Dear Friends of From Here 2 Timbuktu,

 

You may have heard about the recent  tragic murder of Edwin Dyer, a Briton who was taken hostage on the Niger/Mali border along with 4 others in January 2009.  There is some misinformation about this case which I want to put straight,  give you the information I know, put the risks of African travel in general into perspective  and to reassure you that if you are coming to Mali this year you will not be taken to any region where I feel that your security is compromised.

 

I will be running all of my trips this year. Your security will always be my primary concern but I am  confident that my clients will be as safe as they were last year and that the risk of us being caught in a terrorist incident is probably the same as it is anywhere else in the world. One day it is New York, one day it is London, one day it is Madrid or Nairobi or Bali or Mali. 

 

Firstly to correct the misleading slant of reports in the media :

- this case is most likely to relate to the political situation in Niger  rather than  Mali. 

- The kidnapping took place somewhere near the border which is very remote. None of my trips go anywhere near the area in question. 

-The group who took the hostages were almost certainly NOT part of any Tuareg rebel group from Mali.

-The tourists had NOT been to The Festival In The Desert prior to their kidnapping but to a remote Tuareg cultural festival. In my view it is unlikely that the festival and the hostage taking were linked. 

 

I have travelled through 24 African countries. Mali is the safest and friendliest country I know. I am considering basing myself there. I feel safer in Mali than I do in the UK, in terms of robbery, aggression to my person or the chances of being caught up in a terrorist attack. 

 

The hostage taking

I was in Mali when the group were taken in January. The story that came out was that the group had crossed into Mali from Niger to attend a remote Tuareg cultural festival near the border and had then returned to Niger. As far as I know they were taken in Niger. The most likely scenario behind  their kidnapping is that they were victims of opportunistic bandits. 

For a month nobody claimed the kidnapping. 

Their vehicles and the baggage were recovered.

Initially the governments of Mali and Niger blamed the attacks on Tuareg rebels for political expediency. 

 

 For a month nobody claimed the kidnappings. If it was Tuareg rebels doing it for political advantage or trying to undermine the state, either Mali or Niger, why wouldn't they claim the kidnappings? What is the point in taking hostages if no one knows you took them? All the Tuaregs I spoke to at the time said that if it was Tuaregs the vehicles would have been kept - they are valuable commodities and there would have been no way of them being traced. 

 

The rebel groups in Mali deplored the kidnappings and refused to accept responsibility. Certainly if it was them it would have marked a complete shift in their approach and the benefits to the rebel cause are hard to find. 

 

A month after the kidnappings it was claimed by a group purporting to be linked to Al Qaeda.

 

A brief history: 

in both Niger and Mali there are Tuareg nomadic communities living in the Saharan regions who have issues with their governments. The Tuareg are sitting on valuable land which holds uranium and oil. In both countries, as in all the countries of the Sahara, the Tuareg are a minority living on the majority of the land. In Mali they occupy half the land but are only 10 % of the population.

 

 In Mali in the early 1990's there was a general Tuareg rebellion seeking more development, more autonomy and more integration into the military, the police and the government.

 

 In 1996 there was a peace accord and all was fine in Mali until May 2008 when there was a resurfacing of small elements of the rebellion who felt that the Malian government hadn't kept to their promises made in the 1996 agreement. This rebel movement had little popular support amongst the wider Tuareg community. In March of this year there was another peace agreement that has been maintained. This peace agreement was accompanied by an arms amnesty at the time when the hostages were still being held - an unlikely event if the rebels were holding the hostages and in the process of negotiating ransoms.

 

In the 9 months before this peace accord Tuareg rebels had attacked only Malian military positions  on 2 or 3 occasions. Without popular support, the rebels message was clear - their issue was with the Malian government and not the country as a whole. Never in the history of the rebellion have tourists been used or targeted to further their aims. Indeed, hitherto Malian Tuareg rebels have been instrumental in securing the release of hostages taken in Algeria and Tunisia in 2003 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3130547.stm.

 

When I have spoken to rebels I know, they have always insisted that their issue is with the government. They know if they attack tourists they'd lose all international support (not that they get much) and that it would play into the governments' hands as they could be painted as Islamist extremists and their governments could use this to claim counter terrorism finance from Western governments to keep the Tuareg in their place. There is no history or evidence of Tuareg sympathy with the aims of Al Q. They have no history of Islamic extremism.

