The Banana Theory of Terrorism: Alternative Truths and the Collapse of the ‘Second’ (Saharan) Front in the War on Terror

Abstract

This article is concerned largely with truth, lies and disinformation about the US war on terror across the Sahara-Sahel region of Africa. These are terms that have strong resonances but which soon take us into tricky philosophical terrain in which multiple definitions are embedded in numerous and widely contested theories of truth. As social scientists, we appreciate that truth is more about perceptions and social constructs than absolutes. In the postmodernist age, and especially in the context of the power structures with which we are dealingwhat Foucault (1980) preferred to call "regimes of truth" -my usage of the concept of 'alternative' or 'competing' truths might be taken to suggest that all narratives are somehow equal. I should therefore make absolutely clear that the narratives discussed in this article are not equal. The burden of proof for someone claiming that something happened is much higher than for those claiming it did not. In the case of the events that I recount here, that burden of proof lies firmly with the US and Algerian authorities and their respective intelligence services. The onus is on them to produce the metaphorical bodies to support their claims, which, so far, and as I argue below, they have singularly failed to do.In 2002-2003 the US, in collusion with its new regional ally Algeria, launched what has generally become known as a 'new' or 'second' front in its global war on terror across the Sahara and Sahelian regions of Africa. The precise nature of this Saharan war on terror, the intelligence on which it was based, the motives of the US and Algerian governments in various stages of its pursuance, its local, regional and global implications, and what would now appear to be its collapse, have been shrouded in opacity, dissemblance and obfuscation. That is not at all surprising in the light of the fact that senior members of the US administration, including the president himself, are on record as saying that disinformation is a legitimate weapon in its post-9/11 war on terror.The aim of this article is to separate the disinformation from the truth, and to explain the motives of the two main parties involved, namely the US and Algeria, in launching this new front. The article is in six parts. Part 1 gives a summary and largely descriptive account of the Saharan war on terror, which has been described,

Demystifying Africa's Security

“…Although only rarely admitted by US government spokespersons, the importance of African, especially sub-Saharan, oil has been the dominant of the these three strategic considerations since AFRICOM was first mooted within the US Department of Defense around 1997 (Keenan, 2008b). It was in that year that US dependency on foreign oil reached the psychologically critical 50% mark, leading the neo-conservatives ('neocons') to make energy security a key election issue in 2000.…”

“…The reasons for this are complex, but I will deal with them only briefly as I have spelt them out frequently in ROAPE (Keenan 2004a(Keenan , 2004b(Keenan , 2004c(Keenan , 2006a(Keenan , 2006d(Keenan , 2008a and elsewhere. The essence of my argument is that the Bush administration decided to use a military structure to secure access to and control over African oil and opted to use the GWOT as the justification, rather than acknowledging that US military intervention in Africa was about resource control.…”

“…I was initially invited to comment on this issue, partly because of my earlier criticisms (Keenan, 2008b) I had also expressed slightly critical views over the way articles in this issue had addressed certain aspects of both the 'global war on terror' (GWOT) and the US's new military command structure for Africa, AFRICOM. If that were not enough, I also raised concerns about the way articles in this issue, and almost everywhere else for that matter, were using the concept of 'globalisation'!…”

“…The four points I address are: 1) The way in which the GWOT 1 has been used by the Bush administration to justify its militarisation of Africa; 2) how and why this justification underwent a 'paradigm shift' with the launch of AFRICOM from the GWOT to the 'security-development' discourse (Keenan, 2008b); 3) two fundamental misconceptions in the use of the term 'globalisation'; and 4) the context and implications of McFate's important briefing on the 'Outsourcing the Making of Militaries: DynCorp'.…”

Unlocking the Relationship Between the WTO & Regional Integration Arrangements (RIAs)

“…One prominent local citizen in southern Algeria expressed the views of many when he said: 'Now that they [the Algerian authorities] have the Americans behind them, they have become even bigger bullies' (Keenan, 2009b). The US intervention is thus prolonging and perhaps even entrenching fundamentally undemocratic regimes, while weakening or delaying the development of autonomous and more democratic civil societies.…”