B.RAMAN
In swift retaliation against the French military
intervention against Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadi terrorists in Northern Mali
starting from January 11,2013, a group of pro-Al Qaeda terrorists, reportedly
headed by Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri of Niger, raided on January 16 a huge gas
production complex employing many foreign experts located at In Amenas at Tigantourine, about 40km (25 miles)
south-west of the town of In Amenas and 1,300km (800 miles) south-east of
Algiers, occupied the plant, mined it and took hostage the Algerian and foreign
workers.
2.The gas facility, which is jointly owned by
British Petroleum, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's state-owned oil company, employs hundreds of Algerians and 132
foreigners from France, the UK, the US, Norway, Austria, Romania, Japan, South
Korea, the Philippines , Thailand and
Colombia.
3. The terrorists reportedly demanded an end to the
French intervention in Mali and the release of some terrorists held in prison
in Algeria. The Algerian authorities rejected their demands and raided the gas
facility. After four-days of bloody confrontation, they managed to re-capture
the plant on January 19,2013, after killing many of the terrorists, who before
their death, are reported to have executed seven of the hostages taken by them.
4.According to the Algerian authorities, at least 32
terrorists and 23 hostages died during the operation. Some foreign hostages are
still unaccounted for.
5.The exercise of the hard option by the Algerian
authorities of not bowing to the demands of the terrorists and taking military
action against them has not been questioned by the Governments of the countries
to which the hostages belonged.
6. The French have been strongly supportive of the
Algerian action despite the loss of many foreign lives. French President Francois Hollande defended
the Algerian response to the crisis as being "the most suitable". He
told the media: "When you have people taken hostage in such large numbers
by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages -
as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most
appropriate because there could be no negotiation.”
7.Mr.Leon Panetta, the US Defence Secretary, has
reiterated the determination of the US to hunt for Al Qaeda, wherever it may
find sanctuary.
8.India, which is still paying a heavy price for
the soft option adopted by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government against the Pakistani
terrorists who hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in 1999 and for
the humming and hawing of the Dr.Manmohan Singh Government after the 26/11
terrorist strikes in Mumbai, has lessons to learn from the Algerian firmness.
9. It will be incorrect to assume that the bloody
raid in Algeria must have been locally organized. It is likely that the
ideological inspiration and operational guidance came from the command and
control of Al Qaeda located in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)
of Pakistan. As I had pointed out in my
past writings, Dr.Ayman al-Zawahiri, the present chief of Al Qaeda, has for
many years been stressing the importance of the African front in the so-called
global jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish People.
10. As part of the drive to neutralize the African
front of Al Qaeda, Zawahiri has to be located and his sanctuary in Pakistan neutralized,
in addition to the on-going action against the local cadres of Al Qaeda in North
Africa.
11.Till now, one has been assuming that he must be
hiding in the FATA. It is quite likely that, like bin Laden, he might be
actually living in the non-tribal areas of Pakistan and from there commanding
and controlling the activities of Al Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Algeria and
other African countries. Searches should be made for him in other parts of
Pakistan too.( 20-1-2013)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute
for Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China
Studies. Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )
