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by Wombaticus Rex » Mon Jan 28, 2013 2:10 pm
hava007 wrote:glad its mentioned, as recently this board has been ignoring so much of "world news", it seemed almost to have imploded into itself.
Mali, Egype (recently), Burma, Elections in Israel, UK v. EU, and others I forgot.
by Dradin Kastell » Mon Jan 28, 2013 2:11 pm
France is to deploy special forces to protect uranium mines belonging to French nuclear energy giant Areva in Niger, according to a report in a news magazine this week.
According to weekly Le Point, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has given the go-ahead for an elite team from France’s armed forces to reinforce local security at the company’s two sites in Niger, a former French colony.
The move comes amid a heightened security threat following a French-led offensive to drive Islamist separatists out of northern Mali, and the deadly hostage crisis at the In Amenas gas facility in Algeria, which militants said was in revenge for the French military intervention.
The decision to deploy troops, however, was taken earlier in January, after a botched operation to rescue a captured French intelligence agent Denis Allex in southern Somalia, according to Le Point. Allex had been held hostage by militants there since 2009.
It is the first time government troops will be sent overseas to protect a facility owned by a private French company, according to Le Point, although French marines are already deployed on cargo ships travelling through the pirate-infested waters of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea.
Niger’s uranium a strategic French asset
The special forces team will be sent to the Imouraren and Arlit sites operated by Areva, according to the report.
Seven workers, including five French nationals, were abducted in Arlit by militants linked to al Qaeda’s North African Branch, in 2010. Three of those hostages were later released, but four French citizens are still being held.
Areva, which relies on mines in Niger to supply France’s nuclear power stations with uranium, confirmed it was beefing up its security on Thursday.
“We are obliged to reinforce our security … in the light of the current situation [France’s intervention in Mali],” Areva Chief Executive Officer Luc Oursel told BFM TV, although he refused to comment on the report that this would involve French special forces.
Officials in Niger, while acknowledging that the security threat was heightened, said that no agreement had been reached - for the moment - for special forces to be deployed.
Areva has been mining uranium in Niger for more than fifty years and the company is the country’s single biggest investor.
by hava007 » Mon Jan 28, 2013 2:32 pm
people here never really understood that non americans are actual people. but then its as good as it gets, I guess, so it would be a pity to see it becoming irrelevant. ava007 wrote:
glad its mentioned, as recently this board has been ignoring so much of "world news", it seemed almost to have imploded into itself.
Mali, Egype (recently), Burma, Elections in Israel, UK v. EU, and others I forgot.
I've always taken that to be an inevitable side-effect of the predominantly US/Canada membership here.
I definitely own shares of the blame for this, though, since I seldom post OP's here anymore and have parallel geopolitics conversations going in gmail all day.
by barracuda » Mon Jan 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Mali: Timbuktu Locals Saved Some of Their City’s Ancient Manuscripts from Islamists
The preservationists of Timbuktu’s centuries-old artifacts have been holding their breath for weeks, waiting for the moment when the French military would seize back Mali’s ancient northern capital from the Islamic militants who have occupied it for 10 months. At stake were the city’s most precious treasures: tens of thousands of centuries-old, priceless calligraphed manuscripts, whose fate under the jihadists’ rule was deeply uncertain.
On Monday, that moment finally came—and by nightfall, the state of Timbuktu’s treasures was as confused as it had been before.
When Malian and French soldiers rolled into town in armored vehicles early Monday, they found what the preservationists had most dreaded: Timbuktu’s new Ahmad Baba Institute, an expensive adobe construction opened in 2010—the city’s splashiest international project in years—had been torched by militants of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) last Thursday as they prepared to flee the French advance. From Bamako, Timbuktu’s mayor Hallé Ousmane Cissé, who had fled his city nearly four weeks ago, told journalists that the militants had burned the center’s collection of 40,000 or so ancient manuscripts, some of the 300,000 or so historic documents stashed in libraries in Timbuktu and the villages around it, mostly as family heirlooms. “The manuscripts were a part not only of Mali’s heritage but the world’s heritage,” Cissé told the Guardian. “By destroying them they threaten the world. We have to kill all of the rebels in the north.” Reporting from inside the Timbuktu building itself, Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford told viewers that the jihadists had destroyed the center’s contents. Meanwhile, Cissé was quoted on the network’s website saying, “They torched all the important ancient manuscripts.”
That is not so, according to those who’ve worked for months to keep the documents safe.
