The Dark Sahara

Jeremy Keenan

Description

This book reveals the secret US agenda behind the 'war on terror' in Africa and the shocking methods used to perpetuate the myth that the region is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism.



Africa expert Jeremy Keenan points to overwhelming evidence suggesting that, from 2003, the Bush administration and Algerian government were responsible for hostage takings blamed on Islamic militants. This created a permissive public attitude, allowing the US to establish military bases in the region and pursue multiple imperial objectives in the name of security.



The shocking revelations in this book undermine the mainstream view of Africa as a legitimate 'second front' in the 'war on terror'.
Introduction

The Dossier

Missing

1. The Sahara's Bermuda Triangle

2. Reconstructing Tora Bora

3. 'Whodunit'

4. Grounds for suspicion in the Algerian Sahara

5. Grounds for suspicion in the Sahel

6. Who was El Para?

7. Oil and Empire

8. Algeria's black decade

9. Islamists and Eradicators: Algeria's 'Dirty War'

10. The Banana theory of terrorism

11. Preparing the disinformation

12. The nature of US intelligence

13. 'Blowback' and resistance

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Desierto del Sahara
• Sahara
• Sahel
• Guerre contre le terrorisme
• Groupe islamique armé
• United States European Command
• Islam
• United States Africa Command
• Niger
• Maghreb
• Algérie
• General
• Religion
• Algeria
• GIA
• Terrorism
• Tuareg people
• General officer
• Geopolitics
• AFRICOM
• War on Terror
• Pentagon
• Magreb
• Tuareg
• Comando África de Estados Unidos
• Philosophie et théologie
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Political Freedom

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849642828
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Dark Sahara

About the Author

From theTimes Literary Supplement: ‘Jeremy Keenan, like the Tuareg, is his own man: brave, authoritative and a master of his environment by dint of scholarship and experience.’ Jeremy Keenan is a Professor of Social Anthropology and an internationally recognised authority on the Sahara and its peoples. He first visited the Tuareg of southern Algeria in 1964. Between then and 1972 he spent almost three years with them, learning their language and travelling literally thousands of miles on foot and camel through much of the Central Sahara. Few Europeans know the great desert better. The studies he undertook then comprised his PhD thesis (1972) and were published in his seminal work:The Tuareg. People of Ahaggar (Allen Lane Penguin 1977). Subsequent work, first on apartheid, poverty, conflict and underdevelopment in southern Africa, and then on the problems of the economic, social and political transition of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, alongside the development of the European Union, kept him away from North Africa until the mid1990s, by which time Algeria’s ‘civil war’ was at its height. However, following the ‘election’ of Bouteflika as Algeria’s President in 1999, Keenan was able to return to the Sahara. For the last decade, his research has focused almost exclusively on developments, notably the ‘war on terror’, in the Saharan and Sahelian regions of Algeria, Niger and Mali, but with extensive travels in both Libya and Mauritania and with an eye on Chad, Western Sahara, Morocco and Tunisia, while being attached, in a somewhat nomadic style, to the universities of Cambridge, East Anglia, Exeter, Bristol and SOAS. Jeremy Keenan’s writings on the Sahara are extensive and authoritative. Sahara Man: Travelling with the Tuareg(John Murray) was published in 2001, with a paperback edition in 2003 and a US edition in 2004.The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar(Sickle Moon) was republished in 2002. These were followed byThe Lesser Gods of the Sahara: Social Change and Contested Terrain amongst the Tuareg of Algeria(Cass 2004 & Routledge 2005) andThe Sahara: Past, Present & Future(Routledge 2007). Further research and writing on the Sahara and its peoples is found in 18 book chapters, over 40 peerreviewed journal articles and 15 professional reports, as well as numerous radio and TV broadcasts and other media reports. He has made 5 fulllength TV documentary films on the Sahara. Travelling with Tuareg (2006) andThe Lesser Gods (2006) were shot in Algeria whileA Forgotten Civilisation(2007) andUnder the Waters Earth(2007) focus on Libya’s ‘lost’ civilisation of the Garamantes and Libya’s rich cultural heritage respectively. He advises several ‘international consultancies’ on Saharan political and security matters, as well as a number of NGOs, including the IWGIA, UNHCR and other UN agencies, media organisations, mining and oil companies. He also briefs a number of governments, including the US State Department and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The Dark Sahara America’s War on Terror in Africa

JEREMY KEENAN

PLUTO PRESS www.plutobooks.com

First published 2009 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

www.plutobooks.com

Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Copyright © Jeremy Keenan 2009

The right of Jeremy Keenan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN ISBN

978 0 7453 2453 1 978 0 7453 2452 4

Hardback Paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70 per cent postconsumer waste.

