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Tourists desert the Sahara
13/11/2003 10:12 - (SA)
Tamanrasset, Algeria - Desert enthusiasts have been slow to return to the Algerian Sahara following this year's European hostage crisis, but local tour operators hope the rolling dunes will once again attract the wasteland wanderers.
"The ordeal with the hostages who were abducted at the beginning of the year has been a heavy burden," said Claudia Abbt Bahendi, a Swiss woman who runs a travel agency specialising in desert trips.
From mid-February to April of this year 32 European hostages were abducted north of Tamanrasset by armed Islamic fundamentalists of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a group which has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.
The hostages - 16 Germans, 10 Austrians, four Swiss, one Dutch and one Swedish national - were freed in two waves in May and August. One hostage died from heat-stroke while in captivity.
In May, the Algerian army launched an attack to free the first group, and in August the second group was released following long and difficult negotiations in neighbouring Mali.
Since the abductions, most would-be Sahara trekkers have stayed away from southern Algeria - largely spared the violence of the country's civil war, waged since 1992 by Islamic extremists hoping to install a fundamentalist regime - tourism professionals in Tamanrasset, the gateway to the vast desert playground, said.
But several travel professionals say they hope to see a return of travellers between now and Christmas, as the main season for desert treks - from October to April - gets under way.
The few clients who have refused to stay away, despite numerous travel warnings, bravely set off on their Algerian Sahara trek on their own - just as the European hostages did.
A group of French students who arrived in Tamanrasset driving an old car said the French foreign ministry was making a mountain out of a sand pile with its dire warnings about the dangers of travelling in the Algerian Sahara.
And, said a 60-year-old retiree from the east of France, travelling with his wife and several off-road motorcyclists, "In any case, if we were to follow the recommendations of the ministry we wouldn't go anywhere anymore."
The group said they were delighted with their trip and hoped to stop in the Tamelrik hills - where the first group of hostages was freed - on their way back to Tunisia to catch a ferry to Europe.
A number of tourism professionals in Tamanrasset claim that travel warnings are unjustified in a region where there have been no further incidents since the hostage ordeal.
"We haven't had a single security problem at any of the sites the agencies visited with their customers. The only restriction is that we prefer to avoid the Mali border region," where some of the European trekkers' abductors are still believed to be hiding, said Ahmed Hamdaoui, president of a travel agency union in Tamanrasset.
The Algeria-Mali border is closely monitored by the Algerian army, which has deployed surveillance planes and taken aerial photographs of the area, which are currently on display at Tamanrasset airport.
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