03/22/04 06:27 ET
------------------
U.S. Takes Anti-Terror Training to Africa
By EDWARD HARRIS
.c The Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) - On the Green Berets' signal, the 120 Malian troops
sprang across a thorn-covered sand dune and stormed a mock enemy camp,
pouring assault rifle fire into human-shaped silhouettes and an old truck
cab.
It was part of the U.S.-led war on terror - an effort to head off any chance
that the vast and lawless desert of this African nation might become the
next Afghanistan.
But the start of Thursday's live-fire exercise was briefly delayed: Two
donkeys wandered into the firing zone, and a Malian soldier ran out to shoo
them away. ``Tell him to come back!'' cried one Green Beret to a Malian
officer.
While the action was fake, U.S. and Malian officials say the threat is real
- that Islamic militants believed allied to al-Qaida could take root in the
Sahel, the poor and sparsely populated southern fringe of the Sahara Desert.
U.S. forces are providing training, gear, and, Mali commanders told The
Associated Press, spy-satellite intelligence.
The Green Berets are here under the U.S. Pan-Sahel Initiative, which aims to
boost the military capabilities of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad in the
thinly guarded tract of desert they share.
The enemy in this case is chiefly the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or
GSPC, waging an Islamic insurgency in Algeria to the north.
An unknown number of Salafists have been in the region in recent months,
U.S. and Malian officials say, surviving on water from scattered wells and
food brought in on old trading and smuggling routes.
In December, U.S. spy satellites spotted what was believed to be a group of
about 100 Salafist fighters crossing into Mali in 20 Toyota pickups, and the
intelligence was shared with Mali, said Lt. Col. Younoussa Maiga, top
military official for the Texas-sized Timbuktu region.
``They're very fast and the country is vast,'' Maiga said of the Salafists.
``But our friends gave us the information about those people'' and Malian
troops forced them over the border to Niger in January. He did not say
whether any shots were fired.
U.S. forces were not involved in the action, said Lt. Col. M.J. Jadick, a
U.S. Special Forces spokeswoman.
U.S. officials refused comment on intelligence-sharing, saying it could
jeopardize future operations.
``The GSPC is not in the league of al-Qaida - but they're not very far below
that,'' Brig. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in Stuttgart, Germany, told The
Associated Press. His U.S. European Central Command oversees U.S. military
operations in the region.
``The Pan-Sahel (is) a potential safe haven for terrorists,'' Lute said.
The Salafist group hasn't been accused of involvement in any terrorism
outside Africa, but it was blamed in the kidnapping of 32 European tourists
in the Sahara last year. Fourteen hostages were freed in an Algerian
commando raid, while 17 who had been taken from Algeria to Mali were
released for ransom in August. One died of heat stroke.
The Green Berets arrived in November to train soldiers stationed near
Timbuktu, an ancient city of Muslim scholarship of furnace-like heat where
camels roam boulevards of sand.
The Americans have taught their Malian counterparts flanking maneuvers,
ambush techniques, shooting skills, human-rights awareness and safety
measures.
Some $3.5 million - half the amount earmarked for the four-country, State
Department-funded program - went on 39 sturdy Toyota troop transport
pickups, plus high-tech communications and navigation gear, desert
camouflage uniforms with body armor, but no lethal weaponry, the Americans
say.
Mali is one of the world's poorest nations, however, and the U.S. trainers
acknowledge the help isn't enough.
``Right now, the average soldier doesn't get to fire enough live
ammunition,'' said a Green Beret detachment commander, as Malians rattled
off rounds from battered AK-47s with dented banana-clip cartridges.
``If they had more money, they'd have more time behind their guns,'' he
said, speaking anonymously under rules for deployed Special Forces.
The U.S. has sent other aid to the region outside the Pan-Sahel Initiative.
This month, two U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes delivered 19 tons of
medical supplies, blankets and food to Chad after its troops battled
Salafist fighters and killed 43 of them.
The U.S. military says the Sahel could accommodate al-Qaida-style camps
similar to those in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden based himself.
However, U.S. Ambassador Vicki Huddleston told The Associated Press by
telephone from the capital, Bamako, that Islamic terrorists aren't likely to
find much support in Mali.
Most Muslims in West Africa follow a more tolerant version of Islam than
what was practiced in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime that hosted
al-Qaida.
