Deep inside caves, in remote desert
bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces
of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are
burrowing into the earth, erecting a
formidable set of defenses to protect
what has essentially become Al Qaeda's
new country.
They have used the bulldozers, earth
movers and Caterpillar machines left
behind by fleeing construction crews to
dig what residents and local officials
describe as an elaborate network of
tunnels, trenches, shafts and ramparts.
In just one case, inside a cave large
enough to drive trucks into, they have
stored up to 100 drums of gasoline,
guaranteeing their fuel supply in the face
of a foreign intervention, according to
experts.
Northern Mali is now the biggest territory
held by Al Qaeda and its allies. And as the
world hesitates, delaying a military
intervention, the extremists who seized
control of the area earlier this year are
preparing for a war they boast will be
worse than the decade-old struggle in
Afghanistan.
"Al Qaeda never owned Afghanistan," said
former United Nations diplomat Robert
Fowler, a Canadian kidnapped and held
for 130 days by Al Qaeda's local chapter,
whose fighters now control the main
cities in the north. "They do own
northern Mali."
Al Qaeda's affiliate in Africa has been a
shadowy presence for years in the forests
and deserts of Mali, a country hobbled by
poverty and a relentless cycle of hunger.
In recent months, the terror syndicate
and its allies have taken advantage of
political instability within the country to
push out of their hiding place and into the
towns, taking over an enormous territory
which they are using to stock arms, train
forces and prepare for global jihad.
The catalyst for the Islamic fighters was a
military coup nine months ago that
transformed Mali from a once-stable
nation to the failed state it is today. On
March 21, disgruntled soldiers invaded
the presidential palace. The fall of the
nation's democratically elected
government at the hands of junior officers
destroyed the military's command-and-
control structure, creating the vacuum
which allowed a mix of rebel groups to
move in.
With no clear instructions from their
higher-ups, the humiliated soldiers left to
defend those towns tore off their
uniforms, piled into trucks and beat a
retreat as far as Mopti, roughly in the
center of Mali. They abandoned
everything north of this town to the
advancing rebels, handing them an area
that stretches over more than 620,000
square kilometers (240,000 square
miles). It's a territory larger than Texas or
France - and it's almost exactly the size of
Afghanistan.
Turbaned fighters now control all the
major towns in the north, carrying out
amputations in public squares like the
Taliban did. Just as in Afghanistan, they
are flogging women for not covering up.
Since taking control of Timbuktu, they
have destroyed seven of the 16
mausoleums listed as world heritage
sites.
The area under their rule is mostly desert
and sparsely populated, but analysts say
that due to its size and the hostile nature
of the terrain, rooting out the extremists
here could prove even more difficult than
it did in Afghanistan. Mali's former
president has acknowledged, diplomatic
cables show, that the country cannot
patrol a frontier twice the length of the
border between the United States and
Mexico.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known
as AQIM, operates not just in Mali, but in
a corridor along much of the northern
Sahel. This 7,000-kilometer (4,300-mile)
long ribbon of land runs across the widest
part of Africa, and includes sections of
Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, Libya, Burkina
Faso and Chad.
"One could come up with a conceivable
containment strategy for the Swat
Valley," said Africa expert Peter Pham, an
adviser to the U.S. military's African
command center, referring to the region
of Pakistan where the Pakistan Taliban
have been based. "There's no
containment strategy for the Sahel, which
runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red
Sea."
Earlier this year, the 15 nations in West
Africa, including Mali, agreed on a
proposal for the military to take back the
north, and sought backing from the
United Nations. Earlier this month, the
Security Council authorized the
intervention but imposed certain
conditions, including training Mali's
military, which is accused of serious
human rights abuses since the coup.
Diplomats say the intervention will likely
not happen before September of 2013.
In the meantime, the Islamists are
getting ready, according to elected
officials and residents in Kidal, Timbuktu
and Gao, including a day laborer hired by
al Qaeda's local chapter to clear rocks and
debris for one of their defenses. They
spoke on condition of anonymity out of
fear for their safety at the hands of the
Islamists, who have previously accused
those who speak to reporters of
espionage.
The Al Qaeda affiliate, which became part
of the terror network in 2006, is one of
three Islamist groups in northern Mali.
The others are the Movement for the
Unity and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO,
based in Gao, and Ansar Dine, based in
Kidal. Analysts agree that there is
considerable overlap between the groups,
and that all three can be considered
sympathizers, even extensions, of Al
Qaeda.
The Islamic fighters have stolen
equipment from construction companies,
including more than $11 million worth
from a French company called SOGEA-
SATOM, according to Elie Arama, who
works with the European Development
Fund. The company had been contracted
to build a European Union-financed
highway in the north between Timbuktu
and the village of Goma Coura. An
employee of SOGEA-SATOM in Bamako
declined to comment.
The official from Kidal said his
constituents have reported seeing Islamic
fighters with construction equipment
riding in convoys behind 4-by-4 trucks
draped with their signature black flag. His
contacts among the fighters, including
friends from secondary school, have told
him they have created two bases, around
200 to 300 kilometers (120 and 180
miles) north of Kidal, in the austere, rocky
desert.
The first base is occupied by Al Qaeda's
local fighters in the hills of Teghergharte,
a region the official compared to
Afghanistan's Tora Bora.
"The Islamists have dug tunnels, made
roads, they've brought in generators, and
solar panels in order to have electricity,"
he said. "They live inside the rocks."
Still further north, near Boghassa, is the
second base, created by fighters from
Ansar Dine. They too have used seized
explosives, bulldozers and
sledgehammers to make passages in the
hills, he said.
In addition to creating defenses, the
fighters are amassing supplies, experts
said. A local who was taken by Islamists
into a cave in the region of Kidal
described an enormous room, where
several cars were parked. Along the walls,
he counted up to 100 barrels of gasoline,
according to the man's testimony to New
York-based Human Rights Watch.
