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Subject: COUP: Mauritania
lightningtest    8/4/2005 6:22:22 AM
Ref: POTENTIAL HOT SPOTS: Mauritania, Aug 4. some debka.com info to throw into the mix related to AQ activity. London Terror Inquiry Heads Secretly to the African Sahara. From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 214 Exclusive Updated by DEBKAfile July 18, 2005, 3:05 PM (GMT+02:00) ... [snip] ... July 14, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 214 (Al Qaeda’s Zone 9: The Blue-faced Men of the Sahara) revealed that a top-secret gathering took place Wednesday, July 13, in one of the most out-of-the-way towns in the world, Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania. It was attended by linchpins of the services responsible for the war on al Qaeda, the American Central Intelligence Agency, the British domestic and foreign secret services, MI5 and MI6, and the security chiefs of Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Last week too, a senior British official who specializes in intelligence and terrorism Kim Howells was dispatched to Morocco. Add these moves to the earlier DEBKAfile finding that the explosives came from Serbia and it is clear that the real investigation is focused on West Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East – not Pakistan and Egypt. The Nouakchott meeting was indeed called by British anti-terrorist services after their experts concluded that the team of terrorists that blew up three Tube trains and a bus in London on July 7 received their orders, explosives and operating funds from al Qaeda’s West Africa arm. Very little is known about this remote wing of the Islamist group known as the West African Jam’a functions from deep inside the Sahara Desert under the command of Mukhtav bin Mukhtar, known also as the Blind One because he is one-eyed. Al Qaeda refers to this area of operations as Zone 9 and it is one of the most remote, bizarre and hazardous of all its sectors. West African Jam’a members live in hiding among the strange Tuareg tribes, no more than a million strong, of the Sahara desert. Predominantly nomadic, these Berber-speaking people roam mostly through the northern reaches of Mali near Timbuktu and Kidal. The Tuareg are often referred to as the Blue Men of the Desert for their men’s indigo-dyed robes and blue face veils. These tribesmen have many uses for the fundamentalist terrorists. 1. They range across seven African countries: Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, northern Benin, large parts of Niger, Nigeria and Mauritania. Al Qaeda operatives traveling with the Tuareg have access to terrorists and smugglers away from prying eyes. In all these places, except for Algeria, security is lax. 2. For a terrorist moving around in northwest Africa, the blue veil is the perfect disguise. 3. Al Qaeda agents have learned some of the Tuareg tribes’ Berber dialects and use them as a form of internal code to guard their secrets from Western ears. The West African Jam’a stages terrorist attacks only very rarely. Al Qaeda experts believe that even those few are carried out to divert attention from their main missions in the Sahara, which are the smuggling of arms, money and drugs. For instance, al Qaeda’s drug shipments from Afghanistan to Europe, a primary source of funding for terrorist attacks, are routed by the West Africa Jam’a through the Sahara. Some people in counter-terror agencies believe that if anyone knows where al Qaeda has stowed its nuclear materials, it would be bin Mukhtar, who rules the West African wing of the terror organization and is also exceptionally well-connected with Russian, Central Asian, Balkan and Persian Gulf mafias. Because of Its functions and connections, the West African Jam’a is al Qaeda’s operational arm in the international crime world. ... [snip]
 
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