Tuareg Rebel Troops are inspected by a commander
It’s been a busy week and a half for the Sahel region. Not one but two (count ‘em) Sahel themed articles have appeared in the New York Times in the last ten days. The first article was on the training of Malian and Senegalese armed forces and provides further information on the Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) that was the subject of an earlier post on PF that you can find here. One of the interesting points that comes out of the article is just how small this effort is in the grand scheme of US strategic initiatives and how significant the obstacles are against the Malian armed forces ever being a significant challenge to AQIM or the numerous smugglers running cigarettes, fuel, and arms through the desert.
As the article mentions the Malian army has only “two working helicopters” and seems to have adopted a “live-and-let-live” approach to dealing with AQIM while they go after Tuareg rebels instead. Any objective analysis of the challenges facing the projection of power by the Malian government into the Sahara (and this is a similar dynamic for Niger which was also the focus of a Times article this week) must focus on two simple issues geography & economics.
While these are themes that are touched on in all counterinsurgency manuals from the 60s and 70s it is amazing to see the degree of difficulty that they inject into the Malian and Niger cases. Both of these countries are desperately poor, and have little to no government presence or authority in these remote communities on the periphery of the Sahara. Reading the article on the US training program in Mali you get the sense that there is a recognition that training troops alone is not enough– the article mentions plans to coordinate with USAID to move funds to support local businesses, teach practical skills, set up FM radio stations and other initiatives to support the quality of life and increase security for Malians in the north. My concern reading over the article is that while it seems like the US approach combines elements of both counter-insurgency with counter terrorism: winning the hearts and minds of the people, improving military capacity, training and techniques, while trying to reduce or isolate terrorist access to Malians and limit their sanctuaries in the region– this hybrid approach risks failing in the long run unless the US is willing to stay put and commit serious amounts of money to keep it going. This is not a glamorous “surge” type mission– this is a long term, gradual, and what might be called preemptive counter terrorism model. I think it’s an interesting mission and renewed US attention to the region is a good thing as long as it doesn’t involve propping up really unsavory characters in local governments in the region– but I am worried about how long US attention will really be focused on the issue especially given that they are trying to project power into one of the most remote, poor and isolated regions of the world.
This is because the challenges at the root of suppressing AQIM in the Sahara: economics and geography, are extreme challenges for the TSCTI but work very much in favor of AQIM. By operating in the desert, “taxing” smugglers, intimidating locals, and taking what they need in raids AQIM has a steady supply of income and seems to be able to operate relatively comfortably. If they know the desert well they can simply avoid the military forces until they want to engage them in combat and then they can escape again into the desert. Furthermore, as long as there are tourists in the region there will always be the possibility of kidnapping and ransoming them back which provides another relatively steady source of income. Furthermore if one country pulls out or is not committed to the effort AQIM seems relatively able to shift their field of operations from one country to another. As I remarked in a previous post it makes little strategic sense to push the TSCTI in Mali while cutting Mauritania out of the initiative after the coup– my guess would be that AQIM can move into northern Mauritania if they feel it is preferable to operate there than Mali. Given the fact that there are literally no significant forces to oppose AQIM’s movement through the desert you need a unified, coordinated, and determined effort from the relevant governments in order to really eliminate the AQIM threat.
The second article that appeared this week was on the growing Tuareg insurgency in Niger against the government over revenues from the sales of Uranium. I have very little knowledge of the political situation in Niger but one thing that comes through very clearly in this piece are the complications of projecting power against an insurgency with legitimate political grievances in the Sahara. The factors are essentially the same: weak state, poor people, little state legitimacy and in this case a long history of resentment against the institutionalized neglect of the north under colonialism and continued post independence. I am not surprised that the long neglected Tuareg feel that they have a legitimate right to some of the benefits of the uranium currently being extracted from the north.
I am not sure how strong the Tuareg rebels are but note that some of their tactics will be the same as AQIM. Recently a Tuareg group kidnapped a UN diplomat, and they seem to be taking advantage of the terrain, and the ability to move through the desert unimpeded to take potshots at Niger military forces when they feel like it. I don’t get a good sense from the article how sympathetic local villagers are to the Tuareg cause but you have to think that if they enjoy widespread support the Niger government is going to have a very hard time cracking down and eliminating this threat. If there are guerrilla attacks against the mine sites or staff this could get messy in a hurry. I also think it’s interesting that uranium is increasingly being seen in paradigm of the “resource curse”– I wonder if anyone from POLISARIO has attacked Moroccan attempts to extract uranium from phosphate deposits in what might be one of the more interesting stories I’ve read recently from Western Sahara.
