It is understandable that since 2001 the media and Western policymakers have focused on the capture of tourists, aid workers and foreign dignitaries in the Sahel and Sahara. Yet, kidnappings and hostage-takings make for headlines that obscure the more fundamental, endemic issues of pervasive, persistent poverty and the United Nations' millennium goals and development. Their headlines and official reports depict terrorists as profiting from the regions ‘ungoverned spaces’ and ‘invisible desert borders.’ This is, after all, a region that is ‘sparsely populated and [with] loosely patrolled borders’ (Glickman 2003, p. 167; Brulliard 2009; CSIS 2010, p. 3). The most recent incidents include the kidnapping of seven people affiliated with the energy company, Areva, in northern Niger on 16 September 2010 (Toronto Star 2010). Such incidents highlight the exponential rise in kidnappings in the Maghreb and Sahelian states since 2001 (Alexander 2010). Experts believe that the most recent rise in kidnappings took shape in 2003 with the abduction of 32 foreigners, mostly German. El Para, a former member from Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat and 50 followers abducted this large group of tourists in the Algerian Sahara. They succeeded in procuring a ransom of €5 million before releasing the hostages. Upon the release, this band of kidnappers was pursued by African and Western special forces through the northern regions of Mali, Niger, and Chad. In the end, most of the kidnappers, El Para excluded, surrendered to local Toubou people who in turn sold them to Chadian authorities working in collaboration with US special forces (Africa Confidential 2006, Sahara Focus 2009a). Thus, the scene was set for the current preoccupation of attention regarding kidnapping and hostage-taking, rather than the long-term underlying realities that foster such behaviours.
Most kidnappings are smaller in scale and end without incident. The taking of two United Nations envoys in Niger in December 2008, Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, concluded when al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) released them (in addition to three other hostages) for a ransom the Swiss government paid (Thorne 2009). In November 2009, Pierre Camatte, a botanist conducting research on traditional cures for malaria around Ménaka, Mali, was abducted (Sahara Focus 2009b, Thorne 2009). He was released three months later when France negotiated a prisoner release in Mali of three suspects wanted for seditious acts in Algeria and Mauritania (Gearon 2010). There are examples of other hostage-takings, however, that have ended in disaster. Edwin Dyer, an English chef kidnapped while on vacation in Mali in January 2009, was executed by AQIM four months later (Keenan 2009, Walther and Retaillé 2010). Michel Germaneau, a French aid worker with previous ties to the Algerian petrol industry, was allegedly killed in retaliation for a failed rescue attempt by a joint Mauritanian–French military operation in northern Mali during July 2010 (Barchfield 2010). Christopher Leggett, an American aid worker suspected by AQIM of proselytising, was killed during an attempted kidnapping in July 2009 at Nouakchott, Mauritania (Mohamed 2009, Thurston 2010). From Mauritania to Chad, foreigners have become targets for ideological, political or economic gain. Given the success rate, abductions are likely to continue and the media will remain focused on them, not the issues of poverty, famine, and the political marginalising of the inhabitants in the Sahara and remote parts of the Sahel.
To combat attacks on Western interests, the United States and European powers implemented the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a set of programmes designed to assist Maghreb and Sahel governments fight terrorism and govern remote areas in the Sahara and Sahel effectively (Antil 2006; Berschinski 2007). These programmes however have the consequence of locking down space – in other words, diminishing local peoples' capacity to pursue their livelihoods. The regions' activities: pastoralism, commerce and tourism, have increased in risk, depreciated in profits or dropped off altogether. Poverty and political marginalisation are nothing new (Jackson and Rosberg 1986, Moreira and Bayraktar 2008), yet the GWOT has placed the regions' inhabitants in a state of further impoverishment and greater alienation from governments whose representatives live considerable distances away.
AQIM takes responsibility for abducting foreigners, and the media is quick to highlight such claims. The facts on the ground are quite different. Criminal gangs and people seeking quick profit as a temporary alternative to their persistent poverty have been the real actors in most kidnappings and hostage-takings. Based on qualitative interviews and observations conducted in southern Algeria, northern Niger, northern Mali, eastern Mauritania and southern Morocco between 2006 and 2008 (see Figure 1),1 it is shown that terrorists have an uneasy form of collaboration with such criminal gangs and individual actors. Outsiders, for their part, tend to misinterpret these various actors as all being terrorists. This misinterpretation is based on three false conceptions. In the first instance (as is argued below) the myth of the Sahara and Sahel as ‘ungoverned’ and ‘lawless’ is perpetuated. Western powers justify military involvement in the area precisely because they view the region as a no-man's-land. On paper GWOT programmes are designed to improve law enforcement by Sahelian and Saharan governments (Roberts 2003, Antil 2006, Berschinski 2007, Jourde 2007). In practice the policing inadvertently curtails major livelihood practices of local communities. The second major misconception is that Islam currently unites a diverse assemblage of distinct cultural and ethnic peoples into one pan-Islamic whole (see the section on co-equating Islam with terrorism below). The United States and Western European foreign policy experts – perhaps out of expediency – hold fast to the overarching paradigm that Muslim society as a whole is monolithic, violent, a threat to Western interests, and rapidly spreading (Glickman 2003, CSIS 2010, Filiu 2010).
