BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Deep inside caves,
in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali,
Islamic extremist fighters have been burrowing into the earth, erecting a
formidable set of defenses to protect what has essentially become al-Qaida's
new country.
They have used the bulldozers, earth
movers and Caterpillar machines left behind by fleeing construction crews to
dig what residents and local officials describe as an elaborate network of
tunnels, trenches, shafts and ramparts. In just one case, inside a cave large
enough to drive trucks into, they have stored up to 100 drums of gasoline,
guaranteeing their fuel supply in the face of a foreign intervention, according
to experts.
Now that intervention is here. On
Friday, France deployed 550 troops and launched air strikes against the
Islamists in northern Mali, starting battle in what is currently the biggest
territory in the world held by al-Qaida and its allies. But the fighting has
been harder than expected, and the extremists boast it will be worse than the
decade-old struggle in Afghanistan.
"Al-Qaida never owned
Afghanistan," said former United Nations diplomat Robert Fowler, a
Canadian kidnapped and held for 130 days by al-Qaida's local chapter, whose
fighters now control the main cities in the north. "They do own northern
Mali."
Al-Qaida's affiliate in Africa —
al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM— has been a shadowy presence for years
in the forests and deserts of Mali, a country hobbled by poverty and a
relentless cycle of hunger. Last year the terror syndicate and its allies took
advantage of political instability in Mali to push out of their hiding place
and into the towns, taking over an enormous territory larger than France or
Texas — and almost exactly the size of Afghanistan.
The catalyst for the Islamic
fighters was a military coup nine months ago by disgruntled soldiers, which
transformed Mali from a once-stable nation to the failed state it is today. The
fall of the nation's democratically elected government at the hands of junior
officers destroyed the military's command-and-control structure, creating the
vacuum which allowed a mix of rebel groups to move in.
After the international community
debated for months over what to do, the United Nations Security Council called
for a military intervention on condition that an exhaustive list of pre-emptive
measures be taken, starting with training the Malian military. All that changed
in a matter of hours last week, when French intelligence services spotted two
rebel convoys heading south toward the towns of Segou and Mopti. Had either
town fallen, many feared the Islamists would advance toward the capital,
Bamako.
Over the weekend, Britain authorized
sending several transport planes to bring in French troops. Other African
nations have authorized sending troops, and the U.S. has pledged communications
and logistical support.
The area under the rule of the
Islamist fighters is mostly desert and sparsely populated, but analysts say
that due to its size and the hostile nature of the terrain, rooting out the extremists
here could prove even more difficult than it did in Afghanistan. Mali's former
president has acknowledged, diplomatic cables show, that the country cannot
patrol a frontier twice the length of the border between the United States and
Mexico.
AQIM operates not just in Mali, but
in a corridor along much of the northern Sahel. This 7,000-kilometer
(4,300-mile) long ribbon of land runs across the widest part of Africa, and
includes sections of Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso and Chad.
"One could come up with a
conceivable containment strategy for the Swat Valley," said Africa expert
Peter Pham, an adviser to the U.S. military's African command center, referring
to the region of Pakistan where Taliban fighters once dominated. "There's
no containment strategy for the Sahel, which runs from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Red Sea."
The Islamists in northern Mali had
been preparing for battle long before the French announcement, according to
elected officials and residents in Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao, including a day
laborer hired by al-Qaida's local chapter to clear rocks and debris for one of
their defenses. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for their
safety at the hands of the Islamists, who have previously accused those who
speak to reporters of espionage.
The al-Qaida affiliate, which became
part of the terror network in 2006, is one of three Islamist groups in northern
Mali. The others are the Movement for the Unity and Jihad in West Africa, or
MUJAO, based in Gao, and Ansar Dine, based in Kidal. Analysts agree that there
is considerable overlap among the groups, and that all three can be considered
sympathizers, even extensions, of al-Qaida.
The Islamic fighters have stolen
equipment from construction companies, including more than $11 million worth
from a French company called SOGEA-SATOM, according to Elie Arama, who works
with the European Development Fund. The company had been contracted to build a
European Union-financed highway in the north between Timbuktu and the village of
Goma Coura. An employee of SOGEA-SATOM in Bamako declined to comment.
The official from Kidal said his
constituents have reported seeing Islamic fighters with construction equipment
riding in convoys behind 4-by-4 trucks draped with their signature black flag.
His contacts among the fighters, including friends from secondary school, have
told him they have created two bases, around 200 to 300 kilometers (120 and 180
miles) north of Kidal, in the austere, rocky desert.
The first base is occupied by
al-Qaida's local fighters in the hills of Teghergharte, a region the official
compared to Afghanistan's Tora Bora.
"The Islamists have dug
tunnels, made roads, they've brought in generators, and solar panels in order
to have electricity," he said. "They live inside the rocks."
Still further north, near Boghassa,
is the second base, created by fighters from Ansar Dine. They, too, have used
seized explosives, bulldozers and sledgehammers to make passages in the hills,
he said.
In addition to creating defenses,
the fighters are amassing supplies, experts said. A local who was taken by
Islamists into a cave in the region of Kidal described an enormous room, where
several cars were parked. Along the walls, he counted up to 100 barrels of
gasoline, according to the man's testimony to New York-based Human Rights
Watch.
