasks. The creation of Africom will allow the administration to go to the U.S. Congress and argue that the establishment of Africom demonstrates the importance of Africa for U.S. national security and the administration’s commitment to give the continent the attention that it deserves. If Africa is so important and if the administration’s actions show that it really wants to do all sorts of good things for Africa, it hopes to be in a much stronger position to make a convincing case that the legislature must appropriate substantially greater amounts of money to fund the new command’s operations. And within the Pentagon, the establishment of Africom as a unified command under the authority of a high-ranking officer with direct access to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will put the new command in a much stronger position to compete with other command for resources, manpower, and influence over policymaking.
Secondly, key members of the Bush administration, a small, but growing and increasingly vocal group of legislators, and influential think tanks have become more and more alarmed by the growing efforts of China to expand its access to energy supplies and other resources from Africa and to enhance its political and economic influence throughout the continent. These “alarmists” point to the considerable resources that China is devoting to the achievement of these goals and to the engagement of Chinese officials at the highest level—including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, both of who have made tours of the continent and have hosted high-level meetings in Beijing with African heads of state—as evidence of a “grand strategy” on the part of China that jeopardizes U.S. national security interests and that is aimed, ultimately, at usurping the West’s position on the continent. The creation of Africom, therefore, should be seen as one element of a broad effort to develop a “grand strategy” on the part of the United States that will counter, and eventually defeat, China’s efforts. It should also be understood as a measure that is intended to demonstrate to Beijing that Washington will match China’s actions, thus serving as a warning to the Chinese leadership that they should restrain themselves or face possible consequences to their relationship with America as well as to their interests in Africa.
So, what will Africom actually do when it becomes fully operational? Basically, it will take over the implementation of a host of military, security cooperation, and security assistance programs, which are funded through either the State Department or the Defense Department. These include the following:
Bilateral and Multilateral Joint Training Programs and Military Exercises
The United States provides military training to African military personnel through a wide variety of training and education programs. In addition, it conducts military exercises in Africa jointly with African troops and also with the troops of its European allies to provide training to others and also to train its own forces for possible deployment to Africa in the future. These include the following:
Flintlock 2005 and 2007
These are Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) exercises conducted by units of the U.S. Army Special Forces and the U.S. Army Rangers, along with contingents from other units, to provide training experience both for American troops and for the troops of African countries (small numbers of European troops are also involved in these exercises). Flintlock 2005 was held in June 2005, when more than one thousand U.S. personnel were sent to North and West Africa for counter-terrorism exercises in Algeria, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad that involved more than three thousand local service members. In April 2007, U.S. Army Special Forces went to Niger for the first part of Flintlock 2007 and in late August 2007, some 350 American troops arrived in Mali for three weeks of Flintlock 2007 exercises with forces from Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Both Flintlock exercises were conducted as part of Operation Enduring Freedom—Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) which now links the United States with eight African countries: Mali, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. In 2004, the TSCTP was created to replace the Pan-Sahel Counter-Terrorism Initiative, which was initiated in 2002. The TSCTP also involves smaller, regular training exercises conducted by U.S. Army Special Forces throughout the region. Although changing budgetary methodology makes it difficult to be certain, it appears that the TSCTP received some $31 million in FY 2006, nearly $82 million in FY 2007, and is expected to receive approximately $100 million annually from FY 2008 through FY 2013.
Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance Program (ACOTA)
This program, which began operating in 2002, replaces the African Crisis Response Initiative launched in 1997 by the Clinton administration. In 2004, it became part of the Global Peace Operations Initiative. ACOTA is officially designed to provide training to African military forces to improve their ability to conduct peacekeeping operations, even if they take place in hostile environments. But since the training includes both defensive and offensive military operations, it also enhances the ability of participating forces to engage in police operations against unarmed civilians, counter-insurgency operations, and even conventional military operations against the military forces of other countries. By FY 2007, nineteen African countries were participating in the ACOTA program (Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). New budgetary methodology makes it impossible to ascertain the levels of funding for ACOTA, since the program’s funding is subsumed within the budget for the Global Peace Operations Initiative.
International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)
The IMET program brings African military officers to military academies and other military educational institutions in the United States for professional training. Nearly all African countries participate in the program—including Libya for the first time in FY 2008—and in FY 2006 (the last year for which country figures are available—it trained 14,731 students from the African continent (excluding Egypt) at a cost of $14.7 million.
Foreign Military Sales Program (FMS)
This program sells U.S. military equipment to African countries; such sales are conducted by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency of the Defense Department. The U.S. government provides loans to finance the purchase of virtually all of this equipment through the Foreign Military Financing Program (FMF), but repayment of these loans by African governments is almost always waived, so that they amount to free grants. In FY 2006, sub-Saharan African countries received a total of nearly $14 million in FMF funding, and the Maghrebi countries of Morocco and Tunisia received almost another $21 million; for FY 2007, the Bush administration requested nearly $15 million for sub-Saharan Africa and $21 million for the Morocco and Tunisia; and for FY 2008, the administration requested nearly $8 million for sub-Saharan Africa and nearly $6 million for the Maghreb.