Map of Saharan and Sahelian towns where interviews took place in 2006–2008. Countries in dark grey are the national authorities where interviews were conducted. Local transport involved various types of vehicles, mostly Mercedes lorries, Peugeot station wagons and delivery vans, and Toyota Land Cruisers. All transport was collective allowing several hours, in some cases a few days, to interview African subjects. Derived from ESRI Data and Maps, version 9.3 © 2008.
Also, AQIM portrays a simplified picture of GWOT allies as neocolonials, even though such a ploy has little success with recruitment. AQIM's success with local populations is limited and largely confined to cash exchanges for foreign hostages. The Sahara and Sahel have their share of rebels. Insurgent ideologies are largely designed to resist deteriorating socio-economic conditions, the imposition of central authority, the status quo of little to no political representation, and the exploitation of local resources by foreign companies and rentier states (Bonte 2001, Demante 2005, Zoubir and Benabdallah-Gambier 2005, Obi 2008, Cristiani and Fabiani 2010). They are not designed as a war against Western powers. Such insurgent interests have little affinity to the aims of terrorists, while at the same promoting poor-to-antagonistic relations with GWOT allies. Finally, in a concluding section of this paper, the misconceptions generated through the day-to-day interactions between foreigners and Africans is examined. The seemingly endless showcases of material wealth, medical supplies, and food aid create an image in kidnappers' minds (as well as most Africans) of the West as endowed with limitless capital, an image constantly reinforced by outside assistance and foreigners' lifestyles in Africa (Samoff 2004, Miles 2008). Given these three factors, the act of abducting foreigners, as a means to easy money, can be understood. The kidnapper/hostage-taker has long witnessed outsiders (both terrorists and GWOT agents) as a threat to their political, social and economic order. If the GWOT is serious about ending violence in the Sahara and Sahel an overhaul of the policies is needed, beginning with reductions in military and economic coercion and a plan for addressing the regions' chronic problems.
Governed spaces: the Sahel and Sahara
Many desert countries rank among the lowest in population density. Mauritania and Libya, for instance, contain large swaths of the Sahara desert, and as such are among the 10 least densely populated countries in the world. The Sahara also occupies large parts of Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Chad. Even on its borderlands settlements are scattered and infrequent. Within the Sahel proper, Claude Raynaut et al., in their macro-scale study of the region, observed there are more animals than people in the northern Sahel (1997). Thus experts are accurate to characterise both the Sahara and sub-region of the northern Sahel as regions that are ‘vast’ and ‘sparsely populated’. Beyond this demographic dimension, however, fact quickly shifts to interpretation.
For the Sahara and its fringes there is no effective central authority. Historically, the Sahara and northern Sahel are home to Arab, Tuareg and Toubou people who primarily engage in pastoralism (Bonte 1998, Demangeot and Bernus 2001), in addition to other socio-economic activities for survival (Bernus 1981, Retaillé 1993 and 1998). These groups also provided a mixed lot of caravan traders, herders, warriors and bandits who conducted a lucrative trans-Saharan trade until the end of nineteenth century (Conte 1991, Triaud 1993). Maritime trade slowly eroded the trans-Saharan routes but not before pastoral groups installed slaves, captives and artisans in Saharan oases and Sahelian villages that served as ports of call and centres of agricultural production (Brusberg 1985, Zeltner 1989, Gremont 2010). Such demographic complexity grew apace with European intrusions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Further disruptions were the result of the imposition of arbitrary colonial administrative boundaries and customs, the promotion of private property and agriculture, and the shrinking of the pastoral commons. Nomadic groups, such as Fulani cattle herders, who once inhabited the agricultural zones, migrated north, further constricting the pastoral commons (Claudot-Hawad 1993, Park 1993). The Fulani were not the only newcomers. Colonial administrations went about converting desert oases into military posts and provincial towns. Large numbers of Wolof, Halpulaar, Bambara, Songhai, Djerma, Hausa, and Sara attached to the European administration moved with their families to the colonial enclaves carved into the Sahara and northern Sahel.
In spite of these many changes wrought by colonial jurisdiction, control of the Sahara was feeble at best. The colonial enclaves were understaffed. Planning was minuscule and development underfunded. The collection of taxes and customs duties was lax, difficult to enforce, and occasionally wrought with graft (Bernus et al. 1993). Although the new settlements, a growing population rate, and arbitrary borders reduced pastoral commons, the pastoralists nonetheless gained a new opportunity from the opening up of competitive European markets to the north and south of them. There were expanded opportunities to engage in clandestine trade in cattle, sheep, cloth, and comestible goods, particularly in the anglophone colonies (Raynaud 1948). Even as the African independence movements replaced their colonial superiors in the 1950s and 1960s, promising an end to this illicit trade (Bernus 1981), such idealism proved hollow in practice. The new African regimes had inherited a weak state structure and even weaker economies (Gammer 2000, Hastings 2009). Locally, officials contributed indirectly to the continuance of smuggling through their acceptance of bribes or directly through the brokerage and transport of goods. African states' lacklustre performance in paying their employees, and the unforeseen consequences of trade liberalisation from World Bank programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, assured their continuance (Meagher 2003, Samoff 2004).
