Abstract
The Sahel-Sahara region of North Africa has been given increased attention since the early 2000s, in particular those countries that became a ‘battleground’ in the global war on terror launched by the Bush administration after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Though President Obama announced in May 2013 that the ‘boundless global war on terror is over,’ the United States of America (USA) keeps focusing on the networks of Al Qaeda which it considers to represent the highest national security threat to the US and its citizens. Besides the obvious strategic interest in securing oil and natural gas flows from the region to the US, which is behind the ‘pattern of fabricated terrorist incidents’ (p. 25), as Jeremy Keenan states throughout his second book on the topic, he is convinced that ‘the region has served the US as an instrument in its imperial grand design’ (p. 280); and to justify its increasing military footprint, together with its ally Algeria, it started to ‘fabricate terrorism’ in the region.
The Dying Sahara is Keenan’s second book, which investigates Western intervention in the Saharan region, and more closely, the American ‘invasion’ of the Sahel, as he suggests. Reading this critical, and possibly provocative, volume we feel justified about what the author himself indicates on its first page: ‘at least in the language of governments and their compliant media, [the book] is even more of a “conspiracy” than The Dark Sahara [2009] in that it provides “evidence-based” explanations – “truths” – that are wholly out of step with what Western governments would want us to believe’ (p. viii). Even if The Dying Sahara is a fine continuation of The Dark Sahara (and we already know that a third volume is in the making [p. 272]), it is unfortunate that the author constantly refers to his first piece in the series, as it is distracting. What will readers of The Dying Sahara do without having The Dark Sahara next to them while reading? References like ‘evidence presented in The Dark Sahara’ (p. 42), the Tuareg leader of an attack ‘as described in The Dark Sahara’ (p. 101), or to how it was ‘documented in The Dark Sahara’ that Algeria ‘has been the main agent in assisting the US in its policy of creating a ‘Terror Zone’ across the Sahel since 2003’ (p. 102) appear often.
From The Dying Sahara we can learn about the web of complexities across the region with a detailed timespan stretching from the ‘El Para story’ of spring 2003 – ‘real or fabricated’ (p. 2) – to the ongoing Mali crisis that started with a coup d’etat in Bamako on 22 March 2012. The numerous intriguing stories are interwoven in Keenan’s genuine ‘conspiracy narrative’, which – based on his expertise – highlights the ‘Tuareg perspective’. The reader can get a better understanding of other countries’ (in particular, Libya’s) past aspirations in the region ‘using the Tuareg card’. Also, from a geopolitical point of view, Niger’s valuable position due to its uranium treasure and the ‘scramble’ for it in the northern part of the country by ‘international mining companies from France, China, Canada, Australia, South Africa, the UK [United Kingdom] India and elsewhere’ (p. 94), as well as how local people consider that ‘uranium mining [is] a major and extremely serious threat to the region’s unique and complex ecosystem’ (p. 95) are all explained in a fine scholarly manner.
Keenan’s new book offers a chronologically highly detailed insight into the many aspects of foreign engagement and events of presence – alleged and real – that are important to consider when assessing any American strategy in the region. His critical stance is supported by a deep anthropological knowledge of the Tuareg people and a widespread network of local informants all across the Sahara. His assessment and even ‘accusations’ as many might feel, however, definitely raise awareness by ‘sticking in the mind’ as a US government official admitted (p. 68), creating the feeling that there has to be a ‘clue somewhere’ (p. 68). It is therefore a volume that is warmly recommended both to scholars and policymakers, and certainly to students to help develop their critical eyes on such complex situations as the ones presented in Keenan’s work.
The book is structured to give readers ancillary resources like a timeline from the 1960s up to the end of January 2013, together with maps and the list of abbreviations (pp. xv–xxv), without which it would be rather challenging to follow the author’s storyline full of names, dates and events. From this angle, The Dying Sahara is a basic source on contemporary dynamics in the Sahel-Sahara.