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Another "Al Qaeda" affiliate takes its cues from the U.S.  2012

 

Another "Al Qaeda" affiliate takes its cues from the U.S

 

CIA and MI-6 behind Algeria "terrorist" attack


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PROGRESSIVE / LIBERAL ISLAM REFERENCE ECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALISM
  • Ahmed Baba Institute Operation Timbuktu, ancient texts reveal Africa's academic past.  search terms: written history as old as European Renaissance, manuscripts from 13th century buried in the sand to hide them from Moroccan invaders, European explorers and French colonialists, Golden Age calligraphy, astrology, mathematics in Timbuktu,  Andalusian music, trans-Saharan trade routes, text will force the West to accept Africa has an intellectual history as old as its own, 

go to Page 2   Sudan

  • Africa2000 News sources.
  • Africa Confidential, Sudan Chronology.   Bush's policy in Sudan touches: Big Oil and the Religious Right
  • AfroNet Largest collection of African American links on net
  • Africa Republic, World News by regions, sectors
  • African Unification Front
  • AlertNet, Reuters
  • Build Africa news, forums, Country pages 
  • Catholic Relief Org
  • Congokin, news, forums
  • Ethno-Net Africa monitor democratic governance, peace, ethnic conviviality in Africa
  • The Express, Online, The Paper that Means Business, Tanzania
  • Find Africa news, discussion, business, search.
  • Global Guerillas MEND, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, search terms: Royal Dutch Shell, This Day, OPEC, President Obasanjo, corruption.  
  • IRIN News UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
  • Library of Congress Country Study 
  • MENAFN The Middle East North Africa Financial Network, Inc.
  • Operation Timbuktu, ancient texts reveal Africa's academic past.  search terms: written history as old as European Renaissance, manuscripts from 13th century buried in the sand to hide them from Moroccan invaders, European explorers and French colonialists, Golden Age calligraphy, astrology, mathematics in Timbuktu, Ahmed Baba Institute,  Andalusian music, trans-Saharan trade routes, text will force the West to accept Africa has an intellectual history as old as its own, 
  • PanaPress African Perspective
  • Press Digest international and multilingual news 
  • University of Pennsylvania, African Studies mission, resources, projects.
  • University of Valencia, English Rafael Pla-Lopez page, Africa, Zaire.
  • United Nations
  • Notes: Wayne Madsen Reports: "April 16, 2006 -- Hypocrisy at Foggy Bottom. No sooner had Chad's President Idriss Deby threatened to cut off the flow of oil to the West via the Exxon-Mobil Chad-Cameroon pipeline, rebels from neighboring Sudan launched an attack on Chad's capital, N'Djamena. All along, Deby has been an ally of the Bush administration in the battle against pan-Sahelian rebels who were linked to the so-called "Al Qaeda" global terrorist bogeyman. Not only did Deby receive military assistance from Washington, but U.S. advisers have helped train his troops. However, when Deby got into a tiff with the Wolfowitz-run World Bank over oil revenues, he found himself facing armed rebels massed on the outskirts of his capital. Wolfowitz cut off oil revenues to Chad after Deby said he wanted to money to fight the rebels. France, which is opposed to growing U.S. hegemony in Africa, sent fighters to bomb the rebel encampments. In a display of pure Bush-Cheney hypocrisy, it was discovered that the U.S.-supported Chadian "rebels," called the "United Front for Change," were supported by Sudan and its genocidal paramilitary forces in Darfur. This, after statement after statement by the State Department that it condemned the genocide by Sudan in Darfur. The Chad-Sudan situation demonstrates how the neo-cons intend to use the World Bank to suppress the poorest people in the world in order to enrich the coffers of the wealthiest."
RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM
  • WMR October 18-19, 2011 -- UPDATE. Uganda opposition to Museveni responds to Obama's troop deployment    ...   The Ugandan opposition to that nation's long-serving U.S.-supported dictator Yoweri Museveni have pointed out that President Barack Obama, Jr.'s intervention in Uganda's long-running civil war against Museveni has exposed Obama's willingness to use his African tribal connections to Kenya's Luo tribe to commit U.S. forces to an inter-African conflict. With large Ugandan oil reserves now being discovered, it was easy for Obama's oil industry financiers to convince the half-Kenyan Luo tribesman in the White House to back Museveni's forces against the Lord's Resistance Army of Joseph Kony. Our Ugandan sources point out that Kony ceased being a factor in the anti-Museveni movement in northern Uganda some years ago. Kony first went into opposition against Museveni in 1987, a year after Museveni came to power.    ...   Museveni has been in power so long, the first American president he dealt with was Ronald Reagan.    ...   Obama, in supporting Museveni, has also lined up with Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, whose father, Oginga Odinga, was a cousin of Obama's Kenyan Luo father, Barack H. Obama, Sr. Ugandan opposition sources point out that African tribal politics have now entered the Oval Office of the White House with Obama's commitment of armed U.S. troops to a country that lies just across the shore of Lake Victoria from his Luo tribal homeland in northwestern Kenya. The Luo have an ethnic affinity with many of the Ugandan tribes.    ...   Obama is attempting to secure Uganda's vast oil, natural gas, and gold reserves for the United States, according to WMR's sources in Uganda and Kenya. The introduction of Kenyan military troops in Somalia, the stationing of a U.S. Air Force bomber squadron in Ethiopia for Somalia operations, and the agreement with the NATO-installed Libyan government to permit the U.S. to establish an airbase in Libya, near the border with Sudan, is all part of a major military move by the United States into oil-rich areas of Africa.    ...   In addition, these plans have been on the drawing board for years. In the early 1990s, Maurice Tempelsman and his corporate colleagues at the Corporate Council on Africa expressed a desire for former Ugandan President Godfrey Binaisa to succeed Museveni as president of Uganda. However, Binaisa was required to approve a long list of concessions to U.S. and western oil and mining companies. Binaisa refused, so the western corporations remained allied with Museveni and support him to this day, now with U.S. combat troops and a build-up of additional U.S. military forces in Ethiopia, Djibouti, South Sudan, and Kenya.    ...   Raila Odinga, Obama's distant cousin, who believes homosexuals should be jailed, has managed to obtain International Criminal Court indictments against his political opposition, including the son of Kenya's founder Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu who discriminated against the Luos, including Odinga, Sr., Obama, Sr., and Obama Sr.'s mentor, Tom Mboya. Raila Odinga's anti-homosexual stance is supported by Museveni in Uganda and one bill introduced in Uganda's rubber stamp parliament would put gays to death.    ...   Obama's commitment of U.S. troops to settle scores in a wider inter-tribal conflict in his ancestral has called into question his abuse of his authority as commander-in-chief.    ...   Odinga, whose George Soros-funded Orange Democratic Movement was installed after a rift with President Mwai Kibaki, has managed to see to it that two prospective presidential opponents, Uhuru Kenyatta, the founder of Kenya's son, and William Ruto, stand indicted before the ICC in The Hague. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, a stooge of Soros and the United States, has carried thw West's water when it comes to selective prosecutions of those who oppose U.S. hegemonic designs in Africa. Museveni's guerrilla opponent, Joseph Kony, now targeted by U.S. troops, also stands indicted by the ICC, along with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and ousted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. The fact that U.S. clients like Museveni, Odinga, Rwanda's Paul Kagame, and Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi have gone unindicted by the ICC, provides an example at the bias of the court and its political nature.    ...   The actual goal of the U.S. troops now streaming into Uganda and the U.S. Air Force bombers now stationed in Ethiopia is to bring about the division of the remainder of Sudan into four states, ripe for plunder by the United States and the West. U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, who has had a pathological hatred for the regime in Khartoum ever since her days in the Clinton administration, has championed the break-up of Sudan, which began in July with independence for South Sudan as a virtual vassal state of the United States, Israel, and Uganda. There are currently plans to build an oil pipeline from South Sudan through Kenya to the port of Mombasa. The introduction of Kenyan troops into Somalia is intended to protect the Somali-Kenyan border, and the pipeline route, from Islamist guerrilla activity. Rice is expected by many to follow the path of her god-mother Madeleine Albright and ascend from the UN ambassadorship to the Secretary of State position in a second Obama administration. According to Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian sources, it is the plan of Rice and others to further divide Sudan into four independent states: Abyei, the Nuba Mountain State, Darfur, and the remainder of Sudan with its capital in Khartoum. The division of Sudan into five parts from its original status would enable the West to easily control the nation's vast oil and mineral resources and deny the resources to China. 
  • WMR  September 9-11, 2011 -- U.S. ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads  ...   WMR has been informed by reliable sources that the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, is the key State Department official who has been responsible for recruiting Arab "death squads" from Al Qaeda-affiliated units in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya to fight against Syrian military and police forces in embattled Syria. Ford served as the Political Officer at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006 under Ambassador John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte was a key figure in the covert U.S. program to arm the Nicaraguan contras and his support for vicious paramilitary units in El Salvador and Honduras earned him the nickname of "Mr. Death Squad."    ...   Negroponte tasked Ford with implementing the "El Salvador option" in Iraq, the use of Iraqi Shi'a irregulars and Kurdish Pesh Merga paramilitary forces to target for assassination and kidnapping/torture Iraqi insurgency leaders in Iraq and across the border in Syria. The operation was named for Negroponte's death squad operation in Central America in the 1980s.    ...   Ford has become the point man in the recruitment of Arabs and Muslims from the Middle East and beyond to battle against the security forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.S.-backed terrorists have not only carried out attacks on Syrian security forces but have also massacred civilians in "false flag" operations later blamed on Syrian government forces. WMR has been informed that Ford's operations in Syria are being carried out with the assistance of Israel's Mossad.    ...   The "El Salvador" option has also been used in Libya, where Al Qaeda irregulars, drawn from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, have been carrying out murders of Libyan civilians, especially black Libyans and African guest workers, on behalf of the Libyan rebel government. Some of the murders of civilians have been blamed on pro-Muammar Qaddafi forces but they have, in fact, been carried out by Al Qaeda units fighting with the rebels and which are being directed by CIA and MI-6 advisers. Ford has been providing advice to the Libyan rebels on how to carry out their death squad attacks.    ...   From 2006 to 2008, Ford served as U.S. ambassador to Algeria, a nation that opposes the Libyan rebel government and a nation that has begun to see a re-surgence of "Al Qaeda" terrorist attacks against Algerian government targets. In fact, Algeria is viewed as the next domino to fall as the U.S. seeks to establish total military and political hegemony over North Africa.    ...   WMR has learned from a source who was recently in Libya that the Libyan rebel transitional government has agreed to allow the U.S. to establish permanent military bases in Libya, including on the Algerian border. The rebels have also agreed to permit an American to serve as the chief political officer for the planned Libyan transitional advisory body due to be organized by NATO and the United Nations. The body will be modeled on the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. 
  • Wayne Madsen Report "Mugabe's secretive relations with Israel publication date: Apr 28, 2008 Previous | April 28, 2008 -- Mugabe's secretive relations with Israel.  Ask a member of Zimbabwe's political opposition what country is blamed the most for supporting Zimbabwe's autocratic president, Robert Mugabe, and you would hear an interesting response. While China has recently been criticized for trying unsuccessfully to off-load arms for Mugabe from a Chinese ship that was turned away in southern African ports, it is Israel that has maintained a close security relationship with Mugabe over the years. ...  Mugabe's relations with Israel have grown close even though Mugabe has favorably compared himself to Adolf Hitler and has been a strong supporter of the Palestinians. ... According to U.S. Defense Department sources, the Zimbabwe opposition blames Israel more than China for propping up Mugabe with security assistance and military equipment. ... In 2002, prior to contested elections, Israel sold riot control vehicles to Zimbabwe. These vehicles assisted in putting down opposition demonstrations against what was then called a fraudulent election rigged by Mugabe. Israeli security firms also provide assistance to Mugabe." more search terms: opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC), software, Mossad, voter registration lists, rigged elections, Cogniview, Ezer, Tsvangirai, Canada, Ari Ben-Menashe, entrap Tsvangirai, Democratic Republic of Congo, gold, diamonds, platinum, protected my Zimbawe military, Democratic Alliance South African Jews, Tony Leon, Helen Zille,