Fundamentally, revenues from animals and comestible goods are far too small to provide the money and materials needed to support twenty-first-century terrorism. However, such practices put in place the structures that allow the flow of contraband that does. Even before decolonisation, officials admitted their inability to control smuggling (Arditi 2003, Thompson 2009). After independence, when rebellions, civil wars and insurgencies created new demands, insurgents took an active hand in the illicit trade, both as the suppliers and buyers of weapons, ammunition, vehicles and other supplies (Pierre and Quandt 1995, Lecocq and Schrijver 2007, Guichaoua 2009). Today the commodities found in these markets include cigarettes, narcotics, and illegal immigrants shipped northwards (Brachet 2005, Walther 2009). Moving south are gasoline and electronics from Europe and North Africa (Author Interviews October 2006a and December 2007, Collyer 2007). Arabs monopolise the trade (Gutelius 2007), though it is common to find Tuaregs and Toubous employed as drivers, navigators, and security for these operations. This is especially the case after drought and civil war destroyed flocks, and since tourism's decline since the 1990s (Author Interviews October 2006b, Walther and Retaillé 2010). Additionally, civil servants in practice facilitate the movement of goods. The Niger government recognises the benefit of transporting illegal aliens. It generates badly needed revenue and authorities do little to curtail the practice beyond the posting billboards (see Figure 2) that are meant to discourage such migrations (Brachet 2005, Walther 2009, Thurston 2010). As for the smuggling of goods, it is more than a market for arms to terrorists, it is also a part of peoples' livelihoods.
Panel deterring illegal migration in Niamey, Niger during November 2007. Roughly translated from French the sign reads, ‘Illegal Migration … Do not place yourselves in such danger!’ The billboard's sponsorship comes from (on the left) the European Union, (at the centre) the United States Association for International Migration, and finally (on the right) the Niger Government. Source: Author.
In the Sahara and remote parts of the Sahel, both trade and authority are decentralised and highly competitive. Rivalries and intrigues do at times lead to violence. What is difficult for Western policymakers and the media to differentiate are incidents that are acts of terrorism versus ones which are not. For example, when four French tourists were killed in Mauritania during Christmas 2007, the experts and media attributed the shootings to AQIM (Petrou 2009, Thorne 2009). Mauritanians, however, held a different view. They saw similarities between the incident and previous robberies involving foreigners. In their judgement, the French tourists were simply victims of a robbery that went wrong (Author Interviews February 2008a and 2008b). Another example, the abduction of Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, highlights the complexity in distinguishing a desperate act from terrorism. There was a delay of three months between the capture of these two United Nations envoys and the ransom paid to AQIM for their release, along with that of three additional hostages (Thorne 2009). A question arises: why such a delay? One explanation is that AQIM did not kidnap the envoys. It is reasonable to posit that a group familiar with their mission kidnapped the envoys and then sold them to AQIM, or transferred them to another group in contact with AQIM for a quick return (Keenan 2009, Sahara Focus 2009a). Since Nouakchott, Bamako, Niamey and N'Djamena have weak holds on their peripheries, it is fairly easy for hostage-takings and other forms of violence to occur without terrorism necessarily being the motivation of the perpetrators.
In such murky circumstances, there is every possibility for such incidents involving foreigners to occur without terrorism being the motivation. Nonetheless, the Western powers are quick to assume that any violence directed at Western interests is a terrorist act and thus invoke the two-edged sword of the GWOT: the use of hard power (both military and economic) and selected humanitarian programmes that purport to help end terrorism (Sheehan 2005, Huysmans et al. 2006, Mitchell 2010). Explicit examples of this strategy are in Afghanistan and Iraq. In other parts of Central Asia and Africa, covert operations are conducted in the name of the GWOT (Hafez 2008, Hastings 2009, Kurečić 2010, Sørbø 2010). For the Sahara and Sahel, there is a pattern of military build-up, masked with charity, to deflate pre-existing tensions between local populations and their national governments. The restricting of space (of the commons) as part of the strategy only serves to generate more conflict between interest groups. Add to this state of tensions, the decline in legal commerce in markets far from international borders, and the GWOT's attempts to clamp down on smuggling and other forms of illegal trade. Licensed merchants in the interior towns of Agadez, Niger and Kiffa, Mauritania complain of drops in sales and deliveries with increased regulations on transport or the threat of hijackings in route (Author Interviews December 2007 and February 2008b). Pastoralists experience infringements on their movements. Both terrorist and soldier patrols block routes, confiscate property and in extreme cases shoot animals, people, or both (Author Interviews October 2007b). Pronouncements from GWOT officials and the negative press coverage regarding the threat of terrorism serve to further stifle tourism (Walther and Retaillé 2010). Taxi drivers who would normally earn a living driving tourists to heritage sites find themselves competing with others to transport illegal immigrants to state borders (Author Interviews October 2007a and February 2008d). Humanitarian assistance, such as vaccinations, the construction of wells, and the donation of motor pumps fail to compensate the affected local populations for the damage caused by the presence of both terrorists and soldiers. With each cycle of increased tensions, initiated by governmental actions to implement GWOT tactics, the tension level only increases instability and alienation among the affected inhabitants of the Sahara and Sahel.