African Coastal and Border Security Program (ACBS Program)
This program provides specialized equipment (such as patrol vessels and vehicles, communications equipment, night vision devices, and electronic monitors and sensors) to African countries to improve their ability to patrol and defend their own coastal waters and borders from terrorist operations, smuggling, and other illicit activities. In some cases, airborne surveillance and intelligence training also may be provided. In FY 2006, the ACBS Program received nearly $4 million in FMF funding, and Bush administration requested $4 million in FMF funding for the program in FY 2007. No dedicated funding was requested for FY 2008, but the program may be revived in the future.
Excess Defense Articles Program (EDA)
This program is designed to conduct ad hoc transfers of surplus U.S. military equipment to foreign governments. Transfers to African recipients have included the transfer of C-130 transport planes to South Africa and Botswana, trucks to Uganda, M-16 rifles to Senegal, and coastal patrol vessels to Nigeria.
Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA)
In October 2002, the U.S. Central Command played the leading role in the creation of this joint task force that was designed to conduct naval and aerial patrols in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the eastern Indian Ocean as part of the effort to detect and counter the activities of terrorist groups in the region. Based at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, long the site of a major French military base, the CJTF-HOA is made up of approximate 1,400 U.S. military personnel—primarily sailors, Marines, and Special Forces troops—that works with a multi-national naval force composed of American naval vessels along with ships from the navies of France, Italy, and Germany, and other NATO allies. The CJTF-FOA provided intelligence to Ethiopia in support of its invasion of Somalia in January 2007 and used military facilities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya to launch its own attacks against alleged al-Qaeda members involved in the Council of Islamic Courts in Somalia in January and June of 2007. The command authority for CJTF-HOA, currently under the U.S. Central Command, will be transferred to Africom by 2008.
Joint Task Force Aztec Silence (JTFAS)
In December 2003, the U.S. European Command created this joint task force under the commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet (Europe) to carry out counter-terrorism operations in North and West Africa and to coordinate U.S. operations with those of countries in those regions. Specifically, JTFAS was charged with conducting surveillance operations using the assets of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and to share information, along with intelligence collected by U.S. intelligence agencies, with local military forces. The primary assets employed in this effort are a squadron of U.S. Navy P-3 “Orion” based in Sigonella, Sicily. In March 2004, P-3 aircraft from this squadron and reportedly operating from the southern Algerian base at Tamanrasset were deployed to monitor and gather intelligence on the movements of Algerian Salafist guerrillas operating in Chad and to provide this intelligence to Chadian forces engaged in combat against the guerrillas.
Naval Operations in the Gulf of Guinea
Although American naval forces operating in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea and other areas along Africa’s shores are formally under the command of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, based in the Mediterranean, and other U.S. Navy commands, Africom will also help coordinate naval operations along the African coastline. As U.S. Navy Admiral Henry G. Ulrich III, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces (Europe) put it to reporters at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, in June 2007, “we hope, as they [Africom] stand up, to fold into their intentions and their planning,” and his command “will adjust, as necessary” as Africom becomes operational. In a significant expansion of U.S. Navy operations in Africa, the U.S.S. Fort McHenry amphibious assault ship will begin a six-month deployment to the Gulf of Guinea in November 2007. The ship will carry 200-300 sailors and U.S. Coast Guard personnel and will call at ports in eleven countries (Angola, Benin, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, and Togo). Its mission will be to serve as a “floating schoolhouse” to train local forces in port and oil-platform security, search-and rescue missions, and medical and humanitarian assistance. According to Admiral Ulrich, the deployment matches up perfectly with the work of the new Africa Command. “If you look at the direction that the Africa Command has been given and the purpose of standing up the Africom, you’ll see that the (Gulf of Guinea) mission is closely aligned,” he told reporters.
Base Access Agreements for Cooperative Security Locations and Forward Operating Sites
Over the past few years, the Bush administration has negotiated base access agreements with the governments of Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Sao Tome, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia. Under these agreements, the United States gains access to local military bases and other facilities so that they can be used by American forces as transit bases or as forward operating bases for combat, surveillance, and other military operations. They remain the property of the host African government and are not American bases in a legal sense, so that U.S. government officials are, technically, telling the truth when they deny that the United States has bases in these countries. To date, the United States has done little to improve the capabilities of these facilities, so that there is little or no evidence of an American military presence at these locations.
