The US War For The Sahara

Proxy Wars Heat Up In The Sahara Desert
Who will win control?
Pursuing Terrorists in the Great DesertThe U.S. Military's $500 Million Gamble to Prevent the Next Afghanistan
by Raffi Khatchadourian January 24th, 2006 11:28 AM


In the early months of 2004, a lone convoy of Toyota pickup trucks and SUVs raced eastward across the southern extremities of the Sahara. The convoy, led by a wanted Islamic militant named Ammari Saifi, had just slipped from Mali into northern Niger, where the desert rolls out into an immense, flat pan of gravelly sand. Saifi, who has been called the "bin Laden of the Sahara," was traveling with about 50 jihadists, some from Algeria, the rest from nearby African countries such as Mauritania and Nigeria. There are virtually no roads in this part of the desert, but the convoy moved rapidly. For nearly half a year Saifi and his men had been the object of an international hunt coordinated by the United States military and conducted primarily by the countries that share the desert. Soldiers from Niger, assisted by American and Algerian special forces, had fought with Saifi twice in the past several weeks. Each time, the convoy escaped. Now it was heading further east, toward a remote mountain range in northern Chad. At the time, Saifi was by far the most sophisticated and resourceful Islamic militant in North Africa and the Sahel, an expansive swath of territory that runs along the Sahara's southern fringe. In the Sahel, the Sahara's windswept dunes gradually reduce to semi-desert, and then, further south, become arid savanna. The terrain extends roughly 3,000 miles across Africa—from Senegal through Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and into Sudan. It is awesome in its scale, poverty, and lack of governance. Troubled by restive minorities, environmental degradation, economic collapse, coups, famine, genocide, and geographic isolation, the Sahel has been described by one top U.S. military commander as "a belt of instability." (Last year, the U.N. ranked Niger as having the world's worst living conditions; Mali and Chad were among the five worst.) The region is also home to some 70 million Muslims, and since 9-11 there have been reports that Islamic radicals from other parts of Africa, as well as from the Middle East and South Asia, are proselytizing there, or seeking refuge from their home countries, or simply attempting to wage jihad. Read more at the link above.

South American Resource Wars

China Moves In
U.S. rivals eye Bolivian gas, minerals

WORLD BRIEFINGS By Martin Arostegui THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 24, 2006

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia State enterprises from Venezuela and China are signing agreements with Bolivia's new leftist government to develop Bolivia's hydrocarbon and mineral resources, according to diplomats and spokesmen for Bolivia's ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS). A $1.5 billion investment by Chinese energy giant Sinopac for gas fields in eastern Bolivia is going ahead, according to Chinese Embassy officials who say the bid, first made over a year ago, was blocked until now by "political and administrative complications." Sinopac made a deposit for the project after a visit to Bolivia last year by Chinese energy executives. New investments were among the main topics discussed during a visit to Beijing last week by Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was sworn into office on Sunday after campaigning on a promise to nationalize his country's energy resources. Mining ventures in Bolivia also are being considered by China, which already controls much of the iron production in Peru and is planning to build steel plants in Brazil. A consortium of companies from India and China is among five groups bidding on a $5 billion project to develop Bolivia's iron-ore deposits at El Mutun, according to confidential documents shown to The Washington Times. El Mutun, in eastern Bolivia, is believed to contain the largest iron-ore deposits in Latin America, and the third-largest in the world. Officials of Bolivia's mining ministry said development of El Mutun has been held up by the need for major investments on infrastructure. A railroad must be built to connect the mine with Port Busch on the Paraguay River, where new facilities need to be installed for barges to carry the iron to the Atlantic
Ocean. "There are Chinese companies currently investigating projects in mining. But it's very complicated. It's a very big investment," said a Chinese diplomat in Santa Cruz. There are also political complications. Local business interests favor other foreign companies bidding for the project, including Britain's Rio Tinto Zinc and private Brazilian and Argentine firms. Arturo Medivil, a Santa Cruz lawyer and radio talk-show host, warns that competition for El Mutun could set off an explosion of separatism in eastern Bolivia, which supported the right-wing Podemos party in the December elections and elected independent governors favoring regional autonomy.