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“Sudan will not allow revenues from oil exports from South Sudan to be used to buy arms for rebels and mercenaries,” Bashir declared. It was a public politics undertaking designed to maximize political rewards for Bashir. Despite pressure by the US, the PRC and several world powers on Khartoum to abide by the March 2013 agreement between Juba and Khartoum, Bashir remains adamant. Ultimately, however, tight implementation of Bashir’s cut-off was postponed and some export of South Sudanese oil was still taking place by late June 2013. But the die is cast. On June 21 2013, Bashir reiterated that until South Sudan implemented “all agreements by 100 percent, no barrel of oil will be piped to Port Sudan”.
Protests from Beijing, long a major patron of Sudan and a consumer of South Sudanese oil, were ignored by Khartoum.
Meanwhile, hectic preparations were, by late June 2013, taking place in Khartoum for the escalation of the surge into western Africa. Both Iran and Sudan consider the Central African Republic (CAR) a crucial venue because the CAR permits movement westward around the chaos in Darfur and the French presence in N’Djamena. Moreover, Bangui provides quick access to the Gulf of Guinea, as well as to the sub-Sahelian east-west roadway which passes through the region’s main capitals — those which Khartoum has been recently courting — all the way to Dakar.
On June 17, 2013, Pres. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and President Michel Djotodia of the Central African Republic oversaw in Khartoum a series of secret multi-national discussions which would now facilitate a dramatic break-out westward for Sudan, Iran, the CAR and their allies.
Djotodia is the first Muslim to lead the CAR, significant since only 15 percent of the population is Muslim and most of them practice tribally-influenced offshoots of Islam. Djotodia, in contrast, was a councilor in the CAR Embassy in Sudan but based in Darfur where he was converted to Islamism-jihadism by his Sudanese hosts. He is convinced in the Sudanese tenet that a strong jihadist kernel is indispensable to ensuring the loyalty and cohesion of any revolutionary movement irrespective of its openly declared ideology or policy.
Indeed, the key internal security and intelligence positions in Djotodia’s Seleka coalition are held by fellow jihadists and their own stalwart tribal-jihadist militias. Hence, Djotodia is convinced he is beholden to Bashir’s Sudan for his own ascent to power. Little wonder that the CAR’s Christian majority fear that Djotodia and his Muslim allies from the north intend to impose an Islamist regime on the nation.
Back in early 2013, Khartoum convinced Djotodia to renege on his understandings with Paris and Bangui: the January 2013 Libreville Agreement. The Seleka coalition launched a new offensive which culminated in their occupation of Bangui on March 24, 2013, and the overthrow of then-Pres. François Bozizé. During the offensive, the Seleka forces also attacked the AU forces, killing several South African and Ugandan troops.
Djotodia did not forget Khartoum, and soon after assuming power in Bangui started sending quantities of CAR diamonds to his friends in the Khartoum-backed Janjaweed militias in Darfur to help fund their genocidal struggle.
Subsequently, Djotodia moved quickly to transform the CAR into a “grey zone” at the heart of Africa.
The CAR is being transformed from a de facto haven for various armed groups, due to lack of governance in the remote areas, into a willing and active sponsor and facilitator of revolutionary groups and criminal networks in order to further undermine regional stability. Thus, while Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) groups of varying size were tolerated in parts of the CAR since 2008, the growing cooperation between Bashir and Djotodia changed the importance and rôle of the LRA. In late April 2013, Joseph Kony was invited to Sudan and promised supplies and shelter in return for military cooperation in both the CAR and Uganda.
The CAR is thus becoming a hub of subversion in the heart of the Africa with geopolitical ramifications extending far beyond the borders and capabilities of the CAR itself.
Thus, the June 17-18, 2013, visit to Khartoum by Djotodia and his delegation constituted a major up-grade of the CAR’s rôle in, and contribution to, the Iran-Sudan alliance. In their first private meeting, Bashir assured Djotodia of Sudan’s commitment to supporting and economically sustaining the CAR in return for the CAR’s playing a greater rôle in the continental designs of Iran and Sudan. Djotodia agreed wholeheartedly, setting the tone for the subsequent discussions between numerous senior officials.
