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
This hero of the left has again revealed himself as fundamentally reactionary. Those with any familiarity with the struggle in Western Sahara know that talk about opposing the “partition of Morocco” is akin to opposing Israeli withdrawal from “Judea and… Read moreGeorge Galloway betrays Western Sahara
From AP via Qatar’s The Peninsula, Sept. 15 (link added): PARIS — Al Qaeda has for the first time announced a union with an Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying they will act together against… Read moreAl-Qaeda announces merger with Algeria’s Salafist Group
Islamist guerillas are stepping up attacks in Algeria, apparently led by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has rejected an amnesty offered by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to try to end more than a decade of violence. On… Read moreAlgeria: guerilla resurgence
Reuters reported May 29 that Mali’s armed forces are hunting down Tuareg rebels who have taken up arms again, demanding more autonomy for the desert north. According to the report, the rebels used pickup trucks mounted with machine guns to… Read moreMali: Tuareg revolt back on?
We recently noted an internal shake-up in the Libyan regime that seemed to signal a tilt back to the sidelined hardliners. This seems not to have affected Washington’s plans, announced today, to restore diplomatic relations. This may actually reveal something… Read moreChávez, State Department woo Qadaffi
The conventional wisdom is that Libya’s Mommar Qadaffi is defanged and domesticated. Recent events, however, indicate a strategic tilt back towards the bellicose on the part of the savvy despot. A cabinet shake-up favoring the hardliners comes on the heels… Read moreLibya tilts to hardliners, threatens Italy
This is practically Orwellian. Is the Algerian regime using the printing of the anti-Islam cartoons—blurred and denounced—as an excuse to crack down on pro-Islamist newspapers? From Al-Jazeera, Feb. 13: Algeria and Yemen have arrested journalists working for newspapers that have… Read moreArab journalists arrested in cartoon controversy
The Pope greeted a group of Tuareg desert nomads in St Peter’s Basilica Nov. 13, using the occassion to invoke the “universal brotherhood” of all the world’s peoples. The ten Tuareg visitors, dressed in blue and white robes and turbans,… Read moreTuaregs do Vatican
“The speed with which Algeria has gone from symbol of revolutionary socialism to Islamic battleground has confounded most observers,” states the blurb for The Call From Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam by Robert Malley (UC, 1996)…. Read moreAlgerians jailed for eating lunch
