MAURITANIA: Attacks targeting foreigners, the military, and the Israeli embassy have sown fears of an organised militant cell

Record ID: 455224

  • Title: MAURITANIA: Attacks targeting foreigners, the military, and the Israeli embassy have sown fears of an organised militant cell
  • Date: 13th February 2008
  • Summary: (AD1) ALEG, (260 KM FROM NOUAKCHOTT), MAURITANIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TOWN OF ALEG, WITH PEOPLE WALKING BY, WOMEN SELLING GOODS AT STREET MARKET
  • Embargoed: 28th February 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mauritania
  • Country: Mauritania
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVABE161M4879U1KC532Z6Z99H81
  • Story Text: French tourists shot dead by suspected Islamic militants lies smashed into concrete shards.
    Like many details surrounding the Christmas Eve shootings, who destroyed the plinth remains a mystery. But its symbolism seems clear: the moderate Muslim culture of this Saharan state has been penetrated by violence.

    "He was left there where they hit him, lying down in his car, dead," said Oumar Thiecoura N'Diaye, deputy mayor of Aleg, as he stood next to the plinth's remains, showing where the bodies had been found.
    The broad-daylight attack at Aleg was followed days later by the killing of three Mauritanian soldiers and an assault on the Israeli embassy in the capital Nouakchott in early February, both claimed by al Qaeda's North African branch.
    The attacks, which prompted the cancellation of the Dakar rally, have sown fears of an organised militant cell within pro-Western Mauritania and raised concerns al Qaeda is expanding southward, as U.S. intelligence has long predicted.
    While neighbouring states like Morocco and Algeria have suffered major bombings, Mauritania has largely escaped attack. The exception, an ambush on a desert outpost three years ago which left 15 soldiers dead, was rare enough to leave doubts.
    People in the town of Aleg are very keen to pass on the message that al Qaeda does not operate in their region, or in Mauritania, and that the village is peaceful, welcoming to foreign visitors.
    It is the only Maghreb country to have relations with Israel, despite vocal domestic opposition, and has undergone a democratic transition since the toppling of dictator Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya in 2005, which has been held up as an example to the Muslim world.
    But Jemil Ould Mohamed Mansour, head of a moderate Islamist political party, said a foreign call to jihad was resonating among youths angry at Taya's repression of Islamists.

    "I think we can talk about elements or people who have been recruited by al Qaeda. I mean elements close to al Qaeda. We can talk about elements, but I think that we don't have, for the moment, a terrorist organisation close to al Qaeda," Mansour said.
    Western governments are taking the threat seriously. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, on a visit to Nouakchott last week, vowed greater security cooperation. Washington, which includes Mauritania in its 500 million US dollar Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative, has stepped up military aid.
    New President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi has been hesitant to tackle Islamists and his critics say Islamic militants are taking advantage of the newfound freedom to operate.
    Mauritania's minister of communication, Mohamed Vall Ould Cheikh said the government is doing everything they can to stem terrorism.

    "If there are al Qaeda networks they will be dismantled, that's for sure. It's true that we won't succumb to the panic and start doing what they used to do before, start arresting people left right and centre, but there are investigations in progress," Ould Cheikh said.
    A vast, sparsely populated nation of just 1.5 million people on the edge of the Sahara, Mauritania holds significance for Islamists, experts say.

    "Between Mauritania, Algeria and Mali there is a triangle which is not secured. There are many armed groups, a lot of drug trafficking, cigarette trafficking, this means that there is an enormous cause for insecurity in this triangle," Mesaoud said.
    The isolated, lawless desert region spanning northern Mali and Niger and southern Algeria has long been considered a fiefdom of Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), where it finances itself through cigarette and drug smuggling, money laundering and protection rackets.
    The attacks have already affected life in Mauritania. Charter flights have been cancelled, while many restaurants now refuse to serve alcohol.
    Western diplomats say they no longer venture into the eastern desert, popular for camel treks.
    Evidence of Islamic militancy in Mauritania, linked to Saharan drug trafficking, has mounted in recent years. At least three suspects held incommunicado for the tourists' killing have been detained before for al Qaeda-related activities.
    The alleged ringleader, Sidi Ould Sidna, was one of 24 suspects acquitted last year of receiving training from the GSPC, which was renamed al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) a year ago.
    AQIM is believed to have between 400 and 4,000 members, mostly in Algeria, with camps scattered around water holes in the Sahara. Western security sources describe it as a loosely connected web of cells, best organised in Algeria.

    "Unfortunately in a lot of our country there are regions that aren't controlled, there are really desert regions, sometimes mountainous, 'no man's land' as they say, where there isn't any administration, and where there is no security, so it seems that these are maybe the regions where the terrorists regroup, sometimes, there are bandits too," Ould Cheikh said.
    But the acquittals and subsequent disappearance of the suspects were seen in Mauritania as a sign of disarray in the security services following Taya's fall, and many critics say the security services suffer from lack of credibility, being accused of corruption and lack of professionalism.

    "To be able to deal with this type of problems you have to have rigourous people, a police force that functions in a scientific way, who works in a rational way, respecting the law. But when you have a police to the contrary, whose image is bad, and who nobody trusts, and who don't themselves respect the legislation and regulations, it's clear that those who want to practice terrorism, in their clandestine organisations, have an advantage," said Gourmo Lo, a Mauritanian law professor at Le Havre University, and opposition politician.
    Experts say Mauritania's moderate Maliki school of Sunni Islam has been infiltrated by Salafism, a conservative ideology linked to the strict Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.
    Amid a flood of Saudi funding in the 1990s, the number of mosques in the capital mushroomed to more than 900 by 2002 from around 50 in 1989, said anthropologist Yahya Ould al-Bara.
    Despite a crackdown after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, links persist. Mauritania arrested one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted Islamists in January, Abdallahi Ould Mohamed Sidiya, after tracking him across four countries.
    High unemployment and Mauritania's rapid transformation from a culture of nomads to city-dwellers has left many young men disorientated and susceptible to extremism, some experts said.
    Marking a break with Taya, Abdallahi legalised Islamist political parties and has created a new Ministry for Islamic affairs, naming a Salafist imam to head it.
    Ordinary Mauritanians however hope their life can continue in the same way that it always has.

    "Mauritanian people have to enjoy their security and we don't need any religion that is bringing violence, we need to keep our religion, the peaceful one that we are used to, and we have always been able to live in peace and now we should continue to be able to live in peace and stability without this violence coming from outside," Outmane Sidi, a mobile phone vendor in Nouakchott said.
    Some experts question whether AQIM has significant capability outside Algeria, noting that the attack in Mauritania was small in scale.
    They also note that the myth of al Qaeda is sometimes important because it is used to justify Western security and immigration policies in the region.
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