In interviews with TIME on Monday, the preservationists said that in a large-scale rescue operation early last year, shortly before the militants seized control of Timbuktu, thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmad Baba center to a safe house elsewhere. Realizing that the documents might be prime targets for pillaging or vindictive attacks from Islamic extremists, staff left behind just a small portion of them, perhaps out of haste, but also to conceal the fact that the center had been deliberately emptied. “The documents which had been there are safe, they were not burned,” said Mahmoud Zouber, Mali’s presidential aide on Islamic affairs, a title he retains despite the overthrow of the former president, his boss, in a military coup a year ago; preserving Timbuktu’s manuscripts was a key project of his office. By phone from Bamako on Monday night, Zouber told TIME, “They were put in a very safe place. I can guarantee you. The manuscripts are in total security.”
In a second interview from Bamako, a preservationist who did not want to be named confirmed that the center’s collection had been hidden out of reach from the militants. Neither of those interviewed wanted the location of the manuscripts named in print, for fear that remnants of the al-Qaeda occupiers might return to destroy them.
That was confirmed too by Shamil Jeppie, director of the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town, who told TIME on Monday night, “There were a few items in the Ahmad Baba Library, but the rest were kept away.” The center, financed by the South African government as a favored project by then-President Thabo Mbeki, who championed reviving Africa’s historical culture, housed state-of-the-art equipment to preserve and photograph hundreds of thousands of pages, some of which had gold illumination, astrological charts and sophisticated mathematical formulas. Jeppie said he had been enraged by the television footage on Monday of the building trashed, and blamed in part Mali’s government, which he said had done little to ensure the center’s security. “It is really sad and disturbing,” he said.
When TIME reached Timbuktu mayor Cissé in Bamako late Monday night, he tempered the remarks he had made to journalists earlier in the day, conceding in an interview that indeed, residents had worked to rescue the center’s manuscripts before al-Qaeda occupied the city last March. Still, he said that while many of the manuscripts had been saved, “they did not move all the manuscripts.” He said he had fled earlier this month after living through months of the Islamists’ rule, a situation he described as a “true catastrophe” and “very, very hard.” He says he expects to fly back home by the weekend on a French military jet. By then, perhaps, the state of Timbuktu’s astonishing historic libraries might be clearer.
http://world.time.com/2013/01/28/mali-t ... z2JJv2KhlR
by 8bitagent » Tue Jan 29, 2013 7:30 am
by Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 29, 2013 9:09 am
8bitagent wrote:http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/22/as-left-pressures-obama-on-drone-strikes-some-suggest-new-front-in-north-africa/
Welcome to the official new front...
by Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 29, 2013 11:47 am
(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 1/29/13)
By Adam Entous and Siobhan Gorman
The U.S. signed an agreement Monday with the West African country of Niger that clears the way for a stepped-up American military presence on the edges of the conflict in neighboring Mali.
The U.S. and France are moving to create an intelligence hub in Niger that could include a base, near Mali's border, for American drones that could monitor al Qaeda-linked militants in Mali's vast desert north, U.S. officials said Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the U.S. was considering a larger presence in the region, including drones, to increase intelligence-collection efforts.
U.S. and French officials said they see Niger as a logical hub for intelligence-collection operations in Mali, where France has deployed warplanes and ground troops to drive Islamist militants from cities and towns they have held for months.
The signing of the so-called status-of-forces agreement with Niger was a necessary precursor for American military operations there, officials said. U.S. officials said discussions with Niger on a drone base were at an early stage.
The U.S. and Niger started negotiating the status of forces agreement last year to provide legal protections for American military personnel operating in the country. Talks took on added urgency after France launched its military mission in Mali on Jan. 11 against al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, and affiliated Islamist militants in northern Mali. The agreement is likely to be announced in Niamey, Niger's capital, on Tuesday, U.S. officials said.
The agreement signed Monday with Niger is meant to expand cooperation "to counter shared threats in the region," a U.S. defense official said.
U.S. officials said the agreement doesn't set out the precise number of American military personnel who would be based in Niger, nor does it prescribe what roles they will play. There are now fewer than 50 U.S. military personnel there.
U.S. operations in Niger to aid the French military campaign would represent a significant escalation by the U.S.
U.S. officials said new drone bases are needed near Mali to monitor militant activity because the U.S. doesn't have any in or near the new war zone.
Western war planners say small landing strips in Niger near the border with Mali are ideally located for missions using drones, manned surveillance aircraft and possibly U.S. special-operations units. That is because the airstrips in Niger are closer to militant havens in northern Mali than airstrips near Mali's capital, Bamako, in the south of the country.
The Obama administration has been wary of getting pulled into a new conflict in Mali, but hasn't ruled out the use of armed drones or special-operations units to help target al Qaeda militants -- if intelligence agencies conclude that they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland, U.S. officials said.
The U.S. military command for Africa, known as Africom, declined to discuss any plans for deploying drones -- which are sometimes called "ISR," in military parlance -- to Niger. "We don't discuss specific planning efforts, and in particular, we do not discuss specifics related to ISR, and intelligence matters," said Col. Tom Davis, a spokesman for the command.
