Algiers: Security Summit – Where the main hub is…

Given the proliferation of terrorist activities and “foreign” interventions in the Sahel region, Algeria has decided to react, fearing that any inimical decision or arrangement by neighboring countries will affect Algeria the most.            A ministerial meeting is held in Algiers, and seemingly aiming to put order in relations among countries of the Sahel. It includes Algeria, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Chad, Libya and Burkina Faso. This conference will focus on the resurgence of terrorist activity and crime in general. Unwilling to revive tensions around the recent release of some hostages in northern Mali, Mr. Abdelkader Messahel preferred to gently remind that there are agreements with immediate neighboring countries, and those agreements are based on common interests, but also commitments to respect. “Algeria has honored its commitments” and “has put its hand in its pocket to help neighboring countries to stabilise their borders”, he said.

However, if Mr. Messahel sees that terrorism is the greatest threat to the region; contrarily and in opposite way Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has stressed, last Friday, the “rejection of any outside interference in the Sahel region, under the umbrella of terrorism”.
Then it becomes legitimate to wonder if the conference, aiming to monitor and evaluate the Bamako process on security and development in the Saharan-Sahelian, is not spinning in a kind of “a donor and recipients of lessons” … as if terrorism is not an international matter, but rather a regional one, and better still localized to the degree of making it a domestic matter for fear of revealing weaknesses and serious breaches of state structures and government responsibilities… but time will wind up and harsh evidences will speak up…

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