The Dark Sahara America's War on Terror in Africa

[Jacuma]

British Anthropologist Jeremy Keenan on “The Dark Sahara: America’s War
on Terror in Africa”

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues her seven-nation tour of
Africa, we hear from British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. He traces
AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, to a 2003 kidnapping of
European tourists. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic
militants thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Keenan argues that
the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones
responsible.

Guest:

Jeremy Keenan, Professor of social anthropology at the School of
Oriental and African Studies in London. His latest book is The Dark
Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa. Its sequel, The Dying Sahara,
will be released next year.

AMY GOODMAN: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has emphasized that her
seven-country tour of Africa is intended to promote democracy, fight
corruption, and boost US investments in African trade and agriculture.

We turn now to another issue that’s widely expected to be discussed on
every stop: AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, which has been
publicly opposed by every country on the continent except Liberia.

Now Secretary Clinton will not be visiting the countries in and around
the oil- and gas-rich Sahara desert—Mali, Niger, Chad, Algeria and
Mauritania. But a new book by British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan
argues this area is crucial to understanding the birth of AFRICOM and
the Bush administration’s expansion of the global war on terror into
Africa.

Keenan is a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental
and African Studies in London and has spent over four decades working in
and writing about this region. He traces AFRICOM and the US military
concern over al-Qaeda’s presence in Africa back to the February 2003
kidnapping of thirty-two European tourists in Algeria’s Sahara desert.
The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be
affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Professor Keenan argues that the Bush
administration and the Algerian government were the ones to blame.

His latest book is called The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in
Africa. Its sequel is called The Dying Sahara, will be released next
year.

Anjali Kamat and I spoke with Professor Keenan last week and asked him
to lay out the story.

JEREMY KEENAN: Really, the story begins in 2002. That, you will
remember, is after the Americans had thought they had successfully
defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. So we move from Afghanistan at the
end of 2001 with the America now sort of launching its global war on
terror. And there was a feeling—there was very little evidence for this,
but at least the American military felt, and they were saying, that the
terrorists that they thought they had dislodged from Afghanistan had
moved across through that part of Asia, across the Horn of Africa, into
the Sudan and across into the Sahara, and from there, they were going to
attack Europe. There was absolutely no evidence for that, and that, of
course, is really a figment of imagination. And that was in sort of
2002.

And what America was trying to do or the Bush administration was trying
to do was to justify the militarization of Africa. In other words, the
early seeds, the growth of AFRICOM. It wanted a reason, an excuse, to,
if you like, secure Africa, primarily for its oil resources, the
gradually increasing threat of China on the continent. But it hadn’t got
a reason, or it hadn’t got an excuse or a justification to do so. And
the war on terror provided just such a reason. It provided the
justification for the Bush administration, if you like, to get a grip on
Africa and to launch the war on terror in Africa.

The problem was, there was very little terror in Africa. In fact, if we
exclude the incidents in Mombasa in the hotels in 1998, a few incidents
in Egypt, in North Africa and the Algerian coast, all of which are
rather marginal to the main oil areas of Africa, which are around
Nigeria and West Africa, there was effectively no terrorism on the
continent.

And so, what happened was they fabricated it. And what they did was to
kidnap, hijack and take hostage seven different groups of tourists,
Europeans, traveling in the Central Sahara in Algeria, the Central
Algerian Sahara. And over a period of about three to four weeks, seven
different groups literally just disappeared into thin air. There were
all sorts of stories of sort of Bermuda Triangles in the Sahara and so
forth. Gradually, the idea or the news came out that these had been
taken by Islamist or Islamic terrorists. But there was no certainty. It
was being manipulated by Algeria, the Algerian secret services, working
with the Americans.

And the name of the leader gradually sort of percolated out, only after
about three or four months, as a man called El Para. That was his
pseudonym or his war name. He had twelve—he has at least twelve aliases
that I know of. There’s even a rumor that he was trained as a Green
Beret in America in the 1990s. Certainly, he was working for the
Algerian DRS. That’s the Algerian security services, secret military
intelligence services. He was in charge of a group of so-called
terrorists who kidnapped, took hostage these thirty-two European
hostages. That was the beginning of the story.

That incident itself ran on for six months. The tourists were held in
two different hideouts in the Algerian Sahara, literally hundreds of
miles—thousands of miles from anywhere. One group was released under a
rather theatrically established attack, a sort of false attack, by the
military after three months. Then the second group were taken all the
way south into Mali. That’s two, two-and-a-half thousand miles, sort
of—or kilometers south of the Mediterranean coast, right into bottom
half of the Sahara. And eventually, they were released, after six months
in captivity.

