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Al-Qaeda Capability Against Africa Builds Up in Mali

Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou told French President Francois Hollande today that the terrorist training centers being set up in northern Mali constituted a threat to the entire region. 


Issoufou reiterated that jihadists from Pakistan and Afghanistan were involved in training an Africa-wide terror capability. Issoufou announced that he intended to seek UN support for troops to be sent to Mali.


Airplanes are flying on a regular basis into the three airports in the northern Mali region that has been seized by al-Qaeda, bringing in supplies and equipment for the forces being trained there by al-Qaeda operatives from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Libya, according to West African sources. 


Flush with cash, the operatives are offering $500 to impoverished youth in the area to join the al-Qaeda-trained insurgency apparatus.


All the different al-Qaeda linked groups, from Algeria to Somalia, are not separate, but are one operation, said one African source. He emphasized that this includes Shabaab in the Horn of Africa, Aqim in Algeria, Boko Harem in Nigeria, and the al-Qaeda-linked groups in Mali.


Sources also report that today a 40-person advance party from the European Union arrived in the city of Agadez in northern Niger because of concern over the al-Qaeda buildup. The group included military and civilian security advisors. The EU had previously indicated that EU150 million had been set aside to use to build up security capabilities in the Sahel.


The British financial empire's al-Qaeda buildup in Mali was triggered after the destruction of Qaddafi by NATO, and is being coordinated out of al-Qaeda camps in Libya, according to charges by West African officials.