  • WMR   June 20, 2011 -- The blackmail used to inch Germany into the Libya campaign ...   For decades, the CIA has been in possession of documents proving that Libya's chemical weapons program benefitted from the assistance of West German firms. Germany abstained on UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized "any means" necessary to prevent the death of civilians in Libya's civil war, which the U.S. and NATO quickly adopted as a green light for regime change in Libya through the assassination of its leader Muammar Qaddafi.    ...   To counter German resistance to UN and NATO action against Libya, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was told by President Obama that she and her country would be embarrassed if some of the details of Germany's involvement in Libya's nerve and mustard gas weapons program were "leaked" to the media. WMR learned in Libya that the blackmail of Germany by the U.S. and NATO worked and that Germany decided to step up its role in the Libyan war effort, although not to the extent desired by Washington, London, or Paris. In fact, the Germans want nothing reported about the continued presence in Libya of chemical weapons stocks turned over by Libya to the UN and U.S. but still await disposal. Libyan troops were placed in charge of the security for the chemical weapons stocks after Libya's 2003 agreement with the U.S. and UN to turn over its stockpiles. However, since NATO began bombing Libyan military bases, some of which are adjacent to the chemical weapons warehouses, there is a fear that the weapons could fall into the hands of Libyan rebels, some of whom are "Al Qaeda" and "mujaheddin" veterans of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Germany fears that its role in providing the chemical weapons technology to Libya might be revealed if the rebels gain control of the warehouses.    ...   Libyan chemical weapons production was centered at the "Pharma 150" plant at Rabta, construction of which began in 1984. One of the primary firms involved in Rabta's construction was Imhausen-Chemie of Lahr/Schwarzwald, Germany. Assisting Inhausen were some thirty other West German firms, in addition to Belgian, Singapore, South African, and French companies, the Schweizerischen Kreditanstalt Bank of Zurich, and Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Switzerland subsidiaries of Imhausen. Assisting Imhaussen at Rabta was Japanese Steel Works and Marubeni of Japan, both of which masked chemical weapons production equipment sent to Rabta as desalinization plant materials. Some 200 construction workers from Thailand were also involved in the building of the Rabta complex.    ...   Among the other West German firms supplying Libya's chemical weapons plant at Rabta were Abacus, Alfred Teves GmbH, Bischoff, Deutsche Bank, Drebs und Kiefer, Merck, Gesellschaft fur Automation, Heberger Bau, Hunnebeck, J. Sartorius, Kone, Krebs and Kefier, Linde, Pawling and Harnishchfeger, Preussag, Raab Karcher, Rhenus, Rose GmbH, Salzgitter Indistriebau GmbH, Siemens, Thyssen, Webac, and Zink.    ...   Imhausen partnered with a Frankfurt-based firm, IIhsan Barbouti International (IBI), headed by Ihsan Barbouti, a native of Iraq and resident of London who was supplying chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.    ...   A Danish firm, DISA, supplied the foundry for Rabta's chemical bomb making capability, which may explain why Denmark's fanatically pro-business government has joined the NATO bombing campaign in Libya. The destruction of evidence pointing to how NATO and other European nations helped Libya develop chemical weapons may explain the involvement of a raft of NATO countries in the Libya military campaign and the reticence of European nations to discuss the present security problems with NATO's bombing of Libyan military bases that have the added responsibility of providing security for the adjacent warehouses containing chemical weapons and pre-cursor materials.    ...   Belgium's Flaekt Company provided Rabta a cooling tower, while De Dietrich, a French company, provided glass lined cauldrons. Ironbridge, J.G. Trading, and Tosalex Trading of the United Kingdom were involved in shipping and contracting for Rabta.   ...   Phillips Petroleum of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, supplied thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor chemical. Energoinvest of Yugoslavia supplied Rabta's power station, East Germany's VEB provided Rabta's steel production capabilities, and Lampart of Hungary and Peterlee of Italy also supplied materials to Rabta.    ...   There are Western intelligence elements in Tripoli that wish to see the roles of NATO nations at Rabta consigned to the ash heap of history. They made their intentions and interests quite clear during a conference in Tripoli at which the security dangers of Libyan rebels, many of whom are radical Islamist Salafists, pose to the warehoused chemicals being protected by central Libyan government military forces under the 2003 agreement with the United States and UN.    
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  • WMR October 21-23, 2011 -- With end of Qaddafi, AFRICOM readies its permanent military presence in Africa     ...    As the so-called "Christian" leaders of the Western nations continue to celebrate the brutal execution of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi at the hands of Libya's NATO-armed rebels, the bulldozers and other heavy equipment are building what is expected to become the permanent military headquarters for the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in the heart of the African continent.    ...    Informed WMR sources report that construction is now underway for a large U.S. air base near Bangoka International Airport in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo. The main contractor being employed is a long-time Belgian businessman, arms dealer, and mercenary in Congo who once supported the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko.    ...    With Qaddafi's wealth and aid largesse no longer a factor in blocking the Pentagon's push into Africa, theAFRICOM air base in Kisangani will serve as the hub for U.S. military operations in Africa, with the primary mission being the protection of U.S. oil and mining interests that are tasked, along with AFRICOM, with the securing of African oil, natural gas, precious metals and gems, and rare earth minerals from control by China.    ...    The northern regional headquarters for AFRICOM is planned for an annex to the new Tripoli International Airport, a project begun by Qaddafi to turn Tripoli into the major air hub for Africa.    ...     The CIA and its George Soros-funded "democracy manipulators" have gotten behind Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the only African leader who has invited AFRICOM to set up its headquarters and main base in her country. For that reason, the CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, and Soros's network of election and media manipulators have descended on Monrovia to ensure that Johnson Sirleaf is elected in the second round of presidential voting over her opponent Winston Tubman. The Liberian opposition has already claimed massive vote fraud by Johnson Sirleaf, a recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. AFRICOM is looking at Liberia as the regional West African headquarters for AFRICOM, with Tripoli International Airport serving as the North African headquarters, Addis Ababa as the Horn of Africa headquarters, and Botswana as the southern African headquarters.    ...   African nations that have received large aid grants and subsidies from Qaddafi and which now stand to suffer economically -- Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Chad -- are now being offered standard usurious World Bank aid grants with the provision that they succumb to the dictates of AFRICOM and western multinational firms.    ...    The U.S. base construction activity was tipped off in a leaked State Department cable, dated February 2, 2010, from the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa to the Department of State, with copies to the CIA; Defense Intelligence Agency; US European Command in Vaihingen, Germany; and the Joint Analysis Center at Royal Air Force Base Molesworth, UK -- a major U.S. intelligence base. With the subject of "A U.S.-trained Infantry Battalion: Cornerstone of GDRC National Defense Strategy?" the cable states: "A USG [U.S. government] effort to construct a training facility in Kisangani to train a professional light infantry battalion appears to be a major cornerstone of developing the Kisangani zone. Construction of the training center continues, with phase II training scheduled to commence at the facility on February 17. Cooperation with the Kisangani area military and political officials has been far better than expected. A local contractor showed poloff the blueprint for a planned new presidential retreat near Kisangani, an indication that the President [Kabila] may plan to spend more time in this strategic city."    ...    The "local contractor" who the U.S. embassy "poloff" [political officer] met, was, according to our sources, the Belgian weapons smuggler who previously worked for Mobutu, the dictator installed by the CIA after the assassination of Congolese nationalist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961.    ...    The cable continues: "The USG program, implemented by AFRICOM and private contractors, called for a multi-phase training regimen beginning with FARDC [armed forces of the DRC] officer and non-commissioned officer leadership and staff training followed by battalion maneuvers integrating junior soldiers."    ...   The cable then proceeds the describe what was billed as a training facility but what, in fact, will become a massive military air base and AFRICOM's continental headquarters: "(C) The training installation, currently referred to as Camp Base, is situated 10 kilometers northeast of Kisangani city center along the main road leading from the Kisangani International Airport. The site is approximately two kilometers from the main road, connected by a hard-packed red dirt road at the intersection of which is a squad-sized 10-person canvas tent with cots for FARDC military police who maintain internal security. Local contractors with FARDC engineer support constructed the road, which is capable of two-way traffic at speeds of between 60-80 kilometers per hour and remains passable even during heavy rains. Camp Base is a rudimentary site with ongoing renovations and new construction projects. Engineers razed approximately eight buildings in various KINSHASA 00000031 002 OF 003 stages of disrepair in addition to leveling terrain for bivouac sites. Clearing of tall grasses and clumps of trees uncovered colonial roads, two of which were refurbished for use as interior roads. The physical plant will eventually consist of a bivouac site with cement floors, an internal cantonment area for family members accompanying soldiers-in-training, a firing range, and an administrative building for instructors. Another portion of the site houses an agricultural project that will enable the training center to produce their own provisions, thus removing a potential source of strain between soldiers and the nearby community."    ...   The cable also reveals that the Americans are masking their base construction operations by using local, for-hire transportation rather than official military or diplomatic vehicles: "USG visitors and American contractors use local for-hire vehicles at that remote location"    ...   No matter how much the U.S. has tried to hide the massive base construction project from the locals, the cable alsor reveals that the local residents of Kisangani have not been fooled: "(SBU) During poloff's visit to Kisangani, Mayor Guy Shilton Baendo Tofuli Molanga said he welcomed the training site on the outskirts of his city. There have been no problems with the recently arrived officers and NCOs, though some in local civil society misperceive (and some, perhaps, mischievously so) Camp Base as a U.S. military installation."    ...   The CIA Kinshasa station chief, known in the cables as "poloff," believes that it is "mischievous" for the true nature of Camp Base to be revealed.    ...    However, the remainder of the "smoking gun" cable reveals the entire base operation, along with the name of the Mobutu-era businessman who is building the AFRICOM headquarters in the jungle.    ...   "Poloff noted that the U.S. training program emphasizes citizen skills as well as soldier skills and suggested the Camp Base flag pole, which naturally flies the Congolese flag, should be extended to visibly address concerns of the surrounding population. Orientale Province Governor Medard Autsai Asenga's assistance resolved a politically sensitive problem: cutting the grass at the airport. Only one runway met safety specification standards for takeoff and landing of U.S. military cargo aircraft, but that runway was overrun with undergrowth. Airport authorities rejected USG requests to clear the airstrip citing understaffing and competing priorities. Governor Autsai personally intervened with the administrators resulting in an airfield able to receive USG planes with necessary equipment to complete a fully operating base. The full contingent would also exceed field expedient methods of sanitation, leading to a local contract for mess and latrine facilities with the owner of a wide-ranging local enterprise, BEGO-Congo.    ...   (C) BEGO-Congo is owned by Jean-Marie Bergesio, a Belgian and life-long resident of the DRC. American contractors and USG officials stay at his atmospheric hotel in Kisangani. Bergesio is well connected in provincial politics and has an adopted Congolese son well-placed in the national police headquarters in Kinshasa contributing to both police protection and political access. Indeed, an American contractor in Kisangani showed poloff photos of a site under construction by Bergesio for President Kabila. Once completed, the sprawling complex would be a presidential retreat approximately 10-15 kilometers upriver from Kisangani."    ...   Known before independence as Stanleyville, Kisangani is an historic city where the Lingala-speaking and Swahili-speaking regions of the Congo converge. Until recently it was also the lynchpin of the nation's economy and served as Kinshasa's main nexus to the eastern provinces because it is home to the Congo River's last port before the river is no longer navigable. To be truly effective, the plan requires currently nonexistent force projection and/or air reconnaissance assets."    ...   There is one fly in the ointment for the AFRICOM plans. Apparently, Rwanda's U.S.-installed client-dictator, Paul Kagame, is not keen on seeing AFRICOM located in the DRC. Kagame has, for well over a decade, been the Pentagon's point man and contract pass-through (with a handsome percentage) for U.S. military operations in the DRC. Because of Kagame's meddling in AFRICOM's plans, the CIA recently decided that it is time for Kagame to be overthrown in a coup. However, Kagame's use of the Rwandan genocide to burnish his international public relations and "human rights" credentials has earned him powerful friends in the Holocaust arena and the Israel Lobby/Jewish community. For that reason, the CIA has contracted with a well-known Mossad front company with offices in the Georgetown area of Washington, DC and close links to the American Jewish Committee and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the White House Public Liaison Office to organize the deposing of Kagame without a push-back from Kagame's influential Jewish friends in Washington and New York political, financial, and media circles.
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WMR  - Another "Al Qaeda" affiliate takes its cues from the U.S.    April 9-11, 2012 -
Just as the Obama White House and George Soros-linked "themed" Jasmine and Lotus revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, respectively, opened Libya up for a foreign-inspired revolution against Muammar Qaddafi, the recent military coup d'etat in the west African nation of Mali stands to export another "themed" revolution across Mali's porous northern border into Algeria. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, along with Iraq, Syria, and South Yemen, all have one thing in common: they were once citadels of Arab socialist and/or Nasserite political power. With Saddam Hussein and his Baath Socialists gone in Iraq, Bashar al Assad's Baath Socialists on the ropes in Syria, Neo-Destour socialists gone in Tunisia, the old Marxists in South Yemen now being branded as "Al Qaeda" affiliates, and Nasserite regimes ousted in Egypt and Libya, only Algeria and its vestiges of National Liberation Front Nasserite political control remains.

