Terror in Mali: An Attack on China and Russia?

Too many coincidences to ignore, including silence from the Western media... 

November 27, 2015 (Eric Draitser - NEO) - Coming on the heels of the terrorist attack in Paris, the mass shooting and siege at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, the capital of the African nation of Mali, is still further evidence of the escalation of terrorism throughout the world. While there has already been much written about the incident in both western and non-western media, one critical angle on this story has been entirely ignored: the motive.

For although it is true that most people think of terrorism as entirely ideologically driven, with motives being religious or cultural, it is equally true that much of what gets defined as “terrorism” is in fact politically motivated violence that is intended to send a message to the targeted group or nation. So it seems that the attack in Mali could very well have been just such an action as news of the victims has raised very serious questions about just what the motive for this heinous crime might have been.

International media have now confirmed that at least nine of the 27 killed in the attack were Chinese and Russian. While this alone would indeed be curious, it is the identities and positions of those killed that is particularly striking. The three Chinese victims were important figures in China’s China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), while the Russians were employees of Russian airline Volga-Dnepr. That it was these individuals who were killed at the very outset of the attack suggests that they were the likely targets of what could perhaps rightly be called a terrorist assassination operation.

But why these men? And why now? To answer these questions, one must have an understanding of the roles of both these companies in Mali and, at the larger level, the activities of China and Russia in Mali. Moreover, the targeted killing should be seen in light of the growing assertiveness of both countries against terrorism in Syria and internationally. Considering the strategic partnership between the two countries – a partnership that is expanding seemingly every day – it seems that the fight against terrorism has become yet another point of convergence between Moscow and Beijing. In addition, it must be recalled that both countries have had their share of terror attacks in recent years, with each having made counter-terrorism a central element in their national security strategies, as well as their foreign policy.

And so, given these basic facts, it becomes clear that the attack in Mali was no random act of terrorism, but a carefully planned and executed operation designed to send a clear message to Russia and China.

Libya & Mali, Good extremists & Bad extremists

February 4, 2013 (Guardian War Propaganda) - It’s hard to contemplate the audacity of the Guardian in their feigning concern for the victims of extremism in Mali as 2 years ago they were cheering on almost identical extremists in the very same region.

Image: Libya's "rebels" were in fact Al Qaeda's  US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who committed sweeping atrocities, even exterminating entire cities with little or no condemnation from the West. Now they fight in Syria with Western arms and cash, while their ideological compatriots in Mali serve as a casus belli for French occupation.

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The UK Government and media outlets downplayed and largely ignored the brutalization of black communities during the Libyan conflict and in its aftermath reports of ethnic cleansing were conveniently swept under the carpet. The extremists who were committing these atrocities and war crimes were subjected to the least amount of scrutiny possible as they were essentially fighting on behalf of Western interests and were backed up militarily by NATO. Compare this to the current situation in Mali. A near autonomous region in the North of the country is this time directly threatening Western interests so miraculously its all systems go with regards to rigorous reporting and faux outrage.

What does this duplicity tell us about government policy and the news reports that shamelessly support it?

It tells us that human rights and democracy play little to no part in the decision to promote and pursue wars. The Guardian can, and do, propagandize a cause based solely on the Governments financial interests.

By Design: French Mali Invasion Spills into Algeria

January 17, 2013 (LD-Tony Cartalucci) - Exactly as predicted, the ongoing French "intervention" in the North African nation of Mali has spilled into Algeria - the next most likely objective of Western geopolitical interests in the region since the successful destabilization of Libya in 2011.

In last week's "France Displays Unhinged Hypocrisy as Bombs Fall on Mali" report, it was stated specifically that: 

"As far back as August of 2011, Bruce Riedel out of the corporate-financier funded think-tank, the Brookings Institution, wrote "Algeria will be next to fall," where he gleefully predicted success in Libya would embolden radical elements in Algeria, in particular AQIM. Between extremist violence and the prospect of French airstrikes, Riedel hoped to see the fall of the Algerian government. Ironically Riedel noted: 

Algeria has expressed particular concern that the unrest in Libya could lead to the development of a major safe haven and sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other extremist jihadis.