Sudanese and Central African senior intelligence officials discussed how to better utilize the LRA in order to force the Ugandan forces out of the CAR.
Sudan’s ultimate objective is to use LRA forces based in the CAR in order to destabilize the Republic of South Sudan, and then use its territory to have LRA forces reach and destabilize Uganda. Kony has already committed to pursuing Sudan’s strategy. Sudan and the CAR agreed in Khartoum that the first step in this endeavor would be flying LRA forces currently being sheltered, trained and equipped in Sudan to Tambura (in the eastern CAR, off Tumbura, South Sudan).
The Sudanese and Central African Republic senior intelligence officials also met in Khartoum with counterparts from Chad in order to upgrade and refine the tripartite security cooperation deal between their countries. Back in 2012, the three countries agreed to form a joint force in order to monitor their common borders and ostensibly “prevent rebel attacks”. As amended and refined in Khartoum, the tripartite security cooperation deal between Sudan, Chad, and the CAR now regiments and facilitates the flow of convoys with military aid and supplies westward shielded and secured from Western forces and their local allies.
Most important is the groundbreaking regional security agreement discussed and committed to on June 17, 2013, by a large group of senior officials co-chaired by Bashir and Djotodia. The Sudanese delegation was led by Defense Minister Abdelraheem Muhammad Hussein, Presidential assistant and veteran intelligence senior official Nafie Ali Nafie, and National Intelligence and Security Services chief Mohamed Atta al-Mawla Abbas. Also around the table were delegations of senior intelligence and security forces officials from the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Mali, and Mauritania.
The delegations discussed and agreed on close strategic cooperation to restore Arab-Muslim preeminence to the entire region of West Africa. The representatives committed to the consolidation of mutually loyal and supportive regimes, as well as to assisting other regional countries to establish Muslim-dominated governments and to have them join their alliance. The senior officials discussed practical modalities for jointly breaking-away from stifling Western influence and demands for reforms. They agreed on cooperation in resolving security and economic crises and suppressing democratic opposition forces.
Significantly, all countries present also committed to helping Egypt and Sudan in their “sacred struggle” to sustain the Arab rights to and dominance over the Nile waters. Thus, the June 17, 2013, agreement constituted a major and strategically profound shift in the regional posture and assertiveness. If implemented, West Africa will not be the same.
Thus, as the West — led by the US and France — is contemplating the surge into the Sahel in order to contain AQIM and other jihadist and tribal insurrections, the real challenge will be the Iranian-Sudanese surge aimed to transform the entire West Africa and deny it to the West. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the other insurgencies will be but instruments of a grand strategic design and surge.
“Kenya and Uganda are building the world’s longest heated oil pipeline”, August 2015
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Paragraphs
Kenya and Uganda have agreed on a route for a 1,500-km (930-mile) pipeline to pump oil from Uganda to the Indian Ocean, a project that officials hope will transform East Africa into a major oil exporting region.
The path—to serve Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, and potentially Ethiopia—has been the subject of dispute between Kenyan and Ugandan officials since last year. It will cut through northern Kenya and the Lokichar Basin from Hoima in western Uganda before reaching the port city of Lamu.
An alternative route had the pipeline snaking through Kenya’s capital of Nairobi and on to Mombasa, a plan that Ugandan officials said would be cheaper, but would have required displacing hundreds of residents.
The pipeline is part of a broader regional project, the Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor, to bring Ugandan and Kenyan oil to global markets. Uganda is home to sub-Saharan Africa’s fourth-largest supply of crude oil, with as much as 6.5 billion barrels discovered a decade ago. Kenya is home to about one billion barrels. Another proposed project would connect oil from South Sudan and Ethiopia to the pipeline.