The recent military coup in Mali, followed by the voluntary abrogation of power by military junta leader CaptainbAmadou Sanogo, has ushered into the presidency the speaker of the Malian parliament Dioncounda Traore. President Amadou Toumami Toure, ousted by the military coup leaders, resigned as president in a deal worked out between the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has served in the past as military surrogates for France, Britain, Portugal, and the United States in their former colonies of Ivory Coast, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone. Many ECOWAS top military officers from various west African states have been trained under the auspices of the U.S. International Military Education and Training (IMET) program and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

One of the major forces behind the transfer of power from the junta to Traore in Bamako, the Malian capital, is Burkina Faso President Blaise Campaore, who assassinated his predecessor, Thomas Sankara, in a 1987 coup. Sankara, a left-wing progressive who rejected the interference of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in his country, was often described as the "Che Guevara" of Africa. Campaore's coup was facilitated by the CIA and French intelligence at the same time Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was engaged in World Bank activities in neighboring Ghana.

WMR's sources in the Middle East and Africa have confirmed that Mali is merely a stepping stone for future NATO "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) aggression aimed at toppling Algeria's government. An obscure "Al Qaeda" affiliate called the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (as artifical as Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia) has claimed credit for kidnapping seven Algerian diplomats from the Algerian consulate in Gao, in what is now in the newly-proclaimed independent state of Azawad, declared by Tuareg rebels who are being reported as linked to the former forces of Qaddafi in Libya. However, the Tuaregs have, since Mali's independence from France, claimed that the former colonial authorities reneged on the promise of a Tuareg homeland in the wide Saharan expanses of the former French West Africa.

ECOWAS, NATO, and their puppets in Bamako are now claiming that the new state of Azawad, which claims control of Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal, and declared by the Azawad National Liberation Front, is being overrun by "Al Qaeda" forces of the Ansar Dine Islamist movement. Ansar Dine is being described by western media reports of being an offshoot of "Al Qaeda" and imposing sharia law in Gao, Timbuktu, and other towns and cities in Tuareg-controlled territory in northern Mali. There are news reports of Ansar Dine's "ominous" black flag appearing on buildings in Gao and Timbuktu, replacing that of the Azawad National Liberation Front.

Interestingly, the "Al Qaeda" militants of Ansar Dine are on the same page in rejecting the independence declaration of Azawad. Aawad's independence is also being rejected by France, the United States, ECOWAS, and Morocco, as well as the United Nations, putting the West and ECOWAS in the same camp as the Islamist militants. It is a carbon copy of the joint "Al Qaeda" and Salafist coalition with the West and the Gulf Arab states as previously seen in Libya, and now, in Syria.

