The United States is sending troops and defence contractors to the Sahara desert of West Africa to open what it calls a new front in the war on terror.
A small vanguard force arrived this week in Mauritania to pave the way for a $100-million plan to bolster the security forces and border controls of Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger.
The US Pan-Sahel Initiative, as it is named, will provide 60 days of training to military units, including tips on desert navigation and infantry tactics, and furnish equipment such as Toyota Land Cruisers, radios and uniforms.
The reinforcement of America’s defences in a remote, poorly patrolled region came on a day when US police forces gained important powers in the homeland to conduct searches.
In a 6-3 ruling, the supreme court yesterday reversed a lower court decision in Illinois not to allow police to set up roadblocks to collect information from motorists. The supreme court said it did not represent an unreasonable intrusion on privacy. The three dissenting judges said the ruling exposed motorists to police interference.
West Africa is not known as a hotbed of support for Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network but Washington is taking no chances in a region with strong Arab and Muslim ties.
”A team of military experts has been here since Saturday to teach, train and reinforce the capacities of the Mauritanian army charged with frontier surveillance against cross-border terrorism,” Pamela Bridgewater, a US deputy undersecretary of state for African affairs, told reporters in the capital, Nouakchott.
Since dropping support in the mid-90s for Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime, the government of Mauritania has angered some local Islamic groups by forging links with Washington. At least one such group was allegedly behind a failed coup last year but some sceptics claim the government exaggerated the threat.
Mali, Chad and Niger also have porous borders, sizeable Muslim populations and disgruntled opposition groups but al-Qaeda has so far concentrated its African operations in the east: blowing up US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and a rocket and car bomb attack against Israeli targets in the Kenyan resort of Mombasa last year.
Armed groups roving the desert have abducted western tourists and caused the Paris-Dakar rally to be rerouted, but whether they are opportunistic bandits or Islamist guerrillas is not clear.
Ms Bridgewater said there had been threats against US interests in Mauritania’s neighbour Senegal, the scene of extraordinary security measures during President George Bush’s visit last year.
”Yes, we have heard. But this question is very sensitive, and I don’t want to respond to this question,” she said.
West Africa is comprised largely of former French colonies and Paris might be expected to be wary. The French defence minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, is to visit Washington this week to meet Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. – Guardian Unlimited Â