6th Paragraph
The pipeline will likely have to travel through swamplands, national parks, and wildlife reserves, and parts of northern Kenya that are vulnerable to attacks by bandits or Islamist militants, according to consultancy BMI Research, which estimates the pipeline won’t be ready before 2020. A lack of skilled labor, poor electricity supply, and the difficulty of importing material and machinery into landlocked Uganda are other obstacles.
http://qz.com/478773/kenya-and-uganda-are-building-the-worlds-longest-heated-oil-pipeline/
“Post-Gadhafi Libya now a jihadist springboard backed by Iran, Qatar, Sudan and Turkey”, March 2015
The consolidation of a self-proclaimed Caliphate in eastern Libya provides the jihadist camp with springboard into Africa and southern Europe.
That strategic thrust, supported strongly by Qatar, Sudan, Iran, and Turkey, has already begun, and highlights the transformation of the takfiri jihadist movements, the Muslim Brothers (Ikhwan), and many of the former Al Qaida movements.
Although jihadist forces occupied Tripoli in October 2011 — as a direct result of the Western military intervention which helped bring down the Moammar al-Gadhafi Administration in Libya — they failed to consolidate power and focus on all-Islamist causes. Subsequently, Libya sank into the still-escalating fratricidal fighting between a myriad of militias and localized forces.
Starting early 2014, the jihad-sponsoring states have capitalized on the building chaos in order to transform jihadist-held parts of Libya into secure springboards for the spread of takfiri jihadism into both western Africa and southern Europe.
By early 2015, Libya no longer existed as a viable state, having morphed, at least for the time being, into a web of small fiefdoms fighting each other.
Libyan jihadists affiliated with global entities, foreign jihadists, and jihad-sponsoring states played a decisive role in the victory of the Libyan uprising and the toppling of the Gadhafi Government in 2011.
While NATO airpower was instrumental in destroying Gadhafi’s military machine, the jihadist camp was decisive in seizing power on the ground to the detriment of Libya’s myriad of indigenous tribes and clans. These contradictions are at the crux of the fratricidal fighting throughout the area of what once was Libya, and adjacent regions.
As background Iran, Sudan, and their proxies — mainly the Hamas and the Hizbullah — were the first jihadist entities on the ground in eastern Libya in 2011, both helping the anti-Gadhafi upsurge and finding out how they could benefit from the prevailing chaos.
A few Iranian and Sudanese officers had already arrived in Benghazi from Sudan in the third week of February 2011, and met with Libyan senior officers who had defected to the rebels.
In March 2011, the IRGC established a high-level command center in Benghazi. IRGC Brig.-Gen. Mehdi Rabbani — a close confidant of Quds Forces commander Qassem Soleimani and the deputy commander of the IRGC Tharallah Base in Tehran — was nominated the commander of the Libyan operation. (In December 2012, Rabbani was promoted IRGC Deputy Chief of Operations and put in charge of such key issues as the defense of the Persian Gulf.)
The on-site senior Iranian operative was Ibrahim Muhammad Judaki of the Quds Forces contingent in Lebanon. His deputy was Khalil Harb, then the Special Advisor to the Hizbullah’s Secretary General in charge of cooperation with and support for Palestinian, Yemeni, and other sensitive groups. Another senior member of the Iranian group was Abdul Latif al-Ashkar, one of the main logistics experts of the Hamas who was target killed by Israel near Port Sudan, Sudan, on the night of April 6/7, 2011.
The initial mission was to expedite the purchase of weapons and ammunition for all anti-Western jihadist forces. The Iranians brought with them several millions in hard currency (dollars and euros). Special attention was paid to the purchase of chemical warfare (CW) munitions for Hamas and Hizbullah.
Tehran’s objective was to provide their protégés with CW capabilities from third-party sources so that Iran would not be implicated and subjected to retaliation should Hamas or Hizbullah use these weapons against Israel. In late March 2011, the first two small convoys set on their way to Sudan via Kufra. One convoy carried tactical containers and the other a few shells. This endeavor led Israel to target and kill Abdul Latif al-Ashkar as he was preparing to ship the weapons from Sudan to the Gaza Strip via the Sinai Peninsula.
