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Analysis: Mali: the world's next jihadi launchpad?
Source: Reuters
Analysis: Mali: the world's next jihadi launchpad?
By David Lewis
DAKAR | Mon Jun 4, 2012 10:08am EDT
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
But instead, the Tuaregs' struggle for an independent homeland has been hijacked by better-armed Islamists from Mali and abroad, creating a safe haven for militants in the Sahara that is already being compared to similar bastions elsewhere.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Mali is still a long way from the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan of the 1990s from which Osama bin Laden's then little-known al Qaeda readied the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets in 2001.
And the desert trade in hostages, narcotics and other goods has yet to reach the scale of the piracy off the east coast of Somalia, estimated to cost the global economy $7 billion a year.
But Ould-Abdallah and a swelling chorus of security experts point to an influx of foreign fighters, a debilitating rivalry between neighboring states, and steady flow of illicit funds as making Mali and the wider Saharan zone the next one to watch.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
By David Lewis
DAKAR | Mon Jun 4, 2012 10:08am EDT
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
But instead, the Tuaregs' struggle for an independent homeland has been hijacked by better-armed Islamists from Mali and abroad, creating a safe haven for militants in the Sahara that is already being compared to similar bastions elsewhere.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Mali is still a long way from the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan of the 1990s from which Osama bin Laden's then little-known al Qaeda readied the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets in 2001.
And the desert trade in hostages, narcotics and other goods has yet to reach the scale of the piracy off the east coast of Somalia, estimated to cost the global economy $7 billion a year.
But Ould-Abdallah and a swelling chorus of security experts point to an influx of foreign fighters, a debilitating rivalry between neighboring states, and steady flow of illicit funds as making Mali and the wider Saharan zone the next one to watch.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/04/us-mali-threat-idUSBRE8530JH20120604
