AQIM’s new kidnapping strategy

AQIM’s new kidnapping strategy

By OLIVIER GUITTA (Middle East Times)

Published: March 24, 2008

A Tuareg tribesman in Mali.

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Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb – or AQIM – kidnapped two Austrian citizens in Tunisia on Feb. 22. The hostages are reportedly being held in northern Mali and Austrian authorities, with the help of Libya, are trying hard to obtain the release of their citizens.

This latest action from AQIM should not come as a surprise, for several reasons.

First, AQIM has made no secret that targeting foreign nationals has become one of their priorities. In Algeria, AQIM recently targeted U.S. and Russian contractors, and the U.N. compound in Algiers, while Western nations have warned their citizens of the risks associated with remaining in the country. AQIM also recently almost succeeded in kidnapping two French executives. After this incident, a number of French nationals (mostly women and children) left Algeria to return to safer grounds. The idea behind this strategy is to kill the tourism industry and dry out foreign investment in the region.

Second, AQIM has a tradition of self-financing its operations mostly through kidnappings, racketeering and smuggling of all kinds. Interestingly enough, the kidnapping of the two Austrian tourists mirrors the operation led by the Algerian GSPC (the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), now AQIM, in 2003 under the command of Abdel Rezak al-Para. Back then, 32 European tourists (including Austrian, Swiss and German nationals) were kidnapped in the Algerian Sahara.

Seventeen of them were freed thanks to a military operation led by Algerian forces, and the remaining 14 – one hostage had died – were released six months later after a large ransom was allegedly paid by German authorities. This money was used to buy substantial quantities of sophisticated weapons that Algerian security services seized in January 2004.

Today, AQIM’s first demand was the release of a number of prisoners held in Algeria and Tunisia, but later a ransom (reportedly 5 million euros, about $7.7 million) was added, and then AQIM dropped the release condition. This proves that the money issue was in reality what this kidnapping is all about.

Just a few weeks ago, the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat published a letter from AQIM entitled, “Call for help from the Islamic Maghreb.” In this letter, AQIM acknowledged that it is suffering from a lack of operatives and most importantly that its elements have “an urgent need of cash.”

Clearly, if Austria were to pay the ransom, AQIM would use the funds to rearm, regroup and rehire and would be emboldened to kidnap more foreign nationals.

Third, the fact that the hostages are presumably in northern Mali is also unsurprising. AQIM has been using northern Mali (in particular Timbuktu and Kidal) as sanctuaries. This is the ideal place to install a terrorist base, since the area is almost impossible to patrol for such a poor country. This area also represents a great hiding location from U.S. satellites since it is very mountainous and full of caves. Nonetheless, terrorists need to be on the move quite often: they use Toyota Land Cruisers and refueling stations buried in the ground that they locate thanks to GPS equipment. AQIM possesses heavy weapons, mortars and ground-air missiles, among other sophisticated equipment, such as scramblers for their Thuraya satellite telephone communications.

To make matters even more complicated and unstable, the area is home to the Tuareg, a Berber group whose main military group – The Alliance – is fighting Malian authorities. On March 20 violent clashes erupted between Malian forces and the Tuareg: eight people were killed and 33 Malian military personnel were kidnapped. Interestingly, the Tuareg went from being AQIM’s ally to AQIM’s foe.

Eglasse Ag Idar, the spokesman of The Alliance, recently told the French daily Le Figaro that the Malians do not want to die fighting al-Qaida: for them, it is an Arab problem that concerns the West. He added that, on the other hand, the Tuareg are motivated to fight al-Qaida in order to defend their territory. At the beginning of this month an AQIM cell was dismantled in the area and a big fish (Abu Osama) was caught, allegedly thanks to information provided by some Tuareg tribal leaders.

It seems that AQIM is really following al-Qaida in Iraq’s modus operandi. Indeed, after having imported suicide bombings to Algeria (mostly since the April 11, 2007 attacks), then recruiting teenagers, now AQIM is kidnapping foreign nationals. The example of the Austrian hostages might just be the start of a kidnapping wave.

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Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).

http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/03/24/aqims_new_kidnapping_strategy/5871/

Proof of Iran’s military nuclear program

Proof of Iran’s military nuclear program

By OLIVIER GUITTA (Middle East Times)

Published: April 07, 2008

Despite the very flawed and much publicized December National Intelligence Estimate report on Iran, the U.N. Security Council recently passed a third set of sanctions designed to force Iran to halt its nuclear program. Indeed, except for a few credulous people and some in the U.S. intelligence community with a political agenda, most capitals in the world dismissed the NIE findings as bogus.

And now the International Atomic Energy Agency has joined the fray.

Interestingly, analyzing the findings of the NIE back in December, the French expert and director of the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique (Foundation for Strategic Research), Francois Heisbourg, told the Swiss daily Le Temps, that this report’s conclusion could be the result of a revenge from some in U.S. intelligence against a president who put them in a tough spot during the Iraqi crisis.

He added very rightly so: “Compared to the NIE report on Iran, even Mohamed El Baradei [the IAEA's head] looks like a hawk”.

