Sahel:”Interférences” (Le Quotidien d’Oran)

This Algerian paper has an interesting piece on the current "AQIM problem" in the Sahel, if only as an elucidation of a Algerian nationalist perspective. The US and other are continually hammering on about the Sahel becoming the next Afghanistan or Somalia, but more as an attempt to justify the intrusion of AFRICOM and the "War on Terror" into Africa (so far, true in my view). The states in the region have "refused to blindly embark on the American global war", but many have internal weaknesses (smuggling, regionalism). True, but now it gets fishy. Mali, he says, had the 'excuse' of the Tuareg insurgency not to govern the north. Now Algeria has solved that problem for them, and yet they still "do nothing". Mali has "betrayed" Algeria, releasing the AQIM under the "interferences" of the west, hints that the Mali govt. has a finger in the hostage business. But Mali is "fated to return, sooner or later, the path of cooperation." No mention that the AQIM come from Algeria, of course.

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