In addition to these publicly acknowledged base access agreements, the Pentagon was granted permission to deploy P-3 “Orion” aerial surveillance aircraft at the airfield at Tamanrasset in southern Algeria under an agreement reportedly signed in during Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s visit to Washington in July 2003. The Brown and Root-Condor, a joint venture between a subsidiary of the American company, Halliburton, and the Algerian state-owned oil company, Sonatrach, is currently under contract to enlarge military air bases at Tamanrasset and at Bou Saada. In December 2006, Salafist forces used an improvised mine and small arms to attack a convoy of Brown and Root-Condor employees who were returning to their hotel in the Algerian town of Bouchaaoui, killing an Algerian driver and wounding nine workers, including four Britons and one American.
Over the course of the next eighteen months, there is one major issue related to the new command that remains to be resolved: whether and where in Africa will Africom establish a regional headquarters. A series of consultations with the governments of a number of African countries—including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Kenya—following the announcement of Africom found than none of them were willing to commit to hosting the new command. As a result, the Pentagon has been forced to reconsider its plans and in June 2007 Ryan Henry, the Principal Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy told reporters that the Bush administration now intended to establish what he called “a distributed command” that would be “networked” in several countries in different regions of the continent. Under questioning before the Senate Africa Subcommittee on 1 August 2007, Assistant Secretary Whelan said that Liberia, Botswana, Senegal, and Djibouti were among the countries that had expressed support for Africom—although only Liberia has publicly expressed a willingness to play host to Africom personnel—which clearly suggests that these countries are likely to accommodate elements of Africom’s headquarters staff when they eventually establish a presence on the continent sometime after October 2008.
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* This article is a revised and shortened version of an article that will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Review of African Political Economy.
Daniel Volman is the director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC, and the author of numerous articles on US security policy and African security issues.
The Algerian Civil War: Washington’s Model for ‘The New Middle-East’
’Washington has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism.’
—U.S. undersecretary of state William Burns [1]
’This is a prescription for intra-Muslim civil war throughout the Middle East. Those involved would be seen as proxies tearing the Muslim world on behalf of Israel and the US.’
— Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui [2]
The American invasion of Iraq has clearly failed to produce the domino effect that would, as the architects of the war promised, bring all US enemies into line, and create a new Middle East where democracy would flourish. The invasion of Iraq, like Israel’s failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006, has made it clear in Washington, London and Tel-Aviv that conventional military power and hi-tech weaponry are impotent in the face of popular insurgencies. While this fact is widely accepted by experts on low-intensity warfare, hawks in the American, British and Israeli governments preferred to test its validity for the twenty first century. Now that they found out, at a great price one should add, a significant shift in US war strategy is in place. Analysts and government officials are calling this shift “The Redirection.”[3]
According to media reports, the US is now convinced that the biggest threat to its interests in the Middle East is the increasing influence of Shia Iran and its allies Syria and Lebanese Hizb’Allah. With the help of the Saudi government, Washington is currently funding and arming various Sunni fundamentalist groups to confront Iran’s influence. Civil war scenarios are already unfolding in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq. It is obvious that the United States is setting Islamist groups against each other. What has been less obvious is the fact that the only time Islamists movements were fought by proxy through other Islamist movements is Algeria’s civil war of the 1990s. If that is the case, then Algeria’s civil war is Washington’s model for the “New Middle East.”
I. The “Redirection”?
Reports have confirmed that the US has intensified covert operations in Iran using the obscure Sunni group Jundallah.[4] In Lebanon, the US has been funding and arming Sunni fundamentalists with links to al-Qaeda, like Fatah al-Islam, and actively promoting a confrontation between them and Hizb’Allah.[5] In Palestine, the United States has been arming and training factions of Fatah loyal to Mohammed Dahlan in the hope of provoking a confrontation with Hamas. In Syria, the US has been funding Abdel Halim Khaddam and the Muslim Brotherhood in the hope of provoking a confrontation with the Syrian regime. US Marines have been supervising the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, and US covert operations are now underway in the African desert, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Analysts and government officials are openly calling this shift in strategy the “redirection.” Encouraged by Saudi Arabia, the United States has apparently decided that the biggest threat to its control of the Middle East are Shia groups in alliance with Iran and Syria like the Lebanese Hizb’Allah and the Iraqi Mehdi Army. As a result, the “redirection” would consist of using Saudi Arabian money and its standing in the Sunni world to do a rerun of the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, this time against Shia, “Safavid” Iran. The truth of the matter is that Saudi standing in the Sunni world is not what it was in the 1980s. The vanguards of Sunni resistance groups, whether it is al-Qaeda, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, do not consider Iran a bigger threat than America and Israel. They are also unlikely to consider Saudi Arabia and America as “protectors” of Sunni Islam. Here is how Ayman Zawahiri reacted to this idea:
Some have claimed that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are protectors of the people of the Sunnah. Allah suffices us and He is the best of protectors. Since when are those who helped America to blockade Iraq and kill a million of its children protectors of the people of the Sunnah? Since when are those who supplied American forces with provisions and materiel, and provided them with bases, airports and storerooms to attack Afghanistan and Iraq helpers of the people of the Sunnah? From where did the planes which bombed Afghanistan and Iraq take off? From where did the forces which invaded Iraq set off? Who was it who agreed to the international resolutions to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq? Who was it who recognized the puppet regimes of apostasy and treason in Afghanistan and Iraq? Who was it who pursued and combated everyone who wanted Jihad in Afghanistan and Iraq? Who was it who recognized Israel and approved its usurpation of Palestine? Who is it who tortures and punishes the Mujahideen and sets up secret prisons for America? And who, and who, and who? Yes, they are protectors of the American way (sunnah), Crusader way (sunnah) and Zionist way (sunnah). As for the way (sunnah) of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), they are its enemies and the ones who combat it.[6]
The quote is long but it shows how many obstacles the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt have to overcome before they can claim to be defenders of anything besides American interest. Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, too, have always had better relations with the Syrian and Iranian governments than with those of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. If the US and Saudi Arabia want to organize a Sunni jihad against Shia ascendancy, as they once did against the Soviet Union, they will have to contend with the fact that the vanguard groups of Sunni jihad are categorically opposed to it. No wonder the US and the Saudis are working with obscure groups like Iranian Jundallah and Lebanese Fatah al-Islam.