French surrogates like Campaore and Ivory Coast's French-installed president Alassane Ouattara are now at the forefront of leaders calling for a joint Malian-ECOWAS military force to seize control of Azawad from the Tuareg secessionists. However, once ECOWAS troops, supported by NATO forces, enter the Saharan territory of Azawad, many independent observers believe the ECOWAS troops and their NATO allies will not stop at the Malian border with Algeria but claim that the Tuaregs are receiving support from the Algerian side of the border and use the false claim as a pretext for conducting aggressive R2P operations inside Algerian territory.

While NATO supported the secession of South Sudan from Sudan and have turned a blind eye to Cyrenaica's declaration of autonomy from Libya, they have taken an aggressive posture toward Tuareg rebels in Mali, Niger, Libya, and other countries. The Sahara is known to possess vast reserves of natural gas, with southern Algeria now serving as a major focal point for natural gas drilling and production.

It is also important to note that on June 17, 2008, the U.S. embassy in Bamako, the Malian capital, held discussions with Ansar Dine leader Cheikh Cherif Ousmane Madani Haidara, the vice-president of Mali's High Islamic Council and the leader of Ansar Dine. The Ansar Dine leader was described in a leaked U.S. embassy cable, dated June 19, 2008, as the leader of the "extremely popular" Ansar Dine movement. Ansar Dine is now described by the U.S. government as an affiliate of "Al Qaeda."

Haidara is also described in the cable as favoring "democratic openness and anti-corruption since the late 1980s when Mali's former military dictator Moussa Traore banned him from preaching." One excerpt from the cable flatly rejects any links between Haidara and Ansar Dine and the Wahhabist Al Qaeda and states that Ansar Dine is more closely associated with the Muslim Sufi sect, a branch of Islam that is despised by the Wahhabis and their patrons in Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states: "ANSAR DINE is not associated with any particular religious persuasion beyond a general adherence to Sunnism. In Mali individuals who describe themselves as simply Sunni in order to distance themselves from Sufi traditions often belong to Mali's ahl-al-Sunna or 'Wahhabi' community. Although Haidara's philosophy and preaching generally tracks with Sufi tenets, he is not interested in the semantic differences between the Tidjaniyya, Hamaliyya and Quadriyya which comprise Mali's three major Sufi traditions. 'They are all the same,' said Haidara when asked if he adhered to one Sufi persuasion. 'There is no difference between one and the other.'"

More interesting is the fact that the U.S. Agency for International Developmennt (USAID), a virtual arms of the CIA, agreed to provide training to thousands of teachers at Ansar Dine-linked medersas (madrassas), or religious schools. Twice, the United States invited the Ansar Dine leader to visit the United States but he changed his mind because of his fear of flying.

It is clear that Ansar Dine, like Boko Haram in Nigeria, is being used by the CIA, USAID, AFRICOM, and NATO to provide a raison d'etre for Western and ECOWAS military intervention not only in Mali, but eventually, in southern Algeria. The psychological warfare specialists at AFRICOM, the National Security Council, Soros-funded NGOs, and the CIA are now working overtime to re-write the State Department's own analysis of the social-political-religious situation in Mali to justify a permanent Western military presence in west Africa and the entire Sahel region.

 

Babel Magazine  The Depopulation Agenda  by Jon Rappoport

NOTE: Jon’s website can be accessed at: http://www.stratiawire.com

From a round-up of my best intelligence sources and from my own 15 years of research … the subject is depopulation - a third of Africa to go under in the first long phase, which is underway now. AIDS and other diseases will be the COVER STORY for the decimation. The real causes will be starvation, contaminated water (which has existed for a long time), toxic vaccines given to people who are already immune-suppressed, wars, and of course, stolen farmland.

Many reports of rural villages disappearing … this will be laid at the doorstep of AIDS. It already is. This is a cover story. This is a lie. HIV, as detailed in my past stories (keyword search my archive), causes nothing. It is basically a dormant retrovirus, like many others of its class. Its "amazingly intricate" activity in the body is a made-up piece of non-science.

The day after my 1988 book, AIDS INC., hit the shelves, a copy was on its way out of California to Moscow in a diplomatic pouch. It was sent by an agent of the USSR who was operating under diplomatic cover here.

This fact was relayed to me by one of my major sources for the book. He said, "Won't they be surprised when they actually read it." What he meant was; the Russians at the time were fronting the theory, developed by East German biologist Jakob Segal that HIV was a lethal germ engineered in Maryland. A bio-war U.S. creation. My book instead proved that HIV --- wherever it came from --- was a harmless retrovirus that was being used as a cover story to explain/conceal an emerging depopulation operation in the Third World. HIV was also a cover for other agendas outside the Third World.

As long as AIDS is the target of WHO/UN "humanitarian" efforts, the actual causes --- which are easily reversible --- of death in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are allowed to remain and fester and expand. Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, has been a major thorn in the side of the depopulationists. He knows that HIV does not cause human disease. He knows that the front-line drugs for AIDS, especially AZT, attack the bone marrow, where certain cells of the immune system are manufactured. Thus CREATING what is called AIDS through pharmaceutical means. In particular, giving AZT to pregnant mothers is a major goal of the depopulation effort. Mbeki understands that the causes of death in the Third World I have mentioned above are killing Africa. However, he continues to ask for outside help to alleviate these ravages. There is no chance he will get this help. ZERO.

Mbeki is being contained, to a degree, in his attempts to form a real coalition of leaders all over the African continent. MONEY is the weapon being used against him. Payoffs, "aid" dollars, and so on. Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier and other retrovirologists were languishing at the end of the 1970s at the National Cancer Institute and the Pasteur Institute, respectively. They had just finished their work on the doomed Viral Cancer Project, which was a failed attempt to show that cancer was caused by one or more viruses --- in particular, a newly discovered class of germs called retroviruses. These scientists had cut their teeth on these somewhat exotic but unimportant germs. That was what they knew. They were fishing around for a new disease that could bring them government dollars. They were SET UP to become the new tigers who would get major research money to explore an emerging phenomenon called AIDS. HIV was, in their hands, destined to become the COVER STORY for death that actually was occurring for MULTIPLE REASONS.

So Montagnier and Gallo did "discover" HIV and the rest is history --- false history.

I apprised the East German biologist Jakob Segal, via mail, that his theory about HIV was way off base in the sense that it was not causing human disease. If it was indeed a bio-war creation, it was a failure.

Either my letter was intercepted or he ignored it because he had his own agenda. He had answered a previous letter of mine which had asked direct questions about his work --- but when I blew the whistle, he fell silent.

Meanwhile, I had interested author and environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin in HIV. For a time --- before I discovered the truth --- I was exploring the possibility that HIV had been put together from bovine and sheep viruses --- and Rifkin was very hot on the bovine factor --- because there was a chance that HIV or some bovine germ close to it was in smallpox vaccine. If so, it potentially implicated the vaccine in millions of deaths in the Third World.

But then I dug deeper. I found out that NOTHING strange or exotic needed to be in the vaccine. All by itself it could kill people, particularly those whose immune systems were suppressed already. And then I examined very closely the medical evidence that had been advanced by Gallo and others to prove that HIV was the cause of what was being called AIDS. I realized, in 1987, that this evidence was non-existent.

I pointed out these two discoveries to Rifkin. He was not pleased. I think he felt a little betrayed because I had been feeding him much different information before I saw the deeper truth. And Rifkin was basically pointing himself toward a theory that irresponsible medical germ machination itself was implicated in AIDS. He felt that tinkering with germs in labs was where the real action was. I told him the Plot was more insidious than that, and HIV was really a cover story for the depopulation agenda. He soon abandoned his AIDS project.

During this period (1987-88), I met a member of the secret service of one of the African nations "most afflicted with AIDS." This man was basically loyal to his people, and he felt that a gigantic hoax was being perpetrated. At some risk to himself, he spoke to me about various doctors who had come to his family and told them that AIDS research was being done in order to prove that so-called Slim Disease --- at that time the African label for AIDS --- was the result of HIV. These doctors were amazed that such obviously false research was being accepted. In particular, they cited Lancet, the famous British medical journal, as the publisher of some of this research. I then did my own examination of a key paper by Serwadda which attempted to establish Slim as a new and emerging phenomenon on the African continent. The paper was so full of unsupported statements, so rife with omissions, that I concluded Slim was basically a diversionary label for: starvation, dirty water, stolen land, and immunosuppressive vaccines.

At bottom, why all this false science? Because someone needed a cover story to conceal a persistent and intentionally unsolved situation in Africa that was causing death according to a plan to depopulate the continent.

