'Prime real estate' for terrorists

2005-05-26 12:38

Dakar - The United States (US) is pouring more soldiers and millions more dollars into its anti-terrorism campaign in Africa, including in Algeria and chaotic Nigeria, both oil-rich nations where radical Islam has a following.

A new North and West African effort outlined on Wednesday from the US Embassy in Senegal proposes spending $100m a year over five years to boost security in some of world's least policed areas, starting with a joint military exercise.

An earlier anti-terror exercise with a budget of just $6m focused on troop training in four West African nations. The new campaign will target nine North and West African nations and seek to bolster regional co-operation.

Analysts were waiting to see if the programme would be fully funded — but said the intended budgetary increase shows the US is taking West Africa more seriously.

Taking Africa seriously

"If they're turning the corner to $100m, that's graduation into something much larger," said J Stephen Morrison, Africa director at the Washington DC-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. "It's still modest, but it's a dramatic step up."

Major Holly Silkman, a US military spokesperson, said under-populated border areas in the region could be sanctuaries for "terrorists or would-be terrorists".

US officials have long viewed northwestern Africa's vast desert stretches as prime real estate for aspiring terrorists seeking to set up training camps or other bases. Some US commanders liken the area's ungoverned expanses to Afghanistan during Taliban rule, under which Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror group thrived.

Much of the troop training will focus on units responsible for guarding frontiers, said Silkman.

Concern over radical movement

Militants have roamed south from oil-rich Algeria into West Africa recent years, and in northern Nigeria, years of poverty and brutal military rule has radicalised some Muslims.

Silkman said: "Islam isn't the problem, it's only the radicals."

The new programme will also bring together for medical training and command-post exercises military staff from the nine participating countries — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Chad and Nigeria.

Notable among the new entries is Nigeria — Africa's most-populous nation of 130 million, the continent's biggest petroleum producer and source of one-fifth of all American oil imports.

Osama bin Laden purportedly marked the country for liberation in release posted on the Internet earlier last year.

The country's heavily Muslim north has seen increasing radicalism and anti-West attitudes.

"By adding Nigeria, adds a very significant dimension, because northeastern Nigeria is arguably the area that poses the greatest vulnerability in terms of al-Qaeda or affiliates taking root," said Morrison.

Morrison stressed there has been no firm evidence of any organised, foreign-run Muslim militant group operating in northern Nigeria.

- AP