Robert Fowler som satt tre måneder som gissel hos Mokhtar Belmokhtar og hans gruppe i 2008, sier Vesten må lære av sine feil. Jihadistene har som mål å danne et sammenhengende belte gjennom Sahel-regionen. Lykkes de bare delvis med det betyr det katastrofe for menneskene som bor der.

Algeria has been fighting Islamic fundamentalism for 20 years, and in that struggle some 200,000 people have been killed. The jihadis have fought under many names since 1992, becoming, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in January 2007.

What is new, is their push into the vulnerable and impoverished sub-Saharan region, and we in the West helped. By making possible the wholesale looting of Qaddafi’s arsenals, we have facilitated the Algerian militant’s plan to turn this strip across Africa, from Mogadishu on the Indian Ocean to Nouakchott on the Atlantic, into a chaotic and ungovernable zone in which they believe their jihad will flourish. Should they even partly succeed – in concert with their murderous brothers in Boko Haram and Al Shabab – it will create an economic and humanitarian disaster of barely imaginable proportion. Thus, they can only be defeated now, or later at a much greater cost in blood and treasure.

As a captive of this Al Qaeda affiliate, I learned of their implacable hatred of all things Western, of the extent to which they despise the ideals we hold most dear: freedom, liberty, democracy, equality, human rights. They won’t be talked out of their jihad. They won’t compromise, and as they made clear, we too are squarely within their sights.

An important military adage I learned as deputy defense minister in Canada is “maintain the aim.” But we didn’t in Afghanistan. If Mali and the wider Sahel region is to be freed from the jihadi scourge, we will have to better remember this hard-learned lesson. This must be about so damaging and degrading the capabilities and numbers of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its clones that they won’t soon again threaten the peace and stability of our friends across this vulnerable region; nothing else.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/15/is-mali-a-new-line-in-the-sand-against-terror/what-i-learned-as-a-hostage-in-niger