[zonbron]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Nr.10

Een stukje inhoudelijke reflectie over de campagne van Frankrijk in de Sahel.

Hollande Goes To War, French War On Terror in Mali
_{14 januari 2013}

Ook Mauretanië, Burkina Fasso, Niger en Tsjaad zitten in een gelijkaardig geval als Mali.

• overdreven aantal kinderen
• langdurige droogtecyclus
• armoede
• groeiende Chinese aanwezigheid
• verstedelijking

==> radicalisering, djihadistische terreur van:

• Ansar Dine
• Al Qaeda in de Islamistische Maghreb

2!

En daar gaat het inderdaad over, de Sahel. 'Sahel blend'

'k ben benieuwd...

ARMING THE TUAREG - AND THE BRIGANDS
True to form, Muammar Khadafi played his own divide-and-rule "strategy" in an eccentric, always-changing way making generous handouts of small arms, vehicles, munition and training, and cash to all-comers and all players in "his" African backyard. As well as the Tuareg, djihadists and brigands were sometimes, in some cases richly endowed with weapons, including relatively high quality antitank missile launchers and vehicle-mounted antiaircraft rapid fire cannon of 20 - 50 mm caliber, with a range up to 7 kms able to fire as fast as 900 rounds per minute. Algeria countered this with its own more insidious, planned and targeted strategy of extending Algerian power southwards into the Sahel, through a mixture of selected assassination or "elimination" of "uncooperative" political and ethnic leaders, and gave cash-and-military support to certain djihadist groups, like Ansar Dine and the even less defined "Al Qaeda for an Islamic Maghreb" (AQMI), for as long as that was judged of interest to Algeria in the three Sahel countries including Mali, sharing a common border with Algeria. Other players from outside the region especially included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, often indiscriminately financing extreme islamic groups right across the Sahel while attempting to not support or to counter those "islam influenced" fighter groups which were aided by Khadafi, and less rigorously, those supported by Algeria.

Daar zijn ze weer, de vrienden van het westen...

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS
One thing is certain: mainly due to the cut-off in Khadafi petrodollars and unsure supply of Saudi and Qatari petrodollars, but increasing supply of Algerian petrodollars restricted only to Algiers-friendly groups and entities, the net result has been what the Western press calls "radicalization". This has triggered a "business model" shift to finding new revenue sources, notably hostage taking and protection rackets operated against the weak, undermanned, underequipped and corrupt local civil power systems in Sahel states. Opponents of all kinds to the "in situ" Western-friendly formal powers which essentially only rule the major cities has rapidly grown - with an ongoing "turf war" outside the major cities between unsure and underpaid troops of the Western-friendly regimes, and the opposition kaleidoscope.

Khadafi...