 

True Democracy Party  War on Libya is War on Entire Africa  back
The Picture: War on Libya is War on Entire Africa Source: Reuters Edited By: Quoriana Posted: 2011/07/27 In 2010 Gaddafi offered to invest $97 billion in Africa to free it from Western influence, on condition that African states rid themselves of corruption and nepotism. Gaddafi always dreamed of a Developed, United Africa and was about to make that dream come true – and nothing is more terrifying to the West than a Developed, United Africa. Here is a selection of the initiatives Libya has already put in place in Africa, as well as some of the projects it is planning, explaining why the West’s illegal war against Libya also is a war against Entire Africa. AFRICAN UNION: Libya is one of the biggest contributors to the budget of the African Union. A Libyan diplomat told Reuters Libya is one of five countries — the others are Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa — which cover 75 percent of the Union’s budget. “Libya makes its full required contribution to AU funds. Not all countries do and that buys it influence,” a senior African Union official said. MALI: For several years Mali has been confronted with the activities of the radical Islamist militia Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in its northern deserts. Gaddafi’s money and diplomacy have helped to resolve conflicts in northern Mali between rebels and the government. In 2010 Libya has given Mali two security planes to combat insecurity in the north of the country. These conflicts could flare up again if Gaddafi exits the stage. Nowadays Gaddafi has many supporters in Mali who regularly march to protest against the Western-led military intervention in Libya. CONGO: Libya has put $65 billion into sovereign wealth funds, including one which is specifically designed to make investments in Africa. The Libyan Arab African Investment Company, a vehicle of Libya’s Africa sovereign wealth fund, owns Le Meridien, one of the biggest hotels in Congo. The hotel is undergoing refurbishment paid for by Libyan investment. In 2010, Libya planned to fund the building of a highway north of Congo’s capital Brazzaville, where also the building of a mosque is planned. LIBERIA: Libya has provided millions in investment projects, helping to strengthen the rule of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in one of Africa’s most impoverished nations. Gaddafi’s help includes the funding of a rubber processing factory built in Gbarnga, Bong County, a technical and vocational school for the handicapped, as well as Libyan assistance in helping Liberia tackle the food crisis and renovation for the Ducor Intercontinental Hotel. NIGER: Also in Niger Gaddafi has helped to prop up the government and the authorities would become more fragile without his financial help. Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi visited Niger in August 2010 and announced the creation of a $100 million investment fund for Niger as part of a strengthening of bilateral ties. Under earlier agreements, Libya is contributing 100 million euros for the construction of a Trans-Sahara highway in the north of Niger, according to sources close to Niger’s foreign ministry. The local subsidiary of Libya Oil, along with Total, are the major players in Niger’s fuel retailing business. CHAD: Gaddafi has been a key supporter of the government, which would weaken if it lost his aid revenue. Chad has been plagued by civil wars and invasions after its independence from France in 1960. After years of unrest, Gaddafi seals a peace agreement for Chad between four Chadian rebel groups and the Chadian government in 2007, which agreement was signed in Sirte. In 2010 Libya made a huge investment in Chad’s National Telecom, which meant a boost of the number of the Chadian mobile phone users from 100,000 to two million. CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Libya has helped to prop up the fragile government, sending paratroopers into the capital in 2001 to defeat a rebel assault. In 2008 Gaddafi played a role in the formation of a peace agreement between the government and rebel groups. MAURITANIA: Gaddafi was the first head of state to visit after a 2008 coup which brought President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz to power. Aziz, who subsequently won a presidential election, has visited Gaddafi several times since then. Even Mauritanian opposition politicians have gone to Tripoli to pledge allegiance to the Libyan leader. Mauritania has debts to Libya of about $200 million. During discussions on debt relief in May 2010, the Libyan Central Bank announced Libya would provide $50 in grants to build a hospital and a university. The university is to be named after Gaddafi. SUDAN: The 20,000-troop peacekeeping mission in Dafur, jointly supported by the African Union and the United Nations, could be hampered if the African Union (AU) loses funding from Gaddafi and destabilize the country. Gaddafi, who blamed the crisis in Darfur on Israel, made a number of attempts to broker peace talks between Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government. In October 2010, Gaddafi warned ahead of a vote on possible independence for South Sudan that a partition of the country would be a “contagious disease” that could spread to other African states. ETHIOPIA: The African Union, based in Ethiopia’s capital, could find itself in financial trouble if it loses the massive support that Gaddafi gives it. Under his rule, Libya supplied 15% of the AU’s membership dues, and it also paid the dues of many smaller and poorer African nations. To seek for a solution of the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict, Gaddafi has sent a special envoy to Ethiopia in 2000. In 2008, Libya’s OiLibya bought Shell Ethiopia. This agreement also included retaining all Shell employees, who were hoping to work in a better environment since a long time SOMALIA: The African Union peace keeping mission, whose 8,000 soldiers are crucial to the battle against Islamic radicals in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, could be severely weakened if the AU lost the financial support of Gaddafi. In 2008 Libya decided to grant an investment fund to Somalia through the Sahel-Saharan Investment and Trade Bank to fund infrastructures such as roads and bridges within Somalia. GAMBIA: Libyan firms own two hotels and the “Dream Park” entertainment centre in Gambia. Gambian agriculture has received support from Libya, including a donation of seven new tractors. In 2009 Gaddafi gave two camels to Gambian President Yahya Jammeh as a gift. The Libyan and Gambian presidents have exchanged visits and senior Gambian officials attended ceremonies in September to mark the anniversary of Gaddafi coming to power. On September 7, 2009, Gambia celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Al Fateh Revolution: “In Libya everyone enjoys Freedom!”.
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WMR   -- CIA and MI-6 behind Algeria "terrorist" attack  January 22-23, 2013

The so-called "Al Qaeda affiliate" operation carried out against the Tigantourine BP-Statoil-Sonatrach natural gas facility near the town of Amenas in Algeria's Sahara Desert and in which 37 foreign gas industry workers being held hostage, including three Americans, were killed, was engineered by CIA and MI-6 operatives who used the services of "Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM). American covert support for Salafists in Algeria is an outcropping of the CIA's and Pentagon's overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Salafist insurgents with AQIM in the Sahara, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Ansar Dine in Mali have received weapons from Libya provided by NATO to rebel forces there or looted by the rebels from Qaddafi's armories. Algeria maintains a strong border security with Libya so the CIA and MI-6 planners decided that to foment an anti-government rebellion in Algeria, that nation's "soft underbelly" with the failing state of Mali was the best avenue.

Algeria, with its Arab socialist underpinnings, knows it's the next domino that the Washington-London-Riyadh-Doha axis expects to fall. After ousting Arab socialist governments in Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, there are only a few bastions of Nasserite ideology remaining in the Arab world and Algeria is one of them. The National Liberation Front that battled France for independence for Algeria had close ties to Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and the Soviet bloc. The FLN not only battled French forces during the Algerian civil war but also Israeli and American special operations teams sent to assist the French. In 1956, Mossad special military teams actually took part in battling FLN forces in the Algerian city of Constantine. The FLN, including the veteran FLN leader, current Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, have been on the Israeli hit list ever since the Algerian war of independence.

The CIA-controlled Washington Post let Langley's feelings about Algeria be known in its coverage of the hostage massacre at Tigantourine.

The Post reported: "The Algerian military and security services have a history of brutality and extrajudicial killings. During the civil war in the 1990s, one faction of Algerian generals earned the nickname 'the eradicators' for their insistence on eliminating enemies instead of negotiating." The CIA puppet who heads the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), weighed in with a shot across Algeria's bow that the Post was happy to publish: "It’s [Algeria] closer to a police state than anything, and cooperation is on again, off again."

Neither the Post nor Rogers mentioned that Algeria fought a bloody civil war against Islamist guerrillas of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Salafist group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in the 1990s and many of the Islamists received reinforcements from CIA-trained "Arab mujaheddin" veterans from Afghanistan. From 2003 to 2005, the "new" leader of the GSPC, Amari Saifi, also known as Abou Haidara and "Abderezzak El Para" and a veteran Algerian paratrooper who served as the personal bodyguard for the Algerian Defense minister in the early 1990s, carried out a number of kidnappings of foreigners in the Algerian Sahel region. In 2003, El Para kidnapped 32 European tourists in the Algerian Sahara and all but one were later released after ransom money was paid in a secret deal between El Para and the Algerian government. One hostage, a German female, died during the kidnapping. The CIA is suspected of providing the ransom money to pay off El Para and justify an increased U.S. military presence in the Sahel region.

El Para was later allowed to escape to Mali and then Niger. In fact, El Para was a CIA and MI-6 false flag operative and he "captured" by the Qaddafi-supported Movement for Democracy and Justice  rebel group in Chad in 2005 and expatriated to Algeria where he is said to be serving life in prison after a secret trial. El Para was captured while Qaddafi still believed the United States had allied itself with the Libyan leader to fight Al Qaeda-linked groups in North Africa. Unbeknownst to Qaddafi, El Para was a CIA operative intent on destabilizing not only Algeria, but also Mali, Chad, Niger, and, eventually, Libya, to justify a massive U.S. military presence in the Sahel. When he was captured, El Para had in his possession a highly-advanced encrypted satellite telephone. The phone's technical details were known to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which was able to track El Para's location whether he was using the phone or not.

El Para, like other Algerian and North African paratroopers, may have received his training at Fort Benning, Georgia, courtesy of the U.S. International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. Amadou Sanogo, the Malian Army Captain who ousted Mali's democratic government last year, precipitating the current crisis, received U.S. military training from 2004 to 2010 at the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Hood, Texas. In October 2005, the year after "El Para" took up his duties heading the GSPC in the Algerian Sahel region, the U.S. helped Algeria establish the African Union Counterterrorism Research Center in Algiers. The move was in preparation for the establishment of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in December 2006.

