It’s early, yet, but it looks like the Algerian government screwed the pooch and went and got a bunch of Western oil/gas workers killed who were being held hostage by jihadists. And they didn’t even call Obama or Cameron to warn them they were going to launch a raid. Big mistake. If Obama has proven anything, he’s proven that you don’t take Americans hostage and get away with it while he’s in charge. But he was cut out of the loop, so he had no opportunity to organize a response. Europe is going to be even more pissed because this was a mainly English/Norwegian operation and most of the dead are going to be from those countries. I’m betting that the weapons used by the hostage-takers were seized when Gaddafi fell. I might have mentioned that that operation could have collateral effects that we wouldn’t like.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Holy shit. I don’t know if it’s kosher to say that here, but it’s the best I’ve got.
That’s some high level bad judgment, and people died for no reason.
Tragic.
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Read my diary – US Special Forces Trained Malian Army, Ethnic Tuareq Defect to Rebels with update about the Algerian hostage taking.
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US backed Free Syrian Army losing the battle to the terror group Al-Nusra Front in Aleppo. This jihadist group is fighting for an Islamic state in Al-Sham (Syria)
and are funded and sponsored by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Free Syrian Army Desintegrates In Aleppo: Looting and Infighting
Any response would have simply triggered a lot of “No blood for oil” and talk of US invasions on one end of the Internet, and dark and mutually contradictory mutterings about US collusion with Islamic extremists and an insufficiently violent response on the other.
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Just watched an extended interview on Sky News with British Foreign Minister Haig who had harsh criticism of Algerian decision for military intervention. Now he joins Hollande of France [video] who had been more sympathetic towards the Algerian regime. It is becoming clear the militants had early on started executing hostages and the 5 workers I wrote about were most likely Japanese.
In a breakimg news update another 25 bodies have been found inside the boobie-trapped gas facility. It’s not clear yet how many are hostages or militants. The fear of more hostage deaths as a number of foreign nationals are still unaccounted for, may become a reality.
LATEST:The 32 dead militants in hostage crisis were of six different nationalities including three Algerian and one Canadian
Cross-posted from my new diary – 770 Workers Rescued as Algerian Hostage Crisis Ends In Violent Deaths
Gadhaffi crushing the rebellion would have had collateral effects we wouldn’t like, too.
Weapons from Libya have been killing people in Africa for a lot longer than the end of the UN mission, usually in much higher numbers than this. We’re just noticing this one because it’s an oil facility.
Charles Taylor, who’s in the news, was armed by Gadhaffi.
Maybe this will be last time.
When/where was this “proven?”
Don’t think the GOP and NRA have gotten the message since they’ve have so many successes holding Americans hostage under Obama’s tenure.
Last time I checked, Algeria was a sovereign nation, and maybe, just maybe, they had a better read on the hostage situation of a commercial operation in their country than outsiders.
Doesn’t look like it. Doesn’t look like it at all.
SEALS have so far shown there isn’t anything they can’t tackle. There must be something but I am guessing Obama would have liked at least a chance to get their counsel on options
My diary – PM Cameron Gives Full Support to Algeria in Hostage Crisis
Link
See the dancing goalposts, BooMan?
From “the Algerians had a pretty good read on the situation” to “It was a terrorist attack.”
Are you joking? In what universe is negotiating with the GOP comparable to dealing with Somali pirates? Yes, I know it’s metaphorically similar, but you can’t kill Republicans with a SEAL team.
What world? Try DC – via Zero Hedge
Let’s not forget that Obama gave in to the GOP debt limit ransom a couple of years ago that set up the fiscal cliff hysteria.
btw — the issue of Somali pirates is not an exclusive to the US either as victims or negotiators.
You have to have your head pretty far up your posterior to read this news and write that Algeria had a good handle on this.
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Joe you are so full of it and giving Marie2 a troll rating is being a prick here @Booman.
Right, I’m full of it, because the Algerians really proved to the world how on top of the situation they are.
You want to follow Marie’s head, you go on with your bad self.
For my part, I have trouble seeing such a profoundly offensive, deluded comment as anything but a troll. You might as well respond to the Sandy Hook shooting by saying that private gun owners understand security best.
link:
Want to say the same thing to Madame Secretary?
Now — kindly apologize for being a jerk.
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Cross-posted from my new diary – 700 Workers Rescued as Algerian Hostage Crisis Is Near End
Did you post the wrong link, dearie?
Because HIllary Clinton saying this was terrorist attack has nothing whatsoever to do with your idiotic, morally debased claim that the Algerians knew what they were doing here.
The only think I’m sorry about is that you continue to inflict your comments upon us.
As did Cameron and Panetta. And probably anyone that has a passing familiarity with Algeria’s history with Islamist terrorists.
If you can’t handle interruptions to your CW dribble with more informed and/or incisive observations, skip my comments.
Fighting Islamic militants in the 1990s, Algeria lost 200,000 lives. One of the worst of the GSPC fighters and veteran of the Jihad in Afghanistan was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a man of the desert with several death sentences on his head. The recent year he was involved in the Mali rebellion.
(BBC News) – When the GSPC merged with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Mr Belmokhtar headed an AQIM battalion in the desert between Algeria and Mali. After AQIM stripped him of his title as “emir of the Sahel” as a result of in-fighting, Mr Belmokhtar launched the Signed-in-Blood Battalion last year.
