• One-eyed ‘Prince’ vaults to global infamy with Algerian raid

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  January 18, 2013 – 1:40PM

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  STEVEN ERLANGER and ADAM NOSSITER

  A still from a video obtained by a Mauritanian news agency reportedly shows jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar speaking at an undisclosed location. Photo: AFP

  His entourage calls him “the Prince”, and after the militant Islamist takeover of a town in northern Mali last year, he liked to go down to the river and watch the sunset, surrounded by armed bodyguards.

  Others call him “Laaouar”, or the One-Eyed, after he lost an eye to shrapnel; some call him “Mr Marlboro” for the cigarette-smuggling monopoly he created across the Sahel region to finance his jihad. And French intelligence officials called him “the Uncatchable” because he escaped unharmed after apparently being involved in a series of kidnappings in 2003 that captured 32 European tourists, which is thought to have earned him millions of dollars in ransoms.

  Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 40, born in the Algerian desert city of Ghardaia, 560 kilometres south of Algiers, is now being called the mastermind of the hostage crisis at an internationally run natural-gas facility in eastern Algeria. Algerian officials say he mounted the assault on the facility and the mass abduction of foreigners; his spokesmen say the raid is in a reprisal for the French military intervention in Mali and for Algeria’s quiet support for the French war against Islamist militants in the Sahel.

  Tanks are seen close to the gas plant where Algerian forces launched an operation to free hostages. Photo: Reuters

  Belmokhtar has been active in politics, moneymaking and fighting for decades in the Sahel, which includes Mali, Mauritania and Niger and is one of the poorest regions in the world. But through this single action, one of the most brazen kidnappings in years, he has suddenly become one of the best-known figures associated with the Islamist militancy sweeping the region and agitating capitals around the world.

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  The 1989 killing in Pakistan of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian considered the “father of global jihad” and a mentor of Osama bin Laden’s, prompted Belmokhtar to seek to avenge his death, he has said in interviews.

  At 19 he traveled to Afghanistan for training with al Qaeda and has claimed in interviews to have made contact with other jihadi luminaries like Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, according to a 2009 Jamestown Foundation study. Bin Laden made contact with him, through emissaries, in the early 2000s, according to Djallil Lounnas, who teaches at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco.

  Belmokhtar later named a son Osama, after bin Laden, and inserted himself into local populations in the southern Algerian/northern Malian desert by marrying the daughter of a prominent Arab leader from Timbuktu, Mali. He is also said to have shared the riches of his lucrative activities with the poor local population, Lounnas has written.

  Belmokhtar, was described as taciturn, watchful and wary by a Malian journalist, Malick Aliou Maiga, who met him last summer. He was one of the most experienced of the leaders of what became al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb until he broke with the group last year to form his own organization, the “Signed-in-Blood Battalion”, sometimes translated as “the Signatories for Blood”.

  Occasionally using the alias Khaled Abu Abass, he is thought to have based himself in Gao, Mali, which has seen heavy bombing by French warplanes.

  It was not clear whether Belmokhtar was at the scene or commanding the operation from afar.

  There are stories that he lost his eye fighting in Afghanistan, but others say he lost it fighting Algerian government troops after he returned to Algeria in 1993, when the country was ripped by civil war, after the government annulled 1992 elections that were about to be won by an Islamist party. Belmokhtar has been a wanted man in Algeria since that time and condemned to death several times by Algerian courts.

  Belmokhtar was falsely reported to have been killed in 1999. Nearly a decade later, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which he joined, adopted the jihadist ideology of bin Laden and renamed itself al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Belmokhtar is considered to have been a key intermediary with al Qaeda and a well-known supplier of weapons and materiel in the Sahara.

  But he clearly does not share authority easily, and left or was removed from his post as commander of an AQIM battalion in Mali in October, reportedly for “straying from the right path”, according to a Malian official, quoting the AQIM leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel.

  The dispute was about Belmokhtar’s return to smuggling and trafficking. Dominique Thomas, a specialist in radical Islam, told Le Monde that Belmokhtar’s activities ran counter to the official AQIM line, which presents itself as entirely virtuous.

  Belmokhtar then founded his new group, which he allied with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, another Islamist group that had broken off from al Qaeda.

