Algeria: use of overwhelming force against hostage-takers was necessary

Counterterrorism experts critical of what they consider to be Algeria’s rushed and heavy-handed operation, say that the United States would likely have handled the situation differently.

• First, the United States would have taken its time, engaging in longer discussions with the hostage-takers, trying to identify the leaders and buy time
• All the while, Pentagon, the CIA, and allied security services would have moved surveillance drones, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, and electronic eavesdropping gear to the scene to help identify the locations of the hostages and the assailants.
• Human sources inside Islamists cells in the countries the terrorists came from would have been consulted to gather more information on the terrorists and their background

“It would have been a precision approach as opposed to a sledgehammer approach,” Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney, a retired deputy commander of the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command, told the Times.

In his Monday press conference, the Algerian prime minister provided more details on how the hostage taking unfolded.

He said that the initial goal of the militant was to take over a bus carrying foreign workers from the living quarters to the site. The plan was to drive the bus to the nearby airport of Amena, highjack a plane, and fly the workers to Mali, then use the hostages to extract ransom from Western government.

Kidnapping for ransom has been the main source of terrorists’ revenue in northwest Africa for close to a decade now.

“They wanted to take control of this bus and take the foreign workers directly to northern Mali so they could have hostages, to negotiate with foreign countries,” he said. “But when they opened fire on the bus, there was a strong response from the gendarmes guarding it.”

The militants, realizing that their plan was not going according to plan, then split into two groups — one to seize the complex’s living quarters, the other to capture the gas plant itself. In the process the militants took dozens of hostages, attaching bombs to some, and booby-trapping the plant.

Early Thursday morning, the militants again tried to follow their initial plan. They strapped bombs to some of the hostages, used others as human shields, got into five jeeps, and tried to break out of the plant and drive to the airport.

“They put explosives on the hostages. They wanted to put the hostages in four-wheel-drive vehicles and take them to Mali,” the prime minister said.

“A great number of workers were put in the cars; they wanted to use them as human shields,” the prime minister said. “There was a strong response from the army, and three cars exploded,” he said.

When the terrorists realized that they would not be able to get to the airport, they decided to blow up the whole complex. “The aim of the terrorists was to explode the gas compound,” he said. In this second assault, he said, there were “a great number of hostages,” and the kidnappers were ordered to kill them all. It was then, he said, that army snipers killed the kidnappers.

“If the terrorists were shooting hostages or at least putting explosives around their necks and their intent was to sabotage the plant, this might have been a suicide mission to blow up the plant, and not negotiate,” Henry A. Crumpton, a career CIA officer and formerly the State Department’s top counterterrorism official, told the Times.

“It sounds horrible to say, but given the number of hostages and scope of this, this is not as bad an outcome of what could have happened, if that was their intent.”

Students of Algerian history and culture say that criticism of Algerian tactics in the operation show a deep misunderstanding of the country.

The Algerians were bound to respond with force, said Mansouria Mokhefi, a professor who heads the Middle East and Maghreb program at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris, told the Times.

“Everyone knows the Algerians do not negotiate,” she said. The attackers knew this as well.

She noted that the foundation of the Algerian government is its longstanding commitment to defeating Islamist militancy, as manifested in the government’s take-no-prisoners approach to its war with the Islamists from 1992 to 2002. “The legitimacy of this government in Algeria is its fight against terrorism and the security of the country,” she said.

Christian Prouteau, chief of security under former president François Mitterrand, chides Western analysts for engaging in Monday-morning quarterbacking. “There isn’t a military unit that would have done better, given the strategic conditions, the place where this unfolded, the number of assailants and the number of hostages,” he told the Times. “I challenge any Western country confronting this kind of operation to do better.”