American military personnel in Niger would likely provide counterterrorism training to local forces and help the country with border security, in addition to helping gather intelligence on al Qaeda in Mali, officials said.
Other countries in the region are also seen by U.S. officials as possible hosts for U.S. drone bases.
U.S. and French officials are concerned about any spillover of the fighting into neighboring countries, including Algeria, which, at the urging of Paris, has moved forces to try to close its long desert border with Mali. French officials said the goal is to prevent fighters from fleeing across the border to escape advancing French and African forces.
U.S. officials said they want to step up cooperation with the government in Algiers to fight AQIM and associated militant groups, as Algeria is one of the few capable governments in North Africa that fervently oppose Islamist militants. Current and former officials said the Central Intelligence Agency or the U.S. military may be able to reach a deal in which Algeria provides a drone base in exchange for equipment and training.
The Algerians have been fighting Islamist militant groups since the 1990s, when they stepped up their effort to counter extremists with the help of the CIA. The agency forged a good relationship with its counterparts there and Algeria was able to tamp down the threat considerably.
The Pentagon has small numbers of American personnel and equipment scattered across Africa. The largest U.S. concentration is at Camp Lemonnier, a joint French-U.S. base in Djibouti, used to launch drone strikes in Yemen. The base is the headquarters for a task force encompassing 2,000 Americans.
In addition to the U.S. personnel now in Niger, about 100 were sent to the region last year to help in the hunt for the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel militia in central Africa.
Africom is based in Germany, with about 1,500 people stationed in Stuttgart and 500 others in Florida, Britain, and at regional African organizations, such as the African Union, on the continent.
U.S. officials had planned to increase the U.S. presence this year by rotating about 3,000 American troops through different assignments in Africa.
The U.S. military has forged a relationship with its counterparts in Niger for a decade, dating back to the U.S. worries about al Qaeda spreading in the region in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, said Seth Jones, a former Pentagon adviser and an al Qaeda specialist at the Rand Corp.
He said U.S. officials have a "very serious concern" that even if the French succeed in Mali, the Islamic extremist threat will continue to spread in the region in countries like Mauritania, Nigeria, and Niger.
The U.S. has sifted through a knot of legal issues in addressing the rise of extremism in northwest Africa. A coup in Mali last year forced the U.S. to suspend military aid to that country.
In Niger, the military staged a coup in 2010 after then-President Mamadou Tandja attempted to extend his term beyond December 2009, when he was supposed to cede power.
The U.S. reaction to the coup was muted, with State Department officials noting at the time that Mr. Tandja was improperly trying to hold on to power. The military junta scheduled a presidential election for 2011, returning power to civilian authorities and clearing the way for stepped-up U.S. military support.
by DrVolin » Tue Jan 29, 2013 1:23 pm
by 82_28 » Tue Jan 29, 2013 1:57 pm
The U.S. signed an agreement Monday with the West African country of Niger that clears the way for a stepped-up American military presence on the edges of the conflict in neighboring Mali.
by wintler2 » Tue Jan 29, 2013 7:31 pm
by cptmarginal » Fri Jan 10, 2014 2:57 pm
Koudede: Guitars from Agadez Vol. 7 LP SF084
In October 2012, the Tamashek community lost one of its most luminous voices when Koudede's life was cut short by a car crash during his trip home to Niger from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Koudede was a leading light among the myriad musical groups that have recently proliferated in Niger and Mali to voice the Tuareg struggle against exploitation and to exalt their proud but waning nomadic heritage. His outstanding reputation and corpus of songs garnered the respect of his contemporaries, and his altruistic persona made him a formidable conduit for younger generations of musicians; he was always eager to foster dialog by spreading the music and message of his people. These recordings were captured in an atmosphere of tumult as the 2012 Tuareg insurgency led to a series of battles in the northern Sahara between the government of Mali and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). In a misbegotten alliance, the MNLA was drawn together with a rogue movement of dogmatic fundamentalists who were bent on destabilizing West Africa's generally symbiotic relationship with a peaceful, centuries-old Afro-Islamic culture. Three of these four tracks were recorded on location at Toumast -- the Tuareg headquarters in Mali's capital city of Bamako -- shortly after Koudede appeared as a featured artist at the Festival au Désert in Timbuktu. In February 2012, as conditions worsened for the Tuareg in Mali, Koudede's peers advised him to flee the country. The remaining track was recorded in Ouagadougou, after Koudede and his group left Bamako for the safer soil of Burkina Faso. These recordings showcase Koudede's mastery of song and emotion, and memorialize his tragically short tenure as one of the Tuareg's most venerable prophets of the Kel Tamashek message to the outside world. Sublime Frequencies is honored to perpetuate Koudede's extraordinary legacy with this four-song, 45-rpm 12" EP. Recorded and compiled by Hisham Mayet.
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