Mali, a new Afghanistan?

Northern Mali extends to pretty much on the same area as Afghanistan (650,000 km2). Like him, is a landlocked country, an area with no outlet to the sea The main difference: the population is sparse with less than a million and a half inhabitants per km2 or two ... There are only three cities: Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu famous. This is a huge area and empty in the heart of Africa. Refuge territory fell under cutting radical Islamists, the African equivalent of the Afghan Taliban. They are not numerous: a few thousand fighters at most, probably less for the hard core.

Following the fall of Gaddafi in Libya and political unrest in Bamako, Mali's capital, three armed groups (AQIM Mujao and Ansar al-Din) took control of this vast territory and they impose, force the Sharia.Accused of being places of idolatry, religious sites of traditional Islam are destroyed, the adulterous couples are, literally, stoned with stones until death ensues, music and alcohol are strictly prohibited.Mullah Omar could feel at him. Eleven years after Western intervention in Afghanistan, with the success that we know we are with a new front at 3000 kilometers from Paris.

For years, this scenario evoked concern in policy circles and military schools: it is now done! And what do we do? Nothing. A large part of diplomatic reels, failing to change the situation on the ground, hold the media and at least give the illusion of action.

September 25, from the rostrum of the United Nations, President François Hollande, for example, describes the situation in Mali as "unbearable, unacceptable, unacceptable," adding that "we have a duty to act, and act together act quickly because there is an emergency. " It looks like an Italian opera, when the brass ring and on stage, leaving the troops to battle valiantly but ... walking on the spot!

What is, in fact, the real situation? On the eve of the annual session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Malian government - or what takes place since the military uprising of March and the de facto partition of the country - called lip intervention outside to help against the Islamists. The voice of François Hollande, French diplomacy has not failed to ride this horse kindly provided, but for now, appears to be rather a hack.

Before acting, we must still wait a resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations under Chapter VII, which authorizes the use of military force. Unlike Syria, Russia and China should not block the adoption of such a text when it is filed. When? We do not know.

Second stage and not least the establishment of the force. We found his name but that's about it ... It will be called the Micema, the acronym of the ECOWAS Mission in Mali. It will be an African force of about three thousand men. It will be implemented by ECOWAS, the Economic Community of the States of West Africa, which includes 15 countries in the region, the most powerful of them, Nigeria. Micema This will be supported by some Western sponsors, primarily France, which provide logistical support, training and resources information.

France's military presence is already there, so discreet. Few dozen men of Special Operations Command (SOC) are hard at work with planes and helicopters, as part of Operation Sabre - which lasts for three years. Means additional air information are being deployed in neighboring countries.

Paris still hopes other European countries embark on this new adventure African and spends lavishly to try to convince partners unmotivated. African countries are not actually much more. First and foremost the Mali itself. François Hollande acknowledged in his speech to the United Nations when he said: "I know that there may be still the temptation to negotiate" with "terrorist groups." Because, in Paris, everyone knows that Mali accommodated well and long for the presence of these "terrorist groups" in its territory, unlike neighboring Mauritania, which itself without the stalk thank you.

Another thorn in: Algeria. Its neighbor is not unhappy to have "exported" terrorists, often of Algerian origin, outside the national territory ... And past colonial forces, it takes a very dim view of any military intervention of France in this Algiers sees as its backyard. A recent spy novel "Katiba" (Flammarion, 2010), written by a very knowledgeable former ambassador, Jean-Christophe Rufin, illuminates the reality of complex terrain and dirty tricks that can result ...

"Negotiating with terrorist groups, there can be no question" ensures the head of the French state.Really? But then discussing with, or attempt to do so, the French emissaries in this area? For these "terrorist groups" hold six French hostages, including four of them began in mid-September, the third year of detention. Their captors, members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), did not fail to recall, in a video on September 19: French military action in Mali lead to "the death of the hostages."

