Algerian insurgents are becoming more active in Africa's remote, ungoverned deserts, and increased cooperation and intelligence-sharing among African nations will be key to averting future attacks by such groups, a top US general said Saturday.
US Major General Thomas Csrnko said the No. 1 threat to the region was Algeria's Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an al-Qaeda affiliated movement that loaded fighters onto a dozen trucks earlier this month and attacked an isolated Mauritanian army outpost near the Algerian and Mali borders.
The surprise assault left 15 Mauritanian soldiers and nine Salafists dead. Csrnko said insurgents from the group, which the US has designated a terrorist organization, fled with captured arms and ammunition.
The Salafists are accused of kidnapping 32 European tourists in the Sahara in 2003 and of carrying out numerous attacks in Algeria itself. Csrnko is the special forces commander for US European Command, or EUCOM, which oversees US military activities in Europe and all of Africa. During the Flintlock exercise, about 1,000 US special forces troops are training 3,000 African soldiers.
Csrnko and others are in West Africa for a two-week US-led joint counterterrorism exercise called Flintlock, taking place June 6-26. The exercises involve nine African nations -- Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal -- a vast area the US is pouring more money and equipment into in a bid to keep terrorists at bay. Africa's "ungoverned" spaces -- particularly deserts where security forces are hard to come by -- are the chief concern of American commanders fearful terrorists may seek refuge there.
Csrnko said Algerian Salafists were conducting supply and smuggling operations within the Sahara region, using well-established, centuries-old trade routes that forge paths through harsh deserts.
Al-Qaeda terror cells are still believed to be active in Afghanistan, launching attacks alongside Taliban rebels. Csrnko said as many as 25 percent of foreign fighters from North Africa were heading to Iraq to fight US forces and their allies. Iraq has become a terrorist magnet in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion, with suicide car bomb attacks daily. US officials say a small number of fighters are returning to North Africa as well, trained in guerrilla tactics and bomb-making.
US forces began training armies in Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Chad in 2003. That effort has been expanded to Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria and Senegal, and its budget will be boosted from US$6 million to US$100 million for five years, starting in 2007.
Csrnko said US forces would aim to train with the same African units in the future with a view toward improving the capabilities of quick reaction forces, not regular armies.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS