The Skeptic الشكاك

575 From the Department of Forgotten Small Wars

Rebels attacked a military patrol in Mali, near the Algerian border, on Saturday morning. Europeans might care because renewed fighting might endanger the release of two Austrian tourists taken hostage last month in Tunisia and spirited across the border into Mali. Americans might care because the group calls itself Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Seif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, possible heir to Libya’s Brother Leader, is mediating between Austria and Al-Qaeda.

Le Monde:

Reprise des affrontements dans le nord du Mali, où se trouvent deux otages autrichiens d’Al-Qaida
LEMONDE.FR avec AFP | 22.03.08 | 18h09

es affrontements entre l’armée et les rebelles touareg ont repris, samedi 22 mars dans l’extrême nord du Mali, alors que les violences ont déjà fait huit morts – dont cinq civils – depuis la capture, jeudi, de 33 militaires par des rebelles. Cette brusque dégradation de la situation sécuritaire intervient juste avant l’expiration, dimanche soir, d’un ultimatum pour la libération des deux otages autrichiens enlevés le 22 février en Tunisie par la branche d’Al-Qaida au Maghreb et qui se trouveraient, avec leurs ravisseurs, dans le nord du Mali.

Samedi matin, les rebelles ont attaqué à la mitrailleuse une patrouille de l’armée, à 30 km au nord de la localité d’Abeïbara, non loin de la frontière avec l’Algérie. Aucune source n’était en mesure d’indiquer le nombre de tués ou de blessés.

LE FILS DE MOUAMMAR KADHAFI IMPLIQUÉ DANS LES NÉGOCIATIONS

Ces violences pourraient perturber les négociations pour la libération des Autrichiens Wolfgang Ebner, 51 ans, et Andrea Kloiber, 44 ans, enlevés alors qu’ils circulaient dans le sud de la Tunisie. Ils auraient été conduits par leur ravisseurs dans le nord malien.

Le fils du dirigeant libyen Mouammar Kadhafi, Seif Al-Islam, est en contact avec les ravisseurs et se dit optimiste sur leur prochaine libération, a affirmé samedi le dirigeant autrichien d’extrême droite Jörg Haider, qui maintient des contacts étroits avec le responsable libyen. Selon plusieurs sources, l’ultimatum de dimanche soir pourrait être une nouvelle fois repoussé.

Credit: the headline is inspired by the discovery, in a friend’s bathroom, of Index on Censorship‘s 2006 issue on “small wars you may have forgotten.” I wouldn’t mention it, but assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s 2002 brief to Index on Censorship on “the corrosive evil of [the] forgotten war” in Chechnya, which I believe appeared in that issue, makes it well worth the digression. Here’s a taste:

The city was sealed off after a series of strange events. Controls were so tight you couldn’t even move between different districts within the city, let alone make your way out of Grozny on foot.

On that day, 17 September, a helicopter carrying a commission headed by Major-General Anatoly Pozdnyakov from the general staff in Moscow was shot down directly over the city. He was engaged in work quite unprecedented for a soldier in Chechnya.

Only an hour before the helicopter was shot down, he told me the task of his commission was to gather data on crimes committed by the military, analyse their findings, put them in some order and submit the information for the president’s consideration. Nothing of the kind had been done before.

Their helicopter was shot down almost exactly over the city centre. All the members of the commission perished and, since they were already on their way to Khankala airbase to take a plane back to Moscow, so did all the material they had collected. That part of the story was published by Novaya Gazeta.

Before the 19 September issue was sent to the printers, our chief editor Dmitry Muratov was summoned to the ministry of defence (or so I understand) and asked to explain how on earth such allegations could be made. He gave them an answer, after which the pressure really began. There should be no publication, he was told. [More…]

506 Briefly Noted

Briefly noted:

• Libya assumed the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council yesterday. The Libyan foreign minister will meet the US secretary of state tomorrow.
  • Mohamed Eljahmi, brother of imprisoned Libyan activist Fathi Eljahmi, has an impassioned op-ed in the Washington Post pegged to the occasion. Here he is describing his attempts to get Washington to intercede on behalf of his brother:
    

    The [U.S.] diplomat suggested that rather than seek the State Department’s help, I should strike a deal with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Libyan leader’s son and designated point man for engagement with the United States. How far U.S. moral clarity has fallen. Does the State Department believe that families of Cuban dissidents should beg for Fidel Castro’s grace? Would the Reagan administration have suggested that Jews apologize to Moscow for seeking religious freedom? Perhaps East Berliners should have taken their complaints about the Berlin Wall to the East German zoning commission?

• The Lebanese opposition, led by Hizballah, wants 11 ministerial seats. The government is willing to grant them only 10.
• Steel magnate and ruling-party MP extraordinaire Ahmed `Ezz raised the price of steel by LE250/ton.
• Gazan pilgrims are still stuck in Sinai.
• The Beeb has a nice feature on “Africans from south of the Sahara… risking their lives through dry and hot deserts to live and work in Algeria.”
• A brief history of the khawal.

501 Terrorism, Counterterrorism

Too important not to note:

The blasts in Algeria yesterday, blasts which caught a school bus, killed at least 77 people, and destroyed a UN compound. Adding insult to injury (and death), these murderous dogs sound like parodies of themselves:

In a detailed Internet statement, the group identified two “martyrs” who detonated vehicles loaded with explosives outside the court building and “the headquarters of the international infidels’ den,” a reference to the U.N. offices. [WaPo. Domestic, Algerian coverage here.]

François al-Hajj, the Lebanese Army’s chief of operations, was killed, along with three other people, in a bomb attack outside of Beirut today. He was tipped to have been chief of the armed forces if Gen. Michel Suleiman becomes president.

A triple car bombing in the southern Iraqi city of Amara killed at least 40 people today.

Human Rights Watch yesterday released a damning report casting serious doubt on the 2006 “Victorious Sect” arrests here in Egypt. “Beyond coerced confessions, there appears to be no compelling evidence to support the government’s dramatic claims,” HRW said.

On the eve of peace talks, Israeli tanks attacked Gaza yesterday, killing at least six Palestinians. The Palestinians said the attacks, and new Israeli settlements planned for East Jerusalem, were an attempt to disrupt the peace talks. The Israelis said the attacks were routine, as if that were somehow better.

Lastly, and much less importantly, I must confess I’m still thinking about robots. The product of too much time and too little sleep, no doubt. At the risk of further damaging my credibility, I can’t resist passing along this 75-year-old editorial about an inventor shot by his robot, which appeared on one of my favorite blogs, Paleo-Future, today.

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