An interesting aspect of this “redirection” effort is the fact that it is essentially run by deputy national-security adviser, Eliot Abrams, and the Saudi national-security advisor, Prince Bandar. Abrams and Bandar were both involved in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and observers have noted that the “redirection” involves a rerun of the US war on communism in Latin America. Joseph Massad compared the way Palestinian Fatah has been collaborating with the US in toppling the elected Hamas government to Chile’s General Pinochet collaborating with the CIA in the early 1970s.7 While the comparison is to some degree accurate, it ignores the fact that when fighting communism, the US had the added advantage of dealing with a Western ideology. Islamic political ideology is indigenous to the global south and, as such, it is still incomprehensible in the West and still largely seen through Orientalist (even Medieval) stereotypes.
If the US is promoting a civil war scenario in the Muslim world, and if this civil was is supposed to dispose of groups and states that oppose US dominance in the Middle East, then they need more expertise than what they used in Latin America in the 1970s. The only country where a civil war scenario was engineered (literally) to get rid of an Islamist opposition, and which the US government would consider a success story is Algeria. The Algerian civil war was the only precedent for fighting Islamist movements by proxy through other Islamist movements. Rather than a counter insurgency, Algerian generals called the civil war they engineered and have been running for over fifteen years now a “counter Jihad.” That is exactly what the United States seems to be doing.
II. The Relevance of Algeria
If the era of casualty-free wars through aerial bombing and hi-tech weaponry is over, as Hicham El Alaoui notes, then the new battles are for the control and the allegiance of populations. The recent electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine, and the extent to which Hizb’Allah, the Mahdi Army and the Sunni insurgency have all entrenched themselves in the electoral politics and the societies of their countries, have made it clear to US war planners that they can either accept defeat and withdraw (as Israel did last summer), or change strategy. The US chose the second option. It is here that the Algerian civil war experience comes in.
The challenge that Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hizb’Allah, the Sunni resistance in the Anbar province of Iraq, and the Mahdi Army in the south of Iraq represent for United States and Israeli ambitions is not of the kind of challenge that al-Qaeda and its affiliates have represented so far. The latter have exclusively been a fighting force of at most few thousands, and have showed no interest in electoral politics or even in governance. The challenge that Hamas, Hizb’Allah, the Mahdi Army, and the Sunni resistance of Iraq constitute for American and Israeli ambitions in the Middle East is of a different kind. These Islamist movements have a large popular base and a mass following that allows them considerable share in state power. This type of Islamist challenge manifested itself concretely for the first time in Algeria when the Islamist Salvation Front used legal means to get to power in 1991.
Before the end of the twentieth century, Algeria was the only Arab-Muslim country where an Islamist movement managed to mobilize a grassroots movement and win a landslide electoral victory. By the late 1980s, only Iran and Sudan saw the coming of an Islamist movement to power. But while Sudanese Islamists overthrew the existing regime, and while Iranian Islamists rode a popular uprising to power, Algeria’s Islamists were the first to win a parliamentarian majority through legal means. The Algerian military, back then, refused to recognize the popular mandate of the FIS. They took power by force, and fought fiercely for the control of the population. The US and Israel today, too, refuse to accept the popular mandate of these groups. They are trying to take power by military force, and are embarking on a clandestine adventure to control the populations. The objective of the US and Israel, and one should not forget the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, is the “eradication” of these Islamist movements in a military sense of the word. The one Muslim country that has pursued an existential civil war with a grassroots Islamic movement with the purpose of “eradicating” it is Algeria.8 While media reports have often noted the Bush administration recurrent interest in “learning” from the Algerian civil war, the nature and extent of that interest have generally been kept out of public view. As it was the case with the Algerian civil war, the real story will have to be reconstructed by comparing, as they say, yesterday’s leaks with today’s lies.
