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By Jason Motlagh
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONALPublished May 20, 2005
A newly declassified Canadian intelligence report warns that West Africa is breeding a militant Islamist threat with "significant potential" for growth for groups such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service brief, which was obtained by United Press International, says religious and ethnic divisions coupled with state corruption and severe poverty in parts of West Africa provide fertile grounds for al-Qaida and affiliated groups to recruit supporters and plot attacks on Western interests.
"The meshing of religious sectarianism with regional politics, combined with regional and ethnic rivalries, provides radical Islam with a significant potential to serve as a rallying point for social malcontents," the CSIS brief said, citing "ungoverned areas" and the "presence of members of foreign terrorist organization" as sources of grave concern.
"Many of the poor, young, disaffected and undereducated members of local Muslim communities have proven susceptible to the tenets of Muslim fundamentalism and have provided these terrorist elements with intelligence and logistical support," the brief said.
Last week, seven men alleged to be members of Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algeria-born movement with links to al-Qaida were charged by a Mauritanian court for plotting acts of terror.
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The group, known by the initials GSPC, was identified as an "immediate concern" in the CSIS brief. It is estimated to have 300 fighters in the region, is on U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, and is charged with kidnapping dozens of European tourists in the Sahara desert.
Experts say, however, local authoritarian regimes that continue to denounce Islamic political groups as terrorists in order to stifle opposition may increase sympathy for the movements. They say the Mauritanian government of President Maaouya Ould Taya is not alone in inflating the domestic terror threat as a pretext to repress socio-political freedoms in a manner that could foment radicalism.
"By giving credence to the notion that Islamists are linked to the armed rebels, Ould Taya runs the risk of leading the state into an impasse," said a May 11 report issued by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. "The international community should realize that the terrorist threat barely even exists in Mauritania and that the wrong policies could help create one."
Crisis Group says the Sahel -- a vast, lawless and largely Muslim region that borders the Sahara desert -- is "not a terrorist hotbed."
A March 31 report by the group downplays Islamist movements in Mauritania and Niger, the world's second-poorest country, where it says the government has "maintained ... an unambiguous line on separation of church and state." The report further states "fundamentalist Islam has been present in the Sahel for over 60 years without being linked to anti-Western violence."
Nevertheless, it said neighboring Mali runs the "greatest risk of any West African country, other than Nigeria, of violent Islamist activity."
Mike McGovern, Crisis Group's West Africa Project director, told United Press International this was
because of "a conjunction" of factors, notably the presence of the GSPC and heavy Islamic proselytization campaigns by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States.
He singled out the Jema'at Tabligh, a South Asian Islamic missionary organization reported to be the world's largest, as exercising greater influence in the country and said they follow the "same approach to religion as Taliban, except they allow for the mixing of religion and politics."
The May 11 Crisis Group report said other, less established, movements include "a nebulous set of political groupings" whose ideology draws from Saudi Wahhabism, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and other prominent fundamentalist thinkers.
"In general, there is a lot of Islamic activity (in the region) with the Wahabbi influence and Pakistani clerics working throughout the region," said Princeton Lyman, an expert in Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Some are fundamentalists, others less so ... but I would not call a place like Mali, which is very poor, a prize to hold for al-Qaida.
"If I was thinking like al-Qaida, the prize would not be Mali or Chad, but Nigeria," said Lyman, listing its history of corruption, massive Muslim population and religious tensions as evidence.
Lyman said though he "gets mixed reports of al-Qaida's established presence in the area," Nigeria is ripe for ideological entrepreneurs who exploit poverty-stricken areas and popular discontent with governments.
Nigeria's 120 million people are almost evenly divided between the Muslim-dominated north and the Christian south, though much intermingling goes on. The adoption of strict Islamic law in some northern provinces has sparked outbreaks of violence in which thousands have died.
Many analysts fear the growth of Al-Sunnah wal Jama'ah, an extremist group that has attacked authorities and stirred sectarian unrest with the goal of creating a "Taliban-style" state in the north.
Believing West Africa to be the new front in the global war on terror, U.S. military officials have been engaged in the Pan-Sahel Initiative, a low-profile $7.75 million military program that began in 2004 to improve border security throughout the region.
PSI-trained troops of the Chadian army reportedly killed 43 GSPC militants in a cross-border firefight last March. Since then, the improved efforts of Algerian and Malian troops are said to have critically undermined GSPC activities. But more preventive measures are now under way.
The PSI will morph into the Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative in June, the Pentagon announced this week. The beefed up $125 million initiative, which may draw more federal funding, will deploy U.S. special operations forces to train counterparts in Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Chad, Tunisia, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali and Niger and facilitate better collaboration on regional security.
"Everyone agrees the holistic approach is most effective," said Crisis Group's McGovern, adding he was satisfied that Washington had reached a decision and moved to push it forward.
"West Africa is not a hotbed of terrorism, but a place we want to sure up so it doesn't become one in the future," he said. "I think that's worth the investment of a few hundred million dollars."
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