Islamist assault on In Amenas takes Sahel crisis to another level

Coming only days after France committed troops and its air force to overturning dramatic advances made by Islamist militants in Mali, the 16 January attack on a gas production facility at In Amenas, in south-eastern Algeria, underlined the security threat and political volatility that now blight the Saharan/Sahel region. Never during the 1990s conflict with radical Islam did a major Algerian hydrocarbons facility face such attack. Sahel politics were a localised affair in which players such as Major General Mohammed ‘Tewfik’ Medienne’s Algerian military security apparatus and veteran Tuareg leader Iyad ag Ghali largely knew where they stood. But the fallout from Captain Amadou Sanogo’s coup d’état in Mali last March and subsequent collapse of Bamako’s control over the north has triggered an international crisis.

While talk of ‘Islamic terrorism’ dominates the narrative, this crisis is rooted in the region’s structural weaknesses. As the African Energy Atlas 2012 observed, the Sahel region has become prey “to an unfolding crisis in which political battles… and communal tensions… are being exacerbated by economic crisis as desertification overtakes ever more pastoral communities”. As the rise of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria violently testified, this crisis was finding new expression as traditional elites lost authority. Meanwhile, the availability of arms and fighters, as materiel supplied to the Libyan rebellion that overthrew the late Muammar Qadhafi found its way into wider circulation, amplified the region’s diverse crises. Mali’s army was not fit for purpose, and was outgunned by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and associated groups.

The extent of the Sahel’s crisis was underlined by the speed with which President François Hollande reversed France’s previous reserve at intervention, dispatching troops from other African bases and trying to rescue a hostage in Somalia – who might be used as a pawn in the struggle.

Algeria had previously opposed international military intervention in Mali, but it too has been sucked in as President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his generals lost control of events in their old fief. Now the conflict threatens to spread not just into other Sahel states – with Mauritania and Niger already in the front line – but also into Algeria and potentially other Maghreb countries.

As African Energy went to press, news media were reporting that at least one foreign worker had been killed and several others kidnapped by jihadists escaping French military assaults which began in northern Mali on 11 January. UK ambassador Martyn Roper tweeted: “We can confirm that British nationals are caught up in a terrorist incident in In Amenas. Continuing to work closely with local authorities.”

The field, near the border with Libya, is operated by a joint venture of BP, Norway’s Statoil and Algerian state company Sonatrach. Mauritania’s ANI news agency, known for its access to jihadist spokesmen across the region, said Islamist fighters were holding the foreigners. The Irish government said a national had been abducted; five Japanese workers with JGC Corporation were said to be among the detainees. Jihadist groups in northern Mali had warned Algeria not to co-operate, but one month after Hollande’s ‘historic’ visit to Algiers, it opened its airspace to French jets.

Several local sources said the attack was orchestrated by Al-Mouakioune Bi Dam (The Blood Signatories), a recently created group involving legendary trans-Sahel smuggler and former AQIM leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar. A spokesman claimed the group had achieved full control of the In Amenas base, where it claimed to hold around 300 people, of whom 41 were said to be foreign. The number of pawns being played in the Sahel has just gone up, adding to the complications. The conflict is entering a new phase, which is unlikely to be resolved by bombing alone, or within the immediate future.