Mali is ``probably the only Muslim country in Africa that's been fully
supportive of the war on terrorism,'' Huddleston said.
After Thursday's mock ambush, the Malian troops stood in formation and
enjoyed a Green Beret-supplied treat of cold soft drinks and Swisher Sweet
cigars.
The Special Forces chief commended them on their hard work over the past
weeks, and some of the Malian trainees shouted out a few freshly learned
English words: ``Yes! Now! Shoot the enemy!''
03/22/04 01:44 EST
------------------
Britain shuts Algiers embassy on security fears
ALGIERS, March 21 (Reuters) - Britain has closed its embassy building in
Algiers because of fears of an attack and has moved staff into a hotel for
safety, a senior diplomat said on Sunday.
Jim Currie, Britain's deputy head of mission in Algeria, said the decision
followed a global review of security following a suicide truck bombing at
the British consulate in Istanbul in November that left the consul among the
dead.
"It is related to the bombing...in Istanbul. We took the decision right
after that to reinforce our embassy security around the world," Currie told
a news conference in Algiers.
He did not say whether there was a specific threat in Algeria, which is
emerging from a decade of Islamist violence and holds a presidential
election next month.
Embassy staff would live and work in the heavily guarded Hilton hotel in
Algiers and some operations would be handled from Tunis, such as the issuing
of visas by mail.
"The embassy remains open but its location has been moved for security
reasons," said a Foreign Office spokeswoman in London.
The move comes in the aftermath of suspected al Qaeda bombs in Madrid on
March 11 that killed 202 rail passengers three days before a general
election.
A Western diplomat told Reuters the British were unsatisfied with the
security offered by the Algerian authorities.
Algerian officials were not available for comment.
Violence linked to Islamic rebels has left more than 150,000 dead in Algeria
over the past decade, human rights groups say.
At least 27 people died and hundreds were wounded in twin suicide truck bomb
attacks on British targets in Istanbul -- the consulate and a British-owned
bank -- on November 20.
Britain was the closest ally of the United States in the Iraq war and fears
a major attack by Islamist militants -- an attack that London's police chief
said last week was inevitable.
(Additional reporting by Peter Griffiths in London)
03/21/04 16:17 ET
-------------------
South Africa Inaugurates 'New' Court
By GLENN McKENZIE
.c The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - President Thabo Mbeki inaugurated South
Africa's new Constitutional Court building Sunday on the grounds of a
100-year-old former prison fortress where Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi
were detained .
``It is right that the Constitutional Court occupies this building, which
represents the conversion of the negative, the hateful energy ... into a
positive hopeful energy for the present and future,'' Mbeki told whistling
and cheering dignitaries, as the court's large wooden doors were thrown
open.
The $73 million edifice on the site of the 100-acre former fort, now renamed
Constitution Hill, is billed as South Africa's most ambitious public
building project since all-race elections in 1994 ended nearly five decades
of racist white-minority rule.
``This is a place of pain but also a place of courage,'' said Constitutional
Court Justice Albie Sachs, a former anti-apartheid lawyer who lost an arm to
a car bomb planted by apartheid security agents in the 1980s.
The 11-judge court is the custodian of South Africa's new constitution,
presiding over legal challenges to the nation's basic law.
Using bricks from the grim, century-old fort, workers have erected the
court's new home in The Fort verging on the vibrant but crime-ridden
inner-city neighborhood of Hillbrow.
Jail window bars have been transformed into latticework for ivy creepers,
while sloping glass ceilings and wall panels make the court a ``place of
living and of light,'' Sachs said.
Some of the original ramparts and rancid-smelling cells in The Fort's former
``native prison'' section have been transformed into a museum serving as a
reminder of injustices perpetrated by the nation's former white-minority and
British colonial rulers.
Using convict labor, South Africa's Afrikaners - white settlers of Dutch and
French extraction - originally built The Fort in the 1890s to hold white
criminals arrested during Johannesburg's unruly gold rush.
By 1899, cannons on The Fort's ramparts were turned against the Afrikaner's
English-speaking rivals, whose numbers were growing in Johannesburg.
British troops captured the fort during the Anglo-Boer War in 1900, using it
to imprison the future Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi four times
between 1908 and 1913 for spearheading a passive resistance campaign against
colonial rule.
