Mali declares all-out war on jihadists

ALGIERS, Algeria, July 23 (UPI) -- President Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali, a desolate state in the Sahara Desert south of Algeria, has vowed "a total struggle against al-Qaida" after marauding Algerian jihadists killed 28 of his soldiers in a new offensive across the region.

It remains to be seen whether Toure's July 7 declaration of war will be sustained, although on June 17 the Malian army announced that it had killed 26 "Islamist fighters" in an attack on a jihadist base at Tessalit Oasis in the far north of the country.

But help is at hand. On July 21 Toure's office announced in Bamako, the Mali capital, that "security cooperation between Spain and Mali will be extended to step up the pressure on circles that encourage terrorism."

That announcement followed a visit by Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba.

Units of Toure's army have been trained by U.S. Special Forces over the last 18 months as part of a drive to motivate regional forces to go after the terrorists.

Some 300 U.S. Special Forces instructors and advisers have been deployed at three Malian bases, along with a smaller detachment of British troops.

According to the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat on June 18, U.S. and British intelligence officials have been following closely behind Malian forces operating against the jihadists, questioning local tribesmen about the location, movements and strength of AQIM operatives in the region.

Arab and Tuareg militias have also been increasingly used to hunt the jihadists in the desert of northern Mali. Algeria has been providing the Malian military with arms, fuel and ammunition.

Toure's action indicated that regional states may finally be prepared to mobilize for a major campaign against the jihadists. They are spearheaded by al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb, an Algeria-based organization that in recent months has intensified its operations across North Africa and the Sahel states to the south.

It seeks to forge an alliance with other jihadist groups in the region to open a new front against the United States and its allies, and there are fears it plans eventually to launch attacks in Europe.

Western counter-terrorism specialists believe the recent surge in AQIM operations in the vast, ungoverned spaces of Algeria, Morocco, Male, Niger, Senegal and Mauritania could indicate that the jihadists have been reinforced by veterans of the Iraq war, possibly even from Afghanistan as well.

Western sources say that AQIM's growing use of increasingly advanced explosive compounds is evidence that skilled bomb-makers returning from Iraq have joined the group.

AQIM has been steadily escalating its operations across the region in recent weeks.

On May 31 AQIM said it killed a British hostage, Edwin Dyer, one of six foreigners kidnapped in the Sahel region in December and January.

The group assassinated a senior Malian military intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Lamana Ould Bou, in his Timbuktu residence on June 10. Ould Bou, a former Islamist rebel who became the regional intelligence chief, had just made a number of high-profile arrests of AQIM activists.

On the evening of June 17 militants associated with AQIM ambushed an Algerian army convoy with roadside bombs and gunfire in mountains 110 miles east of Algiers, killing 18 police officers and one of several Chinese construction workers they were escorting.

On June 23 two gunmen shot dead Christopher E. Leggett, a U.S. teacher and aid worker, in a street in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, in what may have been a bungled kidnapping.

The Malian army reported that "dozens" of people were killed in July 4 clashes with AQIM fighters in the Timbuktu region in the far north. AQIM said it had attacked Malian patrols, killing 28 soldiers and capturing three.

The June 23 shooting in Mauritania occurred just one day after the release of a video statement by a senior al-Qaida religious leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, in which he praised the AQIM campaign in Algeria and called on other Islamists to support the group.

He urged Muslims to "sincerely side with their mujahedin brothers in Algeria" and called on Mauritanians, along with jihadists in Mali, Niger, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to "mobilize your soldiers, fortify your ranks, unify your command … and accord a message to the infidels of the West and the East."

Hot times ahead.