Since the invasion of Iraq, Analysts and government officials have often cited Algeria as a useful case and a relevant precedent to learn from. As soon as it became obvious that the Iraqi resistance was there to stay, Pentagon officials got interested in the Algerian war of national liberation. The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was screening Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic film The Battle of Algiers.9 For the US military, the Algerian war of liberation provides the closest parallels and the most useful lessons on the strategies, the strengths and the weaknesses of a popular resistance movement facing a Western occupying power.
More recently, it was reported that George W. Bush was reading Alastair Horne’s classic A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-62. Henry Kissinger had apparently recommended it to the president.[10] After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Algeria was also one of the first countries the United States turned to in order to learn how to fight Islamic militancy. Washington, as undersecretary of state William Burns put it in December 2002, “has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism.”[11] It did not matter that the Algerian government had acquired one of the worst human rights records on earth, or that its security forces have been heavily implicated in some of the worst massacres of civilians. Torture techniques that were notorious in the basement of the Chateauneuf police station and the garage of the Cavignac police station in central Algiers (sexual violence, chemical suffocation, blowtorching of faces and bloating with salted water) soon started showing up in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.[12] There is reason to believe, today, that Washington is not only borrowing torture techniques from Algeria, but the whole sinister program of eradication that the Algerian junta has used for fifteen years to terrorize its populations, especially the poor. The Algerian generals who devised and run this program routinely referred to it as “counter jihad.”
III. Counter Jihad: The Counterinsurgency of “Eradication”
The rise of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algerian politics in the late 1980s was swift and unexpected. By the time France, the United States and Britain realized what was going on, the FIS had already won the local elections by a landslide and was set to win the legislative elections. Before those elections took place, though, the Algerian army took power by force, cancelled the elections, and banned the FIS. French and American reactions were diverse and inconsistent. At first, France could not condone the coup d’état or publicly support it, but it clearly saw it with a willing eye. As President Mitterand said, “fundamentalism does not appear to be the surest way to reach democracy.”[13] Up until 1993, the French administration was not sure, though, that the generals of Algiers could halt the tide of Islamism sweeping Algeria. While Mitterand and his foreign affairs minister, Roland Dumas, quietly supported the generals, they were also bracing themselves for the possibility that Islamists might win the civil war. Similarly, when the Clinton administration allowed Anwar Haddam to represent the FIS freely in Washington, it was obvious that the US did not want to be left out in the event of an Islamist victory in Algeria.
Until 1994, the Algerian junta was still finding it hard to control the Islamist insurgency. The country was paralyzed by its massive foreign debt, and international donors were requesting the introduction of constitutional structures before approving new loans. To get the funds it needed to “eradicate” the Islamists, the junta decided to show that Algerian Islamism was primarily a threat to the West. To that end, the Algerian secret services created their own Islamist groups. Instead of a counterinsurgency campaign, Algerian generals appropriately called it a counter jihad. The fact has been clearly established that some of the notorious Islamic Armed Groups (GIAs) were creations of the Algerian secret services (DRS). On the domestic front, their purpose was to commit atrocities in the name of Islam that would discredit the FIS. On the international front, the aim was to convince the West that Islamism needed to be “eradicated.” These are the groups who came out with a takfiri ideology (excommunication), and declared civilian populations, intellectuals, musicians and artists to be legitimate targets. These are the groups who smashed babies against walls, hacked defenseless civilians, and put toddlers in ovens. These are the groups who raped, pillaged, and massacred entire villages undisturbed, while the screams could be heard from large military barracks nearby. Not once, as is well known, did the army intervene to rescue those people who sometimes were only few hundred feet away. It was not an accident that the terrorized communities always happened to be the ones that massively voted for the FIS in the 1992 elections.