The GWOT also undermines regional long-term security by training and supporting, both financially and materially, militaries utilised by the national political elite to suppress political dissent. There are a number of examples of this practice. The Nigérien government, for example, initially blamed the Mouvement des Nigériens pour la Justice (MNJ), a politico-military organisation fighting for greater autonomy in northern Niger, for the Fowler–Guay abduction (BBC News Africa 2008, Graham IV 2010). Morocco persists in labelling the Polisario, Western Sahara's independence movement, as a gang of criminals, smugglers and cohorts with terrorist organisations (Ousman 2004, Zoubir and Benabdallah-Gambier 2005). Even Amadou Tomani Touré, the president of Mali who most view as more tolerant of the Tuareg than other Sahelian politicians, scrapped diplomacy for force in dealing with Ibrahim Bahanga's insurgency at Tin Zaouâtene in 2008 with GWOT assistance (Sahara Focus 2009a). If these groups, and others like them, have any ties to terrorists it is out of expediency more than choice. They share the same battlegrounds, after all, and have the same adversaries (i.e. national governments). Their goals, however, differ from those of jihadis. Ultimately, the suppression of dissent, or even the voluntary disbandment of these groups without resolution, provides the foundation for violence to resurface. Collectively or individually, dissent fosters closer alliances with extremists. Hard power does achieve one thing, an atmosphere of uncertainty and intermittent violence, pushing ideologues whom are not terrorists closer to extremes.
Co-equating Islam with terrorism
The perception of a pan-Islamic movement pitted against the West has deeper roots than the current war on terror. Colonial administrations in the late 1800s and early 1900s, much like contemporary independent governments, had their own cadre of experts. Such experts consistently interpreted and conflated tensions by lumping together diverse groups that in fact had little or no ties with each other. It is worth noting, however, that when colonial administration was weak, Western weaponry and military action became the primary tactical advantages against Africans. Some Muslim societies organised and resisted the approaching ‘infidels’. The Toucouleur and Sokoto empires and the Mahdist movement in Sudan, though short-lived, were large enough in scale to alarm the most confident of colonial regimes. Such organised resistance to European encroachments were the exception. Most annexations of territories and peoples occurred without incident (Kolapo 2007). Even in the Sahara, where Arab, Tuareg and Toubou groups who are commonly perceived as xenophobic and war-like, organised resistance to European colonialist rule was isolated, small in scale and contained by military forces (Le Rouvreur 1962, Bernus et al. 1993, Triaud 1996).
Isolated attacks did occur over time, but rarely in the name of Muslim versus Christian. Caravans, colonial agents and small-scale military patrols were attacked for various reasons including material gain, animosities over colonial practices, competition over resources, or personal grievances (Chapelle 1957, Frémeaux 1993). Acts of banditry had long been an acceptable practice in pastoral societies. Before European colonial domination, the competition within and between pastoral groups to meet immediate needs and expand control of land and resources were accepted practices (Claudot-Hawad 1993, Gremont 2010). During the colonial period, the targets, not the goals of the attacks, changed. The targets were no longer exclusively families, clans or confederations. Central authority became another adversary. Nevertheless, the response by colonial officials was, for the most part, limited. The colonial bureaus paid greater attention to the policing and development of agricultural zones, not pastoral ones (Frémeaux 1993, Triaud 1993). On site, local populations did little to help in the apprehension of suspects, either out of ignorance or, in certain cases, through non-compliance. Custom also played a part as it was, and is, common for pastoralists to aid individuals whether they are victims or perpetrators (Bernus 1981). In Toubou society, for instance, it is acceptable for families to aid bandits and murderers (Zeltner 1989). Incidents involving the disappearance or death of colonial officials in the Tibesti Region of Chad were common until the 1950s (Chapelle 1957, Le Rouvreur 1962, Beltrami and Proto 2005). It stood to reason that pastoralists, regardless of their individual clan or familial affiliations, would sooner help other pastoralists than the colonials.
