In this issue:

Are U.S. Special Forces 'Bashing a Hornet's Nest' in Africa?

Book Reveals: Secret Service Role in Algerian 'Islamic Terror'

Call for Crude Oil To Be Quoted in Euros, Not Dollars

Cheney Gang Pawprints on Equatoguinean Coup Attempt

Brit Press Covers for Cheneyacs in Equatoguinea

Thailand, Malaysian Power Firms Consider Sudan Project

From Volume 3, Issue Number 12 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Mar. 23, 2004
Africa News Digest

Are U.S. Special Forces 'Bashing a Hornet's Nest' in Africa?

The Pan-Sahel Initiative of the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) is engaged in anti-terror "cooperation" with the African countries of Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and Chad, with State Department funding. This "cooperation" takes the form of U.S. special operations forces training chosen units of local armies in "mobility, communication, land navigation, and small unit tactics." That, at least, is the limit of what is being said publicly. Now, an extension of the program to Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria is under consideration. However, some fear that the program may provoke anti-European terrorism from African Muslim sources.

There are significant populations in this belt across Africa that have been manipulated to rally around the standard of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Air Force Gen. Charles Wald told the Associated Press March 6 that a particular target of the program is the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat—accused of kidnapping 32 European tourists in the Sahara last year—which reportedly issued a manifesto associating itself with al-Qaeda some months ago.

Wald's description of his approach to the whole area is, "We need to drain the swamp." The actual content of any such "anti-terror" operation conjures up an image of bashing a hornets' nest.

Book Reveals: Secret Service Role in Algerian 'Islamic Terror'

A book review in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung March 15, exposed Algerian "Islamic terrorism" as being run by the Algerian security agencies, at least since the military coup there in 1991. The book, which came out last year in France under the title Chronique des Années de Sang. Algérie: Comment les Services Secrets Ont Manipulé les Groupes Islamistes (A Chronicle of the Years of Blood. Algeria: How the Secret Services Manipulated Islamic Groups) was written by Mohamad Samraoui, a former leading officer of the Algerian counter-espionage agency DCE. Living in exile in Germany, after he served as military attaché at the Algerian embassy in Bonn, Samraoui wrote that "the terror groups in the underground were bred and manipulated by the secret service of Algeria."

According to Samraoui's insider knowledge, the state-run terrorists were recruited from existing Algerian opposition Islamists, who were turned around after arrest, and then run by such entities as the CPO operations department of the secret services. Ostensibly, this was supposed to be for infiltrating Islamist movements, but in reality, the waves of terror over the next years were set up by that operation. Samraoui learned that, on one night in July 1991, the first artificial Islamist terror base was set up some 50 kilometers from Algiers, and the first pro-extremist leaflet of "Islamist terrorists" was printed at the "military Antar barracks in Ben-Aknoum, the headquarters of the most important CPO center for illegal operations."

Also, the alleged blacklists with civilian targets of the "terrorists," Samraoui found out, were produced at the Centre Ghermoul, where the HQ of the counterespionage DCE was located. All the so-called "emirs" of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) terrorists were run as puppets of the secret services, and the terrorists were always activated with special brutality whenever the Algerian government made attempts to reach a conciliation deal with the non-terrorist Islamist movement.

Call for Crude Oil To Be Quoted in Euros, Not Dollars

A South African government economist called for crude oil to be quoted in euros, instead of dollars, in an op-ed in Johannesburg's Business Report March 16. Mandla Maleka, chief economist of Eskom Treasury, the in-house bank of the South African government-run corporation for electric power production, Eskom, wrote: "Perhaps the time is ripe for crude oil prices to be quoted in euros rather than in U.S. dollars. This was Saddam Hussein's wish before his demise from grace. In fact, while still in power, he settled his oil accounts in euros and not in dollars. Quoting prices in U.S. dollars means that as the U.S. dollar weakens, the price of oil increases.... [T]he U.S. dollar looks set to remain stuck to the floor as a result of structural problems with deficits.... The implications of high oil prices for South Africa are huge.... Well, with the U.S. having made its intention clear of increasing its oil imports from Africa, are the relations between the U.S. and some of its traditional sources at an all-time low? Is last week's coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea part of a bigger crude oil price plan? Would you be surprised at intimations that the British and U.S. intelligence agencies were involved?"

Cheney Gang Pawprints on Equatoguinean Coup Attempt

In the July 2003 coup in oil-rich Sao Tome, former members of the South African 32 Buffalo Battalion pulled the coup. The 32 Buffalo Battalion consisted of mercenaries mainly recruited from Portuguese Africa in the 1970s. Then, Western diplomats (and African Presidents) got involved and negotiated a reversal of the coup, in which conditions desired by the Cheneyac IASPS/AOPIG (Advanced and Strategic Political Studies/Africa Oil Policy Initiative Group) were imposed on the restored government. The "former" mercenaries were somehow let off the hook.

In the current, aborted Equatoguinean coup, the Angolan Foreign Minister reports that the 23 Angolans among the 67 men arrested at the airport in Harare are, again, former members of the 32 Buffalo Battalion.

The plane used by these men was flown from Sao Tome to South Africa March 7, where they took delivery of it and immediately flew north. And they planned to retreat to Sao Tome as a safe haven, if they met too much resistance to achieve their coup in Equatorial Guinea, according to information obtained by the Zimbabwe Home Affairs Minister. But Sao Tome is a client state of the U.S., by choice of its President, Fradique de Menezes, who fears Nigerian dominance.

The plane itself was sold by Dodson Aviation, Inc., headquartered in Ottawa, Kansas, to London-based Logo Logistics, which has Simon Mann of British SAS and formerly of Executive Outcomes as one of its executives. Mann is among those under arrest in Zimbabwe. The Dodson subsidiary in South Africa, Dodson International Parts (SA) Pty Ltd, seems to be a successor to Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts, which doubled as a mercenary operation.

Brit Press Covers for Cheneyacs in Equatoguinea

The March 14 London Observer and Independent cover for the Cheneyite origins of the coup attempt in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in their March 14 stories, which could be summarized in few words: "The coup was hatched in London" (Observer), and "The coup was not hatched in Cheney's Washington" (Independent).

The stories are titled, respectively, "Did African coup begin in Chelsea?" and "The inside story of the ties that bind [Equatoguinean] President Obiang and powerful American interests."

But the truth is, the Cheney network considers the Gulf of Guinea to be its own private lake, and DIA agents (chiefly) are crawling all over the countries that share its coastline. No coup takes place without the network's green light.

Thailand, Malaysian Power Firms Consider Sudan Project

Thailand's Electricity Generating Plc (EGCO) and Malaysia's Petronas oil firm are looking to invest in an independent power project in Sudan, the Bangkok Post March 11. EGCO's senior executive vice president said the company was negotiating with the Malaysian firm on project details, including the plant capacity and investment budget. He said the North African country, now at peace after a long civil war, needed massive investment in rehabilitation and infrastructure development. With a population of 35 million, and current generating capacity of just 600 megawatts, Sudan is woefully short on power. The Sudan government recently announced a 1,250-megawatt, $1.5-billion hydropower generating project to boost generating capacity.

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