And thanks to NATO, that is exactly what Libya has become - a Western sponsored sanctuary for Al-Qaeda. AQIM's headway in northern Mali and now French involvement will see the conflict inevitably spill over into Algeria. It should be noted that Riedel is a co-author of "Which Path to Persia?" which openly conspires to arm yet another US State Department-listed terrorist organization (list as #28), the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to wreak havoc across Iran and help collapse the government there - illustrating a pattern of using clearly terroristic organizations, even those listed as so by the US State Department, to carry out US foreign policy."

Now, it is reported that "Al Qaeda-linked" terrorists have seized American hostages in Algeria in what is being described by the Western press as "spill over" from France's Mali operations.

The Washington Post, in their article, "Al-Qaida-linked militants seize BP complex in Algeria, take hostages in revenge for Mali," claims:

"As Algerian army helicopters clattered overhead deep in the Sahara desert, Islamist militants hunkered down for the night in a natural gas complex they had assaulted Wednesday morning, killing two people and taking dozens of foreigners hostage in what could be the first spillover from France’s intervention in Mali."

France Displays Unhinged Hypocrisy as Bombs Fall on Mali

NATO funding, arming, & simultaneously fighting Al Qaeda from Mali to Syria.

January 11, 2013 (LD) - A deluge of articles have been quickly put into circulation defending France's military intervention in the African nation of Mali. TIME's article, "The Crisis in Mali: Will French Intervention Stop the Islamist Advance?" decides that old tricks are the best tricks, and elects the tiresome "War on Terror" narrative.

TIME claims the intervention seeks to stop "Islamist" terrorists from overrunning both Africa and all of Europe. Specifically, the article states: 

"...there is a (probably well-founded) fear in France that a radical Islamist Mali threatens France most of all, since most of the Islamists are French speakers and many have relatives in France. (Intelligence sources in Paris have told TIME that they’ve identified aspiring jihadis leaving France for northern Mali to train and fight.) Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), one of the three groups that make up the Malian Islamist alliance and which provides much of the leadership, has also designated France — the representative of Western power in the region — as a prime target for attack."

What TIME elects not to tell readers is that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is closely allied to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG whom France intervened on behalf of during NATO's 2011 proxy-invasion of Libya - providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya's government. 

 

As far back as August of 2011, Bruce Riedel out of the corporate-financier funded think-tank, the Brookings Institution, wrote "Algeria will be next to fall," where he gleefully predicted success in Libya would embolden radical elements in Algeria, in particular AQIM. Between extremist violence and the prospect of French airstrikes, Riedel hoped to see the fall of the Algerian government. Ironically Riedel noted: 

Algeria has expressed particular concern that the unrest in Libya could lead to the development of a major safe haven and sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other extremist jihadis.

And thanks to NATO, that is exactly what Libya has become - a Western sponsored sanctuary for Al-Qaeda.

NATO Terrorists Target Syria & Algeria

NATO's Pan-Arab Terrorist Blitzkrieg. 
by Tony Cartalucci

August 29, 2012 - Western policy makers admit that NATO's operations in Libya have played the primary role in emboldening Al Qaeda's AQIM faction (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). The Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution's Bruce Riedel in his article, "The New Al Qaeda Menace," admits that AQIM is now heavily armed thanks to NATO's intervention in Libya, and that AQIM's base in Mali, North Africa, serves as a staging ground for terrorist activities across the region.

Image: NATO's intervention in Libya has resurrected listed-terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate, LIFG. It had previously fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now has fighters, cash and weapons, all courtesy of NATO, spreading as far west as Mali, and as far east as Syria. The feared "global Caliphate" Neo-Cons have been scaring Western children with for a decade is now taking shape via US-Saudi, Israeli, and Qatari machinations, not "Islam." In fact, real Muslims have paid the highest price in fighting this real "war against Western-funded terrorism."

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AQIM, like their Libyan counterparts, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) are both listed by the US State Department as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations." Likewise, both the UK Home Office (.pdf, listed as GSPC) and the UN recognize both organizations as terrorists. 