France and its president are now on the razor's edge: it is impossible to leave Al-Qaeda moved to a new sanctuary in Africa as it is equally impossible to sacrifice the lives of six French hostages. The statecraft and diplomatic posturing be enough to overcome this difficult choice? For now, impotence prevails. And this is good news for anyone.

The opinion of the author does not necessarily coincide with the position of writing.

(1) Jean-Dominique Merchet "European Defence: the great illusion" Larousse 2009.

* Jean-Dominique Merchet journalist specializing in business defense. French author of the most widely read blog on these issues, created in 2007. Former Institute of Higher Studies for National Defence. Author of many books including: "Dying for Afghanistan" (2008), "European defense: the great illusion" (2009), "A History of Special Forces" (2010), "The death of bin Laden" (2012)

Russia ‘Ready’ to Export Su-30 Fighters to Africa

Russia is ready to sell Su-30s and other modern fighter jets to African countries, state-controlled arms exporter Rosoboronexport said on Saturday.
Delivery contracts with countries such as Uganda, Angola, Ethiopia and others should include personnel training programs and after-sales servicing, Rosoboronexport’s deputy chief Alexander Mikheyev said.
This year Russia has delivered six Su-30MK2 multirole fighters to Uganda and is currently in talks to diversify cooperation, he added.
Mikheyev said on Friday Uganda expressed interest in buying another six aircraft of that type.
Rosoboronexport has also signed a contract to sell six Mi-17 helicopters to Ghana, he said.

Ambassador Chris Stevens killed in Libya: Is Arab Spring turning against US?

The flareup of violence in which Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in Libya shows how the Arab Spring has unleashed forces that are vehemently opposed to America and its ideals.

 

The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three other American diplomats in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi Tuesday underscore how anti-authoritarian revolutions across the Arab world have unleashed extremist Islamist forces violently opposed to America and its ideals.

“The big question for the United States, and it’s only been made more urgent by these events, is how to adjust to a world where [moderate Muslim] governments have paved the way for more extremist elements to wield their influence,” says Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington. “It’s not a good dynamic, but it’s not going away and has to be addressed.”   
The American ambassador, Chris Stevens, was killed in the same city of eastern Libya where he had set up shop as the US envoy to the Libyan rebels as they fought to oust America’s longtime nemesis, strongman Muammar Qaddafi. Ambassador Stevens and the three other Americans were killed when a mob infuriated by an anti-Islam video made in the US stormed the Benghazi mission and burned it to the ground.