After fifteen years, the Algerian junta has left a trail of evidence and countless contradictions that have allowed analysts to piece together their eradication strategies. A wave of defectors in the ranks of the Algerian military and security services, many of them wrote accounts of their involvement, allowed a very precise corroboration of the evidence.[14] Many atrocities that were committed between 1993 and 1998, allegedly by Islamists, turned up to be covert operations of Algerian secret services (DRS). A few high profile cases would be enough to establish the point. In 1996 seven French monks were kidnapped in the Medea region south of Algiers. Betraying their contempt for Algerian sovereignty, the French secret services (DST) attempted to contact the Islamist kidnappers directly. What they discovered was the shocking evidence that the Algerian government was engineering the civil war. Jamal Zitouni, the notorious leader of one of the main Armed Islamic Groups (GIAs) – the one that kidnapped the monks and was responsible for other gruesome atrocities – it turned up, was an agent of the Algerian government. The suspicion is strong still, today, that when Zitouni decided to murder the monks, the Algerian junta was actually punishing France for going over their head to contact the kidnappers.[15]
Another high-profile case was the slaughter in 1994 of seven Italian seamen. They were found with their throats cut on board their ship (the Luciana) at the port of Jenjen, east of Algiers. The massacre happened, conveniently for the junta, on the eve of the G7 summit in Naples, and was predictably blamed on “Islamic extremists.” Numerous defectors from the Algerian security forces told Le Monde and The Observer, though, that the crime was planned and instigated by Generals Mohammed Mediane, aka “Tewfik,” and Smain Lamari. Again, defectors’ accounts have corroborated each other and the details matched. Primary investigations also showed the port to be under heavy control of the Algerian army. It would have been impossible for an Islamist group to kill the seamen, steal tons of merchandise, and escape unnoticed.16 The terrorist bombings in Paris in 1995 – one at the Saint Michel metro station and one at the Maison Blanche – were also the work, it turned up, of the Algerian shadowy Directorate of Infiltration and Manipulation and the Directorate of Information and Security.[17]
With the spectacularly gruesome massacres of civilian communities that had massively voted for the FIS, especially in the towns of Bentalha and Rais, the West was ready to give the junta enough billions and weapons to “eradicate” the Islamists.[18] Counter jihad, as a form of counterinsurgency, had borne its fruits for the Algerian Junta. The Algerian population was debilitated by the intensity and gruesomeness of the violence, international public opinion was outraged against the Islamists, and Western powers were ready to send the IMF and World Bank. What’s more, most of the violence that the Islamists were being blamed for was actually targeting what was left of the legitimate Islamist resistance, and the population at large who supported it. Many birds were hit with one same stone.
From 1994, the French government threw in its lot on the side of the Algerian junta once and for all. The hard-line idea of eradicating Islamism triumphed. Roland Dumas, the French foreign minister at the time, declared France’s “political backing of the leaders of today’s Algeria.” He pledged France’s economic support “as well as the backing of Algeria on the international scene.” “Friendship,” he said, “must be expressed otherwise than just with words.”[19] Socialist leader Claude Cheysson spoke for most French liberals when he said that democracy in Algeria, as a result of the army coup, “was safe for the time being.”[20] Western intellectuals (and westernized Algerians) who embraced, condoned and defended the unsavory military junta were legion in the nineties. Little did they know that they were providing precious cover for a massive military onslaught on a largely poor and unarmed population of Algeria.[21] Little did they know that they were victims of a murderous, depraved and reactionary maneuver that some generals devised in order to stay in power.
By Western standards, the coup and the civil war in Algeria were a success. Algeria was “saved” from falling into the hands of Islamic “extremists.” The idea of Jihad was turned against itself, and Islamist groups were pitted against each other. The Islamic party that won the elections (FIS) was the primary target of this violence. The other main target was the population that massively voted for them. Islamism was demonized in the eyes of both the Algerian population and of the populations of the West. Western governments were forced to support the illegal coup and the junta behind it. In exchange, Algeria’s large reserves of gas and oil kept flowing freely and cheaply to the West. The civil war also disposed of what French public opinion routinely refers to as “Algeria’s demographic excess.” Equally important, it paved the way for IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programs. In short, Algeria remained a safe French (and now American) backyard.[22]
IV. The Algerian Model in Washington’s “War on Terror”
It is clear that the unintended consequences of the invasion of Iraq include the spread of Iranian influence in Iraq and the Middle East. The unintended consequences of the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in July-August 2006 include the emergence of Hizb’Allah as an undisputed champion of Islamic causes and a formidable and highly disciplined guerrilla group. The hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv are convinced now that the United States should shift its war strategy in the Middle East. The central component of the new strategy, as Seymour Hersh and others reported, is the large-scale use of clandestine operations throughout the Muslim world. These operations aim at bolstering various shadowy Sunni fundamentalist groups and the Palestinian group Fatah to provoke various civil wars scenarios in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. To work around congressional oversight, the architects of this strategy are using Saudi funds and the billions that have been unaccounted for in the budgetary chaos of Iraq.