The Sunni jihadists — both Libyans and foreigners — who arrived to help their LIGF (Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya: LIFG) brethren in Cyrenaica quickly consolidate a jihadist bastion under the Emirate’s banner. One of the key principles of the 2004/5 jihadist doctrine for localized jihads articulated by Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Shura Kabira is to seize foothold for jihad, and a possible base for the jihadist trend, anywhere possible and even if in cooperation or partnership with non-Islamist elements. With Cyrenaica becoming an important bastion of jihadism, as well as a gateway to Egypt, Sudan, the Sahel, and southern Europe, it was imperative to further consolidate the jihadist safe-haven the moment conducive conditions arose. The jihadists quickly ensured that no future government of Libya would be able to undermine the LIFG-dominated emirate between Darna and Baida unless they unleashed a most violent civil war.
Indeed, the jihadists immediately started to dispatch convoys of trucks full of weapons and ammunition from eastern Libya via Chad to AQIM (Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) bases in the Sahel (mainly Niger and Mali).
Meanwhile, in the Autumn of 2011, the Libyan chaos served as a cover for the consolidation of numerous jihadist entities focusing on other jihadist fronts. However, it took the intervention of various jihad-sponsoring states — mainly Qatar, Turkey, and Iran — to transform the jihadist victory in Libya into an effective springboard for the export of jihadism throughout vast regions.
The number one lesson which Doha drew from the Libya crisis — Qatar’s first real surge onto the big-power politics — was that money was not enough, and that there was no substitute to actual intervention on the ground in the subversive and military operations.
Hence, Doha embarked on the building of a “jihadist Foreign Legion” which would provide Qatar with the ability to intervene in Sunni contingencies, starting with the then-fledgling Syrian jihad.
The then-Qatari Chief of Staff, Maj.-Gen. Hamad bin Ali al-Attiyah, personally oversaw the military aspects of the program. The Commander in Chief was the Libyan jihadist commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj. This nomination kept him away from the turmoil in Libya and the NTC’s inability to install him as either Minister of Defense or Army Chief. Belhaj’s deputies were Al-Mahdi Hatari (the former commander of the Tripoli Brigade) and Kikli Adem (Belhaj’s loyal right-hand man from his LIFG days). The main training facilities for the Legion were in Darna, the center of the Libyan jihadist emirate.
Between early 2011 and early 2014, the Islamist jihadist world was consumed by a great theological debate about their future in view of the grassroots intifadas which shook the Middle East. Osama bin Laden’s Shura Kabira never really believed in the realistic prospects of enduring jihadist states as viable sources for the spread of jihad, and rejected the concept as a viable goal after the collapse of the Taliban’s Emirate in Afghanistan.
Although bin Laden
led the campaign to help the intifadas, he did not believe the nascent Islamist
states like then-President Mohammed Morsi’s Egypt would endure against a
hostile world.
In contrast, a group of neo-salafi scholars considered the intifadas as the
beginning of the fateful “End-of-Time Battle”
for the Middle East. According to tradition,
this apocalyptic battle would be waged in ash-Sham on the plain of Dabiq. The
scholars defined the theological prerequisites for expediting this battle in
what they called “the Khorasan Pledge”, starting with the imperative of a
jihadist caliphate.
The first such Caliphate is being implemented in al-Jazira under the new “Emir of the Faithful”, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Qurashi. Another key issue dividing the jihadist world was cooperation with Shi’ite Iran, which Zawahiri encouraged given the immense benefits derived by the jihadists, and Baghdadi initially forbade on account of Sunni orthodoxy but later slightly relaxed for pragmatic reasons.
This profound theological debate (within Sunni Islamism) slowed down the consolidation of the jihadist springboards in Libya and other jihad fronts all over the world.
The consolidation of a jihadist Caliphate in eastern Libya accelerated starting early 2014 because of the need to support the Egyptian Islamist jihadists against the growing power and popularity of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.
In March, a wide coalition of jihadists — including the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, Hamas, and Al Qaida — started building a Free Egyptian Army in eastern Libya under Qatari, Turkish, and Iranian patronage.