Salafis 101: 5 key facts

When Stevens was sworn into his post earlier this year, he spoke passionately of the job that lay ahead of building a solid bond between the US and the new Libya that had emerged from the successful revolution against Mr. Qaddafi.
But the fall of Qaddafi’s iron-fisted regime also set free small but growing bands of Islamist extremists who were ready to take advantage of the new freedoms and the slackened security restrictions made possible by the change of government.
Already during the fighting against Qaddafi, the US was concerned about the presence in Libya and across North Africa of Al Qaeda-affiliated groups. But Tuesday’s attack appears to have been instigated by another organization, Ansar al-Sharia, whose followers adhere to the extremely conservative Salafi movement that rejects Western influence and demands a return to strict Muslim practices of past centuries.
Salafi forces appeared to be behind Tuesday’s violent protests at the US Embassy in Cairo as well as the Benghazi attack. The armed mobs were expressing their fury over an amateurish anti-Islamic video that denigrates the prophet Mohammed. The video was made last year in California by someone claiming to be an Israeli-American real estate developer.Speaking in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday, President Obama eulogized the four lost Americans as exemplary agents of “freedom and human dignity,” even as he insisted that “no acts of terrorism will ever … eclipse the light of the values we stand for.”
The US government is working with the Libyan authorities to “bring to justice” the perpetrators of the deadly attack, Mr. Obama said, adding, “Make no mistake: Justice will be done.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who stood with Obama for the statement, reported earlier that in addition to Stevens, Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith was killed in the attack. The names of the other two Americans killed were not immediately released.
Obama also insisted in his statement that “this attack will not break the bonds between the United States of America and Libya,” but it is hard to see how it won’t affect US relations with Libya, the Arab Spring countries, and the wider Muslim world.
The anti-American protests and deadly assault on the Benghazi consulate occurred on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as Obama noted, saying Tuesday was “already a painful day” for Americans even before the events in Egypt and Libya.
The reminder of Islamist extremists’ hatred for America will only darken the clouds that many Americans already saw building over the countries of the Arab Spring. The events will likely feed doubts about Egypt and the intentions of its new president, Mohammed Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Morsi will make a White House visit later this month, and the threat of Islamic extremism – and how Morsi plans to address it – will now rise higher on the agenda.
The death of a US ambassador in a country he played a part in liberating will very likely reinforce the Obama administration’s reservations about the disparate rebel forces fighting Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. One reason the US has not officially recognized the opposition forces arrayed against the Assad regime is lingering doubt about the degree to which extremist Islamist forces, including Al Qaeda, are involved in the anti-Assad fight.
Libya’s deputy prime minister, Mustafa Abushagour, condemned Stevens’ killing as “an attack on America, Libya, and the free world,” but WINEP’s Mr. Clawson says he doubts those reassuring words will be backed up by action.
Libya’s new authorities did nothing to stop violence earlier this year directed against the country’s moderate Sufi sect by Muslim extremists, he notes, much as attacks on manifestations of Western influence in Tunisia have gone unpunished.
“If the Libyan authorities do nothing when those under attack are Libyans,” Clawson says, why should we expect that they will when the attacks are against us?”

 

Obama's Arab Spring becomes the Arab Winter

The murder of Ambassador Stevens prompts a new question to Obama supporters: "How's that Arab Spring thing workin' out for ya?"
The horrific photo of Chris Stevens, who died in service to his country, is the new icon for Obama's naïve Arab Spring mantra.
Back on May 19, 2011, in a speech on the Arab Spring, Obama said:

"That story of self-determination began six months ago in Tunisia. On December 17, a young vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi was devastated when a police officer confiscated his cart. This was not unique. It is the same kind of humiliation that takes place every day in many parts of the world - the relentless tyranny of governments that deny their citizens dignity. Only this time, something different happened. After local officials refused to hear his complaint, this young man who had never been particularly active in politics went to the headquarters of the provincial government, doused himself in fuel, and lit himself on fire.
Sometimes, in the course of history, the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has built up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat. So it was in Tunisia, as that vendor's act of desperation tapped into the frustration felt throughout the country. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets, then thousands. And in the face of batons and sometimes bullets, they refused to go home - day after day, week after week, until a dictator of more than two decades finally left power.
The story of this Revolution, and the ones that followed, should not have come as a surprise. The nations of the Middle East and North Africa won their independence long ago, but in too many places their people did not. In too many countries, power has been concentrated in the hands of the few. In too many countries, a citizen like that young vendor had nowhere to turn - no honest judiciary to hear his case; no independent media to give him voice; no credible political party to represent his views; no free and fair election where he could choose his leader.
This lack of self determination - the chance to make of your life what you will - has applied to the region's economy as well. Yes, some nations are blessed with wealth in oil and gas, and that has led to pockets of prosperity. But in a global economy based on knowledge and innovation, no development strategy can be based solely upon what comes out of the ground. Nor can people reach their potential when you cannot start a business without paying a bribe.
In the face of these challenges, too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people's grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills, a half century after the end of colonialism. Antagonism toward Israel became the only acceptable outlet for political expression. Divisions of tribe, ethnicity and religious sect were manipulated as a means of holding on to power, or taking it away from somebody else.
But the events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and diversion won't work anymore. Satellite television and the Internet provide a window into the wider world - a world of astonishing progress in places like India, Indonesia and Brazil. Cell phones and social networks allow young people to connect and organize like never before. A new generation has emerged. And their voices tell us that change cannot be denied.
In Cairo, we heard the voice of the young mother who said, "It's like I can finally breathe fresh air for the first time."
In Sanaa, we heard the students who chanted, "The night must come to an end."
In Benghazi, we heard the engineer who said, "Our words are free now. It's a feeling you can't explain."
In Damascus, we heard the young man who said, "After the first yelling, the first shout, you feel dignity."