Despite this, military intervention in Libya was pursued by the West and condoned by the UN with full knowledge that the militants leading so-called "pro-democracy uprisings" were in fact merely the continuation of decades of violent terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda affiliates. The West had full knowledge of this, primarily because it was Western intelligence agencies arming and supporting these militants for the last 30 years, in Libya's case, while coddling their leaders in Washington and London.

Additionally, the US Army itself meticulously documented foreign terrorists fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that the highest percentage per capita emanated from Libya's cities of Benghazi and Darnah, the so-called "cradle" of 2011's "pro-democracy uprisings" in Libya.

 CTC at West Point's "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq." (.pdf)

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What unfolded was a premeditated lie - where placard waving "activists" overnight turned into battle-hardened heavily armed, tank driving, jet flying militants waging a nationwide battle against Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi. In reality, it was the fruition of 30 years of covert support the West has poured into militant groups across the region - support that would not end with the fall of Qaddafi.

 

Image: Libyan terrorist manning a tank during NATO's 2011 overthrow of the Libyan government. The media expects the public to believe placard waving peaceful demonstrators had somehow, in just days, transitioned into tank driving, jet flying rebel forces - just like in Hollywood. 

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LIFG terrorists promptly turned both east to Syria and west to Mali beyond their borders - a logistical matter they had perfected during their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, as early as November 2011, arrived on the Turkish-Syrian border to provide cash, weapons, and LIFG terrorist fighters, overseen by Western intelligence along with US funding and arms laundered through Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) members such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Since then Libyan militants have been confirmed to be leading entire brigades of foreign fighters inside Syria.

And as Bruce Riedel of Brookings concedes, these weapons went west to Mali as well. Algeria had feared just such a scenario unfolding with NATO's intervention in Libya - a fear now fully realized. Ironically, Riedel, in August 2011, had tried to make a case for Algeria being "next to fall" in an article titled literally, "Algeria Will Be Next to Fall."

A year ago, Riedel attempted to argue that it would be the so-called "Arab Spring" that would spread into Algeria after having taken root in neighboring Libya. He had eluded to, and it has now become abundantly clear, that by  "Arab Spring," Riedel meant, US-backed subversion, and more specifically NATO-armed Al Qaeda-brand militancy and terrorism.

With the US now openly arming, supporting, and literally "cheering" Al Qaeda in Syria, it is clear that the "War on Terror" is an unprecedented geopolitical fraud perpetuated at the cost of millions of lives destroyed and an incalculable social and economic toll. NATO, with full knowledge of the consequences is literally carving out of North Africa and the Middle East, the so-called "Caliphate" Western leaders had held over their impressionable people's heads as the impetus to perpetually wage global war. Torn from the pages of Orwell's 1984, an artificial war has been created to carry forward corporate-financier machinations both abroad and domestically. The so-called threat to Western civilization is in fact a foreign legion of Western corporate-financier interests, executing Wall Street and London's foreign policy on a global scale where and in a manner traditional Western forces cannot.

NATO's terrorist blitzkrieg across the Arab World will not end in Syria. It will continue, if allowed, into Iran, through the Caucasus Mountains and into Russia, across China's western borders, and even across Southeast Asia. The price for ignorance, apathy, and complicity in supporting the West's so-called "War on Terror" will ironically reap all the horrors and then some in reality, that were promised to us if we didn't fight this "Long War."

Our support of both the political gambits of our politicians, as well as our daily patronage of the corporate-financier interests driving this agenda have already reaped an unprecedented and still growing regional safe haven for terrorists - and as moderate secular governments continue to be undermined and toppled, we can only imagine the blowback, retaliation, and other consequences as this destructive foreign policy unfolds. To imagine that such meddling will not end up being visited back upon us, even if in the form of a false flag attack dwarfing 9/11, would be folly.

Already, we are suffering economic devastation and an increasingly stifling security apparatus at home, and as long as we capitulate to this current agenda instead of asserting a more rational one of our own, it will only get worse.