  Some suggest that his expertise has been more in criminal activities than in holy warfare. Kidnapping and smuggling — of cigarettes, stolen cars, arms and drugs — has been his specialty in the vast and largely lawless border regions. He was said to be central to hostage-takings and subsequent negotiations for their release in 2003, 2008 and 2009.

  Robert R. Fowler, a former Canadian diplomat and a UN special envoy to Niger, was kidnapped by Belmokhtar’s brigade in late 2008 and met with him several times.

  “He’s a fairly slight, very serious, very confident-looking guy who moves with quiet authority,” Fowler said in a telephone interview from Canada. “He’s clearly been in the business of being a terrorist and surviving for a long time. I was always impressed by the quiet authority he exhibited. He was a good leader of this group of people.”

  Maiga, the Malian journalist, recalled seeing Belmokhtar, dressed in black and wearing a turban that descended over his eye, leaving a hospital in Gao with his entourage. He called out to him, and a bodyguard quickly interposed himself.

  “You must not,” the bodyguard said. “That is the Prince.”

  Subsequently, Maiga recalled seeing Belmokhtar seated on the beach by the river at Gao, surrounded by bodyguards.

  “He was saying nothing,” Maiga said. “He has a fixed stare. He doesn’t trust people.”

  Maiga and others say locals regard him with both respect and fear.

  In an interview with the Mauritanian news agency Alakhbar in Gao in November, Belmokhtar said he respected “the clearly expressed choice” of the people of northern Mali “to apply Islamic Shariah law”. He warned against foreign interference, saying that any country that does so “would be considered as an oppressor and aggressor who is attacking a Muslim people applying Shariah on its territory.”

  Belmokhtar was already scheduled to be tried again in absentia by the Algiers criminal tribunal starting Monday, on charges that include supplying weapons for attacks on Algerian soil. Planned targets were said to include pipelines and oil company installations in southern Mali.

  The New York Times

  Copyright © 2013 Fairfax Media

  

  Irish hostage’s family ‘over the moon’ at his release in Algeria

  Son of Belfast electrician Stephen McFaul says he will never let father return to Algeria after he was held captive by militants

  • David Batty
  • The Guardian, Thursday 17 January 2013 15.27 EST

  

  A family photo of Stephen McFaul with his sons Dylan (left) and Jake. Photograph: PA

  The family of an Irishman who escaped from Islamist militants at a gas facility in Algeria said his captors tied explosives round his neck.

  Stephen McFaul, 36, from west Belfast, fled to safety after the vehicle he had been travelling in crashed after coming under attack from Algerian forces, said his brother Brian McFaul.

  The former hostage also told his wife that the Algerian army bombed four jeeps carrying fellow captives and probably killed many of them.

  Other members of the family have spoken of their joy after he was freed on Thursday, with his teenage son saying he would give him a “big hug” and not let go.

  Stephen McFaul, contacted his wife, Angela, at about 3pm to confirm he was no longer being held captive, Donna McBride, his sister, said.

  “We are absolutely delighted that he is free and is unharmed,” she said, adding that her brother was currently being debriefed by officials in Algeria.

  His 13-year-old son Dylan said: “I feel over the moon, just really excited. I just can’t wait for him to get home. I just can’t wait, I’ll never let him go back there.”

  Asked on Northern Irish TV channel UTV what he would do first when his father got home, Dylan replied: “Give him a big hug and I won’t let go.”

  McFaul, who who also has a four-year-old son, works as a supervising electrician at the natural gas pumping station stormed by Islamist gunmen on Wednesday. When McFaul realised the raid was taking place he hid in the living quarters of the facility, staying in touch with his brother Brian by mobile phone and text. After the gunmen found him he was allowed to make a final call to his family.

  His family then had an increasingly tense as they received conflicting news reports but had no clear idea of whether he was alive. Only when he called home on Thursday afternoon were they able to relax.

  “They were moving five jeep-loads of hostages from one part of the compound. At that stage they were intercepted by the Algerian army. The army bombed four out of five of the trucks and four of them were destroyed,” Brian McFaul told Reuthers.

  “The truck my brother was in crashed and at that stage Stephen was able to make a break for his freedom,” he said. “He presumed everyone else in the other trucks was killed.”

  The hostages had their mouths taped and explosives hung from around their necks, McFaul added.

  McBride said: “He’s a very kind person. He would do a lot for anybody, he would do anything for anyone. I can imagine out there he has probably done everything in his power to make sure everybody is safe. It is just a pity that some people have lost their lives.”

  McFaul’s father, Christopher, told UTV it had been “a tough 48 hours but we’ve come through it. We’re a strong family. It’s been hard – I’ve tried to put a brave face on it.”

  He said his son was easygoing, happy go lucky and took everything in his stride. He added that he felt sorry for the other hostages and their families.

  His wife, Marie, said she was “delighted, thrilled to bits” that their son was safe. “We’re very happy – over the moon.”

  Ireland‘s taoiseach, Enda Kenny, said he was relieved to hear McFaul was safe and well.

  “I believe he has already spoken to his family in Belfast and I wish him a safe return home to his loved ones,” he said. “I would like to pay tribute to all those who have been involved in the effort to resolve this crisis and my thoughts are with the other oilfield workers and their families who have found themselves at the centre of this traumatic situation.”

  McFaul is a former pupil of De La Salle College in west Belfast where Dylan is a year-nine pupil.

  Acting principal, Fiona Kane, acting principal, said: “We were very concerned and we were rallying round to support the family; that is very much part of our ethos. Dylan was in this morning to tell his form teacher and he’ll be back in school on Monday. I think the family are taking tomorrow to celebrate.”

  More on this story

  • Algeria: hostages feared dead after troops storm gas field

    Conflicting reports suggest anything between six and 34 hostages have lost their lives as rescue operation continues

  • Details of offensive begin to emerge
  • Algeria hostages escape Islamist militant captors
  • Lib Dem MEP censured over tweet during Algerian hostage crisis
  • Irish hostage in Algeria freed
  • Algeria keen to lead on hostage crisis, says No 10

  • Comment and analysis

  • Nabila Ramdani: Algeria spills more blood

    The violent end to this standoff is only the start of a new chapter in the country’s savage history

  • Mr Marlboro: the jihadist back from the ‘dead’ to launch Algerian gas field raid
  • Algeria hostage crisis sparks fears of escalation across region
  • Gas plant raid puts spotlight on Algerian military

  • Video

  • Algerian TV broadcasts footage of tanks outside BP-run gas field

    Algerian television broadcasts footage of tanks in the area of the BP-run gas complex, where Algerian forces have launched an operation to free foreign hostages

  • William Hague condemns Algeria hostage attack
  • Hollande ‘fully trusts’ Algerian authorities over hostage crisis

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  David Cameron confirms one British hostage dead at Algerian gas complex – video17 Jan 2013

  British prime minister David Cameron declares publicly that a number of British citizens have been taken hostage at an Algerian gas complex

  • 17 Jan 2013Gas plant raid puts spotlight on Algerian military
  • 17 Jan 2013Hollande ‘fully trusts’ Algerian authorities over hostage crisis – video
  • 17 Jan 2013Irish hostage in Algeria freed

  Algeria keen to lead on hostage crisis, says No 1017 Jan 2013

  PM has chaired Cobra meetings but spokesman says handling of crisis is ‘very much an Algerian and BP-led process’

   

  • © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

  Mali, Afghanistan, Syria and Ambassador Ryan Crocker

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  By Tod Robberson / Editorial Writer
  trobberson@dallasnews.com
  5:11 pm on January 17, 2013 | Permalink

  We just finished an interview with former U.S. Amb. Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat who has served all over the Middle East, including his two most recent postings in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before retiring last year, he ranked as perhaps the most experienced senior diplomat in the U.S. foreign service. Crocker, currently a Kissinger senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, is in Dallas as a guest of the World Affairs Council of Dallas-Fort Worth.

  He has served in some of the world’s most-troubled trouble spots and has been the diplomatic point man for successive administrations when they needed someone to quell tensions and keep the ship of state on course, particularly when the U.S. diplomatic mission comes attached with a controversial military component. When Crocker talks, Washington listens.

  I wrote a blog item earlier today questioning the need to put a U.S. military stamp on the current Islamist insurgency in Mali, so it was on my mind when we met with Crocker. Even though West Africa isn’t one of his areas of expertise, Crocker knows precisely what the stakes are when it comes to the spread of al-Qaeda’s influence across the region. He told us in an interview that the United States needs to take very seriously the growth of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb from North African countries such as Libya and Algeria south into Mali. It has to be confronted aggressively, he said. To allow al-Qaeda to spread is to risk what happened before 9/11, when al-Qaeda used Afghanistan as the logistical base for its global operations.

