Word: mauritania
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...becoming more common across Africa. Armed conflicts are on the decline, democracy is spreading, and economic growth is healthy. But rebirths can be fragile. And after a few years of optimism in West Africa, instability has suddenly returned. The past two years have seen coups in Guinea and Mauritania and the tit-for-tat assassinations of the President and army chief in Guinea-Bissau. More recently, the regional superpower, Nigeria, endured three months of political uncertainty when President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua underwent medical treatment in Saudi Arabia but refused to hand over power to his deputy for three months...
...Topping the list of the techniques AQIM has borrowed from its brothers in the Middle East and South Asia is kidnapping Westerners to net big-money ransoms - or carefully choreographing their executions to shock the world. As the fates of several hostages hang in the balance in Mali and Mauritania, Western governments are grappling with how to deal with the growing problem: should they pony up hefty ransoms time and again to save their citizens, or stand by the time-worn policy of refusing to negotiate with hostage takers...
...Westerners have been abducted by AQIM in North Africa in the last three years. While the group has unleashed many of its most violent terrorist acts (bombings and shootings) in cities like Algiers, its kidnappings have all taken place in the vast Sahel region stretching across Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Libya and Tunisia. According to experts, the number of insurgents roaming the desert area in four-wheel vehicles has increased from a few score to perhaps 200 in the past two years, including both hard-core members and supporters who periodically participate in missions...
Security experts believe that AQIM's shift in tactics began in earnest with the December 2007 killing of four French tourists in Mauritania in what officials believe was a botched kidnapping. Successful abductions of Westerners then followed in Tunisia, Nigeria, Algeria and, most recently, in Mali, where French aid worker Pierre Camatte was snatched from his hotel on Nov. 25, and again in Mauritania, where three Spanish volunteers and an Italian couple were kidnapped on Nov. 29 and Dec. 19, respectively. (See pictures of a jihadist's journey...
Despite that success, concerns over al-Qaeda in Africa have continued to grow as the group demonstrates an ever more muscular presence with a series of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations, from Mauritania to Somaliland. The Somali connection is proving to be a particular worry with the regrouping of militants under the new unified command of a group called al-Shabaab and the discovery that scores of young Muslim men from the U.S., Britain and Australia are traveling to Somalia to receive weapons training in al-Shabaab camps. This year, three men from Minneapolis pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges...