Economic aid is needed to combat terrorism in Sahel, not just military training - ICG

The heavy-handed US military response to the emergence of small Islamic terrorist groups in the Sahel could prove counter-productive, fuelling the rise of Islamic militancy in this poor and remote region of West Africa, the International Crisis Group (ICG) says in a new report. The Brussels-based think-tank concedes that there is a rising problem of insecurity in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, which are all desperately poor countries on the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert. But it says this can only be tackled effectively by a broader western response to weak government control and grinding poverty in the region. "The Sahara is clearly not a hotbed of terrorist activity, but an area in which weak states are attractive targets for terrorist or criminal organisations," the ICG said. "If military aid is the only response, however, the result could be counter-productive, especially if that assistance is overwhelmingly American in origin. Broader western efforts are needed to tackle the underlying problems of weak governance and poverty." It recommends that the United States balance its recent military assistance to beef up the anti-terrorist capacity of the security forces of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad with economic aid to improve the standard of living of people in these staunchly Islamic countries. The Sahel is one of the poorest regions of the world. Three of the four countries studied are amongst the world’s poorest 10 nations, according to the United Nations' Human Development Index. The ICG also urges Washington's NATO partners in Europe, particularly France, the former colonial power to share the task of building up the capacity of the security forces in these four countries. And it calls on donors in general to treat development and counter-terrorism as inter-linked issues, rewarding governments that show religious tolerance. It cited the example of Niger, which maintains a strict separation between religion and the state. The report notes that although Mauritania describes itself officially as an Islamic republic, Islamic fundamentalists in the country suffer government persecution. The ICG urges Mali, whose northern deserts have been used as a safe haven by the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, to open negotiations with its Tuareg community on reopening government military posts in the north of the country, which were closed in the late 1990s. It said the authorities in Bamako should also build new roads in the region, develop the local livestock industry and promote tourism to wean local tribesmen away from their guns. The United States began to regard the Sahel as a new breeding ground for Islamic terrorists three years ago, when the Salafists, who are believed to have links with the Al Qaeda movement of Osama Bin Laden, kidnapped two groups of European tourists in southern Algeria and held them for ransom. In 2004, Washington launched a Pan-Sahel Initiative to strengthen the anti-terrorist capacity of the security forces in the region. It donated new military equipment and sent in contingents of marines to provide specialist training to desert ranger units in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad. But ICG said Washington, which is already out of favour in much of the Islamic world for its invasion of Iraq and pro-Israeli stance in the Middle East, had to balance military assistance with economic aid and act in concert with its European allies. “It is crucially important that US counter-terrorism policy in the Sahelian region proceed with great care,” said ICG. A wrong move now could fuel anti-American sentiment in a region that remains broadly well-disposed to Americans at a time of growing hatred in much of the Muslim world, it warned. Crushing poverty does not automatically make the Sahel a fertile ground for terrorist recruitment, yet the region does attract overtly religious charities – both Christian and Muslim - the ICG said. It warns donors against overly funding Christian organisations since this could be construed as “importing Western biases through the back door.” ICG said some people were actively playing on US fears of Islamic terrorism in the Sahel to screw aid money out of Washington, but this was a dangerous game. “Actors on the ground in these four countries are poised to use American fears of an Islamist threat to benefit financially and/or politically in ways that recall the manipulation of Cold War politics by many African governments,” it said. The ICG noted that in Mauritania, President Maaouiya Ould Taya had used the terrorist threat as a thinly veiled pretext to persecute his political opponents, but this had only served to fuel instability in the country, which suffered a military uprising in 2003. The think-tank said although Mali appeared to be most ‘democratic’ of the four nations studied, it was the one which harboured the greatest terror potential, not least because of continuing discontent among Tuareg nomads in the north of the country, who staged an open rebellion in the 1990s. ICG referred to recent US reports that Mali may have been investigated as a possible safe haven for Osama bin Laden following his departure from Afghanistan. Furthermore, Pakistani Islamic fundamentalists from Jamaat al-Tabligh, the same outfit that Richard Reid the UK shoe-bomber was linked to, have become increasingly active in the country in the last seven years, it noted. The ICG said that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who supplied nuclear weapons technology to North Korea had built a luxury hotel in the north of the country. “In conjunction with the presence in the north of the one Algerian fundamentalist group to have stated allegiance to al Qaeda…. both Western and Malian military and intelligence analysts [are] nervous.”