In the regional capital of Gao, a
young man told The Associated Press that he and several others were offered
10,000 francs a day by al-Qaida's local commanders (around $20), a rate several
times the normal wage, to clear rocks and debris, and dig trenches. The youth
said he saw Caterpillars and earth movers inside an Islamist camp at a former
Malian military base 7 kilometers (4 miles) from Gao.
The fighters are piling mountains of
sand from the ground along the dirt roads to force cars onto the pavement,
where they have checkpoints everywhere, he said. In addition, they are
modifying their all-terrain vehicles to mount them with arms.
"On the backs of their cars, it
looks like they are mounting pipes," he said, describing a shape he thinks
might be a rocket or missile launcher. "They are preparing themselves.
Everyone is scared."
A university student from Gao
confirmed seeing the modified cars. He said he also saw deep holes dug on the
sides of the highway, possibly to give protection to fighters shooting at cars,
along with cement barriers with small holes for guns.
In Gao, residents routinely see
Moktar Belmoktar, the one-eyed emir of the al-Qaida-linked cell that grabbed
Fowler in 2008. Belmoktar, a native Algerian, traveled to Afghanistan in the
1980s and trained in Osama bin Laden's camp in Jalalabad, according to research
by the Jamestown Foundation. His lieutenant Oumar Ould Hamaha, whom Fowler
identified as one of his captors, brushed off questions about the tunnels and
caves but said the fighters are prepared.
"We consider this land our
land. It's an Islamic territory," he said, reached by telephone in an
undisclosed location.
He added that the Islamists have
recruited new fighters, including from Western countries.
In December, two U.S. citizens from
Alabama were arrested on terrorism charges, accused of planning to fly to
Morocco and travel by land to Mali to wage jihad, or holy war. Two French
nationals have also been detained on suspicion of trying to travel to northern
Mali to join the Islamists. Hamaha himself said he spent a month in France
preaching his fundamentalist version of Islam in Parisian mosques after
receiving a visa for all European Union countries in 2001.
Hamaha indicated the Islamists have
inherited stores of Russian-made arms from former Malian army bases, as well as
from the arsenal of toppled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, a claim that
military experts have confirmed.
Those weapons include the SA-7 and
SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, according to Hamaha, which can shoot down
aircrafts. His claim could not be verified, but Rudolph Atallah, the former
counterterrorism director for Africa in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
said it makes sense.
"Gadhafi bought everything
under the sun," said Atallah, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel,
who has traveled extensively to Mali on defense missions. "His weapons
depots were packed with all kinds of stuff, so it's plausible that AQIM now has
surface-to-air missiles."
Depending on the model, these
missiles can range far enough to bring down planes used by ill-equipped African
air forces, he said. However, they will be far less effective against the
forces of the West, with their better equipment.
Another factor in the success of
military intervention will be the reaction of the people, who, unlike in
Afghanistan, have little history of extremism. Malians have long practiced a
moderate form of Islam, where women do not wear burqas and few practice the
strict form of the religion. The Islamists are imposing a far more severe form
of Islam on the towns of the north, carrying out amputations in public squares,
flogging women for not covering up and destroying world heritage sites.
The Islamists' recent advances draw
on al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb's near decade of experience in Mali's
northern desert, where Fowler and his fellow U.N. colleague were held captive
for four months in 2008, an experience he recounts in his recent book, "A
Season in Hell."
Originally from Algeria, the
fighters fled across the border into Mali in 2003, after kidnapping 32 European
tourists. Over the next decade, they used the country's vast northern desert to
hold French, Spanish, Swiss, German, British, Austrian, Italian and Canadian
hostages, raising an estimated $89 million in ransom payments, according to
Stratfor, a global intelligence company.
During this time, they also
established relationships with local clans, nurturing the ties that now protect
them. Several commanders have taken local wives, and Hamaha, whose family is
from Kidal, confirmed that Belmoktar is married to his niece.
Fowler described being driven for
days by jihadists who knew Mali's featureless terrain by heart, navigating
valleys of identical dunes with nothing more than the direction of the sun as
their map. He saw them drive up to a thorn tree in the middle of nowhere to
find barrels of diesel fuel. Elsewhere, he saw them dig a pit in the sand and
bury a bag of boots, marking the spot on a GPS for future use.
In his four-month-long captivity,
Fowler never saw his captors refill at a gas station, or shop in a market. Yet
they never ran out of gas. And although their diet was meager, they never ran
out of food, a testament to the extensive supply network which they set up and
are now refining and expanding.
Among the many challenges an
invading army will face is the inhospitable terrain, Fowler said, which is so
hot that at times "it was difficult to draw breath." A cable
published by WikiLeaks from the U.S. Embassy in Bamako described how even the
Malian troops deployed in the north before the coup could only work from 4 a.m.
to 10 a.m., and spent the sunlight hours in the shade of their vehicles.
Yet Fowler said he saw al-Qaida
fighters chant Quranic verses under the Sahara sun for hours, just one sign of
their deep, ideological commitment.
"I have never seen a more
focused group of young men," said Fowler, who now lives in Ottawa, Canada.
"No one is sneaking off for R&R. They have left their wives and
children behind. They believe they are on their way to paradise."
___
Associated Press writer Baba Ahmed
contributed to this report from Bamako and Mopti, Mali.
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