Lack of Warning on Rescue Effort Highlights Limits of Algerian ...
www.nytimes.com/.../limits-of-algerian-cooperation-seen-in-rescue-e...
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rescue attempt undertaken without prior notice to the countries whose
citizens were taken hostage typifies Algeria's independent approach, ...Lack of Warning on Rescue Effort Highlights Limits of Algerian Cooperation
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: January 17, 2013
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Militants Seize Americans and Other Hostages in Algeria (January 17, 2013)
But the limits of Algeria’s cooperation with the United States were
visible on Thursday when Algerian forces stormed the gas facility where
Islamic extremists were holding dozens of American and other foreign
hostages — an operation that a Pentagon official said was undertaken
without consultation with the United States.
“The Algerians are jealous of their sovereignty, and that explains why they haven’t consulted with the Americans,” said Anouar Boukhars,
an expert on North Africa at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. “Their position is no negotiation with violent extremists.”
Obama administration officials have been reluctant to discuss the rescue
mission, which Algerian officials acknowledged led to the death of some
hostages. With an eye on Mali, however, American officials made clear
that they planned to continue nurturing the relationship with Algeria.
“When this incident is finally over,” Mrs. Clinton said on Thursday,
“we’re going to do everything we can to work together to confront and
disrupt Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”
She had talked by phone on Wednesday with Algeria’s prime minister,
Abdelmalek Sellal. The call concerned “what might be needed” to deal
with the hostage situation and “the desire to keep lines of
communication open,” said Victoria Nuland, the State Department
spokeswoman.
The State Department would not say if the United States had been
notified in advance of Thursday’s operation by the Algerians, but a
Pentagon official said it had not.
Some former American officials who have dealt extensively with the
Algerian military said on Thursday that they were not surprised that the
Algerians would stage an operation without notifying other countries,
including Britain and Japan, which were among the countries whose
citizens were taken hostage, but which also received no advance notice
of the operation.
“This is how they operate; they like to do things unilaterally,” said
Rudy Atallah, a former Air Force Special Operations officer and director
of African counterterrorism for the Pentagon.
For all that, American officials were striving to keep relations with Algeria on track.
“One thing that is clear: there will not be a satisfactory solution in
Mali without Algeria’s participation,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of
the African Command, said at a recent news conference in Niger’s
capital, Niamey.
The Algerians have their own interests in a good relationship. They have
concerns about deteriorating security in Mali, and the United States is
the largest buyer of Algeria’s oil.
Over the last year, the position of Mr. Sellal’s government on Mali has
changed. At first, Algerian officials were worried that a military
campaign against militants in Mali might push them north into Algerian
territory and radicalize the Tuaregs, a nomadic group in the desert area
straddling the borders of Algeria, Mali and Niger.
But as security in Mali worsened, the United States and France stepped
up their entreaties to the Algerians. The October visit was Mrs.
Clinton’s second as secretary of state, and was followed by a November
visit by William J. Burns, the deputy secretary of state, and December
meetings between American and Algerian counterterrorism officials.
Algeria has made clear that it will not send troops to Mali, but it
began to help in other ways, including by sending thousands of troops to
the southern part of its country to secure the border.
The American and French diplomacy also appeared to pay off when, after
the militants in Mali began to move south this month, Algeria responded
by opening its airspace to the French as they began to rush troops to
the landlocked African nation.
“That tells you how pragmatic they have become,” Mr. Boukhars said.
Still, Algeria’s cooperation has not always been everything American officials have wished.
“Senior military and civilian leaders in Algeria have a clear
understanding of the threat that exists in northern Mali,” General Ham
said. “That doesn’t mean we all agree on all of the details.”
General Ham, who has visited Algeria four times in the past two years,
praised the Algerians for tightening their southern border “so that
terrorist forces in northern Mali cannot move freely across the region.”
But he gently urged the country to work harder to “communicate more
clearly and more directly” with Mali and other border nations “so that
they could pass information that affects their shared borders more
quickly.”
Current and former American officials, along with Algeria experts,
describe Algeria’s national security apparatus as something of a black
box. A report last year by the Congressional Research Service said that
the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, had consolidated his power
by diminishing the influence of senior military commanders.
At the same time, according to the report, a military intelligence
service, the Department of Intelligence and Security, retains vast power
over government decision-making, and operates largely independently
from the traditional military chain of command.
A shadowy figure, Gen. Mohamed Mediène, has run the service since the
early 1990s. Algeria analysts know very little about him, and few
pictures of him exist in the public realm.
In brief remarks at the State Department on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton kept
her focus on Mali, avoiding any talk of Algeria’s internal security
arrangements. “We’re going to be working with our friends and partners
in North Africa,” she said, before speaking again by phone with
Algeria’s prime minister.
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