Inside the Bush administration, the key players in this adventure are Dick Cheney, the deputy national security adviser Elliot Abrams, and the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador) Zalmay Khalilzad. Dick Cheney’s office is coordinating these operations behind the back of Congress and the CIA. Outside the United States, the shadowy Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, is the main coordinator. Abrams and Bandar were both involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. Back then they helped the Reagan administration illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras from secret arms sales to Iran and from Saudi money. Prince Bandar brings considerable Saudi funds to the table. He also brings useful Saudi connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups. He was also involved, it should be remembered, in coordinating the effort of Arab fighters who joined the Mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Saudis have apparently assured the White House that they will keep a very close eye on the fundamentalists this time. The White House, as an intelligence official put it to Seymour Hersh, are not against the “Salafis throwing bombs”; they just want to make sure they throw them at the right people: Hizb’Allah, the Mahdi Army, Iran, and Syria.[23]
In Lebanon, the United States has already pledged two hundred million dollars in military aid and forty million dollars for internal security. The money is intended to bolster the government of Fouad Siniora against the Hizb’Allah led opposition. As it was the case in the early phase of the Algerian civil war, many obscure and radical Sunni groups are emerging in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. The US is now providing these groups with clandestine military and financial support in the hope of provoking a confrontation with Hizb’Allah. One notable Sunni extremist group that is now the recipient of US clandestine support is Fatah al-Islam. The group is based in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, and has recently been offered money and weapons “by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government interests – presumably to take on Hizb’Allah.”[24]
Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and a US ally, has already spent thousands of dollars to bail members of Sunni fundamentalist groups from jail, many of whom are known to have trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Hariri also used his influence to obtain amnesty to twenty-nine Sunni fundamentalists, some of them suspected of plotting bombs in the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut. “We have a liberal attitude that allows al-Qaeda types to have a presence here,” a senior official in Siniora’s government told Seymour Hersh. Hariri also arranged a pardon for the Maronite Christian militia leader, Samir Geagea, who has been convicted of many atrocities against civilians as well as four political murders, including the assassination of Prime Minister Rashid Karami in 1987.[25] Geagea is already on the offensive. He held a press conference, last week, to say that Hizb’Allah has become a burden on the Lebanese state.[26]
In Palestine, the US has been intensely promoting a coup against the democratically elected government of Hamas. With the “friendly” governments of Jordan and Egypt, the US has been providing military assistance to faction of Fatah loyal to security chief and CIA man Mohammed Dahlan. Israel has been helping by arresting members of Fatah who oppose confrontation with Hamas.[27] Besides burning the building of the Palestinian Legislative council, shadowy Fatah operatives also burned the prime Minister’s office, shot at his car, and burned offices in different ministries and harassed Hamas ministers. In a move very reminiscent of Algeria’s dirty civil war, undercover thugs burned Palestinian Christian churches during the controversy surrounding the Pope’s racist comments on Islam. Those who sanctioned the arson were obviously hoping, as did the Algerian generals who sanctioned the killing of the French monks in 1996 and the Italian seamen in 1997, that the world would blame the Islamist. As I write, the AFP is reporting that a Christian library in Gaza has been bombed in a strange pre-dawn attack.[28] Reuters is reporting that a completely unknown group by the name of Tawhid and Jihad has executed kidnapped BBC reporter, Alan Johnston.[29] Hamas has duly condemned these attacks and has consistently provided protection to Palestinian churches and helped release kidnapped foreign journalists.
The United States is also providing clandestine support to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Abdul Halim Khaddam, the former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005. Again, the goal here is to undermine the Syrian government of Bashar Asad.[30] At the same time, the US is funding and arming the shadowy Sunni fundamentalist group, Jundallah, to mount a bombing campaign inside Iran.[31]
Much like the Algerian junta, Washington is creating its own Islamist groups and developing its own “eradication” program. All the pieces seem to be in place for a large-scale campaign of sabotage, bombings, kidnappings and assassinations whose aim it would be to discredit the resistance movements in the Islamic world and demonize them in the eyes of the public. Unlike Algeria, though, the scope of American counter-jihad includes the entire Muslim world. The atrocities, slaughter and mayhem are likely to be far bigger than they were in Algeria. It remains to be seen whether civil societies, the intellectuals, the media, and the genuine Islamist resistance groups will fall into this insidious trap that latter-day colonialism seems to be putting the final touches on.
From ACAS Bulletin 77
_____________
Fouzi Slisli is Assistant Professor at St. Cloud State University. He received his MA and PhD from the University of Essex (UK). His writings on the Middle East and North Africa have appeared in Race and Class, Al Ahram Weekly, openDemocracy.com, Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora, and Mizna.
1. U.S. undersecretary of state William Burns, in Barry James, “Arms Sales Overcomes Rights Record Qualms: US Enlists Algeria in Terror Battle,” International Herald Tribune, (December 10, 2002).
2. Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui, “And the Winner is … Iran,” Le Monde Diplomatique, (February, 2007).
3. Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection.” The New Yorker (March 5, 2007).
4. William Lowther and Colin Freeman, “US Funds Terror Groups to Sow Terror in Iran,” The Telegraph (UK), (February 25, 2007).
5. Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection.”
6. Speech of Ayman Zawahri (February 12, 2007). Retrieved from: <http://video.google.com/video play?docid=2933856766506011354> on April 16, 2007.
7. Joseph Massad, “Pinochet in Palestine,” Al-Ahram Weekly, (November 9-15, 2006).
8. “Eradication” is how Algerian generals who opposed dialogue with Islamists described their policy in the mid 1990s.
