Daily Times Editorial Jan 21, 2013

Algerian hostage crisis One of the deadliest hostage crises the world has seen has ended in bloody fashion at a remote gas plant in Algeria. Militants affiliated to Al Qaeda In the Maghreb (AQIM) claimed the attack was in retaliation for the French military intervention against Islamist rebels in neighbouring Mali, although western governments seemed sceptical of the claim on the basis that the attack seemed too well planned to have been put together in such a short time. They do however concede the possibility that it may have been triggered by the Mali intervention. The numbers of dead and missing western hostages is still clouded in uncertainty, but the toll seems to run into the hundreds. The isolated gas plant lies in the Sahara, a vast desert shared by many north African countries with scant population except nomads whose traditional way of life has remained virtually unchanged even after borders were drawn in the sand reflecting the limits of colonial domination by various western powers. Thus for example, the Tuareg tribal nomads of Mali and other north African countries that share the Sahara have more or less been left to their own devices, their areas becoming a hotbed of smuggling and kidnapping for ransom. Into this wild and purely policed desert area has intruded the AQIM, seizing large parts of the country in the desert north. When the UN Security Council finally woke up to the threat posed by the AQIM and adopted a resolution sanctioning military intervention to prevent a takeover of unstable Mali by the militants, France, the ex-colonial power, was the only one to brave the risks of a military intervention that promises uncertain prospects. Logistical support has come from the British, but both they and the US have stopped short of committing troops, as reflected in the statements of their respective defence ministers after a meeting in London. The emerging al Qaeda and its affiliates’ threat to the established states of north Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea arguably owes itself to the original intervention by the US and NATO in Afghanistan, where the Bush administration occupied the country to remove al Qaeda from its base and prevent further attacks such as 9/11. The ‘splat’ produced by trying to squash the al Qaeda mosquito in Afghanistan through a major invasion and occupation has led to the unintended spread of the al Qaeda franchise across the Muslim world. Outgoing US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta as usual voiced the intent of the US and its western allies to prevent any attempts by al Qaeda or its affiliates to overthrow governments anywhere in the region, citing interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and now north Africa (not to mention the unintended consequence of the birth of al Qaeda in Iraq after the US occupation). The emergence of jihadi extremism in threatening form was owed to the use of these militants in Afghanistan against the Soviets and Afghan communists. The chain of cause and effect has by now linked the al Qaeda franchise groups across the arc or crescent that geographically defines the Muslim world. Unfortunately no lessons have been learnt from the outcome of using jihadi extremists in Afghanistan, as witnessed in the Libyan and now Syrian interventions, both of which house al Qaeda affiliates in the western-backed opposition’s ranks. In fact the attack in Algeria used weapons obtained from Gaddafi’s armouries looted by Islamist militants during that struggle as well as possible routes from that country to evade detection before it was too late. Although some western governments whose nationals were killed or are still missing in Algeria have expressed reservations about the Algerian military’s assault on the gas plant, arguably accelerating the hostage casualties, France has fully backed the assault, arguing that there was no room for negotiation, particularly after the captors started killing their hostages. Algeria has a tough attitude to terrorists, having been through a bloody civil war against Islamist militants in the 1990s that killed 200,000 people but led to the final defeat of the Islamists. Relief that the hostage crisis is over is tempered by disquiet about another western intervention in a volatile region besieged by al Qaeda affiliates, which could so easily turn once again into an endless quagmire a la Afghanistan, with eventual failure not something that can be ruled out categorically. The western dilemma is that they will be damned if they do intervene, and damned if they don’t. But at least this should be a rude awakening, albeit belated, that flirting with al Qaeda affiliates in the ongoing Syrian struggle may not be the best option.