The Pentagon and CIA has not been happy with Algeria's reluctance to allow the United States and its allies to establish a large-scale military and intelligence base at Tamanrasset in Algeria. In 2010, a small intelligence-sharing and training facility that hosted a maximum of 400 U.S. special forces personnel was permitted at Tamanrasset but Algeria knew fully well about the history of another former secret U.S. base in the Sahara. Before he became a target for assassination by the CIA, Qaddafi permitted the Pentagon and CIA to establish a special forces base in the southwestern region of Fezzan in Libya, near the tri-border area of Libya, Niger, and Algeria. The CIA used its Libyan base to arm and train Berbers and Tuaregs to fight against Wahhabist rebels spreading across the Sahara. As part of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI), the top secret Libyan base armed desert tribes to fight against Salafist guerrillas. 

But after the Bush administration, Washington changed sides and began supporting Saudi- and Qatari-based Wahhabists and Salafists against Qaddafi, other North African leaders, and Tuaregs who established their own independent nation in northern Mali only to find themselves under siege by CIA-supported Salafists entering Mali from Niger, Algeria, Nigeria, and other nations. Algerian intelligence was clued into Washington's gambit and began beefing up its security, refusing to allow Algeria to become involved as an American base for Saharan military activities, especially since Washington was backing the Salafists in Libya, Syria, and Mali.

The Hollywood-like central casting specialists at the CIA always need a one-eyed Islamist guerrilla to head its "false flag" armies. The first was the one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in Afghanistan (he was permitted to escape like Osama Bin Laden from the CIA special operations teams in Afghanistan). Now comes AQIM leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, another one-eyed veteran of the CIA-led Afghan war with the Soviets and served as El Para's number two man. Belmokhtar leads the "Blood Battalion," a name that could only be conjured up by the fantasy engineers of CIA perception management specialists. Belmokhtar, who led the attack on the Algerian gas plant and who has been earning his income by smuggling cigarettes, narcotics, and women from the West African coast to North Africa and Libyan arms captured from Qaddafi's military to anyone with ready cash in West Africa, is the CIA's new "El Para." With more terrorist attacks under his belt, Belmokhtar could replace Bin Laden as America's and the neo-cons' needed bogeyman.

Belmokhtar is said to have entered Algeria from Libya, the country made safe for Salafist guerrillas by the CIA's and MI-6's overthrow of Qaddafi.

Algeria's Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said that Belmokhtar was assisted by two Canadian nationals, both killed in the Algerian attack to free the foreign hostages. The proof cited by Algeria was the discovery of Canadian passports on two of the dead terrorists. The only name given for one of the Canadians was "Chedad." It is suspicious that Canada, with its strongly pro-Israeli government, would not know the name of one of its nationals who is now reported to be a leader of an AQIM affiliate in Algeria. Canada's rabidly pro-Israel Foreign Minister John Baird discounted the presence of any Canadian nationals among the terrorist ranks.

The Daily Mail reported that a blond-haired, blue-eyed British national joined Belmokhtar's Blood Battalion in 2012 and was seen visiting wounded Salafist guerrillas in the hospital in Mali after fighting broke out in that country last year. The paper also reported that another British national was arrested by Mauritanian security in December while trying to enter Mali.

Israel's hidden hand in trying to destabilize Algeria is seen in rhetoric from the neo-conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Zionist-oriented think tank in Washington, DC. It has criticized Algeria for not permitting the U.S. to make a surgical strike at the AQIM hostage takers. However, some British and American quarters are fearful of prying too deep into the Algeria attack because of the sinews that connect the attackers with Western intelligence. The "Blood Battalion" commandos reportedly wore Algerian army uniforms and arrived in vehicles bearing the corporate markings of Sonatrach, the Algerian state-owned energy firm. The terrorists' weapons were said to have originated in Libya, now controlled by a CIA- and MI-6-installed regime in power in Tripoli and a Salafist autonomist regime running Benghazi.

The head of AFRICOM, General Carter Ham, said he didn't believe that the armed Islamist groups in Mali were a threat to the United States. Armed Islamist groups on the CIA's payroll are only a threat to the United State when Langley orders them to be. Currently, with France taking a beating in fighting in Mali, only the United States and Britain stand to eclipse French influence in West Africa.

On April 9, 2012, WMR reported the following: "WMR's sources in the Middle East and Africa have confirmed that Mali is merely a stepping stone for future NATO 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P) aggression aimed at toppling Algeria's government. An obscure 'Al Qaeda' affiliate called the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (as artificial as Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia) has claimed credit for kidnapping seven Algerian diplomats from the Algerian consulate in Gao, in what is now in the newly-proclaimed independent state of Azawad, declared by Tuareg rebels who are being reported as linked to the former forces of Qaddafi in Libya. However, the Tuaregs have, since Mali's independence from France, claimed that the former colonial authorities reneged on the promise of a Tuareg homeland in the wide Saharan expanses of the former French West Africa.


Terrorist guerrillas arrived at Algerian gas plant in vehicles with the logo of Sonatrach, the Algerian energy company.

ECOWAS, NATO, and their puppets in Bamako are now claiming that the new state of Azawad, which claims control of Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal, and declared by the Azawad National Liberation Front, is being overrun by 'Al Qaeda' forces of the Ansar Dine Islamist movement. Ansar Dine is being described by western media reports of being an offshoot of 'Al Qaeda' and imposing sharia law in Gao, Timbuktu, and other towns and cities in Tuareg-controlled territory in northern Mali. There are news reports of Ansar Dine's 'ominous' black flag appearing on buildings in Gao and Timbuktu, replacing that of the Azawad National Liberation Front.

Interestingly, the 'Al Qaeda' militants of Ansar Dine are on the same page in rejecting the independence declaration of Azawad. Azawad's independence is also being rejected by France, the United States, ECOWAS, and Morocco, as well as the United Nations, putting the West and ECOWAS in the same camp as the Islamist militants. It is a carbon copy of the joint'"Al Qaeda' and Salafist coalition with the West and the Gulf Arab states as previously seen in Libya, and now, in Syria."

As a U.S. State Department cables leaked by WikiLeaks demonstrated, it was the United States that tried to convince Mali and Algeria that AQIM was their major threat and they had to increase their military cooperation with the United States. Neither country in 2008 was fully aware that AQIM was a creation of American and British intelligence and their real enemy was the CIA and the multinational firms for which it fronts. The leaked cable sent by the U.S. Embassy in Bamako, Mali describes the insidious nature of American fracturing of Africa and creating the environment for civil war and ultimate Western military intervention:


