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The Making of Terrorists: Anthropology and the Alternative Truth of America’S ‘War on Terror’ in the Sahara

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The Making of Terrorists: Anthropology and the Alternative Truth of America’S ‘War on Terror’ in the Sahara The making of terrorists: Anthropology and the alternative truth of America’s ‘War on Terror’ in the Sahara Jeremy Keenan Abstract: This article, based on almost eight years of continuous anthropological research amongst the Tuareg people of the Sahara and Sahel, suggests that the launch by the US and its main regional ally, Algeria, in 2002–2003 of a ‘new’,‘sec- ond’,or ‘Saharan’ Front in the ‘War on Terror’ was largely a fabrication on the part of the US and Algerian military intelligence services. The ‘official truth’,embodied in an estimated 3,000 articles and reports of one sort or another, is largely disin- formation. The article summarizes how and why this deception was effected and examines briefly its implications for both the region and its people as well as the future of US international relations and especially its global pursuance of an in- creasingly suspect ‘War on Terror’. Keywords: Algeria, disinformation, Sahara, Tuareg, ‘War on Terror’ I first undertook anthropological fieldwork Sahara following its effective closure to the out- amongst the Tuareg of the Central Sahara, side world during the eight-year period of civil mostly amongst the Kel Ahaggar of southern conflict that followed the Algerian army’s annul- Algeria, during the period 1964–1971.1 It was ment of the 1991–1992 elections that would have a period of tumultuous change, following the brought to power the world’s first ever demo- recent independence of Algeria (1962), during cratically elected Islamist government. I was thus which a number of pressures, notably successive able to witness an entire society, in one of the drought years and a number of ideologically world’s most isolated and remote regions, re- driven government policies, led to some 50 per- enter and begin to catch up, as it were, with the cent of the Kel Ahaggar being more or less sed- modern world. The Tuareg entered the new mil- entarized by the time I left at the end of 1971 lennium having skipped globalization and asso- (Keenan [1977] 2002: xi–xxviii). ciated technological changes that had charac- I did not return to the Sahara again until terized the last decade of the twentieth century. 1999. The ensuing almost eight years of more or The first three years of this century were thus less continuous fieldwork in the Central Sahara a new dawn for many Tuareg. The re-opening and northern Sahel have been remarkable for of the Sahara not only enabled them to rebuild two reasons.2 The first is that my 1999 return their tourism industry, their point of insertion coincided with the reopening of the Algerian into the global cash economy, but the arrival of Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology 48 (2006): 144–151 The making of terrorists | 145 the Internet around 2001 enabled them to exer- there were several signs, which, when read with cise a large measure of control over the process hindsight, show how the US and Algeria were of that insertion by giving them direct access planning to launch a ‘New’ or ‘Second’ Front in to their markets (mostly in Europe) and the the War on Terror that would link the ‘terrorist’ means to engineer their development toward groups of the Maghreb (North West Africa), no- the environmentally sustainable goals that sev- tably northern Algeria, with the Sahel. Although eral Tuareg leaders had actually drafted at an local Tuareg, especially in southern Algeria and international WTO-sponsored conference in northern Mali, had noted that US intelligence Tamanrasset, the administrative capital of the agencies were showing an interest in the extreme region, in 1989. The Internet provided them with northern parts of Mali and that Algeria’s mili- the means to explore the freedom that lay be- tary was engaged in a number of suspicious ac- yond the inefficiencies, constraints, and con- tivities on its side of the border, none of them trols of Algeria’s statist system. Also, along with had any inkling at that stage of the headline- satellite phones, it has enabled me to remain in grabbing events that were to lead US military more or less continuous communication with commanders3 to describe their hitherto relatively my informants during the increasingly difficult tranquil region as a “Swamp of Terror”. times that I address below. The “nightmare situation”,as one prominent These circumstances, namely my fortuitous Tuareg described it, began in the second week of return to the region at that time and the new March 2003 with reports that European tourists, technological means of communication, have mostly German or German-speaking, were given rise to the second remarkable feature of ‘missing’ somewhere in southern Algeria. As the this ‘return’.This is that I have been able to wit- wider picture unfolded, it became clear that ness and record the ‘truth’,or what I have referred thirty-two tourists had been captured and taken to in other articles on this subject (Keenan 2004a, hostage in the Algerian Sahara. The hostage- 2004b, 2004c, 2005, 2006, forthcoming) as the taking was soon attributed by the Algerian au- ‘alternative truth’, about a most appalling se- thorities and their American allies to Algeria’s quence of events that many Tuareg now believe Islamist ‘terrorist’ organization, the Groupe has irreversibly transformed the Central Sahara Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC; and Sahel, as well as their lives and livelihoods. Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat). The The events to which I refer relate to Amer- mastermind of the plot was presumed to be the ica’s ‘War on Terror’. In 2002–2003, the US, in GSPC’s second-in-command, who went by at collusion with its new regional ally, Algeria, least a dozen aliases, including El Para after his launched what has generally become known as stint as a parachutist in the Algerian army. a ‘New’ or ‘Second’ Front in its global War on The hostages were held captive in two groups Terror across the Sahara and Sahelian regions of in the mountains of Tamelrik and Immidir, two Africa. The precise nature of this Saharan War of the many ranges that comprise the Tassili-n- on Terror; the intelligence on which it was based; Ajjer and Ahaggar regions of southern Algeria. the motives of the US and Algerian govern- After nearly three months, one of the groups ments in various stages of its pursuance; and its was liberated by an Algerian army assault. The local, regional, and global implications have all other group was taken by its captors to north- been shrouded in opacity, dissemblement, and ern Mali where its fourteen members (one had obfuscation. That is not at all surprising in the died en route) were finally released in August, light of the fact that senior members of the US after six months in captivity, following the al- administration, including the president him- leged ransom payment of EUR 5 million. self, are on record as saying that disinformation Even before the hostage-taking, the US had is a legitimate weapon in their post-9/11 War on identified a banana-shaped swath of territory Terror. In late 2002 and in the weeks immediately across the Sahelian regions of the southern Sa- preceding the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, hara that it presumed was harboring Islamic mil- 146 | Jeremy Keenan itants and bin Laden sympathizers on the run hostage taking in March 2003, no act of terror, in from Afghanistan. The hostage-taking confirmed the conventional meaning of the term, had oc- US suspicions and even before the hostages were curred in this vast region. Yet, by the following released, the Bush administration was branding year, US military commanders were describing the Sahara as a ‘terror zone’ and El Para as a top terrorists as “swarming” across the Sahel and the al-Qaida operative and ‘bin Laden’s man in the Sahara as a “Swamp of Terror” (in Powell 2004). Sahel’. They were describing the region as having be- Between the time of the release of the hos- come “a magnet for terrorists … A terrorist tages in August 2003 and the end of the year, the infestation … [that] we need to drain” (ibid.). entire Central Saharan region of southern Alge- Typical of the media hype are articles like the ria, northern Mali, and northern Niger became one in the Village Voice titled “Pursuing terror- heavily ‘securitized’, with Algeria reporting var- ists in the Great Desert: The US military’s $500 ious, albeit small-scale, ‘bandit’ activities in the million gamble to prevent the next Afghanistan. region. Then, following earlier visits from the Part one: Hunting the ‘bin Laden of the Sa- US Office of Counterterrorism to Chad, Mali, hara’” (Khatchadourian 2006). Mauritania, and Niger, Bush’s Pan-Sahel Initia- This summary account of the events that tive (PSI)4 rolled into action with the arrival of took place in the Sahara-Sahel during this pe- a five-hundred-strong US ‘anti-terror team’ in riod has been described, albeit sometimes in Nouakchott (Mauritania’s capital) on 10 Janu- nothing more than short newspaper items, in ary 2004. A further four hundred US Rangers an estimated 3,000 official government press re- were deployed into the Chad-Niger border re- leases, articles, and media reports of one sort or gion the following week. another.5 Virtually all of them are ultimately By the end of January, Algerian and Malian sourced, although sometimes rather vaguely, to forces, reportedly with US support, were said to US and/or Algerian government spokespersons have driven the GSPC from northern Mali. Then, and/or their military intelligence agencies. in a series of engagements, El Para’s men were However, we now know that this very dra- chased by a combined military operation of Niger matic account, what I call the ‘official truth’,was and Algerian forces, supported by US satellite US-Algerian spin and largely untrue.
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