Now, while this fact was quite underreported, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) documents actually point to the existence of the military Iranian nuclear program. On Feb. 25, Olli Heinonen, the Finnish deputy director general of the IAEA, presented evidence of the existence of this.

Also, the French daily Le Monde got access to documents proving that Tehran pursued a military nuclear program after 2003, contrary to what the National Intelligence Estimate stated. The main document is a 2004 letter written by Mahdi Khaniki, one of the IAEA’s main interlocutors and former Iranian ambassador to Syria, to Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the vice president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

In this letter Mahdi Khaniki pointed out that the IAEA inspectors demanded to see the contracts for the purchase of spare parts used in the development of the centrifuges.

He wrote:

“At a meeting held on January 31, 2004 in the presence of Dr. Rohani [Hassan Rohani, the chief negotiator of the Iranian nuclear program until the end of 2005], the latter decided that these contracts should be prepared in accordance to the AEOI’s wishes, so they would be ready to be delivered to the IAEA. It is worth noting that the representative of the ministry of defense and of assistance to the armed forces said at the meeting that the contracts were drawn up for a presentation [to the IAEA]. However, portions of these contracts, which this writer viewed at the Ministry of Defense, were crossed out with black lines and the quantities did not appear; therefore, it seems that these contracts will raise more questions than those which [normally] should be submitted to the Agency [IAEA].”

Le Monde, citing sources close to an intelligence service, affirmed that this letter was part of “Project 13″ (also known as “Project for the disappearance of threats”), a project allegedly aimed at deceiving the IAEA inspectors.

For Iranian experts, quoted by Le Monde, this letter represents clear evidence of the involvement of the Iranian defense ministry in the nuclear dossier. This confirms suspicions about the military character of this program, while attesting of the efforts of the Iranians to conceal it.

Further proof of this came in when in mid-December 2006, U.S. intelligence services intercepted a conversation, between two unidentified officials at the Department of Defense in Tehran, reporting differences between officials of the AEOI and the Ministry of Defense. Indeed, one of the two interlocutors pointed out that: ” Currently, as for the CTBTO [Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization], I think that the Ministry of Defense must have the last word, because they [the leaders of the AEOI] know that ultimately we intend to conduct tests.”

In light of these new developments and the increasing worldwide consensus (from Europe to the Gulf), regarding the threat associated with the Iranian nuclear program, concerned nations will soon have to make a decision on a plan of action.

Will the U.N. sanctions be enough? Nothing is less sure. That’s why the ever growing military activity in the region does not bode well for a peaceful resolution of a thorny issue.

–

Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (WWW.THECROISSANT.COM).

http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/04/07/proof_of_irans_military_nuclear_program/3739/

What future for the OSCE?

The re-emergence of a political East and West is just one issue that the OSCE must tackle or else render itself irrelevant. From EurasiaNet.

By Jean-Christophe Peuch for EurasiaNet (15/02/08)

Finland’s foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva, who took the helm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on 1 January, believes the time has come to build what he calls “a new spirit of Helsinki.”

“We cannot afford to let this organization, with its more than 30 years of history, fade away,” Kanerva told reporters in Vienna in January, shortly after briefing the OSCE’s Permanent Council on the priorities of his 12 month-chairmanship.

In other words, the world’s largest regional security organization must reverse to the fundamental principles of the Helsinki Final Act, which, at the height of the Cold War, gave birth to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

For nearly 15 years, the CSCE served as an important multilateral forum for dialog and cooperation between East and West during the last years of the Cold War. When it became the OSCE three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were widespread expectations that the European continent would soon become “whole and free.”

Yet, this dream never came true and a number of OSCE participating states are still ruled by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes. In addition, old divisions are now re-emerging, raising the specter of renewed confrontation between the former Cold War enemies and threatening the very foundations of the OSCE.

Mounting disagreements among the organization’s 56 participating states have made it impossible for OSCE annual ministerial councils to adopt final declarations since 2002. Last year saw those divergences further deepen and, despite a last-minute agreement to give Kazakhstan the chairmanship of the organization in 2010, all other divisive issues remain.

In Kanerva’s view, what the OSCE needs most at the moment is “a new injection of optimism and positive spirit.”

Indeed, one would hardly find reasons to be optimistic in the working paper the Hamburg-based Center for OSCE Research (CORE) released in mid-January.

Called “Identifying the Cutting Edge: The Future Impact of the OSCE,” this report - which was commissioned by the Finnish Foreign Ministry in anticipation of its upcoming chairmanship - says the organization is experiencing “a crisis of both political substance and moral legitimacy” that may take years to rectify.

“The best that can be hoped for the OSCE in 2008 is that the damage resulting from current and forthcoming disputes will be minimized, while, at the same time, conditions for a more ambitious effort to reframe the basic consensus among the participating states are fostered,” the report says.

In the view of European, American and Russian experts who helped draft this 38-page document, the OSCE’s core values - common and cooperative security, shared norms and commitments, and inclusive dialog - are “in acute danger.”

“When key norms such as cooperative security and democracy and human rights are ignored or challenged, the OSCE’s legitimacy is in danger,” those experts say.