In Timbuktu, the fighters are becoming
more entrenched with each passing day,
warned Mayor Ousmane Halle. Earlier in
the year, he said, the Islamists left his
city in a hurry after France called for an
imminent military intervention. They
returned when the U.N. released a report
arguing for a more cautious approach.
"At first you could see that they were
anxious," said Halle by telephone. "The
more the date is pushed back, the more
reinforcements they are able to get, the
more prepared they become."
In the regional capital of Gao, a young
man told The Associated Press that he
and several others were offered 10,000
francs a day by Al Qaeda's local
commanders (around $20), a rate several
times the normal wage, to clear rocks and
debris, and dig trenches. The youth said
he saw Caterpillars and earth movers
inside an Islamist camp at a former Malian
military base 7 kilometers (4 miles) from
Gao.
The fighters are piling mountains of sand
from the ground along the dirt roads to
force cars onto the pavement, where they
have checkpoints everywhere, he said. In
addition, they are modifying their all-
terrain vehicles to mount them with
arms.
"On the backs of their cars, it looks like
they are mounting pipes," he said,
describing a shape he thinks might be a
rocket or missile launcher. "They are
preparing themselves. Everyone is
scared."
A university student from Gao confirmed
seeing the modified cars. He said he also
saw deep holes dug on the sides of the
highway, possibly to give protection to
fighters shooting at cars, along with
cement barriers with small holes for
guns.
In Gao, residents routinely see Moktar
Belmoktar, the one-eyed emir of the Al
Qaeda-linked cell that grabbed Fowler in
2008. Belmoktar, a native Algerian,
traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s and
trained in Osama bin Laden's camp in
Jalalabad, according to research by the
Jamestown Foundation. His lieutenant
Oumar Ould Hamaha, whom Fowler
identified as one of his captors, brushed
off questions about the tunnels and caves
but said the fighters are prepared.
"We consider this land our land. It's an
Islamic territory," he said, reached by
telephone in an undisclosed location.
"Right now our field of operation is Mali.
If they bomb us, we are going to hit back
everywhere."
He added that the threat of military
intervention has helped recruit new
fighters, including from Western
countries.
In December, two U.S. citizens from
Alabama were arrested on terrorism
charges, accused of planning to fly to
Morocco and travel by land to Mali to
wage jihad, or holy war. Two French
nationals have also been detained on
suspicion of trying to travel to northern
Mali to join the Islamists. Hamaha himself
said he spent a month in France preaching
his fundamentalist version of Islam in
Parisian mosques after receiving a visa for
all European Union countries in 2001.
Hamaha indicated the Islamists have
inherited stores of Russian-made arms
from former Malian army bases, as well as
from the arsenal of toppled Libyan leader
Moammer Gaddafi, a claim that military
experts have confirmed.
Those weapons include the SA-7 and SA-2
surface-to-air missiles, according to
Hamaha, which can shoot down aircrafts.
His claim could not be verified, but
Rudolph Atallah, the former
counterterrorism director for Africa in the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, said it
makes sense.
"Gaddafi bought everything under the
sun," said Atallah, a retired U.S. Air Force
lieutenant colonel, who was a defense
attache at the U.S. Embassy in Mali. "His
weapons depots were packed with all
kinds of stuff, so it's plausible that AQIM
now has surface-to-air missiles."
Depending on the model, these missiles
can range far enough to bring down
planes used by ill-equipped African air
forces, although not those used by U.S.
and other Western forces, he said. There
is significant disagreement in the
international community on whether
Western countries will carry out the
planned bombardments.
The Islamists' recent advances draw on Al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's near
decade of experience in Mali's northern
desert, where Fowler and his fellow U.N.
colleague were held captive for four
months in 2008, an experience he
recounts in his recent book, "A Season in
Hell."
Originally from Algeria, the fighters fled
across the border into Mali in 2003, after
kidnapping 32 European tourists. Over the
next decade, they used the country's vast
northern desert to hold French, Spanish,
Swiss, German, British, Austrian, Italian
and Canadian hostages, raising an
estimated $89 million in ransom
payments, according to Stratfor, a global
intelligence company.
During this time, they also established
relationships with local clans, nurturing
the ties that now protect them.
Several commanders have taken local
wives, and Hamaha, whose family is from
Kidal, confirmed that Belmoktar is married
to his niece.
Fowler described being driven for days by
jihadists who knew Mali's featureless
terrain by heart, navigating valleys of
identical dunes with nothing more than
the direction of the sun as their map. He
saw them drive up to a thorn tree in the
middle of nowhere to find barrels of diesel
fuel. Elsewhere, he saw them dig a pit in
the sand and bury a bag of boots, marking
the spot on a GPS for future use.
In his four-month-long captivity, Fowler
never saw his captors refill at a gas
station, or shop in a market. Yet they
never ran out of gas. And although their
diet was meager, they never ran out of
food, a testament to the extensive supply
network which they set up and are now
refining and expanding.
Among the many challenges an invading
army will face is the inhospitable terrain,
Fowler said, which is so hot that at times
"it was difficult to draw breath." A cable
published by WikiLeaks from the U.S.
Embassy in Bamako described how even
the Malian troops deployed in the north
before the coup could only work from 4
am to 10 am, and spent the sunlight
hours in the shade of their vehicles.
Yet Fowler said he saw Al Qaeda fighters
chant Quranic verses under the Sahara
sun for hours, just one sign of their deep,
ideological commitment.
"I have never seen a more focused group
of young men," said Fowler, who now
lives in Ottawa, Canada. "No one is
sneaking off for R&R. They have left their
wives and children behind. They believe
they are on their way to paradise."
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