TOMBOUCTOU: Islamic militants linked to Al-Qaeda are building fortified bunkers in the Sahara desert of Algeria and Mali to shelter against air attack as their power grows, security experts believe.
Taking no account of national boundaries, the members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have implanted themselves in the desert, gaining revenue from ransoming western captives and illegal trafficking.
"We have different verifiable reports which enable us to state that AQIM is currently in the process of building shelters, or bunkers, in which to hide against attacks in the desert shared by Mali and Algeria," a Malian source said.
"There is no doubt these people are giving themselves the means to their ends," the source, a highly-placed official in Mali’s northern operational command, added.
An official from one of Mali’s neighbors confirmed the reports, saying, "The terrorists are building fortified bunkers in mountain areas because they fear coming under air attack.
"Some have already been constructed in Mali and Algeria, and others have been started along the Niger border."
Well-organized and highly mobile, AQIM has been virtually unassailable in the Sahara, but the countries where the Islamists operate have recently been offered help from the West, including France and the United States.
Experts stress that aircraft are vital to track them down and attack them.
"I think they are worried at the prospect of every country in the region joining in a widespread conflict, hence their decision to take counter-measures," former Malian defense minister and intelligence Chief Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga said.
"The Islamists want to control the Sahara," he said. "They take hostages to have money and a reputation, but also to deter those who want to contest that control."
Malian academic Hamed Maiga is currently preparing a thesis on AQIM and regularly visits northern Mali.
"At night witnesses have reported hearing the noise of machinery in the mountains or rocky regions where the Islamists are building bunkers against air attack," he said.
Hamed Maiga said the fighters had already laid minefields around their desert hideouts to guard against assaults overland.
Their construction of more permanent fortifications also showed their determination to make the region their permanent base, he said. "Otherwise they could just move elsewhere to avoid attacks."
AQIM was founded in the late 1990s by radical Algerian Islamists who sought the overthrow of the Algerian government to be replaced with Islamic rule. The organization linked to Al-Qaeda in 2006.
Believed to number around 300 men, its influence spans large parts of north and west Africa and it has raked in millions of dollars from ransoms, funding a tiny but well-oiled army.
The militant Islamists have spun a tight network across tribes, clans, family and business lines that stretch across the Sahel.
They have managed to avoid capture in the complex and tough landscape by integrating into its social fabric: they support poor tribes, finance the digging of wells and sometimes distribute medicine.
But they also engage in racketeering, and facilitate the trafficking of drugs by South American cartels that use the region as a key transit point to Europe by taxing and protecting convoys.
Algeria’s Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia said Wednesday that Algiers would be implementing a new strategy against "trans-Sahara terrorism" in cooperation with neighboring countries.
Quoted by the state news agency APS, he said that border security would also be strengthened.
Speaking in Oran to regional officials of western Algeria, Kablia claimed that terrorism had been considerably reduced, but said other problems such as theft, smuggling and drug-dealing had to be confronted.