Here's the newest addition to his list of events:  In Tripoli, we see the limp body of a dead American Ambassador.

In that May, 2011 speech, Obama went on to say,

"That's why, two years ago in Cairo, I began to broaden our engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect."

"Mutual respect," he predicted.
When a nation chooses to be governed by incompetent leadership, people die. It's always been that way. It will always be that way. And that's the way it is now, in America.

China’s arms exports flooding sub-Saharan Africa

China’s arms exports have surged over the past decade, flooding sub-Saharan Africa with a new source of cheap assault rifles and ammunition and exposing Beijing to international scrutiny as its lethal wares wind up in conflict zones in violation of U.N. sanctions.
Weapons from China have surfaced in a string of U.N. investigations in war zones stretching from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Ivory Coast, Somalia and Sudan. China is by no means alone in supplying the arms that help fuel African conflicts, and there is no proof that China or its arms exporters have intentionally violated U.N. embargoes in any of those countries.

But China has stood apart from other major arms exporters, including Russia, for its assertive challenge to U.N. authority, routinely refusing to cooperate with U.N. arms experts and flexing its diplomatic muscle to protect its allies and curtail investigations that may shed light on its own secretive arms industry.
The stance highlights the tensions between China’s responsibilities as a global power and its interests in exploiting new markets. It has also raised questions about whether Chinese diplomats have a grip on the reach of the country’s influence in the arms industry beyond its borders.

