Topic: Bob Fowler Kidnapped in Niger

[E.R. Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is more on al Qaeda in Maghreb:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/diplomat-robert-fowlers-kidnapper-has-powerful-terrorist-links/article1322382/

Diplomat Robert Fowler's kidnapper has powerful terrorist links
Ten months after the kidnapping, there are reports that Algeria is offering Mokhtar Belmokhtar an amnesty
 
Geoffrey York

Timbuktu, Mali

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009

On the northern edge of Timbuktu, the ancient mud buildings disappear and there is nothing but endless desert, stretching for nearly 1,000 kilometres to the border of Algeria and beyond.

This forbidding landscape, populated only by a few bands of nomads and smugglers, is the stronghold of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the elusive commander of the terrorist cell that kidnapped two Canadian diplomats and held them hostage in the Sahara for more than four months.

The 37-year-old Algerian-born radical, trained in Afghanistan and still closely linked with al-Qaeda, has a fearsome reputation in the Algerian media. His legend is fuelled by nicknames such as “The Uncatchable” and “The Emir of the Masked Battalion.”


This image of Mokhtar Belmokhtar was circulated by Interpol in 2002
The Globe and Mail

A more accurate portrait would begin with another nickname, given to him because of his lucrative cigarette-smuggling activities: “Mr. Marlboro.”

His true value to the Sahara terrorists is his ability to deliver money and weapons to his allies in Algeria and Mauritania, known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Rather than leading his men on dangerous missions or in battle, he prefers to lead from behind, relying on support networks in northern Mali that evolved from his trafficking of drugs, stolen cars, cigarettes and hostages.

By marrying at least four wives from the desert communities of northern Mali, including the famed blue-robed Tuareg nomads, Mr. Belmokhtar has entrenched himself in the Sahara region, giving him the protection he needs to survive.

“Unlike some of the other AQIM leaders, literally through marriage he has found his way into the social fabric of Mali and Mauritania,” said Peter Pham, a U.S.-based expert on terrorism in Africa.

Crucially, Mr. Belmokhtar is believed to have forged close links with senior government officials in northern Mali, allowing him to operate freely in the Sahara in exchange for refraining from attacks on Malian targets. The arrangement created a safe haven that has proven useful to his allies in their kidnap-for-ransom operations over the past six years.

When Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay were kidnapped in Niger last December, they were promptly whisked across the border to Mali, where the hostage-takers clearly felt much safer. Similarly, two Austrian tourists kidnapped in Tunisia were taken to Mali and held there until their release. In both cases, Mr. Belmokhtar was the key figure in negotiating the final ransom. The revenue from the kidnappings, believed to be many millions of dollars, added to the financial wealth of “Mr. Marlboro.”

Among the people of the Sahara, Mr. Belmokhtar is known more as a trader than a terrorist – someone with whom they can do business. “He is not a bad man,” said Baba Ould Sheik, an Arab leader from northern Mali who negotiated with Mr. Belmokhtar to obtain the release of the Canadians. “He's simple. He's not nasty. It's possible to talk to him.”

Canadian taxpayers have spent millions in a clandestine operation initially aimed at freeing Mr. Fowler and Mr. Guay from Mr. Belmokhtar, and which is now focused on bringing him to justice. Dozens of federal diplomats, spies and police travelled to West Africa last spring in hopes of rescuing the two Canadians, who were released in April in exchange for four AQIM members imprisoned in Mali. The mission continues today, with the RCMP still hoping to lay charges against Mr. Belmokhtar and his accomplices.

Born in central Algeria in 1972, Mr. Belmokhtar was a teenager when he became obsessed with the Islamic militants who were fighting against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. By 1991, at the age of 19, he was travelling to Afghanistan to train with the Islamic fighters. He says he attended a notorious al-Qaeda training camp in Jalalabad and fought in battles across Afghanistan.

Returning to Algeria in 1993, he joined the Islamic extremists who were battling Algeria's military regime. He became the leader of the “southern zone” of the insurgency, obtaining weapons and supplies through smuggling networks in the Sahara, although he also occasionally led attacks against Algerian and Mauritanian security forces.

Mr. Belmokhtar, also known as “The One-Eyed” because he is blind in one eye, was a key intermediary between the Algerian radicals and the leaders of al-Qaeda. By 2006, his group had merged with al-Qaeda and rebranded itself as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, tapping into the global Islamist ideology.

His trafficking activities, meanwhile, remained a major source of arms and equipment for the Algerian terrorists. “His ability to supply jihadi elements in northern Algeria reliably has been critical to the ability for these groups to sustain their activities,” wrote Andrew Black, a U.S.-based risk management consultant, in an analysis for the Jamestown Foundation.