  “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is a pretty lethal organization. [The Mali insurgency] is just a reminder that we have not defeated al-Qaeda,” he said. Crocker stopped short of saying U.S. troops need to be on the ground in support of French troops fighting there, but he made clear this problem isn’t going to go away by itself.

  In a separate video interview, he offered a similar assessment of the situation in Syria (where he also served). He recently met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Washington and offered an upbeat assessment of Afghan readiness to assume security responsibility for their own country as the United States accelerates its troop drawdown.

  

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  Algeria

  Algeria Intervenes in Hostage Crisis as Mali’s War Spreads Regional Chaos

  By Vivienne WaltJan. 17, 20136 Comments

  

  One day after Islamic militants invaded an Algerian gas field and seized dozens of Western workers, there are fears that several of the foreign hostages might be dead—potentially escalating the military intervention in neighboring Mali into a full-scale regional conflict. For months, a parade of Western diplomats and politicians, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and French President François Hollande, have visited Mali’s big, richer neighbor—Algeria—to try to persuade the government to deploy its crack military forces against al-Qaeda fighters in control of northern Mali. For months Algeria rebuffed their pleas, despite its long military and intelligence ties with the U.S., reluctant to be dragged into a Western-led fight and risk igniting a bloody conflict at home.

  (MORE: Westerners Kidnapped in North Africa — but Is France the Real Target?)

  But the fight has come to Algeria. Reports suggest that at least 24 foreign hostages were killed when Algerian soldiers mounted a raid on the natural-gas compound in the south-east of the country to free them Thursday; the Algerian state news agency says some 600 hostages have been freed by the operation. As news filters in from the massive, remote facility, fears now grow that the week-old French military intervention in northern Mali is spinning into a broader war, drawing in one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers—precisely the situation Algeria was determined to avoid. “No matter which way Algeria deals with this, this will have a heavy consequence,” says Jean-Pierre Filiu, a specialist on the country at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, who accompanied President Hollande last month to the capital Algiers where the French leader met President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Even then, the assumption was that despite jihadi networks in control across its southern border, Algeria would likely remain relatively secure. “Never, ever, did the jihadis touch the oil and gas facilities of Algeria,” Filiu says. “This is totally unprecedented.”

  Unprecedented, but apparently simple. Before dawn on Wednesday, about 20 armed militants invaded the living quarters at the Ain Anemas natural-gas field, about 1,000 miles from Algiers, and seized 41 foreign hostages, among them seven Americans, as well as Britons, Japanese, French, Norwegian and Irish citizens. An unknown number of Algerian workers were also kidnapped. The militant group, calling itself the “Masked Brigade,” is led by an Algerian-born jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who is believed to have masterminded several kidnappings, and to have ties to the region’s main terror franchise, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Filiu believes the group had probably driven from northern Mali, hundreds of miles across the Sahara—a sign of their stunning ability to operate in the remote desert. “They have a tremendous asset with the extreme mobility of their commandos,” he says. “They move at night with no headlights, at high speeds, totally undetected.”

  (MORE: War in Mali: France Can Bomb Militants, but Not Arms Routes)

  Keeping those commandos away from its oil and gas wealth is critical for Algeria, since that comprises some 60% of its revenues and more than 95% of its exports. Ain Anemas, run jointly with BP and Norway’s Statoil, pumps about one-sixth of the natural gas produced by Algeria, which is Europe’s third-biggest gas supplier, and a key supplier to the U.S. Algeria also has about 12.2 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third biggest reserves in Africa after Libya and Nigeria, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

  The well-armed Algerian forces had surrounded the compound since Wednesday’s attack, firing sporadically, while the government attempts to defuse the crisis politically, conferring with Tuareg tribesmen who have links to al-Qaeda groups, and consulting U.S. and French officials through Wednesday night, according to the Associated Press, citing an unnamed Algerian security official. From inside the compound, hostages described a terrifying ordeal, saying captors fitted some of them with explosives. “The situation is deteriorating,” an Irish hostage told Al Jazeera by phone. “We are worried because of the continuation of the firing.”

