Libyan-Derived
"As a result of the crisis, millions of economic migrants, especially from Chad, Mali, Mauritania, the Niger and other African countries were forced to flee Libya and return to the communities they had left in search of better living conditions.
"Overnight, the governments of the region had to contend with the impact of the crisis on an already challenging humanitarian development security situation."
January 2012 United Nations report
If Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi were still alive, he'd leer knowingly and say "I told you so". He did, he foretold what chaos would result in Africa with his downfall. He knew of what he spoke; he was not the King of Africa after all, for nothing. His country's oil wealth gave him very special status. His neighbours learned to love him for his generosity in spreading the riches he garnered from his geography's natural resources.
And he also took off their hands members of their society that proved problematical for them. Young men who could not find employment in their home countries became his trusted mercenaries whom he arranged to have trained and become well equipped to do their work, protecting him, and protecting Libya. Family men for whom there was no work at home gravitated to Libya where they performed labour that native Libyans spurned.
During the civil war that erupted through Libya's "Arab Spring", their distinctive ethnic appearance, their skin colour, betrayed them and they became targets for the rebels in the tribal and sectarian upheavals that resulted in the final downfall of the Gadhafi regime. Many drowned in their desperation to escape Libya, many others were simply killed by Libyans resentful of their presence. Those who were able to escape the carnage did so with their weapons, and those they looted.
A tailor-made prescription for trouble further afield, as the Tuaregs employed as mercenaries simply resumed their determined efforts to wrest from the Malian government a geography of their own. During the fighting and the uncovering of munitions caches at military outposts where the regime's forces had fled in disarray, a splendid opportunity arose to allow the AQIM to arm themselves with the spoils, even as NATO was busy bombing the military, allowing cover for the rebels.
All those supply depots stuffed with arms, left by the retreating government troops quite thrilled Mokhtar Belmokhtar, for one, as leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Even before that happened, African heads of state voiced their concerns of consequences of the conflict that would impact on their countries.
Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno warned in March of 2011 that he had knowledge AQIM had benefited hugely with missiles and small arms from the abandoned arms stockpiles from Libya. "This is very serious -- AQIM is becoming a genuine army, the best equipped in the region", he warned, emphasizing their advantage, being on the scene aiding rebel forces fighting to overthrow Gadhafi.
A like warning emanated from the Algerian government, itself at war with AQIM for the past ten years, even as weapons were being smuggled into Mali. Niger's security forces were busy monitoring covert convoys making their way through the desert border area with Libya. Successfully intercepting a convoy with 645 kilograms of explosives, 445 detonators and small arms, only one of many; the others delivered their burden of armaments to the jihadists.
"The region has turned into a powder keg. things have changed and degraded since the Libya crisis ... the region is on a path to war. With stolen weapons circulating, al-Qaeda's total impact is growing" lamented Niger's Foreign Miister Mohamed Bazoum at an anti-terrorism conference in 2011. This is what was achieved in Libya and its spillover into neighbouring countries when Moammar Gadhafi was dispatched, thanks primarily to NATO's helpful intervention.
Libya continues to teeter between uneasy truce and chaos, with the still-armed rebel groups defying the order that the newly-elected, Western-backed government is attempting to restore within the country. An estimated 200,000 well-armed tribal men continue to pose a threat to the fledgling government, incapable of imposing order on much of the country. The AQIM attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi with the death of four Americans, one toll.
The AQIM group that attacked the In Amenas gas refinery in Algeria with the resulting hostage crisis costing the lives of 38 foreign workers and 27 attackers, carried arms that had been looted from Libya. And of course Mokhtar Belmokhtar was involved. Additionally, some of the very same Libyan rebel fighters whom NATO had championed made their way to Syria, now busily engaged in fighting the Syrian regime, and they are linked to al-Qaeda.
And now it is Mali upon which the attention of the world has turned as first an army coup resulting from the Taureg unrest, then a Taureg-Islamist alliance marched on the northern Mali desert towns of Timbuktu , Kidal and Gao, the country's most populous northern cities to capture the territory and begin their year-long occupation, transforming the area into a Sharia-occupied holding.
The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, fighting for an independent Taureg homeland was turned upon and finally turned out and dispossessed of their mission in northern Mali by their jihadist-opportunist partner, Ansar Dine, which also took possession of the advanced weaponry that the Tauregs had brought with them from Libya.
France marched in with its military and its airforce with warplanes making short work of emptying the towns of the jihadist presence. Members of Ansar-dine fled into the desert and there they will remain until the departure of the French and the African troops that joined them, until such time when they see opportunity going their way and return to the huge area they are determined to make a permanent base for themselves, as the foot-in-the-door for a pan-African Caliphate.
Labels: Africa, Armaments, Conflict, Islamism, NATO, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, February 10, 2013
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