By Lamine Ghanmi - Analysis Fri Feb 17, 9:35 AM ET
RABAT (Reuters) - A U.S. drive to deepen anti-terror ties with North African nations needs to be balanced by greater concern for democracy and human rights in order to gain wide political acceptability in the region, analysts say. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco this month, heaped lavish praise on their cooperation in Washington's "war on terror" on his first tour of the strategic energy-rich region on Europe's southern flank.
But local ears strained to catch any mention of good governance. It was left to Rumsfeld's aides to voice U.S. hopes for internal reforms in the three countries, tightly governed states struggling with a variety of social and economic strains. In a region where anti-U.S. resentment among ordinary people and intellectual elites runs high due to the war in Iraq and U.S. support of Israel, his silence on locals' hopes for more jobs and greater freedoms spoke volumes, commentators say.
"The Maghreb has apparently no political purpose other than to serve as a watchman, to wear a uniform or serve as a vast communal protectorate in the face of the risk of 'terrorist infiltration' for Washington," said Algeria's independent newspaper Le Quotidien d'Oran. BUSINESS AS USUAL Saad Djebbar, an Algerian lawyer and analyst based in London, said: "His meetings with the leaders in the region did not bring to the fore the U.S. commitment to promote democratic action and the substance of democracy." "That revived the perceptions among people in the Maghreb that 'there is business as usual' with Washington keeping the status quo for the sake of the fight against terror," he said.
Washington views Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco as forces of moderation in North Africa, amid concerns about local Islamic militants with links to fellow radicals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa's Sahel region. Washington has long standing defense ties with Tunisia and Morocco. Its relations with Algeria, Africa's second-largest country, have been warming after a long period of tension and the two opened military-to-military exchanges last year. U.S. experts have been training local militaries in countries around the Sahel as part of Washington's Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative, which aims to help governments prevent their territory from becoming safe havens for militants. The training has involved Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria and Tunisia and may later be extended to include Libya. Local people say the U.S. Bush administration's rhetoric about expanding democracy in the Arab world clearly takes second place to shutting down al Qaeda's networks. "For many people, the U.S. vision for democracy in the region appears strange and unclear. They accept anomalies and malfunction in the democratic process," said Touazi Mohamed, a Moroccan political analyst. Recent developments in the region and beyond are likely to ensure Washington's priorities remain unchanged. FROM THE MAGHREB TO IRAQ Hamas's stunning Palestinian election victory and gains for Islamists in Egyptian elections are likely to inspire caution in Washington, fearful that pushing for democratic change will empower Islamist groups opposed to its policies. On the counter-terror front, security sources in the Maghreb say scores of young men from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco have made to Iraq to join the anti-U.S.insurgency. Intelligence sources say some of the young men from the Maghreb who went to Iraq died in suicide attacks there. "It is clear for the U.S. that it will not win the war in Iraq if it does not put an end to the insurgency. Many people from the Maghreb are joining the insurgency in Iraq and that worries the U.S.," said Mohamed Dariff, a Moroccan analyst. Morocco has stepped up its crackdown on suspected cells of Islamic radicals since 2003, when suicide bombings in Casablanca killed 45 people and shocked the normally peaceful country. Tunisia blamed al Qaeda for a 2002 bombing against its main Jewish shrine, killing 14 people, most of them German tourists. Algeria's government is fighting the radical Islamic faction Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which intelligence sources in the region believe al Qaeda wants to make its umbrella group in the Maghreb. "There is a shift in al Qaeda strategy to unify Jihadists in the Maghreb under the umbrella of Algerian GSPC," said Dariff. Rumsfeld said the three countries were successfully shutting al Qaeda out of the region. But Morocco's leading Le Matin du Sahara, which often reflects the views of policymakers, said al Qaeda's threat to the region was serious.
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