In terms of collective threats, European powers in the Sahara (French, English and Italian) recognised one by the early 1900s, a movement whose ideology traced back to the Mahdist uprising in the Sudan (Thompson 2009). The Sanusiyya, a subgroup of Salafists, preached a pan-Islamic doctrine and advocated the use of violence against foreigners. This tactic bears some resemblance to AQIM's current methods. Organised in Cyrenaica with support in Fezzan to the west, this movement attacked colonial outposts far-removed from Tripoli, Cairo and Fort Lamy prior and during the First World War (Triaud 1996).2 French officials erroneously linked the violence in the eastern Sahara with that of the Tuareg revolts in north-eastern Mali and northern Niger that occurred during the same period (Clozel 1916, Simon 1919). Hindsight after the First World War revealed that the Tuareg rebels had no affiliation with the insurgents to the east. Their grievance was with the dramatic socio-economic changes that took place in the short tenure of French administration (Bernus 1981). Despite differing ideologies and conditions among the varied Saharan peoples, the response to dissent and resistance by every European colonial power was military force and occupation. French and Italian forces killed the Sanusiyya leadership and disbanded its followers. Such resistance persisted in Italian territory until 1931 (Rainero 1980). Liquidating the movement did not extinguish the message, however. Sanusiyya resistance again flared up during the intrigues of the Second World War, with the Allies managing to play upon divisions to suppress those sympathetic to the Axis powers (Thompson 2009).
With decolonisation, naturally, changes came in the administering of the Sahara and Sahel, but what did not change was the lack of state integration. With the exception of Mauritania, Arabs, Tuaregs and Toubous living far from Bamako, Niamey and N'Djamena had little sense of national identity. Furthermore, the established inequalities between them and national elites that existed before decolonisation continued. The disaffected, especially the young, sought alternatives to post-colonial systems that catered to the educated, urban elites from the South. Droughts, the destruction of flocks and the disbanding of family members during times of famine in the 1970s and 1980s brought many young men from the Sahel to Algeria and Libya. There, they gained work opportunities and in some cases exposure to radical politics (Boucek 2004, Zoubir Benabdallah-Gambier 2005, Boubekeur 2008). For a short time Qaddafi in Libya supported extremists as part of his anti-Western campaign. Through state backing, trained ‘jihadis’ were sent to conflicts in Lebanon and Afghanistan in the 1980s. By the 1990s, however, Qaddafi changed his policies both at home and abroad. Estranged Libyans returning from abroad organised the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to replace what they perceived as a false Islamic theocracy (Boucek 2004, Pargeter 2005). For their part, Arab and Tuareg combatants, those from Mali and Niger particularly, returned to participate in the 1990s rebellions (Gutelius 2007, Lecocq and Schrijver 2007). Algeria also faced the threat posed by radicalism shifting to violence. By the 1990s Algiers could not prevent civil war. The long-term one-party rule of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) was notorious for corruption, mismanagement and human rights' violations (Pierre and Quandt 1995). Guerrilla warfare in the countryside was common and terrorist attacks occurred in the major cities.
In all these conflicts, violence directly affected the security of foreigners living and working in the Sahara and Sahel. The Polisario, fighting for the independence of the Western Sahara, killed French and Africans in a night raid at the mining town of Zouérat in 1977 (Bonte 2001). Rebels abducted bystanders both foreign and domestic in the 1990s Malian and Nigérien rebellions to obtain political leverage, material gain, or money (Grégoire, 1999, Demante, 2005). They also carjacked NGO vehicles, dropping off the workers outside towns, and selling the vehicles for cash or exchanging them for weapons and supplies at markets hundreds of kilometres away (Author Interviews January 2008). Militants in the Algerian civil war did not discriminate between Algerian and foreigner (Pierre and Quandt 1995). During the Nigérien rebellion of 2007–2009, the MNJ abducted Chinese workers, later releasing them unharmed (Guichaoua 2009). These actions were not a pan-Islamic front against foreigners. The goals within this varied landscape of actors typically involve both the need for development and political representation. Conversely, the co-optation, dispersion and/or repression of these various actors create a vacuum for extremist elements to fill. As they champion the call for a holy war against ‘despotic’ African regimes friendly to Western powers, AQIM seeks to fill this vacuum (Antil 2006, Berschinski 2007).
The growth of radicalism is for some a nuisance and for a few an opportunity. As mentioned above, the deployment of national forces and sorties by AQIM greatly reduce commerce, animal husbandry and tourism. Despite these dislocations and disruptions, most in the Sahara and Sahel avoid both terrorists and military patrols (Author Interviews October 2007b and February 2008a, Brulliard 2009). For those in contact with Salafi clerics, whose financing comes from Wahhabi donors, there are options. First, not all Salafis preach violence. Most are Salafiyya Ilmiyya or Da'wa Salafis who practise non-violence and abstention from politics. Beyond their doctrinal concerns, they offer immediate assistance of food and cash to the needy (Ousman 2004, Gutelius 2007, Boubekeur 2008). Migrating Africans passing through Saharan posts (those who are delayed en route) frequently need money since bribes and expenses quickly deplete their purses and wallets (Brachet 2005, Collyer 2007). Some seek Salafi charity to return home or continue on to North Africa or Europe (Author Interviews May 2007 and October 2007c). Jihadi Salafism differs from the Ilmiyya branch by advocating violence and the potential for greater material rewards to those who join their ranks. Those recruited are likely to ship off to other battlefronts in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Significant numbers of North Africans fight, or have fought, on the side of the Taliban forces and the Iraqi insurgency (Boubekeur 2008, Alexander 2010). By contrast, the commitment of Western aid in the region is irregular, in part due to poor logistics and lack of security (Zoubir and Benabdallah-Gambier 2005, Solé-Arqués 2009).
