Perhaps the journalist from Newsweek got fed-up with everyone lying on AQMI. More on this later and good post Kal, but no agree 100%: If you take away Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Libya, France, the US and Niger (pehaps Morocco with Tourine) playing some dirty game, you will find only decent people smuggling as always some tea, cigarettes Malrboro. Arms and drug, that is new. We did not do this in the 60’s. It is the military and security guys behind it and all of the above countries are involved. They tried to blame Venezuela et the Colombians ont some drug smuggled in Northern Mali. What is worse with the scenario is that the huge plane landed in the town whose mayor is Ould Sheikh, the go-between ransom seekers and ransom payers since the El Para saga. I thought you read the articles from the Mail and Globe of Canada (I dumped here the links).

Really enjoyed the post. I was actually in Cairo for the game and wrote the Sports Illustrated piece you mentioned. Can you drop me a mail? Cheers! James

Interesting fact: the Danish cartoon protests in either country were nothing compared to this, underlining again that contrary to popular belief, the truly explosive social forces of the Middle East are propelled by football, cheesy Lebanese pop music and Internet porn, rather than Islamist agitation.

Something to keep mind for next time one hears a rant about how Arabs are really just an Islamofascist hive mind: Mohammed Aboutrika has an infinitely bigger militant following than Usama bin Ladin.

The Sahel and Af/Pak are two entirely separate regions with separate geographies and historical contexts. To evaluate the Sahel in terms of Af/Pak yields a moment of relief, but when the region is looked at on its own terms — those of an Algeria not far out of a massive and savage Civil War, restive nomadic populations in Niger, wide and practically all-encompassing poverty, the encroachment on traditional religious customs by the cosmopolitan Islamist ideologies via satellite and eastern missionaries and the emergence of progressively more despotic governments amid popular dissatisfaction — the picture is more clear and the region is more justly prioritized.

Yes!

Today, the Sahel, as has been written here and by others, is going through rapid culture change. This has been brought on by urbanization, caused by draught and other natural phenomena, and the rise of television stations like al-Jazeera, al-Arabyia and so forth. This has added a new level of conscious to an area of the Arab and Muslim world that was previously relative isolated from the Islamist trends in the Arab east.

Yes!

From the start, though, AQIM is more interested in dislocated city boys, not tribal-minded youths, as those most removed from the traditional context are the most vulnerable to extremist ideology.

Yes!

Put those togeter, add the northern Algerian connection (and its function as a link to the diaspora communities of Europe), stir in the now-global ideology of AQIM, and you’ve got the potential threat pretty well framed.

Here, though, you’re wrong:

If Johnson were of the opinion that the Sahel was unimportant internationally, his piece ought to have said this straightforwardly early in the piece and illustrated it for readers.

For you misunderstand the laws of journalism, my friend: then it would not have been printed at all. Telling the truth about long term social and religious evolution processes in a distant country sells no copy, unless editors spice it up with a tongue-in-cheek hint that if you don’t read up on the tribulations of Faroffistan, there might be a hijacked airliner coming your way.

Finally, your criticisms aside, I was quite gratified that for once someone wrote a piece on the Sahara/Sahel without basing it on Jeremy Keenan’s theory of The Great CIA-DRS-AQ World Domination Plot and its malicious scheme to spend billions of dollars to fuck around with local Touareg for no obvious purpose. But I guess that might not fly with Newsweek editors either.

Arrogance and stupidity on the part of the people, and the manipulation of those instincts by government and media.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/arabic/574006?submit=1

I completely agree that the Egyptians have an advantage when it comes to covering their arguments over the Algerians. But what do you honestly think brought about these clashes.