Dunno: 08ALGIERS548 Destination: VZCZCXRO7155 RR RUEHPA DE RUEHBP #0485/01 1511303 ZNY SSSSS ZZH R 301303Z MAY 08 FM AMEMBASSY BAMAKO TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9183 INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE RUEHAS/AMEMBASSY ALGIERS 0436 RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0433 RUEHRB/AMEMBASSY RABAT 0304 RUEHTU/AMEMBASSY TUNIS 0163 RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC RHMFISS/COMSOCEUR VAIHINGEN GE RHMFISS/HQ USAFRICOM STUTTGART GE RHMFISS/HQ USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 07 BAMAKO 000485 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/30/2018 TAGS: PTER, PREL, ML, AG SUBJECT: WORKING WITH THE MALIANS ON SAHEL SECURITY REF: ALGIERS 00548 Classified By: Ambassador Terence P. McCulley for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 1.(S) Summary: This cable analyzes Mali’s approach to security in the Sahel in advance of the interagency mission to Algiers. Mali is a committed ally in the war on terror, but its position as one of the poorest nations in the world limits its capacity to counter the presence of AQIM in the country’s far north. Moreover, the mantra of Mali’s leadership is that AQIM is an Algerian problem, and that the incipient Tuareg rebellion in the north presents a greater threat to Mali’s stability and sovereignty than the terrorist presence. Since the GSPC re-branded itself as al Qaeda, we have made headway in sensitizing President Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT) to the danger posed by AQIM to both Mali and western interests in the region, but work remains in this regard. Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) programming in Mali reflects these generally congruent, but at times conflicting, realities by balancing targeted military assistance with a broad range of development, humanitarian and public diplomacy initiatives designed to reinforce the link between security and development. Since TSCTP’s inception, Mali has regarded U.S. military assistance as a vehicle for addressing a variety of security concerns ranging from AQIM to bandits and narco-traffickers to Tuareg rebels. At the same time, ATT recognizes that his country’s poverty and geographic position force him to consider the equities of powerful regional players. We do not believe that Libya is Mali’s preferred dance partner on regional security issues, particularly on Tuareg questions, but Qaddafi’s deep pockets mean that ATT cannot resist if the « frere guide » decides to engage (or meddle, depending on one’s point of view). Algeria, however, remains for Mali its preferred diplomatic partner on trans-Saharan issues, and while ATT can be by turns bitter and frustrated with the Algerians, he recognizes Algiers holds the key to a peaceful resolution of Mali’s Tuareg insurgency. We believe that President Toure is committed to a negotiated solution with the Tuaregs, but there are many internal political constraints that play into his handling of the crisis. For ATT, the Algiers Accords remain the central basis for negotiation with the insurgency, but application of aspects of the agreement — particularly the so-called « special units » — are politically delicate, but not impossible, to achieve. 2. (S) Summary continued: Mali remains a good partner on security issues, and it is not impossible to reconcile Mali’s need for tranquillity in the north with what we understand to be Algeria’s goals, in order to advance U.S. peace, security and counter-terrorism objectives in northern Mali. It is, however, important to act quickly, as the situation in the north is unraveling as we write. We hope the inter-agency mission to Algeria will reassure the Algerians that our military engagement with Mali is one part of a larger, holistic program, and that our mil-mil training programs are intended to build capacity to address the range of security threats in the north, and not to launch the Malian military in some quixotic anti-Tuareg campaign. It is important that the Algerians understand that the Tuareg insurgency here represents a threat to the security and stability of a democratic and moderate regional ally, and that the development we all seek for northern Mali is endangered by ongoing acts of rebellion and banditry. Moreover, the Malian military has a responsibility and an obligation to safeguard Mali’s territorial integrity and protect civilian populations in the north (most of whom recognize that acts of rebellion impede development). As for Mali, we need to continue to engage with ATT in support of a peaceful resolution to the northern crisis, to encourage him to more effectively articulate his northern strategy (both to his northern compatriots and to his majority and increasingly resentful southern electorate), and to take the politically risky (but necessary) steps toward involving northerners in the security forces active in the northern zone. Key to this effort will be our continued support for decentralization in Mali which will answer the demand made by Northern populations for more autonomy and control of their resources and future. In the end, ATT needs to find a Malian solution to this internal (and interminable) problem, but he needs an assist from « Bouteflika the Malian », and the U.S. can play a helpful BAMAKO 00000485 002 OF 007 supporting role. Restoring the Algiers Accords process by bringing the rebellion in from its mountain redoubt in the Sahara will advance U.S. counter-terrorism goals by returning the focus to the threat of AQIM in the Trans-Sahara region and fostering conditions that help deny space to terrorists active in northern Mali. End Summary. —————————————— TSCTP in Mali: No Security, No Development —————————————— 3.(S) As one of the poorest nations in the world, Mali lacks the ability to effectively combat terrorism or counter terrorist influences. TSCTP programming in Mali takes this reality into account by dividing TSCTP actives into two categories: counter-terrorism and counter-extremism. Counter-terrorism programs cover the « hard » side of TSCTP, meaning direct military to military assistance. This assistance is designed to bolster Mali’s ability to provide the level of security and stability, particularly in northern Mali, upon which development depends. The primary vehicles for this assistance are Joint Combined Exchange Training events (JCETs). JCETs are not designed to help the Malian military counter Tuareg insurgents. They are intended, rather, to boost selected Malian military units’ capacity to control borders and respond to a broad range of security threats ranging from terrorist activity to drug smuggling and arms trafficking. Over the past year we have held successful JCETs in Bamako, Tessalit and Kidal, and Malian units that have participated in JCETs have shown a marked increase in professionalism and operational capacity. 4.(S) The « soft » side of TSCTP in Mali includes Department of Defense sponsored humanitarian assistance, USAID development programs and public diplomacy outreach. Our counter-extremism component of TSCTP is designed not only to encourage the traditional tolerant nature of Malian Islam but to also effectively address the critical interplay between development and security. This effort is particularly key in northern Mali where we are able to reach out to important northern communities in ways that demonstrate USG friendship and support. The DOD’s humanitarian assistance and Civil Military Support Element (CMSE) play a crucial role in helping us meet this goal by building and rehabilitating wells, schools and health clinics throughout Mali. Medical and Veterinary Civic Action Programs (MEDCAP and VETCAP) that normally accompany JCETs are also extremely well received and enable local communities to derive benefits from military training that would otherwise not extend beyond the perimeter of military installations. 5.(U) USAID/Mali considers the northern region of Mali an important area and has undertaken activities there in a concerted effort since 1999. USAID/Mali implemented approximately $3.7 million worth of activities in the north during FY07, including support to 35 rural health centers, the construction and reinforcement of 17 community radio stations, the establishment of six community telecenters offering Internet access, the conduct of conflict-mitigation activities, support to rice and horticultural commodities, the expansion of access to financial services, the provision of scholarships and mentoring to 6,500 girls under the Ambassador’s Girls Scholarship Fund, and the creation of teacher training and radio-based instruction for children of nomadic populations. USAID/Mali received an additional $9.5 million in TSCTP funds and the majority of these resources have been earmarked for activities in the North that aim to expand economic opportunities for youth, construct additional community radio stations, build capacity for local government, and support madersas throughout the country. On the Public Affairs side, we have used cultural preservation grants to help Mali honor its Islamic heritage by protecting thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts in Djenne and Timbuktu and helping to preserve an ancient mosque in Gao. Additionally we recently celebrated the year anniversary of the only American Corner in Mali. Located in Gao, it has allowed us to quadruple our outreach to key contacts in the region and to further promote mutual understanding between Malians and Americans. —————————————– Malian View of the Situation in the North BAMAKO 00000485 003 OF 007 —————————————– 6.(S) Malians generally regarded the GSPC as an Algerian extremist group composed of Algerian Salafists dedicated to overthrowing the Algerian government. The GSPC was therefore seen as an Algerian problem that posed a risk not to Malians but to Algerians and the occasional western tourist naive enough to venture deep into the Sahara. The GSPC-AQ merger to form AQIM altered this perspective only slightly until the December 2007 murders of the French tourists in Mauritania and, to a lesser extent, the kidnapping of the Austrian hostages in Tunisia, brought the dangers of terrorism in the Sahel home to the Malian government. 7.(S) The brewing rebellion in northern Mali, however, has displaced all other security concerns. President Toure has made a concerted effort to handle the recent attacks by Tuareg rebels (and the resultant deaths and capture of Malian soldiers) through dialogue and restraint, but he is under increasing pressure from the military, which is composed predominantly of southern Malians, to respond with force and severity. President Toure faces the very difficult challenge of finding a way to sit down at a negotiating table with rebels who have killed Malian soldiers, stolen government arms, laid mines, disrupted badly-needed economic development and still hold perhaps as many as 90 Malian soldiers as « prisoners of war. » President Toure’s decision not to respond militarily to such aggressions are increasingly interpreted as signs of weakness by the media and the wider Malian public. His recent decision to circumvent the regular army by supporting ethnic Imghad Tuareg paramilitary groups against Ibrahim Bahanga and the Alliance for Democracy and Change (ADC) suggest President Toure’s resolve for dialogue has begun to wear thin. 8.(S) Mali recognizes that Algeria is the only credible mediator for the Tuareg crisis. Yet President Toure is clearly frustrated with President Bouteflika and Algeria’s off-again on-again mediation efforts. Algerian allegations, whether leveled by the Algerian press or through the diplomatic rumor mill, that Mali is somehow intransigent in the war on terror or willingly harboring terrorists have not passed unnoticed in Bamako. President Toure is also convinced that members of the Algerian security services in southern Algeria are actively facilitating Tuareg rebels and has told us on several occasions that he does not believe President Bouteflika controls, or is even aware, of what his security services are doing along the Mali-Algeria border. Malians also posit that, if Algeria is serious about combating AQIM, they should do so by controlling their own borders instead of relying on unreliable and self-interested Tuareg proxies. 9.(S) President Toure still respects President Bouteflika (who bore the sobriquet of « the Malian » during his sojourn in Gao at the time of the Algerian war for independence) and seems to give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that his Algerian counterpart is unaware of what his own security services are up to. President Toure would prefer to see greater Algerian control of its borders and more Algerian resources aimed at AQIM operatives coming from North Africa than the arming of Malian Tuaregs who can easily turn such training and equipment against the central Malian government. ———————- What this Means to Us ———————- 10.(S) Deepening levels of impunity in northern Mali are rapidly reducing our ability to advance key peace and security goals. The only groups likely to benefit from a northern Mali free-for-all akin to the one that occurred during Mali’s 1991-1996 rebellion are well-armed bandits and AQIM. The humanitarian and political impacts of a third rebellion in northern Mali will be enormous. Those who will suffer most are not the minority of Tuareg rebels who have taken up arms against the central government but the vast majority of ethnic Tuareg and Arab northern Malians who simply want to send their children to school and support teir families. We have already begun to curtail cetain USAID and DOD activities in the north due t a lack of security and our sensitivity to beingperceived as taking BAMAKO 00000485 004 OF 007 sides in the conflict underway between Tuareg bandits and the Malian military. 