NATO Triggers African Terror-Wave

NATO Libyan "liberation" unleashes terror "tidal wave" over North Africa.
by Tony Cartalucci

April 5, 2012 - Western nations, including the United States, England, and France - the neo-imperial trifecta - have decried a recent military coup in the North African nation of Mali based on the grounds of violating "democratic principles." Each nation has now proceeded to impose crippling sanctions on Mali until "civilian rule" is restored. Targeting and purposefully weakening Mali regardless of how the new government came into power exposes once again the insincerity, indeed, the fraud of the global "War on Terror."

This is because the government of Mali was specifically overthrown by the military regarding its inability to deal with a rebellion festering in the nation's north, bordering Algeria and part of the nomadic Tuareg's territory which stretches from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco all the way to western Libya. And due to the general lawlessness that is a feature of this region, smugglers, weapons dealers, and more importantly, terrorists, are also operating there.

This includes Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a US State Department listed terror organization (listed #38). In fact, while Mali's northern unrest has been characterized as a "Tuareg separatist movement," it is actually AQIM extending its holdings - a fact being slowly admitted so as to blunt the implications this violence carries with it. Therefore, purposefully sabotaging the Mali government at this critical juncture, only gives AQIM more time to consolidate its current holdings and prepare to expand yet further.

The Implications of Mali's "Rebellion" Being an AQIM Invasion

In a 2007 West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) report and a 2011 CTC report, "Are Islamist Extremists Fighting Among Libya's Rebels?," AQIM is specifically mentioned as working closely with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and it was predicted most notably by geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley, that even before NATO began dropping bombs on Libya that by doing so, they would be thrusting not only LIFG into power, but empowering a regional network of extremists, including AQIM. AQIM's presence in northern Mali, flush with weapons from Libya and a new sense of purpose is this prediction unfolding into reality.




Image: The very courthouse in front of which Senator John McCain denied Benghazi was a rat's nest of Al Qaeda terrorists, is now flying the flag of Al Qaeda, while crowds have been photographed in the streets of Benghazi carrying it aloft since the fall of Qaddafi. Now Benghazi has declared itself semi-autonomous while it sends its fighters both east to Mali and west to Syria to carve out an extremist militant empire - all with NATO's full support. (click images to enlarge)

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Bruce Riedel out of the corporate-financier funded Brookings Institution think-tank wrote, "Algeria will be next to fall," where he gleefully predicted success in Libya would embolden radical elements in Algeria, in particular AQIM. Between extremist violence and the prospect of French airstrikes, Riedel hoped to see the fall of the Algerian government.

Should AQIM be successful in carving out holdings in northern Mali, it will only be a matter of time before they begin crossing into Algeria. It should be noted that Riedel is a co-author of "Which Path to Persia?" which openly conspires to arm yet another US State Department-listed terrorist organization (list as #28), the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to wreak havoc across Iran and help collapse the government there - illustrating a pattern of using clearly terroristic organizations, even those listed as so by the US State Department, to carry out US foreign policy.

Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar noted in an Asia Times piece titled, "How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli," that:

"Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir. "

"Belhaj," referring to Hakim Abdul Belhaj, leader of LIFG in Libya, led with NATO support, arms, funding, and diplomatic recognition, the overthrowing of Muammar Qaddafi and has now plunged the nation into racist genocidal infighting. This intervention has also seen the rebellion's epicenter of Benghazi peeling off from Tripoli as a semi-autonomous "Terror-Emirate." Belhaj's latest campaign has shifted to Syria where he was admittedly on the Turkish-Syrian border pledging weapons, money, and fighters to the so-called "Free Syrian Army," again, under the auspices of NATO support.



Image: (click image to enlarge) Truly NATO's intervention in Libya has been a resounding success. Not only has the West managed to revive the terrorist LIFG organization Qaddafi had been fighting successfully for decades, but now "international institutions" have a casus belli spreading across the whole of North Africa, into the Middle East and beyond as NATO weapons and Western cash enable LIFG fighters to battle as far as Syria in the east and Mali to the west.

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With LIFG handed an entire nation by the UN and NATO, it is now flush with cash, resources, weapons, and fighters eager to carry their "revolution" to the four corners of the globe - and in Syria, NATO is once again facilitating them in their quest - a quest that also coincidentally fulfills decades-long US-planned regime change there. And while their push east into Syria is still underway, solely owed to the efforts of NATO and the UN, it appears since January of 2012 they have also been pushing into northern Mali under the banner of AQIM.