In Mali, Niger and Chad, the representation of Arab, Tuareg and Toubou groups in the military and police materialised after the 1990s (Lecocq and Schrijver 2007), but most serve in the more populous parts of these countries, not their local communities. This effort of national integration serves the state (Moreira and Bayraktar 2008, Ilkjaer and Boureima 2010), but fails to address problems that occur between local communities and state services in the North (Author Interviews October 2006b and January 2008). These circumstances are glossed over by many proponents of the GWOT because terrorism is understood more in terms of cultural conflict between Western powers and Muslims. Socio-economic disparities that push individuals and whole groups to the margins are not given priority, even if they are recognised as factors that lead to alienation and resistance.
The lines between agency, insurgent, and terrorist are not always clearly defined. The chronic, endemic problems affecting minorities – especially those of corruption, poverty, and state repression – overlap and blur into the West's preoccupation with the conflict identified with (often ill-defined) terrorist organisations. Some call the Sahara and Sahel ‘breeding grounds of terrorism’ (Bruguière 2010, Filiu 2010). The continued military involvement in the area may help to ensure that this characterisation becomes irrefutable. At present, however, most of the population have no desire to join jihadis and related causes. The deaths of Christopher Leggett and Michel Germaneau were unfortunate, but their deaths were more likely mishaps than the executive orders of AQIM leadership (Petrou 2009). Edwin Dyer's execution was also tragic, yet merited greater press coverage for AQIM. In claiming to have murdered all three men, the terror group raises the ante in future hostage-takings. AQIM also hopes to increase the recruitment of fervent individuals who adopt the mythology of an anti-Western pan-Islamism (Ousman 2004). Given the current socio-economic climate of the Sahara and Sahel, however, it is more likely that profiteers and out-of-work insurgents will initiate further foreigner abductions for the purpose of selling them to AQIM or AQIM contacts. These people are not per se terrorists, as their primary motivation is taking advantage of a lucrative opportunity. This activity has remarkable similarities with the Somali pirates and the Ogoni activists in the Niger Delta (Obi 2008, Hastings 2009), insofar as a political or ideological motive is not at the heart of the action.
Foreigner–African encounters
The richest businessman in any of these countries [Mali, Mauritania, Morocco or Senegal] could move to Europe and there he would take orders from the poorest European. (Author Interviews February 2008c)
Local populations have no stake or role in the presence of foreign firms or the national militaries posted in the Sahara. They are at best a disproportionate minority of short-term labourers and low-ranking civil servants. During the colonial era, Africans were employed in private firms and the administration, but with the exception of a few individuals, indigenous jobs were limited to clerks, foot soldiers and colonial works labour (Kolapo 2007). Recruitment was, for the most part, limited to Africans residing in the South. Decolonisation broke the ‘thatched roof’ ceiling in the civil service but not the barrier between the African elite and marginalised groups. In fact, African independence parties expanded the public sector not to create jobs for a multi-ethnic society but to absorb newer generations of their urbanised constituents (Jackson and Rosberg 1986, Sørbø et al. 1998). Within MNCs and NGOs, foreigners retained the key-level positions until the 1980s (Gammer 2000, Bonte 2001). Change has come in the last two decades, however. The companies and NGOs made the transition from hiring only foreigners for engineering and upper-level administration, to training and hiring Africans (Wermus 1995, Dillard 2003, Chamaret et al. 2007). While profiled for its positive qualities in creating local stakeholders and leadership roles in Africa, little attention was paid to the demographics of who precisely entered these highly sought-after positions. Currently, high-status positions are filled, almost exclusively, by ethnic groups that have monopolised political, economic, and educational advantages since colonial times. This practice of exclusion extends to the Sahara and Sahel for Arab, Tuareg and Toubou peoples. As such, they have no choice but to identify with their neighbours: the smugglers, drug traffickers, criminals, kidnappers, and terrorists that the current GWOT is determined to suppress.
