Waging war on terror: The implications of America's ‘New Imperialism’ for Saharan peoples

Abstract

This article explains how and why the US administration and its allies in the region, notably Algeria, launched a new Saharan-Sahelian front in the global ‘war on terror’ in 2002–03. It argues that the justification for launching and maintaining this front was based on a massive deception involving the fabrication of ‘terrorist incidents’ in the Sahara by the military intelligence services of the countries involved. The deception, while beneficial to Algeria's authoritarian and military-backed regime, was designed primarily to create the ideological conditions for the expansion of US imperialist interests in Africa, notably the securing of US strategic national resources. The article follows the course of this ‘war’ in the Sahara-Sahel from its inception in 2002–03 until the present. In so doing it examines the nature of ‘intelligence’, the role of the media in perpetrating the deception and the wider implications of the ‘war’ for the peoples of the regions that have been most involved.

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