The Greater Goal of LIFG/AQIM & Wall Street's Expanding Bloodbath

AQIM does not just threaten the people of Mali - including the tens of thousands already displaced by the current fighting, but also the people of Algeria, Niger, and Mauritania - all of whom have fought costly battles, as did Qaddafi of Libya, to end the scourge of Al Qaeda in North Africa. In each and every case it has been the West who has harbored and rehabilitated these radical groups, infused them with weapons and cash, and provided them with political-ideological cover. Of course, no cover was more perverse than calling them "freedom fighters" as they ravaged Libya, emptying out entire cities, blockading and bombarding others indiscriminately and now permanently terrorizing the nation from east to west based on anything but "democratic" ideals.

Americans are being taught to fear Islam and the people of the Arabic World as a source of extremism and barbarism. In reality, it is the people of the Arabic World on the front line fighting what is essentially a US-British-French-backed foreign legion of extremist fighters plaguing them for decades and attempting to dismantle their nationalist governments and way of life. The West's goal is to replace them with client regimes led by backward ideologies sure to arrest development and ensure that each nation's resources are funneled out solely for Wall Street and London's exclusive exploitation. Bickering, infighting ideologues are by far easier to manage within a global empire than the strong, secular, nationalistic states the Arab World would most likely transform into.


Photo: Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski organizing the CIA's Arab legionaries in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in the early 80's. Al Qaeda would later spin off into regional terrorist organizations, covertly armed, trained, and protected by the CIA to this day, including LIFG in Libya, MEK in Iraq and Iran, and Baluchi terrorists in Pakistan.

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While the West poses as a force for humanitarian causes and against the tides of terrorist savagery, they concurrently prop these organizations up when nations around the world would have had them otherwise crushed decades ago. The terrorist problem is one created and perpetuated by the West, more specifically the peddlers of "international institutions" led by Wall Street, London and the client states captured in their orbit. While they pose as the ultimate solution to what ails the world, peeking behind the curtain reveals them to be behind the levers of some of the world's most pressing problems - terrorism ravaging North Africa not the least amongst them.

NATO's arming of LIFG and literally carving out a nation-state for them has given them a springboard to take their US, French, Qatari, and British weapons both west toward Syria and east to Mali. For this reason, if no other, NATO and the UN that has legitimized their global murder-spree must be recognized as entirely illegitimate - their do-gooding seen as the scam it is. They have created a problem to which their answer is military intervention, the destruction of sovereign nation-states, and the installation of client regimes demonstratively devoid of the promised "democracy" and "freedom" they were supposedly there to institute.

Destabilization of Africa: Coup in Mali

Corporate media pleads ignorance as "flickers" of Al Qaeda once again emerge.
by Tony Cartalucci

March 22, 2012 - The North African nation of Mali, whose borders exist within the epicenter of recent Western-backed destabilization efforts throughout the continent, has French-backed war in Cote d'Ivoire on its southern borders and Western attempts to destabilize Algeria to the north.


Image: Mali, represented in green, is located just south of Algeria, west of uranium-rich Niger, and north of Guinea and the recently French-besieged nation of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast.)

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As recent reports of a military coup emerge, indicating that troops have seized control of the capital city Bamako, including the presidential palace, the flickers of Western-destabilization can be seen at play in the country's north. Labeled as a "Tuareg rebellion," the resulting violence from warfare in Mali's north has been cited as a contributing factor to the military's move to overthrow the government in Bamako, claiming the ruling government has left troops under-armed to deal with the increasing violence.

Western media cites "weapons left over from the Libyan civil war," as the impetus for "Tuareg" separatism. However, while it is true the nomadic Tuareg people exist in a region that includes Mali, southern Algeria, Niger, and parts of western Libya, it should also be noted that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operate in territory that almost perfectly overlays that of the Tuareg. AQIM are also the more likely recipients of Libyan weapons handed to them by their Libyan Al Qaeda affiliates, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group who led the 2011 NATO-backed rebellion against Qaddafi.


