The end of Timbuktu's gate-crashing jihadists

Since French commandos parachuted on to the sand just north of Timbuktu and liberated the city from the jihadists, there is a growing sense of freedom, particularly among women. Video: The Guardian

Dancing in Timbuktu

Oh what a feeling dancing in Timbuktu
under a clear desert sky
with thousands of sparkling stars
gazing at the warm fire
sipping French Cognac.

Sisters and brothers relaxing on white satin
never reaching the end
rejoicing in freedom
singing Vive la France
we love you
oh, how we love you.

Bomb, baby, bomb! ... another Western no-brainer

A Tuareg independantiste in Mali ... sidelined by the Salafi-jihadis.
Photo: Global Dispatches

Getting to know the imperial disaster in Mali: Apparently, it's a no-brainer [excerpt]

By Pepe Escobar, an independent Brazilian investigative journalist and commentator

ONE has to love the sound of a Frenchman's Mirage 2000 fighter jet in the morning. Smells like... a delicious neo-colonial breakfast in Hollandaise sauce. Make it quagmire sauce.

Apparently, it's a no-brainer. Mali holds 15.8 million people - with a per capita gross domestic product of only around US$1000 a year and average life expectancy of only 51 years - in a territory twice the size of France (per capita GDP $35,000 and upwards). Now almost two-thirds of this territory is occupied by heavily weaponised Islamist outfits.

What next? Bomb, baby, bomb.

So welcome to the latest African war; Chad-based French Mirages and Gazelle helicopters, plus a smatter of France-based Rafales bombing evil Islamist jihadis in northern Mali. Business is good; French president Francois Hollande spent time last month in Abu Dhabi clinching the sale of up to 60 Rafales to that Gulf paragon of democracy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

'Geronimo' Belmokhtar and the Algerian Global War on Terror chapter

'Geronimo' Belmokhtar is already rehearsing for his cameo
appearance in a Zero Dark Thirty sequel. Photo: France24

CAFÉ PACIFIC is slightly off its usual Pacific track over the Algerian hostage crisis but, given France's role in state terrorism in Oceania and nuclear testing (this began in the Sahara desert), it is interesting to follow Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar's "unwestern" articles in the Asian Times. His robust column, The Roving Eye, provides a devastating critique of self-serving Western policies - a refreshing contrast to the media spin in this part of the world. For example, in the wake of new warlord French President François Hollande's adventure in Mali and the jihadist raid on the vast In Amenas gas plant, where does Algeria fit in the overall scheme of things?

According to Escobar, the Algerian military's ultra-hardcore response to the Islamist raid was predictable - "this is how they did it during the 1990s in their internal war against the Islamic Salvation Front":

We don't negotiate with terrorists; we kill them (along with scores of hostages). We do it by ourselves, without nosy foreigners, and we go for total information blackout.

 THE ROVING EYE [an excerpt]

War on terror forever

By Pepe Escobar

And the winner of the Oscar for Best Sequel of 2013 goes to... The Global War on Terror (GWOT), a Pentagon production. Abandon all hope those who thought the whole thing was over with the cinematographic snuffing out of "Geronimo", aka Osama bin Laden, further reduced to a fleeting cameo in the torture-enabling flick Zero Dark Thirty.

It's now official - coming from the mouth of the lion, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, and duly posted at the AFRICOM site, the Pentagon's weaponised African branch.
Exit "historical" al-Qaeda, holed up somewhere in the Waziristans, in the Pakistani tribal areas; enter al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In Dempsey's words, AQIM "is a threat not only to the country of Mali, but the region, and if... left unaddressed, could in fact become a global threat".

With Mali now elevated to the status of a "threat" to the whole world, GWOT is proven to be really open-ended. The Pentagon doesn't do irony; when, in the early 2000s, armchair warriors coined the expression "The Long War", they really meant it.

Even under President Obama 2.0's "leading from behind" doctrine, the Pentagon is unmistakably gunning for war in Mali - and not only of the shadow variety. General Carter Ham, AFRICOM's commander, already operates under the assumption Islamists in Mali will "attack American interests".

'We have come to exterminate the Crusaders' - Algerian hostage crisis background

Al Jazeera news video.

"WE HAVE come to exterminate the Crusaders", said a freed Algerian worker at the In Amenas gas field. He described on Al Jazeera television how the the Islamic jihadists searched the Sahara desert installation looking for foreign workers and planned to blow up the entire plant.

The hostage crisis had a deadly end at the weekend with the second and final assault by Algerian special forces but the bloody saga has cast a shadow over the country’s energy sector, according to the latest report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The preliminary death toll from the four-day siege was 23 hostages and 32 captors with five of the militants being captured. The army freed 685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners.

France24.com has taken a closer look with Sébastian Seibt reporting:

The hostage incident has indeed caused a halt in activity at the site, where both gas and 50,000 barrels a day of liquid hydrocarbons similar to crude oil are produced.

Compared to the 1.18 million barrels of crude oil produced daily by Algeria, the production at the gas field seems relatively insignificant.

“It can create a bit of volatility, but one attack in itself is not going to lead to a long-term price hike,” said Céline Antonin, an economist specialising in oil industries at the French Economic Observatory.

The risk is that the terrorists’ “ability to strike so boldly is likely to spook the Western oil operators who run facilities across the region”, according to British weekly magazine The Economist. If oil operators get jittery, The Economist assessed, speculation could result in higher prices.
>> Read more

Stop press:  At least 37 hostages died in the terrorist seizure of, and ensuing special forces assault on, a natural gas plant in Algeria, says the country's prime minister. Five other hostages are missing from the In Amenas complex and could be dead, Prime Minister Abdul Malek Sallal said. Before Sallal's statement on Monday, other countries and companies that employed foreign workers at the sprawling plant had confirmed a total of 29 hostage deaths. - CNN

• Count of hostage deaths rises
• Algeria claims capture of five hostage-takers
• Algerian reaction to raid rooted in history
• Is Algeria immune to the 'Arab Spring'?
  Will the Algerian hostage crisis affect the oil industry?
• Making sense of Mali's armed groups