Kimberly Dozier / Associated Press & Lisa Friedman / ClimateWire & Scientific American – 2012-07-26 22:58:55
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20120726/b7807913-ac22-4795-8ceb-93d9c21b4cdb
US Weighs Options To Drive al-Qaida from Mali
Kimberly Dozier / Associated Press
ASPEN, Colo. (July 26, 2012) — The US is likely to weigh options ranging from military assistance to direct strikes to drive a growing al-Qaida presence out of the coup-wracked African nation of Mali, a Pentagon official said Thursday.
“We cannot allow al-Qaida to sit in an ungoverned space and have a sanctuary and impunity,” said Michael Sheehan, the Defense Department’s assistant secretary for special operations.
US officials first must find ways to work with the post-coup government in Bamako to combat the militants, Sheehan said at the Aspen Security Forum.
“We have to accelerate that effort,” he said, now that al-Qaida’s African branch, known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, essentially has taken over Mali’s northern region.
Mali’s junta leaders handed power to an interim government after their revolt, but they still remain largely in control.
The coup leaders have rejected US assistance so far, but on Thursday said they would welcome a West African military intervention force to help recapture the north — the first indication that the coup leaders would accept foreign troops.
The proposal for a 3,000-member military intervention force is still awaiting approval from the UN Security Council.
Sheehan said “all options would be considered for what is a looming threat,” including strikes on the militants.
“What we will do with Mali, I can’t speculate, but I think you can look at the whole range of things that have been successful in partnership with (other) governments, and perhaps operating in ungoverned space,” Sheehan said.
Sheehan added that the US is discussing the situation with US allies France and Britain, who are equally concerned about al-Qaida’s spread.
Any next steps by the US will be negotiated first by the American ambassador on the ground, added a senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of any such negotiations.
US special operations forces have had an episodic training presence in Mali. Three special operations troops who were off duty were killed in a car crash, together with three local women, the day after the coup. They had been part of a small training force there at the invitation of the last government, a second US military official explained. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the program publicly.
Online: http://aspensecurityforum.org
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Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Are Malians Fleeing Drought, Famine and War Climate Refugees?
Lisa Friedman / ClimateWire & Scientific American.com
(May 31, 2012) — Refugee workers in the Sahel region where thousands of Malian refugees are fleeing violence in their country said this week they are witnessing firsthand the knotted challenges of food security, climate change and conflict in Africa.
Alice Thomas, climate displacement manager for Refugees International, said tens of thousands of destitute Malians are pouring into countries already hit hard by starvation, lack of water and crop failures.
Speaking from Dakar, Senegal, after two weeks assessing camps in Niger and Burkina Faso, Thomas said communities have opened up their villages to Malian refugees.
But, she and others worried, it could be just a matter of time before the stress from thousands of newcomers — and their livestock — reaches a breaking point.
“When the refugees started coming to Niger in early January, they wanted to stay with the local communities, and the local communities opened their doors. People have so little in terms of food, and they shared what they had. They look at these people as brothers,” Thomas said.
But she noted that the Sahel is heading into the lean season.
A recent study conducted by a group of aid organizations found 70 to 90 percent of people in western and eastern Niger estimate their food stocks will run out before the next harvest.
Meanwhile, the political crisis in Mali shows no sign of ebbing.
A particular point of tension, Thomas worried, is the UN agencies that are set up to ensure that refugee camps’ food and water needs are met. No such infrastructure exists for the suffering surrounding villages.
“There is a lot of concern about whether the long-term presence, combined with lack of water and pastureland, are going to cause tension,” Thomas said. “Are you going to see local communities getting less patient with the resources being spent on refugees?”
Changes loom ‘outside the bounds of’ normal experience
According to the UN High Commission on Refugees, more than 300,000 people have fled Mali since fighting erupted in the north in January between a Tuareg rebel movement and Malian government forces.
Burkina Faso has accepted about 61,000 refugees; in Niger there are 41,000; and in Mauritania, 64,000. Meanwhile, the Algerian government has reported that about 30,000 Malian refugees have crossed into the country.
Security experts who study the region say the Sahel is at ground zero of the confluence between climate change and conflict.
Joshua Busby is an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas and one of the lead researchers in the Strauss Center project on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS), a $7.6 million grant funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
He noted that scientific models suggest the Sahel will have an additional 76 to 100 “heat wave days” — that is three days in a row above 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the middle of the century.
Parts of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, meanwhile, could see 21 consecutive days of less than 1 millimeter of rainfall.
“These are very dry areas already, and people who are marginal farmers depending on rain-fed agriculture or pastoralists are kind of living on the knife’s edge of survival already,” Busby said.
When coupled with existential challenges like a secessionist movement splitting a country in half, as is happening in Mali, environmental challenges take on heightened worries.
“I think we need to reassess our understanding of political volatility in this part of the world,” Busby said. “We’re going to start seeing physical changes outside the bounds of normal human experience in a region that has already experienced quite a lot of variance in weather.
What that means on top of more critical instabilities are unknown, and I think it gives us some pause about how we extrapolate about the past patterns for the future.”
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