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Glossary Maps

Introduction The Dossier

Missing  1 The Sahara’s Bermuda Triangle  Kidnapped: by Smugglers or Islamists?  Mokhtar ben Mokhtar, Hassan Hattab and the GSPC  The First Release of Hostages  Transferring the Hostages to Mali  The Final Hostage Release  2 Reconstructing Tora Bora  A New Front in the Global War on Terror  Expanding the GWOT Across the Sahel  3 ‘Whodunit’  The Suspicions of the Tuareg  Local Knowledge and Research Methodology  A Diabolical Intelligence Deception  4 Grounds for Suspicion in the Algerian Sahara  Kidnapped on the ‘Graveyard Piste’  The Hostage Liberation  ‘No Assault, No Islamists, No Victims, No Ransom!’  Who Ordered the Kidnapping?  The Journey from Tamelrik to Mali  The Hostage Release in Mali

x xiii xv xviii

1 10 13 15 17 21 26 28 31

33 33 36 42 42 45 50 54 54 59 62 64 66 71

vi THE DARK SAHARA

 5 Grounds for Suspicion in the Sahel  Alleged ‘Terrorism’ in Southern Algeria:  August 2003 to Early 2004  Military Engagements Flush the GSPC Out of Mali  The ‘Holdup’ of Tourists in Ar  El Para’s Journey to Chad  6 Who was El Para?  The ‘Truths’ of El Para  El Para’s Biographies  El Para as a DRS Agent  El Para as a US ‘Green Beret’?  Phantasmal Terrorists  El Para’s Communications  El Para’s Extradition to Algeria and Trial  The Last Word on El Para?  7 Oil and Empire  America’s Energy Crisis  The Cheney Report  The Importance of African Oil to the US

 8 Algeria’s ‘Black Decade’  The Economic Crisis of the Mid 1980s  From Economic to Political Crisis: 1988–1992  A Military Coup by Any Other Name  9 Islamists and Eradicators: Algeria’s ‘Dirty War’  Who is Killing Who?  The Beginning of Armed Conflict  International Support for the Algerian Regime  The Nonideological, ‘Financial’ Dimension of  ‘Total War’  State Terrorism and ‘Dirty Tricks’ 10 The ‘Banana Theory’ of Terrorism  The Reagan Administration’s ‘War on International  Terrorism’  New, Post2000, US–Algerian Relations

vi

7

4

75 76 82 86 94 94 97 98 101 103 105 111 114

116 116 118 122

132 133 136 138

142 142 147 150

151 153 158

158 161

CONTENTS vii

 The Opportunity of 9/11  US Tardy on Algerian Arms Sales  Origins of the ‘Banana Theory’  A New Era in US–Algerian Intelligence Relations  Arak, October 2002: the First Attempt at Hostage  Taking  Planning for the PanSahel Initiative (PSI) 11 Preparing the Disinformation  Contextual Analysis of Algeria’s ‘Disinformation’  What Did the Americans Know?  The Alliance Base: Paris  Justification for the GWOT and the Link With Iraq 12 The Nature of US Intelligence  An Absence of Terrorism in the Sahel  ‘Backoftheenvelope’ Intelligence  Confusing Pakistanis: the Tablighi JamaatMovement  Inadequate HUMINT  Parallels with Iraq  Complicit in Conspiracy 13 ‘Blowback’ and Resistance  The Tuareg Take Up Arms  The Dying Sahara  Proof by Reiteration

Notes List of Jeremy Keenan’s Works Index

164 165 167 170

172 174 176 178 188 191 192

196 196 197 198 199 201 202

204 207 208 210

212 254 260

In memory of

Mokhtar

without whom this book neither would not nor could not have been written