Did you know that our "2nd Front" is Collapsing? Check this out....

This article details the false info a la Iraq that was promulgated for this mess....


1//Foreign Policy in Focus, US September 26,2006

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3544



COMMENTARY: THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICA’S ‘SECOND FRONT’

By Jeremy Keenan

It started in 2002 with a few hesitant probes that were low on intelligence, high on imagination, and short a couple of helicopters reportedly lost in the desert wastelands of northern Mali. Then, in 2003, the US launch of a second front in its "war on terror" moved into top gear.

In collaboration with its regional ally Algeria, the administration of US President George W Bush identified a banana-shaped swath of territory across the Sahelian regions of the southern Sahara that presumably harbored Islamic militants and sympathizers of Osama bin Laden on the run from Afghanistan.

Although the United States had vague suspicions that the Sahel region of Africa might become a terrorist haven after its dislodgment of the Taliban from Afghanistan, the gear change was triggered by the hostage-taking of 32 tourists in the Algerian Sahara. The US attributed their capture in March 2003 to Algeria's Islamist militant organization, the Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat (GSPC). The presumed mastermind of the plot was the GSPC's second-in-command, who goes by many aliases, including El Para after his stint as a parachutist in the Algerian army.

The GSPC held the hostages in two groups about 300 kilometers apart in the Algerian Sahara. An Algerian army assault liberated one of the groups. The captors took the other group to northern Mali and finally released the hostages after the alleged ransom payment of 5 million euros (about US$6.3 million). The hostage-taking confirmed US suspicions. Even before the hostages were released, the Bush administration was branding the Sahara as a terror zone and El Para as a top al-Qaeda operative and "bin Laden's man in the Sahel".

The US spin on these events was all very dramatic. And it was all largely untrue.

MUCH MUCH MORE

it is well documented that the GSPC has bases in Mali, Niger, Chad etc... and that regular fighting is occuring there. But they seem being losing ground since they have to fight other local militias with completely different agendas

the French Army has recently intervened against such a group in Chad, using air strikes, preventing a coup.

an attack has ocurred in Mauretania
http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-f.asp?ID=347614

the Algerian military has maybe not got what it wanted from the US, but got it from the French. It was one of the reasons of the GIA's attack on French soil 1994-95 and the hijacking of a plane with the Eiffel tower as a target.

in France the Sahel terrorism is considered as a threat, but a minor one. But it does exist.
It's true that the US has increased its presence in this part of the world, but it's not likely they can keep it in the long run.

http://www.alwihdainfo.com/artmai04/terrorisme05.html (french)
http://www.cf2r.org/fr/article/article-la-menace-terroriste-dans-le-sud-algerien-et-au-sahel-3-5.php (french)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafist_Group_for_Preaching_and_Combat

Summary : the article is right about the exageration from the US but wrong in the assertion that it isn't a threat.