Beijing has responded to the disclosures not by enforcing regulations at home but by using its clout within the Security Council to claw back the powers of independent U.N. arms investigators. Those efforts have helped undercut the independence of U.N. panels that track arms trading with Iran and North Korea.
“This is really a case of unbridled capitalism, and I think the Chinese government is not even always aware of what these companies are doing,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which has been tracking Iran’s and North Korea’s procurement of nuclear technology from Chinese companies. When the Chinese are “confronted with evidence,” Albright said, “they respond very defensively and legalistically.”
China has blocked the release of embarrassing U.N. revelations of illicit arms transfers, stopped the reappointment of an arms expert who uncovered Chinese weapons and sought to restrict the budget to fund investigations. It has also consistently refused to allow U.N. investigators to trace the origin of Chinese weapons discovered in war zones.
The country’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this report, but its representatives have repeatedly denied accusations that the country is violating sanctions.
More broadly, China has made clear that it has a philosophical aversion to sanctions, which were imposed on Beijing by the European Union following the Tiananmen Square events in 1989, and that it believes most major political disputes are better addressed through diplomatic talks.
Council diplomats say China has gone along with the proliferation of U.N. sanctions panels in order to maintain a cooperative relationship with the West, particularly the United States. Today, the United Nations enforces arms embargoes against 13 countries or groups, including the Taliban, al-Qaeda and seven African countries.
But China’s willingness to play along has been tested over the past decade as it has transformed itself from the world’s largest importer of arms to a major producer, with domestic production exploding by 95 percent from 2002 to 2006 and from 2007 to 2011, making it the sixth-largest arms exporter in the world.
The trend has been most sharply felt in sub-Saharan Africa, where China, a major presence at arms trade shows in Africa, sells weapons to 16 countries, more than any other top arms trader from outside the region.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, it now accounts for 25 percent of the market, not including South Africa. (SIPRI notes that a number of large Ukrainian and Russian arms sales to Sudan and Uganda are likely to force China out of the top ranking in 2012.)
“Africa is quite an important market for the Chinese arms industry because it is a stepping stone” to becoming a first-tier arms exporter, said Pieter D. Wezeman, the chief author of the SIPRI report, noting that China’s offerings are far too inferior to compete in the industrialized arms market. “They have to start somewhere,” he said.
Some of those arms have been diverted to conflict zones under U.N. sanctions.
In May 2011, a team of U.N. arms experts collected several high-explosive incendiary cartridges in the Darfur town of Tukumare, where Sudanese armed forces had recently battled rebels, according to a confidential report that was produced by three U.N. arms experts and first publicly disclosed by the London-based newsletter Africa Confidential.
The cartridges — which were manufactured in China in 2010, more than five years after the arms embargo first went into effect — were compatible with weapons systems used in Sudan’s Russian-made Mi-24 attack helicopters and Su-25 ground attack aircraft. But China rebuffed requests by a U.N. panel to attempt to trace the cartridges back to their manufacturer.
It was not the first time.
A review of Chinese compliance compiled by SIPRI showed that China has routinely provided panel members with incomplete answers when confronted with evidence of Chinese arms in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan and Somalia, where China declined a request from a U.N. panel that discovered 15 Chinese RPGs in the hands of Somali pirates.
It is in the case of Darfur, where Chinese ammunition has become a feature of annual U.N. reports, China has moved most aggressively to clamp down on a panel’s findings.
In 2011, China blocked the release of the Darfur panel’s report, then singled out the arms expert, Holger Anders of Germany, who had uncovered boxes of Chinese cartridges, and dismissed his work as unprofessional.
“An undergraduate student could have done better work; nothing was verified; it was nothing more than hearsay,” China’s delegation told the panel, according to an account provided by an official familiar with the matter. Anders responded by presenting the Chinese with an envelope filled with cartridges and asking them to analyze them themselves, according to the official, who declined to speak for the record because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The Chinese diplomats took the shells, but never responded.
In January 2011, China placed a hold on the U.N. decision to renew Anders’s contract, effectively shutting him out of the Security Council panels. Anders has since gone to work for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast.
U.S. and European officials have sought to persuade China to take a more conciliatory approach in Darfur, saying that China was needlessly drawing attention to itself even though other countries such as Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were supplying Sudan with deadlier and more advanced weapons, including attack helicopters.
Council diplomats said that while Chinese diplomats in New York recognize the futility of their response, they have been hemmed in by hard-liners in Beijing, particularly within the People’s Liberation Army, which oversees China’s arms exports. Council diplomats also say they remain unsure how much control China’s diplomats have over China’s arms trade.
Last September, the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported that it had obtained documents showing that Libyan officials met with Chinese companies to buy arms on July 11, 2011, several months after the council had imposed an arms embargo on Libya.
The Foreign Ministry in China, which had voted in favor of the Libya sanctions, said the contacts had taken place without the government’s knowledge. They said no arms were delivered, and that they would strictly implement the Libya sanctions.
“The PLA has a very powerful voice at the table, and on some of the arms issues what we hear is, this might look like benign munitions in country X but this is going to set people off in our capital,” according to a Security Council diplomat who has worked closely with the Chinese. “The Chinese get extremely sensitive.”
In practice, China has shown the “minimum amount of effort” in enforcing arms embargoes it supports at the Security Council, the official added. “Get them off the record and they say, ‘Look, we have been subjected to sanctions ourselves.’ ”
The United States has sought to assuage Chinese sensitivities by granting Beijing and other key powers greater political control over U.N. investigators enforcing sanctions. In 2009, for instance, the Obama administration proposed inviting the Chinese, along with the council’s other permanent members, plus South Korea and Japan, to appoint their own national experts to enforce sanctions against North Korea.
Beijing’s diplomats have worked assiduously to limit the experts’ ability to do their jobs, pressing for budget cuts that would curb their ability to travel to carry out investigations and attend specialist conferences. China has refused numerous requests by the North Korea panel to visit Beijing to discuss its own efforts to enforce sanctions, and it blocked the publication of the panel’s annual report in 2011.
“It has had a bit of a chilling effect,” said a council diplomat. “It has made the panels a little gun-shy because their reports might not see the light of day if they are too blunt.”
U.S. and European diplomats said that despite Chinese reticence, they have been able to leverage U.N. sanctions, particularly in places like Iran and North Korea, to reinforce U.S. and European sanctions, and to apply pressure on countries that do business with them. “The fact that the panels exist has given a jolt to [Western efforts] to enforce these sanctions and that is a positive thing,” said the council diplomat.
Western diplomats say that they have also succeeded in gradually convincing China to expose itself to greater scrutiny. This year, China allowed the release of the North Korea panel’s 2012 report, which documented the role of China’s Dalian port as a trans-shipment point for luxury goods entering North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions.
They also noted the mysterious appearance of a new KN-08 portable missile launcher on the back of a truck during parade celebrating the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth. However, they said, the suspected supplier of the missile launcher — China — was excised from the final report.

