G8 joins fight against al Qaeda in North Africa

Representatives of leading Western countries and regional states met in Mali Wednesday to discuss stepping up the fight against Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda. Anti-terror experts of G8 members Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States joined counterparts from Burkina Faso, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal in Bamako.

Diplomatic sources said that Algeria, which was also invited, boycotted the talks, maintaining it believed that countries outside the should sit out the battle against al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Agence France Presse’s Stephanie Barbier writes that Malian Foreign Minister Moctar Ouane said the meeting was “a sign of esteem and confidence” in Mali, where AQIM fighters are believed to be holding seven hostages seized last month in neighbouring Niger.

A diplomat said the aim was to increase awareness to step up efforts against AQIM, and matters discussed would include controlling borders and the role of organizations such as the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States, also represented at the talks. The meeting is scheduled to end Thursday.

AQIM kidnapped five French nationals, a Madagascan, and a Togolese from a uranium mining town in Niger on 16 September. It is believed to be holding them in a mountainous desert region in northeastern Mali.

Virginie Saint-Louis, Canada’s ambassador to Mali, who chaired the meeting, said, “I am saddened by the circumstances which bring us together today, the constant and worrying threat of terrorism.”

As well as the kidnapping, she referred to a bomb attack in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on independence day on 1 October which killed twelve people. AQIM has been exploiting the vast tracts of the Sahara desert and the Sahel scrubland to the south, carrying out attacks in Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and Algeria.

Originally known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, the group had as many as 28,000 members in the 1990s, when they were engaged in a brutal war with the secular Algerian government.

Current estimates indicate that their numbers have dwindled into the hundreds. The adoption of the al Qaeda name was seen at the time as a ploy to shore up their increasing weakness and attempt to revitalize the organization.

Australian Mike Smith, head of the UN anti-terrorism committee, said that AQIM “does not respect borders any more than it respects international legal norms, national sovereignty or indeed the lives of innocent people.” On the contrary “it sets up safe-havens and training camps in remote corners of the region and then launches strikes from these into the territories of other countries.”

“The only way the states of the Sahel are going to be able to deal with this threat effectively over the long term is collectively (with) operational cooperation in fields such as intelligence (and) border controls,” he said, urging “working together with powers from outside the region and building mutual confidence and trust through joint training and exercises.”

The growth of the group’s activities is beginning to spur countries of the region toward greater cooperation. A month ago the military commands of Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger agreed to set up a joint intelligence centre based in Algiers.