Two Algerian Islamist militants were killed and several wounded when a roadside bomb they were planting outside the capital Algiers exploded prematurely, the official APS news agency said March 14. The two bombs were to be buried and detonated from… Read moreAlgeria: rebels killed planting bombs
Abu Abduallah Ahmad, financial officer of the so-called “al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb,” confirmed to AlJazeera’s Morocco office that his group was responsible for two attacks in Algeria over the March 3-4 weekend that killed seven police and four… Read moreAlgeria: Islamist insurgency back on?
Niger’s military reports killing at least five “armed bandits” in a remote Saharan region still largely outside state control more than 10 years after the end of a rebellion by desert nomads. A defense ministry statement said soldiers seized three… Read moreNiger: Tuareg revolt back on?
Frederick Vreeland, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asia affairs and former US ambassador to Morocco, has an op-ed in the March 3 New York Times on the usually obscure crisis in Western Sahara,… Read moreWestern Sahara makes NYT op-ed page —but not Sahrawi perspective
Morocco has announced it will present an autonomy plan for Western Sahara to the United Nations next month in hopes of ending the three-decade conflict. The plan would give the occupied territory a parliament, a chief of state, cabinet and… Read moreWestern Sahara: Morocco proposes autonomy
On Feb. 27, the Polisario Front’s special mine action team destroyed 3,321 anti-personnel mines in Tifariti, Western Sahara. This was the Polisario Front’s second stockpile destruction since it signed the “Deed of Commitment for Adherence to a Total Ban on… Read morePolisario Front destroys landmines; Morocco holds out
An Algerian army captain was killed Feb. 28 and another officer seriously injured in an attack near the village of Ain Rich, outside the city of Djelfa. Officials said the Mohadjrine Falange, a wing of the Salafist Group for Preaching… Read moreAlgeria: Salafists escalate attacks
Some long-belated progress in the struggle of another stateless ethnicity left off the map in the colonial and post-colonial carve-ups. From Reuters, Feb. 21: ALGIERS – The Malian government and Tuareg rebels agreed on Tuesday to start implementing an Algerian-brokered… Read moreMali: Tuareg rebels agree to disarm
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC by its French initials) has been very busy lately. With little note in the world media, Tunisia last month apparently squelched a plot to attack the US and British embassies. It ended… Read moreNYT: North Africa “staging ground for terror”
We’re glad the hijacking was thwarted, but we don’t quite get the politics behind this incident. The hijacker was supposedly seeking asylum from Mauritania (which remains a pretty oppressive place despite the democratic transition supposedly underway there), but Mauritania said… Read moreMysterious Mauritanian hijacking thwarted
From Afrol News, Dec. 11: An Algiers bomb attack against oil workers that killed an Algerian driver and wounded nine people, including several Western citizens, has raised fears that Algeria’s trend towards peace and stability may end. As the US… Read moreAlgeria: Salafists target Halliburton
Note the rather ironic last line of this account. Perhaps the real lesson US war-makers failed to glean from Pontecorvo’s film was, “Stay out—its hopeless.” From Italy’s AKI news agency, Oct. 13: Gillo Pontecorvo, one of Italy’s leading filmmakers renowned… Read more“Battle of Algiers” director passes, lessons unheeded
