Lying in the sand, their AK-47s trained on some scrap metal and cardboard cut-outs, the Malian platoon held their fire as three donkeys stumbled into the kill zone.
"There are burros in my line of vision," an American voice crackled over the radio. "We don't want to kill nobody's livestock."
The elite US Special Forces who have been teaching Timbuktu's 512th Motorized Infantry Company to destroy enemy camps like to be thought of as "warrior diplomats," culturally sensitive and a cut above the rest of the military.
In the inhospitable terrain of the Sahara Desert, bouncing across the dunes in a Land Rover chasing stubborn donkeys out of danger is the least they can do for the local economy.
But many Tuaregs -- light-skinned turban-clad nomads who have lived and worked in the desert for generations -- say the presence of US troops threatens both their livelihoods and a delicate balance of power in the Sahara.
US forces are training local troops in the region because Washington fears militant Islamic preachers, driven out of their native Algeria, are trying to recruit fresh forces in a traditionally moderate region for attacks on their homeland.
The training for the army in Mali and neighboring Mauritania -- soon to be given to troops in Niger and Chad as well -- is supposed to help the West African countries police vast swathes of thinly-patrolled wilderness.
Yet some who make regular trips along ancient trading routes and speak with herders and caravan drivers at watering holes said the US activity was attracting bandits from the far reaches of the desert.
"Before the Americans came there were no terrorists in Mali," said Ibrahim Ag Mohamed, who guides tourists across the dunes from Timbuktu, a sand-swept town founded on a main caravan route in the 11th century.
"Since the American army came to Timbuktu, two groups of tourists have been stopped by armed bandits and asked if there were Americans among them," he said, his face lit by a shaft of sunlight filtering through the doorway of his mud-brick house.
The first group was stopped near Araouane, once a fabled oasis six days by camel north of Timbuktu, while the second was traveling from Mauritania to the salt mines at Taoudenni, a further nine days to the north, he said.
Another guide who had been with one of the groups told the same story, saying the bandits spoke Arabic, not the Tamashek language of the Tuaregs, and had left them alone when they realized none of the tourists were American.
"The bandits who are in Mali are Algerians who made an agreement with Tuareg groups in the north that they would not cause any harm to Mali," he said.
"But we are still afraid. They are bandits, terrorists. People who risk their lives to harm others."
US officials say the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a hardline Algerian Islamic militant group that has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, is trying to re-arm and recruit further south after being forced out of its homeland.
Malian Colonel Younoussa Barazi Maiga said his forces had chased up to a hundred GSPC members out of his country in January. He said they were armed with the same weaponry as his men -- aging Chinese and Russian Kalashnikovs.
US officials say the group, thought to have been behind the kidnapping of 32 European tourists in Algeria last year, could try to topple the governments both in Algeria and Mauritania.
RSS