Image: Two maps show both AQIM & Tuareg territory - with one overlaying very closely the other. This may be due more to the lawless nature of Tuareg territory, allowing AQIM to operate with impunity, rather than any sort of collaboration between the two groups. (click image to enlarge)

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A recent Guardian article titled, "Mali's mutineers maintain unusual tradition of tolerance and turbulence," has likewise noticed the possibility that AQIM, not the Tuareg, are behind the instability in Mali. This after a previous Gaurdian article claiming that, "the Tuareg uprising that began in mid-January is being fuelled by arms left over from the civil war in neighbouring Libya."

The background of AQIM's recent activities and future trajectory was reported in "The War on Terror is a Fraud:"

At one point, Qaddafi had almost entirely extinguished the movement [Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)], in particular LIFG, most of whose leadership fled, and ironically sought refuge in London, Langley, and Washington. Qaddafi would attempt to re-approach the West by abandoning his WMD programs and inviting Western intelligence agencies in to help counter the remnants of LIFG and other regional terror organizations. The CIA and MI6 instead, rearmed, reorganized, and redirected these terrorist organizations back at the Qaddafi regime culminating in the February 17, 2011 "Day of Rage" and the subsequent NATO intervention. Indeed, the US, UK, France, Qatar, and other NATO member states are overtly deposing Qaddafi in favor for a regime made up of hardcore terrorists.

In other words, a terrorist organization on its death bed, was intentionally brought back to life by NATO. Having done so, LIFG is already shipping weapons to another notorious terrorist organization in the region, Algeria's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) (#37 on US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations). Algeria, like Libya, has fought a long battle against terrorism at the cost of protracted unrest now known as the "lost decade." After a failed attempt at stirring regime change in Algeria through Egyptian-style street protests and internal defections, it appears the US through NATO is attempting to revive AQIM and initiate a violent revolution.

Already, Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution policy wonk and co-author of the "Which Path to Persia?" report engineering the use of terrorism to destabilize Iran, is licking his chops over the prospects of Algeria "being next." In a report, aptly titled, "Algeria will be next to fall," Riedel sets the rhetorical stage, just as he helped to do with Libya, for another "spontaneous" "indigenous" uprising, with the prospect of NATO, and more specifically, French intervention looming over them. In reality, as we can clearly see, AQIM would not be in any position were it not for NATO arming and handing a neighboring nation to their allies amongst Libya's LIFG.

AQIM shoring up bases outside of Algeria's borders would be essential for carrying out a Libya-style insurrection against the vigilant North African nation. Algeria had already thwarted attempts to fill its cities' streets with mobs of US-funded, trained, and directed youths and has battled AQIM terrorists for years. Bolstering the military capacity of AQIM and other extremist groups inside of Algeria would be a necessary prerequisite if ever the West expected to overthrow the nation as it has its neighbors.

Algeria shares a lengthy border with Libya itself, whose eastern city of Benghazi, the Libyan rebellion's "capital" has already declared itself a semi-autonomous terror-emirate. Northern Mali falling to Libyan rebel allies like AQIM could present Algeria with armed chaos on two fronts.

What the meaning of the Mali military coup is in geopolitical terms still remains unknown. A stronger military posture aimed at breaking AQIM on the Mali-Algerian border would obviously work in favor of Algeria and contra the agenda of LIFG and AQIM's Western sponsors on Wall Street and in London. Conversely, a weakened, infighting Mali would only serve to further the agenda of AQIM and its Western sponsors.

Readers and researchers would best serve the truth by waiting for additional information before jumping to conclusions, watch the reactions and moves made by Washington, the various corporate-funded think tanks, and its mass-media apparatus, as well as keeping in mind that AQIM serves the same purpose in both Algeria and Mali, that NATO-backed LIFG terrorists do in Libya and now even in Syria.

Above all, we must not let the obscurity with which nations in Africa are treated invoke apathy, because in the creation of a global empire, even the farthest flung nations can play a pivotal role in either bolstering or obstructing imperialist ambitions.