The Dark Sahara

Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. The Dark Sahara Keenan 00 pre i 25/3/09 09:57:30 Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. About the Author From the Times Literary Supplement: ‘Jeremy Keenan, like the Tuareg, is his own man: brave, authoritative and a master of his environment by dint of scholarship and experience.’ Jeremy Keenan is a Professor of Social Anthropology and an internationally recognised authority on the Sahara and its peoples. He fi rst visited the Tuareg of southern Algeria in 1964. Between then and 1972 he spent almost three years with them, learning their language and travelling literally thousands of miles on foot and camel through much of the Central Sahara. Few Europeans know the great desert better. The studies he undertook then comprised his PhD thesis (1972) and were published in his seminal work: The Tuareg. People of Ahaggar (Allen Lane Penguin 1977). Subsequent work, fi rst on apartheid, poverty, confl ict and underdevelopment in southern Africa, and then on the problems of the economic, social and political transition of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, alongside the development of the European Union, kept him away from North Africa until the mid-1990s, by which time Algeria’s ‘civil war’ was at its height. However, following the ‘election’ of Boutefl ika as Algeria’s President in 1999, Keenan was able to return to the Sahara. For the last decade, his research has focused almost exclusively on developments, notably the ‘war on terror’, in the Saharan and Sahelian regions of Algeria, Niger and Mali, but with extensive travels in both Libya and Mauritania and with an eye on Chad, Western Sahara, Morocco and Tunisia, while being attached, in a somewhat nomadic style, to the universities of Cambridge, East Anglia, Exeter, Bristol and SOAS. Jeremy Keenan’s writings on the Sahara are extensive and authoritative. Sahara Man: Travelling with the Tuareg (John Murray) was published in 2001, with a paperback edition in 2003 and a US edition in 2004. The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar (Sickle Moon) was republished in 2002. These were followed by The Lesser Gods of the Sahara: Social Change and Contested Terrain amongst the Tuareg of Algeria (Cass 2004 & Routledge 2005) and The Sahara: Past, Present & Future (Routledge 2007). Further research and writing on the Sahara and its peoples is found in 18 book chapters, over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 professional reports, as well as numerous radio and TV broadcasts and other media reports. He has made 5 full-length TV documentary fi lms on the Sahara. Travelling with Tuareg (2006) and The Lesser Gods (2006) were shot in Algeria while A Forgotten Civilisation (2007) and Waters Under the Earth (2007) focus on Libya’s ‘lost’ civilisation of the Garamantes and Libya’s rich cultural heritage respectively. He advises several ‘international consultancies’ on Saharan political and security matters, as well as a number of NGOs, including the IWGIA, UNHCR and other UN agencies, media organisations, mining and oil companies. He also briefs a number of governments, including the US State Department and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce. Keenan 00 pre ii 25/3/09 09:57:31 Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. The Dark Sahara America’s War on Terror in Africa JEREMY KEENAN PLUTO PRESS www.plutobooks.com Keenan 00 pre iii 25/3/09 09:57:31 Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. First published 2009 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Copyright © Jeremy Keenan 2009 The right of Jeremy Keenan to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 2453 1 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2452 4 Paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70 per cent post-consumer waste. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Keenan 00 pre iv 25/3/09 09:57:31 Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. CONTENTS Acknowledgements x Abbreviations xiii Glossary xv Maps xviii Introduction 1 The Dossier 10 Missing 13 1 The Sahara’s Bermuda Triangle 15 Kidnapped: by Smugglers or Islamists? 