Now, by this time, America was talking, or the Bush administration was
talking about the Sahara being a swamp of terror. “We’ve got to drain
it.” El Para was being described as Osama bin Laden’s man in the Sahara.
And so on and so forth. And there were lots of little incidents along
the way, so to speak. El Para, himself, over the next six months was
allegedly chased by combined forces of American Special Forces along
with the Mali army, Algerian army, the Nigerian army, into Chad, a story
which all the evidence suggests never even ever took place. This lasted
for almost two years, a year and a half. And it provided the Bush
administration with, if you like, the information or the disinformation
to launch a new front in the war on terror, what they call the Saharan
front or a second front. And I should say the word “second front” was
used by the Americans for almost every new phase in the war on terror,
every part of the world where they launched a new front was usually
called a “second front.” So there were lots of second fronts—in Latin
America, in the Far East, in Southeast Asia, and, of course, in the
Sahara. And that was really the story.

What is extraordinary is that, by a thousand-to-one chance,
million-to-one chance, I was sort of there in the region for two or
three years, more or less continuously, before this incident took place.
I was there for much of the time while it happened and afterwards. And
I’ve been working there for a long time, so I knew—I had a network of
very close friends all through this region, local people. I mean, I talk
about this region, we’re talking about a very large sort of chunk of the
Sahara, much of the Central Sahara and what we call the Sahel. That’s
the southern shore. So, all this region, I had a sort of network of
close friends, people I’d been working with, local people, mostly
Tuareg, Tuareg tribesmen, who were able to provide me with details of
what didn’t happen in the area. You know, we’re talking about events
which were being fabricated.

But it provided the basis for launching this new front in the war on
terror, and that has become, if you like, the base for more or less
everything that has happened in Africa since then. When I say everything
that’s happened, in terms of the development of AFRICOM and much of the
ideology, if you like, that propaganda, if you want to call it that,
that the Americans have used to justify much of the military action that
they have taken in the rest of the continent. And when they talk about
the threat of terrorism in Africa, various countries to the south, the
justification for this, the argument is, “Look what happened in the
Sahara. This is where al-Qaeda was, and now is. And these vast,
ungoverned spaces, these are the dangerous areas, the failed states, the
areas which aren’t being governed. This is where terrorists are lurking,
where they’re hanging out. They’re threatening Europe. They’re
threatening the rest of Africa.” So, this story, which was fabricated
over this period of time, 2003 and 2004, has become, if you like, the
base, the fact, the truth behind what is really an enormous lie.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Keenan, who ordered the kidnapping?

JEREMY KEENAN: The leader was a man called El Para. We know that he
is—there is overwhelming evidence that he is an agent for the DRS. So
the question is who—the DRS is the Algerian—

AMY GOODMAN: The DRS being…?

JEREMY KEENAN: That’s the Department of Renseignement et Sécurité, the
Department of Information and Security, so the secret military
intelligence services in Algeria. The head of that, or the operational
head, was a man called General Smain Lamari. His boss, the overall
command, is General Mohamed Mediène. Mediène is still alive. He still
holds that job. Smain Lamari, who almost certainly managing the
operation, died in August two years ago. So he was managing it, and it
is almost certain that he would have been ordering it and controlling it
from Algiers itself.

ANJALI KAMAT: You talk about how Algeria colluded with the United
States, but what’s in it for Algeria?

JEREMY KEENAN: With 9/11, Algeria saw an opportunity, and the President,
Bouteflika, President Bouteflika—I think I’m right in saying—was the
first foreign president to visit George Bush in the States. And I think
I’m correct in saying he probably undertook more visits than almost any
other at that time. Anyhow, the development of a very close relationship
between Algeria and America.

I should say, at that time, it was Algeria being a bit pushy. And what
they wanted, in essence, was a deal with America, the deal being that
Algeria was saying, “Look, you’ve had this horrific atrocity happen in
America, 3,000 people killed, but we know this. We understand this.
We’ve been the front line against terrorism for the last ten years.
We’ve had 200,000 people killed. You know, we are in the same boat
together.” So, Algeria wanting to, if you like, get into bed with
America. What America—what Algeria wanted, of course, was high-tech
equipment for its army, surveillance equipment, communications
equipment. Ideally, they wanted attack helicopters and night-vision
equipment and so forth.

America, for its turn, was saying, “Look, it’s all very well, you know,
you saying these things about us, but, you know, you’re on top of the
terrorist situation. You know, really, you don’t need this sort of
equipment. You know, the country is the best it’s been now for well
over—you know, for ten years. There’s very little terrorism left. There
are a few incidents up in the east in the mountains, but, by and large,
you know, you’re in control of the situation.” So this was the American
excuse, if you like, for not delivering, you know, what Algeria was
wanting. That was in September.

Literally a month later, there was the first kidnap attempt on European
hostages in the Sahara. And what Algeria was saying, to itself, was,
“Look, you know, we’ve got to show to the Americans that we’re not on
top of terrorism. We’ve got to show that it exists and it’s a problem.”
And also, at that same time, the Algerians knew that the Americans were
sort of imagining, if you like, this movement of Taliban terrorists from
Afghanistan through the southern Sahara, weaving across and getting up
into Europe in that way, which is a crazy idea. So the Algerians were
saying, “Well, if we can sort of get some terrorism in that area, we can
hopefully win the argument that we’re not on top of it, and also we can
sort of give the Americans some concrete evidence to bolster their own
theory,” which was based on no intelligence at all.

ANJALI KAMAT: Let me fast-forward to the present. In your book, you talk
about the role of General Jim Jones, who is now national security
adviser to President Obama. Can you talk about current US policy in
Africa and what the current status of AFRICOM is, now that you’ve set up
for us the story of what created the rationale for AFRICOM?

JEREMY KEENAN: Yes, certainly. General Jim Jones plays an interesting
role in this. He was, if you like, at the beginning of the story, and
he’s at the end of it, or if you talk about the present, now, as of
course Obama’s head of national security, national security adviser. At
the beginning of this story, in 2002, 2003, he was head of EUCOM, so the
Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and head of EUCOM, and EUCOM, that’s
European Command, of course covered Africa. Africa was minute; it took
up very little attention from EUCOM. But that has changed. And so, in a
sense, the growth of AFRICOM out of EUCOM, European Command, sort of
covers this period. So it began with General Jones, when he was in
charge, and the story that I’ve just told you, that was under his—on his
watch, so to speak. And, of course, now he is Obama’s national security
adviser.

So what is happening with American policy in Africa now? There was a
huge amount of optimism, of course, with Obama coming to power. I think
now, a few months further on, we are a little bit more cautious and
uncertain of what is actually happening, particularly on the AFRICOM
front. At the sort of time of Obama’s election, I think there was a
feeling amongst or within AFRICOM that it might well get the chop. There
was certainly political pressure, and still is, in Washington not to use
a military presence in this way. But what we’ve seen in the last few
months suggests, and it’s still early days for Obama, that in fact he is
following rather in the lines—in the footsteps of his predecessor in
promoting and pushing AFRICOM.

And this, I think, is very serious for Africa, and it is not going to do
American foreign policy any good at all, because what we’re seeing at
the moment, in the last few months there’s been almost a replay of the
story I’ve just told you and the same individuals concerned. That is,
the people who took the hostages in 2003, the same people, have been
taking hostages again now—a very complicated story; I won’t go into the
details of it—but since last December, that’s December 2008, and up
until last month. So more hostage takings again by the same people who
kidnapped them in 2003. So we know that there is some involvement of the
Algerian security forces, and the question is, is America involved
again?

Now, in what I have written on this in the last few weeks and so forth,
I have been very careful to say that I have no evidence, direct
evidence, of America being involved in the way that it was in 2003 and
during the Bush period. However, I do not know if the odd phone call
took place. Just because I don’t have evidence doesn’t mean to say there
is no involvement.

What is worrying is that the AFRICOM and America now, the American
government, is now talking, again, in the same language as in 2003, ’04:
“Yes, we’ve got al-Qaeda all over the Sahara. This is a security threat,
and need AFRICOM,” etc. So, this is very worrying. Again, as I
emphasize, it’s the early days in the Obama administration. I don’t
think he’s being particularly well advised on this, the what’s going on
in Africa in this particular context. But it does—it sounds very, very
familiar: the same place, exactly the same people, the people who
assassinated the hostage who was killed on the 31st of May, a man called
Edwin Dyer, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time, a tourist. He happened to be British, living in Austria. The
person who assassinated him and beheaded him was the same person who
took—who was El Para’s number two, who took the hostages in 2003, the
same people.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Keenan, I wanted to ask you about Hillary Clinton’s
trip to Africa, seven countries. She’ll be going to Kenya, South Africa,
Angola, Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, Cape Verde. The significance of these
countries and US policy in Africa?

JEREMY KEENAN: Well, I remain a little reserved. Trips and words are one
thing; actions are another. And while, of course, one obviously welcomes
this apparent change in policy between the Bush administration and the
Obama administration, and, if you like, the attempts to reconstruct
better relations between America and the rest of the world, as long as
America is peddling the AFRICOM idea and, if you like, giving primacy to
the military, because this is what is happening, AFRICOM is the front
line, if you like, of American policy in Africa. As long as that line is
being pushed, we’re not going to have really much change in Africa.

The present line of giving primacy to AFRICOM, given its history and
given what it is doing, is not what Africa itself wants. And I think the
question is quite self-evident: why is it that, so far, every single
country in Africa has said, “We do not want AFRICOM?” What could be
clearer than that? So no matter what Hillary is doing running around
Africa, the message from Africa has been, even from rulers who are
fairly despotic and certainly by no means very democratic. Authoritarian
rulers who have done the bidding of the United States over these years
are saying, “We do not want AFRICOM in our country,” as at least a base
for it.

So, until America gets that message onboard, loud and clear, and it sees
and understands the history of how AFRICOM has developed from this very,
very murky past, which I document in this volume—then the second volume
will be out in the beginning of the year, that covers the last two or
three years of what is happening—American-African policy is—sure, it
will improve, because it can’t get any worse, but it’s going to be very
suspect. And it is not, in my view, the right path.

AMY GOODMAN: British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. His latest book, The
Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa.