Washington, May 29, 2013 (MAP)
Failure to settle the Sahara issue continues to hamper anti-terrorism cooperation in North Africa, a region beset by destabilization threats of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) network, said on Tuesday US terrorism expert, Daniel Benjamin.
Benjamin, former counter-terrorism coordinator at the state department, who was debating at a conference held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington on AQIM threat in North Africa and the Sahel deplored “slow” progress in anti-terrorism cooperation as a result of the Sahara conflict which continues to hamper better cooperation.
He urged, in this regard, for settling the Sahara issue in order to give impetus to regional cooperation in fighting the local terrorist groups as well as criminal and other illicit activities which serve to finance these violent groups.
A French expert and professor at the Paris Sciences Po School, Jean-Pierre Filiu, noted that the AQIM local affiliate continues to be led mostly by former leaders of the Algerian Islamic Group (GIA), underlining the nexus and complicity existing between extremist groups and other criminal organizations operating in the Sahel-Sahara region.
Another conference held by the “Carnegie Endowment for International Peace”, had also warned of the connections between the Polisario and AQIM, a terrorist group that counts on militants and recruits to carry out its destabilization plots in the Sahel Sahel region, which has become an “arc of instability”.