The United States has been involved in covert action and Intelligence gathering in Africa since 2002. Special forces have boots on the ground in most of the North African nations, important because of mineral mining (see the France nuclear giant Aréva with uranium mining in Niger – remember CIA’s yellow cake and the Iraq war!).
Sometimes the US covert operation hits the headlines like last year in Mali:
Three US commandos found dead in car crash in Mali with three Moroccan prostitutes.
From the scarce headlines – US media is pre-occupied with a doping affaire of Lance Armstrong – it appears the two US citizens escaped or were recued in the military action by Algeria’s anti-terror squad. Yes, the Mali rebellion was made possible by the return of the Tuareg fighters with heavy arms (Gadaffi’s mercenaries). The western powers nor the new Libyan regime consisting of tribal militias were able to secure the mass arms cache including 20,000 SAMs. Sound familiar to the jihadists or mujahideen Arab fighters in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan?
The Algerian military were forced to act when the terror group were transporting a number high-value hostages in 5 SUVs and probably heading for the desert, a terrain well known to them. We need to hear the specifics on what happened before making a judgment call.
the media isn’t covering it except for a sentence or two because no one knows anything. it has nothing to do with Lance Armstrong, who, as far as I can tell, here in NY anyway is barely being mentioned. maybe he’s being covered in France. seems the gun issue has become an occasion for piling on the USA and frankly I find it unseemly
There’re enough weapons floating around the area (Algeria was a beneficiary of George W. Bush military assistance largesse) that your assumption of Libyan origin might or might not be accurate.
The Algerian government has three motives relative to Mali (and that also involves AQIM): suppress local Islamists and liberal/left through keeping terror incidents going, continue to get Western arms aid to fight terrorism, and ensure that Tuareg nationalism in Mali doesn’t threaten the territorial integrity of southern Algeria.
Not all of those point to wanting to wait for US help.
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Reality
The fallacy of that argument is pretending that al Quaeda was not already in the area. Algeria has been the focus of AQIM for a decade (only they weren’t called that then).
There was very little al Quaeda influence in the Libyan Revolution and there are few al Quaeda links now.
One of the Western journalists’ conceits is to automatically label all Wahabists, Salafists, and jihadis as al Quaeda. Ayman Zawahiri would be ecstatic if that were true–and we’d have a much more serious struggle going on there. Like most movements, there are significant personality and ethnic differences that make coalitions difficult.
At the moment, Libya seems to be moving away from Islamist positions. Even in Cyrenaica, to a lot of folks a putative al Quaeda stronghold.
The MNLA is not affiliated with al Quaeda and in fact one of the conflicts in northern Mali is between the MNLA and AQIM. In addition there are ethnic militias organized among the Songhai and Fulanis. And an more radical Tuareg nationalist bunch.
Having finally found an excuse to blame the United States, the internet leftists are now willing to admit that al Qaeda is doing bad things in the Sahara.
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The Algerian GIA and later GSPC morphed into AQIM. The leader of the Algerian militia in the hostage crisis is Al-Qaeda trained in Soviet-Afghan War and veteran of GSPC. He was kicked out of AQIM last year. Saudi Arabia is leading nation of Salafists and Wahabists expansion, its funding and arming the movements (jihadists). Not much has changed since the Jihad in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden’s revenge with the 9/11 attack on America. Of course Egyptian Zayman Al-Zawahri joined Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in 1995. The unity between the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist or Wahabist is not universal, see the Emirates where MB is outlawed. The binding issue between all militant groups is Jerusalem (Al Quds), the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestine. The hatred for Israel and America is intense, this motivates aggression and criminal acts. See my previous comment about blow-back.
I might have mentioned that that operation could have collateral effects that we wouldn’t like.
To quote from an ooold diary,
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A convoy of SUVs with militants and hostages, some strapped with explosives, attempted to move from housing complex to the gas facility a few miles away. The militant leader Taher Ben Cheneb was among them. The Algerian special forces decided to avoid this at all cost and a helicopter gunship intercepted the convoy destroying 3 vehicles. A fourth was blown-up by the terrorists and in the fifth the hostages managed to escape.
From an Algerian witness interviewed today, it became clear the militants already separated the Algerian (muslim) workers from the foreign nationals. He witnessed the execution of five colleagues in the housing complex.
This leads to my conclusion the Algerian leadership handled correctly and avoided an impossible hostage situation if this convoy would have reached the gas facility. Any military action would have been more hazardous and complicated.
I am old enough to remember multiple hostage takings by terror groups in the 70s and 80s in the Middle-East and in Europe. In The Netherlands the French Embassy was attacked by Japanese terrorists with hostages in exchange for political goals. Also the Indonesian minority living in exile in the Netherlands from the Moluccan undertook military terror acts with hostage takings of train passengers in combination with an attack on a primary school with young children in 1977. Dutch news video of commando raid on train
In these terror acts, the red line is execution of hostages. As soon as this happens, any negotiations are doomed for failure if you want to keep the perpetrators accountable to face justice.
Cross-posted from my new diary – 700 Workers Rescued as Algerian Hostage Crisis Is Near End