ABSTRACT
Since early in 2003, the Sahara-Sahel region has become a new front in the global ‘war on terror’. Prior to that time there had almost certainly been no act of terror, in the conventional meaning of the term, 1 anywhere in this vast region of Africa. And yet, by the end of 2004, senior US military personnel were describing the Sahara as a ‘Swamp of Terror’, a ‘terrorist infestation’, which, in the words of US Air Force General Charles F. Wald, deputy commander of US-EUCOM, 2 ‘we need to drain’. According to Stewart M. Powell, who covers the White House and national security affairs for Hearst Newspapers in Washington, DC, ‘The Sahara . . . is now a magnet for terrorists’. 3
