French officials were quick to label a hostage siege in Algeria an “act of war,” while British Prime Minister David Cameron talked up a multi-decade war across Northern Africa, insisting it was vital to confront “al-Qaeda.”
Yet it’s not really “al-Qaeda” as such, despite being spun that way. Fighters in Mali belong mostly to factions like Ansar Dine and MUJAO, a pair of Salafist groups with an eye toward a strict religious theocracy in the region. The group in Algeria’s siege called itself “Those Who Sign in Blood,” and their link with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is unclear at best.
Yet nominal ties between those groups and AQIM has been enough of an excuse to couch the whole war as against “al-Qaeda,” much as every militant faction Pakistan seems to fight is “Taliban” whether it is in the name or not.
And even though AQIM has permission to use the al-Qaeda trademark, it is an auxiliary with a deep history going back decades, starting as the Group for Call and Combat after splitting with Algerian rebel group the Armed Islamic Group, which itself was a split-off from the Islamic Armed Movement, which fought in Algeria’s on-again, off-again civil war.
Despite its regional name, AQIM has remained intensely Algeria-centric, mostly trying to forge deals with like-minded groups in nearby nations, like their loose pact with Ansar Dine. The groups didn’t necessarily get along very well in the first place, and to the extent there’s unity, it is coming as a result of the French invasion. Indeed, its seems Western policies are pushing the various factions into unifying into the huge “al-Qaeda” threat they are trying to sell the public on.
There is one of two possibilities here;
1- The leaders of the civilized west do not understand the nature of things in that part of the world so they start adventures they cannot control. Or,
2- They understand but lie and deceive for other reasons, like getting your country out of a recession on the back of innocent civilians in far away undeveloped lands. |Again leading to adventures they cannot control
What really perplexes me is the total absence of reasoned voices, witch there is no shortage of in the civilized west when it some to say gat rights.
There is definitely a problem in that part of Africa, but to resolve it you have to correctly understand it.
Good post. This AQIM thing is a Carte Blanche, to use a French phrase, for NATO strikes across Africa. Enough.
Once more it's the West's "solution" to problem they created out of thin air.
Western leaders understand the nature of things very well. That's why it is not useful to brand reactionary policies as "stupid" or "futile". They are neither. This is just raw, naked power at work in service of vested interests. Also, don't forget to include the nomadic Toureg sessationists in the mix of what is going on in Mali. "Al-Queda" is not a command-and-control entity, but rather a resistance movement geared to avert the obliteration of their culture and religion by the rapacious West. The people also correctly understand the "nature of things."
No surprises here to those who dutifully absorb the MSM output.
We know that we've always been at war with Eastasia.