Among factors that are undermining the organization is what the report identifies as “the re-emergence of a political East and West” and “the resurgence of unilateral military thinking” in both the United States and Russia.

Citing the potential danger posed by Iran and other so-called rogue states suspected of seeking to develop nuclear arsenals, the United States has been pressing plans to deploy missile-defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. In parallel, it is considering establishing military bases in Bulgaria and Romania, while mulling further eastward expansion by NATO.

Russia, which believes those US initiatives represent a threat to its security and a violation of international disarmament pacts, in December suspended its participation to the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. OSCE officials are now concerned other CFE states - Armenia and Azerbaijan, in particular - might follow suit and in turn freeze their treaty commitments. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

In recent days, Russian leader Vladimir Putin indulged in some neo-Cold War behavior, threatening to aim Russian nuclear-armed missiles at Ukraine and other Central European nations if they embrace NATO too tightly. Appearing at a US congressional hearing, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Putin’s rhetoric “reprehensible.”

In his recent address to the OSCE’s Permanent Council, Kanerva vowed to help Russia and other CFE states resolve their differences through dialog in order to save what is commonly described as the cornerstone of European security. “The future of the [CFE] Treaty should be secured. An erosion of the Treaty regime should be avoided at all costs,” he told reporters afterwards.

The OSCE’s politico-military dimension is not the only one that is being challenged. Its so-called human dimension is also under serious pressure.

Moscow has been increasingly critical of the work of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which it accuses of political bias and holds responsible for ushering in new, Western-oriented governments in Georgia and Ukraine in the wake of disputed elections held in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

ODIHR is an autonomous institution that reports directly to the OSCE’s chairman-in-office. Russia and another six CIS countries last year drafted a series of proposals which seek to bring ODIHR under the control of participating states and reduce both the scope and size of its election-observation missions in former Soviet republics.

The United States and Western European countries object to the proposed Russian-sponsored reform, saying it aims to weaken the OSCE’s election-monitoring activities.

The dispute culminated when ODIHR, citing delays in the issuing of Russian entry visas to its observers, refused to monitor the December 2007 State Duma election. This, in turn, prompted the Kremlin to threaten to further cut its contribution to the OSCE budget. In yet another dramatic twist, ODIHR last week said restrictions imposed by the Kremlin would not allow it to observe the March 2 presidential ballot.

At his annual news conference 14 February, Putin had derisive words for ODIHR. “I don’t think anyone is tempted to deliver any ultimatums to Russia today, especially an organization with an acronym sounding so bad to the Russian ear as ODIHR,” Putin said.

“We invited 100 people [OSCE monitors]… [They think] it’s too few for them,” Putin continued, referring to the March election monitor-dispute. In a departure from the infamous saying often attributed to Marie Antionette - “Let them eat cake” - Putin told ODIHR that instead of offering lessons in democratization, it should “teach [their] wives how to make shchi [the Russian word for barley soup].”

The ODIHR controversy is just the tip of the iceberg. It stems from much deeper divergences among participating states about what the organization’s agenda should be. Reconciling those conflicting visions is perhaps the greatest challenge that is awaiting Finland and its designated successors - Greece, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania - in the years to come.

While accusing the OSCE of neglecting arms control issues, Russia claims the United States and other Western countries are using the organization as a vehicle to promote their own pro-democracy agenda. Washington, in turn, believes issues related to Europe’s security should be dealt with in forums where Russia has no say - such as NATO - and that the OSCE should focus more on the promotion of human rights and democracy.

“For a number of Western states, the OSCE is primarily a human dimension organization that is expected to be active primarily South and East of Vienna, whereas arms control is seen as peripheral at best and dangerous at worst,” the CORE report says. It adds: “The test for Western states, particularly for the [United States], will be whether their interest in the human dimension and ODIHR is greater than their current distaste for multilateral arms control.”

The CORE experts believe Moscow’s intentions remain similarly ambiguous. “Does Russia’s renewed interest in [the] field [of arms control] reflect genuine concerns? Or does it rather represent an effort to introduce a political currency more to Russia’s liking than the human dimension? Or is it even an effort to divert attention from attempts to weaken ODIHR?” they ask.

They further argue that only serious consultations among participating states can help answer those questions and find a “new basic consensus” on the substance of the OSCE’s politico-military and human dimensions.

They also recommend that, for the sake of preserving the unity of the OSCE “as a community of shared values, norms, and commitments,” high-level discussions be held within the organization on the meaning and different forms of democracy. This, they say, will help “keep the democratic option open for all participating states.”

While acknowledging that such an undertaking involves considerable political risks, the CORE experts argue that failure to address those issues “might involve even greater risks” for the OSCE.

 

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Jean-Christophe Peuch is a Vienna-based freelance correspondent, who specializes in Caucasus- and Central Asia-related developments.

EurasiaNet provides information and analysis about political, economic, environmental, and social developments in the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as in Russia, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. The website presents a variety of perspectives on contemporary developments, utilizing a network of correspondents based both in the West and in the region. The aim of EurasiaNet is to promote informed decision making among policy makers, as well as broadening interest in the region among the general public. EurasiaNet is operated by the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=18652