9. CNN “The Situation Room,” (January 12, 2007). See also Maureen Dowd, “Aux Barricades,” The New York Times, (January 17, 2007).
10. CNN “The Situation Room,” (January 12, 2007). See also Maureen Dowd, “Aux Barricades,” The New York Times, (January 17, 2007).
11. Barry James, “Arms Sales Overcomes Rights Record Qualms: US. Enlists Algeria in Terror Battle,” International Herald Tribune, (December 10, 2002).
12. The torture practices of the Algerian security forces have been extensively documented. See, for example, Robert Fisk, “Witness from the Front Line of a Police Force Bent on Brutality,” and “Lost Souls of the Algerian Night: Now their Torturers Tell the Truth,” The Independent, (October 30, 1997); “Conscripts tell of Algeria’s Torture Chambers,” The Independent, (November 3, 1997); Robert Moore and Francois Sergent, “Hands that Wield Algeria’s Knives,” The Observer, (October 26, 1997); John Sweeny, “The Blowtorch Elections that Shames Britain,” The Observer, (May 25, 1997).
13. Quoted in Camille Bonora-Waisman, France and the Algerian Conflict: Issues in Democracy and Political Stability, 1988-1995, (Ashgate, 2003), p. 44.
14. See especially Nesroulah Yous, Qui a tué à Bentelha? (Paris: La Découverte), 2000; Habib Souaïdia, La Sale guerre: Le Témoignage d’un ancien officier des forces spéciales de l’armée algérienne, (Paris: La Découverte), 2001; Salima Mellah, “Le Mouvement islamiste algerien entre autonomie et manipulation,” Committee Justice pour l’Algerie, (Dossier No. 19, May 2004), <http://www.algerietpp.org/tpp/pdf/dossier_19_mvt_islamiste.pdf > Retrieved on April 16, 2007.
15. See Arnaud Dubus, “Les sept moines de Tibhirine enlevés sur ordre d’Alger,” Libération, (December 23, 2002). The extent of French implication in the affair has been illustrated by René Guitton, Le Martyre des moines de Tibhirine, (Paris: Calmann-Lévy), 2001. The victims’ families are still demanding an official investigation, but neither the French nor the Algerian government would reveal what they know of the affair.
16. See John Sweeny, “Algeria’s Cutthroat Regime Exposed: Name the Killers, Demands Italy,” The Observer, (November 16, 1997).
17. See John Sweeny, “‘We Bombed Paris for Algeria’,” The Observer, (November 9, 1997). See also Naima Boutelja, “Who Really Bombed Paris,” Red Pepper, (September 2005). <http://www. redpepper.org.uk/europe/x-sep05-bouteldja.htm>.
18. Salima Mellah, “Le Mouvement islamiste algerien entre autonomie et manipulation”; Nesroulah Yous, Qui a tué à Bentelha?
19. See Camille Bonora-Waisman, France and the Algerian Conflict, (p. 56). See also Pablo Azocar, “Dumas Visit is Shrouded with Tension and Suspicion,” Inter-Press Service, (January 8, 1993).
20. Julian Nundy, “Paris in Two Minds about Algiers Coup,” The Independent, (January 17, 1992).
21. Bernard Henry Levy led the way, on the side of the French, and Rachid Boujedra and Khalida Massoudi led the way, on the Algerian side. Incidentally, Boujedra who wrote FIS de la haine, (Paris: Gallimard, 1994) happens to be touring American universities as these lines are being written. The tour, according to the leaflet distributed in Macalester College (MN), lists the French Embassy as one of the sponsors. One cannot help but note that the intellectual who helped justify eradication policies in Algeria in the 1990s is being paraded in the United States now when Washington is in need of solid justifications for its “redirection” policies…
22. See Fouzi Slisli, “The Western Media and the Algerian Crisis,” Race and Class, (Vol. 41, No. 3, 2000), pp. 43-57.
23. Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection.”
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Mirella Hodeib, “Geagea launches Broadside at Nasrallah,” The Daily Star, (April 11, 2007).
27. Joseph Massad, “Pinochet in Palestine,” Al-Ahram Weekly, (November 9-15, 2006).
28. “Christian Library, Internet Café Bombed in Gaza,” AFP, (April 15, 2007) <http://news.yahoo. com/s/afp/20070415/wl_mideast_afp/mideastunrest>, retrieved on April 16, 2007.
29. Nidal al-Mughrabi, “BBC ‘concerned’ by Claim Gaza Correspondent Killed,” Reuters, (April 15, 2007)< http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070415/ wl_nm/palestinians_journalist_dc> Retrieved on April 16, 2007.
30. Warren Strobel, “US. Steps up Campaign against Syrian Government,” McClatchy Newspapers, (March 30, 2007); see also Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection.”
31. William Lowther and Colin Freeman, “US Funds Terror Groups to Sow Terror in Iran.”