U.S. military experts have begun training soldiers in Mali to tighten border controls on the fringes of the Sahara desert, where Washington fears Islamic militants could be moving along ancient trade routes.
| That'd be GSPC, of course, plus any local group they might have gotten off the ground... |
Three U.S. teams are training units in the capital Bamako, the eastern town of Gao and the desert city of Timbuktu to combat arms trafficking and banditry in the north, Mali’s chief military spokesman, Abdoulaye Coulibaly, said on Tuesday. "We’ve selected three units -- one at Timbuktu, one at Gao and one based in Bamako, each one with around 100 members," he said. Around 10 U.S. experts are training each unit. The support, which includes around 40 off-road vehicles and communications equipment, is part of a U.S. scheme to help four nations on the southern edge of the Sahara -- Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad -- combat security threats. The region is known for bandits and smugglers -- 32 European tourists were kidnapped in the Sahara last year and last month’s Paris-Dakar rally was interrupted because of ambush fears -- and some worry it could also be a breeding ground for militants. The chief prosecutor of Sierra Leone’s U.N.-backed war crimes court said last year his team had evidence that al Qaeda members were operating freely in West Africa, saying they came to the region to "rest, relax, refit and refinance". |