After the Afrikaner-based National Party took power in 1948, the fort became
a notorious holding cell for anyone accused of breaking laws banning blacks
from white areas without a special pass.
``If an African man disappeared in Johannesburg'' before the prison was
closed in 1982, the fort was ``the first place his family would look,''
Sachs said.
A young Nelson Mandela was detained there for several weeks in 1955 after he
and other activists of the now ruling African National Congress drafted a
``Freedom Charter'' demanding equal rights for South Africa's black, Asian
and mixed-race majority.
``Our communal cell became a kind of convention for far-flung freedom
fighters,'' Mandela recalled. Mandela was later convicted of treason and
spent another 27 years in other prisons.
Other inmates recalled the unsanitary conditions, verbal abuse and other
indignities suffered in dank, overcrowded group cells and cramped isolation
units.
``We were stripped and physically attacked'' by female wardens who conducted
invasive strip searches on black women prisoners, said Vesta Smith, 82, who
was held without charge for six months in 1976.
Buckets for the prisoners' drinking water and human waste were casually
interchanged by the wardens, she said. Black prisoners were forced to sleep
on mats on the floor, while white prisoners were allowed beds.
``The memories all rush back,'' Smith said, as she toured the premises
recently.
Now, planners hope Constitution Hill's unique architecture - combining old
and new designs - and stunning multimillion dollar (rand) art collection
will draw tourists to help revitalize the impoverished inner-city of
Johannesburg, South Africa's largest and most cosmopolitan city, Sachs said.
03/21/04 15:05 EST
----------------------
Residents flee militia attack on west Sudan town
By Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, March 21 (Reuters) - Arab militia fighters attacked a town in
Sudan's arid western Darfur region sending many people fleeing, an aid
official and a witness said on Sunday.
A local businessman who witnessed the events but declined to be named said
the militia fighters executed 49 people -- including nine people hanged --
in Korma town for collaborating with rebels and also looted and burned parts
of the town.
The Sudanese government declined to comment.
Two rebel groups launched a revolt against the government in Darfur in
February 2003. They accuse the government of neglecting the region and
arming Arab "Janjaweed" militia who loot and burn African villages.
The businessman, who spoke by telephone from the area, said the Janjaweed
burst into the town around 95 km (60 miles) northeast of Kebkabiya and 900
km southwest of Khartoum, early on Thursday.
"They (Janjaweed) executed 49 people whom they accused of collaborating with
the rebels. Nine were hanged. One tree had three people hanging from it, and
the 40 others were shot in the town centre," he said.
"They burnt two neighbourhoods in Korma town, which had mainly African
tribes living in them. They also burnt four surrounding villages," he added.
A local aid official also said people were fleeing the area after executions
during an attack by Arab militia.
One government official, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters the
authorities had no official comment about Janjaweed activities and referred
to an earlier government statement which said officials considered the
militia fighters outlaws.
In a separate incident, rebels from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) said
they had killed around 100 Janjaweed fighters who had attacked a rebel
garrison on Saturday.
SLM spokesman Muhamed Mursal also said the rebels had heard reports of the
killings in Korma.
"DARFUR NOT RWANDA"
Sudan will present an official complaint to the United Nations over
statements by the organisation's humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh
Kapila, that the situation in Darfur is reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide.
"The Sudanese government wishes to know whether these statements are an
expression of the U.N.'s position towards the situation in Sudan or whether
it is the private opinion of the resident humanitarian coordinator," State
Minister for Foreign Affairs Najeeb al-Kheir Abdul Wahab told Reuters.
The United Nations warns of a humanitarian crisis in Darfur and estimates
one million people are affected by the fighting with more than 100,000
refugees fleeing over the border to Chad.
Abdul Wahab also said one of two Chinese engineers Sudan said had been
kidnapped by rebels last week was now with officials and in contact with the
Chinese embassy in Khartoum.
Abdul Wahab said one of the men had been released by the kidnappers and one
had escaped. One of the men wandered into rebel-held territory, where he was
recaptured, and state authorities were in pursuit of the kidnappers.
It was not clear whether the Chinese engineer with Sudanese authorities was
the man who had been freed or the man who had escaped.
03/21/04 13:47 ET
--------------------------
Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing
in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq.
Richard Clark(former national security advisor in Bush administration)
shortly after Sept. 11, 2001
----------------------
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