Africa Unrest Has Obama Administration Fingerprints

[Geee]

Human Events:

The hostage crises in Algeria and Mali are linked to President Barack Obama’s failed Libya policy and could quickly metastasize across North Africa transforming it into the world’s epicenter for Islamic extremists.

The Islamist group that stormed the Ain Amenas gas facility in southern Algeria claims it was responding to Algiers’ support of the French military invasion of neighboring Mali. The French went to the aid of Malian forces to battle rebels – mostly ethnic Tuaregs, nomadic Berber people who inhabit the Saharan interior of North Africa and allied with Islamic extremists – who now control much of that country and threaten, according to French authorities, to radicalize the entire region.

Adam Garfinkle, editor of The American Interest magazine and a North African expert, explained in his blog the Tuaregs are the main group that has been in periodic revolt against the Mali government for decades. Garfinkle states the “catalyst” for the Mali rebellion was the Obama administration’s decision to start a war in Libya as well as our bad judgment about the Tuaregs.

For years the U.S. military provided counterterrorism training to Malian forces and it helped select Tuareg officers to command Mali’s northern units. Once Obama launched operations against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi many heavily armed Tuaregs, who were Libyan mercenaries, returned to Mali with truck loads of weapons. Then the American-picked Tuareg commanders with the help of the returning Tuareg mercenaries seized the northern half of Mali.