The “emir” of the Free Egyptian Army (FEA) is Sharif al-Radwani. The Army’s liaison officer with the Qataris is Abu-Ubaida, a veteran Al Qaida commander who had worked with the Qataris in Libya, Syria, and other sensitive projects.
The initial objectives of the FEA are to target vital installations, to storm prisons to free Muslim Brothers detainees, and to make Sisi’s Egypt ungovernable. The Libyan intelligence services supported these preparations. Large quantities of weapons, vehicles and other equipment were delivered to the Egyptian groups and stored in the Darna Emirate, pending dispatch into Egypt.
Meanwhile, as of Spring 2014, the theological character of the jihadist movement in Libya had been tied intimately to the transformation of the jihadist movement in the Maghreb and the Sahel. No jihadist movement could escape the brewing schism between the traditional jihadism represented by the Al Qaida supreme leadership in Afghanistan-Pakistan and the ascent of takfiri jihadism spearheaded by the Khorasan Pledge scholars and implemented by the KHI (Al-khilafa al-Islamiya or the Islamic Caliphate) in al-Jazira.
In June 2014, AQIM leaders sought to reconcile between the Al Qaida Shura Kabira and the Khorasan Pledge scholars. In a June 22, 2014, communiqué, AQIM recognized Ayman al-Zawahiri’s preeminence as “our Sheikh and Emir”, and urged DI’ISH to reconcile. However, when AQIM’s appeals were rejected by the Al Qaida Shura Kabira, AQIM announced its support for the DI’ISH.
On July 1, 2014, Sheikh Abdullah Othman al-Assimi posted a video-message in the name of al-Qaidat Jihad in the Maghreb and Trans-Saharan Regions. Assimi, whose real name is unknown, is the organization’s leader and a prominent Islamist jurist. His home base is in the mountains and forests of Boumerdes and Tizi-Ouzou in Algeria.
“My group wants to build friendly ties with DI’ISH. You are dearer to us than our tribe and family, and you will always have our support,” Assimi said. “We are still waiting for Al Qaida branches across the world to reveal their stance and declare their support for [DI’ISH].” Assimi alluded to his support for the takfiri interpretations of the laws of jihad. “After the silence of the people concerned, we wanted to show our stance for the sake of justice so that the DI’ISH jihadists know that we will not fail them. We tell all Muslims that we have seen justice in the DI’ISH approach and they are among the most obedient of Allah’s people and the most dedicated to the Prophet.”
This was a very important endorsement of the tenets articulated in the Khorasan Pledge.
Meanwhile, a group of Libyan mujahedin, including veterans of the Syrian jihad, announced in mid-June 2014 the formation of a takfiri jihadist group in eastern Libya called the al-Battar Brigade. The Brigade was modeled after the DI’ISH and was formally affiliated with it through Libyan mujahedin in both Libya and al-Jazira. The primary objective of the Al-Battar Brigade was to establish control over the city of Darna — the heart of Libyan Islamism and jihadism — and eradicate traitors to the jihadist takfiri cause.
“We will cut off heads, slit stomachs and fill Libya with graves” in order to attain these objectives, the Al-Battar communique said. At the same time, al-Battar Brigade continued to cooperate with Al Qaida’s Ansar Al-Sharia, the jihadist primary entity expediting the movement of jihadists and weapons between the Syria-Iraq theater and local centers such as Libya.
In late-July, regional jihadist leaders met in southern Libya in order to better coordinate operations, examine the possible unification of Maghreb and Sahel groups, and agree on a common position regarding the theological dispute between Zawahiri and Baghdadi. The gathering included senior commanders from AQIM, Ansar al-Sharia (Tunisia and Libya), Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (Egypt), El Mourabitounes and Ansar al-Din (northern Mali). By mid-August 2014, the presence of takfri jihadists affiliated with the KHI throughout the Maghreb and the Sahel was palpable. The takfiri jihadists vastly expanded recruitment of volunteers for fighting in the ranks of the KHI in Syria-Iraq. They also oversaw the conversion of existing networks and groups to takfiri jihadism.
The process has accelerated by the return of combat veteran jihadists to the Maghreb and the Sahel.