  The crisis is deeply worrying for Algeria, too. As darkness fell on Thursday night, there were confused reports about the state of the hostages, with one stating that only a handful of them were alive.

  With 4,500 miles of borders with Niger, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Mali, the country is huge, about the size of Western Europe, and straddles about half of the Sahara Desert, where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, has built up an impressive arsenal, using a war chest of tens of millions of euros amassed in part from hostage-ransom payments by European governments. Alarmed at the jihadist groups’ growing wealth, Algerian diplomats led an effort in 2010 to get the U.N. to ban governments from paying ransoms, which they claimed were thwarting counter-terrorist efforts. At that time, the Algerian president’s advisor, Kamel Rezag Bara, told me,  “If you think about the fact that you can buy anyone in this region—anyone—for €5,000, you can see the problem.”

  (VIDEO: 50 Years of Algerian Independence: Scenes from a 20th Century War)

  The problem for Algeria and its neighbors has worsened since then, partly thanks to the mountain of weaponry that poured out of Libya after Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall in October, 2011. Since then, Algerian officials have sidestepped confrontation with jihadists, instead opting to push them deeper into the southern Sahara areas, away from the country’s critical energy infrastructure, and across its borders. At the same time, Algeria maintained contact with Ansar Dine, one of the more prominent Islamist groups running roughshod over northern Mali, and Algeria’s critics say it has too readily tried to avoid conflict with some of the more criminal militias in the region.

  At stake for Algeria’s government is its ability to keep the country at peace, something on which Bouteflika has staked his presidency. Since independence from France, Algeria has been ruled by the same revolutionary—now authoritarian—political party. Bouteflika came to power at the end of a brutal civil war with Islamist forces, which killed about 150,000 Algerians between 1991 and 1999. And until now, the government’s tactic appeared to work: By avoiding all-out battle against jihadists, the militants avoided attacking Algeria’s energy facilities.

  But all that changed when France began bombing northern Mali last Friday. Algeria granted French fighter jets overflight permission. It also sealed its southern border with northern Mali, threatening to starve Northern Mali’s jihadists of fuel—essential in their fight against French and African troops—since most of the area’s gas stations are located in southern Algeria. “These columns of vehicles require a lot of fuel,” says François Heisbourg, an expert on the region, who is chairman of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. “It was perceived as a sign that Algeria would not let these guys do whatever they were going to do.”

  7 comments

  elcidharth

  213 people listening

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  elcidharth just now

  Mali: The Next Afghanistan?@elcidharth.com

  La France intervient dans la rebellion Mali@elcidharth.com

  Mali Mauled@elcidharth.com

  …and I am Sid Harth@elcidharth.com

  

  MelPol 1 hour ago

  The odor of barbecued swine and liquor has been corrupting nostrils of the holy. Everywhere in Algiers and the Casbah there is that devilish temptation. It is no wonder that Islamic militants have gone a Jihad.

  

  notLostInSpace 1 hour ago

  Can someone explain this:  “Europe’s third-biggest gas supplier, and a key supplier to the U.S.”.   I am not one of the kooky drill in Alaska people, but I do know the US is sitting on a huge amount of untapped gas.  Why do we need Algeria?

  

  AlgerianRelief 6h

  @TIME @TIMEWorld in amenas 1000 km away from mali border its not easy to monitor . algeria is taking aditional measure to protect its border

  

  AlgerianRelief 7h

  @TIME @TIMEWorld you are exaggerating a little bit here spreads chaos where ? AQMI knows Algerian Army is not a laughing matter when teased

  

  JamesLAngelle 3 hours ago

  Algerian army storms gas field, frees 600, 50 dead; ABAMAKO translation:

  MISTER MARLBORO

  
  http://militarybureau.blogspot.com
  

  

  Sofiane 3 hours ago

  Ain Amenas instead of Ain Anemas

  

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  Terrorism

  Westerners Kidnapped in North Africa–But is the Real Target France?