The ‘Africanisation’ policy MNCs and NGOs apply to their management creates or exacerbates existing ethnic divisions. The socio-economic disparities that flow from such practices are counterproductive to both regional stability and state integration. An example is the seven Areva employees abducted in northern Niger in September 2010. None were native to the area. Five are French, one Togolese and the other Malagasy (Toronto Star 2010). Even among the Nigériens employed by Areva and its affiliates, locals, with the exception of temporary manual labourers, are not included (Author Interviews October 2006b). In northern Niger, local Tuareg, Arab and Fulani communities have no attachment to AQIM, but neither do they have any affiliation with the laws a Zarma–Hausa ruling elite in Niamey imposes on them (see Figure 3). Nor do they have any real stake in MNCs extracting uranium from their commons (Guichaoua 2009). Thus, for a few, kidnapping is more than an economic act of necessity. It is an act of defiance, one that extremists seek to interpret as a campaign to regain direct control over land and resources. Since pastoral commons have already been drastically reduced, tourism has declined, and work opportunities for wage work have dwindled since the recession of 2008, the criminals and ideologues mingling with local people offer more than national and international agents who are but passing strangers in the region.
Panel in proximity to most national bureaus in Niamey, Niger in December 2007. The green panel translates as, ‘All Nigériens under the same law’. Signs like this were erected during the political instability in the late 1980s and the Tuareg rebellion of the 1990s.
For training and surveillance purposes, African governments deploy soldiers in the Sahara and remote parts of the Sahel. Their presence is, above all, to disrupt, detain, and disband terrorists and insurgents, anyone or any group identified as ‘enemies of the state’. They, in addition to the foreign advisers that accompany them, are but temporary visitors. The armed forces of Mali, Niger, Chad and Algeria are made up of soldiers not from the desert. They come from the more humid Sahel and the Mediterranean. They have little or no stake in the welfare of this region, unlike the pastoralists, merchants, and holy men (both reformist and radical) who live here. The hard-power tactics these militaries practise, backed by the military assets of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom are double-edged. On the one hand, if history repeats itself, GWOT allies are likely to suppress AQIM and other extremists much like the colonial regimes that liquidated the Sanusiyya. In doing this, jihadism may resurface with each new generation, particularly if their success includes the deaths of innocent bystanders. So too will the unresolved insurgent movements in Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger and Chad, since the level of integration into their respective state-level systems is poor for Saharan populations (Claudot-Hawad 1993, Boubekeur 2008, Solé-Arqués 2009). With the exception of the joint Mauritanian–French raid in northern Mali during July 2010, the Western powers have largely kept secret their direct involvement in the covert training, equipping, and funding of African militaries, and satellite surveillance of the region(Jourde 2007, Alexander 2010, Bruguière 2010). Even so, this masks nothing. The local people are aware of Western involvement in their localities and AQIM is quick to label these manoeuvres as a new imperialism in their broadcasts (Author Interviews October 2007b, Jourde 2007, Keenan 2009).
This trend of involvement is exacerbated by the infrastructure, material supports, and volume of goods brought in by MNCs, NGOs and militaries. Vehicles, laptops, solar panels, cellphones, weapons, in addition to food and medicines, become commodities that thieves, smugglers, and ideologues vie for (Obi 2008, Guichaoua 2009, Solé-Arqués 2009). The GWOT material assistance upgrades African nations' militaries considerably but also creates opportunities for bribing officials and the stealing or raiding warehouses for supplies (Berschinski 2007, Jourde 2007). Food and medical aid appear benign enough. Still, in the hands of terrorists they are tools to encourage, persuade, or extort compliance from an abstinent population (Ousman 2004, Boubekeur 2008). The same is true when political regimes control such assets (Benini 1993, Claudot-Hawad 1993). The levels of humanitarian and military assistance flowing into the region are not only inducements for corruption and theft, such availability also reinforces the economic incentive to kidnap foreigners. Many Africans perceive no end to the wealth that MNCs, NGOs and Western powers possess (Author Interviews February 2008b and February 2008d). A company that raises the capital needed to extract minerals from the desert or a government that donates thousands of tonnes of food aid or medical supplies has the ability to raise millions of euros to free their nationals from a terrorist group. And, as such, this widens the potential for the abduction of foreigners by either unscrupulous individuals or groups in order to profit from the presence of such alien elements in their commons.
Finally, the very lifestyle that foreigners bring with them to Africa is alien to Africans. It is also idealised by many Africans (Andreotti 2007, Kapoor 2004, 2008). For those who exalt Western lifestyles, the luxurious hotels in the capital, the gated houses with servants, the supermarkets stocked with imported, processed foods, even the trivial act of drinking bottled water, is all mistakenly perceived as easily obtainable. Even tourist packages that depict African journeys as local experiences still cater to Western comfort and tastes (Donaldson and Tyner 1999, Forbes 2005, Odularu 2008). Compared to living in huts, tents or shanty towns, working in sectors of the economy that net little advancement and having to draw water from wells or dilapidated tap systems, large numbers of Africans strive for foreign tastes. African elites mimic Western behaviours that they once enjoyed at universities in France, England, the United States, and Russia. Those who crave such lifestyle opportunities have little choice but to remain impoverished or may turn to migration, informal trade, and/or crime (Andreasson 2005, Brachet 2005, Author Interviews October 2006a and October 2007c). In terms of abduction as a means to such ends, an individual or group must devote much time and effort to planning and execution of the act. Abduction is, however, neither new nor exclusive to the taking of foreign nationals (Amnesty International 2007, Bengali 2008). Abduction is an old and tested stratagem. Ransoming foreign nationals brings with it the potential of large returns (Bengali 2008, Cristiani and Fabiani 2010). It is therefore, nothing extraordinary to expect that the exclusionary practices of foreigners and elites within Africa, with their displays of material wealth, produce conditions for incidents of kidnapping and robbery that are not limited to terrorists. Both criminal elements and opportunists disaffected by such levels of disparity are also players. It is an old story cloaked by the fear of a ‘global jihad’.
