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| Africa: North |
| US expands defense ties with Algeria |
| 2003-12-18 |
| The United States has expanded security and military aid to Algeria, including the sale of non-lethal weaponry to the North African state. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said the Bush administration offered what he termed defensive systems to Algeria as part of expanded military aid and cooperation. Burns did not specify the weaponry. During a visit in October to Algiers, Burns said the United States provided Algeria with $700,000 a year for military equipment and training of security forces. That equipment is said to include night-vision and other non-lethal equipment. "Counter-terrorism cooperation between our countries continues to be outstanding and of a great value," Burns said. "For our part, we are doing what we can to help Algeria finally put an end to the terrorist scourge that has ravaged the Algerian people for over a decade." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #10 BTW, the use of French instead of Arabic is favoured by Berbers and liberals for two reasons: as a vector of communication who doesn't drag Algeria still more toward Arabization and because the Arabic culture is a closed one... From personal experience, use of French is also favored by certain parts of the Algerian military. Unfortunately, they're not the ones with any power (yet). |
| Posted by: Pappy 2003-12-18 9:13:47 PM |
| #9 JFM, you have encouraged me, unintentionally. I saw very little to be gained by for Europe in the tunnel to Morocco deal. I had a picture in my mind of a bunch of Eboli carrying, AK slinging leftist rebels infiltrating through Spain. On the contrary, at least for the Berbers, an added connection to Europe might be just the ticket. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-12-18 8:41:53 PM |
| #8 About the privilegied trade between Algeria and France. In 198x Mitterrand signed a treaty with Algeria in which France agreed to buy gas above the prices of international market. Don't know if the treaty is still in vigor. However Algerian's goovernment is a panarab supremacist one (it has forced the use of classic Arabic, like talked in Saudi Arabia, to the detriment of French, Berberic and dialectal arabic). The Algerian governemnt is also actively promoting wahabism much to the sorrow of the Berbers who see their suffi imams being displaced. BTW, the use of French instead of Arabic is favoured by Berbers and liberals for two reasons: as a vector of communication who doesn't drag Algeria still more toward Arabization and because the Arabic culture is a closed one (Spain, and probably France, translate more books in one year than the entire Arabic world since Gutenberg). That is why I think that Algeria's drift of France means probably that the FLN is up to no good. And no I don't believe they will be better allies for the US than the Saudis. It happens I know first hand what kind of Saddam-like monsters are in the FLN. |
| Posted by: JFM 2003-12-18 6:18:45 PM |
| #7 Algeria is/was more or less a client of France, with privilegied trade of natural gas among other ressources; one of the grudges the local islamo-throatcutters have against France is its steady support of the junta since 1992 (mostly political, plus intelligence sharing, lending nightvision equipped helicopters, intercepting radio traffic,...). If indeed Algeria is willing to get closer to the USA, this is another loss of influence in Africa for Paris, to the benefit of Washington. Btw, 2003 was "Year of Algeria" (ie praising our common history, cultural ties, planned development, what a joke!) in France. Most people didn't even notice. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-12-18 1:34:14 PM |
| #6 Thanks, guys! ;-) Glad to hear that Dr. Condi and I hadn't entered a parallel universe, particularly Dr. Rice as she seems to be President Bush's closest adviser. |
| Posted by: Jennie Taliaferro 2003-12-18 11:43:10 AM |
| #5 Another moronic aspect of NMM's criticism (namely that we should have prevented it because it's happened before) is that there are lots of things we know about in a general way without being able to prevent them because details are lacking on the time, the place and the method of attack (and there are a number of alternative methods). This is why American troops continue to die in Iraq (Russian troops in Chechnya and Indian troops in Kashmir) - knowing in general terms that something is going to occur doesn't mean that you can prevent it. The attackers have the initiative - they can choose the time, the place and the method of attack. Whatever we deploy in response, they will find a way around it - our defenses of publicly accessible buildings are in plain sight, whereas their preparations to overwhelm our defenses are conducted in secret. This asymmetry gives them the initiative every time. Unless. Unless we make the terrorists run for their lives, and persuade their state sponsors that funding and providing weapons to terrorists could lead to them being toppled and led away in chains or worse (Uday's and Qusay's fates). Ultimately, the only way to fight terrorism is to capture or kill the terrorists and remove their sources of funding by either arresting or killing their state sponsors. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-12-18 10:04:38 AM |
| #4 NMM: France is more threatened than we are by Islamic nutz in that country--remember the guys that wanted to crash a plane into the Eifel Tower? And the CIA had no clue what was headed OUR way? I would say that NMM is the incompetent moron, except as usual, he has left out an important pertinent fact, namely that the Eiffel Tower-related hijacking occurred in 1994, while the Clinton administration was busy negotiating a worthless treaty with North Korea and not pursuing bin Laden. Basically, NMM is evil, but his sheer incompetence precludes the use of the word genius, so I'll just call him an evil moron. (BTW, equating a strike on the Eiffel Tower with a strike on the World Trade Center is ludicrous - one is an IRA-style limited attack, whereas trying to bring down the World Trade Center was an attempt to kill tens of thousands - I know - I used to work there). |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-12-18 9:42:31 AM |
| #3 Jennie, for people like NMM "lied" means "said something I don't want to hear". |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2003-12-18 9:36:41 AM |
| #2 I'm sorry, but where was the "lie" that Dr. Rice supposedly told? Here in Texas, we don't haul off and call people liars without damn good reason and you'd better be no exception! I've never seen *any* evidence of NatSecAd Dr. Condileeza Rice being incompetent. The view from your POV must be pretty jaundiced. IIRC, Algeria seems to have been pretty cooperative with us in the WOT and in dealing with it domestically. I'm pretty sure that the Algerians stopped "looking" to France when they got totally screwed by them as a colonial power several decades back. You may not be Mike Moore, but do you play him on TV? |
| Posted by: Jennie Taliaferro 2003-12-18 3:55:23 AM |
| #1 Now let's get real folks--Algeria looks to France, not the US for help---France is more threatened than we are by Islamic nutz in that country--remember the guys that wanted to crash a plane into the Eifel Tower? And the CIA had no clue what was headed OUR way? Our imcompetent National Security Advisor/ Oil Co employee Condi lied again. |
| Posted by: NotMikeMoore 2003-12-18 2:17:33 AM |