  By Bruce CrumleyJan. 16, 20137 Comments

  

  Have France and the French moved to the top of the list of terror targets? French leaders are taking no chances. They have alerted their constituencies and the public in general to the increased terror threat following President François Hollande’s Jan. 11 announcement of France’s military intervention in Mali against al Qaeda-linked forces controlling the northern half of the country. Tightened security measures sent hundreds of armed soldiers patrolling Metros, train stations, airports and tourist sites across France, while officials instructed the French people to be wary of the increased risk of attack at home—and abroad. “We’re facing an exterior enemy and an interior enemy,” Interior Minister Manuel Valls stressed Tuesday.

  On Wednesday Jan. 16, al-Qaeda-allied groups in Africa proved that warning was well-founded. News reports indicated Islamist radicals had kidnapped numerous French and European workers—including, the U.S. State Department confirmed, several Americans–from an oil installation in eastern Algeria. Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its regional allies have long used hostage taking as a fund-raising and terror method. Around the same time, Somalia’s al-Shabab militia announced it will execute a French spy it has held for three-and-a-half years in response to a failed Jan. 12 commando mission to rescue him left 17 extremists and two French soldiers dead. Those developments came after warnings by a jihadi leader in Mali Monday that by attacking Islamist forces in Africa, “François Hollande opened the gates of hell for all French people”.

  (MORE: The Crisis in Mali: Will French Air Strikes Stop the Islamist Advance?)

  All that action seemed to indicate French anti-Islamist action in Mali and elsewhere in Africa had already set jihadi groups seeking retaliation—with France looming largest in their sights.

  “America gets a break from being top of target on Islamist terrorists’ lists now that France has taken that spot,” a senior French security official darkly joked to TIME. “Our intervention in Mali will make France the primary object of extremist anger and vengeance for awhile. Initially that will leave French interests, tourists, and other soft-targets abroad particularly vulnerable to terror reprisal, awaiting attempts to organize and mount attacks on French territory itself. But our action in Mali makes us enemy number one to both Islamist extremists in the region, as well as other allied jihadi who will be aching to avenge their brothers in Africa.”

  Wednesday’s kidnapping seemed to suggest France’s United Nations-covered intervention in Mali means terror trouble for other nations as well. Evolving reports say an al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping Wednesday of around nine foreigners in Algeria—including, reportedly, Norwegian, British, Irish, French, and Japanese nationals. Soon after, the leader of the group, Mokhatar Belmokhatar, said it had taken seven American prisoners in the raid that is also said to have left two French security workers at the BP oil installation dead. Though French officials said they were unable to provide information on the abductions Wednesday morning, Hollande used a speech to journalists in the Elysée to stress that halting increasingly violent jihadi activity in the region was why France joined Malian armed forces to battle Islamist militias in the first place. “The decision I took Friday was necessary because if it hadn’t been taken then, it would have been too late to take later,” Hollande said. “Mali would have been conquered by terrorists, and its population placed under their force.”

  Many specialists agree. Marc Trévidic—France’s leading investigating magistrate on Islamist terrorism tells TIME that northern Mali and the wider Sahel had become such a vivid arena of jihadi recruitment, combat, terror training, and control that it’s threat to African and European security was too great to ignore any longer. Allowing it to develop further, Trévidic argues, would have been tantamount to letting a pre-9/11 Afghanistan flourish in a place just a few hours away from Europe by plane. “We know individuals left France for Mali in order to join Islamists in the north for training, and know people had been tasked with creating recruitment networks for that jihad,” says Trévidic, whose new book, Terrorists: The Seven Pillars of Madness, examines various aspects of radical development—and surveillance of budding extremists. “That flow has increased over the months, and it’s clear that stream will eventually reverse itself as trained terror operatives head back for France and Europe. It has to be cut.”

  (MORE: France Holds Seven Suspects Thought to Be in a ‘Terrorism Cell’ )

  The security official agrees, but says because French military action has now turned northern Mali and the Sahel into a chaotic battle zone Islamist militias must now fight to hold, the immediate terror threat to French soil comes from elsewhere. In addition to soft targets abroad, he says, terror plotters are most likely to try to mount retaliatory strikes on France from beyond Africa. “The most likely option is Islamist militias in Mali will ask fellow radicals in France that they’d had previous contact with to get a terror strike moving,” the official says. “Even more probable is that effort will be conceived and overseen by extremists in places like Pakistan or Yemen using contacts in France, or seeking to export operatives to France. Terrorist planners always take the path and use means least likely to be detected, and most inclined to succeed. Those probably won’t involve Africa for awhile.”