Conclusion
The Sahara and its fringes are governed by a complex growing number of actors who have witnessed foreign agents, both non-African and African, destabilising their political order and socio-economic activities for over a century. Colonial regimes, national elites, MNCs and NGOs changed the pastoral commons by reducing its territory greatly through the seizure of land by eminent domain and settlement. The influxes of people from colonial times to the present clandestine migrations have further complicated the demography. Arab, Tuareg and Toubou see themselves as the proper stewards of the Sahara and northern Sahel, though their numbers, poverty and political marginalisation exclude them from political participation. The emergence of extremism is not because these territories are vast and Arab, although the Tuareg and Toubou are Muslim. Instead, jihadists have found a social environment where local populations have antagonistic relations with their respective governments. Life in the Sahara was difficult before El Para and his followers abducted tourists in Algeria. AQIM's growth and the GWOT's build-up, however, have escalated the insecurity and violence. Most local people cope with these difficulties through their herds, trade, and philanthropy within their communities or through outside assistance. The terrorist and counterterrorist activity in the region, however, jeopardises the security of pastoralists and their animals, reduces licensed commerce in specific areas, increases rivalry in smuggling operations, and leads to international NGOs withdrawing their personnel and assistance. The negative press generated from the violence ruins what little tourism still exists and provides weak states the needed military assistance to suppress political rivals. Clandestine trade continues but the current benefits may not be universally distributed and likely to diminish given the commitment of GWOT backers to suppress it.
Criminals, ideologues and other people pushed by poverty or political motivation are the culprits abducting foreigners and attacking Western targets in the Sahara and Sahel. The question that remains is whether these actors believe their cause is Muslim versus Westerner or if personal experience, economic difficulties, antagonisms over central authority, or grievances regarding foreigners profiting from natural resource extraction motivates their actions. Despite what these various actors think of AQIM, the terrorist organisation has a purpose for them. To put it in crude terms AQIM is a ‘clearing house’. By selling their prisoner to AQIM they reduce their risk of capture and earn quick money. AQIM can demand top ransoms thanks to both the Western media which links all violence occurring in the region to AQIM and the support of Wahhabi donors and al-Qaeda (Berschinski 2007, Gutelius 2007). Even if AQIM does not have a foreigner or group of foreigners detained, the hostage(s) will, in all likelihood, filter into their camp. AQIM bears the greater risk, but then this helped them grow from an unknown in 2003 to an organisation capable of extorting millions of euros from national governments.
Despite the proliferation of violence, however, Western powers and their counterparts in Algiers, Nouakchott, Bamako, Niamey, and N'Djamena have not lost local populations to violent extremists. Most Saharans and Sahelians shun violence. At the same time, local populations in the Sahara and its fringes do not acquiesce to their governments and outside actors exploiting their commons and constricting their socio-economic networks without participation and/or some form of compensation paid to them. Because of this, many Arab, Tuareg and Toubou are non-aligned in the war on terror. The situation where Toubou groups sold El Para's group to Chadian authorities is a good example of this. Had the tables been turned, the Toubou (if the risk was minimal and benefits worth it) might have sold captured authorities to the terrorists. Expectations run high among policymakers that local people will collaborate with GWOT allies given Western humanitarian efforts, but this is far from the reality. Westerners and their recent enemies are both seen as opportunities in rare situations, and as nuisances and threats in most others. To maintain a status quo of backing up military and economic coercion through covert means against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb may succeed in stamping them out, but the long-term foreign presence will only be interpreted by zealots as a new neocolonialism and will become a recruitment tool to indoctrinate newer generations who believe such rhetoric in the Sahara and Sahel, or in other regions. The failure of state integration and the lack of local participation with the MNCs and NGOs that work in the Sahara and northern Sahel have manifested into an environment where abductions and killings are lucrative, profitable and, now by default of other declining activities, a tenuous livelihood strategy for a minority of local actors.
Note on contributor
Franklin Charles Graham IV graduated in May 2011 with a doctoral degree in geography at West Virginia University in Morgantown. He is currently seeking to work with non-governmental organisations in Africa and will continue his research on natural resource management, food security, and indigenous rights for local communities in Sahelian and Saharan countries.