African Union T-55 series Main Battle Tank

                         African Union T-55 series Main Battle Tank

Asian Defence News

Piracy partly financed terrorism of Al Shabab (Europol)

Europol investigators are (almost) sure. "Right now, we have no physical evidence but a body of evidence" explains Michel Quillé, deputy director of Europol (*). "Part of the ransom is used to fund terrorist groups in the region. Links between entities and Al Shabab pirates exist is a functional relationship and not hierarchical. If criminal groups can launch piracy operations from areas controlled by Al Shabab, is that there is a modus vivendi and modus vivendi is paid. "

Highly organized crime

"Maritime piracy is not an isolated or occasional. We are dealing with criminal networks and hierarchical as in other areas of organized crime. The dimension "organized crime" is present ". Detect financiers, organizers, however, is not easy. "The challenges are many," says Michel Quillé. "The formal identification of the perpetrators of these acts, in areas where the central authorities, where the structures of identification of individuals are not solid, is problematic. It is also difficult to draw financial channels. The ransoms are paid in cash, divided among several players, and spread over the field (NB: So without a lot of traces). Banking systems are used informal systems. "For Europol, the work goes much by the recorded communications that allow" to identify the networks and structures. " A painstaking ...

A permanent survey

Since January 2010, Europol has established a file "Piracy" at the request of several European countries - France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands -. This database includes 21,000 items (the names of suspects, victims, numbers Gsm ...) - powered by members of the organization and States with which she spent Agreement (United States, for example). "50,000 links were generated, with dozens of investigative leads." The "aim is to identify the networks, individuals, relationships and actions." A joint investigation team "Nemesis" was incorporated, permanently. Under direction of a Dutch magistrate, it includes Dutch officers (some intelligence) and German, working in conjunction with the analysts of the European Agency.

No legal basis

"The sinews of war: what is intelligence," says the head of Europol. "We must improve coordination within the European Union." Some countries have information but do not feed the base, he said without naming the country (...). "We must also improve information sharing with stakeholders as close to area, for example EUNAVFOR Atalanta mission ...). But "unfortunately - he notes - there is no legal basis for an ongoing exchange." Europol organized contacts with other CSDP missions - as EULEX Kosovo. And the top police officer to wonder: "why can not we receive information permanently with Atalanta." The issue is under study at the European External Action Service (EEAS). And the question was raised, very formally, the PSC recently (early July). Meanwhile the informal exchange of information takes place: Europol analysts and regularly travel to Atalanta HQ in Northwood. Or conversely soldiers, sailors and officers EUNAVFOR Atalanta move to Europol (and a visit is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday).

(*) At a conference on maritime capabilities organized on Monday by the Directorate of Strategic Affairs Ministry (French) defense and the Cyprus EU Presidency.