17 Mokhtar ben Mokhtar, Hassan Hattab and the GSPC 21 The First Release of Hostages 26 Transferring the Hostages to Mali 28 The Final Hostage Release 31 2 Reconstructing Tora Bora 33 A New Front in the Global War on Terror 33 Expanding the GWOT Across the Sahel 36 3 ‘Whodunit’ 42 The Suspicions of the Tuareg 42 Local Knowledge and Research Methodology 45 A Diabolical Intelligence Deception 50 4 Grounds for Suspicion in the Algerian Sahara 54 Kidnapped on the ‘Graveyard Piste’ 54 The Hostage Liberation 59 ‘No Assault, No Islamists, No Victims, No Ransom!’ 62 Who Ordered the Kidnapping? 64 The Journey from Tamelrik to Mali 66 The Hostage Release in Mali 71 Keenan 00 pre v 25/3/09 09:57:31 vi THE DARK SAHARA Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. 5 Grounds for Suspicion in the Sahel 74 Alleged ‘Terrorism’ in Southern Algeria: August 2003 to Early 2004 75 Military Engagements Flush the GSPC Out of Mali 76 The ‘Hold-up’ of Tourists in Aïr 82 El Para’s Journey to Chad 86 6 Who was El Para? 94 The ‘Truths’ of El Para 94 El Para’s Biographies 97 El Para as a DRS Agent 98 El Para as a US ‘Green Beret’? 101 Phantasmal Terrorists 103 El Para’s Communications 105 El Para’s Extradition to Algeria and Trial 111 The Last Word on El Para? 114 7 Oil and Empire 116 America’s Energy Crisis 116 The Cheney Report 118 The Importance of African Oil to the US 122 8 Algeria’s ‘Black Decade’ 132 The Economic Crisis of the Mid 1980s 133 From Economic to Political Crisis: 1988–1992 136 A Military Coup by Any Other Name 138 9 Islamists and Eradicators: Algeria’s ‘Dirty War’ 142 Who is Killing Who? 142 The Beginning of Armed Confl ict 147 International Support for the Algerian Regime 150 The Non-ideological, ‘Financial’ Dimension of ‘Total War’ 151 State Terrorism and ‘Dirty Tricks’ 153 10 The ‘Banana Theory’ of Terrorism 158 The Reagan Administration’s ‘War on International Terrorism’ 158 New, Post-2000, US–Algerian Relations 161 vi Keenan 00 pre vi 25/3/09 09:57:32 CONTENTS vii Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. The Opportunity of 9/11 164 US Tardy on Algerian Arms Sales 165 Origins of the ‘Banana Theory’ 167 A New Era in US–Algerian Intelligence Relations 170 Arak, October 2002: the First Attempt at Hostage Taking 172 Planning for the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) 174 11 Preparing the Disinformation 176 Contextual Analysis of Algeria’s ‘Disinformation’ 178 What Did the Americans Know? 188 The Alliance Base: Paris 191 Justifi cation for the GWOT and the Link With Iraq 192 12 The Nature of US Intelligence 196 An Absence of Terrorism in the Sahel 196 ‘Back-of-the-envelope’ Intelligence 197 Confusing Pakistanis: the Tablighi Jamaat Movement 198 Inadequate HUMINT 199 Parallels with Iraq 201 Complicit in Conspiracy 202 13 ‘Blowback’ and Resistance 204 The Tuareg Take Up Arms 207 The Dying Sahara 208 Proof by Reiteration 210 Notes 212 List of Jeremy Keenan’s Works 254 Index 260 Keenan 00 pre vii 25/3/09 09:57:32 Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. Keenan 00 pre viii 25/3/09 09:57:32 Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. In memory of Mokhtar without whom this book neither would not nor could not have been written Keenan 00 pre ix 25/3/09 09:57:32 Property of Pluto Press. Do not distribute. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died shortly before this book was completed, said that while an ordinary man was obliged ‘not to participate in lies’, artists had greater responsibilities. ‘It is within the power of writers and artists’, he said, ‘to do much more: to defeat the lie!’ In what is a sad refl ection on the state of the world in which we live, it has increasingly become the task of anthro- pologists to ‘defeat the lie’. At a time when our universities are taking on an increasingly mercenary hue and social scientists coming under growing pressure to politicise their research and so ease the passage of ‘the lie’, it is a regrettable indictment of academe, but perhaps not surprising, that my acknowledgements are so brief. I would like to have thanked, as I have done frequently in the past, a number of funding agencies and research councils, but I am not able to do so. The prolonged fi eldwork and research on which this work and its sequel (The Dying Sahara) are based have received no such funding.

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