When terror knocks at your back door

Naming things wrongly comes to add to the world’s misfortune”, Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus wrote fifty years ago. He was then not thinking of the situation in Mali today, of course, but he could well have been.

This small country, a part of the Sahel band that splits the north from the rest of Africa, is indeed turning into a genuine Taliban-style Afghanistan and very few talk about it. The country is becoming an Islamist oasis, at the very back door of vital Western interests, with possible help and money from people who claim to be the West’s best allies. The Financial Times, in its June 2 issue, described it as “the possibility of an Islamist-aligned mini state that could offer a base to the jihadist groups and criminal gangs that roam the Sahara”.

Let’s recall the situation in March, 2012, when soldiers based in Kati (close to Bamako) rebelled against official authorities and swiftly held a coup d’état. Mali President Amadou Toumani Touré was forced to quit a few weeks before elections were due. Hardly ten days after the putsch, “to better fight against the Northern Tawareq rebellion”, northern secessionists, were victorious on the field and ended up controlling a third of the country, including the cities of Kidal, Gao and Tumbuktu. The clerical ‘Movement for the Liberation of Azawad’, a militia boosted by the return of well-armed Tawareq soldiers hired by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, proclaimed ‘the independence of Azawad’. But a few days later, it was learnt that Islamist organisations Ansar Dine and Al Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi) had ultimately outmuscled the Tawareq secessionists and were willing to create an Islamic state.

There has never been peace in this part of the world., which is one and a half times the size of France And as a consequence of the war in Libya, a renewed willingness by the Tawareqs to obtain independence was aroused. They indeed have long complained of neglect and misrule by the central government and they finally had the means to speak loudly. Also, Algerian Salafists had developed a presence there, taking advantage of the porous borders between Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Niger. Since 2007, the region has become a kind of no-man’s land, with all sorts of criminal activites, mainly drug and arms smuggling. It is also where eleven Europeans (three were released last week), including six French nationals, have been detained since September 2010 by Aqmi.

A kind of coalition between the Tawareqs and Aqmi, Boko-Haram of Nigeria and Somalian Shebabs have led to the present situation, in which it appears the Salafists, ultimately, have overuled most of the secessionists. Aqmi, which is historically linked to the former Algerian terrorist organisation GIA, is now leading the show with the unexpected help of foreign aid whose origins are being investigated. A recent report by the US DNI shows how Osama Bin Laden’s successors are connecting with the Sahel, whereas French spy agency DGSE shows troubling and convincing evidence about finances that are poured over the Salafists

How are we to address a situation in which terrorists are preparing themselves for targeted attacks against North Africa and Europe? The official authorities in Bamako, restored thanks to the West Africa Economic Community (CEDEAO), are materially unable to intervene, as is the CEDEAO itself. For obvious reasons, France cannot intervene in its former colony. Algeria remains, in which actors already understand the nature of the threat, but it is divided over the issue. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius visited three weeks ago to try and convince the government to move forward. But President Bouteflika does not seem to be at ease with what he considers ‘foreign interference’ in his south border. Some elements of the Algerian army are more willing to intervene but lack the political power to do it.

Meanwhile, some of the most fanatic Tawareqs, together with Aqmi and others from Yemen, Somalia or Pakistan, are instilling a fanatical society in the territories they have gained control of. This is why, for instance, Aqmi and Ansar Dine militants destroyed the graves of the city’s Muslim saints buried in Timbuktu and, incidentally, destroyed part of a Unesco World Heritage site.

It cannot but remind one of the destruction by the Taliban in Afghanistan ten years ago. One should also wonder about the reasons behind those foreign interests who are helping the terrorists. Religious belief? Vision for a strategic deepness of their national territories? Political solutions aimed at better sharing between populations in south Mali and the northern Tawareqs can obviously be found. But combatting terrorism is of another nature.

In this fight, it is important to know who is genuinely on freedom’s side and who will be held responsible for having financed, undirectly or not, future terrorist attacks.

Luc Debieuvre is a French essayist and lecturer at IRIS (Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques) and the FACO Law University of Paris.