Ten months after the kidnapping of Mr. Fowler and Mr. Guay, there is no sign that the RCMP has moved closer to its goal of prosecuting Mr. Belmokhtar. Instead, there are persistent reports from Algiers that the Algerian authorities are giving him a new option: an amnesty agreement that might put him beyond the reach of Canadian prosecution forever. “If it's up to him, he might accept the amnesty,” Mr. Ould Sheik said.

I wish to reiterate my objection, as a matter of practicality, to spending huge sums of money on bringing Belmokhtar to justice. There is nothing to be gained by prosecuting him in any open court. The better options are:

•   Capture him and milk him for information and then use that information to steal al Qaeda’s money (and the money of other, similar groups) and to assassinate al Qaeda’s members (and the members of other, similar groups; or

•   Kill him – extra legally – pour encourager les autres.

This is work for a secret intelligence operations service, not for law enforcement.

[Blackadder1916]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-shadowy-negotiator-who-freed-fowler-and-guay/article1320522/

It’s hard to know what to make of sorts of these fellows except they are, at least they were, ubiquitous in North Africa and the Middle East – they are ”locals” who have ”connections” with those who do their ”business” on the fringes of society and outside of society’s norms. Baba Ould Sheik was paid, that ought to be enough.

And that is one of the shortcomings with the manner in which Canadian officials conduct business in the third world.

While it can be taken as a given that (Ali) Baba (and his forty thieves) 'wet his beak' somewhere along the line from the ransom paid, it is also very conceiveable that he didn't receive a "gesture" from the Canadian government.  It is understandable why the Canadian government wants to distance itself from the payment of the ransom and release of prisoners in exchange for Fowler and Guay, but "losing face" should not be associated solely with oriental business practices.  Showing proper "respect" is equally important when doing business in Africa (as well as in the rest of the world).

You may know for a fact that an intermediary will receive a commission from the other party in a transaction; you may be certain that he will skim off the top anytime cash changes hands; however, you should not assume that any bribes you paid are being divided among underlings or other parties (except maybe a taste to the one who suggested it).  If you sit at the table and are involved in ordering the meal then you have to pay a "pourboire" to the one who brings it.  Though (if judged by some government scandals) it may seem easy to (temporarily) hide under the table payments, Canadian government rules do not really condone "baksheesh" and our representatives abroad are not noted for being free and easy with cash.

Mali will probably receive some future "official" consideration for their assistance in this matter, the government officials involved will take their usual cut, though that is unlikely to include anything for Baba Ould Sheik. The article noted that he has been the negotiator of choice for most hostage takings for several years.  While he has mostly remained in the shadows till now, previous hostage takings in the region have not involved as high a profile individual as Fowler.  Maybe, like most "professionals", Baba just wants recognition for his skill (of course, he probably wants more money too, like most professionals).  In the custom of that region, if Canadian officials had any direct contact with him and had even "suggested" that his expenses would be taken care of, then he would be correct in his assumption that he should receive that "respect" direct from Canada.

[E.R. Campbell]

Your points are very well taken. I was thinking of the political embarrassment in Canada when, inevitably, any "thanks" we might offer would become public.

[Bruce Monkhouse]

I wish to reiterate my objection, as a matter of practicality, to spending huge sums of money on bringing Belmokhtar to justice. There is nothing to be gained by prosecuting him in any open court. The better options are:

•   Capture him and milk him for information and then use that information to steal al Qaeda’s money (and the money of other, similar groups) and to assassinate al Qaeda’s members (and the members of other, similar groups; or

•   Kill him – extra legally – pour encourager les autres.

This is work for a secret intelligence operations service, not for law enforcement.

Actually we have a whole list of Canadian gang figures who need this kind of justice.  If not, in a few years, you will be able to substitute Canada for Africa in all these newspaper clippings......

[Blackadder1916]

Your points are very well taken. I was thinking of the political embarrassment in Canada when, inevitably, any "thanks" we might offer would become public.

Seen.

And that is why many representatives in Africa use "consultants".  It is taken as a matter of fact that the consultant's "fee" includes any "minor expenses" that he may be required to distribute.  The contract does not usually include any wording that lists what (or what not) may be "expenses"; such clauses generally being able to be used as evidence should such practices be contrary to the legislation of a representative's (or consultant's) country.  Also, it is assumed that if a party to a negotiation directly mentions to another individual "reimbursement of expenses", then the one mentioning it becomes responsible for those costs, not the consultant; they are usually very knowledgeable about the local rates for bribes tariffs, they don't want the naive and stupid cutting into their profit margin. Though there is much of a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" to this cut-out process, that's how it works.