11.(S) The similarities between the start of the last northern rebellion in 1991 and today are sobering. In January 1991 Algeria brokered a peace agreement, the Tamanrasset Accords, between Mali and northern rebel groups led by Iyad ag Ghali that was never implemented. As security in the north deteriorated, an alphabet soup of armed rebel militias (the MFA, MFUA, FIAA, ARLA and FPLA among others) representing disparate ethnic groups and Tuareg fractions filled the void. A similar dynamic appears to be unfolding now with the appearance of competing Tuareg rebel and government sponsored militias and the 2006 Algiers Accords - also negotiated by Algeria and Iyad ag Ghali – teetering on the brink of collapse. 12.(S) In regards to our CT efforts in the region, we have made some progress in convincing President Toure of the need to zero in on AQIM by focusing on the changing nature of AQIM and the fact that Mali, like neighboring Mauritania, is not immune to AQIM attacks on its soil. We have also been more aggressive on the intel side in terms of information sharing. The Malians are significantly more open interlocutors now than a few years ago, even though President Toure still sees action against AQIM as counter to fundamental national interests due to the inherent risks of further stirring up trouble in the north. A third Tuareg rebellion will greatly diminish our ability to discuss counter-terrorism with the Malians and their willingness to listen. ————————– Saving the Algiers Accords ————————– 13.(S) The Algiers Accords remain the only, and best, way to prevent further unrest and provide an environment conducive to stopping AQIM activity in the Sahel. President Toure’s commitment to a peaceful settlement to the ongoing rebellion and Algeria’s recent agreement to resume its mediation represent two positive steps in getting the negotiations back on track. That said, domestic political constraints and opposition within the Malian military will pose significant roadblocks and further deepen President Toure’s frustration of having to dedicate so much time, money and material resources to Mali’s most sparsely populated region. Implementation will require more concessions and more diplomatic pressure, but we remain confident that progress can be mad if the potential road blocks can be overcome: – The absence of a point person on either the Malian or Tuareg side. In July 2006 Minister of Territorial Administration, General Kafougouna Kone, negotiated the Algiers Accords on Mali’s behalf. Alliance for Democracy and Change (ADC) leader Iyad ag Ghali and his deputy Ahmada ag Bibi represented the Tuareg rebels. Two years later, General Kone has faded from view and Iyad ag Ghali has moved to Saudi Arabia. President Toure could re-energize the peace process and significantly alter the dynamics of the current crisis by appointing a lead interlocutor. General Kone is the most obvious choice. Fifteen years of democratic success in Mali has, however, produced two other leaders – former President Alpha Oumar Konare and former Prime Minister and opposition leader Ibrahim Boubacar Keita – who were central figures during the second northern rebellion of the 1990s and could lend a needed sense of gravitas to peace negotiations. Nominating either Konare or Keita as his special envoy to the north would require a significant amount of political courage on President Toure’s part given that his relations with both men are not the best. On the Tuareg side there is no one capable of replacing ag Ghali. While there are a number of well-respected Tuareg politicians, none of these have the ability to control, or even influence, current rebel leaders. – Juxtaposed with the absence of Malian and Tuareg interlocutors is a multiplicity of mediators. President Toure apparently turned to Libya not to send a signal to Algiers but in hopes of securing the release of the military hostages still held by Bahanga. Re-introducing Libyan cash and influence to northern Mali was clearly ill-advised. Mali’s request for Algeria to return as the key facilitator on this issue indicates President Toure’s recognition that Algiers holds the key to a peaceful resolution of Mali’s BAMAKO 00000485 005 OF 007 Tuareg insurgency. – The reduction of Malian military’s footprint in northern Mali during an ongoing period of hostilities. The signatories of the Algiers Accords pledged to facilitate a return to pre-2006 troop levels in northern Mali. This has subsequently been interpreted by some Tuareg rebels as a complete withdrawal of the Malian military from northern Mali. The Malians would like to reduce their troop numbers in northern Mali, both to respect the Accords and reduce costs, but this is ultimately a question of national sovereignty and one cannot reasonably expect the Malians to withdraw from a zone of instability. Rather than reducing troop levels in the north, Mali is in the process of augmenting its security presence, and will continue to do so as long as Tuaregs rebels continue to attack military bases and convoys and hold Malian soldiers hostage. – The relocation of military bases. Both the 1991 Tamanrasset Accords and 1992 National Pact called for military bases located within urban areas to be relocated to less inhabited areas. Fifteen years later, Mali still lacks the financial resources to construct new military posts in order to fulfill this requirement. – Economic development for the north. The Algiers Accords outline an extensive, yet vague, plan for the development of northern Mali. The only portion of this agenda so far implemented was the March 2007 Kidal Forum. The Forum was intended as a pledge-a-thon for northern Mali but served as an accounting of all the projects and initiatives for the north already undertaken by the Malian government and international donor community. Many of the specific development projects identified in the Algiers Accords – such as paving the road to Kidal, repairing the airports in Kidal and Tessalit, extending electrical grids and providing Kidal with access to national television and radio – are feasible yet well beyond the financial means of the Malian government or any single international donor. Banditry and Tuareg unrest further complicate any development efforts in the north as most foreign development partners are unable to work in such a hostile and unstable environment. – The creation of special military units. This is the most important aspect of the Accords for Tuareg rebels and the one where Mali may have to make the most concessions. We have spent the last 18 months pushing for Mali to make these units operational and integrate them into security operations in the north. Were Mali to agree, we could likely incorporate the special units into our JCET program. President Toure and other Malian leaders maintain that Mali already created these units and that they were subsequently sabotaged by Tuareg desertions. There is some truth to this as the Malian government did make a substantial concession by agreeing to appoint Hassan Fagaga as the commander of the special unit in Kidal. On the other hand, there is some substance to the Tuareg argument that the units existed on paper only and never received equipment, vehicles, fuel or other required supplies. Explanations for continued Malian foot-dragging on this issue include: fierce opposition within the Malian military to the reintegration of Tuareg deserters responsible for attacking and killing fellow Malian soldiers; concern that Tuareg special unit members would simply turn the training and equipment provided to them against the regular army; suspicion that Algeria intends to use the special units to advance Algerian rather than Malian interests. There is also the unresolved question of the fate of chronic deserters like Bahanga and Fagaga. Minister of Internal Security, General Sadio Gassama, is vehemently opposed to the concept of special units. Since the units would fall under the Security Ministry’s purview, this is a problem. In short, President Toure could stand up these units, but has hesitated due to internal political constraints. – Outstanding questions on the April 10 execution of two Tuareg members of the ADC. In addition to demands for a military withdrawal from northern Mali and the creation of special units, Tuareg rebels are also demanding a credible murder inquiry into this event. We will probably never know who committed these killings or why. In October 2007 a Malian army unit arrested and executed a Tuareg gendarme within the confines of the military base in Gao. The soldiers responsible for the Gao murder are known to the BAMAKO 00000485 006 OF 007 Malian military, yet no legal proceedings are underway. Given this precedent, chances for a credible and transparent inquiry into the April 10 executions are grim. —————————- Overcoming Mutual Suspicions —————————- 14.(S) Encouraging Mali and Algeria to overcome the evident distrust that divides them will pose a serious challenge. On the Algerian side, we need to impress on Algeria the dangers of using Tuareg rebel groups as surrogates against AQIM as they did in 2006 by providing funds and fuel. By bankrolling the ADC, Algeria provided support to a group that had attacked a democratically elected government, circumvented the sovereignty of the Malian state by attempting to create a local militia, and further destabilized the north. Reftel’s description of Algeria’s understanding of the special units - Tuareg militias charged with eradicating AQIM – is significantly different from the Malian reading of the Algiers accords, which outlines a clear command structure with defined missions assigned by Malian military leadership. 15.(S) Algerian concern that the United States is arming the GOM to take on the Tuaregs is yet another indication of a misunderstanding between neighbors – although this tracks with statements made by Tuareg contacts. The nature of U.S. military assistance to Mali has been constant for several years and focuses on peace and security writ large. It is also worth noting that the Malians have, up to this point, launched only one operation against the Tuaregs and this operation relied not on U.S. training but Bulgarian attack helicopters and Ukrainian pilots. This offensive military operation was done in response to Bahanga’s blockade of the vital, and only, road between Gao and Kidal. ————————– Conclusion: What We Can Do ————————– 16.(S) USG counter-terrorism and development efforts in Mali require a secure and stable northern region. Northern Mali’s slide into unrest and rebellion will seriously affect our ability to advance key peace and security goals. We see the need to use our good offices in both countries to encourage deeper understanding and trust between the Algerians and the Malians at the same time that we encourage movement forward on the Algiers Accords. Because Malian, Algerian and American security interests are not incompatible, there are ways for the U.S. to work within the Algiers Accords framework without challenging Algeria’s role as primary mediator. It is important that the Algerians understand that the Tuareg insurgency here represents a threat to the security and stability of a democratic and moderate regional ally, and that the development we all seek for northern Mali is endangered by ongoing acts of rebellion and banditry. Moreover, the Malian military has a responsibility and an obligation to safeguard Mali’s territorial integrity and protect civilian populations in the north (most of whom recognize that acts of rebellion impede development). Although Mali’s confidence in Algeria’s ability to control Tuareg rebels is likely exaggerated, Algeria does have some leverage with Tuareg rebel leaders and we need Algeria to use this influence to, at the very least, secure a general cease-fire. Mali will only be able to consider its obligations regarding a return to pre-2006 troop levels in the north once the fighting has stopped and Bahanga and the ADC have released the prisoners they continue to hold. 17.(S) On the Malian side, we must convince President Toure of the need to stand up special units despite the inherent risks they pose to the Malian military. There are enough loyalist Tuareg and Arab soldiers within the Malian army to fill out one or two of these units and counter-balance any less trustworthy former Tuareg rebel elements that also must be included in the plan. If the Malians agree to stand up one or two of these units, we could incorporate them into JCET events. We are also pressuring President Toure to formulate a public relations strategy for the north in order to recapture the rhetorical battlefield from Ibrahim Bahanga and the like and to assure the populations in the North that the Malian government is actively finding ways to answer BAMAKO 00000485 007 OF 007 their developmental needs. We are also committed to continuing our active and wide-ranging USAID program in the North of Mali with a goal of helping Mali fulfill at least some of the development components of the Algiers Accords. Development in the North, including greater decentralization which would place more local autonomy and control over resources, is a critial component of responding to Bahanga’s grievancs at the same time that we create a stable and more secure environment that will be less hospitable o AQIM activity. MCCULLEY

 

 

 

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