  Except for kidnapping activity—as Wednesday’s abductions suggest. For years, militias linked to al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb have used hostage taking both as a manner of raising millions in ransom money European governments have often paid. Extremists have also used threats to abductees to warn European leaders from taking action against Islamists, or help local African governments do so. Prior to launching its Mali intervention, France had long avoided a military option due in part to fears for the eight French nationals held captive in Africa. In his comments Wednesday, Hollande said such hesitation was over. “France will not accept that its citizens are held hostage, and will do everything it can to secure their freedom as swiftly as possible,” Hollande vowed. “As in Mali, we will not yield to the blackmail of kidnappers.”

  The French security official says fully defending against abductions is almost impossible given the number of companies and tourists Europe sends to Africa each year. Ironically, warding off an attack on French soil may be almost easier. “Anybody with any [Islamist] background, or going anywhere near extremist communities or countries is going to get a lot of very close attention for awhile,” he says. “Even a supposed lone wolf won’t have much margin for action, since armed patrols have been increased at so many potential targets. But no defense is entirely efficient—and the Mali operation and fallout from it are looking to continue for a long time.”

  (MORE: Mali’s Looming War: Will Military Intervention Drive Out the Islamists?)

  8 comments

  elcidharth

  285 people listening

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  elcidharth just now

  Mali: The Next Afghanistan?@elcidharth.com

  

  JamesLAngelle 1 hour ago

  Diabaly Street Rumble;  Mali Army on the Low Road;  ”The Uncatchable” Profile;  ICC War Crimes Mali:

  HIGH ROAD TO TIMBUKTU

  
  http://militarybureau.blogspot.com
  

  

  MohammadIzzaterd 1 hour ago

  Excuse me, Mr. Crumley, I am offended.  As you are well aware, jihad is benevolent, like taking your kids to school ontime or going to the gym, just ask CAIR! and see the #myjihad movement on twitter.  You throw around the word jihad like it means holy war or something violent.  That is ridiculous!  Just ask CAIR, they will straighten you out.

  

  mattskiba25 1 hour ago

  First I would like to say, I am jewish. Second, I am issuing orders to France: kill your goy immediately! I AM ORDERING YOU TO CULL YOUR HERD! There are too many of you. The G-d promised the planet earth to the jewish tribe. WE ARE THE CHOSEN ONES! WE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH so that we can repair and heal it because the G-d couldn’t do it without us according (to the doctrine of Tikkun Olam.) And we are having extreme difficulty healing the universe with all your goy bodies in the way, crowding our healing arm and leg movements. G-d said there is only enough gold in earth’s soil for our tribe. So sorry. We didn’t make the rules. There is nothing we can do to change it even if we wanted to. The G-d has decreed it. It is the God’s plan! Go die in war and terror plots immediately!

  

  sensi 2 hours ago

  Wishful thinking from the TIME I guess, they already decided France culture dead among other oriented french-hating/bashing drivels.

  

  FredFlintsone 2 hours ago

  Al Qaeda again. I thought they wiped em out. I like the reference to armed Islamist occupiers of Mali village as opposed to the French who are neither armed nor occupiers.The Malian army is a nice touch too. They would the ones who arrested their beloved president before the French invaded  Mali has a lot of minerals, Iraq, Afghanistan,Libya also rich. Sudan, Rwanda dirt poor get lost. Its called winning their hearts and minds.Wake up it is what it is. Money talks. Bringing the democracy and western way of life to the heathens one way or the other

  

  commonsenseprevails 3 hours ago

  Maybe the free world will finally understand that terrorism knows no bounds or boundaries. They are willing to sacrifice innocents of any and all nationalities – even their own people – in their quest for world dominance and adherence to their philosophies! Until all countries are committed to ridding themselves of this scourge and cancer, no one will be completely safe! Hunt them down! Send in the drones!

  

  mrmsjb12 3 hours ago

  WELLthere goes the Eiffel Tower

  
• Hello SiDevilIam

View Photo Gallery — Islamist extremists grab more territory in Mali: French military forces step up their campaign, launching airstrikes for the first time in the central part of the country.

By Edward Cody, Debbi Wilgoren and Craig Whitlock, Updated: Wednesday, January 16, 2:58 PM