[milnews.ca]

I can't help but think of "Yes Prime Minister" and their euphemisms for such "thanks"

1. Below £100,000
- Retainers
- Personal donations
- Special discounts
- Miscellaneous outgoings
2. £100,000 to £500,000
- Managerial surcharge
- Operating costs
- Ex-gratia payments
- Agents' fees
- Political contributions
- Extra-contractual payments
3. £500,000 +
- Introduction fees
- Commission fees
- Managements' expenses
- Administrative overheads
- Advance against profit sharing"

Great discussion, BTW...

- edited to fix spelling errors -

[E.R. Campbell]

Actually we have a whole list of Canadian gang figures who need this kind of justice.  If not, in a few years, you will be able to substitute Canada for Africa in all these newspaper clippings......

I think my conscience might be a bit too delicate to advocate extra legal killings in Canada.

Although I advocate doing away with the legal requirement to extend full Charter Rights to everyone "in Canada" I think everyone, even criminals and terrorists, ought to enjoy the generally accepted fundamental human rights - including the right not be arbitrarily executed - while they are here.

[dapaterson]

Actually we have a whole list of Canadian gang figures who need this kind of justice.  If not, in a few years, you will be able to substitute Canada for Africa in all these newspaper clippings......

Yes, but Toronto Police Services is well armed...

Beating up drug dealers and stealing their money. Shaking down bar owners for protection money. Extortion, obstructing justice, assault, theft, perjury, corrupt practices. The allegations that were levelled against a small but influential group of Toronto police officers were stunning in their breadth.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/torontopolice/#

Or even the head of their union:

In 2004 McCormack was charged with corruption and discreditable conduct under the Police Act because of his alleged involvement with a drug-addicted used-car salesman alleged to have links to organized crime.

Those charges were dropped.

In September he was found guilty of insubordination for the improper use of the police database.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/torontopolice/#

[George Wallace]

An interesting twist to this story. 

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act:

Ransom paid for Canadian diplomats: leaked

Ransom paid for Canadian diplomats: leaked cable

04/02/2011 1:04:45 PM
The Canadian Press


LINK

OTTAWA — A leaked U.S. State Department cable suggests a ransom was paid for the release of two Canadian diplomats taken hostage in Niger two years ago.

The May 2009 cable released by online whistleblower WikiLeaks says a Libyan official told the U.S. ambassador in Tripoli that two Canadian officials were released "in return for a ransom payment."

The cable was written just weeks after diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay were released after being kidnapped by al Qaeda's North African wing in December 2008. It does not detail how much was paid in ransom or who might have paid it.

The federal government has maintained that Canada did not pay a ransom for the release of the two men, but the prime minister also hasn't said if anyone else did.

Stephen Harper has said the governments of Mali and Burkina Faso negotiated the release of the men, but never elaborated on whether they paid ransom or agreed to a prisoner exchange.

Musa Kusa, who was Libya's foreign minister at the time, said in the cable that such payments were "unfortunate and only increased the strength of al-Quaida."

Fowler, Guay and their driver disappeared when returning from a visit to a gold mine. Fowler was on assignment as the UN's special envoy to Niger at the time.

Fowler was a senior adviser to several prime ministers, starting with Pierre Trudeau, and played a leading role in thwarting the trade of so-called blood diamonds in Angola.

Western intelligence officials in Algeria said in February that they believe the UN diplomats were initially abducted by local gunmen, bandits or Tuareg rebels, and later traded to the al Qaeda group.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is an Algeria-based militant group that joined Osama bin Laden's terror network in 2006 and conducts dozens of bombings or ambushes each month.

In February 2009, the group claimed in an audio tape played on the Al-Jazeera television network that it was holding the two Canadians hostage.

It made no demands at that time, but in the past has received ransoms for western tourists kidnapped in the vast sub-Saharan region.

[Rifleman62]

The article is implying the dirty, rotten, mean, lying Harper government paid the ransom. The leaked US cable stated a ransom was paid, not by who. May be the UN paid it.

[E.R. Campbell]

More on the ransom in this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, based on a Wikiliaks source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canada-paid-ransom-to-free-envoys-wikileaks-cables-show/article2178811/

Canada paid ransom to free envoys, Wikileaks cables show

COLIN FREEZE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Last updated Saturday, Sep. 24, 2011

Canada broke ranks with key allies when it contributed to a ransom to free hostages in West Africa, according to U.S. officials, who complained that the secret deal with terrorists had “a dramatic effect on regional security.”

In memos from the field cabled to Washington, U.S. envoys expressed fears that the ransom deal encouraged “nefarious elements throughout the Sahel to continue targeting Westerners for abductions.” They also said they thought that the deal might lead to suicide car-bomb attacks against Americans.

It has been 2½ years since Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay were released in mysterious circumstances. When reporters pressed Prime Minister Stephen Harper about what his government had done to free them, he stated that “the government of Canada does not pay ransom.”

In West Africa, U.S. officials were left with a very different impression.