 

In Niger the situation is more serious because they have mined uranium  which counts for 70% of Niger's GDP. The situation is further complicated by the influence of the French and the western world. As long as the west has access to the uranium they tend to turn a blind eye to the environmental and political problems facing the Tuareg. The rebellion in Niger is not linked to the cause in Mali. North Niger is an area I would not go to at the moment because it is too unstable

 

 

What do I think happened? 

I think that they were either taken by opportunistic bandits (most likely) or rebels linked to the political situation in north Niger. What then happened is conjecture as there was a media blackout.  Perhaps they were then sold on to an extremist group from Algeria. We can call them Al Qu'aeda, but this flatters them and actually does Al Q's work for them. There is no great organisation behind these groups. The group most likely to be responsible for Mr Dyer's death are more involved with undermining the Algerian government than with international terrorism. When interviewed on the World at One George Joffe,   Centre for International studies at Cambridge  was asked if Al Q were present in the Sahara, he said: “I think we need to be very careful about this [the kidnapping being a sign that Al Q are strengthening in the Sahara]… but whether it means that AL Q are active in the Sahara I very much doubt it”.

 

A word on banditry

 

The Sahara is vast - the size of the USA. All cases of banditry that I have discovered take place near borders in very remote parts of the desert. These borders, away from the border posts, are not policed so smugglers or militant groups and rebel groups pass unhindered. The more they venture into the interior of a country the more likely they are to come across the military. So they keep to the remote border regions. Your trip to Mali will not go anywhere near the border. 

 

How does this incident affect my trips?

Festival in The Desert/ Festival On The Niger trips Jan and Feb. - These trips don't go anywhere near the region in question nor close to any borders. The Festival In The Desert is 70 kms outside  Timbuktu so not deep into the desert,  and it is more than 700km from the Niger border. Even the extremely cautious FCO site page for Mali does not list this as a no-go area. There is no reason to believe that there is any increased risk as a result of this incident for either of these trips.

 

Tuareg Festival Safari (Dec/Jan) - This trip is hosted and guided by the Tuareg community of Aguelhoc, 500 kms from the region where the hostages were taken. I have a close relationship with this community. I know Tuareg leaders who have only ever  assured me of my safety in the region. When we travel in the desert my guides are in satellite phone contact with their wider community. The leaders I have met have always been keen for me to get the message out that tourists are welcome in the desert, that they are not targets and that they know how the Malian government would play the international community if they ever did anything against a foreigner. Their main gripe with their plight is that they are misrepresented and forgotten by the world community who are more interested in having relations with their governments so that the west will be first in line for the resources. 

 

Whenever I am in the desert I take guides from the community through which I am travelling. The few hostages who have ever been taken in the Sahara have invariably been without a local guide or are in a lone vehicle. I feel that with desert travel in general whatever the political circumstances, traveling without a local guide is like crossing the Atlantic without an experienced sailor.

 

A few personal points to put the risk level of travel to Mali in context.

 

My family have always taken summer holidays on the Pembrokeshire coast in west Wales. In the  early 80's two walkers were shot by the IRA as they were walking on the coast path. Supposition was that they had witnessed an arms dump. Did this event make walking on the coast path or going to Wales more dangerous than going anywhere else at the time of the troubles? Of course we continue o this day having holidays there and camping near this coast path without incident. 

 

There is very little crime in Mali.

 

The core difference between western culture and African in my view is this: in the West we have a series of institutions which we can more or less rely on to bind our society together - political, legal, military, police, welfare, education, health...We no longer need  to rely on our community and so we have lost it. In Africa it is the reverse. Historically they have not been able rely on their institutions, they rely on community instead to bind together the society. The most inspiring aspect of Africa is the cohesion of its community. In every culture in Africa guests or strangers are owed the utmost hospitality. Wherever you go you have a whole community of people looking after you. 

 

I can find no evidence of  the source of a terrorist attack coming out of Mali.

 

For an interesting assessment of the arbitrary nature and inconsistencies in western Foreign Office advice see this page on the Institute for Security studies' web site :http://www.iss.co.za/index.php?link_id=22&slink_id=6245&link_type=12&slink_type=12&tmpl_id=3

 

For more on my views about security see my blog page: http://www.fromhere2timbuktu.com/guylankester/Blog/Entries/2009/1/23_Western_double_standards_-_aid%2C_trade_and_security..html

 

I'm sorry that this email was so long but I hope, if you had natural doubts about security in Mali, that I have put the risks in context in some way. 

 

We cannot live our lives in fear or we refuse the very urge for life that makes us want to travel.

 

Thursday, 11 June 2009