The Dying Sahara : US Imperialism and Terror in Africa

353 Pages·2013·11.64 MB·English

by  Jeremy Keenan

The Dying Sahara
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The Dying Sahara
US Imperialism and Terror in Africa
Jeremy Keenan
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First published 2013 by Pluto Press
345 archway road, London n6 5aa
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of america exclusively by
Palgrave macmillan, a division of St. martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth avenue, new york, ny 10010
Copyright © Jeremy Keenan 2013
The right of the Jeremy Keenan to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBn 978 0 7453 2962 8 Hardback
ISBn 978 0 7453 2961 1 Paperback
ISBn 978 1 8496 4826 4 PDF eBook
ISBn 978 1 8496 4828 8 Kindle eBook
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Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI antony rowe, Chippenham, UK and
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ConTenTS
Preface and Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations xv
Timeline xviii
Maps xxiv
1 P2OG: a Long History of False-Flag Terrorism 1
2 The US Invasion of the Sahara-Sahel 14
3 repression and Terrorism rents 28
4 Footing the Bill: Did the World Bank Fund State
Terrorism? 42
5 Putting the GWOT Back on Track 56
6 new Tuareg rebellions 74
7 Uranium Goes Critical: Why the Tuareg Took Up arms 92
8 The Fifth anniversary of 2003: another Kidnap 109
9 The Creation of aFrICOm 121
10 The Future Ground Zero 133
11 Perfidious albion: The murder of edwin Dyer 149
12 Drugs and the Threat of Western Intervention 159
13 al-Qaeda in the West for the West 176
14 ‘Washing the mountain’: Desert Borders, Corruption
and the DrS 186
15 Sarkozy Declares War on al-Qaeda 197
16 Opening the Gates of Hell 207
17 The Past Catches Up: Pressure on algeria 215
18 The arab Spring and Gaddafi Intervene 227
19 War Crime? 243
20 Preparing for the ‘Long War’ 264
Notes 283
Index 313
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To Jan Burgess
whose courage and professionalism as an editor
did much to lay bare the truths of American imperialism
and its GWOT in Africa.
And in memory
of
Claude Meillassoux.
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PReFACe AnD ACknowleDgemenTS
This is the second of my two volumes on the so-called Global
War on Terror (GWOT). The first, The Dark Sahara (Pluto Press,
2009), was completed shortly before the death of aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, whom I quoted in saying that writers and artists,
amongst whom I include academics, had greater responsibilities
than to not merely ‘participate in lies’. To paraphrase his words,
we have to do much more: we have to ‘defeat the lie’. much that
has been written about the GWOT has merely reiterated and
reinforced what Solzhenitsyn would call ‘the lie’. This volume, by
taking The Dark Sahara much further, both chronologically and
in terms of evidence, defeats the lie, at least as far as it pertains
to much of north africa, the Sahara and Sahel.
Since the publication of The Dark Sahara, Western governments
have made no attempt either to engage in argument over its central
message – that the US, since 9/11, has fabricated terrorism to
justify the GWOT – or even to try and rebut what I said. rather,
their response has been either to try and ignore it, even to the
extent of striking from the record works that have cited The Dark
Sahara (and my other writings) as a source reference, or, when
pressed, to try and disparage it as a ‘conspiracy theory’. That,
too, is not surprising, as a ‘conspiracy’ no longer means an event
explained by a conspiracy but is simply any explanation or ‘fact’
that is out of step with government explanation. This volume, at
least in the language of governments and their compliant media,
is even more of a ‘conspiracy’ than The Dark Sahara in that
it provides ‘evidence-based’ explanations – ‘truths’ – that are
wholly out of step with what Western governments would want
us to believe.
as with The Dark Sahara, I am unable to thank any funding
agencies or research councils for support, as I have been able to
do so often in the past. There are, however, at least two positive
viii
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PReFACe AnD ACknowleDgemenTS ix
aspects to this. First, it helps other academics, young researchers in
particular, to understand that research that threatens government
‘conspiracies’ (what Solzhenitsyn would call ‘lies’) is unlikely to
be funded. Indeed, the scandal which Britain’s economic and
Social research Council (eSrC) brought upon itself in 2006 is
described in Chapter 11. Second, these two volumes, which are
the outcome of twelve years’ continuous research, show that
significant and important research can be done without funding.
It involves sacrifice and at times can be extremely difficult, but
it is by no means impossible. Indeed, the ‘alternative university’
is not far way.
nevertheless, in spite of these background difficulties, I am
especially grateful to a number of people and institutions. In
particular, I would like to thank the Department of Social
anthropology and Sociology and colleagues at SOaS (the School
of Oriental and african Studies), London University, for providing
me with an academic home since 2008. amongst many algerian
friends and colleagues, I would like to give special thanks to
mohamed Larbi Zitout, former algerian Deputy ambassador
to Libya and co-founder in 2007 of the rachad movement. He
defected from his post in 1995 after learning that the atrocities
being committed by alleged Islamists were in many cases being
committed by groups under the control of the algerian regime.
I am, as always, grateful to my publisher, roger van
Zwanenberg, and all those at Pluto Press. Dr Penny nicholls did
much appreciated work in editing an initial draft, helping me to
reduce its length by some 30,000 words. I am also indebted to
martha Farley who has been exceptionally generous in sharing
her expertise on much of this region of africa.
In The Dark Sahara, I expressed my appreciation to a number
of academic journal editors for inviting me to write for them.
Since then, I would like to thank especially Penny Green of the
International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) and the State Crime
Journal, robert Weiss of Social Justice, Fatiha Talahite of Revue
Tiers Monde and Gustaf Houtman of Anthropology Today. I
would also like to thank Jude mcCulloch, Sharon Pickering,
Kenneth Omeje, Scott Poynting and David Whyte for inviting
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