Ottawa acceded to the terrorists’ demands for payment in exchange for the hostages, according to the U.S. ambassador to Mali, Gillian Milovanovic, who closely followed the 130-day hostage crisis from her post in the capital, Bamako.

The career diplomat complained that “it is difficult to level criticism on countries like Mali and Burkina Faso for facilitating negotiations when the countries that pay ransom, like Austria and Canada, are given a pass.”

Her views, reflected in a February, 2010, cable to the State Department, accord with those of U.S. and U.K. sources who have independently told The Globe their countries were angered by Ottawa’s role in the hostage negotiations.

The deal involved a prisoner swap and multimillion-dollar payment. It was brokered by several Western nations working through African intermediaries. The hostage crisis, its resolution and its fallout were largely foreseen, according to leaked cables documenting how U.S. officials struggled to deal with the kidnappers’ terrorist faction, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

In November, 2008, a tribesman from Mali’s Tuareg ethnic group approached U.S. diplomats to warn that kidnappings were imminent. Austria had just paid for the release of two of its citizens. From deep in its desert hideaways, AQIM had put out the word – it was investing its profits in bounties, offering $45,000 to anyone who handed them a new Western hostage.

In mid-December, Mr. Fowler and Mr. Guay were abducted while on United Nations business in Niger. More than 20 Canadians were immediately dispatched to West Africa to look for them. “The Austrians proved adept at cultivating Tuareg and Arab leaders … Canada is beginning to take a page from this playbook,” one U.S. cable said.

In January, 2009, the rescue effort was complicated when four European tourists were also abducted. A cottage industry of middlemen formed. “With various ‘Good Samaritans’ coming out of the desert to peddle information in return for a piece of the presumed payoff, the British, German, Swiss and Canadian representatives may be in Bamako for quite some time,” a diplomat wryly observed.

By February, the Americans were urging Mali’s President to do more, stressing that the Canadian hostages were important to the UN and Washington. “The Canadian government had a policy of not paying ransom,” a U.S. diplomat cautioned. President Amadou Touré replied that he was already speaking to Ottawa’s officials and he would “act with the consent of the Canadian government.”

By March, an Ottawa official (unnamed in the cable) relayed that the negotiations were reaching an “end game.” Six weeks later, the two Canadian hostages were released as part of the larger deal.

Three European captives were also let go. AQIM decapitated the fourth, Edwin Dyer of Britain.

Cables show that in the months before Mr. Dyer’s slaying, an African intermediary had offered to put U.K. officials in contact with him. But they “never accepted out of fear that speaking to the hostage could put them into a position of having to negotiate with terrorists.”

In the aftermath, officials at the U.S. embassy in Mauritania feared that the cash infusion would lead to a wave of car bombings and other attacks, and set up a fortified security perimeter. U.S. diplomats also cabled Washington to say that a mayor of a village in northern Mali was observed to be in control of “an enormous influx of cash likely linked to the Canadian and European hostage crisis.” The mayor later told The Globe he had met frequently with Canadian officials.

Later that summer, AQIM assassinated a U.S. missionary. And AQIM fighters used night-vision goggles to launch a predawn attack in which they massacred dozens of relatively ill-equipped Malian soldiers. “Multiple ransom payments have increased AQIM’s financial ability to conduct operations,” a U.S. official said.

Setbacks in the summer of 2009 led Western governments to step up actions against the terrorist group.

During Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Canada’s Parliament this week, officials from both countries announced they would strengthen measures intended to starve AQIM of funds.

A spokesman for Mr. Harper’s office said on Friday that the government does not comment on leaked documents.

The links to the Government of Canada, itself, are tenuous. While I, personally, am very pleased that Mr. Fowler made it home safely - I hold him in high regard - I remain convinced that ransoms must not be paid.

[E.R. Campbell]

The Globe and Mail is running a four part series on Bob Fowler's book, "A Season in Hell," which begins today with this headline:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/niger-officials-likely-set-him-up-for-kidnapping-fowler-believes/article2222039/

Niger officials likely set him up for kidnapping, Fowler believes

Mr. Fowler suggests that officials in Niger likely set him up to be kidnapped when he was a special UN envoy in that country by passing his itinerary to a terrorist faction known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Mr. Fowler writes that he suspects the reason was to stop “the interference of a pesky foreigner” in that country’s local politics.

More on the link.

[milnews.ca]

A bump to share a link to a BBC podcast where Fowler is interviewed:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/outlook/outlook_20120123-1532a.mp3
Fowler on his kidnappers/AQ:  "It's all about religion.  I think among 'securocrats', there's somewhat of a debate about whether these guys are bandits flying an Islamic flag of convenience or rather, they are some kind of twisted, latter-day Robin Hoods doing a little banditry and kidnapping to fund their jihad.  I think a lot of people would like to believe it's the former, but I know it's the second."